There’s a seriously special feeling you get when you finally get to play a game that you’ve been anticipating for months and months. As a child these games were almost exclusively Nintendo games for me, and I’m sure many will have this glorious feeling with a title like Mario Kart World. More than almost anything else though, I’ve spent the last year desperate to play Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo. Despite having played preview builds and even interviewed the team behind it it was still atop my list to play that final version of the game; which despite my personal hype levels, didn’t disappoint in the slightest.
In Pipistrello you play as Pippit, heir to the Pipistrello empire and all around spoiled nepo baby. Uninterested in the family business of energy, Pippit spends his time using his fortune to attend yoyo competitions across the country. On yet another trip home to beg for more money though he witnesses something horrible. His aunt and matriarch of the Pipistrello clan is being attacked by four rival business tycoons, who are absorbing her essence into four mega batteries. By jumping to her aid Pippit is able to save a chunk of her soul and trap it in his yoyo, and together you plot to take down these capitalist villains and rebuild Pipistrello Industries. The story is way more engaging than it has any right to be, but ultimately it’s the top down Zelda style action that’s the star of the show.
Fans of Link’s Awakening and other classics will feel immediately at home with Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo, but there’s a pretty obvious difference between these games. Instead of a sword, our hero Pippit uses a yoyo to fight his battles. This means it has a bit more range than a standard blade, and alongside this it can also be bounced off diagonal walls to perform cool trick shots. Although this alone is cool, it’s just the tip of the yoyo-shaped iceberg.
You’ll unlock all sorts of cool yoyo based abilities in Pipistrello, and since this is the world’s first “Yoyovania” they’ll help you access loads of new areas. You can walk the dog to ride your yoyo across dangerous liquids, throw your yoyo to hit switches out of reach, and even bounce it off walls to cross gaps in an exciting pinball fashion. When you unlock more and more of these abilities the game starts to really sing, as you’re required to combine them to cross particularly perilous environments.
There’s a fantastic mix of areas in Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo, especially for a game set exclusively in a city. This is mainly thanks to the dungeons (yes, Zelda style dungeons in all their glory) that come in all shapes and sizes. From construction sites to football stadiums, each dungeon you find yourself in has a unique gimmick to master – and I loved them all.
As well as level variety (or I guess urban environment variety) there’s also a fantastic selection of enemies for Pippit to take on in battle. From shielded enemies you’ll have to attack from behind to baseball bat bastards that’ll knock your weapon out of your hands, they all require different strategies and fast reactions to take down. The fact that very few combat encounters feel the same means fighting foes never gets old, and there are even some tricky boss fights that’ll really test your skills.
The best way to ensure you’re ready for battle as you progress further into Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo is to upgrade your abilities, which you can do in your underground base. There are loads of these to unlock from a branching skill tree, but you can’t just use points or money in your wallet to unlock them. Your cousin in charge of upgrades is a germaphobe, and will only accept repayment for an upgrade from freshly collected cash. This does mean you can unlock upgrades before saving up the funds, but there will be a penalty in place (like limiting your maximum health or weakening your attack power) until you’ve paid off your debts. It’s a really interesting system, but one that will leave you in a weakened state rather regularly.
Alongside these upgrades you can also equip badges, which have a variety of effects that’ll help you on your battery quest. Whether you want to take no damage from falling in holes or become stronger when you only have one hit point left, there are tons of badges to find that enable you to customise Pippit to your playstyle. To truly make the most of these though you’ll need plenty of badge points to equip the badges, and to increase your BP you’ll need to explore the city.
Like any good Metroidvania (or I suppose Yoyovania if we must) Pipistrello has a huge amount of collectibles to find hidden throughout the world that you’ll need new skills to access. Health upgrades, Badge Point upgrades, Badges and cold hard cash is hidden away in practically every screen of the game, and there are often clever puzzles to solve before you can access them. I’m not sure I’ve ever enjoyed scouring a map for collectibles quite as much as I did in Pipistrello, which is a pretty powerful statement in its own right.
It’s probably pretty obvious that I really love Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo, but it does have a couple of small issues. There are a lot of badges later in the game that seemed significantly weak compared to those I’d already collected, and that meant I rarely changed my loadout when I found a new one. The upgrade system is also something of a mixed bag, as it can get a little frustrating constantly having to play with debuffs active. Neither of these issues are deal breakers, but I would’ve preferred they weren’t present.
Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo is a sensational video game, taking inspiration from old school Zelda games and building on that formula to create a near perfect game. I simply never got bored of the yo-yo based combat, and it has some of the most worthwhile and compelling exploration I’ve experienced in the Metroidvania genre. Pipistrello is absolutely one of the best games I’ve played in this stacked year of our wonderful hobby, and you’d be a fool to say no to this yo-yo.
