by Nick Ferro, Editor
In an effort to present myself as more trustworthy, I’m going to start by saying something unintentionally hurtful about myself. But, as a middle-aged man, **dies a little inside** I am certainly not the target demo for a Pokémon game in the year of our Arceus 2026. Believe me when I tell you that when my 8-year-old son received a copy of Pokémon Pokopia for his birthday, I have never been more excited for him to go to bed, so I could try it out for myself!
Pokopia, a play on the word ‘utopia,’ (as opposed to the incorrect, albeit amusing moniker, Poko-pia) is the first “cozy game” I have ever played past the opening ten minutes. I attempted Animal Crossing: New Horizons when my kids got it a few years ago, but I just couldn’t find a way in, to really engage myself with the content. Likewise, I am not a fan of Minecraft, another game whose elements are borrowed by Pokopia. I don’t see the appeal as I like a game with some semblance of a story. My kids role play with their friends online with Minecraft and that type of gaming is beyond my 8-bit upbringing of running from one end of the screen to the other and saving a princess. You also can’t discount the fact that despite Nintendo’s many attempts to spin-off from the mainline Pokémon series, they never have appealed to me. I grew up with Pokémon Red, Gold, Yellow, and Ruby, these games were foundational for me and like many “middle aged men” I am pretty set in my ways.
Pokopia, though, takes a very well-known franchise and rebrands it in what I can only describe as the most adorable and addictive way possible. Part of what turns me off to other cozy type games is that I don’t get that little hit of dopamine from completing tasks or objectives that keeps my millennial body running. This is not a problem with Pokopia. Like AT ALL. Pokopia drops you into an abandoned world that appears to have suffered from a great catastrophe. You play as a Ditto who has transformed into their trainer and are found by this game’s version of the Pokémon Professor. Only this Pokémon Professor is, quite literally, a Pokémon themself, a Tangrowth in fact, who goes by the moniker, Professor Tangrowth. Sporting adorable glasses, most likely from their own human partner, and pointing stick, they are your guide into this post-apocalyptic world.
Right off the bat you learn a little bit about what has happened and your objectives moving forward. Like most tutorial stages, the first few hours of the game are dedicated to figuring things out and getting a feel for the game play. If you read my Donkey Kong Bananza review, you might remember me spending hours in that stage having the most fun smashing and destroying the environment to collect all the items. This game is no different, only replace smashing with “watering the ground” and getting a lay of the land.
There are so many quests to complete in Pokopia to keep yourself occupied. Watching my kids play this game (when I reluctantly had to let them have a turn on the Switch 2) it was interesting to watch three different people approach Pokopia in three different ways. Sure, we all immediately met Squirtle and learned water gun to start revitalizing the Withered Wasteland and then immediately discovered Bulbasaur, and subsequently Charmander, but from there while I continued to follow the story mode and started doing more quests, my 13-year-old focused on decorating and organizing the area, while my youngest (8, “the boy”) was more concerned with making new habitats in hopes of finding new Pokémon. Meanwhile, my eleven-year-old was obsessed with talking to the Pokémon she had and making sure their needs were met.
Remember that dopamine hit that I had mentioned earlier? I get it every time a new Pokémon shows up in my town(s). There is nothing like it to be cleaning up an area and to see a yellowed speech bubble appear off in the distance! Oh, the joy of anticipation as you run over to the shaking tall grass or splashing water to discover a new friend who, especially in the early stages of the game, is an old friend from generations one or two. And the excitement doesn’t end with their discovery. The game is quite cute with how happy these little guys are to be there and meet you. It borders on comical at times, especially when you must treat them like chattel in order to fix up your town or temporarily re-house someone to free up a habitat that has the potential for multiple spawns. While this game doesn’t have an evil slumlord-NPC character like Tom Nook, it does have the potential of making you, said slumlord. By the loosest parameters of the game, a structure is considered a “house” so long as the inside is 4×4 blocks apart with three pieces of furniture. Once you create that, four Pokémon can live there. And you don’t even need to use nice furniture, you can get a trashcan, steel barrel, and scaffolding and then take the derpy little guys and say, “you live here now,” and then watch as they fall all over themselves to thank you for bestowing upon them this pit of despair as though you gifted them a mansion meant for a king.
The Pokémon you meet in the game all have some kind of ability that will help you rebuild the world into a habitable utopia, with the hopes of enticing the missing humans to return. Some are good at building, others turn logs into wood, fire types can smelt bricks, glass, and metal, grass types help with speeding up plant growth, and some even find and teleport you to other Pokémon. They are all super cute and fun to have around and watching them go about their lives as you fix up the place is fun. They even will take little naps in beds you put out, or in the case of my Squirtle, on the steps to the house I made him as though he passed out on his way home from the bar, after a night of heavy drinking… I should probably construct a church basement to hold AA meetings. But not all Pokémon are Arceus’ perfect little angels… some are demon spawns of Giratina themself! Looking at you Exeggutor! In the words of Professor Farnsworth, “tell them, ‘I hate them!’” No, I will not elaborate.
