I'm surprised at all the Pokopia interest, honestly.
The game itself is so butt-ugly that it actually repulses me
stuffed full of literal nursery rhyme instruments that it quickly becomes annoying (if not outright insulting).
Yet all anyone seems to do is rave about the game.
the general lack of criticism around the actual game is surprising.
I think the answer is just that Pokopia appealed to and is being played by an almost-entirely-different group of players. Not people like us, and not people like whatever we imagine "typical" gamers to be.
These players have different standards, they want different things out of their games, and we hardly ever cross paths with them so we don't even know that they're out there until they start setting sales records or something. And apparently Pokopia was made in just the right way to tickle their brains. All of the stuff that would bother us either doesn't matter, or it's a straight-up positive for them.
It's the same thing behind the success of games like Farmville or Candy Crush.
You know in the back of your mind that they're hugely successful, but you don't know anyone who plays them, and you don't see the appeal of them yourself—yet someone out there must like them, right? A whole lot of people, apparently.
And it's just the Pokémon name that's throwing us off, making us think that Pokopia must be something that we should like or understand.
I think the answer is just that Pokopia appealed to and is being played by an almost-entirely-different group of players. Not people like us, and not people like whatever we imagine "typical" gamers to be.
These players have different standards, they want different things out of their games, and we hardly ever cross paths with them so we don't even know that they're out there until they start setting sales records or something. And apparently Pokopia was made in just the right way to tickle their brains. All of the stuff that would bother us either doesn't matter, or it's a straight-up positive for them.
It's the same thing behind the success of games like Farmville or Candy Crush.
You know in the back of your mind that they're hugely successful, but you don't know anyone who plays them, and you don't see the appeal of them yourself—yet someone out there must like them, right? A whole lot of people, apparently.
And it's just the Pokémon name that's throwing us off, making us think that Pokopia must be something that we should like or understand.
The thing I don't get is this; people who play cozy games don't equate to being nintendo gamers or pokemon gamers.
Sure, there are plenty of 30+ year old women, like myself, who grew up with pokemon and enjoy cozy games. But that demographic isn't large enough to warrant a game like Pokopia, even if we consider the tranny demographic as well.
Is the Japanese market for cozy pokemon games lucrative enough to warrant Pokopia? Did the spiritual predecessor, Dragon Quest Builders, have a large enough market both domestically and abroad to make way for Pokopia?
How many ITT are men who bought a switch 2 for Pokopia only, and how many of them bought a Switch 2 for another game but decided to get Pokopia, how many bought Pokopia because their significant other wanted it etc.
I think it's an interesting topic because I'm not in a position where I'd consider getting another console just for the sake of Pokopia/modern Pokemon that runs marginally better on the Switch 2 than on the original. Hell, if I wanted to play a cozy game I could boot up any number of titles either via emulation or via a pc platform of choice, so it's a base I've already got covered without needing to throw money at Nintendo (more than I already have, anyway)
The thing I don't get is this; people who play cozy games don't equate to being nintendo gamers or pokemon gamers.
Sure, there are plenty of 30+ year old women, like myself, who grew up with pokemon and enjoy cozy games. But that demographic isn't large enough to warrant a game like Pokopia, even if we consider the tranny demographic as well.
Is the Japanese market for cozy pokemon games lucrative enough to warrant Pokopia? Did the spiritual predecessor, Dragon Quest Builders, have a large enough market both domestically and abroad to make way for Pokopia?
How many ITT are men who bought a switch 2 for Pokopia only, and how many of them bought a Switch 2 for another game but decided to get Pokopia, how many bought Pokopia because their significant other wanted it etc.
I think it's an interesting topic because I'm not in a position where I'd consider getting another console just for the sake of Pokopia/modern Pokemon that runs marginally better on the Switch 2 than on the original. Hell, if I wanted to play a cozy game I could boot up any number of titles either via emulation or via a pc platform of choice, so it's a base I've already got covered without needing to throw money at Nintendo (more than I already have, anyway)
There are people (and not just women) that choose to only play one or few sets of games. Some examples include The Sims series and most of its playerbase being women, people that buy a PS5 just to play Gran Turismo and nothing else, and people who only play DOTA 2 and nothing else.
