Penny-Punching Princess

Get your revenge with cold, hard cash in Penny-Punching Princess, the new isometric brawler from NIS America, Inc! After your father is driven to death by financial stress, beat and bribe your way to a rebuilt kingdom in post-apocalyptic fantasy world where money equals physical power. Build a kingdom, get your minions to make new battle-swag, and enjoy a satirical story perfect for our post baby-boom age!

NIS delivers the weird yet again with Penny-Punching Princess, a fun little arcade romp that just escapes the danger of staleness. Stretched a little too thin but a lot of people are going to be enjoying this one with a price drop.

Take or leave a penny.

Penny-Punching Princess is a fascinating take on the usual capitalist impulses within loot based games and combines this with a fun and humorous cartoon aesthetic, but it just never really feels fun to play. At its best, such as when you bribe fire traps or huge buzz saws to work on your side and damage the enemies, it is a great addition to the usually stale ARPG genre, but too often these moments are quickly followed by a frustrating death caused by an overly busy screen and unintuitive controls. With some refinement, or possibly the bigger screen available on Switch, there is a great game t...

When you look at an overhead beat 'em up with RPG elements, it's hard to know what to expect. Penny-Punching Princess features a unique bribing mechanic so get your golden fists ready and let's see how much of a punch this princess packs.

At first glance, Penny-Punching Princess brings back fond memories of classic action RPGs. Heck, having a magic calculator on your side to bribe enemies with is even clever. But then the gameplay's doldrums set in.

There is a fine line between a unique selling point and a gimmick. A good game creates interesting gameplay moments. A good game finds interesting angles to give a special gameplay experience. A bad game simply creates something odd to sell to the customer which doesn’t elevate the concept, loudly and busily going nowhere. In the case of Penny-Punching Princess, whether the game has a unique selling point or is simply a gimmick really feels as though it’s in the eye of the beholder.

If the price drops to around the $20 mark, this title would be a quirky gem. As it stands, the cost of entry and the lack of true depth to Penny-Punching Princess make it a hard game to recommend to anyone. As it stands, it’s just not a very good time to be had. The price, combined with the repetitive nature and lack of level design make it a resounding “meh” of a game. It feels like it was meant for the 3DS, and was quickly ported to the Switch to cash in, and that’s not a good thing.