I wasn't sure about Pokopia at first. It looked neat, but I didn't really know if I wanted to drop an extra amount of money on a building game, especially on an unemployed income. However, after watching people play it, I was super on board.
Now we skip to now, I got that income back (which is really good cause this year is packed), and Pokopia is in my hands. Gotta say? Super worth it. Easily the best Pokemon product to come out in years.
Gameplay
So, technically, this isn't Animal Crossing/Minecraft Pokemon edition. This is Dragon Quest Builders Pokémon edition. That being said, I'm still gonna make the Minecraft comparisons because I really didn't play DQB2 much, I just wanted to acknowledge that I know the difference.
What I really love about Pokopia compared to Minecraft, is the general theme of restoration. This is present in the narrative but also the actual gameplay. It gives you these ruined cities, and basically asks you to make this broken world whole again. That fueled me with way more motivation to play than just an empty Minecraft world (which to be clear: is still good in some contexts, I just enjoy having that Goal). It's helpful to have a semi full canvas. I can be like "Ok I'm gonna clean up all this ash and junk, rebuild these buildings, but maybe I'll tear this part down for something a little original." It's really fun, and even refreshing to a certain point.
Then there's the "Animal Crossing". Though it isn't really Animal Crossing? I don't know. What other game has you provide a home for many characters and work to make them more happy? I know there's some. ANYWAYS! That's the other half of the game, which is great. Make environments to summon Pokémon (filling the Pokédex, that collection aspect), then make them happier and happier by giving them a place to live perfectly tailored to them.
These two bits are wonderful. I love restoring the old cities, I love building little places for the Pokémon to live. However, this is damaged by the other core bit of the game: timegating. I hate timegating. I've always hated timegating in anything. When I was revisiting Warlords of Draenor content in WoW, all I could think was "god I hated the timegating here". This game is timegated, which SUCKS. Wait until tomorrow to build this. Recipes are random, you only get a few a day. This is the obstacle that makes an otherwise perfect gameloop not perfect. Just let me put in the work if you want me to take a while and go slower; give me the OPTION to grind. Minecraft has "timegating" in a way, but at least I can put in the effort to go out into the world to find something.
Story/Writing
I gotta say. The vibes of this game? Incredible. The story is you and this old Tangrowth restoring the world, wondering where all the humans and Pokémon went. As you go through the world, the quests show off the... innocence of Pokémon. Like, it really reminds you that these ARE just animals, even if they're on average smarter than our IRL animals. They don't really understand what a lot of this human stuff does. They're full of love and just want to make a good place for their friends. Even Professor Tangrowth is really just looked up to because he's been around for so long but he doesn't really know much and that's great! I absolutely love it.
But that's just on the surface. As you explore (which I have to say, exploring is great in this game, super rewarding), you discover old papers, logs, and notes from humans. Some are just newspapers or pictures, but you also run into specific notes from a hacker, an app developer, a professor, a grunt, and a trainer. You discover what actually happened to everyone and the world: the weather was getting so disastrous that people Literally couldn't survive, so they had to escape to space. They couldn't bring Pokémon, so they had to store them in the PC. But thanks to one smart hacker, they put in a program that would release the Pokémon when it was safe. You were released. You made the world better for Pokémon, freeing them into safety. You used this developed app to make the world better. You get help from the humans that had to leave you behind; the humans you're trying to make the world better for again. You even discover how the Professor was stuck alone for years and about the person that owned him, as well as your own trainer! It's outstanding.
Pokopia has such a somber vibe, in a way. The world is abandoned, destroyed. There was such a tragedy in the past. But again, there's that theme of restoration. You're bringing health back to the world; joy even. It doesn't shy away from serious topics, they are there (just not overly present. it's not blood and death, but it's not sunshine and rainbows), but it also tells you that there's light in the future. That's absolutely something I can get behind. I cried at that ending I swear to god.
