Prison Princess: Trapped Allure (PC) - Review

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Not everybody knows of Qureate, but this tiny Japanese publisher is actually the last one openly pushing fan service and sexual elements in its games. Think of it as the Compile Heart or Marvelous of ten years ago. I was particularly convinced by one game of Qureate's from last year, called Livestream 2, which had qualities beyond fan service. Like Livestream, Qureate's Prison Princess received a sequel this year, and I expected to be thrilled again.

As with Livestream 2, Prison Princess: Trapped Allure is a classic point & click game in terms of gameplay. The hero (you) finds himself in ghost form, lost within an old castle. In order to escape, he comes to cooperate with cute princesses - the two from the first game, plus a new one, called Julietta. You then have look for and show them key items that are required to progress through the castle. You also have to solve puzzles involving said items; that is to say, use the right item in the right place. Here I would note that the game is well optimized for Steamdeck in terms of display and controls. 

On the puzzle front, Prison Princess: Trapped Allure leaves me mixed feelings. Some are very challenging, however a good half feel much too obvious to be interesting. But the more fundamental issue with this title is its lack of overall content: it takes only five hours to unlock several endings. The castle is quite small, and you mostly progress simply from one room to the next, which limits the number of possibilities in terms of searching and linking hints between them. You barely have more than one item in your inventory at a time, which is typically unthinkable for this genre. 

Trapped Allure also has a weird tendency of giving far too many hints, like "we might be able to use this in [x] room". This approach is a bit too casual, especially compared to Livestream 2, which was a couple of hours longer, had an environment that was much wider in scope, and gave more freedom to the player. You still get to tackle stimulating puzzles like the one pictured above, but I can't help feeling there could be more in terms of cogitation. What bugs me even more is that Qureate has been spending almost all year merchandising goods from an earlier title (Bunny Garden), delaying other game projects in the process. I'm fully into character goods myself but such side business shouldn't impact on the production of games negatively, which it feels like it has here.

Livestream 2 also had a genuine story and good characterization, something which Prison Princess: Trapped Allure also lacks. The main objective is to get to the throne room, defeat the Demon King, and view one ending. You save several of the princesses' retainers who are trapped in the castle in the process, but those characters get something like five minutes of screen-time and end up being essentially pointless. The small talk is hopelessly bland and lacks depth. Even the main heroines don't get much attention, as the game provides little detail about the personalities or back stories. In short, Qureate came up with far too many characters for such a short game, and didn't take the time and effort to make them really likable. 

Fan service is the only aspect where Prison Princess: Trapped Allure goes further than Livestream 2, although I hoped for spicier situations more comparable to the first Prison Princess. Expect super cute anime girls, lots of cleavage, underwear, and quite risqué events. This new installment seems to have actually gone too far in this respect for Nintendo in the US and EU: the publisher has it listed for Switch on its English web page, but Prison Princess: Trapped Allure is nowhere to be found on the European eShop, in the context of allegedly stricter guidelines for game publishing on Western Switch consoles. That's a shame, because the artwork is genuinely good, although here again quantity and approach is an issue. I would have preferred more focus on the three main girls and more effort on ending illustrations, most of which are "normal" cute ones. I would point out that Prison Princess: Trapped Allure costs only €18 at launch, which alleviates some of the concerns above, but so did Livestream 2 and that turned out to be much more compelling. 

Prison Princess: Trapped Allure is at best a nice little game, with "little" being the problem given the unshakable feeling I had of not getting enough content for the price of entry. Its approach to fan service is frank, so fans of lewd games might consider it given how scarce overtly sexual content has become on the market; but it's too casual to be an effective point & click title, even if some of puzzles are worthwhile.

During the day, Thomas is a normal account manager. But at night he becomes Ryuzaki57, an extreme otaku gamer hungry for Japanese games (preferably with pretty girls in the main role). He spends a lot of time on F2P RPGs, but never misses the lastest interesting releases. Feel free to contact on twitter at @Ryuz4ki57

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