GAME CLEAR No. 259 -- Pac-Man World 2 Re-Pac

Pac-Man World 2 Re-Pac (2025, Multiplatform)

Remake of: Pac-Man World 2 (2002, Multiplatform)
Original Developer: Namco Hometek
Original Publisher: Namco
Re-Pac Developer: Now Production
Re-Pac Publisher: Bandai Namco
Clear Date: 10/6/25
Clear Version: PS5
Clear Platform: PS5

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Why should I care?
Pac-Man’s second 3D adventure is bigger and better than his first, and this version competently repackages it with some appealing extras.

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Spooky szn

Pac-Man World 2 Re-Pac is the kind of simple and competent game that I had a fun time with but will probably quickly forget. As a 3D platformer, it’s total comfort food for me — the kind of thing I’m always happy to play. In the world of 3D platformers, though, it is a rather pedestrian affair.

Pac-Man is the kind of cute, round little guy that’s just perfect as a platforming mascot. His platforming heritage is nothing to sneeze at either — his first side-scrolling platforming adventure came in 1984 with Pac-Land, before even Mario had had one. Predictably, the Ghost Gang are his nemeses in this game, but they answer to a greater evil named Spooky (yes, Spooky). This ghost knight was sealed away under the tree in the middle of Pac-Village hundreds of years ago with the help of the Golden Fruit that it bears. In the present day, the Ghost Gang visit Pac-Village in the night to cause mischief. After they pluck all the golden fruit, the evil Spooky emerges from his arboreal prison. He enlists them to exact vengeance upon the Pac-People, and they scatter across Pac-Land with the Golden Fruit. It’s up to Pac-Man to retrieve them, defeat Spooky, and return him to his resting place.

Predictably for the genre, Inky, Blinky, Pinky, and Clyde have run off to hideaways in distinct biomes. Clyde has set up shop in the grasslands, Inky in the treetops, Pinky in the snowy mountains, and Blinky has taken refuge in a volcano. The levels leading up to their boss encounters are fun and varied in their designs, and after the first few stages, they become genuinely challenging. I find most 3D platformers struggle with being a bit too breezy, so this is a welcome feature for me. Pac-Man has basically the same moveset he did in the first Re-Pac game: a butt bounce (which serves as an attack and a high jump), a flutter kick, a thrown Pac-Dot attack, and a chargeable dash attack. He’s got a handy kick in this one too. He’s also a much defter swimmer this time around and has more potent underwater attacks. These factors make the water stages pretty enjoyable, which can also be very tough to get right.

The bosses are a bright spot too. Although I never played the original game to completion (I think I only ever rented it), my understanding is that each ghost piloted the same generic mech in approximately the same stage layout. In other words, you pretty much fought the same boss four times. In Re-Pac, each ghost has its own animal-shaped mech inspired by its environment. The grasslands boss is a frog, the treetops have an owl, etc. Each has a completely different progression and attack pattern. This is obviously much more interesting and exactly the kind of shit you want to see addressed in a remake like this. They’re still pretty standard fare overall — you dodge some attacks for awhile and then wait for an obvious opening to attack a weak spot — but it’s still an obvious improvement.

An interesting choice with the bosses is also that they do not feature checkpoints. You must beat them in one go. I’m sure some will find this annoying, but I don’t think any of them are too fiendishly difficult, and I appreciate the insistence that the player learn and understand the bosses.

The Re-Pac also adds optional missions and time trials to each stage for those wishing to squeeze some more playtime out of this game. Personally, I don’t find Pac-Man’s moves to be particularly exciting to speedrun with, but I’m sure some will, and it’s a nice addition to the game. The missions are a bit more interesting to me; they generally involve finding all the collectibles and perhaps completing the stage under some constraint, such as not using a particular move that is helpful in the given stage.

More compelling to me is the added epilogue, which features all-new, tougher, remixed stages from the worlds of the base game as well as harder versions of those worlds’ bosses. I haven’t finished it yet, but I’ve enjoyed what I’ve played and appreciate the level of effort that went into it.

Put together, the thoughtful changes to the bosses, the addition of missions and time trials, and the new epilogue make Pac-Man World 2 Re-Pac a bolder reimagining of its source material than the first Re-Pac game was. I think it strikes a great balance between respecting the original game and making smart additive and mutative changes.

Still, I think the reason the game is ultimately forgettable is that it lacks an art design that really makes it stand out. Pac-Man and the Ghosts are classic, iconic designs, and Pac-Village has some charm to it, but the rest of the world is really utterly generic. That’s inclusive of the enemies, who are pretty ordinary wildlife, skeletons, and other tropey mooks like that. If you took Pac-Man himself out of screenshots of the game (and maybe the telltale dots he munches), I think the average game-playing public would have a difficult time tying the environments to the IP. Contrast that with Mario and Sonic, which have well-established environments. Mario has the tall, rounded hills, item blocks,warp pipes, and of course a classic host of enemies. Sonic has the checkerboard terrain, loops, and some iconic robot foes of his own. I mentioned Pac-Land before, which has a rather striking and even sort of goofy, MSPaint-style aesthetic, but at least it leaves an impression! I can’t help but wonder if that could have somehow made the transition to 3D to give the modern world of Pac-Man a better visual identity.

Similarly, it probably also doesn’t help that the Pac-Man IP doesn’t have the musical heritage to lean on either. Mario and Sonic have some outstanding themes they can reprise and generally always bring good new tunes to the table, but Pac-Man basically only has that very brief intro music from the original arcade game to work with (and they certainly do wear it out lol). Pac-Man World 2 has a couple nice tunes, but nothing remotely as memorable as “Chemical Plant Zone” or the primary overworld theme of basically any Mario title.

It’s funny because part of me wishes this didn’t matter. Re-Pac feels good to play and offers a nice challenge in a genre I sometimes find to be too easy. I had fun with it! Yet I fear it’s not a game that will stick with me because of its underwhelming music and art direction? How annoying! Still, I do value the effort put into bringing this game to modern audiences even though the original wasn’t exactly an all-timer itself. It’s a pleasant platformer starring a gaming icon, and you just can’t have too many of those in my eyes.