![Mad Princess: The Great Gladiators [マッドプリンセス-華麗なる闘士たち-] Game Sample - PC/Doujin](/images/yt/-_/mad-princess-the-great-gladiators-game-sample-pcdoujin-80snd.jpg)
Mad Princess: The Great Gladiators [マッドプリンセス-華麗なる闘士たち-] Game Sample - PC/Doujin
33If ever there was a short list of little-known, rough Indie/Doujin gems to talk about on this channel, then Atorasoft's "Mad Princess: The Great Gladiators" (aka MP: Brilliant Warriors) would certainly qualify as one of them. Originally released during Comiket 93 in Japan in 2018 and distributed through DLsite, the game was classified as a "Gladiator Raising Simulation RPG" and, for a time, had a meteoric rise on the site with many accolades. Ranked number one not just for its first 24 hours, but for its first seven days, thirty days, and ultimately ranked number one for the year in terms of popularity (and currently ranks fifth overall). On the surface, it appears as a fairly modest dungeon/adventure game with almost total freedom on the player's part that's designed with the tried-and-true WolfRPG engine (a contrast to the RPG Maker engines), and while the game has bits and pieces of Wizardry, a typical visual novel, and various mechanics from other games, it would be unfair to say that this game isn't fairly unique as a whole simply due to how it's structured.
The basic premise of the game is simple enough: The player takes on the role of a male or female criminal who fights in the Imperial city of Caertina as a gladiator as a means of repenting for past sins and to bring amusement to commoners and nobles alike. The stage is quickly set for you to partake in a deathmatch that sees your character beating the odds and consequently being purchased for their skill to leave their prison and is sold off to one of the major traditional training camps for true gladiators, Lutharia. With a chance to earn your independence on the outside, you explore a large continent while performing all sorts of tasks to repay your debt to your new owner(s) and gain popularity and total freedom (after acquiring a hefty one million gold pieces). While there is a general plot to follow afterwards, the main narrative is light and how you approach the story is entirely up to you.
Before I go any further, I want to point out a few things: The game is a grind-fest. The game has two difficulty settings and does not hold you by the hand. The game was localized in English by a group of internal DLsite translators and is a bit rough (but better than a machine-translation). The game's battle and inventory system is also a bit rough (it's even a mystery how you switch targets in battle and weapons and armor have to be exchanged, upgraded, or sold for paltry sums of gold). Lastly, the game is quite vague in terms of how certain things are even triggered throughout the game. With all that being said however, the game is awesome for a few reasons.
The biggest highlight is just how vast the game world is. Towns have varying economies where you can by low and sell high, meet a variety of characters, and partake in tons events influenced by the time, date and location. While some of the characters only have surface-level backgrounds, there are others who have a surprising amount of events that can be triggered based on your relationship level with them as well as characters they may be involved with (which has several tiers that increase with 100 point milestones and are raised from talks, gifts, events, and misc. actions) and there are several dungeons and quests to go on as well. While most of them aren't essential to complete, partaking in the game's many offerings will teach you a lot about the characters and the game's lore. It also doesn't help that the final boss is incredibly powerful, which further encourages pushing the game and its sub-systems to the limit.
Speaking of sub-systems, the game has a lot of them: you can train with Ferza (your gladiator trainer) to give you a variety of buffs, create and enchant gear with various skills and attributes, stock up on a variety of goods from the various towns and characters you find wandering about, use tools to heavily influence dungeon exploration, add titles to your character, discover more than 150 items to aid on your quest (not including the multitudes of weapons and armors), and more. Players can equip almost a dozen different weapon types which have their own skill sets to suit your play style and they can also change your character's appearance. Your comrades fight automatically and are on the more aggro side, but if you max out your relationship with your partner, you can freely change their gear to compliment you better (if you have a favorite comrade who doesn't fight to your liking). A stamina (vigor) system also moderates skill usage and long-distance travel and there's also many different endings to discover.
The game has a nice soundtrack and little in the way of animations, though the pixel graphics of the many characters and enemies are nice to look at (with the unusual measure of more minimalistic enemy designs and detailed character designs). Overall, the game is worth its asking price.