For a game that's all about raising your own daughter, there's a great deal less interactivity than one would expect. Basically, you choose her birthday and her blood type (both contribute to her eventual personality and body type, so choose wisely!), her name and your last name, and you input your own birthday (which presumably determines how compatible you two are, in terms of personality).

Her birthday and astrological sign also determines what Guardian or Patron Celestial Being you will have. The possible guardians are:
Mars, God of War, Venus, Goddess of Love Mercury, Goddess (?!) of Intelligence, Moon, Goddess of... er... Sensitivity?, Sol, God of... er... , Hades, God of the Underworld, Jupiter, God of... um... Jolliness, Saturn, Goddess (?!) of... Homebodiness, apparently, Uranus, Goddess (?!?!) of... Magic? Maybe?, Neptune, God of... Goddess of... Aw, screw it.

At the end of each month, you decide your daughter's activities for the next month. Each month is divided into 3 (roughly) 10-day periods, during which your daughter may work, go to school, go adventuring in one of four regions, or take some time off. As well, you can have a Father - Daughter talk once per month, and decide with whom she should associate at the Royal Palace. You may also choose this time to go into town and buy her a snack, clothing, weaponry, special items, or heal her of illness or sin... all of which cost a great deal of money.

I choose this moment to note that this game is not for those with short attention spans. If you're looking for a game where you can briefly interact with your pet, give it a scratch behind the ears, and go back to your daily routine, Princess Maker 2 is not for you.

Each of the activities that you choose for your daughter affect her statistics. These statistics, in turn, shape her personality, the kinds of rivals she may make, and her eventual fate once she turns 18 and "grows up". There are many, many endings (estimates range from "over 30" to "over 50"); the "Marry the Prince and become the Princess" ending is but one way to "win" the game. I personally know friends who have enjoyed ruining their "daughters", killing off their "daughters", or attempting to get the worst possible ending; others use cheats to spoil their daughters rotten and ensure them a life of luxury. You have to be careful, though; I discovered, much to my chagrin, that a daughter ill-prepared for her chosen profession may have a terrible career... leading to her guardian deity chewing you out after the game.

Working Your Daughter

As mentioned above, your daughter's stats are affected by the job that she is given. For example, if you choose to let her work at Bongor's Farm, her constitution (HP), strength, and morals will go up... but she will lose her refinement. If she works as a babysitter, she becomes more sensitive (as in, sensitive to the needs of others, and sensitive to the spiritual world) but loses her charisma (Sex Appeal). The kind of work she does will affect how much money she makes; as well, your daughter may get up to two raises if she works well at her job. If she doesn't work well at her job, she won't make any money at all... her stats will still be affected, but there'll be no income, and (since your daughter has to eat something every month) you may rapidly find yourself in debt.

(Oh yeah, I forgot to mention this earlier; you can decide what kind of diet your daughter will have. The less food she eats, the less money you spend on her... but her Constitution or HP will be drastically reduced, and your nosy vampire-demon-butler Cube will repeatedly put her back on a healthier diet.)

The jobs available to your daughter are:

• Housework
  (No money, raises Cooking and Cleaning abilities and Temperament, as well as Housework Reputation. Lowers Sensitivity.)
  
  
• Babysitting
  (4 G, raises Sensitivity and Maternal Instinct, lowers Charisma. This is the only way you can raise Maternal Instinct, although I don't know what purpose that serves.)
  
  
• Church
  (1 G, raises Morals and Faith, lowers Sin. May lower Charisma, but I'm not sure. This is one of the few ways to raise Morals, which are necessary to make your daughter a classy lady.)
  
  
• Farm
  (10 G, raises HP and Strength and possibly Morals, lowers Refinement. This is a good way to make money and make your daughter a hearty and hale lass. Good if you want her to be a warrior or hero, bad if you want her to become a well-bred young lady.)
  
  
• Inn
  (8 G, raises Cleaning ability, lowers Combat Skill. This is good if you want your daughter to get chummy with Domovoi the Kitchen Spirit.)
  
  
• Restaurant
  (8 G, raises Cooking ability, lowers Combat Skill. For some reason, having a lot of cooking ability does not mean that your daughter will get good marks in the annual Cook-off. She'll need high Sensitivity to do well at that.)
  
  
• Lumberjack
  (12 G, raises Strength. Lowers Refinement. You need Strength if you want your daughter's Combat Skill and Attack stats to rise. Mostly necessary for heroes-to-be.)
  
