Patapon 2, the rhythm-based strategy game about adorable packs of hunter/warrior eyeball creatures who worship you, comes out in a week. So let's get some formalities out of the way. For instance, the official review. Here it is: ten out of ten. A joyous ten out of ten. If you liked the first Patapon, then eleven out of ten.

Now on to the more interesting bits, like the first Patapon 2 game diary.

After the jump, I will give you a pony. No lie.

That little fellow up there is for you. He's not called a pony, but that's obviously what he is. Technically, he's a kibapon. Well, okay, the kibapon is what you call the patapon on the horse. The horse really is a horse. One of various things you give a kibapon for equipment is a horse. You can even give them better horses as you find them.

Kibapons on their horses are a great addition to any pack of dancing hunting hooting chanting patapons. When they get rowdy, the kibapons charge forward and knock over bad guys. It's quite a sight to see.

Now you may not be content with that picture of a kibapon, so I'm going to tell you how to get your very own. First, you have to buy Patapon 2, which will be available May 5th to download onto your PSP (No UMDs! Yay! Faster start-up times and it won't sound like you're grinding coffee beans when the game starts!). Then you'll have to play Patapon 2 for a while. Then you have to unlock the kibapons on the evolution tree (more on this tomorrow).

However, once you've done all this, you still won't have your kibapons. If you're like me, you'll just sort of shrug your shoulders and keep playing Patapon 2, trusting that the game will eventually give you your cute little patapon cavalry. And if you're like me, ten missions later you might fret that you still don't have them. Fifteen missions later you might wonder if you're doing something wrong. Finally, after beating your head against a particularly hard army or monster, you might wonder if Patapon 2 expects you to have your kibapons by this point.

It does. But you'd never know.

The trick is the interface at Mater, the Tree of Life. Here you recruit bands of different kinds of warriors. You'll figure out quickly enough how to fill out your squads of Yaripon, Tatepons, and Yumipons, or javelin chuckers, shield warriors, and archers, respectively. They each appear in the three slots on the Mater screen. You highlight each slot and essentially buy new warriors. But what you may not realize is that you can scroll down from these first three slots to the slots for later types of patapons. There's no indication when you've highlighted the bottom slot that you can keep moving down. So keep in mind that Mater doesn't stop at the yumipons. Keep scrolling down and you'll see slots for your kibapons, dekapons, and so on.

Also, be sure to check out the game's manual, where this isn't explained, but other helpful things are. To read the manual, press the triangle button for options before starting the game.

Tomorrow: "Mommy, where do new patapons come from?" Or, evolution explained.