Funny, Simple, and (Probably) Too Short
The PSP Mini selection is full of bittersweet games. And Monsters (Probably) Stole My Princess is one of these games.
The story revolves around you, The Duke. A vampire who is snoozing in his castle when he is awakened by crashing noises. He goes to check on his beloved princess when he finds out she is gone. This leads to him going to the homes of several monsters to kick their ass, and to find his princess (probably).
The gameplay is painfully simple. It is a vertical platformer like Ice Climber where you have to keep moving upwards to chase down the monster and beat him. That's right, nothing but pursuit missions (probably). You are able to jump, double jump, and wall jump to move upwards on your quest to find the princess.
Monsters has a combo system unlike other games (probably). There are many platforms on the way up, and the more different platforms you hit the higher your combo goes up. The combo system effects the points you get and what kind of finishing move you end up using on the boss. There are three finishing moves, a piledriver, a flying dash attack, and a ray fired from the aligned planets. I'm not making that last one up.
The game has some pretty funny jokes (probably). But as you can tell from reading my review, they tend to get old pretty fast. However the game has some genuinely funny moments. Moments such as The Duke celebrating his quickest victory yet to the true relationship between the Duke and the Princess are quite funny. And be sure you don't miss The Duke perform his song at the end of the game.
Unfortunately, this game is very short. Very, very, very Short.. You can finish the 5 stage long main quest in about 10 minutes. And once you do that, there is really nothing else to do but try to get higher scores and ranks. There is a score attack mode, which makes the stages more complex by adding more platforms to boost your combos, but unless you are one that enjoys perfecting things (or you REALLY loved Ice Climber) then you will be done with this game in about 30 minutes. There is a 6th stage if you put the time in to get a gold medal on all the stages, but ultimately, the payoff isn't really worth it.
There are also other minor nagging issues in the game, the controls are not perfectly responsive. There will be times when you will be trying to double jump yet the button does not register, letting you fall down the stage, ruining your combo, and possibly making you fail the stage. The music is remixed classical music, nothing really catchy, and borderline annoying. And speaking of annoying, hearing The Duke laugh ever ten seconds ends up driving you insane.
While this game is only five dollars, it still seems really bare-bones compared to some of the other stuff out there. If you have no interest in beating levels over and over to get high scores, stay away from this. And even if you don't mind that, just be warned that the gameplay is literally "d-pad plus one button" only. So don't expect to be tested mentally.
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