If you long to hang out and chill with Pokémon instead of constantly battling and catching them, Pokémon Pokopia is the perfect game for you.
Pokémon Pokopia is a cosy spin-off from the popular Pokémon franchise where you strive to build homes for Pokémon while making them happy. The game comes at the right time for those sick of war and worry, and appeals to one’s nurturing side as well as love for the adorable Pokémon.
You play as a Ditto, a shape-shifting Pokémon, who wakes up after a long slumber in a world devoid of humans and Pokémon, save for a lone Tangrowth.
As you help Professor Tangrowth to figure out what happened to the humans, your task is to discover and establish habitats suitable for Pokémon to lure them back. Oh, there’s also bringing the humans back as well.
Gotta attract ‘em all!
In Pokémon Pokopia, the objective is to build habitats to attract Pokémon instead of chance encounters and battling wild Pokémon to catch them. With more Pokémon friends, Ditto can learn useful new skills from them.
Think of Rock Smash to bash walls and mine cubes, Water Gun to spray water on crops and plants, and Rototiller to move plants around and till the soil for crops and gardening.
Certain Pokémon can teach Ditto useful skills like Surf to swim across water bodies and Glide to traverse between floating islands, opening up new areas to explore.
But it isn’t all fun and games for your Pokémon friends. They need to be recruited for constructing buildings, smelting ingots, creating bricks and concrete, cleaning up the environment, generating power and making crops grow faster.
I feel bad for overworking the poor fire-type Pokémon who had to work non-stop in helping me smelt metal ingots, glass and bricks for completing major construction projects as part of the main story missions.
By improving the Pokémon’s habitats and homes, the environment level of each town will improve Ditto’s trainer rank, earn more rewards and unlock more items.
Completing main story missions and daily tasks will earn you Life Coins used to purchase useful habitat items, furniture and even upgrades at the Pokémon Center console. Some habitat and quest items are hard to come by, forcing you to explore thoroughly to find them, or level up each town sufficiently in order to unlock them.
As you increase your trainer rank, you can open gates to other towns where new habitats and Pokémon can be found. These include forest, mountains and beach biomes with disaster-struck towns that resemble those from the original Pokémon games.
The first area, Withered Wasteland, is essentially a dessicated Fuschia City, while Bleak Beach is a mud-covered, flooded Vermillion City with a wrecked S.S. Anne cruise ship, and Rocky Ridges is Pewter City covered in volcanic ash housing a dilapidated museum.
Palette Town (a play of words instead of the familiar Pallet Town) is featured as a sandbox zone where there are no story missions but you are free to build what you please, invite your real-world friends to visit and even attract some unique Pokémon!
Players new to the Pokémon franchise may not derive as much enjoyment and emotions as long-time Pokémon players. Personally, when I saw the familiar and beloved locations in such distressed conditions, I was determined to clean up and restore them to the best of my abilities despite working long hours on tedious and repetitive tasks.
Mine, craft, build, explore
Pokémon Pokopia is a forgiving game where there are no hostile monsters and no damage taken from environmental hazards. Even if Ditto drowns in water, falls from height or steps into lava, it instantly respawns with no penalty.
Even if you get stuck in the depths of a crevasse and are unable to dig out, you can always fast travel to one of your homes or a safe spot in the map. Exploration is a zero-risk venture.
Gameplay is a mix of Minecraft in exploration and crafting as well as Animal Crossing in making your Pokémon friends happy. It follows Minecraft’s mining and crafting principles, like being able to jump only one cube high, smashing cubes in the environment to “mine” them, and using furnaces to smelt metal ingots from ores and glass from sand.
Players familiar with Minecraft will have an almost zero learning curve, and Pokémon Pokopia is actually a better place to start for new players since the game has no hazards at all.
Ditto can also grow crops and cook foods that give a boost to its powers. Cooking and eating a hamburg steak can temporarily enhance Rock Smash to mine harder substrates like iron, gold and Pokémetal ores while baking and eating bread will enhance Cut so tougher obstacles can be sliced up.
For completists, Pokémon Pokopia offers plenty of things to find. There are ancient relics that Professor Tangrowth can help to appraise, fossils of ancient creatures that can be assembled and even slates with Unown symbols that can be pieced together to form a mysterious ancient mural.
