Good on Titan Studios. A week after Fat Princess launched, a patch has already been issued to iron out some of the performance kinks that have made playing online an occasionally frustrating experience. The patch, which went live Friday night in North America and will be out for European players next week, tweaks a few scoring and gameplay balances (the princesses now burn calories faster in an attempt to cut down on stalemates, for example), but mainly focuses on addressing the connection and lag issues many players have had.
Thus far, the patch’s impact has been mostly positive, but unfortunately the effects still seem to be hit or miss. Browsing around the forums, some folks are reporting significantly improved performance, others are saying they’re suffering through the same problems as before. I just wrapped up a couple hours of post-patch play, and personally, I’ve experienced a little of both sides.
Right after installing the patch, I wasn’t seeing any difference. My first attempt to enter a match failed. My second attempt succeeded, but a couple minutes into the match I was booted back to the main menu. Then I tried connecting again a couple times and kept getting a message about no matches being available, which is an error I never saw before the update.
Needless to say, I was a bit concerned at this point. But after these problems I decided to exit out of the game and restart, and after doing this I began having better luck, as the next few matches I tried connected without much hassle. From then on, the connection success rate became inconsistent. Sometimes I’d get a match quickly, sometimes I’d have to sit through three or four (sometimes more) failed matchmaking attempts like before.
The matchmaking system still needs some extra tuning, but the in-match performance definitely seems much improved. It’s not like the game was a laggy mess before, but it wasn’t 100% optimized either. Now, though, the game runs noticeably smoother. In the post-patch matches I played, I didn’t notice a single hitch of lag. I did get disconnected that one time, but that was the only in-match performance snafu I encountered.
So overall, the patch is a good first step towards tuning Fat Princess into a well-oiled, cake-eating machine. Titan Studios has some tweaking and balancing left to do, but as is the game is simply a blast to play. I hope you’re enjoying it as much as I am!
Follow the links below for the patch notes, and be sure to check out my full review of the game from earlier in the week if you haven’t already. I’d also love to hear your thoughts on the game and patch. The comments are open if you’d like to chat.
Fat Princess: Sony America Patch Live! [Titan Studios Dev Blog]
Fat Princess: Sony America Patch Live! [Fat Princess PlayStation.com Forum]
Matt Litten is the full-time editor and owner of VGBlogger.com. He is responsible for maintaining the day to day operation of the site, editing all staff content before it is published, and contributing regular news, reviews, previews and other articles.
Matt landed his first gig in the video game review business writing for the now-defunct website BonusStage.com. After the sad and untimely close of BonusStage, the former staff went on to found VGBlogger.com. After a short stint as US Site Manager for AceGamez, Matt assumed full ownership over VGBlogger, and to this day he is dedicated to making it one of the top video game blogs in all the blogosphere.
Matt is a fair-minded reviewer and lover of games of all platforms and types, big or small, hyped or niche, big-budget or indie. But that doesn't mean he will let poor games slide without a good thrashing when necessary! 
