Title: Prinny 1•2: Exploded and Reloaded
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Developer: Nippon Ichi Software/Engine Software (Switch versions)
Publisher: Nippon Ichi Software America
Release Date: October 13th, 2020 (NA)
File Size: 745MB (Prinny 1)/1.2GB (Prinny 2)
Review copy provided by NIS America
This was a surprise! NISA out of nowhere announced a two-pack of both Prinny titles from the PSP exclusively for the Nintendo Switch! Both games can be bought either together via the retail release (both are their own icons), or separately on the eShop. How do the games and their ports on Switch fare? Will they make you happy like a Prinny full of sardines, or as dead as an exploding Prinny? LET’S FIND OUT DOOD!
Here’s Master Etna and our poor Hero Prinny. *tightens tie* No respect at all. (Prinny 1)
I’ve decided to review both games together as they do some as a set via retail and are both very similar games, so it’d be very redundant to make entirely separate reviews of both games. I will give three scores; one for each of the two games, and one for their set as a whole (not as an average). Let’s begin with the first game.
Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero? (or Prinny 1 from here on) takes place in the demon world. See, Prinnies are these penguin doods who are actually the dead souls of criminals, and they’re in this hellish world to atone for their sins. And stuff like that. Oh, and if they’re handled carelessly, they EXPLODE! Very messy. Anyway, our tale begins when their master Etna, the small red-haired demon girl, has had her prized ULTRA DESSERT stolen! That’s just wrong dood!
Here’s the small town hub area. (Prinny 1)
To fix this, she gives a single Prinny (apparently called “Hero Prinny”) a red scarf that allows the Prinny to survive without blowing up. In addition, your Prinny has 1000 in-game lives (they phrase it as individual Prinnies taking over, but you always have the same one, voice and all regardless). And boy are you gonna need them. These are the Dood Souls of Prinny games right here dood.
Onto the gameplay. It’s a 2.5D game that attempts to be a platformer but it is pretty focused on combat as you’ll need it. You can’t just breeze through (I’ve tried). You do the usual… walk… and jumping to get to places, and pressing the Y button to swing your swords at enemies. At the bottom-right is a “combo” meter with an item to the right of it. You fill this up by hip stomping enemies (press down and B in the air). This will stun enemies for a few seconds and they can’t hurt you in this state (not even by touching them). Once the bar fills completely, you’ll get said item, which is a dessert for points, or a scarf hit point recovery (you have three as HP on the standard difficulty. Get with with none and you’ll lose a life).
Hero Prinny at the start of the first tutorial level. (Prinny 1)
However, the issue I have, and it’s a big one, is how atrocious the jumping is in this game (and the sequel). Once you jump, you’re committed to it. There is zero course correction. Even with the double jump, it’s the same thing. You can jump farther if you do this… spin dash (not that kind!) where you hold A and Prinny will spin like a top. Once Prinny starts to glow blue, hold the stick (or d-pad!) where you want to go and let go of the A button and Prinny will run in that direction for a couple of seconds. Spin too long and Prinny gets dizzy. Jumping during this dash will make Prinny jump much farther.
This jumping mechanism is so awful as for example, if you’re not moving and then jump, you’re forced to jump straight up, period. You can only jump left or right if you move first and most of the time it’s a similar distance. Dodging enemies is extremely difficult because of this. My theory is that NIS are (and likely still are) very inexperienced with 2D platformers (or hell, any platformer) so they kind of just winged (flippered?) it. Still, you only need to play and of the prior Mario games to know how this works properly. Shame Engine didn’t get clearance to fix this, if that was even possible.
The intro to the first boss; Bouquet Garni. (Prinny 2)
Moving on. The game is played over 6 stages, and after a trip through each level, there’s a boss fight at the end of each one. I found these most of the time to be far easier. You just dodge, hip stomp to stun, then wail on them. The one exception was this big dragon named Lee Shang Long. I had to watch a video to even get how to beat it. You have to destroy these bomb balls in the air. Destroy 4 of them and the dragon will poke its horn into the ground, and then you stomp the horn twice, the dragon collapses, then wail on it. I couldn’t figure shit out until then. Did everyone have this issue?
