Game: Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero?
Genre: Action, Platformer
System: Nintendo Switch (also on PSP and PS Vita)
Developer|Publisher: Engine Software, Nippon Ichi Software | NIS America
Age Rating: EU 12+ | US T
Price: UK £17.99 | EU € 19,99 | US $19.99
Release Date: October 13th 2020
Review code provided with many thanks to NIS America
The Demon Underdog
Prinny was cut from the cloth of the PSP generation. The game is set in the infamous Disgaea universe and the title plays as a sort of side story to the RPG series. This game is now over 10 years old and possibly a title that some gamers never knew existed. To me the PSP was the handheld that developers got to experiment with, with new and different ideas.
Prinny felt like a title that really fit the bill, something niche that you would not necessarily see on the main consoles . Back in the day this was a game I actually picked up from a video game shop that was closing down. The tag line ‘Can I Really Be the Hero?’ instantly sold me leading me to believe this was some sort of underdog type of game. Now Prinny has another chance at life on the Nintendo Switch. But does this PSP title stand up today? Let’s find out.
Is it a Penguin?
What is a Prinny? A penguin looking demon who has the soul of a bad person, tasked to serve their master in the Netherworld. In this case Etna the demon lord. She wants you to track down the ingredients for the Ultra Desert because she is a tough mistress and she demands it. As good little demon servants it’s up to you to risk your lives in the process. It’s a rather usual plot with a sense of humour. The characters are fully voice acted. It was kind of weird going up against a metal dragon boss who spoke with a very posh English accent but I guess this is the weirdness you need to accept in this unusual Netherworld. The Prinny also say ‘Dood’ – a lot. It’s a humour style which will work for some gamers but leave people like me a little confused at times. You don’t have to be a hardened Disgaea fan to understand the plot but it may help understand some of the lore and characters going on in the background.
Platforming Hack n Slash
Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero? plays as a pretty tricky platformer with hack and slash elements added in. The melee combat is fun as you watch your Prinny slash away with duel swords. The platforming however is a little clunky. When you jump its hard to judge your distance and you also need to make sure you commit to a direction or you will jump up in the air vertically. The game allows you to double jump which lets you course correct but it doesn’t feel as smooth as it could be.
Your goal is to play through each level, reach the end and fight a boss in order to collect a ingredient for the Ultra Desert. The levels are no walk in the Netherworld though. There is a reason you start the game with 1000 lives. It’s because you will die a lot in this game or I guess explode in this case. Expect to see enemies placed at the edge of platforms so when you hit them your Prinny will stagger and fall to its death. Enemies in general can feel a bit cheap with some hovering just above you making it hard to take them out easily. It’s not all bad though there are fun areas where you can ride on vehicles and the melee combat itself was a lot of fun.
The game is not impossible but certainly asks you to learn patterns through explosive errors. Fortunately checkpoints are fairly frequent and I can certainly reassure you the 1000 life limit will probably easily see you through a playthrough of the game. Heck, sometimes I just blew the Prinnys up intentionally (something you can do if you fancy) because I was getting frustrated with the difficulty and it just made me feel better. So don’t panic if you loose upwards of 60 lives like I did per level.
Short but Darn Hard
The game is relatively short but I often had to put the thing down between levels as the overall difficulty leans into the stressful and frustrating realms. You get to select what order you play the core six levels in. As you complete each the game progressively gets harder such as more enemies and hazards given a small incentive to replay the game again. There are two difficulties. The standard allows you to take a few hits before death. But if you are a Prinny master you can go for the hardest setting which see’s you perish after a single hit. Yeah, no thanks.
Learn the Pattern
Boss fights also offer up a hearty challenge. Mostly requiring you to learn attack patterns and striking at the right moment. You can slash with your swords but this will only slowly grind down the health bar. The trick its to use the hip pound move to stun the boss at the right moment then slash away to make that health bar drain quicker. These encounters were entertaining but not without rage quitting frustrations also.
Blast From the PSP Past
The graphics kind of took me back to the old original Playstation days in a good way. Sprites are 2D but the platforms and levels are 3D. The game plays out totally in 2D but this merging of the plains just seems to fit. There is a nice variety of enemy designs and the environments are very colourful considering this is set in the Netherworld. It doesn’t appear anything has been done to particularly update the graphics from the PSP so textures on the TV looked blurred at the edges, after all this was originally and solely a handheld title. The music and voice acting is top notch it’s certainly quite the upbeat underworld despite its hard difficulty.
Stacked up to Previous versions
Comparing it to the PSP version of Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero? this one feel very familiar. Of course the controls have been adapted to Switch but other than that this feels simply like a port of the original title. Not a bad thing if you missed out the first time, but if you own this physically or digitally on PSP or Vita there is no reason to necessarily double dip unless you must play it on Switch. There is also a pretty cool physical version of this game coming to Switch which may appeal to some.
Can I really be the Hero?
Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero? has a very retro feel to me. It’s a game that will be very tough to play through the first time but once you master it’s patterns and gameplay style you can replay this to look for the various secrets or rack up a better score or rating.
The hard difficulty will put some off but if you have the time to spare there’s something special to discover in Prinny. Plus it’s not often you play as a demon penguin that explodes. Dood.
Final Verdict: I like it