Pokémon Pokopia (NS2) Review

Gameplay

Graphics

Audio

Narrative

Summary: The cosiest, craziest Pokémon game with a concept so delightful you wonder why we haven't seen it sooner

4.5

If I ever leave this world alive

Pokémon Pokopia isn’t just a cosy game; it is the cosiest game.

On the surface, it’s a delightful mix of Animal Crossing, Minecraft, and Viva Piñata. Deep down, it’s Dragon Quest Builders wearing the skin of a sick Pikachu. But either way, this is no bad thing at all.

It’s adorable, hopeful, and surprisingly melancholy thanks to its setting, which sees the planet wrecked, the humans gone, and the Pokémon band together to remake the world, hoping they might return.

It wouldn’t be a Pokémon game without collecting a whole heap of the critters, though in Pokopia, it’s less a safari and more of a conservation project.

Playing as a ditto that’s morphed into a weird facsimile of their lost trainer, it’s up to you to recreate the various habitats where Pokémon used to spring from before the catastrophe.

In a nice nod to Pokémon Red/Blue, the first piece of information you’re presented with is that Pokémon live in long grass; however, instead of tearing them away from their home, it’s your job to make it as idyllic as possible by using a whole suite of powers to create a new home for the remaining Pokémon out of the ruins of the old world.

With the help of their newfound friends, Ditto uses his ability to transform into other creatures to learn their skills. This starts with the likes of Squirtle’s water gun and Bulbasaur’s Leafage to reinvigorate parched earth and grow patches of grass, then Hitmonchan’s Rock Smash ability to terraform your surroundings with each swing of your fists, and jump by observing a floundering Magicarp.

As you explore and befriend more Pokémon, Ditto gains even more powers and also finds critters that can help you make more complex building materials, so you can begin to rebuild and move into the ramshackle structures left by the humans, like some kind of wholesome retelling of Animal Farm.

Your ultimate goal in each of the game’s four maps is to rebuild the Pokémon Centre with the help of the Pokémon you’ve befriended in each given area. However, the order you do this in after the first area is mostly up to you.

As you rebuild each biome, you’ll receive hints about how to build different habitats or requests from Pokémon to improve their living conditions, which raises the comfort level of an area, which lets you buy better resources and dwellings for your Pokémon.

It’s a compelling loop that allows for plenty of experimentation as you’ll be given a vague indication of what each monster wants, but how you fulfill that request is down to you.

Thankfully, there’s an expanding catalog of stuff to craft, and making new items is as simple as Animal Crossing. Go to a workbench, pick your recipe, and hammer it together with the basic materials you have to hand. Everything from toys and decorations to tiles and roofing can be knocked together at workbenches that you can also carry around in your inventory. The biggest issue is creating enough storage space for all your materials and odds and ends, and then remembering where you put the item box, with that one item you need later.

The one thing that’s floored me about Pokopia is the scope of the thing. I honestly didn’t expect it to be quite so grand. Each Biome could easily have been the entire game (and the early trailers seemed to suggest the opening one was), and each new area is packed full of things to see, new mechanics to engage with, new powers to unlock, and plenty more Pokémon to befriend and home.

When you’re not creating a new habitat to attract some new monster, you’re building better homes for your residents, beautifying communal spaces, or improving the environment by rechanneling rivers or uncovering some new secret that helps uncover the grander mysteries of what happened to the world.

The myriad of systems all feed into each other wonderfully, and every action you take feels like it’s always building to something grander or giving some sort of small reward. There’s that constant drip of dopamine, similar to Animal Crossing or Minecraft, that is hard to pull away from. In this way, Pokopia is like a ravenous Snorlax that will devour your free time with reckless abandon if you let it.

My one minor complaint is with the multiplayer. It doesn’t go far enough. Sure, it’s fun to work together to rebuild Pallet Town, or ransack a cloud island with your friends in what is a pretty huge map, but I would have liked to have been able to go through the main campaign with a little help from my buddies too.

Yes, it’s nice to look at the stuff your friends have made in Spectator Mode, but I would much rather help them rebuild the wider world of Pokopia than one ring-fenced off map.

The presentation is top-notch, too. It’s got a charming, colourful art style, and each of the Pokémon is absolutely adorable, bursting with character and life. It runs at a pretty steady 60fps in both handheld and docked mode.

Likewise, the soundtrack is a marvelous mix of classic Pokémon themes remixed to suit the slower, cozy pace of Pokopia.

Final Thoughts

Pokémon Pokopia is a delightful game, packed full of charm and whimsy, that’s not afraid to lean into the series’ weirder side and presents players with a surprisingly compelling mystery that melds wonderfully with the gameplay.

It’s a game that encourages exploration and experimentation, which is easy to lose the best part of a week to it without even trying, thanks to an incredibly satisfying primary gameplay loop.

About the Author

Gareth Newnham

Pokémon Pokopia (NS2) Review