Review #057 – Pokémon Pokopia

I wasn’t expecting too much from Pokopia considering Pokémon spin-offs aren’t always the most skillfully designed games in the world. A Pokémon-themed town management sim is a very fun concept though, and getting the team behind Dragon Quest Builders to conceptualize this idea was a solid move. It’s surprisingly awesome.

Many of its core mechanics can be traced back to other popular sandbox games, sure, but it doesn’t feel the developers just copy-and-pasted their way to a finished product. It’s a very smartly designed game, easy to get lost in, and teeming with the series’ delightful charm. Did I spend multiple hours meticulously building separate houses for all the three starter Pokémon? You bet!

The way the game introduces its various mechanics is well done—you pivot from basic stuff like watering plants and cutting trees to generating electricity and cultivating vegetables for cooking food. It scratches that same obsessive town management itch that Animal Crossing: New Horizons did for me over the pandemic. It’s undoubtedly the best Pokémon game in years.