Panty Party

Reading Time: 7 minutes

Title: Panty Party
Developer: HorngYeuan Digital
Publisher: COSEN
Website: http://cosen-net.com/pantyparty/
Genre: Action, Arcade, First-Person
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Audience: Teen – Fantasy Violence,Suggestive Themes, Mild Language
Release Date: Out Now – 25/04/19
Price: £13.09 – Rapid Reviews UK were very kindly provided with a review code for this title.

What the Developers say

“I have to find… the Warrior of Love!”
“The Warrior of Love…?”
“Yes… it is you! The one who loves panties, the Warrior of Love!”
Dashing on the street, Warriors of Love battle along with panties, to save humans from evil intentions – and to save themselves from being transformed into panties!

Fight in a funny comedy full of panties, love and passion, with fierce battles between panties!

Dash and dodge in high speed battles … with panties!
Panty Party is a fast-paced battle game. Fly as a panty in the street and in-between buildings. Search for the enemy panties and kick their butt!

Features
●Feel emotions of foolishness and excitement … with Panty Party!
●Energetic dancing music. It is the melody of panties. And the theme song of only Nintendo Switch!
●Every color imaginable. It is the color of panties.
●A Story of nonsense and fools brought to you by panties ( and the Warrior of Love! ).
●The sentimental thoughts of panties, which you can only experience in Panty Party.
●Hyper exciting battling, multiple battlegrounds in the city and a full collection of unique panties!
●Up to 4 Prayers! and Add hidden unit.
●All panties have unique skills, and the passion skill, to make them even stronger!

https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/panty-party-switch/

Introduction

Welcome to the bizarre world of ‘Panty Party’, where underwear is sentient.  The ‘Warriors of love’ are rather special individuals who can transform into a pair of panties and use their unique abilities to fight other panties who are trying to conquer the world…

You just cannot make this stuff up!

Audio and Visual

The audio in ‘Panty Party’ is filled with upbeat tunes and, of course, its very own ‘Panty Party’ theme tune: a song about the word panty that’s not only catchy but will have you humming it during work hours. The words ‘what are you humming along to?’ have never been so daunting in the workplace.

The songs strike a balance between action-packed and incredibly cheesy, however it works well with the bizarre nature of this title.  All sound effects during play are decent too but nothing spectacular.  There are a lot of grunts, high-pitched screams, and heavy gunfire and explosions that you are going to be hearing over the course of your time with ‘Panty Party’. I never found it annoying though as it all adds to the weird and silly world of ‘Panty Party’.  It is also worth noting that the main campaign is fully voiced by Japanese’s actors too.

Visually, ‘Panty Party’ is decent too.  The areas and locations you will be fighting in are different enough from each other and each of the unique characters – panties – have their own unique look and style.  As a whole, the visuals aren’t going to blow you away but it all works and serves its purpose.

Gameplay and Replayability

I should mention from the off that this is not the type of game I would have purchased at all.  I was thinking I was going to be subjected to some sort of sexual adventure with Japanese school girls which I wasn’t looking forward to. However, in ‘Panty Party’ there is no sexual content whatsoever.  This is a silly and bizarre third person shooter…can you believe it? It involves humans that can turn into panties – underwear.  It truly is as crazy as it sounds.

I would have loved to be in the meeting when someone suggested to make a game about killer underwear! So after getting over that hurdle, what does ‘Panty Party’ offer on the Nintendo Switch and is it worth picking up? 

There are 3 modes to play in ‘Panty Party’. Two are focused on the single player while the third is focused on local multiplayer for up to 4 players.  Story mode in ‘Panty Party’ is ridiculous. What I can make out from the awkward translation is that a young girl called Yurika was walking to school and for some unknown reason, a pair of panties appears in front of her. This pair of panties proceeds to tell her that she has the power to transform into a new form – a panty form…I am still chuckling to myself over this story!

