Patapon, features, reviews, gameplay at discountedgame

Developer(s): Pyramid / Japan Studios


Publisher(s): Sony Computer Entertainment
Platform(s): PlayStation Portable
Release date: December 20, 2007 February 22, 2008 February 26, 2008 February 28, 2008
Genre(s): Rhythm game, Real-time tactics, God game
Mode(s): Single-player
Rating(s): CERO: APEGI: 3+ESRB: EveryoneOFLC: General
Media: UMD
System requirements: 3.73



Patapon (パタポン, Patapon) is a genre-straddling video game published for the PlayStation Portable (PSP) handheld game console combining gameplay features of music and rhythm games, real-time tactics and God games. Presented in a cartoonish, silhouetted two-dimensional environment designed by Rolito, the player plays as an immaterial deity who commands an army of caricature tribal miniature creatures by beating traditional talking drums. The game was developed by Pyramid and produced by Japan Studios, the same studio that developed and produced Loco Roco.

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Gameplay


The player controls a tribe consisting of infantry, ranged troops and cavalry. Initially, the player's warband (army) consists of only a few basic spearmen named Yaripon but as the game progresses more units, greater warriors and more powerful weapons can be obtained. The army is commanded by beating rhythm combos on four different talking drums each mapped to one of the PSP's four control buttons ('Pata', 'Pon', 'Chaka' and 'Don' to Square, Circle, Triangle and X respectively). Different combos tells the player's group of Patapons to do various things such as advance, attack, and defend. Keeping the rhythm going and not missing a beat builds a frenzy in the army which increases attack speed, power and general progress.
The game and story is unfolded through a number of missions of increasing difficulty. As the player progresses, new opponents are introduced and more drum rhythms are unlocked. Between missions, new troops can be spawned by spending currency called ka-ching and combining various resource items to create stronger Patapon troops. Throughout the game a player can also edit troop formations and acquire new weapons to equip their Patapon.

Story
The Patapon were a flourishing people until they were defeated by the evil Zigoton tribe. The player takes the role of their god and uses sacred war drums to direct the Patapon tribe to take back their land. As the story progresses, the Patapon also embark on a journey to Earthend to look upon "IT," a sacred object whose appearance and purpose is unknown to the tribe.


The enemy of the Patapon tribe is the evil Zigoton Empire, a powerful tribe of circular creatures with red irises (as opposed to the white-irised Patapon) that have oppressed the Patapon since their fall from power. After fighting various battles against the Zigotons, guardian creatures such as dragons and giant worms, and the ultimate evil known as Gorl, the Patapon come to Earthend (the ocean) and see the rising sun, which they assume to be "IT".


However, unfulfilled by the anticlimactic end of their journey, they come to the conclusion that "IT" is, in fact, not the sun and to realize their destiny they must cross the ocean and continue their quest. The final scene shows the Patapon and Zigoton tribes working together to build an ark to cross the ocean.

Units
There are various types of Patapon that can be integrated into the player's army that are unlocked throughout the course of the game. While there are 6 unit types in the game, only 3 squads, each comprised of a single unit type, can be included in an army at any given time. This makes unit selection and formation a key strategy aspect of the game.

The Zigoton army is a direct parallel to the Patapon army and are named in an identical fashion, e.g. a Zigoton Kibapon is called a Kibaton.


Hatapon - This Patapon is the first one available to the game, and functions to hold the army together. Holds high the Patapon banner. His death results in mission failure. Hata (旗) means "flag" in Japanese.


Yaripon - Spear-Throwing Patapon. This is the initial unit type given to the player to control, and is useful for both hunting and fighting. Their fever attack is a jumping spear throw that greatly increases the distance of the projectile while avoiding many enemy attacks. A Yaripon squad consists of 6 Yaripon. Yari (槍) means "spear" in Japanese.


Tatepon - Axe-Wielding Patapon. These Patapon are equipped with axes and shields and are primarily melee fighters. They are useless while hunting, as their attack range is negligible at best and scares off prey. Tatepons are arguably the best defense Patapon units, as their shields can protect the entire army from projectile attack. While in fever mode, their shields increase in size and provide better protection. A Tatepon squad consists of 6 Tatepon. Tate (盾) means "shield" in Japanese.


