Prinny 2 is a deceptively cute game that will make you despise and down-right loathe penguins. What starts off as a hack-and-slash button-mashing action game, becomes a platformer that dances the line between challenging and sadistically frustrating. If you've got a pension for abuse, innumerable deaths and redundant humor that gets lame after the umpteenth time then you may find happiness in Prinny 2: Dawn of Operation Panties, Dood for the PSP.

The game begins with a teaser board of sorts as you learn to maneuver the demon world. You have an endless number of lives to learn just how painful it is to die and become a Prinny in the afterlife. The basic controls include the ability to double jump, spin like a top to become invincible, a butt stomp that makes your opponents dizzy and a slash attack that can be performed on ground or in air. Most gamers will probably still be fully invested in this portable platform adventure by the end of the teaser board. The graphics are vibrant and the button mashing controls are easy enough for every gamer to pick up and play. There's even a classic boss battle that presents a minor challenge in learning the boss pattern.

After you beat the boss, Prinny 2 takes a painful dive that you'd have to be a glutton for punishment to endure. If you're unfamiliar with Prinnies, they are the lowest class of demons that look like penguins and are used and abused by all. Think Dobby from Harry Potter. The Demon Lord Etna discovers her panties are missing and accuses the Prinnies of stealing them. As you can see, the game has already taken a bizarre turn so don't expect to be mentally stimulated. If you're a fan of slapstick or M-rated raunch, you won't really find that here either. Instead, the plot becomes poorly disturbing. Etna is afraid someone will smell her underwear and thus bring about Armageddon. Random doesn't even begin to describe this obtusely wacky story. Now you must find the lure out the Phantom Thief, who steals abstract Netherworld items.

Prinny 2 gives you six locations, all immediately accessible, to search begin your search for the Phantom Thief: Nethervalley, Sandwich Palace, Demonland, Nethersea Volcano, Unlucky Swamp and Sakura Palace. The graphics are cute, and will make you giddy with excitement to play. Don't be fooled. Whichever level you choose to begin your adventure, will be more difficult and more inadequate than the next.

Let's start with the basics. This is a platformer so there is a lot of jumping from one platform to another. Wouldn't it be nice if you could control how you jumped? Well, you can't. You can jump straight up in the air and press the jump button again to perform a double jump. However, you can't control your direction and distance. So you'll find yourself dying repeatedly. You're given 1000 Prinnies, or lives, but you can easily exhaust more than 50 trying to get across a single platform. You'll either jump to far or two short.

What makes jumping even more difficult are the enemies that materialize out of thin air. Just when you think you've beaten a flying demon, another one will pop up out of nowhere and hit you the moment you finally land on the platform. A single jump took me almost an hour to make and when I finally did make the jump it was more of a fluke. Unfortunately, since I couldn't shift my view to see ahead, a flying demon killed me only a few paces later. It's sad that the level design is so poor because there are actually a nice variety of monsters to fight. If you've got the stomach for it, you'll have to utilize your butt smash and your spinning ability as much as possible to get past the most miniscule of obstacles.

Boss battles are actually where the most fun is in this 2D-sidescrolling game. They are classic pattern based battles. Most of the time, you must use your butt smash on a floor lever to trigger a falling object from above. Once it falls on the demon's head, it will be knocked dizzy just long enough for you to deliver a few slices with your sword.

Prinny 2 isn't an overly horrendous game, it just needed a little more attention to detail in designing the controls. If you're going to make a platformer, you need to give the gamer the ability to control the direction of the jump in midair. If NIS decides to make another Prinny game, it should also work on having a story that makes you laugh, rather than wince.

Final Score: C-