The Only Good Kanto Remake
Despite the setting of this game being Kanto, I don't feel the fatigue at all. I was really worried that this game was gonna be gen 1 heavy, and it wasn't at all. Incredible spacing of Pokémon from all across the games (what do you mean they picked Volcanion??? VOLCANION?????). The fact that the setting is this ruined Kanto also gives it this extra sauce that isn't "oh god we're just here AGAIN". It's enough original, enough old to give you a healthy enough dose of nostalgia to not be lethal. I want more like this if they're gonna keep doing more Kanto.
Ditto. My Home Is Great. Thank You. Roly-roly.
I didn't talk about this but can I just say I love the Pokémon dialogue in this game? Rolycoly has drastically gone up the favorites list
Anyways. Pokopia's great. I do think the timegating really puts a huge rock in it, it just feels too heavy, but other than that? This was a joy of a game and I'm fairly sure a surprise for everyone that picked it up. It MIGHT be GotY but this year has a lot coming up (I have a lot on my plate now oh god help me)
8.5/10. Amazing vibes, amazing writing, comfy gameplay. Just get rid of that timegating.
Styrm's Adventure Log - Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream
Let me ask you this. Someone offers you a large Crystal of Anger and Hatred or a small Crystal of Anger and Hatred... Which one are you going with?
After Theatrhythm Final Bar Line came out 3 (what? 3?? that can't be right) years ago, my most wanted game changed from that, to a new Tomodachi Life. So of course, I was right there along with everyone else when that first announcement happened. "Never kill yourself" indeed.
Now, I've had this wondrous sequel in my hands for a few months, and with the semi confidence that I don't think the game is getting anything else (which admittedly is disappointing), I wanted to do my little wrap up.
Me When I Make Mii
So, my dream for this game was for it to have Miitopia's mii maker. That thing was AMAZING, you could do so much with it. It just needed better hair cause default mii hair is meh and the wig system in Miitopia was kinda... not great. Tomodachi Life didn't end up going with the Miitopia maker, but it did still vastly improve on the base system we've been rocking since the Wii.
The hair system in this game is the best we've literally ever had. You have the premade hairstyles, but also a bunch of new ones added on, and they kept that bangs/back system from Miitopia while making it actually fit with the style of miis and also way less limited. In general, I really appreciate the increase of options in the base maker, as well as the customization of each of said options. Allowing you to add sparkles or remove sparkles from eyes was huge, this basically doubles or even triples the base eye shapes if you're creative enough. You can have ears! There's also all the colors, which is always very appreciated. 3DS Tomodachi (which I know ISN'T the original one but I might just refer to it as the original anyways cause it's what we got in America first) let you do wacky hair colors with an item which was nice, but I didn't get to make blue people. I love blue people. I can make blue people here.
However, this is a difference from Miitopia that I didn't care for. Miitopia let you, with its makeup system, have a different nose color, or even face color from the rest of your skin. This was great for me, who likes to keep that base mii style (generally) while also keeping the miis functional. I didn't get that here, which kinda limited some of my options. King of All Cosmos with his giant fuck-off orange nose? I couldn't make it work. This is where the face paint system would come in. Unfortunately, uh.
I don't like the face paint as much as I do Miitopia's makeup, and the big reason for that is the lack of layers. Miitopia had layers on everything. Eyes, back of face, front of face, eyebrows, whatever you name it. You could adjust all of these separately, and I LOVED it, cause I could essentially create a mii that would animate properly. Minecraft villager with square eyes that actually close. Strong Bad with his rectangle mouth that can talk. I don't get that here. Sure, the face paint free drawing is a lot better than the strict shapes cause you can do whatever, but I feel like it's a lower skill floor with the consequence of a lower skill ceiling. Overall, the mii creator here is better than the past, but still not exactly what I would have wanted.
The last bit of making a mii is the personality and stuff. Number 1 best thing? Sexuality and gender choices. Thank GOD. I myself am pretty default in my settings, but (basically) all of my friends aren't. So it was really nice to be able to fine tune everyone as needed. The way they did it with the selections? Perfect. No notes. Personality sliders have one less slider, but I didn't really care on that loss, honestly. I also didn't miss having to come up with a last name for people, but I'm sure some did. So overall, that part of the maker was great.
