I finally finished the last route in Princess Nightmare the other day. I had finished most of the game a while ago, but kept delaying playing through Franken’s route – it didn’t really interest me that much. He’s a decent character though, and gives a different kind of ending than the other characters.

So, here’s some of my lame, final impressions on the game. Let’s start with the characters:

Inukai:
The most obvious one to start out with, since most of the other characters are still locked on your first play-through. He’s a fun character, I like him. Couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for him when I had to ignore him on later routes.

Radou:
The big-brother-but-not-really character. Hmm somehow I expected that I would like him a lot better than I did. In the end I found him more annoying than likeable, and couldn’t help but think that Little was acting like a naive doormat in most of his route. Oh well.
Disagreeing with Little, I would say his violin music is annoying 😛

Vlad Dracula:
Little’s “father”. Probably my least favourite route, sorry. I just couldn’t believe much in this story, and found the creepiness factor a little too high (yeah I know he’s not her real father, but still….). There were also a couple of other factors, but I’ll get back to them later.
Dracula can still be pretty fun from time to time though, especially when trying to scare the crap out of Little’s friends xD He was cool, but just not as a romance able character.

Phantom:
Doesn’t really feel like a full-blown route, more like an extra that ends the game early. I ended up on by coincidence actually. Phantom explains a lot of the Dracula family’s background, and he has one of my fav voices….. that helps 😉

Franken:
Sweet story, but I never really got that interested. I do feel sorry for him though…

Van Helsing:
During the first couple of encounters with this guy, I kind of hated him. He was annoying, and with a bad fashion sense! But after a while he has ended up being one of my favourite characters after all. His complete change of character when he arrives at school is too funny – it’s really too bad that you won’t get to see more of Yama after it all ends 😛
Plus, giving Murasame a good scare was fun~!

Shinji:
Oooh this one is interesting. When I first saw the game, I thought this boy looked like an interestingand neutral first choice, only to realise that I had to go through a lot of other stuff first to even unlock that path. And, to realise that he was an annoying brat. Somehow the obvious plot twist managed to almost completely take me by surprise too, which was pretty cool. I had never guessed he was actually such an important character o_O
Yay for epic-ness. I liked this one a lot.

What character do I really feel sorry for, though?

Cheshire. Poor thing. I mean, Little takes absolute advantage of him, he helps her so much, and in the end everyone forgets about him xD Only Sumomo is kind towards him. He was cute though.

Next up is:

Graphics:
I really liked the art in Princess Nightmare. The dark, soft style used is very pretty and detailed, and there is a good deal of CG’s there too. Adding to that, some of the characters have some neat transformation sequences that you will see from time to time. And hey, who doesn’t like looking at Prince….?
In some flashback scenes and other special occasions, you can see sprites that are taken from CG’s to avoid having to make entirely new sprite sets. That works mostly, although there is a couple of instances with strange results.
Another couple of CG’s look like they were made close to the deadline or something like that, and are a little lacking compared to the rest. Especially one in Dracula’s route had me staring and thinking “is that really him? What happened to his nose!?” o_O

Voices:
Hurray, Princess Nightmare is fully voiced! Which makes it a lot easier for me to play 😛 The voices are also really good, and definitely help making the comical parts of game get even funnier.
There are also times where I think the voices get a little too theatrical though, and make things involuntarily funny. Some of Dracula’s more serious and emotional lines are like this. And hearing “Grrrr roaaha wgaaaah” many times in a row can be a little… off-putting as well. Of course that can have as much to do with the script itself as it can with the voice actors. It does get cheesy sometimes….
I must admit, I’m very hard to please in this area.

Music:
I love the music in this game! They have a good deal of tracks that fit the moods very well. Definitely a plus.

All in all I enjoyed reading through Princess Nightmare in spite of it’s few flaws and obligatory fanservice (what’s the deal with everyone turning naked after a few playthroughs??). There were a few things that I would have loved if they elaborated on it a little more, such as Little’s dark side. Always hearing how amazingly strong she really is, and then only getting a small glimpse of the glory is too bad 😛
If you want to play an otome game, and don’t mind stories with vampires and werewolves and all that, then I’ll definitely recommend this one. Now I’m just looking forward to getting the Visual Fanbook that I ordered – I want my pretty art!

I guess I’ll get back to the game and try and collect the last few scenes and CG’s that I missed – which, I’m guessing, involves dressing up boys as Cinderella 😉