Patapon 2

If you own a PSP, you should own Patapon 2. If you don’t own a PSP, you should start considering one. Patapon 2 is that good. The incredibly cutesy, challenging and addictive rhythm/action/puzzle title will have you hooked from start to finish and should be in any self respecting gamer’s library.

The Patapon series sees you controlling your own army of the titular Patapons. You act as their deity, relaying battle commands to them through a war drum, with each of the 4 PlayStation face buttons acting as different drum notes. Hitting the correct sequence of notes will form a command, while hitting them accurately in time with the beat will put your army into a “fever”, upping their abilities. In essence Patapon becomes a rhythm game, however the ever growing number of commands to memorise and choose from establishes a puzzle element, with new commands being added throughout the game’s story. This keeps the game feeling fresh from start to finish, as you’re always finding new tactics with which to thwart your enemies.

New to Patapon 2 is the introduction of the Hero unit- a singular warrior who can change the tide of battles thanks to his unique abilities. The player can choose which class of Patapon he should take the form of and he gains an amplified version of each unit’s strength. For example, should he take the form of the shield-wielding Tatepon he makes your army invulnerable to enemy attacks. These abilities never feel overpowered due to the fact that you have to hit each drum beat perfectly whilst in fever status for the abilities to even have an effect, which can be as challenging as it sounds. It’s important to note that while Patapon 2 was challenging, it never felt unfair or irritating in its difficulty. If you lost a battle all your units recovered instantly and you didn’t lose any resources. Defeat becomes a learning experience, making the game more enjoyable and less aggravating.

Another tactical element available are the ‘miracles’ which can be activated on the battlefield. Each one has a different effect upon the gameplay (one changes the wind direction to boost your archers’ range, for example), however activating them makes your army lose its fever status, temporarily putting you at a disadvantage. Players have to balance between using the advantages of the miracles and losing the abilities that fever status brings.

The huge amount of customization of your units is also a nice addition. By using the loot gathered from successful hunts and skirmishes you can choose to either level up your individual warriors or evolve them into a new Patapon sub-species. Players have to balance between the short term benefit of levelling up the basic Patapons and evolving to the next, ultimately stronger species. Each species can be levelled up 10 times, with the 10th level transforming the warrior into an ‘ultimate’ Rarepon. There are 16 species of Rarepon to evolve to should the player be inclined to collect them all, and gathering the specific loot required for evolving and levelling will soak up hours of playtime. As an alternate to replaying old levels you unlock half a dozen rhythm-based minigames throughout the quest, each paying out different items should you master their three tiers of difficulty.

Presentation wise, the game takes a simplistic but very effective approach. Many objects in the world are little more than silhouettes, but the use of bright colours and exaggerated shapes make every unit type easily identifiable.  The chirpy tunes can be extremely catchy (I can’t get the tree minigame song out of my head!) and you’ll catch yourself chanting the commands after you turn the game off.

While no Shakespeare, Patapon’s story is decent enough to propel you through the game’s main adventure. When you actually sit down and think about the storyline, however, it all gets a little sinister. The Patapons’ main motivation is to get to world’s end to find the mysterious, unexplainable “IT”. To get to this they-don’t-know-what they invade another land, all but wiping out the locals and rare creatures which inhabit it. They ridicule and destroy another civilization’s god and kill one of their women. It’s all a little terrifying, but I loved it.

The story lasted me nearly 30 hours, and that’s with me only seeing 2 of the final forms of the 16 Rarepons. Patapon 2 is a serious time-sink and is exceptional value when you take into account that the game costs less than a Domino’s Pizza (even with a BOGOF voucher!). This game should not be passed up by anyone who loves committing genocide using cute cartoon eyeballs with spears.