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Patapon | 
| From: Sony Computer Entertainment
Category: Video Games
List Price: $19.99
Buy New: $14.36
You Save: $5.63 (28%)
New (29) Used (6) from $14.36
Avg. Customer Rating:  23 reviews
Sales Rank: 383
Platform: Sony Psp
ESRB: Everyone
Media: Video Game
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Batteries Included: No
Age: 5 - 20 years
Operating System: Sony PSP
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2
Dimensions (in): 7 x 4.1 x 0.6
MPN: 98711
Model: 98711
UPC: 711719871125
EAN: 0711719871125
ASIN: B0010EF0UK
Release Date: February 27, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | Simple Commands, Deep Gameplay | | • | Fight, Explore and Hunt | | • | Strategy and Customization | | • | 5 Musical Mini-games |
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| Editorial Reviews:
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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| Customer Reviews: Read 18 more reviews...
 A rare game I couldn't force myself to stick with June 4, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Typically read a lot about a game before I buy. I like RPGs and was intrigued by the rhythm component after thoroughly enjoying Puzzle Quest (a very different but also "mixed" type game). Found out I apparently don't have any rhythm. Gave up on the game after several hours and the first 5-6 levels. Never qualified as fun for me. Gathering levels were too repetitive, but main complaint was that in order to do well in the battles and keep my army in "Fever" I had to ignore what was going on in the battles to focus solely on keeping with the rhythm. That is, when I had overpowering force and was decimating the enemy, I couldn't watch my minion wreaking havoc, but had to keep focused on the screen border to not loose the beat. Obviously given it's popularity, non-rhythm challenged people are not having the same problem.
 good short game May 31, 2008
This game was quite fun for about a week. That's how long it takes to go through the game to the end. The story itself isn't all that interesting. The game play however is very innovative. It's a real-time beat based strategy game. You need to drum out your commands to the patapons as you attack, defend, run away, or psychic yourself up for an attack. So, timing is very important. It's very easy to learn and can get into it pretty easily. However, the whole game is like a tutorial in other games. As you go through the different stages, different patapons are available to you and other resources.
However, the usefulness of the different patapons are in question and why there's no further game play, such as one-on-one matches. In short, this game is good for about a week and then things just get repetitive. No discovery of new levels, units or spells.
One thing I can say is that they spent more time on the graphics, which is quite good. The artistic aspects of this game are outstanding. The music is slightly different for each of the stages and the background for each of the stages are very tastefully done.
Buy this game if you like to play a new type of game and enjoy the little eyes fighting big monsters. Seems like this was geared towards girls as you can find japanese TV adverts on youtube.
Also, checkout the walk throughs through google search.
 PSP Must have May 28, 2008
I bought this after reading reviews at gamespot. It is a wonderful game. Just keep one thing in mind you cant play the game without volume. So if you want a game to play during travel, you better gave a great pair of headphones :)
Crazy Fun! May 21, 2008
What a great game! Repeat the beats to defeat your enemies! Be careful though, because it's super addictive. You also may want to consider headphones to spare those around you from the craziness. One of my favorite PSP games!
Patapon - the good and the bad May 19, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
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 game. 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 games 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 game 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 games 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 games 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 game 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.
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