How many Prinnies are needed to find the perfect dessert? And how many Prinnies will it take to find the stolen panties of their tyrant master, Etna? If you can achieve these noble causes with less than 1000 Prinnies, you will do just fine in Prinny 1&2: Exploded and Reloaded.
The Prinny games are spin-offs of the Disgaea games and were released on PSP a decade ago. Soon, they will be re-released on the Nintendo Switch. We sat with publisher NIS America to see Prinny 1&2: Exploded and Reloaded’s Gamescom 2020 demo and experienced the devoted Prinnies’ gusto.
A Prinny is a worthless soul sewn into a penguin-like body that will explode if hurt. They are commonly considered as Disgaea’s, or even Nippon Ichi Software’s mascot. They are brave, loyal, and very enthusiastic, much like Asta from Black Clover. Oh, and they say “Dood” a lot.
The Gamescom demo showed one of the stages in Prinny 1&2: Exploded and Reloaded, and focused on the game’s mechanics. As mentioned before, you’ll have one thousand Prinnies for the whole game (1000 per game). Every Prinny can take three hits, represented by scarves. If it takes a forth hit, it’ll explode and pass the scarf to the next Prinny.
The Prinnies are not so innocent as you’ll soon discover. They will hip-thrust the enemies from above to stun them and use their sharp knives to slash at them. When you successfully bounce from enemy to enemy, you’ll fill up your combo bar. When full, you’ll gain a bonus (each game has different rewards).
Through the levels, you’ll find multiple checkpoints, and you’ll probably need them. Here and there, you’ll find cool vehicles that can destroy the enemies with ease. Don’t feel sorry for the enemies, though – they’ll chase you down if you do. Just slash and blow them away. No loose ends!
A platformer without a boss fight is like a Prinny without a soul. To find the (questionable) dessert ingredients, you’ll have to defeat some sturdy bosses. Before you hack and slash your way down their health bar, you’ll have to get rid of their defenses, represented by skulls. Once their defenses are down, the bosses will be vulnerable and at your mercy.
The boss we saw in Prinny 1&2 demo was pretty easy to beat and yielded some rotten meat – an ingredient for their ultimate dessert. Ultimate food poisoning, if you ask me.
It is great that after a decade that the Prinny series was available only for PSP owners, this new Nintendo Switch port will expose the game to more audiences. However, for games starring Disgaea’s mascot, I would have expected to see significant visual improvements such as sharper graphics and polished animations.
Prinny 1&2: Exploded and Reloaded’s physical edition will contain both games with all their additional contents and will be available for Nintendo Switch starting October 13.
If you do not fancy physical media, you can just purchase Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero? and Prinny 2: Dawn of Operation Panties, Dood! separately from the Nintendo eShop.
