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IGN Review of Patapon 2
You'd be hard pressed to find a bigger pair of Patapon fans than IGN editor Jeff Haynes and myself. Jeff reviewed the first game, I dropped in some secondary comments and we both pretty much declared the title from Pyramid and Sony one of the greatest UMDs on the planet. Still, when we got our hands on Patapon 2, there was a moment when we thought the worst. The first few missions are pretty much the same as the first few in the original game, the layout of Patapolis is the same and the game certainly feels a lot like its predecessor. In short, we worried that one of the greatest PSP games had just churned out one of the most ho-hum sequels.
We were fools to think such things.
Watch our video review and unlock an imaginary prized fang!
Without a doubt, Patapon 2 is better than its predecessor in every way. It's longer, there are more songs, there are more characters, there are more monsters, there are more items, there are more mini-games and there are more things I could list here. Does it feel like well-worn territory at times? Yes, especially in the beginning and the end, but anyone foolish enough to say that this is Patapon 1.5 should replay the original and see how far off the mark that perception really is.
Like last time, Patapon 2 opens on a down note. After the sunny ending to Patapon, the tribe got restless and set sail to continue its quest to find Earthend. After 49 days at sea, the waters got rough and sank the tribe's ride. The one-eyed cuties wash up on a familiar shore, you're reunited with Hatapon the flag carrier and it's up to you to lead your people on their next adventure -- one that involves a mysterious Hero with no memory, a new tribe of evil-doers known as Karmen and a farting bird.
If you're just joining the Patapon craziness here on IGN, I'll do my best to explain what's happening in this game. The Patapon tribe is a group of one-eyed warriors trying to make a life for themselves in the great, wide wilderness. You are their god. When you play Patapon 2, you're using the PSP's four face buttons as tribal drums to lead the tribe. See, each song is a command to the group and requires a four-button combination. When you hit Square-Square-Square-Circle, you're playing the beat Pata-Pata-Pata-Pon and that's telling your people to move forward.
Now you can't just sit there and punch these commands out one after another. The earth's rhythm is flashing around the screen and you need to hit your drums in time with those steady flashes. Hit the command, wait four beats as the Patapons sing back the song and perform the action and then move on to your next command. You'll have eight tunes to master throughout the game's plethora of missions and they'll do stuff such as charge your attacks, defend the Patapons and wake the party from a sleeping state.
Everybody caught up? Good, let's start dissecting the beast that is Patapon 2. The biggest change to your roster of warriors is the addition of Hero. This is a special Patapon that wears a mask, will come back to life after being knocked out in battle and can change his class before any mission. If you need the power of a club-swinging Dekapon or the horseback-riding Kibapon, you can switch the Hero to that class and deck him out in the proper equipment. If you find your groove with the beats on the battlefield, you can even trigger a special attack from your Hero that doles out tons of damage and can easily change the course of war. Seeing as how a mission can only end when either the flag carrier is killed or everyone but the flag carrier is killed, using your nearly un-killable Hero effectively is key to beating some of the tougher missions.
Another welcome addition is the Evolution Tree. In our last go around, you could create Rarepons: colored versions of the traditional Patapons that came with beefed up abilities, but it was a bit of a guessing game. You'd select a slot, rotate in whatever materials you had and get an unknown result. It was fun, but you never really knew what move you were making. This time, you can specifically customize your tribe down to the individual warrior.
See, every Patapon starts out as the simple black and white one-eyed dude you know and love. At the Evolution Tree, you can use the food, alloy, and other items you've procured in battle to evolve that warrior into one of 16 Rarepons that each have their own abilities and drawbacks. Some are great at resisting critical hits but weak against fire, some are weak against ice but are insanely powerful, and some have awesome names such as Mofo -- any way you slice it, all of this is explained to you before you create the character. Once you settle on a type of Rarepon, you can start pouring resources into that same class to level that specific character up. Obviously, this process makes your character stronger and can continue until Level 10.
