Pokémon Pokopia review – the best Pokémon game on Switch 2

Pokémon Pokopia – a lot more interesting than expected (The Pokémon Company)

The latest Pokémon spin-off is a bizarre mixture of Fallout, Minecraft, and Animal Crossing and it’s the best thing to happen to the franchise in years.

The 30th anniversary of Pokémon catches the franchise at an important crossroads. The last two mainline entries have been disappointing, and the series now has a well-earned reputation for being low-tech and low budget, despite the near infinite profits reaped from trading card and merchandise sales.

Last year’s Pokémon Legends: Z-A was a step in the right direction, and the recent reveal of Pokémon Winds and Waves was promising, but the days when Pokémon was renowned for being a great and innovative role-playing series are far in the past. Winds and Waves won’t be out until 2027, so for now the only way the series can try to rejuvenate its reputation is via spin-offs, reissues, and perhaps more remakes.

We’re not sure that anyone was particularly looking forward to Pokopia – a strange mix between Minecraft, Fallout 4, and Animal Crossing – but much to our surprise it’s turned out to be the best Pokémon game we’ve played in at least a decade.

Pokopia is not an easy game to describe but if you played Dragon Quest Builders 1 or 2 then it’s basically that but with a thick coat of Pokémon spread on top. That’s not an idle comparison, as developer Omega Force (who are best known for the Dynasty Warriors franchise, despite almost everything else they do being much better) worked on the second entry.

The backstory is only roughly sketched out at the beginning, as you take on the role of a Ditto – a Gen I pokémon who can transform into any other creature but can never get the eyes and mouth right – who has changed into a human and woken up in a post-apocalyptic world in which there are no humans or pokémon anywhere, except for a lone Tangrowth who thought it was the only living creature left.

We’d love to know whether the similarities with Fallout 4 are intentional or not but as you explore the deserted world you find half destroyed buildings and infrastructure everywhere, with the streets littered with detritus that you can collect and use as raw materials for crafting, in a manner very similar to Animal Crossing.

You can repair or completely remodel whatever you want, as while the crafting works like Animal Crossing – as you construct furniture and decorations – the whole game world is made up of Minecraft style blocks. These can be collected and moved as you see fit; although many have different properties, depending on whether they’re one of the multiple variations of earth, rock, and minerals.

The game is split into a number of separate areas, each of which has suffered a different ecological disaster, from the first one being a parched desert, to another being flooded, and other covered in volcanic ash. All of this can be cleaned up and reused or you can mostly ignore the landscape, unless it’s part of a narratively critical mission, and just live amongst the sad relics of a destroyed world – which is not how we ever thought we’d be describing a Pokémon game.

Building works very similarly to Minecraft (The Pokémon Company)

There’s so much to do and see in Pokopia and we haven’t even got to the most important part yet which, as you might guess, revolves around the pokémon themselves. Apart from a lone Squirtle at the start, each critter can only be tempted back from wherever they were (none of them seem to know) by recreating the specific habitat they prefer, a little like Rare’s Viva Piñata.

This can range from four clumps of tall grass, to a tree and a bed of flowers, to a punching bag and bench or a collection of moss near a hot spring. You often can’t make a habitat until you discover or craft the items needed and even then, you have to wait for a pokémon to turn up (you can set up a camera to alert you when one arrives).

Sometimes you have to buy the necessary item from the PC at a destroyed Pokémon Center, whose currency you earn by completing simple tasks, like growing vegetables or improving the comfort level of existing pokémon. You manage the latter by talking to a pokémon and finding out what they want, which may be a new home or an item of a particular type.

Pokémon does Fallout 4 (The Pokémon Company)

This all results in a game which is at once dizzyingly complicated – with hidden secrets around every corner and new requests constantly popping up – and extremely laid back. You don’t have to do anything at any time and many tasks that involve pokémon, especially constructing buildings, take a considerable period of in-game time; so you just have to come back later, almost like a mobile game.

Pokopia is many things but it’s first and foremost a cosy game, where you can spend hours fixing up the beach front in what is implied to be Vermillion City or running around completing every errand possible. This can range from constructing a home for Onix (so he’ll in turn help you bulldoze the ruins of the Pokémon Center, ready for rebuilding) to learning to cook and how the various meals can augment your abilities.

Dittos, or at least the Ditto you play as, are a sort of Swiss army knife of pokémon and not only do you learn the moves of various pokémon you meet (squirting water, growing bushes, punching rocks, etc.) by transforming into them, but you also learn things like Strength, that helps you push large boulders, or you can have other pokémon follow you around and do things like breath fire or help clean up mud.

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