The Pokémon you meet are from all generations of the game so long-time players will be rewarded with familiar faces and after 100 plus hours of play time and close to 180 Pokémon discovered, I am only about halfway to “Catching them all!” In fact, the Internets tells me there are 300 total Pokémon available in the game, and yet, that isn’t all the Pokémon possible. For you see after less than two weeks of release, back in March, Pokopia held it’s first “event.” The potential for finding new Pokémon in the game, past the preloaded 300, is possible as special events are planned to unveil more Pokémon during the game’s lifespan! First up was the “Hoppip Family” where you were given a task to collect a special item that can be traded for themed merchandise to build new habitats meant to attract the event Pokémon. When I heard this, I was initially disheartened to learn the event ran only for 10 days and ended a full week before we even owned the game. However, the creators were apparently aware of this being a problem so they added the ability to “date skip” by changing your console’s date. Whenever you get the game just rewind the clock back to the event time and you can never lose out on the opportunity to experience something you missed!
The other large part of the game is rebuilding the devastated towns that you come across in your journey. Some locations are completely destroyed with only the remnants of structures while other areas have homes or buildings more intact but covered with volcanic ash or torn asunder. I often find myself getting sidetracked by what I’m doing to collect items or pieces of one building to repurpose for those closer to being completed. Something that happened early in the game that helped it really click for me overall was the realization that the map is laid out like a town that had been messed up but the bones were still there, so the first job is to demolish all of the unneeded dirt, sand, ash, or whatever that is either in the way or preventing the town from looking clean. Then I got to work replacing the broken paths, with fresh blocks or completing fences and re-growing the local fauna. Plus, you are rewarded for doing these “side tasks” with Pokécoins that can be used to purchase new recipes or items for your restoration project. It drives me crazy watching my kids play and seeing that they are just okay with that giant chunk of landmass in the middle of that one road that could easily be cleared. But then again these are the kids who leave the pile of folded clothes on their floor for a week if I don’t make them put them away. Messy children aside, this game has so many ways to approach it, there is never any lack of entertainment.
Sadly, Pokopia, for all the continued fun I am having, is not perfect. There are some nitpicks and gripes that I do have. This game is an ADHD nightmare. I believe Girlfriend Reviews on Youtube coined the phrase, “Hole-upa-minute,” when expressing a game’s desire to sidetrack the player every two seconds with additional side quests and collection tasks. Pokopia is “Hole-upa-minute the Game.” I need to keep a checklist of tasks I need/want to do so that I don’t get distracted by something shiny. And that’s not even a metaphor! There are literally shiny objects just randomly placed inside the ground or in mountains or in the water that spawn for you to collect that are just as important as anything else you do in the game. Another issue I have is with the storage system the game provides. I have watched some videos of people creating very organized storage solutions for their towns, however the problem I have is the lack of access to those storage systems from one central hub. If I need something in the Rocky Ridge, I can either create storage there and split my storage between locations or I can keep all my storage in one place and travel there prior to starting my task. Either way it’s tedious and requires travel.
My final, and primary, gripe is that I found the games story to be confusing and vague based on two major story beats you discover as you explore. Though, I must stress that this should be taken with a grain of salt as there appears to be massive “endgame” content after the credits roll and I haven’t even scratched the surface of this post credit content. The issue I have with the story is that as you progress you find notes left by the humans of this world. I can only assume Professor Tangrowth really loved Kevin Costner movies because he assigns you one primary task that boils down to: “If you build it, they will come.” The “They” in this instance being the lost Pokémon and Humans. You slowly bring back the Pokémon through your city restoration efforts, but there is a big question mark around the Humans. I thought I had figured out what was going on, due to one quest chain involving a “Team R” member and another group of hidden notes that describe a “Pokémon Restoration Project” in need of computer programmers and hackers. Both story lines felt like they were coming to a head and would eventually cross to reveal the whole picture, however by the credits rolling only the Team R story confirmed half of my theory and the other half was seemingly dropped. Whether I just haven’t gotten that far yet, I can’t tell but being that I have discovered all the zones and explored 90% of the map I am not hopeful that I will get an answer that satisfies me.
There is so much to do in Pokopia that it can seem overwhelming at times. I found a museum hidden in a mountain of ash and rock and decided I want to clear that out so I can connect it to the rest of the town. For the past four nights I have done nothing but hours of clearing ash in my Graveler form (which probably wouldn’t be so tedious if I didn’t have to recharge my strength with food every five minutes) and am still nowhere near complete. It almost feels like a futile effort, however, the potential to create something unique once all the trash has been cleared appeals to the dreamer in me, despite not having a single plan on what to do with the new space. On top of that, I find myself going down a Youtube rabbit hole of studying other people’s builds to get inspiration for my own. It can be both mind-blowing and disheartening to watch other people prove to me that despite my own creative flair, I am nowhere near to the level of those who have mastered this game. And yet, I am still compelled to play this game at every opportunity.
I cannot stress enough that Pokopia is by far the most fun I have had playing a game since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. I look forward every day to finding new Pokémon in my town, clearing out the debris and using what I find to make new homes and habitats for my Pokémon. Now that I am in the endgame content I have even more tools at my disposal and what would have taken me a couple hours to do now is taking a quarter of the time. No promises but once I have another hundred hours under my belt I may make a follow-up, reviewing the endgame content with updates on town creation and more nitty gritty elements that I discover on my way to making my town the very best, like no town ever was!
Exeggutor, seriously, its time to call an Uber!
Rating: Love It
Pokémon Pokopia is available exclusively on the Nintendo Switch 2.
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