Tomba! 2: The Evil Swine Return Special Edition Review - He's BACK!?

If you can believe it, there was a time when creativity and risk-taking were still very much alive in AAA gaming, particularly when it came to gaming mascots. Mega hits such as Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon led the way for PlayStation lovers, but there were also lots of other cool off-beat titles being released like Ape Escape, MediEvil, and of course, Tomba. Originally released in 1997, Tomba! was a lovely action platformer created by Whoopee Camp. Playing as the titular pink-haired wild child, players would battle against an evil group of pigs in hopes of retrieving a lost bracelet. The game was spearheaded by Tokuro Fujiwara, an ex-Capcom employee who was frustrated with the direction the company was headed and is not only remembered for its wonderful visual style and quirky soundtrack, but also for its fun gameplay mechanics and unique event system. Some may even liken Tomba to a Metroidvania, with its large, interconnected world that’s relatively free to explore at your own will, in a game that features no shortage of backtracking. That said, Tomba was certainly more lighthearted than your typical Metroidvania affair, with a larger emphasis placed on puzzle-solving.

Tomba received positive reviews across the board but didn’t actually sell very well at all, gaining more of a cult following well after release. Even still, Sony saw some degree of potential in the first game, inevitably rolling the dice on a sequel, which is the topic of today’s video, Tomba 2: The Evil Swine Return. To the surprise of almost no one, Tomba 2 also flopped—because why wouldn’t it, when the first game didn’t do well—and this was pretty much the end for Whoopee Camp, who shuttered a few short months following the game’s release. Just like its predecessor, however, Tomba 2 gained respect when it was already far too late, and now Limited Run Games are hoping some of those hardcore fans of the series will come out of the woodwork for this lightly touched-up re-release. But should Tomba 2 have stayed a memory of the past, or does it still fill us with nostalgia and fun all these years later? Let’s find out in our full review!

Tomba! 2: The Evil Swine Return Special Edition picks up from the events of the first game but takes place in an entirely new location. On a quest to find his kidnapped girlfriend, Tomba, now joined by his partner Zippo, will once again need to battle back swine, journeying toward a Coal-Mining Town. Unfortunately, Tomba! 2’s story has aged about as well as milk. The humor just isn’t as charming as it was in the first adventure, following familiar tropes and brought to life through hilariously bad voice performances that weren’t even considered very good in the early 2000s and haven’t been updated whatsoever in this newly released version of the game. The game suffers from poor pacing too, with far more dialogue than I remembered, which is accompanied by perhaps one of the most annoying video game songs I have ever heard. Why does it have to play every single time we talk to someone!?

Story qualms aside, Tomba 2’s gameplay will feel somewhat familiar to fans of the original game, though the shift into the third dimension isn’t what I would call a welcome one. It is an action-adventure game at its core, where movement follows predetermined paths that are broken up by occasional intersections. At these intersections, the player is able to follow flashing arrows to decide which direction to head next. It feels as clunky as it sounds and would have benefited from some gameplay refinements which, well, Limited Run Games haven’t done. Instead, we more or less have the exact same experience that we had on the PS1, and while I am all for preserving games in their original forms and this hasn’t been announced as a remake, when you look at some of the work a studio like Nightdive has done, for example, in sprucing up old games for modern times while preserving their essence, well, this just isn’t a good look.

Now that you have an understanding that Tomba 2 is more or less the same game you may or may not remember on PlayStation 1, let’s discuss its other gameplay mechanics. Sometimes, throughout your adventure, gameplay shifts to an isometric view, which, to be fair, controls significantly better. New to this version of the game is the ability to save at any time, whereas this used to only be possible at signposts scattered across the world. It’s a simple change, but a welcome one. While much of the original Tomba’s combat was all about jumping on top of enemies and hurling them, the sequel tries to expand on that formula a bit by adding some weapon variety such as hammers and boomerangs. Some of these weapons will also help to solve environmental puzzles, and there are even special suits that can be unlocked which grant unique abilities, such as being able to float longer in the air. 

There are a few clumsy boss battles too, and the series' signature events return, which are triggered through speaking with different characters or found within different locations. Completing events will once again net adventure points, which will help towards 100 percent completion, and there’s even a rebuilt inventory system where you can equip your weapons and use key items at certain points in the story. Outside of that, Tomba’s health bar remains similar to the first game, with him being able to withstand a few hits of damage, though a new rewind feature helps alleviate some of the game's challenges should you be frustrated.

Platforming in Tomba 2, for lack of a better word, feels awful. In fact, to be 100 percent honest, most of the game, including the combat, does. Yes, some PS1 games have aged well, such as the Crash Bandicoot series, but the games that have aged poorly have aged REALLY poorly. Sadly, Tomba 2 is one of those games, which makes this remastering, if you want to call it that, a bit frustrating, as it could have been a unique opportunity to make an old game feel a bit fresher, as we saw recently with CROC. Instead, all we really get is a pretty lackluster museum with a few extras and no video interviews, the rewind and save-anywhere features, and higher-resolution options, which might actually make the game look worse. A CRT filter is available as well, though it doesn’t help much.

Another odd choice in this version of Tomba 2 relates to the soundtrack. To my surprise, and I did not know this, the Japanese soundtrack is different from the soundtrack we heard here in the USA, and, in my opinion, it is much worse. At the time of this review, you could listen to them both on the main menu, but this could not be toggled in-game and defaults to what I believe is the inferior Japanese OST while you are playing. It’s full of grating, ear-bleeding tracks that will drive you up the wall. Now, I am sure the original Japanese music has its fans, but I think we can all agree it would have been nice to have the option to at least toggle between them. Hopefully, this is something that can easily be patched in. Either way, I was not a fan of the sound design of Tomba 2.

While it’s nice to have Tomba 2 return in some form to be purchased legally, I couldn’t help but be a bit disappointed in its treatment. What may have been fun and acceptable to play in the year 2000 just doesn’t feel that way some 25 years later. It looks old, it sounds annoying, it hasn’t been touched up to play better, and this is barely a celebration of the game’s legacy at all, with just a spattering of artwork and manual scans. Being able to save anywhere and rewind mistakes is nice, but it can’t quite save this dinosaur that may have been better off left in the past. Fans of the original two Tomba games will find some nostalgia here, but everyone else would be wise to avoid this one.

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