Beastmaster and Princes, known in Japan as Moujuutsukai to Oujisama, follows Tiana, a young woman who dreams of becoming a great beastmaster, after she encounters four princes from the neighboring kingdom of Fasan who’ve been transformed into animals by a witch’s curse. Tiana takes it upon herself to help lift that curse, only to discover it’s just the surface of a much deeper conspiracy brewing inside the kingdom.
Otomate, Idea Factory’s otome division, developed the game with Design Factory and first released it on PlayStation 2 in June 2010 before porting it to PSP the following June, with a fandisc called Snow Bride following on PS2 in February 2011 and on PSP in February 2012. The two later got packaged together under the Flower and Snow branding, first on PlayStation Vita and then on Nintendo Switch in Japan on May 30, 2019, with iOS and Android versions following as well, combining the original story and its fandisc into one release rather than marking a separate entry in the series. Beyond the four princes, a childhood friend character rounds out the romance options too, giving the cast a fifth path alongside Matheus, Alfred, Lucia, and Erik.
Gerda, the witch responsible for the curse in the first place, and Hannes, the merchant who ends up handing the four cursed princes over to Tiana, both root the fairy tale premise in something more concrete than just a magical setup, giving the story real people to hold accountable once the plot starts pulling at why any of this happened at all.
Matheus, the first prince turned into a lion, carries himself with a dignified reserve that keeps him at arm’s length from everyone but Tiana, a skilled strategist who never chases after anyone who’s already decided to leave. That composure comes with an odd wrinkle too, an allergy to men that leaves him breaking out in hives from casual contact, Erik being the one exception he’s never quite explained. Alfred, cursed into a wolf, comes across sharper and more guarded still, an eyepatch hiding the story of an eye he lost young enough that his loyalty to Matheus has defined him ever since. The two of them read as opposite responses to the same loss of control, one retreating into composure and the other into distance.
Lucia turned into a duck, which sounds like the game’s one joke at his expense until his route reveals a sharp tsundere underneath and a childhood connection to Tiana neither of them initially recognizes in the other. Erik’s rabbit form hides the most, since gentle, soft spoken Erik conceals a darker, more calculating true self that the story eventually forces to the surface, and watching that reveal complicate a character I’d already grown fond of in his softer form was easily the strongest writing beat across the four routes.
The structural weakness here is one the game shares with a lot of titles built around a locked cast introduced all at once. Matheus and Alfred’s routes lean on a shared block of early plot that repeats itself almost beat for beat regardless of which one I picked first, and the same holds for Erik and Lucia’s pairing. Playing routes back to back within the same pair means sitting through scenes I’d essentially already read, and while the game frames each repeat as technically new content since the focal character has changed, the pacing suffers for it.
A 2016 Kickstarter from Gloczus funded an English localization for Steam and mobile, and Story Jar became the app most western readers actually encounter the game through, requiring tickets purchased to unlock chapters as you go. That mobile version strips out the voice acting present in the original Japanese release and its later Nintendo Switch port, which is a real loss given how much a route like Erik’s leans on vocal performance to sell the tonal whiplash between his gentle facade and his sharper true self.
The original Japanese cast carries real pedigree too. Hikaru Midorikawa voices Matheus, Kosuke Toriumi voices Alfred, Hiro Shimono voices Lucia, and Yuki Kaji voices Erik. Hiroki Yasumoto, Ai Sasaki, Yu Shimamura, Takayuki Sasada, Masakazu Nishida, Yoji Ueda, and Ai Horauchi round out the wider supporting cast around Klaus, Lotte, Gerda, Kurt, Hannes, Bernd, and Dirk. Tiana herself stays unvoiced throughout, which tracks for a protagonist meant to stand in for the reader.
What’s left in the mobile version still carries real charm through its writing and character CGs, but anyone who’s played a fully voiced otome title will notice the gap immediately. Character art holds up well across the roster, distinct enough in both human and animal forms that I never lost track of who was who even mid transformation, and the CG rewards tied to choice based hearts give routes real incentive to be replayed carefully rather than just clicked through.
Verdict
Beastmaster and Princes builds a charming hook out of its curse premise, giving Tiana real agency as a capable beastmaster rather than a passive romantic prize, and using each prince’s animal form as a clever shorthand for the personality underneath. Erik’s slow reveal of a sharper true self stands out as the strongest writing in the whole cast, even against Matheus and Alfred’s own quieter, more guarded arcs. The shared early game content between paired routes drags when read back to back, and the mobile localization’s missing voice acting is a real step down from the original release, but neither issue undoes what’s fundamentally a well constructed fairy tale with more bite in its character writing than its cute premise initially suggests.