Me When I Watch Mii
When it comes to the game beyond creating miis, I like to describe the approach of this entry as Mad Libs. They really put it on you to make the funny situations for the miis. You make lingo for them to randomly say. You make custom items and treasures and places for them to live in and interact with. Having two miis become friends over boobs? Hilarious. This mii is drinking scary juice and eating a darkburger. Amazing. These miis are literally just throwing whatever lines you have set up at each other. This is all great! For a bit.
However, my biggest problem with this game is... despite the Mad Libs nature of it, there's not that many prompts. After not very long, I got tired of seeing the same things over and over again. Oh, the restaurant is being robots. Again. This cutscene really is just throwing random words into the mix. Here's... the same dream where they fall over the island... again... I think I've made my point. When you have a game where the gimmick is "put your funny creations in a premade prompt", I just feel like you have to have MORE prompts to keep this fresh and funny. For a game like LTD that I've been waiting for FOR SO LONG, it kinda sucks that it got old so quickly! Some might say "well Jared you pretty much no-lifed the game playing it literally non stop for the first week, you're asking to drain it of content!" and yeah, I guess! But I feel like even still, I don't think I should have seen pretty much EVERYTHING the game had to offer me by then. I could have only played a little bit to extend it out, but that conflicts with another aspect of the game.
Capitalism. Ok, kinda. You need money to buy cool things for your miis! Food, clothes, living spaces, you know. The original had this as well. I don't have a problem with capitalism; in fact, the main reason I still log in every day is to grab my donations and buy new clothes and food and stuff to complete the item collection (a mission I had for the original but never did. I will get it done here!). However, if you want money, you have to play the game. You have to solve their problems, play their minigames, whatever. Which means you don't wanna just do like 2 things a day to keep the mad libs fresh. You're either gonna have jokes be funny for longer, or you get to unlock things at a reasonable pace. It just doesn't match up.
I'm being really critical of this game. It feels bad. But man! I really wish there was more in this game! It feels like they put everything into the "create your own whatever" at the cost of. Content at all. You'll see people always upset over the loss of the Concert Hall. I was personally missing out on Quirky Questions (which was Mad Libs so that kinda just became the whole game), it stinks that there just wasn't. More. Not even plans of an extra content update or anything.
I Need To Be Positive For A Moment I'm Sorry
Something I really like about the customizable open ended nature of this game is the island builder. Since the miis have their own houses instead of all being shoved in an apartment building, you get to make like, neighborhoods and stuff! I loved this. I probably switched my island arrangement around like 5 times before I finally settled on my current setup (which I even now was like oooooo what if I move everything around). At least for me, it really appealed to that organization loving part of my brain. "Gonna put everyone from this here and then these people go here and ooooo put the supermarket in the middle and then make a shopping part" I absolutely loved it. I'm not an Animal Crossing master or anything where I can make these gorgeous vistas that seem like they're modded, but I think out of all the customization, this was my favorite.
Also, minigames! I've already kinda gone on a bunch about the lack of content, and I do think the minigames also got hit by this, but this is the positive section, so we are putting that away now. Bowling was easily my favorite new minigame. Whenever they ask to play no repeats I say fuck off but bowling? Every day of my life. It's short and sweet and I can figure out the best points, it's a joy. I also really liked the "something's on my mind" game. It's just some quick little mashing with an extra bit of mad libs (Ganondorf is thinking about Arnold Palmer, as he does), but it's the zoom in and the grand choir when you win that really do it for me. The best change in minigames though (other than getting rid of sneeze) is the proposal game. Instead of a kinda random "tap at the right time" game, it becomes a full on vertical shooter. It's less stressful since you can just mash to finish it, but it's also more involved than shooting your shot perfectly, and it has more ridiculousness since it's a fucking shooter game for marriage. Absolutely loved that change.
The way this game handles relationships is really nice. Since I tend to make like, groups of characters (beyond my own personal friend group), it's cool that I can manually introduce them to each other to really get things going instead of waiting and praying for ANYTHING to happen (which does still happen but at least I have SOME agency in getting the ball rolling). I also loved the addition of adding in what the IRL relationship is, which yeah, you can make sure to use for real life couples (or to make sure siblings don't fall in love), but I really liked when siblings were labeled. That's such an important dynamic to me that I didn't think would be thought of!
