What if you didn’t have to battle with your Pokémon? What if you could just…vibe?
If you’ve ever wanted to create your own Pokémon region, now’s your chance. From finding new Pokémon and fulfilling their requests to restoring Pokémon Centres and forming new hot springs, it’s up to you to clean up your surroundings and creating a utopia for you and your buddies. It’s every cosy gamer’s fantasy – even if you have to hoover up more trash than a Trubbish with a Hasty nature and the Pickup ability.
So, what do we think? Is it as good as the critics suggest? Or does it ring as hollow as a Chimecho without a bell?
What if you didn’t have to battle with your Pokémon? What if you could just…vibe?
If you’ve ever wanted to create your own Pokémon region, now’s your chance. From finding new Pokémon and fulfilling their requests to restoring Pokémon Centres and forming new hot springs, it’s up to you to clean up your surroundings and creating a utopia for you and your buddies. It’s every cosy gamer’s fantasy – even if you have to hoover up more trash than a Trubbish with a Hasty nature and the Pickup ability.
So, what do we think? Is it as good as the critics suggest? Or does it ring as hollow as a Chimecho without a bell?
Spoilers abound for gameplay, with some lightly signposted story spoilers.
A Story Worth Ninetails
You’re a Ditto missing your Trainer. Where have they gone? Why have they left you? And where are all the other Pokémon that used to live here?
You share these questions with a friendly and knowledgeable, if a bit scatterbrained, Tangrowth, who acts as the Professor of this land. Together, you explore a ruined landscape, gradually restoring it by gathering resources, building habitats, and attracting Pokémon back to live and thrive. And perhaps, one day, the humans will return from wherever they went.
You’d think this premise would feel heavy, even bleak, but it’s surprisingly the opposite. The story unfolds gently enough that you settle into the cosy setting very quickly, helped by the fact that the Pokémon you meet are delightfully cheerful. It becomes very easy to forget about the mystery entirely and just crack on with building houses and accepting sticks and fluff balls from excitable creatures who only want to vibe with their friends.
That said, the unease never fully disappears.
Minor story spoilers here: you eventually learn that climate change devastated Kanto, and natural disasters were rampant, from earthquakes and flooding to volcano eruptions. The region we once knew is barely recognisable.
So where did the humans go? And why did they leave their Pokémon behind?
That’s the disconcerting internal rumbling that lingered throughout. Pokémon are famously easy to transport – even the largest Wailord or most powerful Entei can be contained inside their Poké Balls and shrunk to fit onto a belt. Not to mention the PCs that can hold hundreds of creatures at a time. Sure, they couldn’t take all the wild Pokémon with them, but what about our Ditto and Tangrowth, who dearly miss their Trainers?
For a game that could have focused purely on cosy life sim mechanics, Pokopia delivers a surprisingly thoughtful, slightly melancholic story. I’m glad to have the mystery behind the build.
Evolving The Genre
Pokopia is one of the biggest departures from the ‘catch and battle’ formula we’ve ever seen – and it’s incredibly refreshing.
This cosy, sandbox-style adventure reimagines the Pokémon world in a peaceful, yet apocalyptic, post-human setting. With humans gone, Pokémon are free to work together to restore their homes.
Let’s go through what we can do:
1. Explore new areas
As you progress, you unlock new biomes and regions, discover hidden resources and secrets, and gain access to better tools and building materials.
One of my favourite parts was realising that this is Kanto – but far in the future. The landscapes have changed so drastically that even long-time fans won’t recognise them straight away.
I first thought that Withered Wasteland, the starting hub, was Pallet Town, due to its early-game appearance, as well as its proximity to the sea. Turns out, it’s likely Fuchsia City. Rocky Ridges screamed Cinnabar Island, with volcanic ash spewed all over the landscape – until I uncovered the Pewter Museum.
It’s a clever way of rewarding long-time fans without making it too obvious.
2. Collecting Mysterious Slates
I completed missed the little hidden underground cavern in Withered Wasteland for ages. I’m a terrible explorer! But once I found my first Mysterious Slate in a sparkly rock, I was hooked.
There are 27 to collect, all with a different letter of the Unown alphabet on them. And when you complete the mural, you’ll get a particularly special prize…
3. Tasks & Requests
The Pokémon in Pokopia are bursting with personality, and many offer side quests.
Some of them are pure whimsy. A recent one I completed was Torchic’s request to create a hot spring. I loved watching various Pokémon soak in the springs in Rocky Ridges, so creating one in Bleak Beach unlocked even more cute animations I could take photos of.
However, others are incredibly useful – and beware, you can skip them! Piplup is desperate to paddle around in the sea with you, so they ask you to find a Lapras to teach you to swim. Finding Gyarados means you can learn to climb waterfalls. Helping Poliwrath and Alakazam will give you a super useful recipe for an elevator. Super missable, super useful!
