Prinny: Can I really be the hero? | a Review
originally published on 27/07/2021;
Hello everyone, I am the thrice damned fiendish stranger, G.E.M.Simov, a creature so foul not even the Burning Hells want me, and I’ve come to talk to you about a game set in a version of Hell - “Prinny: Can I really be the hero?”, for the PSP, which shall henceforth be known as ‘the game’ or ‘Prinny’.
Simple review details - I rank games on an out of 10 basis, granting up to 3 points in 3 categories, as well as a last, single point from my own self, depending on my experience with it. Also, I am a gameplay designer and a writer so I got the credentials to talk shit.
Gameplay
This is a fucker’s game.
The big issues of Prinny are: Movement. Now, the movement is JUST good enough to be passable, but there are so, so many issues with it that it’s the main reason the player will end up dying in this game.
The problem is that there is absolutely 0 control that the player has over aerial movement. The only semblance of agency here is whether or not the player’s character, Prinny, ends up in the air - via the X Button. Other than that, the player might be able to decide in which direction Prinny moves, only while jumping, though, because as soon as the Prinny is in the air, there’s no course correction.
There’s the opportunity to Double Jump, via the X Button while in the air, but that, oftentimes, doesn’t work out, because the player might not have pressed the Right or Left Arrow Buttons hard enough, and the game will not make the Prinny’s jump be one with direction that is not UP, and, thus, the double jump can be something that does not work out as well as it ought to.
In a game which depends on the player moving around at INCREDIBLY high rates of precision, to dodge a multitude of attacks (seeing as the game’s hard mode is literally a death by touch), having something that takes away all the control the player has over their character is very, VERY bad. Instead of doing it so no commands could be issued while mid-air, other than the second X Button for a double jump, they should have done something else.
An example of how it should have been done would have been that: for the first 0.25 seconds of a jump the direction cannot be changed, and then, after 0.25 seconds, it can be changed. It could be that: the direction of a jump can always be changed, but, if the player wants to start falling straight downwards, they can press the Down Arrow Button (which already gets used for a similar function). There are so many options that could have been explored, and yet the folks who made this game went for the one that really shows that this is a fucker’s game.
Why? Because it’s a means of taking away a player’s agency and then KILLING them, outright, which makes the player feel incredibly upset, because the only solution to that kind of meme is to be frame perfect on every jump, otherwise if the control is not inputted at the right time, boom, no movement, death. Or, if the control is accidentally inputted, there’s no opportunity for correction, and the player can lose 10+ minutes of progress… Which is an insane amount, when the game in question is an instant-hit death experience where you must start from the beginning if you’re looking to get any kind of achievement, or a good score.
On the subject of mobility and mechanics not working - I present to you ledge grabbing. It works, supposedly by having the player press the Arrow Button that’s in the direction of the ledge they want to grab, and, as long as the player passes by the ledge, they will grab it… Though that works around 40% of the time. The other 60% of the time the ledge doesn’t get grabbed or the player ends up on the platform without grabbing the ledge. When a player wants to grab a ledge, that means that if they end up on the platform without grabbing the ledge, they will most likely get killed immediately.
There’s also the problem with infinitely spawning stuff that appears literally from NOWHERE, has no sound indication that it has spawned, and comes at the player at an impossible to outrun speed, very hard to dodge, as well, because they have unbelievably hard to predict patterns. The only solution is to get past a certain point in the level, otherwise, the player’s fucked. This isn’t fun, because:
A: There’s no means of playing around it, as the first time it occurs in a level it is almost always a 95% death for the player
B: There’s no means of playing around it, as it is completely invulnerable to damage and has no collision box, so it cannot be bounced off of
C: There’s no means of playing around it, as it infinitely spawns, and its speed is so great that there is no room to breathe
D: There’s no means to play around it, as the player’s own mobility is horrendously constrained by the fact that they have no control over themselves while in the air
Collision boxes and Hitbox detection are also quite unpleasant issues here, due to the fact that many times I’ve had situations where I do not get hit, when I should get hit, only to then get hit while there’s nothing touching me, then there have been instances of he trying to hit something and it not getting hit. That’s a problem.
Let’s not forget about the ALL SEEING eyes of the enemies - it’s lovely how they can see where the player is even if they are not on the player’s screen, through a multitude of walls, and still have incredible laser-sight precision with their projectiles. It’s, frankly, really unpleasant, knowing that the player needs to see the enemies, because they do not always spawn in the same place, or even behave in the same manner, to be able to play around them, while said enemies could be shooting even before the player has had the opportunity to find out that they exist. It’s… Not really cool.
