"Prinny 1•2: Exploded and Reloaded" Review

By Emily G.

Player(s): 1
Platform(s): Nintendo Switch

If you were to walk into my home this week you very well might think I was being attacked. Yelling, stomping and an embarrassing amount of expletives streamed from my apartment every time I booted up "Prinny 1•2: Exploded and Reloaded". However, as much as I scared my housemates in the process, if you looked at my face you would see a huge smile. 

Originally for the Playstation Portable, "Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero?" and
​"Prinny 2: Dawn of Operation Panties, Dood!"have been combined into one bundle on for Nintendo Switch to be released in the US on October 13th. The two games can also be bought separately in the Nintendo E-Shop. The series is a spinoff of the popular Disgaea tactical role playing games. For those unfamiliar with the series they take place in the Netherworld, run by demons. A Prinny is the lowest level of demon, created from the souls of humans who were sinners in life sewn into cute, penguin shaped dolls. The surprisingly fragile servants take center stage in these platformers when they receive a power-up in the form of a scarf that lets them take a few more hits than normal to retrieve stolen goods for their Master Etna. The plot is pretty simple so to avoid spoilers I will skip over that part, but if you are a fan of Disgaea it is chock full of fun cameos from the main series.

So, what about the gameplay? The Prinny series is notoriously hard, but to make up for that you are given 1000 lives to make it through. In the first game your move set is fairly limited with a basic attack, jump attack, duck, hip pound, dash and jump being your whole roster. In the second game they expand this with powered up attacks and slide dashes. Even with this limited skill set the game goes from simple to throwing a hellish barrage of monsters at you within a few levels. In the air, on the ground, and dropping bombs down from off screen. It is expected that you will lose a few of your lives getting down just the right pattern to weave through the fray.

This is where the game can get incredibly frustrating. When the beats to hit to get through a section are so tight the problems with gameplay start to show. The animations for a double jump or hip pound can feel slow and it is not always clear when it has completed. So you often run into problems where it looks like the animation completed in time to hit the monster, but you will take damage. Jumping can also feel a little clunky at times. When I say that I was cursing up a storm this was often the reason why (on top of my own incompetence). This is not something that is updated in the second game either, so the needlessly difficult parts are carried through.

While this might be seen as adding difficulty for difficulty’s sake, I don’t feel like it makes the game unplayable. In some boss battles I went through over 50 lives and my frustration reached a fever pitch. My muscles would be completely blown from frantically button mashing for over an hour and I would be ready to throw the whole console out the window.  So when the dam finally breaks and you see the flash of white signifying your victory the rush of endorphins is amazing! More than enough to keep you going through the rough times.

The games are highly replayable. Each one takes place over 10 in game hours and the levels change based on the time of day you play them. Not just the difficulty, but the boss battles also change. The bosses are cameos from the main series so to see them all you will need to do multiple playthroughs. There are plenty of things to collect on the side if you are a completionist such as dolls hiding in the levels or monster files with more details on each enemy. There is even a harder mode if you hate yourself! I can see myself picking this up from time to time for years to come and I would totally recommend this to anyone who likes platformers. Good Luck, dood!

For More Info On "Prinny 1•2: Exploded and Reloaded":
http://prinnies.com/

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Story: B
Graphics: A
Sound: A
Value: A 
 
OVERALL: A

 Pros:
+ Replay Value
+ High Difficulty, High Reward
+ Beautiful Sprite Art

Cons:
- Movements can be clunky at times

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A copy of this game was provided to us free-of-charge by the publisher for the purpose of this review. This did not affect our review in any way.