Croc 2 Kingdom of the Gobbos Review

Croc's second adventure brings back colorful worlds, varied challenges, and an impressive celebration of its history, but its dated controls and uneven design make this nostalgic platformer harder to recommend today.

Over the last few years, Argonaut Games has been giving one of the PlayStation era’s most underappreciated platforming mascots another shot at finding an audience. The studio has recently resurrected its sequel, Croc 2 Kingdom of the Gobbos, following the revival of Croc: Legend of the Gobbos. The follow-up to the original 1999 version debuts on modern platforms with better visuals, new control options, quality-of-life improvements, and a massive collection of archival material.

The remaster was released on October 29, 2026, for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam and GOG. This is a preservation-focused release, not a full rebuild, and that distinction colors practically everything about the experience. Croc 2 is a bigger and bolder adventure than its predecessor.

The game has hub villages, a more personal plot, more mobility possibilities, over 40 levels, and a range of activities beyond basic platforming. 

There are racing, minecart rides, soaring sections, and lots of Gobbos to rescue along the way. These additions add more variety to the sequel, and its vibrant flair is still easy to enjoy. But extending the basic formula also creates contradictions. Some activities are enjoyable distractions, others change the tempo, and the underlying movement and camera can turn seemingly simple problems into needless frustrations.

The remaster is a valiant effort to bring the original game to more players without losing its identity. The modern controls are a slick alternative to the traditional configuration. Still, the option to return to the retro presentation gives longtime fans a chance to rediscover the game as they remember it. Another strong addition is the Croc2Pedia, which offers fascinating insight into the sequel's making and history.

Still, better presentation and thoughtful embellishments can’t immediately fix design mistakes that already show their age. Croc 2 Kingdom of the Gobbos is a fun return, but it also reminds you that nostalgia and genuinely fun gameplay aren't often the same thing. The story starts on the seashore at Gobbo Valley, where Croc finds a bottle with a letter from his birth parents.

The message suggests his long-lost family is looking for him, giving the small crocodile a more personal reason to leave home and head to the mainland.  The premise is simple, but it gives the story direction. Instead of going out on a mission to take down another bad guy, Croc gets a chance to learn where he comes from and find the family he’s never had.

Unfortunately, things get tricky when Baron Dante returns.

The Dantinis help resurrect the villain defeated in the first game from the Empty Dimension. Dante, of course, has revenge on his mind, and his return is the main battle running parallel to Croc's search. The two plot strands are simple enough and rarely get terribly convoluted, but they give enough drive to keep the quest moving. Croc’s quest for his family lends the sequel a more emotional heart, while Dante’s inclusion ties it to the original.

Much of the story's individuality comes from the Gobbos themselves. Croc travels through four different villages, each based on its own culture and environment. Sailor Village is on the seashore, Cossack Village is snow-covered, Caveman Village plunges into prehistoric adventure, and Inca Village is high in the highlands. These places add diversity to the universe, and the people give Croc reasons to explore, complete jobs, and rescue trapped Gobbos.

Their funny sounds, short talks, and lively reactions provide interest without demanding too much focus from the main adventure. The sequel also features guardians that provide Croc with more specific threats to face. Soveena the Squid, Cannonboat Keith, and Flavio the Thermal Fish each take on a different persona for the expedition, helping differentiate the places and what they offer.

The tale isn't very deep, and the characters don't get the kind of growth you would expect from a modern narrative platformer. Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing. Croc 2 Kingdom of the Gobbos knows that its tale is mostly a vehicle for exploration and platforming. It’s not because of an elaborate plot twist or dramatic character arc, but because of the lighthearted world that makes it work so well.

The largest structural change in Croc 2 is the addition of hub villages. Croc doesn't have to go through a completely linear series of stages. He can return to wider areas between missions, where he can talk to Gobbos, find goals, and choose which portions of the journey to tackle. This makes the game feel more vast and gives each area a sense of place, not just a collection of disjointed stages. It also lets the sequel pack in side activities and bonus objectives without forcing every level into the same pattern.

The game features 40+ nonlinear 3D platforming levels across the four settlements.