There are people (and not just women) that choose to only play one or few sets of games. Some examples include The Sims series and most of its playerbase being women, people that buy a PS5 just to play Gran Turismo and nothing else, and people who only play DOTA 2 and nothing else.
Sure, absolutely, but I just don't see the overlap with Pokopia for any of these groupings. It's the first spinoff of its kind for Pokemon, it's very different from other cozy games that women typically play if they're the types to hyperfocus on The Sims and it's very different from any other Pokemon game before it, main line or spinoff.
Of course, I haven't played Pokopia at all so please correct me, but does it play at all like something like Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons or Stardew Valley? I could see an overlap there based on screenshots from Nintendo.
And again, you'd have to buy a Switch 2 to have access to Pokopia.
Sorry, I'm overthinking this because I don't personally see the appeal of Console + game price. Least of all for a Nintendo game, because they rarely put their games on discounts even after years.
Saw someone on Metacritic complain the MC looks and sound like someone with down syndrome. Since his brother has downs and it triggers him so hard, he stopped playing.
I'm really glad my kids haven't gotten into Pokemon cards yet and hopefully they never will. I can't find them anywhere. I know when the stores are about to be restocked because there's always obese guys camping out waiting to immediately buy all of them. Most of the packs they buy end up unopened sitting in storage to be resold in 5 years for a pretty substantial profit.
You have a card game designed for and marketed to children, but all of the inventory is being purchased by adults, who don't care about the game or the artwork. They snatch them all up to make sure nobody else has the chance and then put them on a rack in their garage to sell later.
Opening packs of Pokemon cards was such a big part of my childhood. Complaining about scalpers seems like some soy reddit shit but I don't understand what the point of the cards are anymore when the intended audience can't even access them.
Sorry, I'm overthinking this because I don't personally see the appeal of Console + game price. Least of all for a Nintendo game, because they rarely put their games on discounts even after years.
Pokemon does have a history of doing crossovers you wouldn't really think of for side games. PMD, Conquest, Pokken, etc. Pokopia makes me think that someone at TPC actually had an idea they genuinely wanted to try more than it was something driven purely by sales.
I’ve been playing Pokémon Pokopia. If you’re the right market for it, that shit hits like crack.
If I had to describe the baseline appeal, it’s perhaps the best game to emulate the feel of living with Pokemon, a game world where the creatures that make it up are essential to the function of society. They wander around, talk to each other, play together… and Pretty much every resource either comes from Pokémon, is made with the help of Pokemon, or can be made easier with the help of Pokemon. If you lay down things like railroad tracks and handcarts, Pokemon will just decide to use them and ride around. And if you bring them along while you’re cooking, they’ll even help you cook and create unique food. Every new arrival is a cause for celebration, because every new arrival increases the ability to make and build and smelt and grow.
Then add on an absolutely hypnotic gameplay loop and sense of progression. It is simultaneously very easy to progress the game if you put your mind to it, and nearly impossible to progress in a straight line without getting completely sidetracked every five seconds. I’ll start with a simple goal, like progress the building project I need for the area 4 Pokemon center rebuild. That takes glass, so I go to my smelters in Area 3 to get some glass, only to realise that Pokemon I wanted to join has come at last. So I get them set up where I want them to be, and address their first couple of needs, and that’s finally enough to hit the checkpoint for this map to level up. I head back to the PC and investigate, and some recipe I’ve been needing for a while to fix Area 2’s docks into a usable state is ready at last, so I go there to start building it.
once I’ve bridged over, I might as well check up on the trading post set up above me. That has the perfect doodad I’ve been looking for to finish off a habitat here, so off I go to set that up. That habitat needs power, so I hook it up, but now I’ve got some utility cables I’m lugging around - unless I go back to area 1 where I need a few more. And while I’m at it, the new ability I have to make rivers would fix this up…
Cut to three hours later, I’m finally getting back to pick up the glass, but the original purpose has been almost entirely forgotten - so I spend most of it making a nice new decoration built to improve Magmar’s feng shui, and I don’t even *like* magmar. And don’t get me wrong, every city I’ve been in is visibly better for my wandering, notable progress has been made, it’s just that almost none of that progress was what I originally intended because of all the sidetracking I go into.
