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| From: Sony Computer Entertainment
List Price: $19.99
Buy Used: $9.94
You Save: $10.05 (50%)
New (29) Used (15) from $9.94
Rating:  38 reviews
Sales Rank: 628
Platform: Sony Psp
Genre: dancing_games
ESRB: Everyone
Media: Video Game
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Batteries Included: No
Operating System: Sony PSP
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2
Dimensions (in): 0.1 x 0 x 0
MPN: 98711
Model: 98711
UPC: 711719871125
EAN: 0711719871125
ASIN: B0010EF0UK
Release Date: February 27, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: Minimal scratches on disk. Comes with original case. May or may not include manual. 100% guaranteed against defects. Contact us within 7 days if there is any defect, and we will gladly refund your purchase. Our standard shipping method is USPS Media Ma
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 6-10 of 38
 A rare game I couldn't force myself to stick with June 4, 2008
Michael Rothermich (Hermann, MO)
5 out of 6 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.
 It's so frustrating! Then why do I love it so much!! March 3, 2008
N. Haneberg (Houston, TX USA)
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
as some of the previous review before me have said this is very simplistic idea for a game and the game itself is actually very fun and addicting!
however, the further you progress in the game, the drum patterns get trickier and the game get much more picky about how "on-beat" you are (my particualr case in point when you need to sumon a miracle).
But other than those faults Patapon is a delightfully cute game that's great for smaller kids and grown ups as well :) just make sure you stay on beat!
Seriously Addictive March 31, 2008
A. Michelle Kunk (Indiana, USA)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I recently purchased Patapon, after reading a few reviews, because I'm a Guitar Hero and DDR fan. I was skeptical about the idea of a rhythm game on a handheld system, but Patapon pulls it off nicely.
Basically, you play The Great Patapon, which an army of little eyeball thingies with feet, called Patapons, regards as a god. You come to possess four drums, aka the square, triangle, circle, and x buttons. The Patapons teach you short commands, usually four button presses, occasionally more, which tell the Patapons to execute a command like attack, march forward, or defend. Using these commands and a few others, you work your way through battles in a side-scrolling world. Between levels, there is opportunity to create and customize more little eyeball thingies, customize equipment and battle formations, follow the fairly simple storyline, and play a few mini games, also rhythm based.
The game has fairly mindless rhythm game elements, as well as a mild amount of strategy. It's actually sort of like Donkey Congas and Final Fantasy I went and had a brightly colored baby.
The pros:
-Really catchy soundtrack, which is more than a soundtrack, because the music changes related to the gameplay and how well you keep up with the beats. It's been permanently stuck in my head for a little over a week now.
-Cute animation, fun little noises that the little eyeball thingies make.
-A fair amount of customization is possible, but not really a hard and fast requirement, thanks to the automated optimize function for equipping soldiers. Tweak, or don't tweak.
-It's inexpensive. It could probably sell for more, given the quality.
A few minor gripes:
-There is no pause button. When playing the game, you build up to what's called "fever," which comes along after you've correctly entered several commands in a row, keeping good time, and not pausing between commands. I usually build up a fever before I do anything else, and maintain it throughout the entire level, because the little army fights better that way. There would be opportunity in the four beats between each command for a player to hit the pause button, take care of whatever is demanding his or her attention, and resume playing without having to disrupt the fever. This isn't a major problem, just an annoyance. The hold switch will "pause" the game, but not without having to build the fever back up. Levels usually take about five minutes to complete, so there isn't as great a need for a pause button as there could be.
-Once you create a little eyeball thingie, it's hard to replace him with a more powerful one. The army can effectively hold eighteen soldiers, six of each of three types. Once you've created eighteen little eyeball thingies, which can happen early on, the nature of the gameplay makes it hard for them to permanently die so you can later create more powerful little eyeball thingies. So a word of advice, and I'll heed it myself when I start a new campaign: don't create another little eyeball thingie just becuase you can; wait for rare materials to make more powerful eyeball thingies.
All in all, this is the most addictive game I've encountered for PSP. It's well done, innovative, simple to learn, and tough to master. It is replayable, because of the customization options. The animation is unique and engaging, and the soundtrack is really catchy. If you like rhythm games and own a PSP, you won't regret the purchase.
Very Disappointing March 31, 2008
Jerry P. Danzig (New York, NY USA)
4 out of 24 found this review helpful
I grabbed this title after reading all the rave reviews and find it a GREAT disappointment. The rhythm part of the game is fun, but the RPG part is tedious with impossible controls. I have a very simple gauge to judge how much fun a game is: if I pick it up, start playing, and look up at the clock a half hour later, the game rocks. Here I stopped playing Patapon after about ten minutes and went back to Pursuit Force 2. At any rate, I believe there is a reason this game sells for just $20, and it involves the inferior controls and inadequate instructions. I would recommend this game to RPG fans only. Rhythm fans will have much more fun with Gitaroo Man, and puzzle gamers will prefer Downstream Panic...
 Patapon - the good and the bad May 19, 2008
T. Paslay
3 out of 3 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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