Yumipon - Archer Patapon. These Patapon have the largest attack range in the game and are always placed in back of any army. While they are extremely effective and can rain down arrows on enemies from afar, they are vulnerable to fire. While in fever mode, they shoot three arrows every attack instead of one. A Yumipon squad consists of 6 Yumipon. Yumi (弓) means "bow" in Japanese.


Kibapon - Cavalry Patapon. Equipped with horses and halberds, Kibapons deal heavy damage and knock back enemy troops. While relatively useless normally, they become faster and push back enemies with great power when in fever mode. They should only be used by a skilled player. A Kibapon Squad consists of 3 Kibapon. Kiba (騎馬) means "horse-rider" in Japanese
Dekapon - Mace-Wielding Patapon. These monstrous brutes are extremely large and bulky, and as a result do massive damage to their targets. Unfortunately, Dekapons are extremely slow, which tempers their awesome might. While in fever mode, Dekapon have a ground pound attack that stuns enemies. A Dekapon squad consists of 3 Dekapon. Dekai (でかい) means "gargantuan" in Japanese.


Megapon - Horn Playing Patapon. Megapons are by far the oddest unit in the game. They are taller than most other Patapons, and carry around massive horns. To attack, they play their horns and the sound waves that are projected take on physical form, flying at the enemy and causing damage. Megapons have a variety of attacks, but the two most utilized are a standard wave of 3 blue notes that bounce off of and around the enemy, causing ricochet damage, and a massive red note only used during fever mode that hits multiple times causing massive damage. A Megapon squad consists of 3 Megapon. Their name may be based on 'megaphone'.







Upgradeable Units - During the 'birthing' phase at the Tree of Life, players can use different combinations of 'ka-ching' and raw materials they gathered during individual hunting missions, mini-games, and other means. Higher quality or rare ingredients coupled with higher 'ka-ching' costs results in higher quality base units. An example would be pairing 'succulent' meat along with 'cherry blossom' instead of 'standard' meat and 'wood branch'. This is not discussed, nor combinations given in the included game manual, but players can experiment for discovery.

Playable Demo
On January 25, 2008. a playable demo was announced by the Patapon's associate producer Chris Hinojosa-Miranda via the official PlayStation blog. He revealed that the demo would be available for those who pre-ordered a copy of Patapon through GameStop. It has since been released as a downloadable demo for those in Europe and North America through the PlayStation Store. Progress made in the demo version of Patapon (including the acquiring of a special demo-only weapon, The Spear of Protection) is transferable to the full retail release so players can resume progress from where they left off in the demo.
Critical reception
Reviews

1UP.com : A
GameSpot : 9.0
IGN : 9.2



IGN (rated the game a 9.2) considers Patapon, "not only one of the best rhythm games ever released, it's also one of the best titles for the PSP." GameSpot gave Patapon a 9.0/10 citing its excellent art design and innovative gameplay. 1UP.com gave the game an A, noting its understated strategic depth despite the game's faults. Metacritic shows an overall rating of 87 out of 100.

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PataponFrom Sony Computer Entertainment
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Product Description
Featuring more than 20 missions in a variety of environments such as swamps, volcanos, gorges and deserts, players will outfit a Patapon army, collect resources, and grow their tribe into a devastating fighting force. Patapon presents a variety of warrior types, along with a wide selection of weapon and shield upgrades, that players will use to strategically customize and position their army as they progress through the funky adventure. Players will easily get caught up in the addictive action by collecting rare weapons and items as the adventure unfolds, and by earning more points to upgrade to new Patapons. Additionally, Patapon features five unique music-based mini-games to earn additional upgrades for the Patapon army. With vibrant character designs by popular French graphic artist, Rolito, Patapon introduces a unique, 2D art style incorporating abstract shapes, colorful environments, and larger-than-life boss enemies. STORYLINE For years the Patapon tribe has lived in the desolate frontier, driven from their home by the evil Zigoton army. Behind the Patapons' cute exterior, lies a fierce warrior spirit that can only be commanded by the beat of their God's war drum. They wait for the day that the "Almighty" will return, to lead them against their enemies and bring them back to their homeland. Finally, their wait has come to an end as the drums of war are heard once again.
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Product Details
Amazon Sales Rank: #200 in Computer & Video Games
Brand: Sony
Model: 98711
Released on: 2008-02-27
ESRB Rating: Everyone
Platform: Sony PSP
Dimensions: 2.00 pounds
Features
Simple Commands, Deep Gameplay
Fight, Explore and Hunt
Strategy and Customization
5 Musical Mini-games
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Enter the world of the Patapons, a small, yet brave noble tribe. Behind the Patapons' cute exterior, lies a fierce warrior spirit that can only be commanded by the beat of your war drum. For years the Patapon tribe has lived in the desolate frontier, driven from their home by the evil Zigoton army. The Patapons wait for the day that the "rhythm god" will return, to bring them back to their homeland, to defeat their enemies and to lead them to the edge of their world. Finally, their wait has come to an end. Lead a small lost tribe to the edge of their world with the beat of your war drum and grow them into an army of warriors. Using simple drum beats, command your tribe to march, attack, and defend themselves against fierce beasts, gigantic monsters, and the evil Zigoton army. Watch as your tribe grows in strength and numbers as they progress through this adventure. Unlock a variety of warrior types from infantry to cavalry, archers to spear-men and maximize them for battle with a variety of weapon and shield upgrades.
Features:
With the beat of your war drum, lead a tribal army into large scale battles
March the Patapons through thirty different environments where monsters and enemy forces lay awaiting to attack
Collect over one hundred weapons and items and build an army with different warrior types
Additional mini-games pair graphic style and tribal music

