FAST AND LOOSE WITH THE TERM REMASTERED
Patapon 2 was originally released in the West for the PSP in 2009. A direct sequel to the wonderful Patapon, it was originally sold as a digital download in a UMD case and was later put back on retail shelves with a UMD. I know because I have two cases sitting on the shelf for Patapon 2. I love this series, so when a code for the remaster came my way I was excited although worried, because I had heard the remaster of the first Patapon wasn’t necessarily great.
It’s fine.
PLATFORMS: PS4
MSRP: $14.99
PRICE I’D PAY: $7.99
The Patapon series is a rhythm strategy game where every drum pattern tells the titular Patapon to march forward, defend, attack, and more. Differing from the rest of rhythm games, Patapon is unique in that it doesn’t tell the player what to press, but only counts out time. Moving requires pressing the Pata drum (square) for the first three counts while hitting the Pon drum (circle) on the last while attacking is two Pons, a Pata, and a Pon. Switching patterns while staying in time allows Fever mode to start which increases the abilities of all the Patapon in the army.
What I find really unique about the Patapon games is the returning to previous levels to hunt wildlife for materials, and then using those materials to create new Patapon and then customizing my army with new soldier types as well as switching out weapons. Patapon is much more than a rhythm game but stilla rhythm game at its core. The Patapon themselves are entertaining and have a lot more attitude than what one would expect out of little black and white eyeballs with arms and legs. The world of Patapon is wonderful.
Back to the remaster, though. Sony wants $15 for this. The PSP download that works on Vita is $5.99. It’s hard to justify the price increase because while the gameplay looks nice, the pre-rendered cutscenes, of which there is a fair amount, look bad. They haven’t been recreated at all and are fuzzy and just do not look good on modern televisions; they stand out more next to the gameplay sections that are crisp and sharp and show the best of artist Rolito’s work. Visually this game is both the best this game has ever looked and also the worst. I think, however, that the biggest issue is that while I could play it with no issue, there is no way for people to calibrate for lag. This is a feature that was in the original Guitar Hero and while it wasn’t an issue on the PSP where all players were on the same hardware, we now have players playing on all different screens and there needs to be that option.
The only benefit to playing on PS4 to me is that I can hold the controller in a way that my thumbs are always on the face buttons which was something I couldn’t do on both the PSP and the Vita.
So I would skip this unless it is the only way you can play Patapon (and I would suggest the first game because this picks up the story right after the end of that game). Even then I can’t actually say that it will work because of the calibration issues. This was an issue with Parappa the Rapper and again Sony just didn’t put in the work. Patapon 2 is a great game; this remaster is only just okay.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
