Final
Fantasy Tactics , Fat Princess: FOC features a bevy of gameplay
modes, robust multiplayer, a charmingly written single-player campaign,
and plenty of junk in the trunk. The core structure always focuses on
two teams (red vs. blue) trying to accomplish mutually exclusive goals:
kidnap the enemy team's princess, capture some neutral characters or
resources, build competing structures, destroy the enemy base, etc.
While the titular bbw's aren't playable, they are the focus of most
missions (and of the storyline in the single-player campaign), and
feature one of FOC's most interesting elements.
See, the princesses don't start out fat. In fact, they're
constantly losing weight throughout a given mission -- and since the
other team is often trying to carry your princess off for one reason or
another, it's important that she be as heavy as possible, to make it as
hard as possible for them to lift her up and abscond. To that end, every
map has little pieces of cake dispersed throughout various locations.
You and your teammates pick up the cake, carry it back to your throne
room, and give it to the princess. She and her magic, size-altering
dress will do the rest. Conversely, it's sometimes important to fatten
up the other team's princess to stop them from returning her to their
base, and then the gameplay model is reversed -- you trying to feed cake
to their princess while stopping the other team from feeding yours.
Click the image above to check out all Fat Princess: Fistful of Cake
screens.
It's a frenetic, fun dynamic, but it's far from the only thing going
on in the game. Each team has a number of players (usually 8-12 per
team) and each player can choose from a variety of classes: Warriors,
Rangers, Mages, Priests and Workers. The first three are offensive, the
fourth is a support class, and the Workers fill a special role. See,
smackdowns are only part of the focus: your team also has to gather
resources (wood and stone) and bring them back to your base. Here, those
resources can be used to upgrade your structures (making the classes
associated with those structures more powerful), or just stockpiled to
keep them away from the enemy. In some game modes, you'll need to
dedicate resources to building a special, goal structure, adding a
further wrinkle: do you shunt resources to the main structure at the
expense of upgrading your guys in the short term, or go for upgrades now
and risk getting out-raced to the goal building before they can pay off
in the long run?
Seemingly small, sure, but clever design choices like that litter
FOC and provide a sheen of consummate professionalism that really gives
the gameplay a big boost. Add to this the silly fun of the
single-player storyline, the humor that litters the game's dialogue and
aesthetic, the excellent balance among the classes, and the top-notch
visuals (the game looks almost identical to its PS3 forebear), and
you'll be smiling from ear to ear in no time.
Click the image above to check out all Fat Princess: Fistful of Cake
screens.
Unfortunately, FOC does stumble in a few areas -- mostly due to the
platform it's on, not to poor design or execution per se. Unlike the PS3
version, FOC only allows up to eight real humans to play in any match.
This means the majority of both teams is always going to be A.I. Not
only is this a let down from a hangin'-with-the-homies perspective, it's
rather problematic in that the A.I. kinda sucks. It will frequently
walk off cliffs, get in your way during important tasks, use resources
to upgrade unnecessary structures, and generally seems to have no clue
what the victory conditions for a given mission are. This means that
matches can drag on a lot longer than they should, since both sides'
A.I.s tend to grind everything into a stalemate with their single-minded
idiocy. Another problem is the lack of ability to communicate with your
human teammates. FOC offers no voice-chat options, and the game has no
clear way to send signals to anyone -- so unless you're sitting in a
room with three of your best friends and their PSPs, you'd better hope
for some spontaneous synergy to rain down from above.
Still, while multiplayer does have its flaws, it's got a lot more
strengths than weaknesses, and, like the single-player, offers a highly
entertaining way to kill some time while waiting for your girlfriend to
get back from Jenny Craig.