Comprehend all that? With a little experimentation -- when you create a Rarepon, the tree branches out to give you access to other types of Rarepons -- you can build an army that's all your own. This Evolution Tree is there for every character in your nine classes of Patapons; yup, in addition to the classes from the last game, Patapon 2 has added Robopons (little guys with massive arms), Mahopon (magicians), and Toripon (attackers who ride flying birds).
Here's the thing: the original Patapon was a bit of a bitch. I mean, it was great, but you were totally on your own. There wasn't a very solid explanation of how you created classes, levels you had already beaten would have songs and items you desperately needed on their second or third playthrough but nothing told you that, and so on. Patapon 2 isn't a piece of cake to jump into, but it has addressed a handful of stumbling blocks people had with the first title. For starters, there's a Demo mode when you start that shows you the earth's rhythm and eases you into playing, but in the bigger picture, Patapon 2 has 84 tips as loading screens that you can go review from your Altar once you've seen them. On top of that, most new songs or critical pieces of the game aren't dropped into levels you've already beaten. This time, you'll find a map or black star while playing and that will open up an new level on your world map. True, you have to be paying attention that another level is now available, but it really isn't that hard to scroll through your map looking for the one section you haven't played yet.
Let the docile tones of Greg and Jeff teach you the ways of Patapon 2.
Playing into this new theme of transparency is the way resource gathering goes down. When you're looking to evolve or level-up a Rarepon, you're specifically told how much ore, meat, or whatever you have and how much you need. Lets look at my save and the fact that I really want to take my Level 6 Kisuk (a tree-like Yumipon with great knockback power but a weakness to fire) to the next plateau. I have the hard iron, tender meat, and other items I need, but I'm short three of the four Itete Fangs I need to complete the conversion. If for some reason I didn't know where to go for fangs, I can read the descriptions of every enemy encounter I have available on the world map and see which is the one to go to for fangs (see: Centura or the poison skewer beast known as Darantula).
Making grinding out these items easier this time is the fact that bosses now stagger. When you've wailed on a creature for a while, it's more likely to stumble or stagger, which means that it coughs up one of the items it's known for. This means that if you come in with a suped-up squad, it's pretty easy to walk out with a whole bunch of whatever item you need. Even better is the fact that there are some new and old musical mini-games you can get to from the Patapolis camp and each of those gives out specific items as well. You can trade items for ka-ching (single-player money) by making the bell dance, get wonderful juice from a pair of brothers, and grab the occasional fang and bit of wood from the original game's dancing tree. These mini-games each have three difficulties to play on (the higher the level, the more expensive it is to play), so there are new tunes to master, but the real improvement is being able to exchange items for money and money for new items; it makes leveling so much easier.
Still, don't think that every complaint you had with the first game has been addressed in this sequel or that everything's simple to understand. There is still no pause button for Patapon; this boggles my mind. If you're playing a frantic fight and someone calls you or you need to catch a train, you're screwed. Either you ignore the fight for a second to accomplish your real-life task and loose Fever and probably loose some troops or you switch the PSP off, loose Fever, and come back with the beat all thrown off. It sucks and is ridiculous. It seems like pausing would be an easy enough addition to this portable game, but no one dropped it in the mix.
Do those complaints take away from Patapon 2's stellar package? Nope, and it's because of stuff like the new multiplayer mode that the few dings don't matter. For the first time, you can take on the monsters and foes of the game with up to three of your friends who are each using his or her Hero from the single-player game. See, each time you face a major task/beast in the game, you're going to get an egg. These eggs are the key to multiplayer because when you choose to host a game -- either via game sharing or ad-hoc -- you'll pick from your unlocked eggs and that choice dictates which monster you guys are going after. You get to change your Hero's class and assign him equipment, and then you and your crew hop into battle. You'll all need to give the Onward song a play so that the host picks up the egg and marches forward, and then when you get to the challenge, you all have your own Fever and attacks to worry about.
