Nippon Ichi has gotten a lot of mileage out of the Disgaea engine and art assets. First, they made over a half dozen tactical RPGs. Second, they made a clever, unique dungeon crawler in the form of Z.H.P. Unlosing Ranger vs. Darkdeath Evilman
The premise is your usual NIS batshittery. The ever-present, obsequious demon-pengiun Prinnies that are the company’s mascot work for Etna, recurring Makai Wars character and sort-of demon princess. A demon thief stole her demon panties so the demon penguins have to fight demon armies to get them back. It’s not exactly coherent, but it is amusing in a very Japanese shounen comedy sort of way. Once again, both the writers at Nippon Ichi and the translators at NIS America had a lot of fun in putting together some very messed up scenes.
You play a Prinny with 1,000 lives, and you have to fight through six demon-filled worlds in any order during your quest to bring back the panties. The action is very basic to the point of stilted. You don’t gain levels or get new weapons or anything else you’d expect in a NIS game. You just run through these murderous obstacle courses, stabbing anything that gets in your way and dying constantly. You have two knives and an enemy-stunning stomp attack, and that’s about it.
You’re going to need all your 1,000 lives, especially if you’re foolish enough to play on the game’s normal or hard modes. Easy mode lets you take three hits before you die, and adds plenty of useful blocks for getting past the jumping sections. Normal mode lets you take one hit before you die. Hard mode means you die as soon as you touch an enemy or hazard. Of course, in all three modes, there are plenty of pits and instant-death traps to kill you as well.
Unfortunately, the stiff controls will kill you just as often as the cleverly-placed traps and monsters. Besides an inertia-changing double jump, you can’t really control where you’ll land after you jump. With tons of tricky jumps over pits and lasers, and tons of flying enemies attacking you, that means you’re going to die a lot. The controls aren’t utterly worthless, but don’t expect to pull any Super Meat Boy gymnastics.
While there aren’t any ridiculous level grinds or bottomless dungeons, Prinny 2 still has a good amount of replayability. The 6 main levels change based on the time of day in the game’s non-realtime clock (it gets later the more levels you play). Paths shift, enemies and bosses change, and new obstacles appear. There are also two unlockable Prinny versions of series regulars Laharl and Asagi, and the latter gets her own tweaked game mode called Asagi Wars, which has its own level layouts and bosses. There are also plenty of unlockables and collectibles, meaning you’ll probably come back to the game again and again, even after you recover the panties.
If you’re a fan of Disgaea, or any other NIS game, you’ll probably love Prinny 2 for the sense of humor, if nothing else. Unfortunately, its stiff controls keep it from being appealing to anyone but die-hard NIS lovers and Japanophile video game masochists. If you can find it for $20, pick it up for the novelty alone. At full price, however, it’s a tough sell.
