If it wasn’t really clear before, I
am a big fan of Pokémon. Not just Pokémon, but I really do enjoy the “rpgs for
kids” subgenre of RPGs. I suppose you could say that I still have a knack to
enjoy the smaller, simpler games that would’ve been playing if I were 10 today.
I also really like cute monster designs so of course I latch onto games like
Pokémon and Yo-kai Watch to go and collect a team of the cutest monsters to
conquer the world with.
Of course the big question when
talking about Yo-Kai Watch is “Is Yo-Kai Watch going to be the next Pokémon
outside of Japan?” Unfortunately a large part of that question is more of
marketing question about the financial success of the game, anime, and other
merchandise on a global scale. Personally, I have no expertise in these areas
of business and cultural impact nor do I have much interest in these parts of
the question. Ultimately, I’m mostly just interested in one thing, “If I enjoy
Pokémon, will I enjoy Yo-kai Watch?”
The short answer for that is, yes if
you enjoy Pokémon you will likely enjoy a lot of what Yo-kai Watch has to
offer. However, it’s not quite so simple to just say Yo-kai Watch is a
serviceable Pokémon-like with more of a focus on Japanese mythology. To be
honest, I wouldn’t even say Pokémon is the best comparison in my mind as Yo-kai
Watch is very, very different. But yes, if you enjoy a small adventure
collecting cute monsters and doing battle Yo-kai Watch has a lot to offer for
you and I recommend it.
Now we can dive into the deeper
specifics of “What is Yo-kai Watch?” Yo-kai Watch is a monster collecting JRPG
about discovering and befriending mysterious creatures called Yo-kai. Yo-kai
are a collection of creatures and spirits from Japanese mythology, though
Yo-kai Watch expands this into a lot of original creatures and concepts based
on strange events and behaviors of modern life. There are the small handful
based on actual creatures from Japanese mythology, but most in the game tend to
be of the latter variety. Unlike its contemporaries, you aren’t exactly on a
quest to save the world (or at least not initially) or to become the greatest
at Yo-kai battling. You aren’t even that encouraged to “Catch ‘em All” to
complete your Medallium. In Yo-kai Watch you act more as a helper to those
dealing with issues caused by mischievous Yo-kai. You mostly just run around
town helping people… and that’s great! It’s a nice change of pace for these
kinds of games, and it only really expands into a world saving quest at the
very end. The game feels more like playing through episodes of the tv show and
fighting the “Monster of the Week” than a big adventure.
The setting of Yo-kai Watch is also
very, very different from most other RPGs. Yo-kai Watch almost entirely takes
place all in one town. It’s actually pretty impressive how they make 5 parts of
a town feel like a full game world. It isn’t something I even really noticed
until I riding my bike through the entire game world in only a few minutes way
after I completed the main story. There is a lot to do in your humble town,
plenty of Yo-kai to discover and people to help. My only real complaint about
the setting is that it is named “Springdale” despite clearly being a very
Japanese town complete with its own temples and shrines.
“Springdale” isn’t the only example
of sad attempts to westernize this game based on a Japanese setting with
Japanese mythology. Most the character names are changed to more western
friendly names like Keita into Nate. Thankfully there are a lot of the Yo-kai
themselves who keep parts of their Japanese myths in their localized names such
as Kyubi, Walkappa, and the Tengu Yo-kai, but sadly there’s a number who have
completely changed like Orochi became Venoct and Muramasa being pretty
unceremoniously dubbed… Snee. Snee the Cursed Blade just doesn’t have the same
ring to it sadly. Cheeksqueak still exists, a Yo-kai with a butt for a face in
the US version so at least that’s nice. Most of the “mascot” characters kept
their iconic Japanese names so Jibanyan and Komasan are here to stay. Now with
any localization this brings up a lot of concerning issues, especially with
games meant for children, from the erasure of foreign cultures to foreign
cultures “corrupting” youths. A lot of these issues I do not feel the authority
to tackle in full being I am not an expert on Japanese culture and (probably
more importantly) I am not from Japan and am not Japanese. I can say from my
perspective, an American playing a localized video game, that the localization
is spotty at best. At least Komasan’s cowboy accent and “Oh My Swirls!” catch
phrase are pretty cute.
