Strategy games, as of late, have found a nice niche in portable gaming. And gamers have access to decent and intriguing games to play on the go. And if something is frustrating, you can just set it aside for awhile and return to it when you’re ready. Here’s a solid addition into the strategy genre and the second longest title I’ve seen this year: Holy Invasion of Privacy Badman! What Did I Do to Deserve This?

Holy Invasion of Privacy Badman! follows the misadventures of a demonic Overlord. It starts simply enough: He’s just chilling out in his nice little dungeon with his pet slimes. He’s not really doing much of anything except channeling a bit of Pinky and the Brain. And like them, he’s not really getting anywhere. But for some odd reason, the local human kingdom feels threatened by his odd existence and sends local heroes to annihilate him and every monstrous creature inside. This is where you come in. As the god of destruction, you have to save your loyal subjects and put those pesky, insubordinate humans in their place. It sounds like you’re going to do horrible things. In reality, it has a bit more mischievous feel. And besides, the various heroes sort of deserve it for acting like major jerks.

Here’s the real joy of this game: The translation is perfect. Tongue is firmly planted in cheek as the various characters and the almanac rattles off information. It is just silly! The characters’ have weird little bios. For example, one male character in the game has in the “sex” section (you know, to determine if a hero is male or female) puts “Yes please!” The various slimes are occasionally listed as delicacies, while some of the insects are noted as pets. Ultimately, it is just fun to read through all the entries.

Alright. So how do you play? Simple. You have this magic pickaxe to dig into the earth. By excising these different squares, the dirt can have different properties. Obviously, based on those properties releases, different monsters of various strengths are born from the ground. You see, these low-level monsters are the backbone of your dungeon because the higher level monsters feed on them. Furthermore, the base monsters infuse the ground with either magic or earthy properties. Thus, by releasing enough slimes and wisps, and by properly arranging the hallways, you can create various creatures of different strengths — especially demons who feed on wisps to grow stronger. Furthermore, any newborn creature will not have the potency of those who have lived in the dungeon all of their short-lives. Certain creatures multiply on their own, such as the lizard men who lay eggs. Slimes and wisps will infuse neighboring walls with their essence. Fairies fire magic at heroes and plant webs to trap them. And dragons — yes, dragons — burn everything to a crisp.

If this sounds complicated, it is. It requires a top notch strategy and a ton of luck. Scratch the last part of that statement. You need TONS of luck as slimes and wisps will suck and replenish the ground randomly, making it difficult to summon your desired monster no matter how perfect you lay everything out. Certain monsters have movement patterns, and they may never go where you need them. Plus, if you’re like me and prefer to take your time in dungeon creation, prepare to die. A lot. Heroes will quickly come into your dungeon and attempt to annihilate all life as they kidnap your head worshiper. As you progress, the difficulty quickly ramps up. This means that dungeon maintenance becomes tricky as the heroes will slash through your followers like butter.

However, this makes it sound like it does not teach you how to play. On the contrary, Holy Invasion of Privacy Badman! does attempt to teach you how to play. The various training levels are unlocked as you progress in the actual story mode. Training starts simple: Release so many creatures of a type. From there, it builds up and attempts to teach how to play better. For example, one of the training sessions has you summon three demons. The problem is the same with the game. There is no guarantee that the slimes will do what you want as it can be tricky to fully power up the soil. In the end, the tutorial section isn’t perfect, but it does its job.

This brings us to the various issues with the game. Each and every time you start, it asks you to put in a memory stick to load your last save. Here is a crazy question: Why would I keep the data for the game and the saved data for it on another card when my PSP has an 8 GB stick? Furthermore, you cannot save the game mid-mission. Thus, you either pause the game and put in suspend mode, win, quit or lose. There is nothing in between. There is nothing that allows you to pick up exactly where you left off to try a different tactic. Furthermore, leveling your units between missions is spotty as it requires hundreds of digging power. No matter how hard I have tried, I never seem to get past the third mission. Supposedly there is a challenge mode for people to test themselves, but I have not seen it. I think I have not unlocked that gameplay mode.

Overall, Holy Invasion of Privacy is a very solid PSN download. Yet this is a difficult game to recommend. The problem is that the casual audience that might be attracted to the game will probably feel out of place due to its grueling difficulty. Hard-core strategy fans might ignore it for the exact same reasons that it attracted the causal/novice gamers. That is a shame, because they are the ones who will appreciate its humorous and fun charm and quirky strategy methods. It is attempting to be, perhaps a bit too hard, a breath of fresh air for jaded strategy fans. Plus, $20 is a lot of money for such a difficult game while most of the games of this caliber are about $10 to $15. Thankfully, there is a demo available for download. So if you are curious, this is method to discover if it is right for you. I do like Holy Invasion of Privacy Badman!. I just wish it would have a gentler learning curve.