It seems as if the Knack 2 sales numbers for Japan are in, and if Japanese magazine Dengeki are accurate, then it’s about as abysmal as you can get.
According to the Japanese magazine (via NeoGAF), they have tracked Knack 2 sales at just 2,106 units sold, which is an enormous drop off from the original game, which managed to sell 322,083 copies when it released. It should be noted, however, that the original’s sales number is so high because it was bundled with all Japanese launch editions of the PS4 itself at no extra cost, but chart trackers still counted that as a unit sold for Knack.
Famitsu, which also tracks video game sales, had the number of units sold for Knack 2 at 2,601 copies sold, so there is room for discrepancy, but selling under 3,000 copies of a game like Knack is never a good thing.
If you haven’t yet, make sure to check out our review of Knack 2:
Co-op was present in the first Knack, but it felt a lot more like an afterthought than a legitimate focus. The natural way in which Knack 2’s cooperative play lets a second player jump in and out feels great. My wife played bits and pieces of the game with me. Just powering on the controller and pressing X was enough to bring her in. Some of the platforming puzzles are adjusted to be more cooperative in nature, and there are combat advantages with two people. Punching through your partner shoots pieces of them out at enemies, and body slamming will scatter their pieces and create a bigger effect for the attack. Pressing R2 will teleport you to your partner, so parents playing with kids can help them get through difficult platforming sections with ease. Or maybe it’s the kids that would be helping their parents.
Knack 2 is an improvement on the first game in every way possible. Mark Cerny and his team have proven that they can take criticism, iterate on it, and then give players even more for their money than was expected. Launching at an exceptionally friendly $39.99 is even better when you consider that Knack 2 feels like a much bigger game than the first. Knack 2 plays it safe, but it does so in the best way possible. It’s not an innovative action-platformer, but it stands as an example of an incredibly polished and fun example of the genre. In many ways, it feels like playing the PlayStation 4 for the first time again, only this time, I’m happy to say that Knack 2 delivers. It seems that Mark Cerny still has a knack for creating mascot action-platformers.
Knack 2 is out now for the PlayStation 4.
