Character raising games are kind of like roguelikes, insomuch that it's very easy to know when a game is definitely one, and very funny to try to argue when a game is the minimum viable example of the genre.
(And for bonus internet argument points, argue that character raising games are the squares to roguelike's rectangles.)
Princess Makers are, of course, character raising games.
Umamusume via sports game, and Gakuen Idolmaster via card game also arguably qualify.
But what is the funniest, lowest bar for 'character raising'?
Tokimeki Memorial? The Sims? Chao Garden? Hey You, Pikachu? Seaman?
The answer doesn't really matter (and, most likely, is couched in what kind of 'energy' you're looking for in a character raising game), but serves to make me contemplate how I've never particularly played what one might consider a Lawful Good character raising game.
You know, the kind with explicit stats, time management, and a branching narrative focusing on the journey of the character being raised, separate from the player character.
Enter Volcano Princess. I loved it!
And I found out that I hardly treat it as a 'character raising' game.
Or rather... the daylight between Volcano Princess, and a simulation game like Tokimeki Memorial, is not exceedingly large to me.
The framing of games like these two is, of course, different.
In Volcano Princess, you play a widowed father raising your daughter in two distinct time periods (her single-digit youth and her fantasy-academy teens) and 42 in-game turns, imparting her with your wisdom, being her emotional cornerstone, and guiding her to become the best she can be; in Tokimeki Memorial your bro turns to you and says 'hey Shiori's pretty hot' and then you're thrown to the winds to end up chasing up after his little sister.
But I find myself visualizing less as the mentor character and more just directly as the princess (really just a girl, but feel free to dig into the plot yourself), as, at least during standard play, there's no gap between your desired and performed actions.
Want to make your daughter work nonstop shifts cleaning the bathhouse (a living's a living)? Spend all her time rizzing up brooding boys or winsome waitresses? Spend endless hours into attempting to farm an infinite bread-energy-money engine? Your clicks are commands - and I'm not saying that I don't think that's a bad thing... I just think that it lends me more directly to thinking 'yeah I should pursue my best friend who says 'I mean you can marry the princess if that's what you want' with a wink' rather than 'yeah my daughter should pursue...'
Semantics aside, Volcano Princess is the kind of 10-hour romp (more if you want to get every possible ending and achievement, of which there are a frankly massive amount) that really just grabs me by the mechanics.
Even putting the rough English translation (the game is a two-Chinese-dev project) and often sparse tutorials aside, Volcano Princess is a game that prizes overwhelming you with choice, showering you in gameplay systems that are often not extremely deep but give you a lot of options on how to spend your time.
I spent the first phase of the game simply plantmaxxing and farmpilling myself (every system is levellable too!), and then hit the second phase of the game which suddenly has a turn-based RPG, dating, multiple part-time jobs, debates and duels (which each have their own unique 'combat' systems), multiple kinds of classes, and horse racing... it makes me yell at how much mechanical exploration there is to do in the game.
I find that the lack of clear explanation also lends a lot of mystique to the game and really juices my curiosity. What does it mean to clear all the dungeons and reduce pollution to 0%? What's at the end of the sketchy alleyway? Literally what are nobles and do I have to care? (I did not.)
There's a sense of freedom to the game which is really backed up by the incredible amounts of endings achievable. Aside from the ending having a Job Select where you can pick any profession you've qualified for, pretty much everyone appears marriageable - and I will admit that I had a bit of a soft spot for the guy who is literally just Generic Dude In Full Body Armor. He's just a guy!
With careful strategizing (even when blind), the game isn't an insurmountable challenge, and I started finding around 2/3rds of the way through the game that I was reaching the end of a lot of the systems - but I felt that this left me feeling more accomplished than disappointed, closer to a sense of mastery and understanding of the game.
And numbers aside, the roses are quite sweet to smell in this game - naturally, in a game where your partner is a primary part of the ending, having both attractive and interesting characters gives the game a lot of juice, and Volcano Princess is definitely a whole pile of carrots thoroughly squeezed (to speak to one of my farming strategies).
I ended up pursuing Nina, your best friend and priest-type-girl who basically spends the entire game being a walking billboard with 'Did You Know You Can Date Women' scribbled on her. Every character seems to have 3 unique cutscenes for their plot, and Nina hits you with the girls-lying-in-the-grass as soon as possible, with a really sweet chat about the meaning of gifts and the feelings put into them.
Perhaps my bar is set quite low but the level at which Nina flirts with you and literally just gets married to you is frankly astonishing. This is probably just an Original Pringle of a game, not even close to a Cool Ranch Dorito... but I've not had that many chips. Other than Labyrinth of Galleria, more akin to a Russian Roulette Takoyaki.
The other characters, both male and female, come through strong as well.
The boys have a variety of tastes that will definitely appeal to a Volcano Princess sort of audience - the brooding ex-criminal type, the kindly artist, the sweet-tongued playboy, the prince struggling with a communication disorder... all of them are genuinely charming in their stories, and often bounce off each other smoothly, with have traumas and histories that feel compelling without being cloyingly dramatic (despite one of them literally being 'I'm literally a wolf. Hey wanna see me in a full anthro look?').
A particular comparison to me is Potionomics, a farming-type relationship box which, despite having a gorgeously animated world (with unique hug animations!) and a wide range of gender/sexuality expression with some pretty compelling world-building and backstories (I will not be arguing the trans-coding of the terminally online grindset moth millenial with Asian parents at this point in time), often felt overly zinger-y and artificial in a way that Volcano Princess dismisses with earnesty.
(Not to mention how Potionomics really siloes its characters so they never talk in person!)
Nina aside, her friend Mona is warm and sweet (which is good because she's invaluable in the RPG section!!! recruit her!!!), and the sword lord Lebsa is the dashing type calculated to stunlock anyone at risk of having their chin tilted upward by another's hand.
The NPC-like side characters (the priest, the shopowner, the nun, etc) all also have nicely-sized stories of their own despite how mechanical their roles are, which really makes the town feel a bit more alive in the same way that being inundated in mechanics does.
I also forgot to write about the core plot hook in this game, where humans are devolving inexplicably into less evolved races (including you, who is slowly 'becoming bird is fine actually') - it's played slow throughout the game, but quite compelling in its own right.
Overall, I'd say that Volcano Princess is decidedly rough around a lot of edges - the translation, the way some of the mechanics beg for an explanation (and others feel unimplemented), and the way in which the game suddenly drops The Entire Plot (and that twist in the true ending is an absolutely MASSIVE one!!!) in your lap in endgame.
But that roughness is what gives it character, really plants the feeling in your head that the devs had ideas they wanted to do, inspiration they wanted to draw from, and characters they wanted you to love. And for me, they really achieved that goal (despite a complete lack of Any Non-Mouse Control Schemes lol).
The sealing shot for me was going on the Miraheze wiki for Volcano Princess after playing blind and discovering that the game has 'hey you leveled up my affection a ton but didn't marry me' letters, a fact that hits me right in the Tomoyo-Daidouji-angst-fanfiction.
Broody boy Ze has a wonderfully passive-aggressive-work-email in writing 'I heard you got married, I think you understand why I'm writing this to you', but Nina in all her glory sends her feelings right through the needle with a paraphrased 'I don't know why, but I feel empty... maybe things would have ended differently if I was more proactive'.
Girl was telling you stuff like 'I want to wake up next to you every morning' and you put her in the exact position where she's like 'I should love you enough to be happy for you and swallow my feelings, but instead I can't stop myself from telling you that it should have been me'. That's the 200-proof stuff right there.
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