Pokopia Review: The Systemseller no one expected

When Pokopia was first shown it looked like a cute and fun spinoff. Knowing that the game was made from the people behind Dragon Quest Builders did got me excited, however I never in a million years expected that Pokopia would become a GotY contender and possibly my favorite Switch 2 game as of yet.

A cute start to an epic Journey

Pokopia starts very calm and cute. We play as a Ditto who transforms into the look of his former trainer. In the world of Pokopia humans are gone. Where did they go? What happened to them? The answers to these questions are the center point of the surprising emotional story of Pokopia.

Our first steps into the world as Ditto show a very dry and destroyed world. No flowers are blooming, trees are dead and no Pokemons are around. We then slowly start to meet our first Pokemon friends who teach us skills like watering the ground or creating bushes. It's already in the first minutes that Pokopia managed to surprise me.

Every Pokemon we meet is written brilliantly. Each of them has their own personality that really shines through in their writing. The same goes for facial expressions. It's simply a joy to see them interact with each other or watch how they react to your actions. If you for example take away a bed you made for them, the shocked face I saw on my charmander was heartbreaking and priceless at the same time.

This shows one of the strengths of Pokopia, you can see in every second you play that this game is crafted with attention to detail and love. The world feels like a living, breathing world. But what do you actually do in Pokopia?

Surprisingly complex gameplay

The core gameplay of Pokopia starts rather simple. Certain combinations of environments create habitats for Pokemon. If you for example create bushes next to a tree you created a new habitat. In those habitats a Pokemon will appear after some time.

One of your goals in Pokopia is to create many different habitats and that way find more and more Pokemon. Another part of it is creating real homes for your Pokemon and making them feel good by decorating their homes with furniture, toys and other cool items they interact with.When it comes to homes Pokopia gives you many options. You can either use a preset of houses or fully create your own homes. The game really allows for amazing creative freedom and it's insane to see what people have already created online.

The Pokemon themself also help you. They all have different talents and skillsets. Some will help you to create certain items. Like fire Pokemon can for example turn clay into bricks. Other Pokemon help you build houses faster and so on.

During the story some pokemon will also teach you new skills. Those are mostly tight to the story progression and you really get some wild abilities that I don't want to spoil here. All of this is just a small part of the gameplay though.

The game has surprisingly many systems in place that get slowly introduced over the course of the campaign. First of all, like in Minecraft you can pretty much destroy every block and create your own world, but over time you even unlock features like electricity which open up a whole new world of options.

A beautiful World to Explore

Another big aspect of Pokopia is Exploration. During the game you will explore a few very different zones each with their own types of Pokemon. What's really special about the world is the sense of exploration and eye for detail. Everywhere you can find small secrets or little hints about the past.

Pokopia also offers a great environmental story telling. The world you explore is a world in ruin. You will find destroyed human cities and many hints in them explaining you what happened and even connecting to old Pokemon titles. This is not a random world, this is a Pokemon world you will know if you're a fan of the franchise.

In some way Pokopia also reminded me of games like Power Wash Simulator. When you enter a city in ruins it's fun to slowly clean the dirt and slowly start to rebuild the city. I love that especially in the first 3 areas there is enough left for you to kinda know how this city must have looked before.

Because of that I often felt motivated to slowly rebuild what was there before. Of course if you do this it's up to you. You can also tear everything down and create your own ideas. While doing all of this Pokopia always has a great progression system.

Each Zone you enter offers its own Level up system and story. You level up by finding more pokemon and making them happy. This way you unlock new items and recipes. As I said before Pokopia is really complex and offers a great level of depth but it's all induced at such a perfect pace that you will never feel lost.

Is Pokopia perfect?

Honestly there isn't much to criticize with Pokopia. One thing I didn't mention so far is that the game also looks really beautiful and its music and sound design is just on point. There are just a few minor things that could have been better.

For one the controls. I think they are mostly fine but it did happen more than once that i wanted to destroy one certain block but the game selected three at the same time. Another smaller issue is the inventory system.

I did create a great storage solution for myself by now, but in the later parts of the story you often have to switch from one area to another and it can easily happen that you're missing a resource you have in area A but you need it in area B. It's not a big deal but porting back and forth can become a little bit annoying. I really wish we could have unlocked something like a cloud storage system at one point.

The last smaller issue I have is the progression of the areas. I don't want to spoil how many there are but for me personally the first area I found after the tutorial was the most exciting one for me and everything after that slowly became worse. None of the areas are actively bad but I do feel like some of the later areas could have been a bit more exciting as they were.

The best cozy game

I can truly say that Pokopia has been a magical journey for me. It took me around 30 hours to finish the game's main story which made me teary at the end. I was surprised by the emotional story, the deep gameplay systems and the charming Pokemon personalities.

Now I am someone who likes to play cozy games from time to time but honestly they rarely can hold my attention for too long. Pokopia on the other hand is still on my mind even after rolling credits. There is still so much I want to build, explore and discover.

There is still plenty of pokemon left to be found and secrets to be solved. This game in my eyes is truly the best game I played on my Switch 2 so far and even better than the amazing Donkey Kong Bananza. If you have a Switch 2 you owe it to yourself to experience this masterpiece.

Rating: Masterpiece