Tomba 2 has to be one of my favorite games of the PS1 library, and now I get a chance to do a Tomba 2 The Evil Swine Return Special Edition review. I will preface this with saying that this port comes from the hand of Limited Run Games and their Carbon Engine Software and all negativehe critique goes to the port itself. If there is a way to describe it, the definition of lazy on the dictionary should have an image of the Steam listing for it. It is sad, very sad that I have to say this, because Tomba 2 was a massive sequel that took all the good aspects from the first one and did wonders.
The first one happened in a pseudo 2.5D world that primarily played as a 2D action game with occasional top down sections, this one takes it to another dimension by adding a proper 2.5D mode with 3D sections. The main draw of the Tomba series, specially from Tomba 2, is its Action Event System or AES for short, it was the main reason it was a popular game. Innovation in the 90s came in many shapes and sizes and Tomba 2 offered something very unique for the time, it was made with love and passion and I bet the team had tons of fun while making it.
The environments, while low poly, are varied and amazing, from a little fisherman’s village to an active volcano and even a circus you can visit, there’s so many locations that makes the world feel even more varied than the ones from the prequel. The powers are also extremely varied too, and upgrades become a huge part of the game that allow you to explore even more things, it truly feels like everything that was done in the first game just got multiplied by a tenfold and got thrown into a different dimension altogether.
The most important aspect of all was a big difference between the Japanese and the overseas release however, and that is in the soundtrack and dubbing. Japan obviously wins the competition of voice acting because that’s what the original language is, while the overseas version of the dub is just plain terrible in many aspects. There’s even a mission during the last parts of the game where one of the voice actors can be heard mixing up lines and shuffling papers, its hilarious, and its even more hilarious when the character is a little rodent like creature.
The music however, this is a rare instance when the overseas release triumphs against the Japanese release of the game and its what makes the game much more memorable too. This is one of the main issues of the port we have right now, it combines the worst of both worlds together and gives us a terrible soundtrack compared to the overseas release and the terrible voice acting of the overseas release all without fixing. This means that the people who were working on this somehow modified the files of the overseas version to make it inferior.
They could have put more effort into casting the voices to fix all the issues, they have the ability to modify the games source code and fix things but they just didn’t. It is lazy and this isn’t the first time that Limited Run Games has blundered a port job so badly to the point that people just review bombed them. It is sad to see that this is how they handled a childhood game of mine and I feel deeply disappointed with the emulation aspects too. As the license shows, this is using very old software compared to what the average user can get from the internet.
There’s no confirmation on who was working on this port specifically since Whoopee Camp, the original developers of this game, are also listed under developers but I highly doubt they would do a bad job at it. Whoopee Camp did some amazing games in the 90s and that’s pretty much the whole Tomba series before the company went defunct in the year 2000, just after dropping Tomba 2 and failing to meet sales targets, despite being born in 1997. Perhaps some names might ring the bell, but Tokuro Fujiwara was involved in the production of the game being basically ex-developers for the Mega Man series.
You can clearly see the Mega Man influence, you have boss battles that feel more like puzzles and have weaknesses, the bosses also give you some powers when you defeat them and they allow you to do more things such as having new attacks and uncovering new areas as you explore the map. You could argue that Tomba has some Metroidvania influences in it but at the same time this is all tied to the Action Event System that often requires you to do certain things first before causing a chain reaction of events to occur.
The main draw of Tomba 2 was always trying to solve every event available and reach 100% completion, trying to discover all of them on your own is a daunting task but lots of fun. If you decide to buy this version of the game for some reason, be aware that this game can sometimes be a rather tricky one to tackle, the trolley mission has caused many frustrations to various players including myself but that was many moons ago and I know how to do it better. If you are a someone who loves uncovering mysteries in a game, you should really get Tomba 2.
Tomba 2 The Evil Swine Return Special Edition is shameless in many ways unfortunately, the 16:9 aspect ratio does not feel like a good way to play the game, so I had to play the whole thing in 4:3 as it was meant to be. The gallery, despite being touted as containing development secrets by the store page, leaves much to be desired although some of the oddities they show like merchandise and even shirts that came out. As always, Limited Run Games tends to do sloppy releases of classics and it seems that the only thing they do well is new releases like Earthion. Unfortunately Tomba 2 just got the axe quality wise.
Tomba 2 The Evil Swine Return Special Edition Review – Verdict
Tomba! 2: The Evil Swine Return Special Edition: The original game is an amazing piece of 90s gaming, but this port by Limited Run Games leaves much to be desired. They plan adding a way to change soundtrack versions in an update, but even with that they need to fix the voice acting in some way. It is sad to see how lazy the port work was and there's plenty of better options to get to play this gem how it was meant to be enjoyed, this isn't one of them. – Hiro
[Editor’s Note: Tomba! 2: The Evil Swine Return Special Edition was reviewed on PC and a copy was provided to us for review purposes.]
