The enemy can also occasionally move further away from us, and so I will have to issue the Pata-Pata-Pata-Pon command to move my units forward. As bosses attack, I have to decide if now is the time to execute a Pon-Pon-Pata-Pon, which is a straight attack using all of my deployed units while dropping their defense down, or a Chaka-Chaka-Pata-Pon, which is a move focused on defense, while also performing a lighter attack on the boss character.

This turn-based nature becomes much more important against boss levels. Patapon, for the uninitiated, is a refreshing mixture of rhythm and turn-based strategy – as I issue each four-beat command, I then must wait a full measure as the Patapon repeat my command in song while they also execute the command. I played as the Almighty Patapon, tasked with helping the Patapon to thrive in their tribal world by beating four drums in rhythm. Gameplay remains the same as in the original. The Patapon sound as adorable as ever, with high-pitched and highly-filtered voices which border on the annoyingly-cute level of timbre. Each of the four drums were crisp, and fun to use. Thankfully, most audio samples sound are of a high quality. Patapon’s audio would likely also have suffered in a straight transition to the home console format, since the PSP was such a technically limited platform compared to the PS4. Patapon used simple assets, and naturally the console has no trouble keeping the game running without any stuttering.

In 4K resolution, for example, I could not see any aliasing at all. Japan Studio and Sony Worldwide Studios appear to have completely redone all of the game’s assets. Since Patapon was originally designed with the PSP in mind, its native assets would definitely not scale very well to the 1080p output of the standard PS4, and especially not to the 4K resolution offered by the PS4 Pro.

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