I am no stranger to the daughter raising genre. I have reviewed Princess Maker 2 and Princess Maker 3 for the Switch. Both of those games are creepy as hell, made for middle age Japanese men to perv on their adopted underage daughters. I mean you can turn them into prostitutes who have orgies of the damned. Volcano Princess is a daughter raising game, minus the creepy pervert aspects of it. I mean you can work at a bath house… as an accountant. Spicy stuff. She’s also your actual biological daughter(her mother dies when your daughter is a baby). What Volcano Princess really has in spades is charm, as its fully voiced, and a story. I ended up caring by the end, and wanting to go back and playing it over again. Buckle up, we got a long review.
Volcano Princess’s basics
The screen above will seem familiar to anyone who has played Princess Maker. Yes, I dressed her up in a wedding dress sent to her by a secret admirer. The base of Volcano is setting a schedule of various classes at her academy, each time you do, it’ll fill up a percentage of a progress bar, once it reaches 100% you’ll get a stat boost(Power, Mind or Charima) and a topic boost in a particular subject, like faith or archery. If you want, you can ignore everything else and just do the schedule, but that would be missing 90% of Volcano Princess, which is contained in the Map button(more on that down below).
You have three main stats, Power, Mind and Charisma, which correspond to one of the houses you can pledge your allegiance to. Each house has a different set of goals for you to attain. In my play-through of Volcano Princess, I did the “power house” which focused on combat, dueling and the rpg section of the game. On the right side of the modules, based on the courses you complete. These are governed by yet more stats, strength, intelligence, emotion and imagery. The module scores are based on the class completion ratio and determine the career she will ultimately get. Now the Map.
Everything Else
You have six places to visit in Volcano Princess, where you can do various things to raise your stats, or engage in various minigames. The most important of these is Exploration, where you fight monsters and gain gold and prizes. Then there’s the Party, where you engage in conversation with various nobles to gain prestige(ease based on you charisma), which is used at the altar to “Speed run” classes. That is, unless you have a darkness rating over 50. If it is high, then you can just lower it by praying at the altar. The third most important is farming and cooking. You cook various stat-enhancing items with items you grow or get in the RPG. You can also catch horses here, which boost stats, but I never caught one, my mind score was too low.
Now the RPG. You have 5 places to explore, 4 regular, and one with your partner of choice. Your teammates are one of seven different young people, who you can also romance. In order to get them to come with you, you need to get their relationship to Friend. You do this by chatting, giving gifts and going on dates. You gain various attacks by completing modules and leveling up. It is suggested you get a partner with heal as there is on other way to heal your team unless you happen to come across a hot springs. After each run, whether win or lose, you’ll get graded. You’ll get to keep any gold, loot and prestige you acquire. At first the RPG seems in depth, but after several explorations, I found it rather shallow and boring. I didn’t even beat the final area.
Conclusion
If this review of Volcano Princess seems to barely scratch the surface, that’s because it does. There’s just so much here to do and see, you won’t see it all in one play-through. I didn’t even get into the story aspects and how the father and daughter are real fleshed out characters, as are the various townspeople and friends. Ultimately, you’ll want to play again, and you can play completely differently. Everything is pretty much optional in Volcano Princess, you focus on the things you need to get ending you ultimately want. I got soldier ending, but I was going for it. I wanted to marry one of the girls, but she ultimately married somebody else, so my daughter married a lesbian soldier.
Now the verdict and score. Volcano Princess gets a Must Play with a eight score. This daughter raising game is better than the princess maker games, period. No creepiness to be found. The game is also much longer than either of the PM games, taking around six hours per run. On the other hand, there’s just so much to do and see, I couldn’t help feeling certain things were short-changed and not as involved as they could’ve been. It especially feels that way with the RPG, which became boring and chore. Or there is the big bad, the Owl Queen. You never face her. She’s only talked about, and kind of disappears by the end. Still, if you’re looking for a Alternative to Princess Maker, you cannot go wrong with Volcano Princess!
Overall: Volcano Princess is a daughter raising simulator that is both not creepy, and bursting at the seems with stuff to do. There is almost too much to do.
Verdict: Must Play
Score: 8
| Release Date | 7/30/26 |
| Cost | $10.99 |
| Publisher | Colorful Palette |
| ESRB Rating | T |
