Patapon 2 Remastered Review

"Hitting the Drums"

Campaign

February 13, 2020 at 2:32am
By Jason Stettner

This is a rhythm based game where you act as a god for these small creatures that come together under the Patapon banner. They need direction and your rhythm will guide them along on the path to survival.

This is the second entry in the series, but it’s also a fine starting point if you haven’t played the other games. The opening cinematics are somewhat rough in appearance, but from there the boost in resolution certainly does benefit the experience. It’s largely the same game if you’re returning to play it, and they could have taken things further. The tutorials were somewhat annoying to deal with, and it does take awhile to actually get going.

There are more than thirty missions to play as where you’ll be adventuring or battling large bosses. As you fight along you’ll be able to strengthen your troop with new special types of items to take advantage of. There’s a general hub area where you manage this, and then go off into battle.

Gameplay

The visuals were alright, though they did come across as somewhat aged. It’s still a clear quality, and the look generally holds up. You command a fairly friendly looking squad of warriors, that grows and shifts as you continue along. They’re excited to be there, and can be worked into a frenzy if you keep the beat going.

You create this command beat by hitting certain combos with the controller buttons, and doing so while hitting the right note. I’m not necessarily great at this aspect honestly and I can see others struggling to hit the marks. That aside, it can be a rather slow game. It can take awhile to battle some enemies or take forever to walk across certain spots. This does make it come across as mind numbingly boring quite honestly, which is a shame as it’s somewhat enjoyable when everything is grooving along.

There were also awkward moments where my troops just couldn’t hit some enemies and kept backing up never being able to hit them. That was somewhat lame as they’d die after awhile and I’d have to restart the level. I also found it somewhat annoying that you’d have to restart levels if you fail instead of there being decent checkpoints.

The Conclusion

Patapon 2 Remastered is a fairly basic port of the game that really didn’t alter much and provides a generally solid sort of experience. It’s a different sort of game featuring rhythm based combat, and that makes it unique. Some elements make this a bit rough to play through, but it does offer a good quantity of levels and lots of adjustments for your troops.

The hub area was cool, and the narrative was interesting. It had some stakes, and they had fun with the general design. You’re going around fighting various enemies, taking territory and hitting the beat to eliminate the boss monsters you’ll come across. This was alright, I found it to have some issues and it could have been more of a boost to what this experience is.

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Patapon 2 Remastered Review on Playstation 4
Review Code Provided by SIEC

Rating Overall: 6.8