Customer Reviews

Steal Princess

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Atlus U.S.A. is foremost in the industry when it comes to localizing niche Japanese titles for American audiences. Steal Princess, a quirky action/platformer/puzzler of sorts, is among the company's latest efforts, but perhaps this is one title Atlus should have left in Japan.

The game involves Anise, a young thief who suddenly finds herself tasked (read: forced) with rescuing the King's kidnapped son from a legion of demons. Despite being a typical 'save the damsel' affair, Atlus' excellent localization, coupled with some attractive cut scenes, make for an entertaining tale that stands as the game's main highlight. It's a pity, then, that the rest of the title is such a mess.

The game is set on Talis Island, a land divided into various regions that are split further into 25 individual stages. These stages are essentially a series of puzzles that task the player with a specific objective, usually involving the defeat of a specific enemy, or all enemies, in a level. Because Anise is only armed with a nonlethal whip, players have to acquire swords, flails, bombs, and other such weapons to properly dispose of their targets. Unfortunately, these devices often have arbitrary values or rules assigned to them, such as only being able to use a certain sword twice, or only being able to use a 'red' flail against a 'red' enemy. The basis for many of the game's puzzles relies on this weird logic of only being able to use certain items against certain enemies at certain times, and the process can quickly become grueling as players constantly replay stages to figure out the right sequence of actions they should make to achieve their objective. To add insult to injury, many stages also feature various block pushing puzzles, but because blocks can only be moved with the 'shield' item, another limited-use weapon, it is all too easy for the player to accidentally use the item at the wrong time and be forced to repeat the level again (and again and again). It's this unforgiving, trial-and-error style of play that robs Steal Princess of its enjoyment (no pun intended).

But the issues do not end there. The game is set in an awkward isometric perspective that is often difficult to traverse with the limited DS d-pad (stylus control is also available, but that is a far worse option still). Anyone trying to move Anise across a long, narrow, moving platform will quickly notice the problem. Even worse, the awkward perspective makes the gauging of depth and distance difficult, leading to a lot of unfortunate falls or jumps off cliffs that should never have occurred (and there is no way to rotate the maps around for a clearer view).

Even the game's basic play mechanics are sloppy. Many puzzles require Anise to whip enemies and transport them to other locations in the stage. But accurately throwing a lassoed enemy is tricky, and it's not uncommon to accidentally hurl one into a hole or body of water. Inadvertently doing this, of course, usually violates the objective of the level, forcing the player to restart it once again. The game also features an erratic lock-on feature that actually complicates things by randomly switching to another enemy before the player is prepared to attack the intended target (the player can also manually lock-on to enemies, but this does not work perfectly, either).

Lastly, the poor in-game graphics must be mentioned. Anise and the enemies are rendered in crudely drawn and animated sprites within badly textured polygonal environments. Considering how beautiful the hand drawn cut-scenes are, this lack of care the developers gave to the rest of the game is certainly disappointing. The music, on the other hand, is actually rather good.

Steal Princess is a title that wants to be loved. It certainly has the memorable characters and pick-up-and-play mechanics that lend itself a certain charm and appeal. It even boasts a map editor, albeit a limited one, to further its replay value. In the end, however, the game is simply too frustrating, tedious, and ugly to be easily recommended.

The Good: Atlus once again comes out with a solid effort at the roleplaying genre.

The Bad: Like Knights in the Nightmare, it is hampered by poor stylus design and difficult puzzling.


This game is worth the money if you enjoy constant trial and error to figure out what is desired, while all along the lack of an ingame tutorial (or, at least, an ingame tutorial that appears to be stretched out over most of the opening section of the game) hampers your efforts. And there's little use going to the manual, either. On the positive side, once I gave up on using the stylus altogether and changed to the use of the buttons almost exclusively, it became far more playable.

The story seems to move along pretty slowly (I've been playing for 2 hours, and I haven't gotten out of the first 'map' yet), but I have doubts about its replayability. The game offers you the ability to make your own maps and upload them, but so far I haven't found anyone else's efforts up there.

In short, a quirky, frustrating game, but one that will probably prove rewarding to those who have slightly more patience than I have.