The 16-bit Super Nintendo is my favorite home game console, but my favorite handheld is the Game Boy Advance (it was pretty much a souped up SNES, so that’s why).  So I was pleasantly surprised to find that this game tries to imitate that GBA style.  When you first turn on the game, it even shows a mock GBA handheld system with a cartridge entering it!  Anyway.  Pipistrello and the Cursed Yo-Yo is a top down viewed action adventure game.  You play as Pippit, a bat who lives in the big city and is the nephew of the biggest mafia leader in town.  But Pippit has no interest in that.  He just wants to enter yo-yo competitions.  But one night on the way home, Pippit finds his aunt, the leader of the Pipistrello mafia family, trapped by four other mafia bosses.  Turns out they want revenge for her running the city’s power unfairly, so they try to trap her soul into four batteries using a machine.  Luckily Pippit appears in time and tosses his yo-yo into the soul stealing beam.  Now his aunt is trapped inside the yo-yo and they must work together to get the batteries back.  This game is a lot like a 2D Zelda title, except the overworld is the city streets, and the dungeons are sewers, shopping malls, construction sites, and soccer stadiums!  And because of the emphasis on top down platforming and yo-yo mechanics, this game also makes me think of Startropics as well! The very definition of a “hidden gem,” the game is available on all current consoles and PC, but reviewed on PS4 here.

In the game, you play as Pippit and can run and jump, and swing your yo-yo around to attack enemies.  As you play, you’ll learn new yo-yo moves to help you get around, so it has Metroidvania aspects to it as well.  You’ll do tricks that will let you throw your yo-yo, toss it and make it spin in place so you can use it like a grappling hook, “walk the dog” to let your yo-yo drag you over dangerous terrain, roll it along walls, and much more!  You’ll also learn other yo-yo skills to let you attack enemies, like charged attacks and whatnot.  You’ll need mastery of all the moves to make it around each screen and solve puzzles and defeat enemies. Baddies you beat will drop money and rose petals to refill your health, and you can find hidden rose petal containers to increase your max life as well.

As you play, you’ll find badges and blueprints to let you build other badges.  Equipping these will give you perks, but you must have enough badge points to use them.  There is also a skill tree but in order to unlock the skills, you must let some of the money you earn go toward that, and while that is going on, you’ll be cursed with power-downs until the debt is completed.  So that can be a little annoying, and the game is hard enough as it is.

And that’s my only real problem with the game is that it’s SUPER HARD!  Luckily there is a screen that lets you change the difficulty in several aspects.  And believe me, I used it.  Hit detection feels a little off since your yo-yo doesn’t hit enemies unless they are lined up with your plane on the tiles.  So I increased the strength of the yo-yo in the difficulty options.  You can take fall damage, and since many screens require precise movements from all your yo-yo tricks, I turned off fall damage.  And I gave myself extra life at the final boss since it was so freaking long.  So thank goodness for the adjustable difficulty.  I would’ve given up on the game a long time ago if it didn’t have it.  I think they could’ve tweaked the gameplay to make it easier, and still be just as fun.  Also, this is just a personal preference, but I think the character designs looked kind of ugly.  But overall, this was a great game and a nice surprise for me.  Another cool thing I noticed in the credits was that Yoko Shinomura did some of the music in this game, and she composed the music for other popular games like Super Mario RPG, Kingdom Hearts, and Street Fighter 2!

Kid Factor:

Pipistrello and the Cursed Yo-Yo is rated E for Everyone with an ESRB descriptor of Mild Fantasy Violence.  You hit cartoony enemies with a yo-yo and they just disappear when defeated.  Even so, because of the high level of reading skill required, and the fact that you must have mastery of the yo-yo tricks to get around the obstacles, no matter how easy you set the difficulty, I’d say this one is best for older kid gamers who are very patient and good at video games.

Tags: Game Reviews