Hmm lets see where to begin. Well first off, Princess Knights is a part SRPG and part dating sim game by Mink. It came out back in 2002, and by Japanese B-game standards, thats rather old. However its still one of the absolute biggest games I’ve ever come across girl wise. To put it simply, this game has 30, yes THIRTY females for the nameless hero to go after.
Now when I first saw such a huge number, I thought that they would be generic pallete-swaped designs, no spoken dialog, and no personality, and no back story. Damn was I wrong. Before I go any farther take a look at THIS. Yes thats right thats the whole lineup minus the one secret girl. You can even click on each of them to see their name and basic information. As you can see this game has some of the best (if not THE best) artwork to be found in a B-game ever.
Now heres the kicker, each of these cuties has their own story and VA too! None of them are generic, of course some of their stories are more interesting then others, but they all have their own attitudes and backgrounds, and its a blast just talking to them.
It would take way too long to go into detail here, so I’ll just give you an example. My favorite (of the one’s I’ve used in my party so far) was the poor begger girl Mao. At the start of one battle Mao and her little brothers will steal your money. However then the real bad guys come out and blast everything with a magic spell. Once the smoke clears you’ll find Mao hugging the dead corpses of her syblings and crying in terror. The scene is heartbreaking but “beautifully” done. Of course then she’ll join your quest to stop the evil if you allow her to.
Story: The game starts out with a loooong introduction with a very nicely done fully animated movie (its seriously like 10 mins long). In this movie you’ll whitness a battle where the hero’s father gets killed and the hero manages to escape by some wierd magic trap thing. The hero has a default name, but it doesn’t really matter since no one will actually call you by it 
Now like many games and animes to come out of Japan, the “hero” starts off as a weak coward who only wants to save his own skin and not much else. After escaping he’s been in hiding for about 2 years with a kind old man and his hottie daughter Clair. They don’t know his true identity and everyone thinks he’s dead. The badguys of course know he’s still alive and are attempting to hunt him down. Seems its been foretold that the hero and his wife would conquer the evil and free the land.
One day while in the woods, you’ll meet a knight, she’ll recognize your pendant and explain that she and a few other remnants have been searching for you to lead them. Of course the hero is an annoying coward and runs away. That night, your house gets attacked and Clair’s father takes a sword in the gut. Finally our worthless hero wakes up and decides to fulfill his destiny. Clair having nothing left decides to come along. After all this the title will finally appear in game and the adventure begins
Once our hero shows up at town he’ll learn some interesting things. Turns out the evil guy has kidnapped his sister and plans to sacrifice her in order to become an immortal demon. Also turns out the hero’s childhood friend Vanessa has joined up with him against you.
The story has some classic B-game cheese as well. It seems that your legendary troope of female knights have to sleep with you before they can actually become “knights.” So as you imagine everytime you recruit a new girl she’ll come to your room that evening…
System: The game has basically two main parts to it, SRPG battles and dating sim interactions with your female party members.
The battles are fully rotatable 3D maps with 2D character sprites. Graphically the game has a simple and older “DOS” type look to it, but its smooth and fast and I have no major complaints. The battles are very straight-foreward. If you’ve played Final Fantasy Tactics, or any such game you’ll be right at home. Each character has thier own special abilities and they shout them out by name with glee You can also capture monsters once their health is low, you can then equip them on a character to greatly increase their stats, and also use all of the monster’s special abilities as well. There is no “MP” like in most games. All abilities/spells require “special points” or simply “SP.” SP is different because the game doesn’t just give it to you. You have to earn in by dating your female party members.
The dating sim part of the game is fairly deep. At every town, your given action points. You then use these to take the girls out on dates. Most locations only take 1 action point, but some will take 2. Each girl of course has her own likes and dislikes, and it will greatly affect her stats. If she really likes where you take her she’ll get a nice stat boost. Buy her something she likes and you’ll boost her even farther. Dating allows you to boost a girls love points, offensive stats, defensive stats, speed, and generates SP points for her. You are allowed to have 8 girls in your party at once, but you can only use 4 (plus the hero) in a any one battle. If you don’t use a girl in a battle her stats will decrease, (even more so if she “dies” in battle). However they also have fatigue points, use a girl in battle after battle, and she won’t be able to be used once the fatigue points get too high.
Therefore a careful balence in your party is crucial. The game has several classes: Fighter, Grappler, Witch, Cleric, Archer, Ninja, etc. And they all have a use.
Since theres so many girls available you can pick up a new one almost every battle. Also when in a town sometimes there will be a heart icon next to a date spot. Go there alone and you can recuit yet another girl. As mentioned before a girl will sleep with you just by accepting her into your party. After that scenes will start happening once you get the girl over 90% love points.
The battles are fairly easy accept the final boss who is extremely tough. So tough that everyone in my party died at least twice. This was enough to lower the love points enough that they all turned me down in the end Next time I’ll pick “easy” difficulty as opposed to "normal."
Overal its one hell of a package. A huge game, if you want 100% CGs your gonna be playing for a long time. Language barrier is fairly low too. The only part of the game that isn’t voiced are the various dates you’ll go on in Sim mode.
The “H” material is fairly mild. All sex between the girls and the hero is fully consensual. It is common though to enter a town and see a girl being raped, but then of course you’ll saver her. Also I was very happy when I realized that the hero’s sister (whom you are trying to save)is NOT one of the 30 girls. So theres no freaky incest either
You can still buy this game at Himeya for $80. Expensive, the fantastic looking CGs eaisly warrant the price. I’m amazed that Mink managed to make the whole thing fit on only 2 CDs.
Note, this game has a few issues with some modern videocards. Everything displays fine for me except for the mouse cursor, which annoyingly flickers, but I got used to it. Some people may have worse problems. I’m running it on a Geforce 4MX 64mbs myself.
Wow, that took awhile. If you got any questions, ask away! Oh and heres the main front page for the game.