  
• Hairdresser
  (20 G, raises Sensitivity. Lowers Strength and Charisma. No idea why it's unsexy to work at the hairdresser's place, but it's a good job for people who really need to get the money for those increasingly costly Art lessons.)
  
  
• Masonry
  (18 G, raises Constitution, lowers Charisma. You need a certain degree of artistry to do well at this job, as well as physical strength.)
  
  
• Hunter
  (8 G, raises Constitution, Combat Skill, Sin. Lowers Refinement. Good for fledgeling heroes, not very good for ladies-in-waiting.)
  
  
• Gravekeeper
  (8 G, raises Magic Defense, Sensitivity. Lowers Charisma. Also gives you the opportunity to fight the Ghost Knight and earn a little extra $$.)
  
  
• Bar
  (12 G, raises Conversation and Cooking ability. Lowers Intelligence. Conversation ability is only really necessary if you want to get chummy with the Royal Concubine and the Court Jester. Sadly, associating with the Court Jester will further raise your Intelligence, but will drastically lower that notoriously hard-to-raise Social Reputation.)
  
  
• Tutor
  (20 G, raises Morals. Lowers Charisma. Possibly a good way to make your daughter less sexy, should she require some un-sexy-ing.)
  
  
• Sleazy Bar
  (45 G, raises Sin, Charisma. Lowers Morals, Faith, Temperament. Probably the best way to corrupt your daughter and make her good at "waitressing, and whatnot".)
  
  
• Cabaret
  (35 G, raises Sin, Charisma. Lowers Temperament, Intelligence, Refinement. One interesting side effect of the Cabaret is that when your daughter works there for long enough, she actually goes from serving people in a bunny-girl costume, to actually dancing on stage.)
  

Adventuring With Your Daughter

When your daughter goes on an adventure, you can control her movements (to a certain degree), choose when she goes to sleep (the only way to regain HP and use or equip various items), and decide whether she should talk to, ignore, or attack any creatures that she meets.

Adventuring, although not quite the same as working, can lead to many side- quests, such as defeating the three legendary bandits Venezaro Bloodrose Vanesta and Hurricane Castio. As well, you can experience supernatural encounters with Ket Shi the Cat God, a merry group of fairies, a beautiful dryad, Lucifon, Prince of Heck, a scantily clad mermaid, the God of War, a slightly sleazy dragon, and much, much more.

The nice thing about many of the aspects of adventuring is that you can still make a tidy amount of money for yourself by beating on whatever creatures (or humans) have the most money. The not-so nice thing about adventuring is that every time you defeat a creature, be it good or evil, you rack up Sin points.

Overall Rating

When you compare Princess Maker to, say, the modern life-simulation game, I must admit that it's fairly primitive in many respects. (To be fair, this is only the second game in the Princess Maker franchise of daughter-raising games.) Even the Adventuring parts are rather bland and simplistic as an RPG, and the general world view of the game ("Your daughter is a fine woman and a wonderfully competent general. However, she never found a suitable husband and had bad maternal instincts, so as her patron god I give you a really crummy mark.") can be interpreted as being either "charmingly old-fashioned" or "horrifically sexist and misogynist".

That said, I find this game oddly addictive. The repetitive nature of the "choose activities for the next three weeks" set-up of the game is actually kind of like an automated tamagotchi that feeds itself on a schedule that you set; and yet, the variety of endings that you can get are fairly astounding. Just recently, I found out that your daughter can not only become a mistress... she can also fall in love of her own volition, and she can fight off any suitors that come too close for comfort. There are probably a lot more hidden "easter eggs" in this game than I know of, and for the dedicated (i.e., "must... get... all endings...") gamer, this virtual daughter can be a treat.

I give Princess Maker 2 a rating for B for "Blimey, That's Addictive!"...
or about 7 stars out of 10.

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Sample Stories

To give any curious beings a sneak peek into the world of Princess Maker 2, I've uploaded some private notes and logs of my past "daughters". In-jokes abound, as these logs were mostly for the benefit of my online buddies (not that any of them appear to have looked at 'em. Ingrates.) Note that some of the... less wholesome aspects of Princess Maker 2 are detailed there, and my language may be slightly cruder for the benefit of my (at the time) mostly male audience.

Only the Brave (and #wiigii! regulars) should click here.

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