• Price: $39.99 USD
• Developer/Publisher: Bliss Brain
• Release Date: July 11, 2024

A review code was kindly provided by Bliss Brain. We thank them for allowing us to cover something they’ve worked so hard on.

The original Princess Maker 2 was released in Japan in 1993, and to celebrate its 30th anniversary they’ve brought Princess Maker 2 Regeneration to Nintendo Switch and other consoles. With updated graphics and a new animated opening, they’ve given the game the “royal” treatment! 👑

You play as a (male) hero who defeated the Demon Lord and saved the kingdom. One evening you go on a walk, and suddenly a little girl descends from the sky in a flash of light. The Star Deity gives her to you to raise, and you get to name her and choose her birthday and even her blood type.

As her father, you’ll make decisions that will influence her fate. (I do wish that they’d updated the parent to include a mother or non-binary option too, but you’re not shown on screen except for once or twice in CGs, so the parent’s gender isn’t super noticeable.)

Starting at age 10, your daughter has a lot of different stats to manage (around 26). You decide on her meal plan, which affects her weight (and stress levels, if you don’t feed her enough). Then you must select her activities for the week; choose between classes, jobs, adventuring, or resting.

You have to schedule the entire month in advance, and you’re only allowed to schedule one activity per week. So if you put your daughter in a dance class, that’s what she’ll do for the entire week. You can’t have her take dance one day and then science the next.

I really like how they included cute little animated scenes that show your daughter studying in class or on the job. Classes don’t seem to stress her very much, and they also increase her stats in some way. However, classes are pretty pricey, so you need her to make some money before she can get an education.

At first I didn’t realize that the cost of classes was per day instead of per week (or how little you make for each job), so I ended up starting a new file due to a lack of funds after spending too much at once. A tutorial explaining the basics may have been helpful. Anyway, you get a small stipend for your daughter every year, but you’ll have to put her to work to earn the funds for her classes.

She only has a few job options at first, since, you know, she’s 10 years old. 😂 (Additional jobs unlock as she gets older.) You need to be careful about which job she takes, as they increase some stats while decreasing others.

It’s also important to note that she may not be very good at a job at first due to low stats. The stats associated with the job will slowly increase as you keep going, but you’ll miss out on wages due to the mistakes she makes in the process.

Your daughter appears to become more stressed out on jobs with stats she’s weak in at the moment. Working in general stresses her out much more than classes, and if she gets too stressed out she’ll get sick. When she’s sick, she doesn’t perform well in class or at work that week, which negatively affects the increase in stats as well as her potential wages.

You have to balance her development with some rest, as all work and no play makes her a stressed, sick little girl. If she gets too stressed, she seems to turn to delinquency. In that state she’ll slack off at work and/or go out buying things she doesn’t have the money for. (On the plus side, if she’s in a good mood and does her job well every day in that pay period, she gets a 50% bonus!)

To decrease her stress, you need to let her relax for a week. Giving her some pocket money to spend when she goes into town seems to decrease her stress even further. You can also choose to take her on vacation; I was a little disappointed that we only have 2 choices for vacation spots, but I loved the CG art for each vacation you take.

Sending her out of town to go adventuring is the final option for her schedule. This isn’t a mandatory option, but it doesn’t appear to increase her stress, and you can find valuable treasure and money in each area. The only problem is that there are monsters out in the wild! 😱

It’s best to have your daughter train in combat skills like attack and magic for a while before you even try to send her out on her own (plus she’ll need some equipment from the armorer in town). She can fight, talk to the monsters, hide, or flee from them. I don’t think the goal is defeating monsters so much as avoiding them, as there isn’t a leveling system besides increasing combat stats back in town.

Moving around the environment and battle animations are pretty slow, in my opinion. If she fails to avoid a fight, a turn-based battle will begin. She can only choose to attack, use magic, or use an item, and there isn’t an option to run. After a few rounds, she may end up choosing to run on her own, or the enemy will flee if you’ve gotten a few hits in. But if she’s unlucky or weak, the monsters will easily defeat her, ending the adventure for the week.

In between each month, there are also a few things you can do in town before setting up the next schedule. You can go into town and buy equipment for your daughter’s adventures, or you can buy her new clothes.

Changing her clothing can affect some of her stats, and I liked how it actually changed her appearance. It was also interesting to see how her attire affects her in different seasons. Overall I did wish we had more clothing options – and maybe even hairstyles.

There’s also a general store that sells gifts for your daughter, plus useful goods for adventures. You may find yourself taking her to the restaurant for some comfort food to reduce her stress, or to the clinic when she’s sick. And if her “sin” stat is high from taking certain jobs or from killing monsters, you can always make a donation to the church to wipe her slate clean.

You can also send her to the castle to get used to “high society.” Initially she can only get the gatekeeper to talk to her, but I think if you build up stats like decorum or refinement you can work your way up to the king? Speaking with those under the king will increase her renown; I’m not entirely certain what that affects, but going to the castle is a free activity every week.

Another free activity involves talking to your daughter about different things. Again, I’m not sure how that affects her, but I’d assume it’s related to the relationship points mentioned in the credits. A hidden stat, perhaps? 🤔

Between her studies, jobs, and the time in between, there are occasional random encounters with characters such as a traveling merchant, a fortune teller, and more. There’s also a Harvest Festival every year, which has different contests you can enter. Winning probably requires a certain level of related stats (i.e. cooking for the cooking challenge), and the rewards are certainly worth it!

I got used to the game mechanics after my first playthrough. Once your daughter turns 18, that’s the end of a playthrough. At that point, you get to see which ending she got, which consists of her career and romantic prospects. They also tell you if she was any good in her chosen field (like if she had enough stamina for a physical job), and if you were a good father or not.

Each ending comes with a picture of her in her career, as well as some brief scenes depicting how she chose to go into that field. The gallery section on the main menu allows you to see which endings you’ve unlocked so far out of an impressive 84 (!!!) options, and it also includes vacation art and illustrations from the previous version of the game.

The gameplay is kind of addictive, but I did have a few issues with the game. Some players may be confused and overwhelmed by everything without a tutorial. I also wish that we had more variety in outfits, gifts, and vacations.

My biggest problem was with the unexpected sexual undertones. This is rated “Everyone 10+,” so I wasn’t expecting anything inappropriate. The game includes measurements such as bust size, which I could maybe see for clothing. But then they went and had the traveling merchant sell a pill to increase bust size…

They also add “sleazy bar” and cabaret jobs as options once she turns 15 and 16, respectively. I tested what happens if she goes down the “sinning delinquent” path, and she ended up as a Harlot for her career at age 18. I’d saved beforehand and paid the church to wipe out all her sins just before the ending, which then changed her career to (regular) Dancer.

The inappropriate elements were off-putting, but they can be avoided for the most part, thankfully. I’d say that there are more positive aspects to the game than negative – just be aware of those elements.

I think there’s an incredible amount of replay value, as you get to make so many choices that can result in many different endings. The updated art looks really nice, and the soundtrack works well for me – I loved how the music changed from a relaxing track to a fast-paced one once I went into town. I was surprised to hear that the game has Japanese voice acting, which was also well done. And they did a good job with the English localization.

Princess Maker 2 Regeneration is a fun daughter-raising simulation that does lack variety in a few areas, but that still has a lot of options in others. I enjoyed managing my daughter’s stats once I figured out how the systems worked.