Six tips for surviving Princess Maker 3

If you are here, then you might not have read our review of Princess Maker 3: Fairy Tales Come True. Then again, maybe you did and love the series enough to look past this installment’s issues. In any case, you have bought this game and are about to brave your way through it. You have both my sympathies and offer of aid. This can be a very difficult and unintuitive installment, but I have a few tips that will help get you through this.

1. Be a Retired Knight.

When you begin a game of Princess Maker 3, you get to choose your avatar’s profession. Each one impacts the game. Your yearly salary and daughter’s starting demeanor are influenced by your role in the world. What you want is to be a Retired Knight. This guarantees you 1,500 gold at the start of the game and a stable yearly salary of 700g. It also means your daughter will begin the game Happy. While the Merchant role is tempting, since you begin with 3,000g and might have as much as 1,000g as a salary one year, you get a Proud and difficult daughter and may have some years where you only earn 100g.

2. Don’t buy summer or winter clothing.

Okay, this one requires a bit of explanation. In previous Princess Maker games, you have to buy the summer and winter clothing. Your daughter can get sick if they don’t have the extra outfits to change into. Clothing isn’t as important here. Unless your fairy companion, Uzu, says the season is extraordinarily cold or hot, there is no need to change outfits. Save your money, as your daughter may not have to deal with that added stress.

3. It’s fine to give a Smile as a birthday gift.

Every year, every Princess Maker game prompts you to give your daughter a gift for her birthday. In Princess Maker 3, one of the gift options is a 0g Smile. Go ahead and smile at your daughter. It will increase her Morality, Attitude and Trust in you. Not bad, for something you didn’t pay for!

4. Balanced educations are good, but focusing on one topic is great.

The best endings in most Princess Maker games require some semblance of balance. You want your daughter to be at her best, should you want her to become royalty. But, it is also important to give priority to certain classes in Princess Maker 3. There are rivals she can meet, make and befriend over the course of her story, as well as a scholarship for the standard School class she can earn. These events only happen if you try to focus on specific areas of study.

5. Don’t enter contests right away.

A few times each year, your daughter will have the opportunity to enter various contests in areas like demeanor, health and fighting prowess. While entering is exciting and a necessity for some endings, they also eat up an entire block of training. If you attend, she doesn’t go to class or her job during that period. When she is young, it could make more sense to skip the event in favor of sticking to her schedule.

6. Dieting actually matters.

You don’t regulate your daughter’s diet in Princess Maker 3 through a meal plan. Instead, you send her to dieting class for 5g per day. This decreases her stamina and weight while increasing her charm and stress. While this might seem like a harsh and unnecessary class, your daughter will gradually gain weight from resting periods where she walks around town. If she gets too heavy, then she will start randomly getting more stressed out from her unhealthy lifestyle. This can mess up your schedule for her. It is better to occasionally send her to fast and avoid this issue.