Pokémon Pokopia Review – This Experimental Spin-Off is a Catch

There’s little else as iconic and immediately recognizable as the Pokémon franchise. Although it had its fair share of spin-offs, the franchise has largely relied on a very specific formula. As a young trainer, you get a starter Pokémon from a local professor, and then spend countless hours throwing multi-colored spheres at wildlife until you amass a team formidable enough to become the champion. It has remained an effective script for thirty years. But the Switch 2 era is shaking things up. Pokémon Pokopia is a spin-off unlike any other, stripping out the long-standing gym badge pursuit and turn-based battle staples. In their place is a cozy life sim teeming with charm that’s equal parts Animal Crossing and Dragon Quest Builders. And it just might be one of the greatest formula deviations the franchise has ever seen.

In Pokémon Pokopia, you are not an aspiring young trainer venturing out into the world to prove yourself. You are a Ditto waking up alone in a ruined, desolate Kanto region. Humanity has packed up and vanished, as have all the Pokémon . Gone are the roaming trainers, bustling cities, and their lively Pokémon Centers. To figure out what happened, this special Ditto takes on the form of its previous owner, morphing into a wacky looking human kid. This quirky creature masquerading as a human soon meets a talking Tangrowth, the stand-in for the series’ normal professor character, who issues the hefty task of rebuilding the withering region piece by piece.

The abandoned, dilapidated environments add a grim undertone to the cute, upbeat proceedings. There’s much time spent reading old human logs and figuring out why society collapsed. But the seemingly heavy narrative takes a backseat to the actual moment-to-moment gameplay. Pokopia is a life sim and sandbox game. Koei Tecmo’s Omega Force, the team behind Dragon Quest Builders 2, worked to refine that formula and make it distinctly a Pokémon experience. The DNA of their other voxel-based sandbox game is patently obvious the second you drop into the world and interact with it through the familiar UI, swapping between items and skills. And this interface is used to spend many in-game days smashing rocks, chopping down trees, and gathering raw materials to liven up the drab and barren surroundings to make them fit for inhabitants. Over time, these once drought-stricken, deteriorating territories are rejuvenated and given much-needed vibrant color, all done plot by plot.

The Power of Friendship

However, this Herculean task cannot be done alone. A workforce is required to enact this change efficiently. Since there are no Poké Balls, wild Pokémon have to be convinced to move into the area voluntarily. This is achieved by catering to their specific needs. The original three starters—Charmander, Squirtle, and Bulbasaur—ask only for four tufts of grass connected to each other in a square formation. The simplicity of their needs doesn’t remain the standard for long. Hitmonchan demands a bench and a punching bag, whereas Scyther requires four patches of grass surrounding a tree. Uncovering the exact architectural requirements, although communicated quite clearly through the Pokédex habitat info built out from discovering Pokémon traces, adds a simple and fun way of designing the environment for the extensive selection of Pokémon in Pokopia—there are 300 Pokémon in the game spanning Gens 1 through 9, with the first gen offering the most of the bunch. Bringing areas to life and watching adorable, recognizable creature designs pop up is always a joy, triggering a deep nostalgic center of the brain for long-time fans. It’s as addictive as it is satisfying.

Once Pokémon move in, they become part of your town’s soon-to-be flourishing ecosystem. Each can be assigned jobs based on the specific skills of their species. Scyther can chop up wood to make lumber; Charmander will happily light campfires and furnaces; and Onix can help with making cement. However, the an equally important mechanic revolves around your Ditto protagonist. Because you are a Ditto, you can copy the abilities of the Pokémon you befriend. The same Pokémon Ditto befriends will also teach it special moves. In the beginning, Ditto learns Water Gun from Squirtle and Leafage from Bulbasaur. The former allows Ditto to rehydrate shrubbery and surfaces, whereas the latter lets it sprout patches of grass from a given surface. There are many more skills to learn that not only make Ditto an equal participant in the development and maintenance of the various maps the player moves between, but enable it to navigate the world in new ways.

In some ways, this turns the world into a giant obstacle course. For example, thorny vines blocking a canyon path may be bypassed with the help of Scyther’s cutting ability, slicing the once impassable barrier with ease. If you find a massive pile of dirt burying an item of interest, you can copy a Piplup to spray a high-pressure stream of bubbles and wash the grime away. The process of constantly unlocking new abilities lets the player access previously unreachable areas, which gives the exploration a highly rewarding pace. Even after logging a fair amount of hours into the campaign, I was still finding new movement tricks that completely changed how I navigated the map.

Head in the Clouds

The presentation capturing this entire adventure is a massive step up from the Switch 1. Running on the Katana Engine, Pokopia looks sharp. The lighting aids in changing the mood of each of the biomes. Walking through a dense forest at dusk as the shadows stretch across the grass feels genuinely atmospheric. And the game runs well. I rarely noticed any heavy frame drops, even when my screen was packed with different Pokémon running around the town square carrying out their assigned tasks.

That said, the game does have some minor issues worth noting. The main campaign occasionally struggles against pacing issue. And it can be quite hand-holdy. The campaign rarely lets you figure things out for yourself. Every time you enter a new biome, a character immediately stops you, gives you a rigid checklist of chores, and directs your efforts. You have to build exactly what the game wants, exactly where it wants it, before it finally takes the training wheels off. Maybe Omega Force wanted to make sure its younger players wouldn’t get lost. But for seasoned players, the constant interruptions can get annoying.

Fortunately, the developers included a secondary mode that completely ignores these grating parts of the story. Once you unlock the Cloud Islands, you get access to a massive, free-form sandbox. There are no mandatory quests here. You just drop in. And best of all, players can continue contributing to the development of that island even if others log off. If only more sandbox/survival games had this feature without shelling out cash for a dedicated server. Coordinating massive building projects with other players is Pokopia elevated to a whole new level, which really ramps up the fun factor. It turns the game from a guided RPG into a unrestricted digital Lego set.

Pokémon Pokopia Review Verdict

[Editor’s Note: Pokémon Pokopia was reviewed on Switch 2, and a copy was provided to us for review purposes.]