Patapon 2 Review

by Bec

Played on PSP

Pata-pata-pata-PON!

Patapon 2 is the sequel to Sony’s critically acclaimed, Patapon. A music rhythm game which combines music, action and strategy.  That may sound like a strange combination but it works well for the small Patapons as you beat your drum in a rhythm that will help them to victory.

The game opens with the Patapon boat being attacked on the open seas and defeated by a Kraken. The Patapon are washed ashore in a strange land where they find new allies and new enemies to be defeated (as well as some old enemies).  

The Patapons need a God and you’re it. You can command your (initially small) army with the power of drum beats. For example, “Pata-pata-pata-pon” (X-X-X-O) commands your troops to march forward, and “Pon-pon-pata-pon” (O-O-X-O) commands an attack. Completing a mission can sometimes take over ten minutes and keeping the rhythm while deciding your next move becomes more of a challenge than you’d expect. If you collect enough beat combos in a row, your Patapons feel the rhythm fever and attacks and defence increase. Drop the beat and you fizzle out and need to start over. The first missions are simple ones that allow you to become familiar with the commands. The learning curve for this game felt paced just right: you’re introduced to new drum beat combinations after completing certain missions. It’ll introduce a new command when the missions become more difficult or require a new strategy.

Your army starts small but can grow and evolve as you choose. Collecting items during a mission will allow you to ‘pay’ for a new recruit or the evolution of an old one. It’s entirely up to you how to grow your army: large groups of infantry, or ranged weapons, or  equal groupings across the board. Each Patapon soldier can be left as your ‘basic’ model or evolved to have special abilities, for example, resistant to fire or knock backs. You’ll also get ‘Hero’ Patapons who can’t be evolved but who can have their class chosen for them and who can be equipped with superior weaponry and armour. The Hero will also blast the enemy with their own special attack, doing serious damage...but only if you land every beat perfect.  This can be a challenge!

As you progress in the game you’ll find that you may need to play some of the earlier levels repeatedly to pick up items needed for your army’s evolution.  Although that has the potential to be annoying, I found it a nice break from the – sometimes intense – harder levels. The drops are more or less random but you collect enough to be able to evolve at a decent rate. A nice feature of the evolution process is the ability to evolve the Patapons individually or together as a unit. Enemies can also drop armour and weaponry which is easily equipped to any Patapon needing an upgrade. Deciding just who to evolve and in which direction of the evolution tree to evolve them can become surprisingly complicated.

Deciding when to pause in your advance and spend time increasing your army can be difficult as the temptation is there to charge ahead. However, I found that if my poor Patapon army was absolutely slaughtered on one level, it was perhaps past time to build up strength and evolve some Patapon. The customisation of your army is part of what makes Patapon 2 so engrossing. It also means it has a decent replay value as you could easily begin again and create a completely different army, having different strategies and different effects on the enemy.

The artwork is cool and funky, the Patapons themselves looking like single eye-balls with arms and legs, but it’s the music that makes this game. Like any rhythm game, it’s best played with headphones and the expectation of looking like a bit of a nut when you start humming the music and nodding your head to ‘pon-pon-pata-pon.’

A fun and challenging game with a nice combination of rhythm and strategy that should make the game enjoyable to beginners and veterans from the original Patapon. I’ve never played the original (being only a recent PSP convert) and found it a refreshing style of game-play. It’s fun to see the army grow into a mighty force from its humble beginnings and to drum their enemies into submission. Being constantly honoured as their God might also be part of the charm...