The OST seems fine for everyone, too, which is similarly baffling. From what I've heard of it, it's got the same problem as the Yoshi games: it's so stuffed full of literal nursery rhyme instruments that it quickly becomes annoying (if not outright insulting). Yet all anyone seems to do is rave about the game. Is it just flash-in-the-pan hype? Does everyone play with their sounds off? Has everyone been so inundated by the main series' dogshit graphics that it's not even a point of criticism anymore?
The graphics are purely a matter of taste, but I’ll reject the notion that’s the music is anywhere near as bad as what you’re implying, or at least explain why its so enjoyable. with the general theme of rebuilding the world, the way I’d the describe the music is humble and deliberately unassuming. Most initial area themes are deliberately very quiet and subdued - both to play into the theme of a new dawn for the world, and lure you into the cozy, hypnotic state I mentioned previously. They sneak the healing jingle into just about every track, which I think is a perfect metaphor for the intentions of the game itself.
And when the areas really start to come together, and the original town theme returns? It’s so heartening as both proof you’re healing the world, and nostalgic as well. It’s like the whole area is invoking the feeling of an old man watching his grandkids play the same games he did when he was their age.
Like… yes, I can see why you’re calling it childish, but that’s to sell the earnestness and the melancholy the game is shooting for. Nobody really understands why humanity is gone, so everything they do is with the ultimate goal of bringing humans back - even though there’s basically no way most of their strategies would ever work, for reasons that would be clear if they could read and understand it. It’s like a bunch of kids trying to study and grow and work as hard as they can, because they completely believe that if they work hard enough, daddy and the other men in green will come home from the war.
Everything is about selling that childlike sense of wonder and hope, and nailing that - along with the super-satisfying gameplay loop - is why the game is such a big hit. Theyre willing to let single Pokemon have some things, sometimes - Bulbasaur will play jump rope with you, Zorua will play hide and seek, but they won’t feel the need to make everything perfectly even just to balance things out, either. The first time I was wandering about in game, heard a pokemon cry with the sound of massive wings, and looked up to see Ho-oh flying around? That genuinely made me feel like I was ten again.
…unrelated to all that, it also gave me a chance to do something that still makes me feel like a bad person for laughing at it days later. Cubone’s base habitat is literally a gravestone with flowers, which is already a little fucked up. But I took my time and found a really good spot to place it down, this high cliff overlooking the town.
Shortly after, Cubone spawns (Literally saying something along the lines of “this place is really nice, mom would’ve loved to see it”). I ask what I can do to make him more comfortable, and he says he’d like a Toy - which is slightly inaccurate as a name, because basically any outright item that you interact with but don’t store in, sit/sleep on, or eat counts.
And I only had one thing that counted on hand. So now, while he’s all alone up on the cliff overlooking the town with his mother’s grave right beside him… cubone can play with the excavation tools I left him.
it also gave me a chance to do something that still makes me feel like a bad person for laughing at it days later. Cubone’s base habitat is literally a gravestone with flowers, which is already a little fucked up. But I took my time and found a really good spot to place it down, this high cliff overlooking the town.
Shortly after, Cubone spawns (Literally saying something along the lines of “this place is really nice, mom would’ve loved to see it”). I ask what I can do to make him more comfortable, and he says he’d like a Toy - which is slightly inaccurate as a name, because basically any outright item that you interact with but don’t store in, sit/sleep on, or eat counts.
And I only had one thing that counted on hand. So now, while he’s all alone up on the cliff overlooking the town with his mother’s grave right beside him… cubone can play with the excavation tools I left him.
Well, if the excavation tools near his mother's grave really does upset the poor guy, at least he's got a quick way to end it right outside his door.
Horribly distasteful jokes aside, I appreciate the breakdown. I also appreciate the spoiler brackets, even though I opened them anyways because I guessed the plot twist from the first trailer lol. It does make more sense when you've put it that way, and I am definitely in the target demographic if so, but I unfortunately cannot agree on the OST without playing the game myself. Listening to the two tracks you linked on their own is only reinforcing my preconceptions. Glockenspiels, soft rock guitars, recorders... this seems like one of the less patronizing tracks and it's still grating on me. At least Pokopia seems to have done the gen 1 tracks a tiny bit more justice than LGPE... but that's such a low bar I feel dirty mentioning it.
