Battle Princess of Arcadias is an Action RPG produced by Nippon Ichi and developed by Apollo Software for the Playstation 3. It is the fifth and final game in Nippon Ichi's Anniversary Project.
The world has been overrun by monsters and people all across the land have worked tirelessly to fight against this overwhelming threat. Fighting on the front lines of each country are the Battle Princesses, powerful maidens who possess overwhelming fighting prowess. One day, the Battle Princess of Schwert Kingdom, Plume, finds all of her soldiers have been massacred by a massive monster, including her attendant. This battle marks the beginning of Plume's journey.
Gameplay takes place on a 2D plane and the battle system is mostly reminiscent of Action RPGs made by Vanillaware. However, the game offer three types of battles — Combat (traditional Beat 'em Up style gameplay), Skirmish (taking on enemy factions while controlling your troops in the background), and Seige (gathering your troops to help you vanquish a giant boss).
This game provides examples of:
- Anti-Frustration Features: Failing a mission only sends the player back to the world map while keeping all of the experience gained for the active characters from that mission. This makes getting through the Early Game Hell much easier.
- Artificial Human: All of Plume, Yuni, Vio, Rhea, and all of the Battle Princesses were created as anti-Ruinaria weapons.
- Big Bad: Deiche, a Ruinaria that betrayed his brethren and is looking to betray the last refuge of humanity.
- Chick Magnet: Raltz. Despite being The Everyman at best as Yuni points out, he's got three girls and a guy who want him.
- Helvelke, the one guy who wants Raltz, also attracts the women in town despite not wanting to deal with them. Re-D, who wants to destroy all of humanity, nearly drops her mission just to be with Hevelke.
- Brutal Bonus Level: The Subspace levels that open up after beating the final boss. Each of the five consists of a Marathon Level of 5 Combat zones followed by a boss at the end. The enemies in the final two are capable of killing a Level 99 character in only a few hits.
- Comedic Sociopathy: Plume frequently talks about wanting to eat her brother (as in LITERALLY cook him), and almost everyone is not only nonchalant but outright okay with eating Sigurth's pet ducks (to the point where Plume's reason for chasing down Luise becomes less about attempting to apprehend/kill her because she's a traitor to Armatura, and more to retrieve "Duck #1, 479"... To eat it). To say nothing of how they treat Hevelke after Re-D starts displaying overt affection towards him.... Really, though, there's so many other cases of Comedic Sociopathy that it's pretty much the entire story's brand of humor.
- Crapsaccharine World: At first glance, the setting seems like a very colorful fairy tale world with a ditzy princess as the game's main lead. However, said world is overrun by monsters and occasionally, Ancient Weapons in the form of giant hulking creatures wreak havoc and would easily destroy everything in its path had it not been for our heroes. On top of that, we later find out that the continent of Vertex is the only safe haven as the rest of the world is in ruins thanks to the Ruinaria.
- Cute and Psycho: Odette, big time. Outside of battle, she speaks all fine and nice; IN battle, she immediately switches to a lower-pitched, more violent-sounding voice. She's even more disturbing outside of battle, where she occasionally talks about violent acts even in her cutesy voice.
- Early Game Hell: After introducing the Skirmish mechanic in a mission where the opposing army is Level 1, the following stage is a second Skirmish with the opposing army at Level 7 and the player (and character brigades) likely only around Level 3-4. The best way through this is to enter the Skirmish, set Defense Formation, and grind experience on the enemy squads until the player brigades can level up enough to win. After powering through that, more Combat missions become available and the learning curve levels out to avoid needing to grind a lot of experience.
- Expy: The first monster looks a little too much like Groudon.
- Forced Transformation: Plume's brother, the King of Schwert Kingdom, was turned into a Goose thanks to a cursed goose statue (he loves birds, and so set the statue near his bed; the first time he went to sleep, he awoke cursed). He's surprisingly nonchalant about it, as is everyone else.
- Kicking Ass in All Her Finery: The girls wear fancy dresses while doing battle with monsters.
- Immune to Flinching: The Mega Armor skill allows a character to take a hit without getting knocked back. It also comes with a drawback in that it also removes Mercy Invincibility for that character as a result.
- It's Raining Men: Deiche's preferred method of entering a scene. He will suddenly drop from the sky to interrupt the current conversation and report on the current situation.
- Mini Dress Of Power: The girls wear varied Pimped Out Dresses with short skirts.
- New Game Plus: Completing all five levels of the post-game Bonus Dungeon opens this up, allowing the game to be played in Hard Mode with all levels/weapons/items reset except for an item and an accessory given to the player for restarting the game.
- Panty Thief: Deiche. Regularly talks about stealing women's underwear, what kind of underwear they're wearing, and even what kind to give to them as presents. Naturally, the entire cast is disgusted.
- Pretty Princess Powerhouse: It's in the freaking title. Or more specifically, Plume, who alone possesses more strength than the kingdom's army.
- Purple Prose: Hevelke's main quirk is that he ALWAYS talks pretty much like this; consequently, no one can understand (nor bother to understand) what he's talking about. Raltz is the only person in the party to actually be able to talk like Hevelke (and with that reveal, we get subtitles for Hevelke's manner of speaking), and it's precisely because Raltz understands how his speech quirk works that Hevelke latches onto the party; notably, Hevelke starts becoming at least a little better about talking normally afterward... Though he still often talks in his quirky way.
- Red Is Heroic: Typical for a Nippon Ichi game, Plume's heroism is signified by this color. Everything from her hair to her dress to her sword has a reddish tint.
- Theme Naming: The Ruinarias' real names are basic on musical notes and often double as a Punny Name, "Re-D" and "Ti-D" especially.
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill: A weapon can be enhanced to have a maximum attack power of 999. That's enough to one-shot the final boss even on Hard mode.
- Yandere: Odette's particularly Yandere towards Raltz when it comes to their brothers.
- You Will Be Spared: The only human Re-D will spare is Hevelke, who she has a major crush on. However, Hevelke considers it a Fate Worse than Death.
