Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero? Review

Disgaea is a fantastic series. The original, Disgaea: Hour of Darkness, was released six years ago and brought a colorful and hilarious world to gamers across the world. With lots of grinding (up to level 9999 per character!) and a gigantic amount of weapons and dungeons to trawl through, Disgaea provided a ton of replayability and fun. While the main character of the original was Prince Laharl, NIS have released a PSP-exclusive 2D side-scroller action game which instead stars the lovable and explosive side characters of the series: the Prinnies.

Prinnies get all the ladies, dood!

Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero? starts off with the Prinnies -- no, not just one Prinny -- who are being punished by Master Etna who has somehow lost her special "Ultra Dessert." The Prinny squad is given the task of tracking down said dessert and an unwilling leader is assigned, given a red scarf (fans of the original game will recognize the scarf) and forced into fighting his way through countless enemies. When the Prinny you play as dies, another Prinny dons the scarf and takes the role of leader. You have 1000 "lives" to make it through the game, each time a Prinny dies -- after 4 hits -- you lose a life and after 1000 lives lost, it's a game over.

Now and then you get a vehicle, dood!

Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero? is tough. Very tough. In some instances you'll actually question whether a level is even beatable. If you go into this game with the attitude that it'll be like any other of those easier games released nowadays, be prepared to pick your brain off the wall. Prinny is unforgiving in its execution -- Prinnies are fragile and even the slightest hit will take away health. This is frustrating when you only have four bits of health on Standard mode of difficulty. When your Prinny is hit by an enemy, it takes the control away from you, so in many instances I found myself being hit in midair and finding myself plummeting to my death with no way of correcting what has been done. Just getting over a simple ledge can take trial-and-error while it frustratingly whittles away at your lives. I lost count of the times I wanted to place my foot through the screen.

That being said, Prinny is meant to be a challenge. As a challenge, the game is unbelievably satisfying and gives you a fantastic sense of accomplishment as you finally manage to beat the unbeatable boss or get over that ledge that drained 60 of your lives. As you struggle through a level you can't help but feel proud to get over challenges that lie in wait. You could actually consider Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero? as a homage to the old-school platformers that required hours of trial-and-error, or learning how a boss works and how you'll go about beating it/them.

These guys ain't so tough, dood...

The games hub is the Prinny headquarters attached on to Etna's castle. The hub is pretty small but from there you can access the various stages, a few secret items and extra content. Finding orbs unlocks several characters who have different purposes, such as a monsterpedia and a battle data recorder. There are six stages to play on, each one is very different from the last, providing a great amount of variety. You can enter the stages in any order you choose, but each stage is more difficult going from easiest to hardest. Prinny himself is a tough little guy. His primary attack is to rapidly slash away with dual knives, but that isn't all he can do: Prinny can do a ground-pound attack to stun enemies -- extremely necessary on bosses -- and an Air Slash attack, a long range projectile barrage that tilts the world on a 3D angle. Prinny can of course run through levels, dash and also double-jump.

Dood! This is the Prinny HQ dood!

Jumping is actually a massive pain in Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero? It's frustrating enough when enemies and traps can so easily kill you, let alone having such a stiff, cumbersome and precise jump mechanic. You can jump, then jump again but you can't actually change direction in midair -- once you've made your jump you can't alter it, you'll have to watch as your Prinny falls to his death. Platforms can be pretty small with little room for error later on in the game sometimes hitting the jump button twice can throw you straight over the platform you were going for. It looks like this was done on purpose to add to the challenge, but it is a huge pain if you're used to games with a more fluid jumping system.

This didn't end well, dood...

Frustrating difficulty aside, Prinny is a beautiful entry in the Disgaea series and while being a different genre, it really fits right in in terms of voice-acting, style and music. The music feels like it was taken straight from the games, and they probably were. The animations are cute, bright, colorful and a real pleasure to look at. Any Disgaea fan would feel right at home and any new fan couldn't help be love them. The voice acting for the Prinnies is hilarious, and while the story is very silly and the game clearly doesn't take itself seriously, it's fantastic to follow. While Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero? is clearly meant to be a challenge, I can't help but feel let down that the game doesn't feature a easy setting for those who'd like it play it for the light-hearted and enjoyable story. It's definitely catered for hardcore platformers, which is odd considering the series roots as a Strategy RPG.

That tiny gap took me 60 Prinnies to get over, dood...

If you're looking for something brain-explodingly difficult, then give Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero? Despite its tough difficulty, it is a fun, enjoyable and interesting game. It has lovable characters and plenty of unlockables to keep you hooked for hours, not even counting the hours you'll waste trying to get through certain levels. It's tough but rewarding, and every gamer should try it out it to test their limits. Watch out for those exploding penguins, dood!