Ripten Review: King’s Bounty: Armored Princess – Twice the Princess, Half the Armor.

It is almost criminal how little King’s Bounty: Armored Princess was talked about when all was said and done in 2009. Then again, it’s predecessor found itself in much the same pirate ship so it shouldn’t be all too surprising to fans of the games that the sequel was so overlooked.

Armored Princess, and King’s Bounty before it, are both sort of an easy-but-not-really-easy strategy RPG. It is easy in the sense that it isn’t Suikoden. You don’t have a trillion troops to maneuver around an immense battlefield or anything. The armies you wield are generally more compact, which allows you to condense your strategies down without going too crazy with micromanagement. It isn’t easy in the fact that the game tries to kick your ass at absolutely every turn. Oh, and it can kick your ass… IN 3-D!

From the beginning you can tell Armored Princess assumes two things- that you are A) familiar with the game before it and B) familiar with the genre. This isn’t a detraction since Armored Princess is a sequel to a game that exists within a genre known for its hardcore fans. If I buy a box of hot dogs injected with cheese from Whole Foods, and then get home and remember that I don’t even like hot dogs without cheese injected in them, that is on me and not the hot dogs. And also I might have horrible taste in food, because those things are delicious.

I need to watch myself, anytime I try to do a review that doesn’t have a gimmick artistic spin on it I tend to do more reviewing of other people reviewing it than I do actually talking about the game. I’ll get on about the story or something. That is what professional reviewers normally do around this point, right? So, anyway, Armored Princess is a continuation of the last King’s Bounty. In this title you play the titular Armored Princess, an all grown up and tough Princess Amelie. Instead of saving the Endorian realm from colorful evil, Amelie goes on a journey to find her mentor and ends up taking a nice interdimensional cruise to the land of Teana, a place that has more in common with Jamaica than Hyrule.

The plot is really just binding to hold together the “A Few Dozen Hours of Awesome Strategy RPG 101” text book, and that action is the real strong point of Armored Princess. You won’t find replay value in the way people have come to judge replay value- there are no multiple endings nor is there any real alignment meter, and you can’t customize your character to look like a perfect Mary Sue of yourself, but the game is so entertaining you will probably go back and try it again as one of the three different classes. Or maybe you want to give it a shot using some of the unit types you didn’t get a chance to experiment with the first time around. There is definitely enough to do in this game that you can wring out entertainment even after your first play through. Most of us supporters of the genre are going to play it more than once just because of our inherently masochistic ways thanks to the steep climb in difficulty.

While it cuts newcomers some slack by only giving you a maximum of 5 troops/character to worry about, it doesn’t cut you any slack in the fact the AI knows what it is doing and likes to throw you a curveball every now and then. The Beyond Oasis-ish world of Teana tries its hardest to keep you out of the bad parts and compartmentalize things to keep you from wandering above your level, which was something the original title didn’t bother to do at all, but it doesn’t always work. Even when you are in an area appropriate to your armies status you might still suddenly find yourself facing an army of 200 skeletons with 10 Archmages in the middle of the fray. It is kind of a jolt when you spent the last hour cruising around smashing butterflies and spiders to death. That isn’t to say the situations are impossible, but they get damn well close to it.

It also helps if you are already used to the series’ fairly unique leveling system. The most important thing being your Leadership stat. The higher it is, the larger the amount of better characters you can recruit. Your stats are actually used as bonuses for your army, and any equipment you wear usually gives a certain perk for using the different types of units. This helps you plan your strategy out even further. If you are on an island that has mostly pirates, you want to have as much on you that gives pirate types a boost. Magic is handled by collecting runes and crystals that you put towards upgrading different types of spells to assist your army, whether it be directly throwing flame upon your enemies or by buffing stats and lowering enemy defenses. It can be a lot to get used to for newcomers, but, once again- sequel.

Luckily even if you are new to the series, the frustration of an actual Game Over screen isn’t something you are going to worry about. Even with the difficulty, you always have another shot thanks to the fact you aren’t actually participating in the battle. Think of your hero character as more of a God wielding magic and strategy to your evangelical troops. When they get slaughtered, you just wash your hands of the whole thing, get more gold, and hire more troops. You could run out of money, but it would be pretty hard to since it seems to grow on trees… or at least get left in a whole lot of chests out in the open. People in fantasy realms never seem to have much trust in banking.

In the end, Armored Princess is a blast. It is actually refreshing to see a game not try to overreach and end up stumbling with it’s sequel. The sophomore slump hits some franchises hard, but Armored Princess escapes. It is fun, addictive, and never at any point takes itself too seriously. It would be ridiculous if it did, considering you routinely go into battle with the most motley crew of fantasy archetypes you can picture. Knights, pirates, barbarians, zombies, and even robots are represented amongst the possibilities you can cobble together in order to save the world. The aesthetics of the game reflect this by being colorful, whimsical, and cartoony. It even has a setting so you could play it in 3-D, but my Kid Vid and the Gamemasters 3-D goggles have been missing since 1992 so I didn’t get to try it out. See, not every game needs to be super cereal with its dialog and give be so graphically intensive you can count the liverspots on every aging wizard. Armored Princess knows what it wanted to accomplish and nailed it in every way. The only possible way you could find this game disappointing is if you went in expecting something with the scope of Dragon Age or the style of Oblivion. This game is a must for people who are fans of the series, the genre, or just fun games in general.

The only glaring problem with this game is that for an Armored Princess, she sure does show a lot of skin. Although I guess “Slightly Armored but Mostly Scantily Clad Princess” didn’t test very well.