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Back in 2022, Pac-Man World: RePac was released.  It was a remake of the original Pac-Man World game on PlayStation.  I even wrote an article about it here.  I encourage you to read that article I wrote because the original Pac-Man World game was a very special game to me as a game reviewer, and the remake was even my Game of the Year in 2022!  I wondered if Pac-Man World 2 would get the RePac treatment someday, and this year it did!  I didn’t like Pac-Man World 2 as much as the original, but it was still a special game to me and I thought I’d explain why in this article, and go over my thoughts on the RePac version of this game as well. 

Pac-Man World was a special game to me because it was one of the first games I got to follow from start to finish as a game reviewer for The Dallas Morning News.  Yeah this was back when people read newspapers.  Anyway, I got to know the team who made the game and a year or so later, I got to see the first glimpses of what would be Pac-Man World 2 at a later E3.  This was a very early demo of the game, and just let you walk around a grassy forest meadow collecting dots.  But they had a few interesting ideas they were planning that actually didn’t make it into the final game, so I thought I’d go over those here.

The original idea for Pac-Man World 2 was that it would be more open world.  They even showed how you could change shoes on the fly to help you travel around the world better.  You could put on rollerblades to go faster on land, and flippers to go faster on water.  But since there was no water in the demo you could just waddle around with the flippers on land.  While the final game was more linear, remnants of this idea can be seen in the rollerblading boardwalk stage and the water stages where you had flippers. 

Another scrapped idea was that the fruit you collected could be used to make power smoothies at a shop run by Smoothie Sue, a Pac-lady with a swirl on her head.  The idea was that when you went to the ghost world, there were no power pellets so you could take these smoothies with you as power-ups.  While this idea was scrapped, you can still see the model of Smoothie Sue being used as the host of the in-game arcade!  I have a feeling that these ideas had to be scrapped because of tight deadlines.

Sadly, when Pac-Man World 2 was about to be released, I was let go from the newspaper.  The editor of the technology section moved to another department, and they decided not to have game reviews anymore.  So I had to tell the Pac-Man World 2 team not to send me a review copy, because I had no outlet to review it on.  But you know what?  They sent me a copy anyway, and the members of the team signed the box (yes I still have it).  That really meant a lot to me that they did that.  I bet they don’t remember they did that, but if there’s anything you should take away from this article is that you should never shy away from doing acts of kindness like that.  Because no matter how small, it may really mean a lot to that person.  I know I’ll never forget what they did. 

Anyway, 25 years later, they remade the game as Pac-Man World 2: RePac.  Of course I’ve played it, what kind of Pac-Man fan do you think I’d be if I didn’t!  So now I thought I’d go over the changes, and what I liked and disliked about it. Just a warning, there might be some spoilers ahead!   So let’s begin!

So naturally, the graphics and music have been improved.  There is also voice acting now, and the guy who played Pac-Man in Pac-Man World 3 is here again.  I don’t really think the game needed voices, though.  Pac-Man may talk, but he really doesn’t ‘say’ anything, if that makes any sense.  I do think it’s funny that Pac-Man’s voice just sounds like a regular guy.  Heck, I could do that voice, although Pac-Man might have a slight Texan accent if I did it. Most levels are the same, but some are reworked and different.  It’s more of a reimagining than a remake, really.

Pac-Man has some new moves as well.  In the first Pac-Man World game, you could throw dots.  They took that out of the original sequel, but now you can do it again here.  In the original Pac-Man World 2, you could do a flip kick in the air, but now you can also do it on the ground.  If you time your butt bounce move, you can do a super bounce that lets you jump higher and stun enemies on the ground.  Later on you’ll have to really master this new move.  Only problem I have is that because of that new ability, the controls don’t flow as well as they did in the original game.

They’ve also added missions in the stages.  If you complete them all, you can unlock an outfit for Pac-Man to wear!  These missions are really hard, though.  There’s also a two player mode, but the second player just controls a Pac-Drone that can stun enemies and collect dots.  Kind of like a throwaway two player like what’s in Super Mario Galaxy and Donkey Kong Bananza.  One thing I’m thankful for is Fairy Mode.  This is the easy mode that gives you extra platforms, infinite health and lives, and lets you skip a level if you die too much on it.  The cool thing here is that it’s referencing the fairy from Pac-Land!