You basically find out that you’re a Warrior of Love which means you are part of a select group of individuals who can transform into a pair of panties.   You use your unique powers to stop anyone who doesn’t love panties…

The story, whilst bizarre, is very forgettable and I skipped most of it as it didn’t really make any sense. I was more interested in getting to parts were I got to shoot stuff.  Thankfully, the shooting part is a lot more fun that I thought it was going to be.

There are 19 episodes in the Campaign and each has a long-winded dialogue section before and after each battle.  You can skip these sections if you grow tired of them, something I did often. Each mission/episode has certain criteria to beat which will unlock one of the 17 unique characters/panties.  Some of these criteria include not dying, obtaining a high score or beating a level within a certain amount of time. If you’re successful, you’ll unlock a new panty and be able to use them in the rest of the story episodes or use them in the arcade mode.

The Arcade mode is similar to a tower:  you can pick different routes as you progress through the series of missions fighting more difficult foes. It serves as an extra mode to play if you’ve completed the main story mode, providing you with extra replayability.

The final mode is the local 4 player battle mode.  Here you can select ether players – locally or bots -and fight it out in 9 areas.  Each area is pretty large and has areas to hide or cover to hide behind. For the most part, you’ll be locked into combat as most of the time the AI panties will gang up on you and try and take you out. 4 player bouts can get pretty intense as each panty has his or her own unique abilities – these can take on many different types of skills such as: machine guns, rockets, katanas, wands, flame throwers, shotguns, lasers etc.

As well as their unique attacks, each panty has a passion move that can be activated, which increases each characters abilities with buffs such as increased speed, quick reloading and unbreakable defence buffs. The passion moves last for a short time but each character has one passion special that they can use in this mode and it can cause massive damage if it hits its target.

As I’ve already mentioned, each panty has three unique abilities and the ability to activate their passion move. As well as this, each panty has its own unique look…these aren’t your average pair of knickers. Some of the most unique are: Kuma who is a bear with a rad pair of red sunglasses and a bazooka. There is also the Master who is a flame breathing swan with wings, and a swans head. There’s even an alien-like panty that is pretty big and has multiple tentacles and the ability to become invisible.

The gameplay in any of the modes is as follows: you move around the battlefield with the left analog stick and use the right analog stick to aim your sights at your targets. There is an auto aim/lock that will turn your sight red when you are focused on an enemy. You can also use the face buttons to use one of your three unique skills but remember, each one has a cool down timer.  Additional to your arsenal is the ability to jump and fly with the B button, and a dash which is accessed by pressing the analog stick in which consumes your energy gauge.  Last but not least is the opportunity to activate your passion move with the ZL trigger.

It is a pretty simple control set-up and you won’t have too many problems with it. Each time your locked in combat you may be fighting waves of enemies until a boss appears or you’ll be fighting a single enemy.  The only other mechanics found in certain areas are washing machines that respawn white panties that can swarm you – you can destroy these with any sort of attack.

Battles can be pretty fun and using each unique skill and finding your own favourite character can be enjoyable and incredibly silly. The campaign itself will only last you a few hours and this will depend on what difficulty setting you have selected, something which can be located in the options menu. There is some replay value trying to unlock characters that you might have not got first time around, and you’ve got the arcade mode and multiplayer which I found a lot fun to play with friends.

Conclusion

Panty party isn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be.  The campaign helps you unlock characters for arcade mode, and you’ve got local multiplayer battle mode which has all characters unlocked from the get-go.  Plus, there are two secret characters to unlock only in this mode. 

The game won’t last forever and after a couple of hours, you’ll have seen everything it has to offer. That being said, where are you going to find anything as weird as this on the Switch? That alone is worth a look. It isn’t going to be for everyone but if you are looking for something incredibly silly, weird and bizarre then ‘Panty Party’ may be it!

Rapid Reviews UK Rating

You can purchase Panty Party on the Nintendo eShop at the following link: https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Games/Nintendo-Switch-download-software/Panty-Party-1549858.html