Penny's Big Breakaway is a great game in a lot of ways:
Its presentation, in terms of both visuals and music, is sublime, and I love a good amount of the character designs as well as Penny herself. There's also a pervasive sense of humour, which is fun without straying too far into annoying.
The movement has a fairly significant learning curve but a lot of the moves become second nature and are very fun - but I think some of the mechanics surrounding the yo-yo are not executed massively well. Aiming the yo-yo with the C-Stick can be surprisingly difficult and it means that some mechanics and especially plenty of the boss fights can be a bit cumbersome. (see: grabbing ledges with it does not seem to be consistent at all)
In addition, the extra objectives and collectibles throughout the levels are decent content extensions but start to drag towards the end, with not too much variety in tasks over ~30 levels - and the point requirements for unlocking the extra artwork seem to get a little bit silly towards the end. Have a lot of other games to get through so doing 100% is off the table for now.
Overall, I think it's a solid value game and an excellent base for possible future products - if a sequel tightened up Yo-Yo's mechanics a bit I would be extremely on-board. Worth your time for sure but can stray into frustration sometimes.
Its presentation, in terms of both visuals and music, is sublime, and I love a good amount of the character designs as well as Penny herself. There's also a pervasive sense of humour, which is fun without straying too far into annoying.
The movement has a fairly significant learning curve but a lot of the moves become second nature and are very fun - but I think some of the mechanics surrounding the yo-yo are not executed massively well. Aiming the yo-yo with the C-Stick can be surprisingly difficult and it means that some mechanics and especially plenty of the boss fights can be a bit cumbersome. (see: grabbing ledges with it does not seem to be consistent at all)
In addition, the extra objectives and collectibles throughout the levels are decent content extensions but start to drag towards the end, with not too much variety in tasks over ~30 levels - and the point requirements for unlocking the extra artwork seem to get a little bit silly towards the end. Have a lot of other games to get through so doing 100% is off the table for now.
Overall, I think it's a solid value game and an excellent base for possible future products - if a sequel tightened up Yo-Yo's mechanics a bit I would be extremely on-board. Worth your time for sure but can stray into frustration sometimes.