PhantomZ2 journeys through the forest and more to find out if The Liar Princess and The Blind Prince is as good as he was expecting. Thanks to NIS America for sending us a review code!
Happy New Year and today we’re looking at another game from Nippon Ichi Software that was given to us to review by NIS America! Thank you! So let’s all take a seat, while Mama PhantomZ2 gets ready to read you the story of The Liar Princess and The Blind Prince for Nintendo Switch.
Story:
The Liar Princess and The Blind Prince starts off with a wolf singing to herself alone under a full moon. However, she isn’t as alone as she thinks, once the praise of her singing from a Prince’s clapping interjects. Taken aback by the idea that someone is applauding her singing, she continues to sing at night for the young Prince to listen to from but escapes after singing due to her worry of the Prince finding out she is a monster. However, due to the curiosity of wanting to know who the beautiful singing is coming from, the Prince climbs up the cliff.
Before he even has the chance to look at where the beautiful singing is coming from, the wolf shields the Prince’s eyes but accidentally claws out his eyes. To make matters worse, when the royal family learns of the Prince’s new condition – they see it as a mark of embarrassment and bad luck, so much that they lock him away in a cell within the castle. Guilty for what she has done, the monster sneaks into the castle to help him escape and take him to the witch of the forest. However, with the Prince still feeling the claws of the monster upon him and with the Wolf still drowning in guilt, she comes up with a plan.
In order to help the Prince, but keep the fact that she’s a monster a secret from him – she makes a request from the Witch of the forest. To become a Princess so she can guide the Prince back to the Witch, and then also wish for his blindness to be cured. The Witch happily goes along with this plan, but the concept of equivalent exchange is still a thing. In return, the Witch asks for the monster’s singing voice, the very thing that brought the Prince to her in the first place. With her wish granted, she returns back to the castle as a Princess and convinces the Prince, very easily, that she is a Princess from a neighboring castle. Once she breaks him out, their journey has now begun.
This story is absolutely cute, sad, and wholesome. So I won’t go any further as I strongly suggest you guys to experience it for themselves. It’s coherent and pretty simple but will leave you smiling or stir up your heart in plenty of ways.
Gameplay:
LPBP is a platforming, action, puzzle game – where the action is probably the most minimal aspect of it. While traversing through the woods, you’ll, of course, have to guide the blind Prince. Most of the time, you’ll be faced with solving puzzles to unlock the paths in front of you. Other puzzles may require you to light your way through an area or activate buttons in the proper order.
Your main way of traversing by yourself, is by either walking, jumping, and switching some switches, but also by using the Y button to transform into your Wolf form. In this form, the Princess is faster, jumps higher, and can attack dangerous monsters. However, this game is all about the Princess AND the Prince. To guide the Prince, you’ll have to hold his hand with the X button while also protecting him from dangerous enemies, bottomless pits, and falling from too high, you’ll have to make sure to place him in the right positions so some puzzles can actually be completed easily. As you progress through the game, you’ll become close enough to the prince where you can guide him from a certain distance. Have him walk forwards, backward, or pick up blocks in order to make some challenges actually possible to complete. By the way, you’ll probably be dying a lot due to accidents. I’ve accidentally killed the Prince a few times and when you realize it, you’ll feel just as guilty as the Princess.
Throughout the game, there will also be collectibles too, of course, collect. Gold flower petals scattered across the stages will unlock concept art to view. If you collect specific flowers and give them to the Prince, it will unveil story elements that actually give background as to who the Witch truly is or was.
There are a few weird issues with the game. In one instance, I actually softlocked myself by using the Wolf to jump over a puzzle and then picking up a flower. However, when you pick up a flower, you can’t turn back into a Wolf. So I had no way of actually going backward now. There’s also very few instances where the Prince will get stuck onto the wall during a jump, and since it counts as him falling from too high – he’ll die. However, these instances are very few and between so you might not actually run into them as I did.
Presentation:
This game’s storybook style and art style, in general, is very great. The monster designs are very unique and kind of campy, while also mixing with a horror aesthetic. The designs of the main characters are very cute, but can also be used to show emotion very well when they need to.
The music is pretty good, but I wish it stood out to me more. The narration of the story itself is actually in Japanese, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. It’s not that the voice is bad, but since its a different language – I’ll be reading faster than her. If they do release an English dub for the story, I would help the narrator sounds good while also reading at the same pace the text appears on the screen. Just so that it doesn’t feel that everything isn’t going too slow. In addition to that a patch like that, could I also be able to use the left control stick on menus? There isn’t really a reason as to why I shouldn’t.
In some instances, assets that you’re able to interact with, switches mostly, blend in too well with the background. I think that’s meant to be the point so it confuses you, but after a while of searching around and not realizing the Switch is there – I then start thinking something is wrong with the game.
Final Verdict:
The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince is a short, but fun and emotional game to play through. Sadly, I don’t think a second playthrough would lead you to any new experiences. It may be a one and done game, but the story told is amazing. The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince gets 4.5 out of 5 stars.
Thanks once again to NIS America for sending us a review code! The Liar Princess and The Blind Prince is releasing for Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 on February 12th. Thank you to our Super Patron: the Duke of Dorks, all of our other Patrons, and to you for reading. Always remember to return to the source.
