Princess Debut



What's a girl to do? You've been taken to an alternate dimension by your possible identical twin, you have thirty days to learn how to do ballroom dances by taking lessons from an anthropomorphic rabbit, at least five or six Bishonen princes are in love with you (maybe), and a pink-haired loli wants to ruin your life. Oh, and you have a flying hamster.

Better Than It Sounds.

Princess Debut, known in Japan as Ohimesama Debut, is a Dating Sim for the Nintendo DS released in English by Natsume, the same guys who brought Harvest Moon to the shores of North America. It brings a new spin on the Dating Sim genre, as its target audience is pre-teen girls. It can still be enjoyed by an older audience, though.

In summary, you discover that your character (whose default name is Sabrina) has an "other self" in another world who just happens to be a princess...and also happens to stink at dancing. Unfortunately for her, there's a huge ball in about thirty days. You agree to switch places and learn how to dance (even if you don't want to) and wind up in Magical Princess Pony Land.

Congratulations! Now choose from the following princes: Vince, Cesar, Kiefer (if it's your second time playing the game), Liam, Luciano, or Klaus. Alternatively, you can just be a bitch to everyone and end up

Aside from being a Dating Sim, Princess Debut is also a rhythm game. You use the touch screen to drag a purple ball around to the beat of the music. Again, Better Than It Sounds.

This game provides examples of:
 * And Your Reward Is Clothes - The prize for winning a dance competition is a new dress. It's also the prize for the winner of the horse race.
 * Big Eater - Sabrina is always hungry.
 * Bishonen - Full of 'em.
 * Boss Rush - Ballroom Mode is this; you choose either the Classical or Latin course and you will have to play one song from each genre under your chosen category in a row. In each song, you have to reach a certain target score in order to clear the song and advance, with the target score relatively harder to reach with each song. Fail to clear one song and you have to start the whole thing over.
 * Breaking the Fourth Wall - If you tell the Princess "Did I say that?" when she asks if you want to go back to your own world, Kip answers with "only the person playing the game will ever know..."
 * Brother-Sister Incest - Implied; Liam says that you look like his sister, and yet he's in love with you. Hmmmm...
 * Revisited later if you end up with him, when you and his sister are together he comments that you actually don't look anything like her after all.
 * Cast Full of Pretty Boys - Well, it is a Dating Sim for girls.
 * Changeling Fantasy - Sort of.
 * Cute Shotaro Boy - Vince
 * Difficulty Spike - While the game is never all that difficult, the Viennese Waltz songs are far tougher than the songs that come before it. A lot of the patterns are either the larger, more complex ones (including your first figure-eight pattern), or will suddenly go very fast.
 * DudeMagnet - Sabrina
 * Mr. Fanservice: All the guys, to some extent. Makes sense, since the game is a dating sim.
 * Everything's Better With Princesses
 * Everything's Better With Sparkles - The upper screen sparkles when you complete a dance step correctly.
 * Fridge Horror - Well, more like Fridge Depression. Getting Tony's ending may leave you feeling bad about dancing with him while wearing the witch hat.
 * Fridge Logic -
 * Friend to All Living Things - Kiefer.
 * Funny Animal - Its pretty normal in the Flower Kingdom for animals to talk and wear human clothing.
 * Genre Savvy - If it's your second playthrough or beyond, you have the option during the prologue of telling the Princess and Kip that you already know what's going on, and that you need a magical tiara to put on a dress.
 * Hidden Depths - Cesar, particularly.
 * Humanity Ensues -
 * Idiot Hair - The player Sabrina, also Vince and Isabel.
 * Ill Girl - Liam's sister, Olive.
 * Jerkass - Isabel. You can change this late in the story.
 * Jerk With a Heart of Gold - Luciano, in a way.
 * Kidanova - Cesar.
 * Kuudere - Kiefer.
 * Multiple Endings: 14 of them, depending on who you end up with for the ball and
 * New Game+ - You can't court Kiefer until you've beaten the game once. Also, you can use all the accessories you've unlocked over the course of your playthroughs in Practice, Ballroom, and Movie modes.
 * Nice Guy - Klaus and Liam. Both have angry sprites, but you have to do some creative poking around to get to see them.
 * No Sense of Direction - Luciano.
 * Older Than They Look - Vince
 * Out-of-Genre Experience - Mozart's Minuet as a cha-cha-cha? Dancing the jive to Danny Boy? Somehow, it works.
 * Pimped-Out Dress - One for each accessory.
 * Princesses Prefer Pink - Your default dress is pink.
 * Rebellious Princess - Depending on the options you choose, Sabrina can be quite brash.
 * Relationship Values - Highly visible and measured in percentages.
 * Shown Their Work - The dances are all taken from the World Dance Council's International Standard and International Latin Competition Dances list, while the dances themselves motion-captured from real dancers.
 * Stoic Spectacles - Kiefer.
 * The Quiet One - Kiefer.
 * The Smart Guy - Kiefer.
 * Token Mini-Moe - Genderswapped with Vince.
 * Tsundere - Luciano is a type A, for sure. Usually a grouch, he warms up to Sabrina over time if pursued.
 * Additionally, depending on some answers that the player gives, Sabrina can be a bit of a type B, which tsuntsun triggers Vince and Cesar seem to find cute.
 * Transformation Trinket - Each of the accessories you obtain transforms you into a different dancing dress.
 * Twin Switch - More accurately, Parallel World Doubles Switch.
 * Victorious Childhood Friend -
 * Virtual Paper Doll
 * You Gotta Have Blue Hair - Many of the characters have unusual hair colors.
 * You Gotta Have Blue Hair - Many of the characters have unusual hair colors.