And Magikarp? Don’t skip Magikarp. Trust me.
4. Team Initiation Challenges
Part of the main story, these challenges track your progression. Getting paper to drop into Team R’s provocative little hatch was a huge milestone for me, which is a phrase I never thought I’d say. I love how obvious it is that you’re doing tasks for the villains, but when those villains might be the last humans left, it adds an extra layer of intrigue. I was always curious (and slightly suspicious) of every interaction.
Also: why do they need a Gameboy System, of all things?
What a silly question.
5. Filling Your Photo Album
I’m sure a lot of people were taking selfies with their favourite Pokémon or documenting their incredible builds.
Me? My album’s filled with sleeping Pokémon. They’re all just so CUTE. No regrets.
6. Collecting CDs
You know those sparkly rocks you can find Mysterious Slates in? Well, you can also find Relics and – incredibly – CDs.
These CDs play the songs from the games you know and love. You can even change the arrangements so that you’re jamming out to the older or newer games, depending on your nostalgia.
Me? I had Ecruteak City, Union Cave, Silph Co, and Driftveil City on repeat. Can you guess my age?
Vibes, Baby
Visually, Pokopia nails its cosy tone. The world is vibrant, colourful, and full of life, even in its ruined state.
Each biome feels distinct, and the environmental details, from swaying flowers and shimmering waters to distant structures, make the world feel alive. Performance-wise, as a Switch 2 game, everything runs smoothly, with our little buddies and elements like windmills moving cleanly.
The Pokémon themselves are a highlight. Each has their own distinct movement and animations; something the series has struggled with in the past. Venusaur hopping around like a giant frog was a joy, and the gentle flapping movements of Pokémon like Dragonite and Kilowattrel were great to see. I did find it frustrating sometimes when trying to lead some Pokémon to their jobs (looking at you, Cyndaquil and Trapinch, who kept falling off structures, whining all the way), but, overall, I found that the Pokémons’ movements were natural and endearing.
The music is very good, too. A cosy game needs a good soundtrack, and even though you’d often spend a long time in each town, the music never felt repetitive or annoying. In fact, it felt quite melancholy at times – which isn’t a bad thing, considering the story.
One of favourite moments, music and animation wise, was when you get taken to a Dream Island. The loading screen is very cute, with a boppy little song whistling you to your destination, showing Ditto holding onto Drifloon’s strings with a happy smile. So cute.
The credits sequence was also very beautiful. I won’t spoil it here, but I never tend to watch credits, and this one got me to sit through all of them. This game was clearly made with love.
Gotta Catch ‘Em All
Back when Pokémon Legends: Arceus came out, I felt the simple joy of finding Pokémon return. Seeing my favourite creatures grazing, splashing, or fluttering around, ready to interact with, brought a thrill that I thought couldn’t be matched.
Until Pokopia.
Every time I discovered a new Pokémon, I had to show my husband. I loved making habitats just to see which Pokémon would appear. Some will appear from very normal habitats, like grass or flower patches. However, others need a lot more work.
One of my first odd discoveries was a “Gently Lit Bed” habitat, which attracts Hoothoot and Noctowl with a cosy setup of a bed, table, and a lit slender candle. Others are even stranger. I was surprised to see Hitmonlee spawn at an ‘Urgent Care’ habitat, or Arcanine strolling into a ‘Mini Museum’.
Others make perfect sense. Why wouldn’t Alakazam spawn at a ‘Surging Psychic Power’ habitat, complete with crystal ball? Why wouldn’t Kirlia spawn at a ‘Moisturizing Makeup Stand’ habitat? Wait, what?
Top tip: invest in security cameras. Point one at a habitat and you’ll get alerts when something appears – perfect for finally catching that elusive Chansey.
More than anything, Pokopia gives you a chance to truly get to know the creatures you’ve known for the last 30 years:
- Did I expect Kyogre to be a dapper Southern gentleman? No, but it’s fantastic.
- Magikarp’s “YO!” when it spawns will never not be funny.
- Rotom is as annoying as ever.
- Pokémon like Porygon2 and Glimmet speak in direct, robotic tones.
- I liked the inclusion of “Peakychu” – a well-to-do version of Pikachu, which is a fun twist on an overused mascot. It’s very cute that it’s so peaky because it used all its electricity to help its friends.
- The “older” (fully evolved) Pokémon are often portrayed as parental figures, like Noctowl, Venusaur, and Aurorus.
The interactions between species are genuinely charming. Just watch Heracross and Pinsir comparing horns, or Tyranitar encouraging Larvitar to ear all their dirt so they grow up big and strong. Or Dratini worrying about not having legs while Poliwag reassures them about evolution. This ends with them promising to stay and evolve together!