It sounds pretty standard -- and it is -- but the crazy cool stuff comes at the end. When you've bested your challenge in the allotted time and carried the egg across the goal, a brand new set of musical mini-games begin. Drums scroll across the screen and it's your job to tap the corresponding buttons as they cross an indicator, the game plays a pattern of beats without putting the drums on screen and you have to replay it from memory, and so on. When you're doing well, you're getting rewarded with multiplayer money that you can spend on supply-filled treasure chests at the end of the experience or that you can exchange into single-player ka-ching.
Bring it on, bird.
However, the big draw to this mode is the egg itself. When the musical mini-games come to an end, you'll need to nail a solitary drum beat. If you do it, the egg hatches and gives the host either a computer player for multiplayer (so that you can tackle the challenges all by your lonesome and fill out your crew with artificial intelligence) or a new Hero mask. The masks are huge because they grant your Hero all sorts of nifty abilities like more HP, more power, resistances, and so on. Before setting out on your mission, you can read the description of each egg and figure out what type of mask you'd get out of a successful campaign. It's yet another set of items to chase down and make use of, which I'm always for, and it's cool that you can play by yourself if you don't have any Patapon-lovin' friends, but I wish the missions were more original. It's kind of weak fighting the same monsters you're playing against in single-player over and over again.
Of course, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that Patapon 2 is only available via download. If you pick it up in the store, you're just getting the game's box, manual, and voucher code that you'll need to enter on the PlayStation Store to get the title. The download is 362 MB and you'll launch it from you memory stick under the Games section of the cross media bar. It's interesting to see Sony testing digital distribution. I mean, the download works well enough, but who knows what it will mean for sales.
Honestly, I could write five more pages about everything that's in this game. You can carry over your save from the first game for items; the animation for the tribe jumping into the air cracks me up every time; and if a warrior gets eaten in battle, he's only out for that mission and not erased from your infantry like in the original game. The simple fact remains that I logged more than 40 hours in Patapon 2 before getting to the final fight in the story. Sure, I was leveling up my guys, repeating boss battles, and having fun with the mini-games, but even if you only explored the content surrounding the actual story for half the time I did, you'd be logging some serious time with this $20 game.
©2009-04-27, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved
We were fools to think such things.
Watch our video review and unlock an imaginary prized fang!
Without a doubt, Patapon 2 is better than its predecessor in every way. It's longer, there are more songs, there are more characters, there are more monsters, there are more items, there are more mini-games and there are more things I could list here. Does it feel like well-worn territory at times? Yes, especially in the beginning and the end, but anyone foolish enough to say that this is Patapon 1.5 should replay the original and see how far off the mark that perception really is.
Like last time, Patapon 2 opens on a down note. After the sunny ending to Patapon, the tribe got restless and set sail to continue its quest to find Earthend. After 49 days at sea, the waters got rough and sank the tribe's ride. The one-eyed cuties wash up on a familiar shore, you're reunited with Hatapon the flag carrier and it's up to you to lead your people on their next adventure -- one that involves a mysterious Hero with no memory, a new tribe of evil-doers known as Karmen and a farting bird.
If you're just joining the Patapon craziness here on IGN, I'll do my best to explain what's happening in this game. The Patapon tribe is a group of one-eyed warriors trying to make a life for themselves in the great, wide wilderness. You are their god. When you play Patapon 2, you're using the PSP's four face buttons as tribal drums to lead the tribe. See, each song is a command to the group and requires a four-button combination. When you hit Square-Square-Square-Circle, you're playing the beat Pata-Pata-Pata-Pon and that's telling your people to move forward.
Now you can't just sit there and punch these commands out one after another. The earth's rhythm is flashing around the screen and you need to hit your drums in time with those steady flashes. Hit the command, wait four beats as the Patapons sing back the song and perform the action and then move on to your next command. You'll have eight tunes to master throughout the game's plethora of missions and they'll do stuff such as charge your attacks, defend the Patapons and wake the party from a sleeping state.
