Handheld
Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero?
By George Damidas
Apr 14, 2009, 7 :50 am

‘Well, we can’t just chicken out now, dood!’ Truer words from a random Prinny have never been spoken. It’s not always easy to take advice from a criminal’s soul trapped inside the body of an explosive penguin-thing with peglegs, but right is right.

Prinnies, the best thing to come out of NIS’ turn-based strategy Disgaea titles this side of zombie shopkeepers, have been long overdue for some time in the limelight. What could have easily been an annoying in-joke, with their high-pitched tone and abusive use of the word “dood,” is instead one of the few genuinely funny running gags in gaming today. To get the most out of Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero? you must be ready, and looking for, a number of things: absurd humor, spot-on graphics and sound, fantastic level design, and, most importantly, nerve-destroying difficulty. A Prinny’s life is not meant to be easy, and NIS ruthlessly drives that point home at every opportunity.

Heroes need grand journeys with which to prove their mettle. Princesses, peace treaties, and liberty are causes that are all well and good for risking one’s life, but creating the Ultra Dessert should be the true goal of any real champion – and that is exactly the object of Etna’s obsession and the Prinnies’ efforts. With a potent butt-slam, aerial and ground dual machete slash, a double jump, a ballet twirl-charged dash and slide moves, and a combo gauge, the Prinnies battle their way throughout a variety of levels in search of the different ingredients to complete the dessert. The moves are far from enough, as Etna also bestows a scarf to keep the peglegged one in action from exploding, at least for up to three hits, and another 999 Prinnies to assist. Yes, you did read that correctly: you have 1,000 lives.

Will you need 1,000 lives? Well, that depends on how skilled you are and how willing you are to work towards earning high marks for each level; but if you are like me, and what I suspect most people, then you will need at least 300 of them. A majority of my 300 deaths were punctuation with a loud grunt or “Dammit!” – sure signs that the game is being played and that someone was knee-deep in some serious platforming. I’ve been reading a number of people complaining about the difficulty in today’s games being too light for their tastes lately, and to them I say fear not, men and women of steel, NIS has delivered to you an appropriately soul-crushing experience to satiate your masochistic needs.

The difficulty comes from a variety of factors, most of which are soundly implemented. The level design is one of the better aspects of the game; what comes off as a fairly straightforward stream of platforms is instead laid out just enough to drive you nuts. I noticed just how intentional the design was whenever I was knocked off of a platform and fell several stories, right down into a number of collectible desserts that were otherwise inaccessibly, indicating that that one spot purposefully made difficult to traverse. Make no mistake, the developers are having a giant laugh at the ludicrous difficulty: enemies appear right where you hope they wouldn’t be, time their scripted moves just when you don’t want them attack, and are placed among still and moving platforms so that you have just enough space to make a simple jump a worrying experience. Sprinkled about are also moments of dumbfounded realization, such as when irritation led me to simply walk through a string of challenges and find that that was precisely the best approach; indeed, finding out the fastest and safest way to the next checkpoint is far more involved here than in other platformers.

The problem with the difficulty isn’t really with the enemies, which are strange and plentiful, but the controls. Oh, the controls. Aside from being knocked back a space each time you are hit, leading to innumerable deaths by plunges off of platforms, navigating obstacles and combating enemies is made extremely difficult because of the stiff controls. In very throwback approach, you cannot control the hero Prinny once it jumps off of the ground: instead of launching towards a platform and nudging towards the landing spot, you instead have to guess the trajectory at liftoff and hope you made the right call. Overshot that? Not able to grab onto the ledge? Death. Cut to 35 tries later: death. Ten tries later still: death. Then, finally, as you cheer for yourself as if you’re about to print a screenshot out and stick it on a fridge door to showoff your amazing jumping skills as you stick a well deserved landing…you’re promptly knocked off by an enemy that popped-up out of the ground and right into you. “Dammit!”

The rigid controls are really what hold the mighty Prinnies back. The humor, despite being an acquired taste, is great throughout, as is the mix of 2D and 3D art with the fantastic voice-overs and music; little details, like sweat beading down a Prinny’s face, are just great. The difficulty bounces around from hilarious to gritting to absurd, but it’s largely worthwhile, thanks to some old-style boss battles and puzzle-like layouts. But then you hit a wall with the controls, and it’s just pure aggravation. Peglegs or not, controlling a Prinny shouldn’t feel like I’m back in 1985.

For those who feel they can brave the wall o’ difficulty, you will find some extra tchotchkes thrown in by NIS.  Inside the cardboard case is a standard PSP case that houses the game and manual, but also included is the official soundtrack. The soundtrack’s booklet puts in some work with two covers, but also serving as a lyric sheet and a comic from the guys at Penny Arcade. All in all, not too bad for freebies.

Overall: 7.5/10