My Personal Island Experience
Usually in these posts, I like to have screenshots of my characters or whatever, but since this game has disabled sharing (which I will accept because it let us make the miis say fuck so it's a worthy sacrifice) I can't put a clean photo, and I'm not gonna post a terrible phone capture of my TV screen here. But, here's a fun little list of story arcs and bits;
Omnath, Locus of Mana, existing on the island before any human life, and seeing the growing life, wanting to fill the final color of mana in his heart; love.
The island's favorite food being the "Fucked-Up and Evil Green Cake"
Me somehow finding my FF MMO characters all in love with me at once, having me convinced I somehow fell into a harem anime
The Straw Hat Pirates docking into the island's harbor, spreading the wonder of Finding the One Piece (also Franky and Robin getting married the only good ship)
Jack Garland attempting several times to break into someone else's confession, and failing each time. I don't think he wanted love I think he just wanted to recruit people to kill Chaos
Umamusume learning about what a "horse" is
Ramattra and Thundercracker moving in with each other out of a shared love of robot liberation... and maybe getting something more out of it?
The Prince of All Cosmos never being seen without his Katamari, which got a movie and game series based off it
My Alliance characters struggling to keep fucking anything together while the Horde is successfully making the strongest found family you've ever seen across the street
Minecraft being a unifying force of friendship
Omnath, in his quest for love, develops a crush for Gold Ship. He gifts her a tuna, but he is washed aside as she gets distracted by El Condor Pasa. However, when that relationship falls apart, Omnath gets a second chance, and succeeds in his greatest romance
Zoro, Baiken, and Raiden creating the "one eyed samurai" club
Despite concerns from board-certified dieticians, Golbez combines Blue Mana and Red Mana for the win, discovering what we all knew; Izzet is some bullshit
Strong Bad becoming friends with Xal'atath, referring to her as "Hot Purple Lady", and also falling in love with one of my OCs who is DEFINITELY just going to steal all his money and dip
I raise my child right, exposing her to Final Fantasy at all moments of her life
The emergence of the Anger Crystal, or what I can only assume, as it seemed like every fucking day for like 2 weeks 1-3 fights would happen constantly, ruining friendships everywhere and I think actively making me want to play the game less because WHY ARE YOU ALL FIGHTING I WANT YOU TO LOVE EACH OTHER
As of now, my goals are trying to get the proper groups moving in with each other (which is very frustrating at times GET IT TOGETHER ALLIANCE) and completing the item catalogue. Golbez and Baiken just started fighting today so the Anger Crystal is alive and well in spreading its plague of hatred. I really hope it calms down?????
I Wish There Was A Streetlamp Here... Or Maybe Just... More In General
Something I want to give this game is that it came during a pretty needed time in my life. Depression has been hitting heavy, and then I get the game I've been waiting for, for so long in my hands. It did bring a whole lot of happiness. But then as time goes on, that's where the game's shortcomings started to highlight themselves, and I think because I was so excited, my disappointment hit harder. I really would love for them to add something else later down the line! Cause I do love Tomodachi Life, and I did have a lot of fun with it the first couple weeks. It just didn't exactly have the lasting power it really needed.
7/10. A long awaited sequel that felt undercooked, making me crave more of it. It still has the charm that sold me initially though.
This right here was a gift game from my good friend MegaFreak400 (shoutouts). He needed other people to appreciate this game with its banger soundtrack and clever combination of game types. I needed a little game to pick up in the midst of a bunch of daily check ins to spice up entertainment, and so with that, here we are!
Gameplay
I first described this game as one of those games that just kinda does one thing. Like think about Tetris, Dig Dug, Pac-Man, something like that. Those games do one thing, you do that one thing over and over and over again. This is not a bad thing, nor a good thing, it just is.