Everybody caught up? Good, let's start dissecting the beast that is Patapon 2. The biggest change to your roster of warriors is the addition of Hero. This is a special Patapon that wears a mask, will come back to life after being knocked out in battle and can change his class before any mission. If you need the power of a club-swinging Dekapon or the horseback-riding Kibapon, you can switch the Hero to that class and deck him out in the proper equipment. If you find your groove with the beats on the battlefield, you can even trigger a special attack from your Hero that doles out tons of damage and can easily change the course of war. Seeing as how a mission can only end when either the flag carrier is killed or everyone but the flag carrier is killed, using your nearly un-killable Hero effectively is key to beating some of the tougher missions.
Another welcome addition is the Evolution Tree. In our last go around, you could create Rarepons: colored versions of the traditional Patapons that came with beefed up abilities, but it was a bit of a guessing game. You'd select a slot, rotate in whatever materials you had and get an unknown result. It was fun, but you never really knew what move you were making. This time, you can specifically customize your tribe down to the individual warrior.
See, every Patapon starts out as the simple black and white one-eyed dude you know and love. At the Evolution Tree, you can use the food, alloy, and other items you've procured in battle to evolve that warrior into one of 16 Rarepons that each have their own abilities and drawbacks. Some are great at resisting critical hits but weak against fire, some are weak against ice but are insanely powerful, and some have awesome names such as Mofo -- any way you slice it, all of this is explained to you before you create the character. Once you settle on a type of Rarepon, you can start pouring resources into that same class to level that specific character up. Obviously, this process makes your character stronger and can continue until Level 10.
Comprehend all that? With a little experimentation -- when you create a Rarepon, the tree branches out to give you access to other types of Rarepons -- you can build an army that's all your own. This Evolution Tree is there for every character in your nine classes of Patapons; yup, in addition to the classes from the last game, Patapon 2 has added Robopons (little guys with massive arms), Mahopon (magicians), and Toripon (attackers who ride flying birds).
Here's the thing: the original Patapon was a bit of a bitch. I mean, it was great, but you were totally on your own. There wasn't a very solid explanation of how you created classes, levels you had already beaten would have songs and items you desperately needed on their second or third playthrough but nothing told you that, and so on. Patapon 2 isn't a piece of cake to jump into, but it has addressed a handful of stumbling blocks people had with the first title. For starters, there's a Demo mode when you start that shows you the earth's rhythm and eases you into playing, but in the bigger picture, Patapon 2 has 84 tips as loading screens that you can go review from your Altar once you've seen them. On top of that, most new songs or critical pieces of the game aren't dropped into levels you've already beaten. This time, you'll find a map or black star while playing and that will open up an new level on your world map. True, you have to be paying attention that another level is now available, but it really isn't that hard to scroll through your map looking for the one section you haven't played yet.
Let the docile tones of Greg and Jeff teach you the ways of Patapon 2.
Playing into this new theme of transparency is the way resource gathering goes down. When you're looking to evolve or level-up a Rarepon, you're specifically told how much ore, meat, or whatever you have and how much you need. Lets look at my save and the fact that I really want to take my Level 6 Kisuk (a tree-like Yumipon with great knockback power but a weakness to fire) to the next plateau. I have the hard iron, tender meat, and other items I need, but I'm short three of the four Itete Fangs I need to complete the conversion. If for some reason I didn't know where to go for fangs, I can read the descriptions of every enemy encounter I have available on the world map and see which is the one to go to for fangs (see: Centura or the poison skewer beast known as Darantula).