Then, there’s another issue - the issue of grabbing things. The player is instructed, in the tutorial, that they can grab things (bombs) with the Triangle Button, and then throw those things (bombs) by pressing the Triangle Button again. Naturally, the player is not informed that throwing bombs at enemies who are too close will lead into the player’s own death, and so that’s something to discover.
Another interesting tidbit, concerning bombs, which the player is not informed of, is that 50% of 40% of the time, they work as intended. The remaining 50% of 60% of the time, they do not work, either because:
- They do not deal damage to targets that get stricken by them.
- They deal damage to targets stricken by them, but far less than intended - example would be an enemy getting hit by the same bomb in two different playthroughs of the same level (under the same circumstances) and the enemy only dying as a result of one explosion, rather than both.
- They cannot get picked up even if the player presses the Triangle Button 2 or 3 times in rapid succession. That’s most likely an unpleasant bug that just messes with the game.
- They are underwhelming to use, due to the fact that they are more risky than rewarding. Best case scenario, player kills a pair of nasty monsters with a bomb. Worst case scenario, player dies while trying to get a flawless level/player dies, in general.
There’s a plethora of other issues with bombs, such as the fact that they are, more or less, treated as an optional means of handling a situation, how they’re very clunky to use, due to the fact that they require the player jumps (sometimes twice) to get a good height from which to throw them, and that means they are putting themselves out of position and also taking away their own ability to move, just so they can get to MAYBE reap some benefits of using a bomb.
THEN, however, the final boss is exclusively based around throwing bombs, and does not, at all, feature one of the most prominent, up till that point, mechanics in the game. The issue here is that the final boss brings about an ungodly amount of ridiculous, almost entirely new mechanics for the player to learn, it relies heavily on mechanics that the player has rarely used, or only in very specific situations, and it requires that the player hits a WEAK SPOT with bombs. Imagine how well that goes– Oh, and also, that boss has around 2, maybe 3 times more Health than any other boss, and is invulnerable for far, FAR longer than either of the other bosses. For the 3 minutes the player is relegated for killing any boss (including the final boss), it means that even 1 mistake will make it so that the player runs out of time.
That whole shebang is abominably bad, and it makes me really sad to see this decent idea get executed so poorly. In fact, that has come to be a surprising feeling that I share for most of this game. It has so many good ideas, and yet the execution associated with them is so mediocre, or downright bad, that it just feels as though it’s not what it could have been.
After taking care of spitting all over the bad, which is actually quite lacking in volume, when one thinks about it, but its effect is incredibly powerful, I should take some time to tell you just how good everything else is.
Examples of how good this game is:
- This game has so much replayability it is actually beyond me how the folks at Nippon Ichi Software did all that, in 2008, but they did, and it’s incredible. Every level (of which there are 6) has 6 different states, which can be played through. Each level, if the player is immaculate and does not die a single time, can last up to a total of 11 minutes, meaning that there is a possibility of almost 7 whole hours of play-time IF the player never dies a single time. The player WILL die more than a hundred, maybe even 500 times, and, thus, the possible play-time breaks through the roof.
That replayability is encouraged by a whole slew of things - unlockables, rewards, lore, cutscenes, different boss battles, and even a multitude of endings. There are also challenges: Can you beat this level without dying? Can you beat this level in less than 6 minutes to get the Gold time? - Then, there’s the unlockables mentioned before. Not only is there lore interspersed among those unlockables, they are all secrets. Some are very far out of the way, such as music tracks, others are more conventionally placed, but are still hidden and a challenge needs to be overcome before they can be obtained. Some require the slaughter of a certain number of monsters, while others require simply encountering a certain monster.
All of this, these secrets, these reasons for the player to keep playing, stack up and make it so that the player wants to go through the game again, to explore the levels, to see what they have missed, to get the good stuff. Not only that, but some secrets are actual NPCs (Non-Player Characters) who can be brought back to the Hub World, only for them to then unlock an even greater variety of things for the player to do. - An astonishing focus on how to make the game difficult, without making it totally unbeatable. Real challenge, rather than a time sink, that requires the memorization of patterns and the knowledge of how to utilize certain mechanics in certain ways.
But then it turns out the final boss I mentioned isn’t even the final boss (even though, for story reasons, it should have 100% been the final boss, but I guess no), even though it was, thematically, most fitting for it to be the final boss (seeing as no one would want to play any more Prinny for a long while after dealing with that dreadful encounter), and, well… The actual final boss is kinda like the other bosses, but he has 2 phases, and the folks who made this game decided to take a page out of the Western Games Difficulties, making that fucking thing’s health INSANELY high. It’s way higher than the boss with the weak spot, and there’s no means of stopping this one’s attacks - just spray and pray.