This game's One Thing is horse racing + solitaire. It's absolutely crazy how well they combined the two concepts. Solitaire is solitaire. You can make crazy combos of cards and it's cool. But they give you a timer based on your horse's mood. The difficulty is based on how close to your horse's ideal positioning you are. The better you do the more of a buff your horse gets in the homestretch + mood and stamina management. It's actually really cool how well it works together. The actual horse racing has other bits too, like deciding where to position yourself during the race, or actually controlling your horse during the final homestretch which adds a bit more action into the surprisingly intense pacing of this solitaire game. I also can't confirm this, but I swear the harder races give you more difficult boards of solitaire to clear with worse luck. It really makes you feel outclassed, somehow.
This is what you're gonna be doing. Over and over and over again. You run your horse through its lifetime running races, winning different grades of trophies depending on how good you do, and eventually breeding your retired horses with each other to make new horses to do the same thing again. It's a great formula. Though personally I will admit I was burnt out by the end, and was kinda like "ok I'm a little sick of solitaire", but I don't think that's a bad thing for a One Thing game, you're gonna wanna move on eventually and that's ok, and if I ever wanna come back it's got plenty of space to work on.
I think one of the things that I really don't care for is the lifemap and winning trophies. Depending on what races you win or don't win, you're kinda forced into the next race. This sucks when you want to collect the GIII and GII trophies, cause you kinda have to throw to make it to those? Especially when you're in year 4+ and the whole thing is "lose 3 races and you're forced to retire", having to lose to make progress feels bad.
The other bit that irritated me more often than not was horse's base skills. As you level them up, they get actually useful skills, but those initial things generally feel more useless than not. Like a lot of the ones I encountered were positioning based charge skills, but it was so hard to actually get into those positionings, so it kinda just felt like "if you're lucky you get a power boost".
Writing/"Story"
When you first start the game, you are greeted by the fact that you, a really terrible jockey with dreams of the Derby, are (very nearly) killed in a horse accident. Holy shit, what the fuck. You meet an angel who loves to gamble on the races who brings you back to life, on the condition that you attain your dream, or else you get sent to Heck for eternal dangnation. (you then say that your dream is to one day play catch with your son who loves you and would never be mean to you). The angel, knowing you're hopeless at racing, gives you the power to be as good at racing as you are at solitaire (the only hobby you really have), and lo, you are revived.
All this to say, absolutely wild introduction from a cute horse racing game made by fucking Game Freak of all things (did I mention Game Freak made this). The "plot" of this game (which really is just a catalyst reason to justify solitaire horse racing) covers some absolutely out of left field topics in an extremely funny wrapping of writing. This doesn't go away. This whole game is hilarious. As you race different horses, you get to meet the different owners, all with their own backstories and personalities, all way more detailed than they really needed to be, so making progress does feel like a joy when you get to be rewarded with comedy gold.
Characters
You - The playable jockey is just a constant source of comedic idiocy. They're so genuine and blunt in how they respond to the other characters around them. They're written kind of like a supporting yes-man/right hand grunt in a way, not really having a spine, and being a great dialogue bounce off for everyone else. Absolutely amazing.
Mr. Maekawa - Not too much character here for the guy you're talking to the most, but this is mainly because he's the vessel of telling you "next race" and all that. Still, a good trainer type guy.
The Angel - I've already pretty much said what makes the angel so funny. His talk of Heck and eternal dangnation, his love of horse gambling, it's hilarious. This dude bets against you in the derby, he's just kind of a scumbag in a lovable way.
Chirp - She's the little girl that owns the shop. She's a girl, and that's about it. I have beef with her because she never shows up when I need and her menu was very unresponsive to work through.
Jimmy - Another jockey, who is even more of a moron than you are. This dude gets addicted to carrots, finds himself in California, and has to work off his debt getting there on a farm. Fucking incredible what they cooked here.
Jagger - The best jockey ever, and someone who shows suspicion in how you're suddenly so good, but he mainly shines in reaction to Jimmy.
Mr. Blingman - This Wario looking fucker who's character trait is "I love spending money" surprisingly isn't a completely hateable businessman. He's got this strangely supporting vibe, and has a "riches to rags to riches" backstory which makes him unsympathetic at first (keyword: at first). Did not expect to actually enjoy him.