Maybe if Switch 2 emulation is figured out this decade I'll give it a try, but there's no way I'm touching this otherwise.
the earnestness and the melancholy the game is shooting for
Nobody really understands why humanity is gone
everything they do is with the ultimate goal of bringing humans back - even though there’s basically no way most of their strategies would ever work, for reasons that would be clear if they could read and understand it
It’s like a bunch of kids trying to study and grow and work as hard as they can, because they completely believe that if they work hard enough, daddy and the other men in green will come home from the war.
Ah.
What you're describing is a horror game.
A weird, dream-like setting where everything is perpetually just out of your reach and understanding.
I really appreciate the explanation, and I'm glad that the game works for you.
But for me, stuff like this usually doesn't evoke "whimsy." It feels uncanny and nightmarish. Like the vibe of the Where The Wild Things Are movie.
PEAK side games. I wish we'd gotten a second Conquest, they could do so many new things with the fairy typing and if they dared, they could do a different cross over rather than simply staying with Nobunaga's Ambition. Fire Emblem x Pokemon, Final Fantasy Tactics x Pokemon.
Pokken could be DLC for regular Tekken rather than a fully standalone game, add different pokemon fighters and pokemon inspired maps. Let me play Heihachi so I can piledrive Lopunny or something. Won't ever happen, has Tekken ever made it onto other consoles/PC than PS? Not that exclusivity has ever stopped a game dev company before.
I also badly want a return to Pokemon Ranger. I still haven't played the other Ranger games and it's been a hot minute since I played Guardian Signs, it was fun and different even if the stylus gameplay gets old after a while. I don't miss the days of Nintendo having to bake in a gimmick into every game because it's exclusive to a console.
Finished the main story of Pokopia after like 40-50 hours of gameplay. The Pokedex is barely 1/3 complete so I figure I may be playing this game forever. It's easily my favourite spin-off for the franchise.
I accidentally let the rebuilt theme continue playing while reading the thread and you're right about it luring you into a hypnotic state, that sound track is wonderful.
It's really a shame this game is locked behind such a high price point though. I can't justify a Switch 2 just to inject nostalgia heroin directly into my veins. I hope I remember to play it in a decade after they crack Switch 2 emulation.
I'm just about to beat LeafGreen's main campaign, I'm swapping out a couple of my Pokémon since they aren't performing well but I should have this done by tomorrow at the latest.
I'm really glad my kids haven't gotten into Pokemon cards yet and hopefully they never will. I can't find them anywhere. I know when the stores are about to be restocked because there's always obese guys camping out waiting to immediately buy all of them.
I manage to hit online restocks pretty often, you just need to be wary of which retailers you decide to hit, the Pokémon Center has one of the more consistent ones (and not bought out by bots very often) whilst Wal-Mart is dreadful and botted regularly.
Technically they try to sell 'em ASAP, all of it is bought on credit cards they regularly max out and pay off when funds come it. They're basically following the same playbook that sneakerheads followed years ago and crypto scammers still use to this day.
You have a card game designed for and marketed to children, but all of the inventory is being purchased by adults, who don't care about the game or the artwork. They snatch them all up to make sure nobody else has the chance and then put them on a rack in their garage to sell later.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news (and parroting since I've brought this up before) but children are actually the a small outlier when it comes to the TCG, especially when the Masters division for (where all the players born in 2009 or earlier) TPCi's TCG events is the largest division they have.
Opening packs of Pokemon cards was such a big part of my childhood. Complaining about scalpers seems like some soy reddit shit but I don't understand what the point of the cards are anymore when the intended audience can't even access them.
TPCi seems to be aware of the issue since they recently announced plans to expand their printing facilities and bought out Excell Distributing. That said you won't see results from a lot of these changes for about a year or so.
Finished the main story of Pokopia after like 40-50 hours of gameplay. The Pokedex is barely 1/3 complete so I figure I may be playing this game forever. It's easily my favourite spin-off for the franchise.
When combining this with the fact that Serebii has been updating his site with Pokopia material for several days longer than he did Z-A, it really just emphasizes how fucking depressing the state of the main series is. A cheaply-made DQB riff has significantly more content to bite into than an "ambitious" (by Pokémon standards) mainline entry.