Each setting has its own visual theme and occasional gameplay gimmicks, so traveling from one place to the next generally seems like a genuine change of scenery. Some levels involve precise hopping and object collecting, while others have Croc rescue Gobbos or fulfill a more specific duty. The hub structure lets you choose the order of some activities, but moving back and forth can feel less direct than it needs to be to make progress.

Croc’s classic tail-spin move is still handy for dispatching foes and interacting with items, and jumping remains the most crucial way to move around. The follow-up adds a triple jump, giving Croc more height and letting him reach platforms that would otherwise be impossible to reach. That’s a nice feature, particularly when a level needs you to evaluate distances or reach a higher ledge.

But the value of this action depends on how reliably the game responds to your inputs. When the movement feels unnatural, even an enlarged jump doesn't always make platforming as comfortable as it should. The game also offers a wider variety of activities to break up the usual platforming. Croc can race automobiles, drive speedboats, ride minecarts, utilize a hang glider, and take over a small airplane.

These additions bring a lighthearted experimentalism to the trip. The game changes pace when you get accustomed to one type of task and invites you to tackle something else. Some of these distractions are among the sequel’s most memorable innovations, offering distinct stages with their own personality rather than relying exclusively on old jumping challenges.

But variety is not necessarily excellence. The car and flight sections are uneven, and not all the activities feel as rewarding as the traditional platforming. Some passages tend to overstay their welcome; others feel like filler rather than content. Minecart rides and races are a refreshing change of pace, but they aren’t well executed enough to make each new activity a standout.

Most diversions are brief, which keeps the less successful ones from overwhelming the experience, but the main game's tighter focus becomes more enticing as the less accomplished ones show up. Crystals found throughout the stages help with exploration. These are the principal currency and may be used at Swap Meet Pete's General Store.

Pete is a cat who runs a shop that sells gadgets and provides an easy way to travel between towns using his crystal ball. The store adds another layer to the advancement system, with specific gadgets that let Croc reach otherwise inaccessible platforms or find more goodies. You can buy temporary platforms and a mechanical device that collects extra crystals, giving you different ways to approach exploration.

The difficulty is that those tools are disposable. Once you’ve used an item, you usually have to buy it again to use it elsewhere. This makes the system feel less rewarding than it should. It would have been nice if unlocking gadgets were permanent, since that would have given a greater sense of progression and made you want to revisit earlier stages with your newfound powers and find places you couldn’t reach before.

Instead, the game wants you to keep gathering crystals to buy items that don't necessarily give you any permanent benefits. But at least the system prevents wasteful spending by letting some goods trigger at defined points when you need them. Still, it feels like a squandered opportunity. There is no regular experience-point system, no character-level grinding.

Progression centers on crystals, collectibles, rescued Gobbos, and access to more stages or activities.

Exploration adds a nice extra goal: specially colored crystals you can collect across the environment to unlock bonus stages via the hub. This matches the game’s simplistic concept well, rewarding exploration of locales rather than grinding adversaries for numerical boosts. But since the purchasable gadgets don't permanently improve Croc's powers, collecting crystals can feel more like maintenance than meaningful character progression.

Croc 2 is largely a platformer, so its puzzles and fighting focus on aiding exploration and mobility rather than being intricate systems in themselves. Most tasks involve estimating distances, timing jumps, choosing the right path, picking up objects, and figuring out how to get to a given place. The fun is in how these tasks are presented in colorful surroundings.

Some levels have you navigate platforms, avoid hazards, rescue a Gobbo, and search for crystals before heading to the level exit. The goals are straightforward, making the game easy to pick up even when the execution gets hard. The tail-spin gives Croc a simple way to deal with foes, and the boss encounters provide bigger milestones throughout the trip.

Some bosses are a bit more active than in the original game, providing you a reason to pay attention to their attacks and openings. The diverse guardians also help to establish the individuality of the different regions. A fight with a squid, a pirate captain, or a thermal fish is more memorable than endless encounters with the same foes, and it offers a change of pace from the typical collection and platforming sections.

But the fighting is not that complex. Boss fights are a little basic, and it’s not always clear whether they’re attacking or vulnerable. This means that some clashes aren't as exciting as their character designs promise. They interrupt the trip, but rarely make it one of its best moments. The puzzles suffer from the same unevenness. Environmental exploration is fun, though the challenges often rely on classic platforming concepts rather than sophisticated puzzle mechanics. That simplicity suits the game's age and demographic; however, it means the experience offers little mechanical depth.

