Isometric action role-playing games are something of a comfort food to me. At the end of a particularly long day of work, I’m usually not in the mood to have my mind challenged all that much. Instead, I opt for something more immediately gratifying. Plunging headlong into legions of enemies, eviscerating them by the handful, and grabbing up absolutely every single piece of loot that falls; it may all be routine, almost to the point of being ritualistic, but between the cathartic combat and the sense of progression speeding along at a nice clip, I’m usually inclined to forgive whatever faults they have. That’s mostly the case with Fat Princess Adventures, a charming but shallow spin-off of Sony’s darkly humorous action strategy game.

Fat Princess Adventures looks not only harmless, but adorable. Characters have chubby, perfectly round faces and are generally designed to appeal to our softer, kinder sensibilities. Of course, this is a Fat Princess game we’re talking about; if this is your first entry into the series (and it shouldn’t be, because the original is a much better game), you might be shocked at how violent it is. As your adventure progresses, you will slaughter myriads of the more evil denizens of Great Bitten in numerous ways – all of them delightfully nasty.

Further compounding the very specific identity this series has made for itself, Fat Princess Adventures sounds as silly as it looks. Its soundtrack ranges from vain and smarmy to epic and confrontational; the disconnect between the two is something of a series staple. Furthermore, the game absolutely never wastes an opportunity to tell a joke. If an opening is made, you can rest assured it will follow through. Sped-up voice acting and campy delivery go a long way in making the difference between "did they really just say that?" and "well, of course they just said that." All the melee and magic sound kind of stock and lack oomph, but to be fair, that’s more reflective of the combat system as a whole, which I’ll get into momentarily.

The senseless carnage between the Red and Blue Kingdoms seems to have come to an end. United, they now stand as Great Bitten. But the fledgling country needs a hero. The Bitter Queen is on the rise with her army of insatiable Gobblings, and she will stop at nothing until the land is purged of sweetness. Enter our nameless, faceless heroes, completely of your own creation and style. They may be grunts, but wars are won with feet on the ground!

Regardless of how you create your character, the gameplay model is consistent throughout the game’s relatively short length. No longer are you running from base to base, slaughtering enemy combatants, capturing princesses, and feeding them cake until they are immobile. Take the core combat mechanics of the classes in the original game, imagine them in a traditional action role-playing game, and you’ve got Fat Princess Adventures.

Despite its conceptual similarities to other games in the genre (including its four-player co-op), Fat Princess Adventures is a more shallow experience in both mechanics and objectives. In many cases, it’s a smartly-dressed game of chase-the-waypoint. That’s not bad in and of itself; most role-playing games follow exactly that development philosophy and succeed nevertheless. But unfortunately, the core gameplay just isn’t compelling enough to provide the addictive pull of its contemporaries.

Fat Princess Adventures is a stakes-free adventure. Death has no drawbacks, save a few seconds of your time. Checkpoints are all over every map, and so are opportunities to switch between classes. You’ll be able to experiment at your own leisure if you’re running solo, but if you’re running with a full pack, you probably won’t feel the need to switch, since most encounters boil down to two sides beating away at each other until one falls.

Death carries no penalties, but it also won’t come for you very often. Enemies drop cake pretty regularly, and even the most aggressive players who throw defense to the wind should be able to stuff their faces regularly enough without becoming an unsightly red stain, or a spasming live wire, or a roasted mass of God-knows-what.

Fat Princess Adventures sticks with the four classes that came to define the gameplay of the core game: Warrior, Engineer, Archer, and Mage. All of them do essentially what their job titles imply: warriors swing swords and defend themselves with shields, engineers wield giant hammers and can defuse traps, archers play the distance game, and mages harness the powers of the elements to bring the pain to the gobblings.

While these classes work well together, there isn’t enough strategic depth to the combat to really make you feel like you truly need all of them. Loot drops, perhaps the most rewarding part of any action role playing game, do not necessarily correspond to your class. So you might finish a long fight only to get something you can’t use – unless you switch classes. You can’t dedicate yourself to one class, which all too often makes the costly process of upgrading gear feel far less personal and more like an unfortunate necessity.

You don’t have to rely solely on your weapons and armor to get you through each encounter. Change things up a bit by eating cake when your health is full. When you do that, your character puffs up into an adorable ball of fat, explodes out of his clothing (save for the naughty bits), and gains an attack bonus – along with a serious dock in the speed department. There’s also the ever-so-common temporary attack boost you can unleash after spending enough time in combat or downing vials of Awesomesauce.

By rights, Fat Princess Adventures should be worthy to stand alongside other entries in the action role playing genre. But with combat as shallow as it is and questing being as rote as it is, it’s hard to recommend outright. Its sardonic and violent sense of humor are its redeeming characteristics, however, so if that’s something you value highly, it’s worth a look.