The Agony and the Ecstasy: Battle Princess Madelyn Royal

The most obnoxious games aren't the ones that are thoroughly bad. You might be stuck with them for a rental, or even until you find some poor unsuspecting sap to take them off your hands, but it's easy enough to detach yourself from them emotionally. "This stinks," you grumble, but after fifteen minutes of self-torture, you can give up on that irredeemable disaster and move on with your life, confident that it had nothing else to offer.

I'm looking at you, Bart vs. The Space
Mutants. Don't smile, you little
bastard! You know what you did!
(image from Lukie Games)

That's not the case with a flawed game, though. A flawed game can be exquisitely designed in some respects and piss-poor in others, but you'll keep coming back, determined to carve around the fat and gristle to reach the tastiest bits. You won't put down the fork and knife until you've taken that last savory bite... and the game will make you suffer for satisfying that hunger. That's the full course meal of pain you'll get from Battle Princess Madelyn... you stick a fork in it, while it sinks a knife into you.

As the legend goes, Battle Princess Madelyn was designed by Christopher Obritsch in response to his daughter's lament that none of the games in the Ghosts 'n Goblins series let you play as a female hero. On the surface, it was noble for Obritsch to make the experience more relevant to his child, as well as any woman who's weary of the mountain of games that lean on the "damsel in distress" trope. On closer examination, BPM is more selfishly motivated, intended less for the designer's young daughter and more for the segment of especially dedicated and masochistic gamers who finished the last four entries in the Ghosts 'n Goblins series. Put simply, the packaging says "Come on in, this is for everybody!," but the product inside says, "Git gud or get lost."

Image from Frinkiac

Before I get into the flaws, here's what Battle Princess Madelyn does right. It's remarkably faithful to the Ghosts 'n Goblins series, perhaps even more so than the official finale on the PSP, Ultimate Ghosts 'n Goblins. Instead of polygonal graphics, BPM is illustrated with gorgeous pixel artwork. Rivers of semi-transparent blood take you to your next destination as skeleton archers perch on tree tops, hoping to catch you with a stray arrow. Your ghostly canine sidekick emits an eerie glow and barks out a stream of deadly fireballs, making you rethink the old adage "dead puppies aren't much fun." Monsters include charging zombies who couldn't quite escape their coffins, enormous subterranean worms that lunge upward to catch you in their jaws, and bosses that fill two screens with their mass. It not only looks great, it doesn't sound too shabby either, with orchestral and chiptune renditions of the soundtrack offered as options.

Battle Princess Madelyn... it's pretty. Frustrating!
(image from Nintendo)

Another point in Battle Princess Madelyn's favor is that it brings quality of life improvements to the table. Ghouls 'n Ghosts let you fire in four directions while Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts has a double jump instead... BPM gives you both. Unlike any of the Ghosts 'n Goblins games, you're free to adjust your direction in mid-air, making it easier to dodge pits and land squarely on platforms. Maddie's got room for two weapons in her inventory, and the player can switch between them with the touch of a button. Additionally, if an enemy invades Maddie's personal space, she breaks out a giant sword and chops them to bits, making close quarters combat less risky.

Okay, we've buttered up the game long enough. Now here's all the rotten stuff in Battle Princess Madelyn that makes the good stuff hard to appreciate. Some flaws from the Ghosts 'n Goblins series were addressed in BPM, but not all of them... in fact, some of these issues have gotten worse. Take the skeletons that burst out of the ground, for instance. You're not given much warning of their impending resurrections, and they don't particularly care if you're standing on their graves when they make their appearances. They also seem more numerous than they were in the Ghosts 'n Goblins games, meaning more opportunities for you to be blindsided and robbed of your armor.

Rock 'n Roll Pumpkin, say it again!
(image from Nintendo)

Wait, wait, it gets better. There are ghostly allies scattered throughout each level, which give you free armor to replace any protection you've lost. However, if you're already wearing armor when you find them, they'll power it up, doubling its durability and also your weapon strength. Daggers multiply, axes become gigantic, and your dog's bone-shattering barks fork out into a trident, making it imperative to reach these friendly phantoms without a scratch. They're still useful even if Maddie's in her pajamas, but getting the standard issue armor feels like a frustrating consolation prize when you realize you could have gotten something much better.

No, I'm not done yet. Like Ghosts 'n Goblins and dozens of other platform games from the 1980s, Battle Princess Madelyn has a peculiar fondness for chucking you into pits, spikes, and other hazards, where you'll lose a life no matter how much armor you're wearing. Oh, did you work really hard to get that armor boost? Too bad, it all goes bye-bye if you're hit by a stray arrow and fall into a river of blood. Worse yet, enemies like the cave bats in the second stage are difficult to anticipate, because the game's form-before-function lighting effects mask their locations. You could take your time, but you don't have much to spare, and since lost lives don't reset the clock, each play becomes a nerve-rattling speed run. Oh, you don't like to play through your video games quickly? Too bad... if you run out of time, the game ends, and you're forced to continue from the beginning of the current stage.

Is she wearing...? Ugh! Just say "no" to
Shovel Knight crossovers, kids.
(image from Nintendo)
(seriously, must he be in EVERYTHING?)

You don't get any options to take the jagged edge off the game's difficulty, because clearly, having fun without torturing yourself to get it is for wimps. You begin to wonder how a game this stubbornly antiquated in its design and this unapologetically sadistic could appeal to a pre-teen girl... or the forty six year old man reviewing it... or anyone short of a cyborg with laser-guided reflexes and the foresight of the entire Psychic Friends Network. Put simply, Battle Princess Madelyn kind of sucks... but its worst flaw is it doesn't suck enough to let you abandon it completely.