Game Review: Volcano Princess

By JT

Players: 1
Platforms: PC (via Steam)

​Set in a fantasy kingdom, filled with monsters and townsfolk alike, Volcano Princess is a game where you’re the father of an adolescent princess whose duty it is to ensure her growth into adulthood. The whole premise is centered around the choices you make. One choice leads to another, and they can send your daughter along multiple paths. Your daughter is expected to seek romance, and ultimately find work and success as you decide which path her life is takes. In this simple life management sim what choices would you make? If you had the option of being strong, intelligent, or charismatic, which would suit you more? Each choice has consequences, including what you might see as a “balanced” choice. Let’s take a moment to dive into Volcano Princess and see what you might be missing by not choosing to check this game out.

I will be skimming over some notable points of Volcano Princess, only because if I don’t then this review would likely become a novel itself, and the first thing someone might mention with Volcano Princess is choice. Choices begin the moment the game starts, from beginning to end. Like choose-your-own-adventure novels, there are good endings, bad endings, and of course a true ending. Everything you do gets you one step closer to the type of ending of your choice. Aside from being just another visual novel, it also acts as a dating simulator, with freedom to choose which candidate you like best. All of this being woven into the story one way or another, unfortunately making parts of the game throw away good writing in favor of some very cringe exposition.

Comparing this to the flash dating sims of the early 2000s, it’s easy to see where the inspiration comes from. Being similar in scope to a flash game from 20 years ago, there are limited platforms for leveling, limited romance options, and hardly any strong dialogue. As someone who has had the opportunity to play so many other dating sims since the earlier PC and PlayStation years, Volcano Princess is very similar in comparison to others within the same realm. You begin with little to next to nothing, you visit the town, talk to people, buy stats, eat, rest, end day, rinse and repeat. If you have energy to spare, you can also battle. Each stat has a purpose dependent on where you plan to use your Action Points, which are needed for any action taken within all areas of the map. In order to fight monsters in the forest, you need at least 8 AP, along with fishing consuming 7, performing a stage play 6, etc. On top of that you will need AP to boost any and all stats, sometimes being able to acquire paintings or books while doing so. You may rest in bed, on a log, or eat food in order to recover some AP, but sooner or later it runs out, forcing you to end the month.

​The game starts out good, visiting the family restaurant, visiting the lake, checking out the forest, fighting some monsters, talking with townspeople, then comes what bogs down the game. It’s not within the first playthrough, it’s afterwards. It’s when you start to spend a little thing called a talent point, and you sacrifice a struggle for success for a struggle to continue. Talent points are points you obtain after each endgame, completely dependent on character growth. With talent points, you can make any New Game+ easier to get through, but not any easier to sit through. You can give yourself advantages in base stats, such as Str or Int, or advantages in other things such as relationship level or Fame.

The sole purpose of Fame seems to be to finish courses early, allowing them to grant additional points to your stats. Stamina for anything to do with combat, including competition and duels, Mind for life skills, and Charisma for anything dealing with the public (this includes baths, stage play, and dancing). Relationship stats allow you to invite some villagers into a party in order to fight in the forest, which must be at relationship level 25 or above. More areas to explore within the forest would have been appreciated, since there are only 4 at the time of writing. This means that the stronger you get the less appealing the forest becomes, and you may only need to go through it a total of 4 times to finish off that area in subsequent playthroughs. It can be lengthy and challenging when you first explore, but there should be more for the next new game you begin, and perhaps a greater variety of monsters along with that. There seems to be more deviations from combat than there are monsters, such as finding a church, a graveyard of bones, a cave, and the list goes on. There is also a skill tree that can give you some major advantages, such as more HP or Def in combat, greater chance at alchemy, or even heavily discounted items in the marketplace. Although, the ability to grow more crops and upping the base speed of your horse could have been replaced and added into the base of the game for a more natural flow.

Everything about Volcano Princess feels as though it is meant to be short, except for the number of turns until your coming-of-age ceremony, when you finally become an adult, which means 41 months. Each playthrough you’re having to sit through Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter. It can feel way too long, especially after the first playthrough, since afterwards you might get down to the final 10 turns without the need to finish anything else afterwards. That means you may have to sit through a lot of free time just chatting and building relationships you don’t need. For dialogue, when you hold ctrl, you can fast forward through conversation, so there’s that. After the second or third playthrough, the game will feel like a slog to get through, while in-between feels like it’s kept at a nice pace. If there was a lot more to do within the world, then it would be above all flash game dating sims of the past. As things stand, that’s not where it lies. I feel the same now as I did then, and that’s not a bad thing, but most everything can be done in just the first playthrough. There are reasons to keep going, starting over, and making different decisions, but not too many.

Whether or not you blow through the story is entirely up to you. Most of it was the exact same dialogue with the second run as it was with the first. The Narrative isn’t all that exciting; conveyed as if it was all written by a teenager. The whole setup is little princess finds love, finds work, and defeats a great evil in order to find herself and learn about her past. If there are any twists at all, they just come right out of nowhere. The wonderful artwork gives us more of a coherent narrative than the actual story does, and is one thing that separates this Steam game from something akin to a Flash game. The music doesn’t do anything different, and the sound design is what you should expect from a budget title. Nothing more could be expected from a dating sim or visual novel. Walking might as well have just been cut out entirely, since there is no point. You must walk from left to right and wait until your character waddles closer to your goal in order to get to everything and everyone.

If you were expecting a lot of content, sorry to say that you won’t get that here. You will get to play what could be considered mini games, but other than that, just a simple story that makes an attempt to become complicated or complex, and a whole lot of the same throughout your entire run. Customization is very small, but any outfits purchased get shown through the main character. Gold is also very scarce in your first playthrough; however, it hardly becomes a problem after your second. You may spend 15 to 20 hours or more per run with a lot of things that will waste your time, including relationships if that isn’t your overall goal that run. My hours skyrocketed only due to long breaks, since that’s what you feel you need after only a few hours in.

Volcano Princess really feels like what it looks like, a Flash game from the early 2000s with more bits added in to pad the game out. Am I going to keep playing it? Yes, because it’s a type of game I’ve always thought of as a time waster. Is it worth the asking price of $11? If it was on sale, I would likely recommend it for only the casual dating and life sim enthusiasts. As much as I can compare it with other simulation type games, I am basing my score on its own merit. Does it hold its own? Is it fun? Does it keep its momentum? Is it a good game? All of these and more are considered. I wanted this game to be more than it is. I wanted more content from it. I wanted more value out of it. For what we got, it’s not a terrible game. It’s just below average.

Check Out Volcano Princess On Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1669980/Volcano_Princess/

---

Story: D-
Gameplay: D+
Graphics: C
Sound/Music: C
Value: D

OVERALL: D+

Pros:
+ The artwork is good, and you'll probably want to collect them.
+ Endgame talent points help out subsequent new playthroughs.
+ You get to see your choices making a difference during the endgame.

Cons:
- After each new game, progression becomes a slog.
- Narrative is very poor in execution.
- Not a lot to do outside of the base gameplay.

A copy of this game was provided to us free-of-charge by the publisher for the purpose of this review. This did not affect our review in any way.

---