Patapon (PSP)

Patapon
Pyramid / Japan Studios

Reviewed by Anthony

Another month, another entry into the overdone Tribal Eyeballs Hunting to the Beat of a Mystical Drum genre. This entry is apparently called Patapon, and like every other entry into the TEHTTBOAMD genre, has you, of course, using the rhythm of a mystical drum to lead a tribal race of eyeballs called Patapons to victory on the battlefield. The end result is a rhythm-based game that flows in a manner somewhat akin to that of an episodic RPG.

Patapon is full of charm, is challenging, has great animation and sounds, and is open-ended enough to be engrossing beyond the straight playthrough. There exist, however, some elements related to difficulty and progression that can grind the fun aspects of the game to a screeching halt.

What’s good:
- The game uses a no-outline graphical format that works great and is accompanied by very smooth animation. The game will keep track of a myriad of arrows, spears, patapon actions, and boss attacks simultaneously without dropping the framerate. You may be too busy keeping rhythm to notice, but battles can be pretty glorious looking.
- The audio presentation is similarly very solid. Your patapons will chant out the songs, and will go into fully choreographed tribal chants and songs in “Fever” mode. The songs are catchy enough, but they even vary a bit depending on the location you’re fighting. It’s endearing, and you’re unlikely to get “Pata Pata Pata Pon~” out of your head.
- For what’s essentially a rhythm game, Patapon gives you a nice amount of RPG-like customization for your troops. Though you take up to three types into battle, six base types of patapon eventually become available, and for each type you can make various different races of patapon with different stats and abilities. Add that to a moderate collection of weapons and armor to find throughout the game and minigames for collecting raw materials, and you have a good bit more to do than just battle.
- The patapon army and enemies alike are charming, adding a few smiles to the experience. From the silly backdrop of trying to reach the end of the world, to enemies taunting you, to your army complaining when you miss the beats, to the feast after the battle, to them celebrating the first advance after vanquishing an enemy with a cheer and tossing their weapons... it’s hard not to be taken in by the experience.
- Being able to replay almost any stage at will was a nice touch.

What’s neutral:
- The game could be seen as surprisingly unforgiving for what appears to be a cute rhythm game. For one, should you miss a beat enough to end the combo, your patapon army will immediately stop doing anything, becoming completely defenseless as you try to get the song started again. Even then, it’s a little tricky. Further, for multiple types of patapon, their true effectiveness lies in Fever mode, where after a number of combo beats, the patapons launch into song and all have significantly heightened abilities. Maintaining Fever mode is more difficult than maintaining the songs’ beats though, and someone who has trouble keeping this going will undoubtedly be very handicapped.
- The minigames are a nice touch for adding extra gameplay and giving the player multiple ways to obtain items. However, you always have to sit through the same talking-introduction to each game every time you play, and given some games can give you only a single reward, that’s a bit daunting. Some have well-set rewards to your actions, while others are completely random. It’s odd, and can put a damper on one’s desire to reliably obtain a single item they may need.
- Although replaying stages was a nice feature, the only time armor/weapons drop from non-boss stages is randomly during the stages that you can’t replay. That’s kind of a bummer, given you might get some worthless item drops from a stage that could’ve earned you some very useful equipment.
- Given that money is such a precious and difficult-to-obtain resource in the game, some way of hypothetically testing how new types of patapon work in battle would’ve been nice. Later forms cost way too much to just try creating for the sake of curiosity.
- It may or may not be a problem for you, but the game is occasionally a bit directionless. They’ll at times require you to explore old stages for items needed to pass current ones, or they’ll sometimes make you fail a stage in order to progress. It’s somewhat akin to finding flags in an RPG, but someone looking to play this as a wacky rhythm game may be a touch confused.

What’s bad:
- Patapon may have the worst item farming system I’ve heard of since Lunar Dragon Song. Essentially, to create stronger patapons, which will be a necessity for later stages, you’ll need two things - lots of money, and strong materials. Although it’s extremely easy to get Meat items from hunting, money and basically every other material will have a very random element to it. Only one stage rarely ever drops large amounts of money, with most earning you maybe 10% of the cost of a rare patapon at best. That doesn’t account for the materials needed, though. To get strong and rare materials, you’ll need to re-fight bosses. The problem? Aside from a very random chance that they’ll drop an item from being staggered by a hale of attacks, bosses drop only a single reward for a hard-fought battle. That reward might be a weak material, or it might be a worthless piece of armor/weaponry you already have. Oh, and you can’t sell any items or materials you don’t need... you’re just stuck with them collecting dust forever. You’re likely thinking “okay, then just fight it again”.. except that each time you defeat a boss, it goes up a level in power, becoming significantly more difficult to beat. So, you may have only gotten a useless material or item from the boss, but now you’re supposed to fight a stronger version of it again without having powered up your team in any way. Thus, the average player will just be resetting after boss fights repeatedly, hoping for a good drop that may not happen ten times straight. And even when that great material finally drops, now you’ll need to spend time farming the money to be able to pay to use it.
- The difficulty level rises pretty significantly within the last few levels. That would not be a problem, and in fact would be a natural or good thing... except that it will likely force players to spend a lot of time going back to farm items, money, and create better patapons to continue. The problem is, the spike in difficulty hits so abruptly, and forces you to work with such a broken farming system, that it feels like your steady progress can suddenly grind to a screeching half.
- There’s one inherent problem with the four-beat rhythm gameplay that I don’t exactly have a solution for, but remains an issue. Although bosses are synched to starting rhythm and give clear signs for what attack is set to come next, staggers and rhythm changes can get the player on a pattern where it’s impossible to safely guard against or retreat from an attack. Because some bosses have brutally strong attacks that can easily KO or even perma-kill a patapon, this can be a very unfortunate issue. At best, you may be able to end your combo and attempt to establish a new rhythm with the bosses, but that’s not a very good idea or a fun way to play either. This could’ve been negated if:
- They really should have allowed you to move backwards. The “retreat” command doesn’t make up for the fact that at times, the inability to move backwards can unfairly cripple your ability to fight properly. This is especially apparent with a seemingly glitched boss issue where a certain boss, if attacked from too far away at the start, will retreat out of view instead of coming to fight. But by time you advance far enough for it to attack, it advances all the way back to its original position, making it such that it can easily slaughter even your long-range patapon in close quarters.
- The post game content of “Now have fun going back and beating any stages or bosses you want, and get stronger!” was pretty weak. Not even a single extra stage, guys?

The mixed feelings with this game are just overwhelming. There’s absolutely no denying that this is a great game that pulls off something very unique with an artistic flair. For a good chunk of the early gaming, I was completely enamored with their adorable singing, toppling huge bosses down by keeping Fever mode going, and the deeper-than-you’d-expect-of-a-rhythm-game amount of RPG-like class and equipment systems. And if you get addicted to gradually empowering your army and taking down higher level bosses, you could play this for a very long time.

But eventually, the item-farming aspect rears its ugly head. Coupled with the spike in difficulty requiring me to cleave my way through that mess, by the end I mostly just wanted the game to be over. I was still briefly back to being enamored with the game and satisfied seeing my army send hales of attacks at my foes, but it came at the cost of multiple hours of “are you kidding me?”-inducing gameplay. I’m slightly comforted to hear that Patapon 2 apparently addresses a myriad of issues related to these concerns... but I’ll cross that bridge if I come to it.