Prinny: Can I Really Be The Hero?

Say what you will about the state of the video game industry—I know I do—but one thing it’s always been is full of surprises…and this is a BIG surprise.

Anyone who’s played Disgaea or has watched Disgaea: Hour of Darkness will tell you: Prinnies rule. It’s just a fact. Prinnies are small penguin-like vessels with tiny bat wings and peg legs that contain the souls of humans who have lead worthless lives, such as thieves or murderers, as they suffer the consequences in the afterlife, sentenced to a life of servitude in the Netherworld where they work as domestic slaves until they either do enough good deeds to be reincarnated, or explode…The major drawback to being a Prinny (aside from a life of servitude) is that when tossed or handled recklessly they explode. Yeah dood, it’s not good. (Prinnies call everyone “dood,” by the way.) So it’s dangerous work, especially if you happen to be in the service of Etna, Vassal to the Overlord and leader of the Prinny squad, which these particular Prinnies of course are. Etna’s extremely hot tempered, devious, underhanded, self-centered, evil, and at the moment very angry and a little hungry. One of the Prinnies has eaten her dessert and won’t come clean, so as a penalty our “Hero” has been ordered to bring her the “Ultra Dessert” by daybreak or the entire squad gets the axe…literally. He tries the explosion excuse but Etna takes the spell off of him so off he goes in search of the ingredients for the confection of Etna’s desire, which must be pretty special since everyone who’s tried to attain it has ended up dead.

Here’s where it gets interesting. As you can see, Prinny is a gorgeous 2D game employing 3D backgrounds and 2D sprites in the vein of Ultimate Ghosts ‘N Goblins, right down to the multi-directional double-jump. Your Prinny can slash, air slash, double jump, hang, hip-pound and pick up and throw bombs. You begin the game with 1000 lives—yup, 1000—on either Standard or Demon difficulty. In Demon mode you die in one hit but in Standard you can take 3 so it’s really like having 3000 lives…Setting out from the Prinny HQ outside of Etna’s Chambers, where you can mull over Tutorials, save, or talk to your fellow Prinnies (and if you dare, Etna), you must forage through six different-themed stages collecting ingredients for the Ultra dessert—which are of course held by the head demon of each area. Along the way, Hip Pounding often will reveal Lucky Dolls hidden in each stage, along with orbs which you can use to revive nameless souls (those things hanging around Etna’s front porch) and receive new features. Since the Netherworld is calm by day and outright demonic by night, the passage of time greatly affects each area depending on the time of day or night you visit. Returning to a level you completed by day (easy) you might find bridges or ladders that weren’t there before in the evening (hard) or night (deadly hard). Each stage has six variations in total, which means you’ll need to play the game at least six times to play them all, after which a little demon told me four more (at least) will appear. What did we do to deserve such a feast of 2D glory? I don’t know, but after the PSP drought we’ve been having this is like a torrential downpour.

The gameplay in Prinny is the stuff of side-scrolling dreams. The control is precise and the animation sheer delight on both the Prinnies and their enemies—great bosses too as you can imagine—and jumping into an Air Slash bumps the action into a cool 3D perspective, a move that never gets old. The action takes to the sky too (and it’s Prinny great, believe me), the replay value is simply ridiculous, and in case of emergency you can change difficulty at any time. The soundtrack is simply perfection, in the vein of Nippon Ichi’s other patented Disgaea scores, and the hilarious (as usual) storyline and writing (written in English and acted in Japanese) are simply in a class by themselves. I am fulfilled once again! Bring on the 2D dood!

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