Let’s move on to Prinny 2: Dawn of Operation Panties, Dood!. The setup is similar. Etna is furious (again) because someone stole her panties. Yes, hence the name. Yes, this is a real premise. Anyway, she again sends a Prinny with 1000 lives (with a different voice this time so it’s at least a different Prinny for certain than the first game’s). The major changes I noticed really are first, the new addition to the break system. This gives new purpose to the combo meter from before. And second, this is very neat; you can now hold Y to spam the sword attacks!
A later stage with Hero Prinny hip stomping a cannon. (Prinny 2)
To elaborate on the break system, once the combo meter fills up, Prinny will power-up and gain three new attacks (and more power in general) while the meter has power left. One is pressing R and Y in the air to do the Prinnikaze attack that plows through a row of enemies in front of you (depleting the meter). Another is using the spin attack offensively to hit enemies (also in both games, you’re invincible while glowing blue, forgot to mention). And the enhanced hip stomp now damages enemies. Finally you lose the power if you get hit.
Visually, it’s odd. On the surface, both games literally look like Engine just slapped the PSP games onto the Switch as if they had zero enhancements, and I mean the sprites are literally blown up/blurred. The slight advantage is that the sprites’ pixels blend together giving you a better… illusion of the art they’re trying to convey. It’s the same reason I assume Love de Lic’s Moon: Remix RPG Adventure on Switch (buy it) did this too. Seemingly the 3D elements are higher-res but it’s legit hard to tell if I’m perfectly honest, as odd as that sounds. The control buttons match the Switch’s now, but that’s kind of it.
WAIT…
Audio-wise it’s good. The games are pretty much fully voice-acted in both English and Japanese. Each Prinny has their own voice (and even names) and all are very funny, quirky voices that are frankly a delight. Music’s good and match the series I’d think (I’m no expert in Disgaea culture games). No real complaints here on the audio front.
Overall… it’s a mixed bag depending on your viewpoint. These games have charm and the general gameplay is fun. But even on the easier difficulties (they’re just hit point differences for you), it’s absolutely brutal. Like I said, Dood Souls would be a good name here, because this is clearly for those ultra difficult-loving gamers who bath themselves in the Souls games and such. That ain’t me dood! BTW, the stories aren’t connected so you can just buy the second one first if you want, but honestly I think the sequel’s even harder. But both are inexpensive at $20 USD on the eShop, so give either a shot if you want.
You’ll Love:
+ The games are charming, especially the characters. Their writing, and English voice-acting.
+ If you get past the blown-up sprites, the games looks fine honestly.
+ Also runs very well. Rock solid 60fps in both games.
+ Has screenshot and video capture support.
You’ll Hate:
– The BRUTAL difficulty. Even with two difficulty options in Prinny 1 and three in Prinny 2, they seem to just change your hit point/scarf count.
– Sprite purists won’t like how the blown-up sprites look. Ironically, in the library section of Prinny 2, you can see sprites of enemies in true, pixel-perfect glory. How odd.
Score: 6.5/10 (Prinny 1) 6.5/10 (Prinny 2) 8/10 (Collection)
Yeah, honestly thinking about it, both are a 6.5 for me. Each is better and worse than the other but nothing that really reaches “great” for me. Why the bump for the collection? Honestly, the prices are actually good when considered ($40 USD for both games together), but also the very cool and easy to buy locally physical edition for $60 USD. The physical Just Desserts edition gets you a jewel case CD, a small hardcover artbook, a poster, and even a lego-like set! That’s wicked cool dood! More than worthy of the bump in score. Tell you what, bump each game to a 7.5 or 8 if you love the difficulty. I didn’t, hence my personal scores.
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