With the Pokémon universe, I tend to stay away from the non-RPG games. Sure, I enjoy the franchise, but for me, most of those games don’t appeal to me. That was the case for Pokémon Pokopia for the longest time. When I first saw it, it wasn’t something I thought would appeal to me. Sure, I’ve played Animal Crossing for 15+ years, but that’s where the life-sims games that aren’t The Sims end. I’m still early in the game, but the first dozen hours have been addictive.
Do what you want
Animal Crossing is the reason I don’t play these games that much. AC is fun, but it has a lot of limitations. You couldn’t do too much in a given day. It became a routine, where you could perform a handful of actions, and then that was it. You had to come back the next day to do it all again. There was little variety outside of a few key dates and days of the week.
But in Pokopia, it’s very different. Yes, there are things you need to do. We still have a structure in place and a story flow, but the limitations are not as restrictive. Sure, you can’t do everything from the beginning. You still need to complete basic tasks. But you can deviate from the main goal when you want. This encourages exploration and discovery. Because of that, I found myself doing everything except progressing the story.
Since I am playing how I want, it’s leading me to areas I shouldn’t see. It’s not that I’m breaking the game; I’m getting a sneak peek. Luckily, the game does react when you do things before characters expect it. It’s cute when Squirtle finds out that I have already designed a habitat for him by the sea. Sure, I didn’t do it knowing I needed to, but it’s nice that I had that kind of initiative.
Restoring the World
Pokopia revolves around your character, a Ditto, looking to restore the world. It’s unclear what exactly happened to the humans or the original Pokémon. Some environmental stuff caused everyone to disappear. But other than that, we don’t have any concrete details. It’s hard to tell if we’ll actually learn what happened or if the focus is on restoring the area to its glory.
Because of that, you want to do as much as you can to get the area back to its previous set-up. This world is large, and it’s easy to get lost trying to explore every corner of it. You will spend a lot of time looking for hints that tell you how to bring certain Pokémon back to the environment. Then, you will spend an equal amount of time trying to see if you have the items necessary to do so.
If you do, then you’ll spend the next little while looking for a good spot to make that habitat. If you don’t, then you will either see what you can craft to make it happen. Or, you will jot down that you will have to figure out how. While it’s easy to go through the menus to see what you need, I wish they had an easier way of tracking things. A checklist or a shopping list would save me time.
Starting to progress the story
Because I spent the first 10-12 hours of the game doing what I wanted, it has caused me some problems. I’ve seen areas that will become more important later in the game. For example, there is an area of the map that resembles a town. You have light fixtures, and it’s clear that we need to bring power to this area.
Although I haven’t been able to restore power to the entire area, I have made a bit of progress here. We’ll need to revive an electric Pokémon, most likely a Pikachu. But part of bringing back power to this area includes using hydro power. Now, I have no idea if what I did is what you’re supposed to do, but I did it anyway. I dug through the mountain terrain and connected water from a different part of the map. With that, I have one hydro section working, which brought a new Pokémon to the area.
The problem is that I don’t have enough water to finish the job. Water is a major part of the game’s story, which I am now learning as I progress through it. In the main campaign, after settling on a home for your Ditto, you encounter an Onix stuck in a cave. The quest to get him out involves getting a Slowpoke to cause it to rain. Slowpoke’s quest line is long with many steps. Once it’s done, I should be able to get more water to the other zones.
No regrets so far
I don’t regret playing Pokopia at my pace. Sure, I could have completed the task of securing a home for Ditto much sooner. One of your earlier tasks is building a home. But this place was too small for my liking. I had to build something bigger and better. I chose to build a cottage. Unfortunately, for me, it requires a lot of supplies and Pokémon to finish.
It also didn’t help that building that cottage takes an entire day, so I had to wait a bit to progress the story. Now, as I go through the Slowpoke story quest, I’m also hitting a bit of a snag. A big part of his plot revolves around humidity. I’m trying to progress this, but it does feel like the game is putting restrictions on how fast I can. The world doesn’t have the right amount of humidity for it to rain. So I will have to continue doing small things to make it easier.
But I’m fine with the pacing. This isn’t preventing me from doing other things. While I try to moisten the world and beautify it, I’m still able to look around and discover new things. I don’t feel restricted. I know that when I return to the game later, I will have made progress. Once I can free that Onix, I can’t wait to see what happens next. At least I know one of my next quests is to rebuild the Pokémon Center. I have the necessary supplies; I only need Onix and a few other Pokémon to help with the rebuilding.
The start of a core spin-off series
Like the Pokémon Legends games, it’s clear that Pokémon Pokopia has the legs to be a long-running series. Let it be clear, we don’t need a sequel right away. But there are so many ways they can expand this in a follow-up game. There are things I am still discovering, and I can’t wait to find them. This is a game I will be playing throughout the year, and I’m in no rush to see its conclusion.
