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You might recall some time ago back in June of 2019 when I reviewed what I thought was an excellent, almost off the walls quirky platformer known as Tomba.  I found it to be whimsical in look and sound, odd, and overall just an enjoyable game to play.  There was so many little quests to do, the enemies were just a bizarre but great choice, and it was easily one of my favorite PS1 titles as well as one that I highly recommended other people to try out.

Imagine my surprise and excitement when I heard about Tomba 2: The Evil Swine Return being created.  My first thoughts were among the idea of wondering how they were going to top the original Tomba.  The style was a perfect marriage of quirky and charming, the story was simple yet engaging because of how taken you get with that overall style, and there was just so much love put into it that anyone, kid or adult, could have a fun time with this sidescrolling adventure that was entertaining to any age.  So how on earth would the sequel be able to top that?

Well...they didn't.  In fact, they actually did what I'd call a Parasite Eve 2 reversal to where I actually found the original game to be leaps and bounds better than the sequel (which the sequel is usually known for being even better than the original).

But...where did they go wrong?  Well, let's explore that a bit, and I'll get into it.

Story
If you recall in the previous game, the story was simply that your grandpa's bracelet was stolen and you were trying to get it back.  You just happened to head to a place that was cursed by evil pigs, and saving that place was basically a side plot with getting the bracelet back being the main goal of the entire game.  One of the game's strengths, however, was that the story was really light.  It was more concerned about you immersing yourself in the cooky world and getting to know and helping the people in it.

Tomba 2...the story was much more front and center.  In this sequel, your childhood friend Tabby (who was absolutely never mentioned in the previous game at all) was kidnapped by the evil pigs.  You learn all this from a note that was mailed to you with the game's incredibly annoying side character inside of the envelope with it.  So your goal is to go through this new area that is also cursed by the evil pigs, and get your childhood friend/obvious romantic interest back.

Now, right there we've already hit problem one.  How many games have done the tired "Save the damsel from the bad guy" plot?  What made Tomba so charming is that his quest was all because of something so trivial: a bracelet that happened to be from his grandfather.  Tomba 2 didn't need a damsel in distress story, nor did it need to be such a big focus.

Which brings me to problem two.  As  I mentioned, aside from snippets from the elderly characters and an FMV cutscene or two, the story in Tomba! mainly took a backseat to getting immersed in the world.  The game was more concerned with having you get to know the people in the world and getting a feel for its oddness, and the story was basically in the background until the moments that it needed to push things along.

Tomba 2 does a bit of the reversal.  The world isn't entirely as interesting, and the story takes center stage because the world isn't as interesting.  Because the world lacks the same charm that the original game's world had, the story had to take a much bigger role to keep the game interesting.  It becomes much less about being immersed in the world than the previous game did, and more about making sure you're keeping on track with saving your friend.  It was basically pushed up stakes because the world wasn't interesting enough to where it would have kept players engaged without being told that there was some bigger goal.

It also doesn't help that many of the characters are either incredibly uninteresting, horribly underdeveloped, or just simply have weird character development that doesn't even go anywhere.

Gameplay
Now, despite all of the negativity I've been dumping on the story, I will say that the overall gameplay is mostly intact.  Your main actions are still using a weapon as a secondary stunning method, jumping on enemies and tossing them, and using items in the right places.

In this game, there've also been additions in the form of costumes.  Now in the first game, you could upgrade to different types of shorts that let you jump higher/dash faster than the previous ones.  Tomba 2 still has those as well...only now there's also actual costumes as well.  Early in the game, you'll get Bird Clothes which lets you glide for a couple of seconds before falling.  Later in the game you'll get the Flying Squirrel Clothes which lets you glide while flapping wings (think in a slow sense like Spyro the Dragon glide), and also protects you from the icy cold of one of the areas you visit.  Even later you'll get a Pig Suit which lets you talk to the people in Circus Village who were turned into pigs, and later is upgraded to help you swim.

Now, before I continue, that's another problem that just occurred to me.  In the previous game, Tomba already knew how to swim by the end,  so it bothered me that he had to re-learn it and could only do so wearing the pig suit.  I'm willing to forgive the fact that he didn't retain those magic stones from the previous game that let him use magic, but I found it incredibly annoying that you learn how to swim near the end of Tomba! And then you not only somehow forget, but have to wait until you get and wear an upgraded version of a terrible suit once again near the end of Tomba 2 to be able to swim again.

But I digress.  The game also for some reason saw fit to make it so that whenever you defeat one of the 5 non-final-boss evil pigs (as opposed to Tomba!'s 7 non-final-boss evil pigs), you get their suit which gives you access to a portion of their power.  In all honesty though, you're more than likely not going to use the evil pig suits since they don't do much...except for maybe the Ice Evil Pig suit since it's required for one of the sidequests.