Speaking of cute, the monster
designs are mostly very good. Not quite as iconic as a lot of the earlier
Pokémon generations, but still filled with a lot of adorable designs in its own
right. Considering Yo-kai are not strictly just super powered animals, they can
afford to get creative with butt faces, more humanoid designs, and
man-faced-dogs. My personal favorites come from the Noko line, Noko,
Bloominoko, and Pandanoko. All are designs based on the Tsuchinoko a legendary
snake from Japan. (Fun Fact: Dunsparce, one of my favorite Pokémon, is also
based on the same creature) Also as I’ve mentioned before, I do have a soft
spot for the adorable Komasan and all the other Yo-kai designs related to him.
That does bring up one issue with the roster of creature designs is that in the
200+ Yo-kai there are a lot of pallet swaps and slight redsigns. This includes
the before mentioned Noko family with Pandanoko just being a pallet swap of
Noko to look like a panda, Komasan has a pallet swap brother Komajiro as well
as a slight redesign with the Legendary Komashura. Unlike the Shiny variants in
Pokémon these are completely different Yo-kai with different abilities. Even
with a lot of roster filler there’s a lot of Yo-kai to choose from to befriend
and battle and there’s likely some Yo-kai for everyone.
Of course I haven’t even gone into
detail about how you battle and befriend these Yo-kai which is another part
where Yo-kai Watch differs a lot from Pokémon and where Yo-kai Watch honestly
has more in-common with a series like Shin Megami Tensei than anything else I’ve
played. In Yo-kai Watch you fight in real time battles in a 3-vs-3 format.
During battle 3 of your party of 6 Yo-kai are in the front active space on a
rotating wheel while your other 3 can be rotated in and out on the wheel at any
time. In battle you actually do not have much direct control over your Yo-kai
as they choose their own attacks and techniques to use. You the player have 5
key interactions with battle; rotating your Yo-kai party, items, selecting
targets, purifying inspirited Yo-kai, and activating a Yo-kai’s Soultimate
move. Rotating, targeting, and items are pretty self-explanatory if you are
familiar with RPGs, though you can use food items on enemies to try and
befriend them. Purifying is curing a Yo-kai of being inspirited by an enemy Yo-kai.
Effects of inspiriting can include many harmful debuffs and status ailments on
your Yo-kai so it is very important to rotate an inspirited Yo-kai out to
purify them which also requires clearing a touchscreen micro-game. And finally
you can activate a Yo-kai’s Soultimate move. Similar to purifying Soultimates
are activated via a touch screen micro-game, but also require a full spirit
gauge. While you don’t have as much direct control over your Yo-kai as most
RPGs there’s still enough to do that keeps the game from being boring in my
opinion.
Also while an AI automated team
might make the game seem real simple it’s actually pretty complicated. The
Yo-kai seem pretty capable at doing the job they are designated to do by their
Tribe. Tribes are like a Job or Class that each Yo-kai fills. There are 8
Yo-kai Tribes in total; Charming, which specialize in speed, Brave who
specialize in physical damage, Mysterious Yo-kai are your magic attackers,
Tough Yo-kai are your defensive Yo-kai or “tanks”, Heartful Yo-kai are your
healers, Eerie Yo-kai are your Yo-kai who specialize in inspiriting enemy
Yo-kai to afflict them with statuses or debuffs, Shady Yo-kai excel at
techniques that drain enemy HP, and Slippery Yo-kai are good at dodging enemy
inspirit techniques. You can mix and match these Tribes to make for a
well-balanced team or you can position Yo-kai of the same Tribe adjacent to
each other to give them a bonus stat boost. Teambuilding can get really
complicated in Yo-kai Watch when deciding between balance and specialization in
specific areas.
Honestly
that’s just the tip of the iceberg in how deceivingly complex Yo-kai Watch’s
teambuilding can be. You still need to factor in every Yo-kai’s physical
attack, Technique, which is either an offensive spell or heal, Inspirit, which
can either be a beneficial buff for your own party members or a negative debuff
for enemies, and a Yo-kai’s Soultimate move which can have a variety of effects.
You can even dive down deeper and factor in a Yo-kai’s Skill, a single trait
that each Yo-kai has, Attitude, which governs both how much a Yo-kai will loaf
around and do nothing as well as specialize their stat growth, a Yo-kai’s Rank,
and every Yo-kai has their own stats to factor in and you can equip an item to
your Yo-kai. I could go on, but I’d be writing for a long time and people are
still discovering more depth in Yo-kai training and teambuilding.
