Patapon 1+2 Replay

Genre: Compilation / Music-Rhythm / Real-Time Strategy

Players: 1-4 Co-Op (Local Wireless)

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Review:

As Sony and Microsoft continue to dip their toe in the waters of multiplatform publishing, we’re starting to see more games that would have once been first-party exclusives spread out to other platforms. Sony has been releasing MLB The Show on Nintendo Switch for years now, but that could be dismissed as a contractual obligation to MLB. In 2024, Nintendo Switch received LEGO Horizon Adventures, but this could have just been due to it being a crossover with the LEGO brand. Now, with the release of Patapon 1+2 Replay (albeit under publisher Bandai Namco), it seems like Sony is inching even further into releasing its hold on its exclusive games.

To be fair, this is a pair of old exclusives – Patapon was originally released on PlayStation Portable in 2008, with its sequel releasing on PlayStation Portable in 2009. These games were subsequently re-released on PlayStation 4 in 2017 and 2020, respectively, but otherwise, Sony hasn’t exactly pushed this as a major franchise. It’s a shame too, because this was arguably one of the signature franchises of the PlayStation Portable, back at a time when many may have been tempted to feel that Sony’s handheld was just getting lesser iterations of their mainline franchises.

Releasing in 2025 together in this remastered “Replay” bundle on PC, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch, this will be the first opportunity to play these games for many players who never owned a PlayStation Portable and missed the PlayStation 4 releases. And it’s an opportunity that many players will find well worth taking, as there’s nothing quite like the Patapon games, which are an odd combination of Music-Rhythm and… I guess Real-Time Strategy? With RPG elements?

Patapon has players taking the role of a god to the titular patapons, a group of abstract little tribal people that look like stick figures whose body is a giant eyeball. Players will command their growing party of patapons indirectly through the use of four war drums assigned to the four face buttons on your gamepad, upon which they play various beats to instruct them whether to advance, attack, defend, retreat, and so on.

Rather than these commands being tied to a single button press, they correspond to specific beat patterns – for example, advance is Y-Y-Y-A (“pata pata pata pon”) while attack is A-A-Y-A (“pon pon pata pon”). Players are directed to press these buttons in time with a beat, and then pause to give the patapons an equal amount of time to carry out the command before inputting the next command. Press the wrong button, mistime a beat, or miss an input, and you lose your combo chain, leading to reduced results.

This release of the game gives players assistance in a few different ways – there’s now a flashing screen border indicating the timing of button presses, and you can choose to have the different beat patterns displayed at the bottom of the screen in case you forget them. And you will forget them – as the game progresses, you’ll get more and more patterns added to your repertoire, and part of these games’ challenge is remembering which beat you need to send out the command you want, and to do it before your time elapses. It’s a pretty unique challenge for Music-Rhythm games, which usually just tell you what beats to input and the challenge is in carrying out those commands with proper timing.

You’ll be able to fill your raiding party with multiple different unit types, and as you progress you’ll gain materials and equipment to outfit your party with better weapons and armor, and you may find yourself grinding to improve your party every now and then.

This leads to one of my complaints about these games – it’s not always clear what is tactically the best choice here. It takes time to figure out the ideal way to do just about anything here – your party’s arrangement, when to attack and when to defend, how to tell when enemies are in range and when you should be advancing instead of attacking, that sorta’ thing.

I should note that while Patapon 2 adds new units and a few other additional features, the gameplay remains much the same here as the first game, making this feel like a continuation rather than a transformative sequel. And at some point here, I should also mention that this Compilation conspicuously lacks Patapon 3, originally released on PlayStation Portable in 2011, an inexplicable and disappointing omission.

On the other hand, this is a pretty good, if modest, remaster of these games. The somewhat abstract and simple visuals of the original have been cleaned up here to look great on modern displays, and the adorable indecipherable voices of the patapons and the catchy war beats all sound great here. There are also new features like the ability to select your difficulty and the aforementioned helpful features when trying to input beats. And surprisingly, the Nintendo Switch version of the game gets one major feature that’s lacking in both the PC and PlayStation 5 versions of the game with its local wireless 4-player co-op.

Overall, I do still think the Patapon games have their flaws, and this collection is lacking a few things that could have made it even better (like Patapon 3), but overall Patapon 1+2 Replay is a good remaster of two classic games that are really unique even to this day. If you’ve played the Patapon games before and want to revisit them, they’re in fine form here, and if you’ve never played them, this is a great time to try them for the first time. In either case, this is a solid addition to the Nintendo Switch game library.

tl;dr – Patapon 1+2 Replay is a solid remaster of two classic PlayStation Portable games that blend Music-Rhythm gameplay with Real-Time Strategy and some RPG elements. While both the games and the collection have their issues, this is overall well worth a look both for those who’ve never played these games and for those looking to replay them again, and the Nintendo Switch version even has exclusive local wireless multiplayer. Overall this is a good Compilation worth checking out.

Grade: B

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