Tomba! 2: The Evil Swine Return
released on Oct 28, 1999
Tomba! 2: The Evil Swine Return is a side-scrolling platformer in which the titular character, Tomba, moves on predetermined linear paths until he reaches an intersection point where a flashing arrow appears over his head. At that point Tomba can move in either direction the arrow points. Some areas in the game enable the player to explore them in a top-down view, allowing Tomba to move around freely. The main goal of the game is to complete all 137 objectives (133 make the regular ones, while the other four are obtained from a Tomba 1 save file) which range from retrieving a fishing hook for a fisherman to helping Santa Claus find his "sack". Completing a task earns the player "Adventure Points", which can be used to unlock specific boxes scattered around the game's world. As the game progresses, Tomba can obtain suits that give him special abilities. For example, the flying squirrel suit allows Tomba to glide long distances while the pig suit allows Tomba to communicate with friendly pigs. Scattered throughout the levels are magical feathers that can instantly transport Tomba to any area that has previously been visited.
Released on
Genres
Reviews View More
Tomba 2 is a game that has game design. It is unknown exactly what it's trying to do, but damn, it is designing its heart out. There is so much game about nothing in here, an absolutely fascinating pile of spinning wheels, fighting with controls, and weird, cozy endearment. I do not think Tomba 2 is a good game, but it's an INSANELY interesting game that I would LOVE to see anyone's impression of.
Outwardly, Tomba 2 is as close to a 2.5D platformer as you can get. You're locked to a 2D plane, but can cross over to other intersecting 2D planes whenever you come across one, giving each area this very neat sense of depth and interconnectivity. Tomba 2 then decides to couple this innovation with some absolutely lousy jumping controls. Tomba HATES the ground for some unexplained reason, and will spend as long as he can floating in the air, his prayers that he never has to hit the ground again slowing him down in midair. This is coupled with incredibly responsive midair controls that keep Tomba's momentum slip sliding all over the place, making simply jumping on anything far harder than it needs to be. Any sense of actual platforming in Tomba is an utter struggle...
... or it WOULD be, but Tomba is strikingly devoid of platforming for a platformer in its first half! There ARE jumps you need to make, but most of the difficult platforming is optional and can just be walked around, there are precious few difficult jumps you actually have to make, and enemies are generally ineffectual and easy to ignore. Tomba instead uses its level design for the sense of exploration, as surprise, the game is actually all about fetch quests! Explore the world, bring this specific thing to this specific NPC, wonder how you get a spoon lodged in between two water-filled plants and then wait for several hours as it sits in your inventory being unused without a clue as to what it should do! While this level of busywork might be off-putting, Tomba's world is actually fairly well-realized, very neatly interconnected, and the main path through it compact enough that any form of backtracking is hardly an issue. It even does the neat thing of going back to previous areas with new abilities to get new stuff, and sets that up fairly neatly!
Unfortunately, for a game all about talking to people, Tomba 2 has a REALLY rough English translation. Sure, it works well enough to convey basic information, but all dialogue is presented stiltedly, with sometimes inaccurate or very vague information on where to go. This gets especially rough the later into the game you get; whilst the game is very good at pointing you in a straight line through its world, once you've completed a loop, exactly who you have to talk to in order to do whatever becomes a rather confused game of "well just talk to everyone until you stumble into the answer".
This is ESPECIALLY trying as the game's two big objectives - the Evil Pig Door and the Secret Towers - are explicitly hidden from the player, Tomba needing to go up to the former located invisibly SOMEWHERE in the world, and if he's holding a specific item when in proximity, he'll be able to access a boss fight. The Secret Towers are even worse, with the player needing to get two special songs from sidequests per tower and just... play them. If a room seems sus? Play it. Didn't work? Move somewhere else. This creates an agonizing amount of guess work for basic progression in the case of the pig doors and secret hunting in the case of the towers, and whilst there are hints for both, the Pig Door locations suffer the most from translation issues, and said location-revealer is hidden behind a lengthy sidequest involving blooming flowers that isn't revealed to be any more important than any optional sidequest, and the towers have no better hint than an NPC in each area going "I'm looking for an invisible tower, I think it's here, better go explore every nook and cranny I guess".
And that exploration, weirdly, gets better as the game goes on. Y'see, the developers KNEW that Tomba's jump sucked, and decided to design the entire game AROUND how floaty and awkward his jump was! Power ups like the Flying Squirrel Clothes allow Tomba to glide a ridiculous horizontal distance, and the grapple allows him to... well, grappling hook his way onto most surfaces, swinging off of them to carry his momentum, which can then combo into the squirrel suit to float around. It is an incredibly weird combination where Tomba is usually not platforming, but going AROUND the platforms, abusing physics to ignore any sort of challenge beneath them. Imagine a Super Mario World where the level design was horrible to jump through, but the cape still felt good to control. That is the feeling of playing Tomba 2 at its best.