The box for the game (which has a reversible cover referencing the art from the original game) also says there will be three special collabs in 2026.  The first one has already been announced.  Pac-Man will appear in Sonic Racing Crossworlds (yes I do have that game), and in Pac-Man World 2, you’ll be able to play a few Sonic themed stages as well!  Neat!  The other two collabs haven’t been announced yet.  I thought one might be Kirby Air Riders, but since Pac-Man World 2: RePac is a multiplatform game and Nintendo doesn’t like to share and have their characters on competing platforms, I crossed out that idea pretty quickly.  I then thought about the new Katamari game, but that’s already been released, too, with no word here.  What could those other collabs be?

Remember when I said I think the original Pac-Man World 2 game might’ve been rushed a bit?  One reason why I think that is because after each world, you’d fight a boss.  The first boss was Clyde (called Blinky at the time), piloting a robot frog.  But the other three ghosts in their worlds just piloted a giant robot ghost.  I kind of liked the robot ghosts, because it kind of felt like they were making reference to Pac-Man Arrangement in the arcade.  But it was still kind of weird.  But in this remake, each ghost pilots a separate robot animal.  Inky has an owl, Pinky has a polar bear, and Blinky has a spider.  At first I was glad that they changed the bosses, because in the original game, Blinky’s robot ghost in the volcano was SUPER HARD!  I thought these new bosses might’ve balanced the difficulty a bit, but boy was I wrong!  I’ll talk more about the difficulty in a bit.

They’ve also revamped the hub world, Pac-Village.  You can change your outfit here and visit the arcade.  In the original PMW2, the arcade let you play classics like Pac-Man, Pac-Mania, Pac-Attack, and Ms. Pac-Man.  You unlocked them by collecting tokens, but here you must complete missions in the stages.  The problem is that the missions to unlock them are in the boss battles, and since I hinted about how hard the bosses are here, you can guess how many I’ve unlocked.  Of course in the remake you can’t play Ms. Pac-Man because of rights issues.  And the version of Pac-Attack here is just the console version.  One cool thing about the original PMW2 is that the version of Pac-Attack on it was the one from Namco Anthology.  It was a Japan only title that had improved versions of Namco console games, and that version of Pac-Attack was way better.  It was one of the coolest things about the original PMW2. 

So now the tokens you collect can be used at new gashapon machines in the arcade.  These are modelled after real life gashapon machines that Bandai makes, so way to go with using the merger, Namco!  You can buy figures of characters and items (kind of like how you do in Kirby and the Forgotten Land), and decorate Pac-Village with them!  I actually visited a store in Grapevine Mills Mall in Texas that has nothing but those gashapon machines.

Spoiler warning for this next part.   Another thing they added to this remake is a post game after the ending.  When you beat the final boss, after the credits it shows a scene where Pac-Boy and Pac-Sis find a portal in the golden fruit tree and they go back in time.  Pac-Man follows them and must conquer more stages that are harder versions of the ones he just completed!  There’s not as many of them, just one stage and boss battle per area.  And then after you beat Spooky for the second time in the past, you can fight a secret boss: Toc-Man from the first game!  He’s mad because he wasn’t invited to Pac’s birthday party, but he did get an invitation, and just accidentally used it as toilet paper! 

Of course I never saw that secret boss myself because I stopped after trying to fight Spooky the second time.  They used instant death pits and he has three phases and you must start over at the beginning if you die, and even Fairy Mode won’t save you from that.  And that’s the big problem I have with this game is that it’s way too hard.  In the original PMW2, I only had trouble with two parts: the Blinky boss fight in the volcano and the rollerblading boardwalk stage.  But I still pushed through.  Here I had to turn on Fairy Mode at the second boss!  There’s no reason this game should be that hard.  I’m glad they added Fairy Mode, but it seems more like a cop-out for fair and balanced gameplay.  I can’t believe how many YouTube reviewers are gushing about this remake.  You can tell they’re doing it just so they can get more free games out of Namco.  I guess that’s why I don’t get as many games to review anymore.  I’m just honest.  Anyway, I have to say I’m ultimately disappointed with Pac-Man’s game offerings this year for his 45^th anniversary.  Between this and Shadow Labyrinth, both are way too hard. 

But I do want to end this on some positive notes.  This is still a very faithful reimagining of the original game.  And in a world where most big games are 70 and even 80 bucks, Pac-Man World 2: RePac is only 30 bucks!  And that’s a lotta game for that price!  And I’m glad to see they put the original PMW2 team in the credits this time.  They didn’t do that with the first game until me and others complained about it and they added it in with a patch!  We will just have to see if Pac-Man World 3 gets the RePac treatment!  Anyway I think that’s all I have to say about Pac-Man World 2: RePac. Later!  --Cary