Priscilla - Probably my favorite owner out of the bunch, her whole bit is being a pop star who gets into horse owning and other things as a publicity stunt. This includes becoming a professional chef, a historian (who loves Sun Tzu's Art of War), and a licensed hydrologist. On the surface, a bubbly pop star, but below, a stupid hard worker.
Professor Ozimov - Your classic mad scientist type who invents something that lets him talk to horses. He's got a lot of crazy laughing interspersed with actual wisdom, which I liked for that extra depth.
The last two characters are Truman and Richie, but to be perfectly honest in my journey to collect trophies, I didn't actually get to interact with them much at all. Truman's a game developer, and Richie's a delinquent type. Their owned horses never aligned with my goals much, so I can't comment on them, but knowing this game, they're probably just as entertaining as the others.
Other than being funny, these bits of dialogue are also good knowledge of the horse racing world, which leads into my next segment of thoughts-
IRL Horsies
Obviously before playing this game I got struck with the Umamusume virus, which proceeded into me gaining knowledge on the horse racing scene (mostly Japanese) that I don't think I ever would have gained before. I think this was great, cause it allowed me to appreciate some of those horse-flavored details that I wouldn't have picked out before, really showing me how much of a labor of love this game was.
Like I said, the bits of dialogue give you some information into how some of the world of horse racing works, like what a clocker is, or what farms do, or what an owner's role in the horse's life is. You get to learn what graded races are, and with my super limited knowledge recognizing the important bits, I can only assume that this stuff is in fact accurate.
The races you can participate in (at least the GIs) actually match up with IRL Japanese equivalents, even if they're under slightly different names. I could point out the Triple Crown and Triple Tiara, I noticed the Tenno Shos (called Equinox Cups), the Arima Kinen was the All-Star Cup, the Japan Cup was the International Cup, and so on. I really enjoyed being able to spot real life reflected into this game.
There's also horse names. God I love racehorse names they're so fucking stupid (half the fun of this game was seeing other horse names/making my own). But to actually tie this into this section's theming, your very first horse's pedigree reveals that they're a descendant of Saturday Silence; AKA Sunday Silence, who was EVERYONE'S dad among big famous Japanese racehorses, so like, OF COURSE it would be him LMFAO. I got to notice other real life inspired names, like Special Weak or Brian's Thyme. Nobody would really care about the pedigree of fake horses, but the fact that there was actual mirroring of real life in there shows you the level of detail they went into and didn't need to.
Music
This game's soundtrack is incredible. This was of course, from the same hands as Pokemon, which doesn't have a bad song, and that really continues onto here. Some of those big GI songs are gonna live in my head. The soundtrack uses a lot of the same sounds as Sword and Shield, which made me really happy cause I love that game's OST.
Perfect Clear! Super Unity!
Pocket Card Jockey is not a complicated game. There's really not much to it. But what is there is super charming and surprisingly well put together.
I mentioned off hand that Game Freak made this game. After also watching Mega (shoutouts) play Little Town Hero, a game that wasn't perfect but had some cool ideas, I'm really realizing how underappreciated their non-Pokemon projects are. Game Freak really was destined to be a fun small indie company that sadly suffers from success of being the creator of the biggest media franchise fucking ever. I wish more people would appreciate these little games, cause you can tell through these that those developers aren't lazy, they have a lot of good ideas in there, they just can't keep up with the ravenous masses.
Again, it also really helps that I've suddenly become horsepilled (The fucking Preakness Stakes were gonna happen near me and I missed them because I'm POOR!), so I got to enjoy this game in a light that a lot of others wouldn't.
I may have felt the burnout due to the repetition at the end, but that doesn't really change this:
8/10. A hilariously written game that expertly combines two worlds you wouldn't think could go anywhere near each other.
I think the ideal existence is being Daisuke Ishiwatari where you can just put all of your uninhibited cringe and all your OCs and interests and music and get paid for it and have other people make things for it
It's crazy how memory works cause I can be watching a Jerma and Ster TF2 video from like 13 years ago that in the grand scheme of things Isn't the most popular thing they've ever done and I can still quote the lines as they're saying them
it's like the same part of the brain that learns music
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