Just looking at the game’s title you can’t help but wonder what it’s all about. Why a Batman reference anyways? No one knows. But this is a pretty fun game.

Read on and see what it’s all about. And don’t forget to check the Save Factor for the game!

Developer: Ride On
Publisher: NIS America
Date of Release: July 16 2009
Platform: Sony PSP (Playstation Store)

Genre: Arcade-style strategy game? I don’t know.
Players: 1

Looks and Sounds
Well, that image of the cover pretty much shows what the graphics are like. 8-bit style, but still really detailed so that everything still looks good when you’re super zoomed-out. That’s not that many character and monster designs, but the ones that are there have a very nostalgic feel to them. Monster designs are basic. Slimes, bugs, lizards, dragons, fairies, demons, skeletons and souls, and each of those has a bunch of color variations. Overall the game looks nice and detailed, despite using an 8-bit style(which I quite like).

The sound design is a bit basic. There’s some background music, it changes if Badman is captured, and each monster type has different sounds associated to attacking/eating/whatever else they do. There’s not THAT many sounds, but it doesn’t need that much either. It sounds good enough. Too many sounds or background musics might disrupt the games atmosphere. The “voice acting” is pretty much just gibberish(ala Banjo-Kazooie), so I can’t say it sounds bad or anything. The sound, overall, is good, but is nothing to write home about either.

Story
Overlord Badman wants to take over the world. I don’t know how it was going before you intervened, but now he needs your help. You’re the God of Destruction, and you need to help Badman get a nice monster army to take over the world. Simple premise.

It never goes really deep, and there’s really only 1 character: Badman. He talks to you between missions, making pop culture references and awkward jokes. The Humor isn’t too bad but not exactly up to par with other games NISA published (like the Disgaea series).

The story is not really an important aspect here.

Gameplay
Well, here’s the big important part. The gameplay here sounds incredibly simple on paper. You have a big grid. Most spots are walls. Some walls have nutrients, some walls have mana. You have to break walls to make a dungeon. Breaking walls with nutrients/mana creates monsters, and different ones depending on how many nutrients/mana it has. At a different time interval for each level, a hero(or multiple heroes) will come in to capture Badman, and your monster have to kill the hero. To dig, you just have to press Square. But you have a limited amount of “Dig Power”.

It may sound simple, but it’s far from that. First, you have no control on your monsters. Each unit in the game, including heroes, has a pattern. Monsters and heroes automatically move to follow that pattern. Then there’s nutrients. Most walls in the dungeon only have enough nutrients for slimes (AKA weaksauce). Slimes, though, are crucial for building your dungeon. They take nutrients from some walls, and transport said nutrients to other walls. This will enable you to get walls with more nutrients, so the ability to get better monsters(there’s 3 levels of nutrients, so 3 different types of monsters for each type of ressource). Mana works the same way. Making more powerful monsters will enhance your defense against heroes and make it harder for them to reach Badman. When they DO reach Badman, they tie him up and bring him back out of the dungeon.  You still have until they drag him out to beat the heroes, so them reaching Badman doesn’t equal an instant loss.

In addition to that, you have the previously mentionned Dig Power. This is crucial to keep count of, because how much you have at the end of a level partly determines how much you’ll have on the next level. And Dig Power is ALSO used to power up monsters. After each level, you have the opportunity to level up monsters. This won’t affect monsters that are currently in the dungeon, but it will affect any other monster of that type you will summon. Each monster has a number of “points” he needs filled up to get to the next level. Each “point” costs 100 Dig Power.

Each monster typpe has some kind of behavior, which is the basis of the whole game: The food chain. Basically, each monster eats something. Slimes and spirits “eat” nutrients. Omnoms eat slimes, Lilliths eat spirits, Lizardmen eat omnoms, Demons eat spirits and each other and dragons hate everything, kill everything, and eat everything. The way each monster acts with other monsters is crucial to making a proper dungeon, as you have to maintain a dungeon that self-sustains AND that doesn’t self-destruct on the way. Some monsters also reroduce. This is mostly done by letting them eat. They also lose health as time goes by, so letting them eat is very important. This whole element adds a lot of challenge to the game, and makes later levels require a good understanding of everything in the game.

Though this all seems complicated, and don’t get me wrong it IS, the game sports a pretty good tutorial to teach the basics, and a challenge mode to get a bit deeper on different “subjects” in the game, like slime control and hero manipulation. The challenges start out very easy, but after a few they can get quite hard. This adds variety and helps learning every little quirk in the game.

Overall
This game is really hard to play at first, and the difficulty is almost overwhelming. After learning the ins and outs of the system it becomes a lot more fun. This is an arcade-syle game, where, if you die, you have to start all over, and the “main goal” i to beat your past high score. So one playthrough isn’t gonna be very long, less than an hour. But GETTING to the last level is gonna be very long unless you can make a perfect dungeon on your first try.

Overall this is well worth buying if you want something different.

Pros/Cons
Pros
- Nice graphics
- Simple to learn but VERY hard to master gameplay
- Arcade-style “Beat the high score” gameplay
- Challenges add variety
- If it’s somehow too easy for you, there’s a hard mode
- Well made tutorial teaches the basics well enough

Cons
- Not very self-explanatory
- A lot of experimenting and trial and error required (not exactly a bad thing, but it can be annoying)
- Definitely not for everyone

The Save Factor
With a starting price of $20 on the Playstation Store, the Save Factor for Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman! is:

$15 (fun, but wait for a sale on it)

jobocan Games, Handheld, psp, Review