From time to time, a video-game comes along to change things. To revolutionize the industry, and push forward the way we see this form of entertainment. Gamers had some examples of game-changing-experiences through the decades, but overall, we all still await that one game, to change them all... Well, wait no more, Panty Party is exactly that game!
Developed by Animu Game (who had previously developed and published Forward to the Sky), Panty Party is also an Anime-based game, but this time the studio has gone ahead and surpassed all known barriers to create a very different and interesting game. Panty Party is a third-person action game featuring panties, who fight for love, free love, as love should be. The story itself, is as amazing, as the concept, and the player watches it unfold through different perspectives.
Yurika is a typical highschool girl who one day experiences a strange phenomenon; she sees a talking panty in front of her eyes! What could easily pass a paranormal event, it’s actually just Baka Panty, the 100% cotton and friendly panty who searches for The Warrior of Love, the one who can love panties unconditionally, with all its heart.
It is said that only the Warriors of Love have the ability to see Panties, and Yurika sounds like one, but she’s not the only one, and if things aren’t confusing enough, there’s an evil plan in march to manipulate world-wide panties and humans.
Panzi-sama, the ultimate panty lover wants to force everyone to love panties, even the ones aesthetically less attractive, because all panties are equal, and obviously deserve all the love one can give. But love should be free, given willingly, not forced and corrupted, and that’s where our adventure begins.
Yurika must join forces with the other Panty lovers to defeat this calamitous who threatens the fabric of existence itself!
Panty Party works just like an arcade third-person action game, where one gains control of a panty, and is free to move, jump, perform attacks and at the end of each stage, there’s a rating.
Panties fly slightly above the ground, and you get to move them in different stages like suburban Japanese areas, parks, streets among building areas, train tracks and even a space station.
Panties fight other panties obviously, and each different panty has its own attack. There are 17 different panties to collect, each with three main attacks; the close range, the projectile which can be laser beams, machine gun, or even grenades, and the third attack reserved for a more special category, like bazooka, flame throwing and other extreme attacks.
Each panty has a Passion meter that fills up along your deadly-spreading attacks of love, and can be used to boost a new status, the Guard, where it buffs defence and allows an even stronger special attack.
A Lot of thought went through, to make sure the combat feels as engaging as possible. When attacking we can use a manual targeting system that slightly locks on the desired enemy, in order to keep aiming at those terrifying panties. It’s not perfect as sometimes it locks itself on an undesired target, but it’s manageable without much frustration into it.
(The fighting and combat in Panty Party can turn into a mess pretty soon, especially if one reaches the final boss without destroying the washing machines that keep respawning weak, but annoying plain-white panties.)
There are 20 stages in Story mode, and if you want to unlock every single panty, this is where you get them. Won’t be easy, as the Story mode offers objectives, up to two of three different challenges to beat per level; Finishing a stage under a specific amount of time, gathering over a particular amount of points, or completing the stage with no deaths: These are the criteria to succeed!
After Story mode, Arcade mode is definitely the place to go, with all the panties unlocked, the player has the ability to spread some chaos through 20 different stages, each with 6 different ending routes to unlock those extra ending cutscenes!
Some extra modes would be welcome, if given the option to choose the stage, opponents, goals and online Leaderboards, would easily make Panty Party a more significant release across its users.
Since each panty has a very unique design and style, we can quickly forget about all the gameplay modes we surely could use to push the in-game length over 5 hours. More if you decide to take things seriously and complete the Story or Arcade mode on Hard difficulty, where combos are essential, and changing attacks are crucial!
The Story mode tells us the plot through what it resembles a Visual Novel engine, with character and panty renders with the background portraying the current in-game location. While dialogues are displayed by simple text, characters show different emotions through special effects on screen.
Panty Party has a very colorful spirit into it. Human characters are anime-based girls, with all that cuteness we all know, but don’t appreciate every day!
Backgrounds portray a Japanese city style, making you feel right at home in case you watch anime regularly that is!
In cutscenes, Yurika, Haruka and every other character (as well panties of course) are displayed through beautiful hand draw designs, with happy thoughts and lots of panty love, but what about in-game panties?
Well, there are panties for all sorts of fans out there, from the more traditional ones, to the most exotic you can imagine. We won’t spoil any fun, but they all sure have nice details!
Panty Party could be further improved, and just like in Animu Game’s previous title, this one also suffers from lack of PC options. We get to change from Lowest, Low, Standard, High to Highest settings, but we can’t really tweek any particular setting.
Framerate was going down to mid 40’s in my GTX 750 Ti on the Highest settings, with OC mode, but mostly locked on 50-60fps when lowered to High settings. Framerate drops due to an increasing number of panties attacking, and creating too many effects towards the player, and thus affecting anyone with a lower-tier card like myself.
Overall the game runs perfectly fine, and Anti-Aliasing seems to be off only on lower settings.
This time around we have Keyboard and Mouse working like a charm, but also, a controller mode that automatically enables Xbox keys.
If there’s one thing we love, is Japanese audio, and Animu Games delivers. The entire game is Japanese audio-voiced, both in-game and in cutscenes. This is fantastic, and fan service at its prime. Voices are accurate to characters, with Yurika being shy, or Baka Panty being emotionally committed. It’s professional audio at his finest, with no audio bugs, glitches or amateur recordings. It’s clean, smooth, Japanese anime voices we all enjoy hearing on both TV and in video-games!
Panties don’t dance, but they would if they could. Music is as the developers put it “(..) Energetic dancing music. It is the melody of panties. (...)” and it’s pretty accurate!
Panty Party is a fantastic concept, and a fun medium-length game to enjoy, and have a good laugh at the funny dialogues and hilarious plot, that in a good way, keeps one curious! A game to take lightly, and appreciate the thought that went behind creating a game to share the true love for panties!