Sadly, the game does not stay at its best for long. Boss fights are incredible exercises in "why does this work like this", with elaborate platforming-based arenas constructed for Tomba to completely ignore as he patiently waits for the boss to teleport next to him, jump on their head, and throw them in a bag three times. Every single boss can be dispatched in this manner, the unique elements of their arenas entirely ignored. Tomba 2 also has mini-games, which range from innoffensive to "oh god you took the worst elements of your platforming and made a timed challenge around it" to perhaps the most brutally difficult mine cart mini-game out there. The world record speedrun finishes the mine cart course with one second to spare compared to the MINIMUM requirement to beat it. It has to be entirely learned via muscle memory, and doing it unlocks the hints for how to find the bosses... but you're not TOLD that these will unlock hints, these are just weird items in a mini-game that might or might not affect the mini-game itself for all you know! It is a backbreaking challenge of perfection, and a solid 15% of my 13-hour playthrough was just learning this mine cart game. Also you have to do it twice, and the second time is faster so it messes with your muscle memory. It's awful... I kind of love that it exists. Y'know those challenges that you hate going through, but want to see other people suffer through them? It's one of those.
The final bit I want to touch on is that this game is fully voice acted. Every single line of dialogue has voice acting that ranges from "we got a guy in the office to record these lines with no emotion whatsoever" to "actually these voice actors are making some fun choices". It is cheesy, it is endearing... it is WEIRD going from some legitimate vocal performances to some of the goofiest voices you will ever hear. All of these have very little proper direction, with some lines being perfectly delivered for their scene and others sounded like they were recorded in a vacuum just GUESSING where the line will show up. There is also an outtake left in the game where the voice actor is re-clarifying his accent and taking the line a second time. It is very funny, it is VERY endearing.
Tomba 2 is a game that only plays like Tomba 2. It is a clunky, unrefined mess that does everything it can make its good ideas try to stop being fun. But damn it, it has a LOT of ideas, like, ALL the time. It is a fascinating game where something is happening, and usually it's pretty mediocre, but there's so many things happening with so much awkward delivery that it becomes charming. Plus the international soundtrack is incredibly catchy and well-suited to its environments. Tomba 2 is a game of vibes. I don't know what those vibes are, but I want you to try them, because I want to see how you react to them.
Outwardly, Tomba 2 is as close to a 2.5D platformer as you can get. You're locked to a 2D plane, but can cross over to other intersecting 2D planes whenever you come across one, giving each area this very neat sense of depth and interconnectivity. Tomba 2 then decides to couple this innovation with some absolutely lousy jumping controls. Tomba HATES the ground for some unexplained reason, and will spend as long as he can floating in the air, his prayers that he never has to hit the ground again slowing him down in midair. This is coupled with incredibly responsive midair controls that keep Tomba's momentum slip sliding all over the place, making simply jumping on anything far harder than it needs to be. Any sense of actual platforming in Tomba is an utter struggle...
... or it WOULD be, but Tomba is strikingly devoid of platforming for a platformer in its first half! There ARE jumps you need to make, but most of the difficult platforming is optional and can just be walked around, there are precious few difficult jumps you actually have to make, and enemies are generally ineffectual and easy to ignore. Tomba instead uses its level design for the sense of exploration, as surprise, the game is actually all about fetch quests! Explore the world, bring this specific thing to this specific NPC, wonder how you get a spoon lodged in between two water-filled plants and then wait for several hours as it sits in your inventory being unused without a clue as to what it should do! While this level of busywork might be off-putting, Tomba's world is actually fairly well-realized, very neatly interconnected, and the main path through it compact enough that any form of backtracking is hardly an issue. It even does the neat thing of going back to previous areas with new abilities to get new stuff, and sets that up fairly neatly!
Unfortunately, for a game all about talking to people, Tomba 2 has a REALLY rough English translation. Sure, it works well enough to convey basic information, but all dialogue is presented stiltedly, with sometimes inaccurate or very vague information on where to go. This gets especially rough the later into the game you get; whilst the game is very good at pointing you in a straight line through its world, once you've completed a loop, exactly who you have to talk to in order to do whatever becomes a rather confused game of "well just talk to everyone until you stumble into the answer".
This is ESPECIALLY trying as the game's two big objectives - the Evil Pig Door and the Secret Towers - are explicitly hidden from the player, Tomba needing to go up to the former located invisibly SOMEWHERE in the world, and if he's holding a specific item when in proximity, he'll be able to access a boss fight. The Secret Towers are even worse, with the player needing to get two special songs from sidequests per tower and just... play them. If a room seems sus? Play it. Didn't work? Move somewhere else. This creates an agonizing amount of guess work for basic progression in the case of the pig doors and secret hunting in the case of the towers, and whilst there are hints for both, the Pig Door locations suffer the most from translation issues, and said location-revealer is hidden behind a lengthy sidequest involving blooming flowers that isn't revealed to be any more important than any optional sidequest, and the towers have no better hint than an NPC in each area going "I'm looking for an invisible tower, I think it's here, better go explore every nook and cranny I guess".
And that exploration, weirdly, gets better as the game goes on. Y'see, the developers KNEW that Tomba's jump sucked, and decided to design the entire game AROUND how floaty and awkward his jump was! Power ups like the Flying Squirrel Clothes allow Tomba to glide a ridiculous horizontal distance, and the grapple allows him to... well, grappling hook his way onto most surfaces, swinging off of them to carry his momentum, which can then combo into the squirrel suit to float around. It is an incredibly weird combination where Tomba is usually not platforming, but going AROUND the platforms, abusing physics to ignore any sort of challenge beneath them. Imagine a Super Mario World where the level design was horrible to jump through, but the cape still felt good to control. That is the feeling of playing Tomba 2 at its best.
Sadly, the game does not stay at its best for long. Boss fights are incredible exercises in "why does this work like this", with elaborate platforming-based arenas constructed for Tomba to completely ignore as he patiently waits for the boss to teleport next to him, jump on their head, and throw them in a bag three times. Every single boss can be dispatched in this manner, the unique elements of their arenas entirely ignored. Tomba 2 also has mini-games, which range from innoffensive to "oh god you took the worst elements of your platforming and made a timed challenge around it" to perhaps the most brutally difficult mine cart mini-game out there. The world record speedrun finishes the mine cart course with one second to spare compared to the MINIMUM requirement to beat it. It has to be entirely learned via muscle memory, and doing it unlocks the hints for how to find the bosses... but you're not TOLD that these will unlock hints, these are just weird items in a mini-game that might or might not affect the mini-game itself for all you know! It is a backbreaking challenge of perfection, and a solid 15% of my 13-hour playthrough was just learning this mine cart game. Also you have to do it twice, and the second time is faster so it messes with your muscle memory. It's awful... I kind of love that it exists. Y'know those challenges that you hate going through, but want to see other people suffer through them? It's one of those.
The final bit I want to touch on is that this game is fully voice acted. Every single line of dialogue has voice acting that ranges from "we got a guy in the office to record these lines with no emotion whatsoever" to "actually these voice actors are making some fun choices". It is cheesy, it is endearing... it is WEIRD going from some legitimate vocal performances to some of the goofiest voices you will ever hear. All of these have very little proper direction, with some lines being perfectly delivered for their scene and others sounded like they were recorded in a vacuum just GUESSING where the line will show up. There is also an outtake left in the game where the voice actor is re-clarifying his accent and taking the line a second time. It is very funny, it is VERY endearing.
Tomba 2 is a game that only plays like Tomba 2. It is a clunky, unrefined mess that does everything it can make its good ideas try to stop being fun. But damn it, it has a LOT of ideas, like, ALL the time. It is a fascinating game where something is happening, and usually it's pretty mediocre, but there's so many things happening with so much awkward delivery that it becomes charming. Plus the international soundtrack is incredibly catchy and well-suited to its environments. Tomba 2 is a game of vibes. I don't know what those vibes are, but I want you to try them, because I want to see how you react to them.
Platformer with aesthetics of japanese shonen in a semi-open world filled with lots of side-quests.
Tomba! 2 is a nice platformer supported by an inventory-system with lots of items to interact with. Its world is colorful and filled with pesky pigs, talkative NPCs and small secrets here and there. It's fun to play and explore, but it still has its fair share of problems.
The great part about this game is world exploration and completing side-quests. It's not a true open world like TES or Assassin's Creed, but it offered something close to it on the 5th Gen console with its number of interconnected locations. There are 6 locations in total with distinguished themes/biomes. And being first and foremost a platformer, the game offers enough opportunities to jump, glide, swing and swim. Each location is filled with residents eager to speak, offer a quest or even give a useful item. The said quests entice you to explore the world to find its secrets. Sometimes these quests work like a puzzle - you need to figure out what to do in order to complete them. Sometimes the goal of the quest can be found in a completely different location, but fortunately the game offers plenty of ways to travel the world via expendable and permanent solutions. So it's really interesting to traverse the world, explore its themes and find solutions to the side-quests.
