Penny-Punching Princess

Penny-Punching Princess is a solid, often fun brawler, but its emphasis on grinding and repetition make it too easy to step away from.

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.

Penny-Punching Princess offers a great twist on the classic RPG formula, adding a new bribing system that takes your opponents out of the game to use for your own advantage. You'll find many hours' worth of content available here, and learning how to best use your magic calculator abilities for maximum success is highly enjoyable.

Penny-Punching Princess combines a lot of elements together and doesn't quite form a completely-perfect cloth out of them.

Long after money has exchanged hands, Penny-Punching Princess will be remembered for the pun-packed, zany adventure that it casts you out on. The game’s inherently repetitive nature will mean it’s best chipped away at over time, but, while some imbalance with the difficulty can irritate, bribing everything in sight with the magical calculator allows it to leave a lasting impression than others on the portable home console.

Penny-Punching Princess is equally off the wall and ridiculously fun at the same time. The visuals will no doubt put a smile on the faces of regular NIS game fans, but the grind can be an annoyance. The story is a little lacking, but what there is of it is enough to keep you entertained throughout.

Instead of cashing in on its unique premise, the game’s one-note execution, paper-thin story, and frustrating difficulty drive its fun quotient into the red.

Penny-Punching Princess is an entertaining and fast-paced game in which you always need to be on high alert since a lot is going on in each fight as you juggle enemies and traps in small arena-style spots… which only gets worse when you're also facing against a mid-boss! If you're a fan of dungeon crawlers then I definitely recommend you give this one a try since it's a game that will keep you coming back for more until the end.

Penny-Punching Princess brings an interesting slant to the brawler genre, one that sadly can become fiddly and repetitive over time. As a fairly expensive eShop title (physical release plans were scrapped at the last minute), it’s difficult to recommend a purchase here, given what you could get for your money instead. Penny-Punching Princess is certainly not a bad game, but it’s not a great one either. One to look for in the sales then, where your calculator allows.

Penny-Punching Princess has pretty pixel art, but plenty of problems. While perfectly playable, the game reveals itself to be predictable and punishing, preventing progress with painful pitfalls and pure repetition.