Fat Princess is like cake, sometimes it's good and tastes yummy while other times it does more harm than good

By now most of us have played a bevy of multiplayer online games that have spread across a wide spectrum of genres and settings.  Some have fought intense battles against the Helghast while others have faced off against a never ending zombie horde as they struggle to survive with their allies.  But have any of us taken up a battle as a Warrior to rescue their Princess in a fairytale like fantasyland where men can be turned into chickens?  Fat Princess puts the player in exactly that type of scenario and provides an enjoyable online experience that doesn’t involve shooting guys in the head and t-bagging them.

Obviously most of you know by now that Fat Princess revolves around two teams trying to capture and rescue a Princess that is force fed cake to make her huge and tough to carry back to the Castle. But beyond this simple mechanic lies a game that has some nice character classes to play as and is surprisingly brutal but still charming when it comes to the violence.

There are five classes in the game: Warrior, Priest, Worker, Mage, and the Ranger. Choosing which class you play as is a simple case of picking up the hat for the class and simply putting it on. You don’t need to pause the game and go into a menu to choose or change or wait until you die and respawn to become the class you want. You can even change class mid battle if you want simply by picking up the hat of a dead enemy or teammate.  This is a perfect mechanic since it allows players to switch things up if they haven’t been doing well with a particular class or if their team is in desperate need of help from a class like a Mage or Worker.

Each class of course has their particular pros and cons but there isn’t a specific class that is too weak or overpowered to the point of ruining the game and you’ll never see a scenario where an entire team is nothing but Warriors trying to enforce some of their brute strength on the opposing team. The Warrior class of course is on the front line of battle due to their sword and broadsword while the Worker, Ranger and Mage class can sit back and pick off enemies with some of their abilities which range from throwing bombs, shooting arrows or casting flames upon enemies. Each class has two levels with the second being an upgrade which is only attainable by the Worker class upgrading the hat stations at the castle. This is one of the aspects in Fat Princess where team work is required but doesn’t feel too force fed in a way. You see the Worker class needs to go about cutting down trees and mining rocks to upgrade castle defensives and the hat machines. Doing this isn’t a chore since the player gets points for chopping down trees, delivering the material to the hat machine or outpost and finally building the upgrade for it. So in a way you can selfishly go about doing tasks but you’re still helping the team and are being rewarded for it.

Fat Princess is a game where it’s best to go about using a small smidgen of teamwork but it’s not really in the same sense of being in a squad like in Call of Duty or Killzone. You can certainly go about slaying enemies with a group of allies but you’re never really bound to stay in a group until it’s time to storm the opposing team’s castle and grab the Princess. When it comes to grabbing the Princess that’s when you need to band together since the situation can turn into utter mayhem if there are a decent number of enemies in the castle.  At times grabbing the Princess can be a bit difficult since the respawn time for players is only five seconds. Sure, that may sound nice since you aren’t out of the battle for too long but considering that all players respawn at their castle you could find a few instances where 10 or more players spawn at their castle while you’re trying to get the Princess out of there.

Visually Fat Princess just exudes charm. Seeing the cell-shaded style big head characters run around these beautiful environments and hacking one another apart is just a wonder to see. You may not expect a game that looks this cute to be graphic when it comes to the violence but Fat Princess is quite brutal at times. Buckets of blood are on the ground once an enemy has died and at times you may even see a skull or chopped off foot every now and then depending on what attack was used to kill the enemy.

The environments are full of character as well and seeing a mosaic grass pattern in one level really makes things pop and adds a lot of character to the world.  The levels themselves are quite diverse with some being a straightforward flat forest type area while others are sprawling landscapes with multiple bridges, jump platforms and some even have hidden passages that make it easier to infiltrate the enemy castle. The difficulty in the game is ramped up as the later levels feature tough navigation thanks to walkways overflowing with lava and resources being scarce or hard to get to.  It’s nice that the developers changed things up a bit with the levels instead of it simply being slight variations of the same map type.

Fat Princess is a fun game but there are a few issues. At this stage in its release it’s almost impossible to get into a game via the quick join option. Your best bet at getting into a match is making the game yourself or doing a search for any game mode. This of course is fine in some regards since it allows the player to tailor the experience for themselves but it would’ve been nice if the netcode was a bit better at launch since there were similar connection problems during the beta back in May. It can also be a bit hard to keep a track of your position during some of the more hectic battles since at times there a can around 12 characters bunched together in a battle of mayhem. Despite having the username appear above the players things can get really hectic which may lead to some confusion and a few cheap deaths.  But perhaps one of the biggest problems with the game is the length of the matches. The “Rescue the Princess” matches can go on forever if either team doesn’t reclaim their Princess and my last two matches in that mode went into full time with the winner simply being chosen based on total points since both teams failed to recapture their Princess. Tightening the match time and perhaps changing the spawn time for players may make the battles a bit tighter instead of them being long fests of players simply chopping one another up and battling for outpost control.

Is Fat Princess a fun game? Yes it is, but right now it’s a bit of a toss up whether folks should get it now. The game is definitely a blast to play and is worth the $15 price tag since there’s a decent amount of maps and modes outside of Rescue the Princess such as Team Deathmatch, Invasion, a single player story and Gladiator mode and even a Soccer mini-game that is pure madness but the game may not have that long term factor that some players want to get out of their online game. The game is fun to play online and cut fools apart with your sword or caste a freeze spell with your Mage but Fat Princess isn’t the type of game where you’re going to put 5+ hours a day or 12 hours a week into. Fat Princess is more a nice pick up and play every now and then type game and isn’t something you may find yourself playing 3 months from now. That really isn’t a criticism of the game but more of a warning to folks interested in buying the game and are a bit unsure if they should pick it up.  Fat Princess is a charming and enjoyable game but I’m not sure how long it’ll last unless a few of the problems are addressed and unique content is made available to prolong the experience and keep users interested in playing online.

Video 1 - Fat Princess battle footage

Video 2 - Don't mess with the killer chicken

Video 3 - Best end credits sequence ever