| Title | Patapon 3 strikes out |
| Author | Tom Chick |
| Posted in | Game reviews |
| When | April 15, 2011 |
Patapon used to groove. Now it just sort of generically rocks out. Thumbs down..
Read the full articleSay it ain't so...
Well, the first two were so good that I guess I will not heed your warning and purchase it anyways.
So there.
The good news is that Patapon 2 is still as good as ever!
I trust you implicitly when it comes to Patapon, but is the game as bad as you make it out to be or are you mostly put off by the 'style'.
Something about a tighter/focused version of the game appeals to me and I have zero interest in multiplayer (and my son loves (loves)) the first two) .. so I'm torn about whether I should pick it up or not.
I would really like to say thank you a whole lot for your job you have made in writing this posting. I am hoping the same effective work by you down the road as well.
Bastage, I'd say it's exactly as bad as I make it sound. :) But I'd encourage you to read other reviews. You might actually like the more focused, hands-on gameplay style. It's occasionally pretty nifty, but I wish it was in a better game that was truer to the spirit of the previous Patapons.
Gah. I love Patapon dearly, and Patapon 3 was probably going to be my last ever PSP game. I guess that honour will now have to go to, um, Patapon 2. One thing though - I'm pretty sure Eurogamer's review said that the timing was much less forgiving than 2, whereas you say the opposite. Any chance this is a Europe/US code difference, or do you think it's just differing opinions?
The timing in Patapon 3 is waaaaaaay more forgiving than it was in Patapon 2. It's absurd not to notice it if you've played both games. I was routinely fumbling beats and still keeping fever mode going. Also, you only need two sets of four beats to get to fever mode, whereas it was something like, I dunno, ten sets of four beats in Patapon 2. There are also no more timed beats for the summoning powers. You just mash the buttons.
I'd be very surprised if there are different codes for the US and Europe, since the relaxed timing is clearly an intentional part of the gameplay, so I'm going to go out on a limb and say that any review that says the timing is harder is flat-out wrong.
To be fair, it seems I've slightly misremembered. The EG reviewer's (Keza MacDonald) gripe about the difficulty was mostly about the timing of the enemy attacks, not keeping up the rhythm as such. FWIW, here's the bit that is relevant to what I was saying above:"The gameplay itself has taken several step up the difficulty ladder, too. Patapon 3 demands absolute perfection from you in the rhythm stakes if you stand any chance of success. You have to hit the drums right on the beat every time to pull off special attacks, the windows for attack-dodging are often tiny, and a single mistake is usually enough to necessitate a restart. But even when you've mastered all of that, you'll still often lose. "
That's a bit of an odd comment on a couple of fronts. "Absolute perfection...in the rhythm stakes if you stand any chance of success" is flat-out inappropriate hyperbole. I don't understand why people write that way. As for the window for attack dodging, it's not any tinier than it was before. Patapon has always played out in the same four-beat slices of time. Once you figure out a creature's animations, you see an attacking coming during the four "action" beats, and then you drum an appropriate four-beat response. But I don't see how anyone who played Patapon 2 can call Patapon 3 more difficult. Patapon 2 could get downright brutal. Overall, I found Patapon 3 a lot more forgiving and casual friendly.
And you know, Ginger, if you're really a Patapon fan, you're probably going to give in and get Patapon 3 eventually. I'll be curious what you think. :) .
"And you know, Ginger, if you
Not sure what happened there. I'll try again. Apologies if it truncates me again.
"And you know, Ginger, if you
I give up.
Word press doesn't like you to paste in quote marks. If it reads them as "curly quotes", it will cut off everything after the quote. Sorry about that. I wish I knew how to fix it. I'm going to assume you were going to admit that you're download Patapon 3 even now!
I'm not! Because, as I was trying to say, my PSP's sound only works through headphones after I dropped it. And your review made that sound like a bad idea.But I probably will end up getting at some point because I'm a sucker.
As for the EG review, I'm speculating but think it may be down to mission ending one hit kills. The paragraph following the one I quoted suggested this was a big problem, not least becasue of the necessity of keeping your flag carrier alive. This wasn't too much of a problem in P2, because usually your Tatepon bought it if you screwed up, not your flag carrier. Maybe it's different in P3. But I don't know because I won't play it. Honest.