The Pokémon franchise has been about checking boxes since its inception. After all, the famous tagline is “Gotta Catch ’em All!” More than just collecting gym badges and catching Pokemon, Pokemon Pokopia evolves the concept of checklists, removing any kind of conflict from the experience and instead offering nearly endless tasks to improve the overall well-being of the various towns and the Pokemon in them. And it does that in a loop that combines elements from Dragon Quest Builders, Animal Crossing, and Minecraft, resulting in one of the best relaxing simulation titles I’ve played in years. While we continue to focus on collections, the focus has shifted from battles to revitalizing post-apocalyptic regions and rebuilding our connections not only to the world but to each other. And just like when the mainline Pokemon series was at its best, I had a hard time putting it down.
In Pokopia, operate the same as above. Ditto turns into a customizable human duplicate when he wakes up without leaving any trace of his trainer. When they step into the world around them, they discover that humanity has abandoned the world of Pokémon. The region is lonely, barren, and desolate, but one Pokemon, Tangrowth, holds your hand as you re-enter the world of the living. Adopting the name Professor Tangrowth, this creature acts as the main thrust of the main story, handing out tasks to revitalize areas with the express purpose of not only attracting more Pokemon, but hopefully also missing humans.
After just a few hours, the first biome is no longer brown and empty, but green and buzzing with recognizable Pokémon. This is a highly rewarding gameplay experience where you revitalize an area and watch different species come together and work together to improve their living conditions. This is important because it lasts until the end of the story.
Each environment also has important requests that require you to work together with your Pokemon friends to accomplish area-specific tasks, such as calling a rainstorm or hosting a party. These are the culmination of each environment and serve as the main way to advance the overall story, but tasks often require specific Pokemon or resources, and they keep you on the rails more than I’d prefer in a cozy game like this.
This story is full of fascinating mysteries that I couldn’t wait to uncover more. What caused humanity to flee? Why has this world fallen into ruin? And who are these strange Pokémon that look like special variations of existing creatures? As a Pokémon fan dating back to 1998, pulling on these threads with their fun nods to the series’ past became a highlight of my time in Pokopia.
As part of the revitalization effort, each town’s Pokémon Center will need to be rebuilt. This involves using resources and recruiting Pokemon from the area to serve as bulldozers and builders. Each Pokémon has its own specialty, so you’ll need to play that role with the Pokémon you’ve befriended, collect resources before you can build something, and explore the area thoroughly. This means a lot of back and forth to complete tasks, but thankfully you can build a railway network to make your travels easier. Unfortunately, because I was so thorough with my curious explorations, I often already completed requests before triggering story events, leading to awkward and long conversations where Pokemon asked me to do things I had completed hours before.
Each structure you build, along with other tasks you complete, increases the environmental level of your biome, advances the story, and unlocks new items in the shop. This makes each construction project feel more monumental, but some buildings (like the Pokémon Center) aren’t ready until the next day, so I always found it frustrating that it hindered progress. This started some races against time, allowing us to start “next day” construction projects by midnight instead of having to wait 24 hours for them to be ready. I understand that construction projects take a long time, and I rarely run out of tasks to complete while I wait, but it’s frustrating when all I want to do is progress through the main story. For a laid-back game, this element adds a layer of stress.
The starting biome may be dry and dead, but the mid-game environment gives you a flooded and polluted coast to account for. Many of the tasks are similar, but involve recreating a Pokémon’s preferred habitat, collecting Pokémon, and crafting, building, and planning to restore the area. Each vast, multi-layered environment brings new challenges and opportunities for exploration. I can’t tell you how many times I went exploring for a very specific purpose, only to get sidetracked by countless branching points and additional tasks.
While I was sometimes confused by how Pokémon Pokopia rewards (and sometimes doesn’t reward) going off the beaten path, exploring was often a reward in itself, as I was able to find new paths through the environment and vistas that showed me areas I hadn’t yet visited. But my primary motivation for exploration is lore drops that offer hints about what happened to this ruined world to drive out humans and send Pokémon into hiding.
When Pokémon join your town, they’ll offer to help by chasing you or using their powers, like Magmar to start a fire or Piplup to blow bubbles to clean up dirt. I loved building a small army of followers and running around, completing tasks and cleaning together. However, the most influential Pokemon will give you the new ability of Ditto Transformation, which allows you to copy the moves of another Pokemon. Even after 30 hours of deep diving, I was still gaining new abilities that vastly improved my expedition and opened up new parts of territory I previously thought I had thoroughly explored.
While the main campaign is very guided and sometimes unsuccessful, Pokopia offers bonus biomes that allow for free-form exploration, construction, and attracting Pokémon. While the main story leans heavily into the history of developer Omega Force’s Dragon Quest Builders, this additional area is more in line with Animal Crossing: New Horizons. It has a basic goal, but it doesn’t have the overarching story or exciting progression of the main game. And this space is so vast that you can spend dozens of hours immersed in this area alone. While the story-driven elements are positioned as the main attraction, this free-form area is a great way to break free from the checklists that are constantly chasing you. Long after I’ve finished rolling through the main story, I plan to return to the vast island to continue creating a little Pokémon paradise.
Pokémon Pokopia is a game of wonder, exploration, and activation, offering a cozy and satisfying experience without the threat of danger. Despite my minor gripes, Pokopia stands out as one of the best examples of a third-party developer using the Pokémon license to the fullest extent possible. When I was a kid, I always wanted to spend time in the world of Pokemon, and now, 30 years later, I feel that way.