Speaking of Sidequests, I will say that there's still an abundance of them, good as well as annoying.  Did you really hate that Kart sidequest in the original Tomba! to get the gold medal?  Then you'll hate the Mine Cart sidequest with multiple difficulties with...wait for it...the reward being a golden object.

Personally, I will say the Mine Cart sidequests were slightly...slightly easier than the Kart quest from the original game.  Navigating that Mine Cart on those tracks and getting to the finish line in time was definitely a chore, but it was still workable whereas I found it near impossible to beat the Kart quest in the time limit that the original game was demanding.

But fear not, because there's a second annoying sidequest known as the Kujara Washing sidequest series.  Much like the cart sidequest, the Kujara Washing sidequest has 2 difficulties: normal, and "expert.  The main goal is to find all 6 of these skiddish creatures and throw them in one of the 6 available washers within 90 seconds.  There's 3 levels within this first difficulty, and the Kujara get more skiddish/quick and the washers move up and down to make it more difficult.  The expert sidequest ramps this up even more by making it 10 rounds, and the same progression from the normal mode now happens in a longer period of time over 10 rounds as opposed to only 3.  Like the Mine Cart sidequest it's not near impossible, but god is it a chore.

Other than that, I also did like that the game did innovate a bit in terms of the types of statuses that Tomba can be.  Aside from being happy/sad (which the game kept his running randomly when sad <_<), he can also now become as small as a rat with the right device/fruit, and also can become invisible.  There's also an additional fruit that you can get that can put you in a "Taboo" state (basically you'e constantly flashing and can run/jump higher).

There were also several returns or "nods" to the original game as well.  Fly collecting is once again back, only this time you collect Fireflies throughout the course of the game rather than Leaf Butterflies, and there are now the addition of Towers (Tower of Strength, Wisdom, Courage, and the Golden Tower), which hold the highest upgraded version of your current weapons (the Golden Tower holding a powder that makes you 100% invincible).  If you have a saved game of Tomba 1 on file, there's an area within the last level of Tomba 2 that will pull from it, and if you've completed the specific sidequests will introduce some quests by familiar characters from 1.  Finally, much like there was a town turned into mice in the first game, there's a town turned into pigs in this one.

But one of the most unusual change that I felt actually took away greatly from the game was the transition to complete 3D platformer.  Well, okay, 2.5D since it's still a "side scroller" with those perspective changes, but it's all done in the PS1's version of a 3D style now.





Honestly, it was a baffling decision to say the least.  It was fine as a regular 2D sidescroller (with only mild 3d elements excluding the FMV cutscenes), and arguably I think the jump to 2.5D more "open" sidescroller killed it a little.

It also made the world feel incredibly empty and shallow.  One of the reasons I said it lacks the charm of the original game is because of just how bland, boring, and empty the areas are.  The Water Temple is large, but lacking in any creativity aesthetically.  The goofiest part of the game (aka the forest of the laughing/crying fruits as opposed to mushrooms) was your basic "dark" forest.  It was basically a very snore-worthy world to get through as opposed to the goofiness of the original.

But by far the most baffling choice was the inclusion of a companion character.    In the original game, it was just Tomba.  Sometimes he ran into characters that talked to him, but the adventure was purely just him.  But Tomba 2 decided to add an annoying companion known as Zippo; a large fly-like creature that follows you and basically makes comments and talks for you when conversations with other characters happen.

I mean I get it, after characters like Navi from Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, there became this sort of odd craze of characters having some sort of companion that follows them around everywhere and gives them constant advice.  LoZ has had that type of character ever since, Insomniac decided to make Sparx talk in the future Spyro games and dish out advice, games like Last of Us, God of War, Bioshock Infinite, American McGee's Alice, Blue Stinger, and countless others introduced either advice-giving (but less interruptive with the exception of Blue Stinger) companions or actual useful ones that did more than just follow you around and talk excessively.

So yeah, of course it made sense that there'd be another game around this time to have a companion character...but Tomba?  It made zero sense except that it dragged down the age group that the game was clearly catering towards.  Zippo was so annoyingly helpful (as well as just annoying), that I felt like I should have been 5 years old playing this game, whereas I never felt too old or too young playing the original, because I felt like it was made for anyone.  This one made it feel like you had to be a little kid to play it, a huge part because of the fact that your companion character talks to your character (and by extension the player since Tomba is a silent protaganist) like he's a little kid.

Graphics
Alright, so I've droned on about the ups and downs of gameplay and the lacking of the story...but how is it in the graphics department?

Well...it's 3D by PS1 standards!

But quite honestly, this was probably the most disappointing area outside of the voices/inclusion of Zippo.  Whereas Tomba! was very vibrant, colorful, and expressive...Tomba 2 has a tendency to be very...restrained.  The colors are never vibrant enough to where it comes across as whimsical or quirky, the worlds are never expressive enough to be goofy or charming, and by PS1 standards it's very...standard.

