Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero?

Prinny is as unexpected a game as you’re likely to find, and not just on the PSP. It’s the ultimate Disgaea fan service: a tough, ridiculous game (and 2-D, to boot) starring the exploding penguins (or whatever the hell they are) from Nippon Ichi’s quirky strategy RPG series.

But unlike Disgaea, Prinny isn’t a SRPG. It’s more like a modernized action-platformer. Think of it as a retooled Super Ghouls ‘N Ghosts with a Disgaea lick of paint. In short, it’s the kind of game that’s rarely made anymore, or at least rarely localized.

That also makes Prinny something special. The game is brimming with the Disgaea series’ trademark humor, while giving prinnies a chance to step outside their usual role of abused comic relief (prinnies are by nature easily unnerved, and have a tendency to add “dood” to the end of almost every sentence) and become, well, heroes.

At least, in their own disposable way.

I mean “disposable” quite literally. Prinnies are actually souls of the damned reincarnated in Disgaea‘s Netherworld as stick-legged, winged penguins that literally explode if jostled.

Although usually bound to a lifetime of slavery in the service of Etna, a vassal in the castle of the Netherworld’s (deceased) overlord, the prinnies’ quest is to collect and reassemble the Ultra Desert, which has gone missing.

Etna tells her prinnies they have 10 hours to track down the ingredients, or they’re all goners.

Given their combustible nature, Etna sends out a squad of 1000 prinnies to get back the Ultra Dessert. Think 1000 lives are too many? Nope. Prinny offers a frighteningly old-school approach and difficulty that’ll have younger gamers longing for the hand holding that’s so commonplace in today’s comparatively easier games.

Prinnies die after being hit four times, and every time they are hit, they get stunned. On top of that, like Arthur, once you start a jump in a certain direction you’re stuck with it, for good or ill. And it’s often the latter, which makes some of the platforming, to be frank, infuriating.

Aside from platforming, prinnies can hip pound to stun enemies, or slash at them with their knives or jump up in the air to deliver a series of devastating diagonal-downward slashes, which becomes necessary for getting past the levels’ often sadistic enemy placement.

As if things weren’t hard enough, things gets harder as the game wears on. Demons become harder and, even more sadistically, enemy and level layouts change for the worse. Expect to lose at least a third of your 1000-prinny squad before the game is through.

All in all, Prinny is a testament to old-school design that’ll make any seasoned gamer want to cry. And that’s a good thing, dood.