With all these incredible ’mons, who do you decide to room with? For you can pick and choose which Pokémon will move into well-constructed homes, or who will be left to their own devices in the wilderness. If you’re a Mr. Mime hater, you can even create a whole prison system underneath the ground to house the creepy dude. I feel bad for all the videos I’ve seen online, burying him alive or keeping him locked up!
All of this helps raise the environment level so that you can progress through the game – but that wasn’t the point for me. What I cared most about is making my buddies happy: learning about their personalities, seeing them delight in their homes, and feeling comfortable enough to play with their friends and stick around in the hopes of a better future.
Though please stop giving me “presents”. I already have plenty of sticks, thank you.
Building A Region
Building is one of the biggest parts of Pokopia – and, at times, one of the most overwhelming.
That’s how I found it, anyway! While I did enjoy building the odd thing here and there, creating bridges to hard-to-reach areas or connecting railcart tracks for easy travel, I’ve never been much of a “builder” myself. So I enlisted help from my friend Danny (certified The Sims house wizard).
Here’s some of the comments he made about building:
- The items and materials feel somewhat lacklustre at first, but truly have limitless potential and stretch your creative muscles in ways that Animal Crossing failed.
- Wanting to progress to unlock new abilities and materials feels natural and rewarding (especially gaining the cooking ability to increase your punching abilities).
- Waiting for building to be constructed can really ruin your flow, but at least you have multiple worlds meaning you can work on other projects as you wait. I was relieved when the wait time was reduced later through the help of a special Pokémon!
- The controls just feel like second nature, and the use of the mouse mode is surprisingly clever; however, somewhat impractical as the switching between the two modes is finicky.
Seems like, when you engage further in the building mechanics, Pokopia provides some of the best going right now.
Tips:
1. Take everything you can from Dream Islands – seriously, everything.
2. Unlock the Magnemite form as soon as you can (it’s a late-game lifesaver).
3. Organise your storage early – label everything, or you’ll regret it. A Pokopia pet peeve of mine is that you can’t store items between areas, so either you aren’t going to remember where you put everything, even with an intelligent storage system, or you are going to have to do a lot of travelling back and forth to get what you need.
4. Reuse existing structures if building from scratch isn’t your thing.
5. Use the Pokémon Center’s 3D printer – take pictures of things you see on Dream Islands or even developer islands, and you’ll be able to recreate them (for a fee).
Dream Worlds & Fantasy Friends
It’s not all about restoring the Kanto region. You can travel outside of it, even as a little Ditto on a mission – if you know what to do.
You know how, if you’re a child, you shouldn’t mistake a Drifloon for a balloon and grab onto its strings, as it may drag you away to the afterlife? Um, that’s in the official Pokédex entry, so don’t @ me. Good thing you’re a Ditto, not a child – and Drifloon will take you away to a Dream Island instead of the afterlife!
Different plushies will take you to different Dream Islands. So, pick one, and see where you end up. Different Dream Islands have different resources, which you’ll need for progression. This is so useful for building, but you can also find Stardust, which can be crafted into Star Pieces. You can either use these to coax a friend’s Pokémon to live in your world, or it can be used later on to craft Rare Pokémetals, an extremely limited resource in the game.
Some people say you should take everything from Dream Islands – and they mean everything. Any furniture, door, window, or wall you see is fair game, and the next time you visit that Island on a different day, all resources will be restored. So, take it all, and use it as inspo for your next building stint.
Keep an eye out in these Dream Islands…I was so excited to find a special friend underneath the mountain, hidden away, ready to travel back with you…
Speaking of visiting different places: if you have a Switch Online membership, you can visit a friend’s world, and vice versa. It’s disappointing that you can’t build together – or even interact with anything properly – but it’s still a fun concept.
Until your friend gets stuck behind some scaffolding and the game won’t even let you move the obstruction, even on your own region. It was very funny, though.
Final Thoughts
Pokopia is one of the highest rated Pokémon games of all time for a reason. It takes the building mechanics of games like Animal Crossing and Minecraft, refines them, and blends them seamlessly with the Pokémon world we’ve known for decades. Whether you’re a long-time fan or completely new, there’s something here to enjoy.
If this were just a building simulator with Pokémon, I’d say it was a fun experience, just because I like Pokémon so much. However, the story elevates it. While I wish we had more answers by the end, the mystery kept me gripped the whole time, and made me want to know what happened to the region I have loved for nearly 30 years.
As such, the prevailing feeling after finishing the game is one of both fondness and sadness. It’s been a while since a Pokémon game has taken up space in my head long after the credits rolled, and I appreciate the developers for clearly putting in so much effort into a franchise so dear to my heart.
That concludes our thoughts on Pokopia. Do you agree? Let us know your thoughts and tag us on social media @zatugames.
