Vanguard Princess is a free Beat ‘em up/brawler game in which you choose a main fighter and a secondary fighter and let yourself loose to beat up your opponent.

Genre: Beat ‘em up
Publisher: suge9
Rating: N/A
Release Date: July 2009
Official Website (Japanese)

After you manage to install it, get passed the little introduction Japanese introduction and fumble around with the controls, trying to guess what keyboard button does what, you enter a realm of surprisingly decent graphics and decent game play.

The control buttons allocated were a little strange to get used to, trying to pull off moves that were more than just a block or a dash or a lame kick was part of the fun and frustration. After all, game theory is about the game being easy to play but hard to master.

What was also odd was trying the multiplayer mode; this consisted of having 2 players on the same keyboard. Although hands kept knocking against each other, the challenge of having to beat another with a strange control button allocation on a cramped keyboard made it amusing to say the least if not a little frustrating at first.

The game mechanics makes sure that the player shouldn’t only have to press one button to get some kind of freakish 5-wonder combo, instead you need to memorise every move specific to that character to execute a daring and flashy action rather than just a kick or elbow to the groin. The creation of a secondary support character to fill the gap between yourself and the opponent is to say the least, unique. That is compared to other well-known brawler games that entail a typical one-on-one combat system. The secondary character may seem to clutter up the screen but it keeps the game play busy and fast paced. Moves can cancel out other moves and getting a combo is hard as your fingers try hard to dance across the keyboard to achieve the same kind of fighting prowess that the A.I seems to be showing off to you.

There is no denying that the game’s characters are what attracted me in the first place. Take a look at those beautiful characters lovingly illustrated along with the support characters that look like every other cute ‘imouto’ (little sister in japanese) in every other anime/bishoujo game. The characters are retro in design, reminiscent of old fighting games like Street Fighter, but it appeals to the modern culture interested in this thing labelled ‘moe’.

Overall:
It’s a free game that is worth downloading. It’s free and only harbours a small amount on your computer hard drive and it’s double the fun going into multiplayer mode. The initial complaints were the controls and when having to play with a friend it seems like they were invading personal keyboard space but after the first couple of seconds all that seems to dissipate, and all you really want to do is watch these beautiful Princesses beat each other up, no matter what lame move KO’d your opponent.

Download it from here: http://www.vector.co.jp/soft/dl/win95/game/se477052.html

Additional Info:
This game was built using a freeware game engine called 2D Fighter Maker and it was built single handed by a supposed ex-capcom employee (says Wiki and some other Vanguard Princess reviews), which is why there can’t be any complaints about it. In fact it should be rather inspiring to game designers wanting to create a game single handed.
Kizer0