Welcome to our review of the newest NIS game called Penny Punching Princess.
In a world ruled by capitalism, cash is king!
Use the money you gather to bribe enemies to fight for you, activate deadly traps with your dough, and when all else fails, smash all that stand against you with your fists! Fight your way from nothing and amass treasures to take on the mighty Dragoloan family and reclaim your kingdom!
Cash Rules Everything Around Me – Fight smarter, not harder! Bribe your enemies to fight for you, or activate deadly traps to turn the tide of battle in this fast-paced brawler.
Who Says You Can’t Buy Popularity – Recruit/Buy flunkies to your cause to unlock stronger equipment and master over 70 special moves based on weapons you craft!
A Madcap Romp of Dollars & Dragons – Embark on a wildly funny adventure as Princess, a girl robbed of her royal heritage in a world obsessed with money.
While this game sounds like some sort of crazy contraption of multiple mixed genres, it is a funny one to say the least. Set at a frenetic pace, you are quite the princess in a crazy action RPG or is it really? You are facing small levels set with lots of enemies that slowly become both smarter and harder as the game progresses. While this is the normal way to play a game, this game is anything but. When you are swarmed by enemies, why not just bribe one to assist you?
That line alone is just so wrong, but it is so much fun.
At parts of the game, well no, that is a lie, in almost everything and everywhere, money comes into play. Sometimes you need to bribe a gate in order to pass through or bribe a dragon to fight alongside you. Everything, much like real life, comes down to cold cash!
On the flip side, there is the regular action RPG style, where you do not just brawl your way through the hordes of incoming enemies, but also allocate skill points in order to make the princess a more powerful princess, ranging from added health to defense and offense. All parts of the regular RPG genre, added into this mix of bribing everything and anything, battling enemies and so much more, this game is crazy but is it also good?
Well, that is something else, while I really appreciate the idea behind this game, I am not sure it really works out. The fighting is fun. The bribing is fun. Some of the other techniques are not. Allow me to explain, when you need encounter break status in an enemy, you can swivel the right thumbstick, in order to get more money out of them. The game does revolve around money which is always made pretty clear. Swiveling that right stick, for me, it goes a little against the flow of the game while fighting. I release my hold on the action buttons to do this, which feels off to me.
I know it is a silly part to complain about, but it breaks the flow every time and you do need to grab the money because well, money makes the world turn ’round… Does it bother me enough to make it influence my rating, yes, it sure did.
In conclusion, this game sounded more appealing than what I personally experienced. It sometimes felt repetitive and while the premise of the game is quite awesome, it had some downsides that I could not fully overlook. I had fun times learning the bribing system and that calculator the game throws at you, but sigh… It could just not keep me wanting more and more and more. In the end, I am giving it 65%. It is a very smart attempt at redefining a possible genre blend, but for me, it did not completely capture my attention in the long run.
My rating is 65%.