Making grinding out these items easier this time is the fact that bosses now stagger. When you've wailed on a creature for a while, it's more likely to stumble or stagger, which means that it coughs up one of the items it's known for. This means that if you come in with a suped-up squad, it's pretty easy to walk out with a whole bunch of whatever item you need. Even better is the fact that there are some new and old musical mini-games you can get to from the Patapolis camp and each of those gives out specific items as well. You can trade items for ka-ching (single-player money) by making the bell dance, get wonderful juice from a pair of brothers, and grab the occasional fang and bit of wood from the original game's dancing tree. These mini-games each have three difficulties to play on (the higher the level, the more expensive it is to play), so there are new tunes to master, but the real improvement is being able to exchange items for money and money for new items; it makes leveling so much easier.
Still, don't think that every complaint you had with the first game has been addressed in this sequel or that everything's simple to understand. There is still no pause button for Patapon; this boggles my mind. If you're playing a frantic fight and someone calls you or you need to catch a train, you're screwed. Either you ignore the fight for a second to accomplish your real-life task and loose Fever and probably loose some troops or you switch the PSP off, loose Fever, and come back with the beat all thrown off. It sucks and is ridiculous. It seems like pausing would be an easy enough addition to this portable game, but no one dropped it in the mix.
Do those complaints take away from Patapon 2's stellar package? Nope, and it's because of stuff like the new multiplayer mode that the few dings don't matter. For the first time, you can take on the monsters and foes of the game with up to three of your friends who are each using his or her Hero from the single-player game. See, each time you face a major task/beast in the game, you're going to get an egg. These eggs are the key to multiplayer because when you choose to host a game -- either via game sharing or ad-hoc -- you'll pick from your unlocked eggs and that choice dictates which monster you guys are going after. You get to change your Hero's class and assign him equipment, and then you and your crew hop into battle. You'll all need to give the Onward song a play so that the host picks up the egg and marches forward, and then when you get to the challenge, you all have your own Fever and attacks to worry about.
It sounds pretty standard -- and it is -- but the crazy cool stuff comes at the end. When you've bested your challenge in the allotted time and carried the egg across the goal, a brand new set of musical mini-games begin. Drums scroll across the screen and it's your job to tap the corresponding buttons as they cross an indicator, the game plays a pattern of beats without putting the drums on screen and you have to replay it from memory, and so on. When you're doing well, you're getting rewarded with multiplayer money that you can spend on supply-filled treasure chests at the end of the experience or that you can exchange into single-player ka-ching.
Bring it on, bird.
However, the big draw to this mode is the egg itself. When the musical mini-games come to an end, you'll need to nail a solitary drum beat. If you do it, the egg hatches and gives the host either a computer player for multiplayer (so that you can tackle the challenges all by your lonesome and fill out your crew with artificial intelligence) or a new Hero mask. The masks are huge because they grant your Hero all sorts of nifty abilities like more HP, more power, resistances, and so on. Before setting out on your mission, you can read the description of each egg and figure out what type of mask you'd get out of a successful campaign. It's yet another set of items to chase down and make use of, which I'm always for, and it's cool that you can play by yourself if you don't have any Patapon-lovin' friends, but I wish the missions were more original. It's kind of weak fighting the same monsters you're playing against in single-player over and over again.
Of course, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that Patapon 2 is only available via download. If you pick it up in the store, you're just getting the game's box, manual, and voucher code that you'll need to enter on the PlayStation Store to get the title. The download is 362 MB and you'll launch it from you memory stick under the Games section of the cross media bar. It's interesting to see Sony testing digital distribution. I mean, the download works well enough, but who knows what it will mean for sales.
Honestly, I could write five more pages about everything that's in this game. You can carry over your save from the first game for items; the animation for the tribe jumping into the air cracks me up every time; and if a warrior gets eaten in battle, he's only out for that mission and not erased from your infantry like in the original game. The simple fact remains that I logged more than 40 hours in Patapon 2 before getting to the final fight in the story. Sure, I was leveling up my guys, repeating boss battles, and having fun with the mini-games, but even if you only explored the content surrounding the actual story for half the time I did, you'd be logging some serious time with this $20 game.
©2009-04-27, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved