I must start this review explaining what I did this time. I've played the entire trilogy a huge number of times, so many I've lost my count. To spice it up, I tried beating the game only with normal patapons (no rarepons) as they are the weakest of them all.
Now, some of the stuff I will say might sound harsh, but in the end this is still my favorite game series of all time so there's that.
First of all, this is the first time I revisit P2 in a while, as I enjoy the first and third games way more, contrary to the popular opinion, here's why:
There are two core gameplay mechanics as to how the patapons themselves are present: squads and the hero. Both of these aspects are present in P2, however I find them to be lacking. P1 is way better at doing the squads, because every single one of them will count towards your victory, unlike in P2 where they are usually quite weak in comparison to your hero so they end up getting carried most of the time unless you get some of the best rarepons at high levels which is not feasible in a regular playthrough.
As for the hero mechanic, P2 introduced him so it's natural for it to be a bit unbalanced, but it's so much so that if you're in a boss fight with a permadeath attack you will be severely crippled if your hero dies. All of the songs you can input except for the march forward will activate the hero mode, which is not that much of an issue in normal or hard mode, but it still can become quite dangerous if you, let's say, want to jump to avoid an attack but do the combo perfectly, activating the hero mode animation and thus getting your hero killed. This is especially bad with the last boss which has quite a tricky timing. P3 is better at the hero mechanic because it's way more balanced, has more classes to choose from and even if your hero dies, you still have the summon to revive him and your other patapons aren't completely helpless without him.
As for the story, it's not good at all except for the parts where a certain character from the first game is involved (and for good reason, they're the best character in the series), and the last few missions where they explain a fair bit of who the patapons were. The rest of the story is almost a copy paste of the first game, except that it has no weight to it because the karmens don't have any personality to them whatsoever except for "i hate the patapons and i will kill them", unlike the zigotons who did have a reason for doing what they did. Not even the named characters from the karmens did anything remotely interesting.
The next thing is the rarepon tree. In this game there are 17 rarepons in total, but only a few of them are any good, and the ones you do want to get are the ones at the end of the tree, and they need a good amount of the rarest materials each to become as good as they can get. And that's only for a single pon, multiply that by the entire army and it will become a slog to farm for all those materials, even for a team made for grinding. In P1 you only need two mats per pon, which is not that slow or hard to come by, and in P3 you only need to level up certain classes to unlock the next. In short, P2's system kinda sucks.
The great aspects of P2, however, are the new bosses, scenarios and the music. But that's just a normal thing for a patapon game. It did get more new bosses than P3 though, which is a plus to me.
Overall, while I still love this game and it's still a big part of my life, I don't understand at all why a lot of the fanbase is so in love with it and say it's the best that the series can offer when it's clearly not. Patapon 1 and 3 are better than 2 depending on whether you want to play with the classic old squad mechanic or with heroes and multiplayer.
Now, some of the stuff I will say might sound harsh, but in the end this is still my favorite game series of all time so there's that.
First of all, this is the first time I revisit P2 in a while, as I enjoy the first and third games way more, contrary to the popular opinion, here's why:
There are two core gameplay mechanics as to how the patapons themselves are present: squads and the hero. Both of these aspects are present in P2, however I find them to be lacking. P1 is way better at doing the squads, because every single one of them will count towards your victory, unlike in P2 where they are usually quite weak in comparison to your hero so they end up getting carried most of the time unless you get some of the best rarepons at high levels which is not feasible in a regular playthrough.
As for the hero mechanic, P2 introduced him so it's natural for it to be a bit unbalanced, but it's so much so that if you're in a boss fight with a permadeath attack you will be severely crippled if your hero dies. All of the songs you can input except for the march forward will activate the hero mode, which is not that much of an issue in normal or hard mode, but it still can become quite dangerous if you, let's say, want to jump to avoid an attack but do the combo perfectly, activating the hero mode animation and thus getting your hero killed. This is especially bad with the last boss which has quite a tricky timing. P3 is better at the hero mechanic because it's way more balanced, has more classes to choose from and even if your hero dies, you still have the summon to revive him and your other patapons aren't completely helpless without him.
As for the story, it's not good at all except for the parts where a certain character from the first game is involved (and for good reason, they're the best character in the series), and the last few missions where they explain a fair bit of who the patapons were. The rest of the story is almost a copy paste of the first game, except that it has no weight to it because the karmens don't have any personality to them whatsoever except for "i hate the patapons and i will kill them", unlike the zigotons who did have a reason for doing what they did. Not even the named characters from the karmens did anything remotely interesting.
The next thing is the rarepon tree. In this game there are 17 rarepons in total, but only a few of them are any good, and the ones you do want to get are the ones at the end of the tree, and they need a good amount of the rarest materials each to become as good as they can get. And that's only for a single pon, multiply that by the entire army and it will become a slog to farm for all those materials, even for a team made for grinding. In P1 you only need two mats per pon, which is not that slow or hard to come by, and in P3 you only need to level up certain classes to unlock the next. In short, P2's system kinda sucks.
The great aspects of P2, however, are the new bosses, scenarios and the music. But that's just a normal thing for a patapon game. It did get more new bosses than P3 though, which is a plus to me.
Overall, while I still love this game and it's still a big part of my life, I don't understand at all why a lot of the fanbase is so in love with it and say it's the best that the series can offer when it's clearly not. Patapon 1 and 3 are better than 2 depending on whether you want to play with the classic old squad mechanic or with heroes and multiplayer.
cisco
2 months ago