I started playing the Japanese version of Prinny: Can I Really Be The Hero over the weekend and instinctually I chopped everything in my path with Prinny’s two swords. Prinny’s basic sword flurry hits enemies in front and in back since the sword attack has frames where Prinny winds up. However, the backslash can only hit enemies dangerously close to you so it’s like a last resort defense to stun an enemy and prevent taking damage. The attack I found myself using most often is Prinny’s air raid where he jumps into the air and throws blue energy bolts towards the ground. While doing this move Prinny hovers in the air which means he can be hit by walking orcs. Air raid blasts also can hit a group of enemies and explode with a vertical blue flame so they can hit flying enemies like mothmen even if they touch the ground.
You can play Prinny like a regular side scrolling action game, but you’ll miss out on the combo system Nippon Ichi developed. Prinny has another attack, a ground pound or as it’s called in Prinny: Can I Really Be The Hero a hip attack. When you jump in the air hit down + X and Prinny can crush orcs with his butt. His hip attack only stuns enemies, though. You still have to finish off stunned zombies and jumping corn men with your swords. The reward you get for using the hip attack is a combo meter boost and when the combo meter fills up you’re rewarded with the item pictured on the right. Usually, these are extra sweets for Etna which translate into more points. But, the combo meter occasionally has a scarf icon which recovers one unit of Prinny’s life bar.
The levels are designed so it’s possible to bounce off one enemy’s head to the next using just the hip attack. You can’t hip bounce to the end of a level, but a tutorial video demonstrates how Prinny can trigger a group of falling enemies and hop on them to get a bunch of bonus points. In the future Prinny masters will probably post power play videos similar to speed runs, but I won’t be one of them. Mastering the bouncing hip attack is hard.
Images courtesy of Nippon Ichi.