But unfortunately some of the quests rely on dumb luck to complete them. The infamous one being the very last side-quest. Without any spoilers I can only say that you need to make a leap of faith in one specific point without any hint when it was previously established that doing so in any other point of that location leads to instant death. BS if you ask me.
The inventory of the game can be filled with dozens of items used to either aid in exploration or complete a quest. Unfortunately it has its weak part - the equipment. There are lots of useful items you can activate to get any kind of effect, but as for the equipment you just stick to one costume for 85% of the time, the other 15% including time before you get that one costume and time when you are required to wear a different costume to progress further. There is just no benefit in switching costumes other than to do a quest. Same with different weapons. Speaking of which...
The battle system is a bit disappointing. The main way to beat the enemies is to jump on them to grab them and throw them somewhere far away. Additionally you have a weapon that can stun the enemy to make it easier to jump on them. There are lots of different weapons but the thing is that at their core they work the same - stun the enemy (mostly evil pigs). A few weapons have a gimmick to help you in exploration of the world like freezing or setting on fire, but as for dealing with the pigs - you can just stick to one weapon that can be utilized most of the time. And it's not reassuring when most of the secret weapons, which are part of the end-game quest rewards, are completely side-lined in favor of that one weapon that can just help you to travel. Because in the end they are all the same. By the way, the end-game...
As it's fun to complete the side-quests, it's not so fun to see what's at the end of that line. Completion of all the side-quests doesn't change the final act of the game. The aforementioned reward-weapons are mostly useless and the final top-secret reward for one of the most mysterious lines of side-quests just grants you invulnerability. The only reward for the player is the second part of the final cutscene. And don't forget that aforementioned infamous last side-quest. It's like the devs didn't really want you to see that 100% completion. And to add to the frustration, the boss battles are... meh. You can see these boss-arenas where you are supposed to run, jump, swing. And you don't use it. You just stand where you've spawned, wait for the boss to approach and deal with it just like with any other mob: jump on it and throw. Finding the boss-arenas is more interesting than fighting said bosses.
The graphics are colorful. Each location is distinct and their inhabitants clearly belong there. The art design is simply masterful. Overall it really gives off that shonen anime aesthetic like the original Dragon Ball. Maybe because of that I really wanted to replay the game in japanese.
As for the music... it's a bit complicated. When I first played the game 20+ years ago it was the international version. The music for the international version was composed by Ashif Hakik. His music really supports each location having that specific sound associated with the theme, and the contrast between depressing cursed and happy purified location is staggering. As for the original japanese version, the music was composed by Shiina Ozawa. And it is mostly generic upbeat music with a bit of a connection to the theme of the location. Even the difference between the cursed and purified version is barely noticeable - switch them and you won't know the difference. So it disappoints me a bit that the og music is on a worse side than the international one. But I'm grateful to Mr. Hakik for such an enhancement of one of my favorite childhood games.
Overall this is a great game even with serious flaws. Back when I was a kid I couldn't finish the game 100% 20+ years ago (curse you, last side-quest!!). And when I finally did it many years later, I didn't feel frustration and disappointment. For me that adventure mattered, that world mattered, and I was ready to overlook all the flaws, because I still enjoyed the adventure and the exploration. And I can call Tomba 2 one of the best if not the best games of my childhood.
Tomba! 2 is a nice platformer supported by an inventory-system with lots of items to interact with. Its world is colorful and filled with pesky pigs, talkative NPCs and small secrets here and there. It's fun to play and explore, but it still has its fair share of problems.
The great part about this game is world exploration and completing side-quests. It's not a true open world like TES or Assassin's Creed, but it offered something close to it on the 5th Gen console with its number of interconnected locations. There are 6 locations in total with distinguished themes/biomes. And being first and foremost a platformer, the game offers enough opportunities to jump, glide, swing and swim. Each location is filled with residents eager to speak, offer a quest or even give a useful item. The said quests entice you to explore the world to find its secrets. Sometimes these quests work like a puzzle - you need to figure out what to do in order to complete them. Sometimes the goal of the quest can be found in a completely different location, but fortunately the game offers plenty of ways to travel the world via expendable and permanent solutions. So it's really interesting to traverse the world, explore its themes and find solutions to the side-quests.
But unfortunately some of the quests rely on dumb luck to complete them. The infamous one being the very last side-quest. Without any spoilers I can only say that you need to make a leap of faith in one specific point without any hint when it was previously established that doing so in any other point of that location leads to instant death. BS if you ask me.
