Sweet mother of pearl! Patapon 2 screens are marching in, with an accompanying army of details to tide you over. SCEJ is totally upping the ante with this sequel. Just to give you a sampling, Patapon 2 will be getting twice the amount of levels, units, and items, as well as a couple of new features to make every Pata-fan squirm in anticipation.

Asking for numbers? Then numbers we shall have! Check out the 411 for Patapon 2: 60 levels, 384 items, 22 characters, 7 minigames, and an average playtime of 20 hours. In the first game, we only had 37 levels, 187 items, 11 characters, 5 minigames, and an average of 10 hours of playtime.

On with the details!

• Over land, over sea...Patapon 2's story begins almost immediately where the first game left off. After the Zigaton threat was dealt with, the tribe built a ship to cross the sea. However, judging from the screens (screen on top, first row below), it looks like everything isn't smooth sailing for the pata-tribe.
• Putting all your eggs in a basket. A new feature in Patapon 2 is Egg collecting. There are 30 types of eggs that you can obtain through the single-player campaigns, with varying levels of rarity. These can be used in the multiplayer mode...
• Using your eggs. In the multiplayer arena, there are two modes: Mission and Carnival (third/fourth row of pics below). Mission takes you and your buddies for some co-op play, and your goal is to move the egg to a specific spot. This in turn brings you to Carnival mode, where everyone gets to jam to some pata-beats that show up on the screen.
• The cast gets bigger. New units introduced in this sequel come in different flavors: in the fifth row of pics, we see the Flier unit, the Mage, and the Robot. Another new unit in Patapon 2 is the hero - this little powerhouse can unleash a special attack (a la Limit Break) when you enter Hero Mode. See first pic, third row.
  
• From Zero to Hero. So what is Hero Mode, you ask? This is triggered right after Fever Mode (which is easier to enter this time around, btw). Heroes can also be customized with different armors, abilities, and jobs (demonstrated in last pic).
• New game plus!...ish. Don't go deleting your save file from Patapon 1 just yet! That same save file can be used in Patapon 2. Doing so allows you to carry over certain special items, medals, and gold.
  

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• Patapon 2 to have twice as much one-eyed tribal fun, easier difficulty