Princess Remedy in a World of Hurt
Platform: PC/Steam
Developer: Ludosity, Remar Games
Premise: As a recent graduate from a school that trains healers, you must venture through Hurtland to heal the Prince and any passers-by who happen to be in need of your services.
Release Date: 01/12/14
I picked up Princess Remedy a while ago, mostly due to it being both free and widely regarded as being pretty decent. However, I never got around to playing it because I had other stuff to play and limited time to dedicate to doing so. Recently, I found myself in need of something quick and easy to review so that I wouldn't have to worry about it interfering with the pointy-end of this term and preparations for going on holiday, so here we are. The first comparison that springs to mind is with Undertale, because it feels very much in the same vein humour-wise, with interesting background characters and things like a jealous chest that won't let you open it if you've opened other chests in that run through. Like Undertale, 'combat' also consists of a fairly simple system of dodging incoming projectiles that gets steadily harder to the point of ludicrousness the further you go through the game; and like Undertale, the aim of the game is to help people.
'Combat' in Princess Remedy takes a route somewhere between bullet-hell shooter and puzzle game. You enter by offering to heal someone, which then takes you to a separate area where you have to shoot all the enemies to cure the random passerby of their malady. This starts off fairly easy, when the game only throws one or two non-projectile enemies at you at any one time, and gets even easier when you start to unlock the AOE flasks. However, the difficulty swiftly ramps up throughout the game as they introduce projectile enemies. In addition, at certain points in the game your upgrades start to be a disadvantage, or at least a duel-edged sword. For example, cover is fairly necessary during a number of the later-game encounters. However, because combat involves the Princess constantly shooting, and because her shooting destroys cover in a fairly indiscriminate manner, if you have enough combat upgrades unlocked that you can destroy the average piece of cover in only a few seconds then you, like me, will swiftly find yourself in a situation comparable to being stuck up a particularly foul-smelling creek in dire need of a paddle on more than one occasion. In addition, it has a fairly annoying tendency of being easy to fail and taking a fair amount of time to retry an encounter. That being said, the difficulty curve is competently mapped out and I never felt unfairly weak or overpowered against the enemies.
However, the combat isn't really what you're there for. The characters are what really sell Princess Remedy. The story is admittedly fairly straightforward: one objective which never changes, and a fairly simple feel-good ending, but in all due fairness it was a game-jam game. It serves as a serviceable framework for a variety of interesting and memorable character interactions. Personal favourite characters to heal included the Dark Lord who had been defeated by a passing hero, a child whose malady was that she was too young, and a particularly odd fellow whose malady was that his sentences made sense. There was a particularly suspicious moment towards the start of the game where an NPC said that "[The prince] is your age, you know" and I was kind of dreading a 'marry the prince or go screw yourself, those are your only options' kind of ending but was pleasantly surprised to discover that that wasn't the case. You're given the option of marrying any of the NPCs from the game that you've healed, and I ended up marrying the lady NPC from one of the forest areas.
It feels a bit unpolished and short, but in all due fairness it was a game jam from 2014, so that's not exactly a deal-breaker. The pixel-art visual style gets a bit confusing at times, but again it was a game jam from 2014 so that's not exactly a deal-breaker either. What is annoying that I can't really let go is the sprint function. Princess Remedy does that thing where instead of having a dedicated sprint button mapped to 'Shift', it makes it so that the 'Use' button also functions as a sprint button when you're in motion. However, there's a slight delay between pushing a movement key and the game registering that you've done so, and as a result I ended up getting sent to the stats menu every other time I went to sprint somewhere. It's extra annoying because I only ever went to intentionally check the stat menu something like 5 times over the course of the game, not to mention the fact that coding-wise it would've been much simpler to just assign it to 'Shift' and not have it need to check if you're moving.
However, it's also worth noting the other main reason I chose to review Princess Remedy: It's getting a prequel later in the year, which means a chance to fix up the parts of the game that were unpolished because of it being originally made in a fairly tight timeframe, which actually covers most of my major gripes with it. With this in mind, I'm prepared to heartily recommend Princess Remedy to anyone in need of a fun way to spend an hour or two.
As always, anyone who has a suggestion for a review/rant or just wants to say 'Hi!' can do so either in the comments or at pressxtoreview@gmail.com
-Harry
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