I guess when I think about it, it's a visually "safe" game. It never goes far enough on any scale visually, and it shows.  It feels like whoever worked on this one had the notion of "What if Tomba 2 was more serious?" and this game shows it.  It tries to take itself more seriously its look and feel, and the result especially visually compared to its predecessor is a bland, lifeless mess lacking a lot of the charm and quirk of the original.

Also, much like the route Ni No Kuni 2 took compared to 1, there's no FMV cutscenes compared to Tomba!  Sure, there's a really bland looking CG movie in the beginning before you get to the title, but boy does it really set the tone of dullness that you're going to experience.  Sure, Tomba! only had 4 FMV cutscenes and 2 CG cutscene with the rest using gameplay footage, but god were they more appealing.  But hey, at least it wasn't the most annoying part of the game, because that part is left to:

Music/Voices/Sounds

I will say one good thing about Tomba 2: The music was actually pretty decent.  Despite the game being a mess otherwise, I thought the music was actually pretty nicely done.  The starting area of Donglin Forest was a favorite of mine for a while, just because it really set the tone for it being a haunted/dark forest (although admittedly some of the music from the places after you beat the pig of that area, like Donglin Forest, was awful).

Sound wise, it was pretty alright too.  Once again, this was nothing major or grating.

You're probably wondering what I mean by this section being the most annoying part of the game.  Right?  Well that comes down to the other part I didn't get into: voices.

Looking back, Tomba! Had a total of roughly 5 voice moments: 1 was for Tomba's sounds that he made throughout the game, 1 was the 100 year old man doing early game exposition, 1 was for the sound of a group of guys laughing/crying in the Mushroom forest when you ate the same type of mushroom, 1 was for the roses that opened up in that same forest to laugh/cry as well, and 1 was the end credits when the guy you hitch a ride with says something that's difficult to really hear.

Outside of that, it was completely reliant on just reading the text.

Tomba 2, however, is completely reliant on voices unless you're reading signs.  These days, that's usually the norm in games...and normally it wouldn't be a problem.  However, we're talking the PS1 age here.  The age where you were lucky to find a game that had good voice acting (and didn't get mocked or later remade with an all new cast like Tales of Eternia/Destiny 2, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, or Lunar Silver Star Story/Harmony).  We're also talking about the age where games were riddled with translation errors, pacing issues in the vocal dialogue, and actors that said something completely different as opposed to the text you were reading.

Tomba 2 suffered most of these things.  The voice actors chosen outside of Tomba for the most part (since he only makes sounds) were terrible.  Characters like Zippo, the main villain, some of the characters in the mining town and so on were grating to listen to.  There were constant moments where the pacing in the dialogue just felt off, or the voice dialogue meant for one character was spoken by a different one (for instance, a line "Were you captured by the evil pigs?" was said by a mermaid who was the one in question that was captured, rather than Zippo whom it was meant for).  Text from Zippo or Kainen would pop up saying one thing, but the voice actor would say something completely different.

Overall, it was a mess.  It was basically everything wrong in the PS1 days of voice acting sprinkled throughout the game, and it made me wonder why they even had the consideration of adding voices to that extent in the first place when it was perfectly fine as a silent text-only dialogue before.

Replayability
This...is a tricky section.  On the one hand, it's got incredible replayability value because there's a lot of sidequests as well as reward for getting everything 100% (although it's mainly just a different ending).  Some of the sidequests are entertaining, but some are an absolute chore.  On the other hand, the world and characters are either uninteresting or occasionally grating to where you might wonder if it's really worth a second playthrough unless you've had ample time to forget its many shortcomings (only to be reminded of them in that next playthrough).

Overall on that aspect, I feel like the bad outweighs the good, so it definitely has stock in being replayable from a gameplay standpoint, but it's just not that engaging or interesting enough to where you'd want to play through again.

Overall
In reality, this game is a mess.  It's riddled with a terribly cliche plot of "save the girl," taking you through a bland, almost lifeless feeling uninteresting world.  It misses the mark on basically everything that made the original such a charming and lovely game except for the music, as the music (for the most part) continues to lift up the game a bit.  But even the decent soundtrack can't save this game from its terrible voice acting and direction, its awful and sometimes ugly graphical style devoid of any charm or care that the first one had, or the overall forgettable world that you went through.  I don't know if the first had the odd complaint about things such as the character eating mushrooms to get happy/sad...but Tomba 2 definitely felt like it was much more restrained, almost "safe" compared to how off the wall and goofy the first one felt.

Part of me wants to recommend this game simply because it is a sequel to Tomba! and it's something I think should be experienced once.  However, part of me also can't rightly recommend this game because I feel like it sours the reputation of the character simply because of how outright bad it can be.