Also, that one literally gives you carpal tunnel syndrome. You need to press the Square button around 200 times within 3 minutes, when half of those 3 minutes are spent dodging the Boss’ attacks. It’s… It’s incredibly well designed, kappa.
Overall, this game is very impressive, though it falls short of being incredible. It was fun to play when it was just challenging, rather than infuriatingly bordering on impossible, which is the latter stages of it. Ah well. 2/3
Presentation
This game looks quite good. There’s a measure of dissonance between the foreground and the background, but I figure that’s sensible, in a way. So, this is a 2D side-scrolling platformer, and, as such, it’s got a bit of leeway. However, it is not entirely 2D, but rather 2.5/3D, because the background itself is a 3D space.
Then, the sprites, of everything that can be interacted with, are pixelated, but also somewhat 3D, even though they appear 2D. In a sense, this game nails an incredible appearance that’s quite unique. It looks incredibly good for a PSP game from 2008, because the folks who made it did make the right calls, and, as a result of that, it has a stylized appearance, rather than something going for realism.
Some people might be a little turned off by the fact that it is a Japanese game and almost everything in it is reminiscent, in style, to the stereotypical ‘Anime’, but I’d say that gives it a fair bit of charm and personality. I can’t talk about other people, but Anime is very expressive, and that has helped tremendously. Considering the fact that the main character, Prinny, is some weird, dead-faced penguin, going for anything but the hyperbole of Anime would have made them very lacking in emotion.
This is all further empowered by a great performance, when it comes to the Voice Acting for the game. I don’t think there’s a single character, voiced, that has an underwhelming Voice Over - it’s that good. And, frankly, that was a shocker, considering that English Voice Actors really botch most things that come from Japan, but, unexpectedly, this game has a very nice set of performances.
The music is a mixed bag. On one hand, it’s pretty good. On the other hand, a large portion of it does not fit with the intensity of the gameplay, and then some tracks are just weird. It’s got a decent bunch of neat stuff, but it’s also somewhat underwhelming.
All in all, this game looks great. 3/3
Story
The story starts off incredibly strong, due to the fact that the player is thrust into a VERY brave new world. There’s these Penguins that Explode, Prinnies, and there’s some nasty overlord who rules over them, and then some snack is gone, so… The Prinnies have 10 hours to assemble the ultimate snack, the Ultra Dessert. How will that happen, considering they explode when they trip and fall?
Well, that’s up to the player to handle. This game has a superb premise, but it becomes more and more diluted, until it becomes unpleasantly annoying. One would think that everything would end when all the stages are complete, but then a couple of ass-pulls occur and the player needs to go at it for even longer.
As mentioned in the Gameplay section, when talking about the boss that really should have been the final boss, the boss that should have really been the final boss would have made this story a lot more pleasant, and the length of the torturous playing sessions would have been lessened, but, then, a character who has only been mentioned… Once?... Comes out of nowhere and just takes a thing. There’s a plot hole here, because the Overlord who rules over the Prinnies SHOULD have been present… But then they aren’t, and nothing gets done by them. It’s a total ‘laugh’, but not really.
The characters that are present in the game are interesting, barring a few exceptions that I really disliked, partially because of how they affected the story, or because they were insanely obvious references to something, and I felt as though they ought to have been optional secret joke bosses, rather than proper bosses, but, hey, the whole thing is a bit of a joke, very humorous in approach, and that isn’t too bad.
Overall, due to the fact that it presents such an interesting world and a decent bit of lore, due to the fact that the manner in which lore is obtained is so involved with the process of playing the game, and the reasonable quality of the writing, I’ll be frank - this is not bad at all… Though it could have been better. 2/3
Legendary Point
Does this game get the legendary point, so craved and wanted by all and none at the same time? Well, if it was not a fucker’s game, I would have said: Yes, of course! But, because it is a fucker’s game, I’m not giving it the legendary point. It’s a NO. 0/1
Conclusion
7/10. I am conflicted about this. I really loved the fact that this game took difficulty by the horns and held it down, and really did something good with it. I really hated the fact that it kept escalating, up to a point where it was no longer fun, but actually, PHYSICALLY painful to play. My fingers still hurt after the Final Boss, and that’s not a joke - it was unbelievably taxing.
I’d recommend this game to people who like Dark Souls, or things of the sort - challenging, difficult games with relatively interesting stories. Keep in mind, though, that this one is not worth finishing - it’ll be more of a hassle than anything else, and the possibility of one injuring themselves or causing themselves great discomfort is high.
I tuck it under my belt, another shining achievement that I proudly display… Shit, there’s a sequel.