Customer Reviews

Patapon - the good and the bad

First of all, this is a must play. It seems as more and more developers weigh into the gaming industry, ironically, it becomes more and more rare for one of them to bring something new to the table. Sony, as per usual, comes out of left field with this gem. Part rythm, part puzzle, part rpg, Patapon mashes together bits and pieces of several genres. It's a shallow dash of each, but it's there, and it works. The design is simplistic and flat, but it's beautiful. Nothing seems out of place in this world. If you've read other reviews you probably know the premice of the gmaes . You build an army of little cyclopian soldiers of various jobs and abilities and march them through their enemies to the promised land.

You create your armies from the ground up by combining various materials you get from mini games and missions. The creation screen will place the default ingredients (two for each type of patapon.) but you can replace these with higher quality items you've found to make more powerful Rarepons. You'll also get better equipment to outfit your armies in while on your missions.

Patapons are controlled by using an 8 beat rythm using a combination of the Cirle, Triangle, Square, and X buttons. You play four beats, the patapons sing their reply for four beats and so on. The catch is there's a tempo you have to follow, your button presses must match with the beat flashing around the border of the screen. Keep up well enough and/or hit a high enough combo and they'll enter fever mode. Fever greatly increases the Patapons attributes. Miss a beat though and you're back to normal Patapons until you can pick it up again via combos. It can be difficult at first but you'll find yourself intuitively stringing the various command beats together and watching your patapons follow your directions flawlessly.

The beats are simple but very catchy, you'll find yourself randomly Pata-pata-pata-poning in your head. It has a nice system of combining various materials to make various kinds and shapes of patapons. The story is simple but you find yourself really caring about leading these little eyeballs to their promise land. Lastly it's truly a rewarding site when your little army enters Fever mode and volleys barrages of spears and arrows at your enemy and your warriors crush through the front lines toppling towers and buildings alike. All while singing in unision your praises. This isn't a perfect game though. There's hardly any tutorial, I'm not sure if they just wanted to invoke a trial and error element to the game or if they were just too lazy to flesh out all the mechanics. For instance, say you pick up a really quality piece of meat and some rare metal (required to make the warrior type patapons) and you want to use them to make a Rarepon. That's all well and good if you don't have a full regiment of warrior Patepons. If you do though, it will simply tell you that you can't make any more of that type.

Now there are bosses that will eat your Patapons rendering them irrevivable, but trying to strategically get a boss to eat the right Patapon and ONLY the right Patapons would be an exercise in catastrophe, and a large chunk of wasted time. I had to skim through a walkthrough on the internet to find out how to delete unwanted Patapons so I could create better ones. You have to go to the item equip screen, to get there you have to select a mission to go on first. Then you have to press Triangle over the correct regiment, highlight the patapon you don't want. Now you'd think that there would be an option to "Retire" the Patapon or even "Kill" Patapon... No, the button you have to press is Select, conveniently labeled "Quit". Silly me, not realizing that Quit meant get rid of highlighted Patapon. Instead I assumed that Quit meant Quit the game, or Quit the item selection phase... Another issue is the items that enemies drop. Most of it is completely useless after you've started making Rarepons as you don't use the generic meats, wood, and stones anymore. Rarely do any gear or weapons drop. When they do, they're only there for a short amount of time before they dissappear, and not into your inventory, they're gone for good. So say a nice weapon drops, but when you killed the enemy he bounced back puting him behind the rest of his soldiers. You better hope that they fall back or you kill them all quick otherwise you can just wave goodbye.