I suppose my main gripes about
Yo-kai Watch’s combat are that I don’t find a lot of balance in the game. I
barely found much use for inspiriting enemies so I barely used an Eerie Yo-kai.
I don’t think I have used a single Shady Yo-kai on my journey. Tough and
Heartful Yo-kai can help keep a team alive, but some of my more offensive
Yo-kai could take enough punishment anyway. Healing with items is on a cooldown
after use, but it usually outclasses any Yo-kai’s healing abilities. Personally
I just focused on offense and inspirit buffs and tried to overwhelm the game’s
bosses which worked most the time. Yo-kai Watch is very easy like one would
expect and I feel that’s fine, just there’s a lot of tools I never found the
use for even against the toughest fights in the game. Combat is still a lot of
fun, but it could definitely use some work to help make more Yo-kai useful.
Speaking of gripes though… let’s get
to finding and befriending Yo-kai. I am going to go as far to say if you are
expecting to find and befriend every single Yo-kai you are going to have a very
rough time. To befriend Yo-kai in battle you must give them food. Now that
sounds simple enough, but each Yo-kai has their own preferences in types of
food. By my count there are 11 different types of food and tiers of
effectiveness within each type. Every Yo-kai has 1 favorite type so each battle
is a 1/11 guessing game for every individual Yo-kai, and you only get 1 shot
per battle. This is especially a nightmare for rare Yo-kai who has an
incredibly low spawn rate so wasting an encounter on guessing the wrong type of
food. Sadly that’s not even the worst part. The worst is that the rarer the
Yo-kai, typically the less likely they are to befriend you even if you gave
them the optimal food choice. Sometimes it really does feel like even when you
are doing everything right you still have a 5% chance to befriend them. There
is nothing more you can do aside from having a Yo-kai who helps with
befriending, but even they only help so much. Finding rare Yo-kai can be a huge
pain, but the odds of success even when you find it are depressingly low.
Certainly this isn’t a deal breaker if you just want to enjoy the main story
and its combat, but it’s such a bummer for people who want to “Catch ‘Em All”
or even just want to have their favorite that happens to be a rare. If that
wasn’t enough, the final nails in that coffin is that there are a few Yo-kai
who are exclusive to a Gatchapon-style machine that requires rare coins to use,
Yo-kai that can only evolve with incredibly rare item drops, Yo-kai locked
behind quests that require incredibly rare item drops, Yo-kai locked behind
quests locked behind the other rare item drop quests that ALSO requires its own
rare item drop, Legendary Yo-kai that are locked behind a list of required
Yo-kai to obtain before you can summon them which… yes requires a lot of the
former mentioned examples, and for me the worst is Pandanoko, the sole Yo-kai
locked behind the Streetpass feature.
Yo-kai Watch is definitely one of my
favorite games I’ve played this year. It’s not quite a world changer like some
other releases this year, but it’s still a very good game and I highly
recommend it. It’s got a lot of glaring issues, but it is a really solid first
in this series. I mean if you compare it to how Pokémon Red and Blue measure up
in their own respective series you’ll find a lot of glaring major issues, but
still a very solid foundation. Of course Yo-kai Watch 2 already exists. I
personally don’t know much about how it improves on what Yo-kai Watch 1 started
but I’m definitely excited to try it if they bring it over. After all, it’s
clear how much I love Pokémon’s 2nd attempt so Yo-kai Watch 2 could
win me over in big way. Still, Yo-kai Watch has satisfied me enough. I love
this game and I’m glad that it’s a game that kids really seem to love in Japan.
It’s a new game, their game. We can bring up all the Pokémon comparisons we
want, but it’s a new game for a new generation of children. I’m glad they have
this game and series to fill their hearts with joy. I do really hope kids
worldwide will enjoy it too. It makes me think about how much I loved growing
up with Pokémon in my life. I do feel like a game like Yo-kai Watch, if not one
of its sequels, has the potential to bring that kind of feeling to a new
generation of children, and I care about that a lot more than the game’s
success on the worldwide market, or even how I and other adults feel about the
game.