The biggest hurdle is the platforming's precision.

Croc moves in a slick style, and it’s not always easy to judge exactly where a jump will land. There’s also significant lag in some places, or a less-responsive feel while jumping, which makes exact timing more unpleasant than it should be. The camera may make it harder to judge distances and landing spots. When a jump goes awry, it’s not always clear if the issue was your timing, the movement, or the viewpoint. 

Croc 2 Kingdom of the Gobbos can be shockingly unforgiving, with moments that could be minor annoyances on a more forgiving platformer. The remaster offers control options, with a modern control scheme and a vintage setting that keeps the original feel. It's nice to flip between them, and the current configuration feels more fluid in many scenarios. Still, the improved choices don’t fully change the fundamental design.

Veteran players might like the challenge and respect the oddities as part of the original game's uniqueness. In contrast, new players used to more accurate modern platformers might find the same areas hard to endure. This is where a more thorough rework could have made a real difference. Croc 2 keeps the original's identity with a bright late-1990s look.

The remaster improves the look for modern displays, making landscapes and characters clearer and cleaner without losing the game’s old-school flavor. Its four villages offer a delightful mix of visual themes, from the beach setting of Sailor Village to the snowbound setting of Cossack Village, the ancient setting of Caveman Village, and the highland Inca Village. Even though the core level design is familiar, each place feels different.

The remaster also gives enthusiasts who prefer the original presentation options like CRT-style effects, scan lines, and filters that replicate the look of the original polygonal images.

You can pick between a classic look and a cleaner modern image, since you can toggle between the old and remastered presentations. These additions are welcome because they let the game keep its original identity without forcing everyone to play the same way. Croc 2 also does well in another area that requires a distinct identity: audio.

The soundtrack maintains the same upbeat vibe as the original adventure, matching the bright landscapes and light tone. Its music remains unforgettable, and revisiting those classic tunes is a crucial element of the nostalgia. The remaster doesn’t need to change the soundtrack dramatically, because its original character still fits the experience.

The Gobbos also add to the mood, with their fun sound effects and conversation. Their reactions populate the communities, and the range of activities and encounters provide enough diversity in the aural presentation for the trip. The sound design isn’t much to write home about, but it does its job well. The music and character noises do a good job of keeping the charm that makes Croc memorable, even when the gameplay gets tiresome.

One of the most impressive elements of the Croc 2 Kingdom of the Gobbos is its Croc2pedia. The digital museum, accessible from the title screen, goes well beyond the typical concept art or promotional samples that are included with a remaster. It includes development documents, unused assets, discarded levels, animation tests, images, ads, promotional materials, music, and galleries of character and environmental models.

It also includes documentary movies and interviews with members of the original dev team, the remaster team, and producers, so fans can get a glimpse into how the game was made. This collection is especially nice for the care it takes to preserve the heritage of a long-forgotten platformer. Argonaut Games doesn’t just show the completed game in better resolution; it puts the creative choices and development process into context.

One particularly interesting addition is a playable version of a minigame that was removed from the original release.

 The remaster team reconstructed it from existing development materials and contextual cues, turning an abandoned piece of the game’s past into something you can actually experience. It’s a remarkable restoration work and perhaps one of the better reasons to revisit this release.

But Croc 2 Kingdom of the Gobbos isn't without its flaws. The larger structure doesn’t always improve the experience, and hub areas can lead to unnecessary backtracking. The vehicle and flight parts feel inconsistent, the upgrade system lacks meaningful progression, and the camera and movement can make platforming harder than intended. Some of these faults are understandable given the game's age, but that doesn't make them any less obvious today. A thorough remake might have retained the plot, characters, music, and level concepts, but rebuilt the movement and camera to modern expectations.

Overall, this remaster understands preservation, but doesn’t go far enough to fix the issues time has revealed. Longtime fans will have plenty of reasons to come back, with all the archival content and presentation possibilities. Expect old-fashioned hassles, but newcomers can still have fun in the colorful world and with its numerous obstacles. Croc 2 Kingdom of the Gobbos is a wonderful slice of platforming history, but it doesn’t quite live up to the definitive comeback this loving crocodile deserves.