Princess Maker 2

Princess Maker 2 is a raising simulation in which the player takes on the role of a warrior entrusted by the gods with a ten-year-old daughter, and has eight years to raise her into practically anyone. A queen, a priestess, a general, a merchant, or simply an ordinary woman who finds her own happiness. The game offers dozens of endings and doesn't mark any single one of them as the only correct one.

The year is divided into months, and each month you decide what your daughter will spend her time on: studying, training, working at a tavern or on a farm, going on expeditions into the wilderness, or resting. Earned money pays for tutors, clothes, and equipment. Beneath the surface run dozens of stats, from strength and intelligence to morale, stress, and reputation, all influencing each other, so that excessive drilling leads to exhaustion and rebellion, while too much freedom leads to spoiling. On top of that come random events, battles during expeditions, and yearly festivals where you're compared against others. Crucially, the game gives no clear instructions on where to aim: the stats relate to each other indirectly, and many endings require a combination of traits that's found more by feel than by calculation. Also at play is how you talk to your daughter in regular conversations, since your relationship with her as a father influences what she's even willing to do.

On the PC-98, the game relied on a clean, appealing art style with plenty of illustrations that change as the daughter grows and depending on the path you lead her down, together with a calm, gently fairy-tale-like soundtrack. It was precisely the pairing of studio Gainax with this genre that drew attention beyond its usual audience, and Princess Maker 2 became the series' best-known entry, with ports to numerous platforms and a long fan afterlife. Today it's striking how sensitively it can assemble tables of numbers into the feeling that you've genuinely raised someone, and how mercilessly it shows you when you've overdone it. Eight in-game years pass faster than you'd expect, and the final year tends to be a desperate scramble to make up for what you've neglected.