I don’t typically like retro RPGs that much, but the promise of hilarious dialogue and characters, plus some recent gems such as Mondealy, made it feel the right thing to do and cover Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass. If not for the bizarrely named title, then another reason to get some use out of the Nintendo Switch 2. A quick callback, The Perfect Pencil was once such a title worth dusting off the paperwright.
Unsurprisingly, you play Jimmy. Everything starts bright and breezy, set in the clouds and a mother who wouldn’t say boo to a goose, but vocal about bumping uglies with Jimmy’s dad in the bedroom in broad daylight, while the kids remain in the lounge. Never fear, let’s go help Jimmy’s knuckleheaded brother tidy his room. Why the hell is there a blob in here, and what kid his age has a toybox this size? There’s a theme here, and especially with the abundance of toyboxes.
Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass is an old-school RPG in the style of Omori and a bit like Knuckle Sandwich, too. Again, not typically something I like to play, but it was quite easy to get into the game early on and make reasonable progress, too. As a turn-based game, there are the expected parameters for attack, defence, and support items. How this game differs is based on Jimmy’s heightened levels of empathy, getting deep under the skin of some of his adversaries and adopting their abilities.
It’s both literal and figuarative and Jimmy has a mindfulness moment where he’s initially the blob, or perhaps soon after, a bully – imagining what it’s like to be like them. When he completes this, he can then shift into that character and adopt their skills on the fly, and more importantly, without losing a turn. Each character clearly has their own skillset, which unlocks with more devastating abilities through usage, plus they have a signature move that can be applied in the wild. What this means is locating a shortcut by tapping a button, gaining access to a new area, or locating secrets through experimentation. Hello, college.
Naturally, Jimmy and Pulsating Mass is text-heavy as this ain’t no talky. Occasionally, it’s a little too wordy, though I found myself skimming battles more than the dialogue, as it’s a random encounter affair. Take that as you will, but I’m on the fence. When grinding, these encounters are great, yet incredibly irritating when trying to get somewhere. Looking at you, Final Fantasy VII circa 1997. But… get this: when a random encounter is about to happen with an exclamation mark, it’s colour-coded. If red, there’s nothing you can do about it, though green means you can skip the fight.
This option made the game significantly better. While I appreciate that combat is a very large element of an RPG, when exploring areas and being bombarded by enemies when you have next to no health and zero consumables, it’s infuriating. This is particularly present in this game, as it wasn’t always clear what the motivation was in the game (besides initially obtaining some honey), and then loosely informed to explore a particular area. There are minimal hints or objectives that support this, and as a result, I found myself wandering around for a large amount of time, not knowing what to do. On the flipside, I levelled up quite nicely.
And that is perhaps another pro about Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass: its length. I had expected a sitting or two to get through it, but this is more like a Final Fantasy game without as much bloat. The titular mass serves as a bit of a Macguffin, or ‘who’s the bad guy’ as seen in The Prisoner of Azkaban, and that’s not directly a bad thing, as my favourite part of the game is the wit+escapism combo. Sure, the random encounters can be annoying, and it’s easy to lose your direction; however, exploration is encouraged, and the number of secrets to find is huge. Even better, you can skip certain encounters when on an errand.
For me, Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass was another reason to whip out the Switch 2 and stick with it. Sure, it’s not a Switch 2 game per se, but being able to play this on console, courtesy of Electric Airship, was a lot of fun. As good as the Steam Deck is, the Switch 2 was a little more practical for lolloping around on the sofa in bed, finetuning my levels of empathy and giving randoms a good shakedown. If you haven’t already got this for the PC, I’d recommend checking this out on the Switch/2.