The inventory of the game can be filled with dozens of items used to either aid in exploration or complete a quest. Unfortunately it has its weak part - the equipment. There are lots of useful items you can activate to get any kind of effect, but as for the equipment you just stick to one costume for 85% of the time, the other 15% including time before you get that one costume and time when you are required to wear a different costume to progress further. There is just no benefit in switching costumes other than to do a quest. Same with different weapons. Speaking of which...
The battle system is a bit disappointing. The main way to beat the enemies is to jump on them to grab them and throw them somewhere far away. Additionally you have a weapon that can stun the enemy to make it easier to jump on them. There are lots of different weapons but the thing is that at their core they work the same - stun the enemy (mostly evil pigs). A few weapons have a gimmick to help you in exploration of the world like freezing or setting on fire, but as for dealing with the pigs - you can just stick to one weapon that can be utilized most of the time. And it's not reassuring when most of the secret weapons, which are part of the end-game quest rewards, are completely side-lined in favor of that one weapon that can just help you to travel. Because in the end they are all the same. By the way, the end-game...
As it's fun to complete the side-quests, it's not so fun to see what's at the end of that line. Completion of all the side-quests doesn't change the final act of the game. The aforementioned reward-weapons are mostly useless and the final top-secret reward for one of the most mysterious lines of side-quests just grants you invulnerability. The only reward for the player is the second part of the final cutscene. And don't forget that aforementioned infamous last side-quest. It's like the devs didn't really want you to see that 100% completion. And to add to the frustration, the boss battles are... meh. You can see these boss-arenas where you are supposed to run, jump, swing. And you don't use it. You just stand where you've spawned, wait for the boss to approach and deal with it just like with any other mob: jump on it and throw. Finding the boss-arenas is more interesting than fighting said bosses.
The graphics are colorful. Each location is distinct and their inhabitants clearly belong there. The art design is simply masterful. Overall it really gives off that shonen anime aesthetic like the original Dragon Ball. Maybe because of that I really wanted to replay the game in japanese.
As for the music... it's a bit complicated. When I first played the game 20+ years ago it was the international version. The music for the international version was composed by Ashif Hakik. His music really supports each location having that specific sound associated with the theme, and the contrast between depressing cursed and happy purified location is staggering. As for the original japanese version, the music was composed by Shiina Ozawa. And it is mostly generic upbeat music with a bit of a connection to the theme of the location. Even the difference between the cursed and purified version is barely noticeable - switch them and you won't know the difference. So it disappoints me a bit that the og music is on a worse side than the international one. But I'm grateful to Mr. Hakik for such an enhancement of one of my favorite childhood games.
Overall this is a great game even with serious flaws. Back when I was a kid I couldn't finish the game 100% 20+ years ago (curse you, last side-quest!!). And when I finally did it many years later, I didn't feel frustration and disappointment. For me that adventure mattered, that world mattered, and I was ready to overlook all the flaws, because I still enjoyed the adventure and the exploration. And I can call Tomba 2 one of the best if not the best games of my childhood.
100% Complete, 133+4 Events.
my first game and the game that defined my childhood :)
Fun platformer game that is honestly super ambitious for a PS1 game but ends up falling short in many aspects. The quest system in this game is quite novel for a platformer game, and it's fully-voiced acted dialogue it ends up really charming. However, most of the quests end up feeling more like busy work rather than engaging gameplay. You never get any real meaningful rewards to do any of these quests aside for the sake of 100% completion. Fortunately, these quests are largely optional so its not too much of a hamper on this game's quality. However a big issue with this game ends up being its controls. The controls are honestly terrible. Everything feels like molasses and Tomba has the floatiest jump I've ever seen from a 3D platformer. The main method of attacking enemies is by grabbing them and throwing them. But often times the hitboxes are a little hard to decipher so you end up taking contact damage with them instead of grabbing them. Fortunately, the floaty jump ends up working in Tomba's favor and does mitigate this issue a bit. Furthermore, there's just several systems in this game, like the costumes, that feel too clunky and unpolished. I feel like if this game released on the PS2 with better controls and more polish it would be remembered as one of the greatest platforms of all time. It especially fumbles by the end by having a "Chozo artifact hunt" where you have to traverse the entire game and find specific pig doors with no indication where to find them which completely bogged down my experience by the end. I wouldn't say this is a bad game per say; it's just one that you have to stomach its bad qualities so that you see its hidden quality unsurfaces.
This is a 2.5D sidescroller but much more in a "3D game that makes use of 2D planes" than a "2D game that has 3D graphics". I love any game that has a physics-based grappling hook, and I like the way this game does towns. Everything about it is pretty novel.