If a boss drops an item behind him when he dies and the mission says complete before you walk over it, you lose it as well. You can watch your happy little eyeballs parade by shiny loot and heaps of cash without any one of them picking it up. The mini gmaes are fun but the items you receive from them can become outdated very fast if your bolstering your ranks with Rarepons rendering said games pointless. On top of that, while they're fun the first couple times,each gmaes is the same thing every time.

It's a "song" that you have to mimic or play along with and it's the same song with the same beat and you just do the same thing every time. I can literaly listen to the mini gmaes at this point and complete them without looking at the screen. There's also alot of repetition. You need to go back and do the same farming runs through the same stages several time to gather materials (you'll rarely get the ones you need) and money to make troops. Most farming missions yield around 200-250 Ka-ching! (money) and each of the 2nd best Rarepons cost 1k to 1.5k to make. That's 200-250 Ka-ching! if no monsters block you from being able to pick up the coin dropped by their dead counterparts. The last thing isn't really the gmaes fault, it can just be frustrating. This game requires alot of concentration and if the TV's on or your significant other or a friend is trying to talk to you or the phone rings you'll find yourself getting off beat and losing Fever ALOT. Yeah, there's no pause either.

Once you start a mission you need to finish it, quit, or die to stop it. Even when I'm alone I generally play with headphones as the PSP speakers don't carry the drum beat all that well all the time, plus it cuts down on the distractions. Personally I have a nice pair of Skullcandy Hesh that I use. They have great sound, they're comfortable, and they block out alot of the outside noise even if you don't have them cranked. In closing, this is a gmaes that you don't want to miss out on. It's at a bargain bin price right now, and you don't find anything this original very often. Yes, it has it's issues but what game doesn't? The good far outweighs the bad.

Get out of my head, Charles!

So - I forgot to order a memory stick duo to store save games for my PSP. This means that the only way to "save" until it gets here is to use the PSP's sleep function (effectively keeping me stuck on one gmaes ). Lucky for me, Patapon is so catchy I probably wouldn't have started playing Crisis Core by now anyway! This gmaes is not for everyone - people with extremely poor rhythm, or people who are turned off by simplistic, cutesy graphics (I get made fun of by some of my buddies in Iraq for playing what amounts to a Java gmaes on a 200-dollar handheld system, heh) probably won't like Patapon. Other people that get a kick out of the idea of leading your own tribe against an evil empire using talking drums (people who like "kooky" gmaes ) will absolutely adore Patapon. I, for one, can't get the "Bon BonBon" song out of my head. 5 out of 5 stars.

Most American developers probably wouldn't take a risk on a gmaes concept like this - that's why I really like Japanese gmaes developers. They'll take an idea and just run with it.

Patapon rocks!

Over the years, I have played both strategy gmaes and rhythm gmaes . In Patapon, I get to play both genres in one and strangely enough it works! You are the mighty god of rhythm to a struggling band of Patapon warriors who were displaced from their homeland by the evil Zigoton. You lead the Patapons in the battle to reclaim their territory by pressing the PSP buttons in a rhythmical pattern that simulates drum beats.

Different drum cadences inspire the Patapon to advance, fight, defend or retreat. Each time your Patapons accomplish a mission they earn rewards such as weapons, armor and various raw materials that can be used to create upgraded Patapons with stronger attributes. You can even learn powerful Juju rhythms that will perform miracles such as calling up rain or windstorms that aid you in battle. My only quibble with the game is that the tutorials are very skimpy. You can get some advice from the tribal priestess, Meden, but like most oracles her hints are somewhat cryptic, leaving you on your own to puzzle out what to do, especially for things like how to dismiss your old Patapons in order to swap in their upgraded counterparts.

I suppose you could always read the game manual but honestly, who ever takes the time to do that, really? Patapon is very enjoyable and worth playing. I definitely recommend it but be forewarned the drumbeat rhythms are somewhat addictive. After a long session, it will take a while to clear the Pata Pata Pata PON and Don Dodon Dodon out of your head.


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