You can even find CDs of familiar 8-bit tunes from the original Pokemon games that can be played on a CD player or by asking the DJ Rostom Pokemon to play them.
I was surprised at how engaging and addictive the game is despite neither having to fight nor being challenged by opponents. Although the quests can get mundane and repetitive, the prospect of encountering new Pokémon and befriending them while uncovering collectables make it all worthwhile.
Lesson in patience and kindness
Pokémon Pokopia is a kind and wholesome game by design, and it actually cares for you as a player. Professor Tangrowth and other Pokémon keep reminding me to take a break, go to sleep when it’s late at night and that there’s no rush to do everything.
Since constructing buildings can take some time, and more complex ones can only be completed the next day, the game forces you to take things easy and be patient for things to be accomplished.
Some of the more complex quests will require Ditto to travel between towns to bring Pokémon with specific skills needed for certain tasks as well as harvest and transport resources to towns that are lacking.
Additionally, Drifloon, the floating balloon Pokémon, can bring Ditto to Dream Islands to collect additional unique resources, like cotton spores required for trading with Hoppip for items to organise a special limited time event to attract certain Pokémon.
Although the game is cosy and good-natured, there are moments of disquiet when you find journals left behind by those who came before that mention your character by name. There are also hints to Team Rocket’s insidious plots as well as the cataclysmic events that led to the disappearance of all humans.
Wholesome, whimsical and cosy
The biggest highlight of the game is getting to hang out with cute Pokémon who are extremely good natured, helpful and grateful for small acts of kindness, like getting the items they request for, improving their homes or giving them food.
The game lets you interact directly with each Pokémon. You can see their unique personalities and characters, which makes every interaction so refreshing. I get so attached to the adorable Pokémon that I feel bad whenever I have to wake them up and send them off to work.
Playing from the perspective of Ditto taking the form of its human trainer is interesting. You, the human player, are reminded of the fact occasionally when Ditto morphs back into its original form, reminding you that you are a Pokémon and that other Pokémon are your equals and not your pets.
As you get to be closer friends with the other Pokémon, they will start to address you as the name you give your character and not just call you Ditto. Some Pokémon will even invite you to play games with them, like hide-and-seek, quizzes and jump-rope, which is entertaining but can be a bit of a chore when you are busy getting things done.
However, the Pokémon have their individual preferences, so you have to provide them with furniture, decorations and food that they prefer, such as larger beds for bigger Pokemon, lights for those who like things brighter, and spicy foods for those who prefer a kick. You also need to ensure that the Pokemon’s habitats are of the temperature, brightness and humidity to their liking.
The game cleverly puts a spin on familiar Pokémon characters, like Peakychu, a Pikachu who is drained of electricity to help its sick friends, as well as a Mosslax, who is a Snorlax that was in slumber for so long it turned mossy.
Another enjoyable aspect of the game is the chill soundtrack reminiscent of Minecraft with elements from the music from the original Pokémon games.
If you have a Nintendo Switch online account, you can also visit the sandbox Palette Town of your friends and invite them to visit as well! The other towns are not accessible for online play though, so multiplayer is limited in Pokopia.
TL;DR
A must-play for Pokémon fans who love the adorable critters and are familiar with the original Pokémon games. Pokémon Pokopia is also an excellent game for young gamers, animal lovers and those who want something chill and relaxing to play with no stress, fear and violence. This game is also ideal for those who are keen to have a safe place to start learning Minecraft’s principles.
Despite the somewhat repetitive and tedious gameplay, the safe and cosy vibes, hanging out at familiar Pokémon world locations, interacting with the lovable Pokémon and rewarding outcomes makes Pokémon Pokopia a happy place to escape to.
Pokémon Pokopia is a thoroughly enjoyable game with adorable Pokémon that make me smile and go “aww!” constantly. However, if you prefer a game that challenges you, Pokémon Pokopia is probably too sedate for you.
Pokémon Pokopia is available for the Nintendo Switch 2 at the Singapore Nintendo eShop for the digital download version or from online retailers for the physical cartridge at S$86.
