Hi hi,
Today I wanted to share my progress in Pokopia after playing the game for about 150 hours, talk about what I am focusing on right now and some thoughts on what I’m liking or disliking. It’s actually mind-boggling to see that number of hours in my Nintendo profile. The only game that I played more than that is Stardew Valley.
Be mindful that I will be saying spoilers about the story plus show Pokémon and areas from the late game. So beware of that if that’s something you want to avoid.
If you’re coming from the future, note that I wrote this post before the free August update and Bubbly Basin DLC.
I mentioned here before that Pokopia felt like a game made for me, and that feeling is still true to this date. As a big fan of Dragon Quest Builders 2, mechanics felt familiar and vastly improved. Magnet Rise feels so much better than the Transform-O-Trowel, though the storage system definitely suffered a downgrade from DQB2, where you can craft using items stored anywhere and not only from your inventory or connected chests. Not to mention how NPCs in DQB2 use everything you build while Pokémon ignore most of it (I got heartbroken when I placed my first slide and realized they don’t use it). Anyway, this is not a DQB2 post.
If you’re confused about these comparisons: let me take a step back and mention that it was the same team from Koei Tecmo that worked on both games.
Behold my very underwhelming Withered Wastelands, where the only thing I am proud of are my hot springs.
Combining crafting and building with habitat creation in a game was a genius move in my opinion, and it was so smart how they justified it all using the backdrop of this post-apocalyptic world where the humans had to leave. Plus I kept wondering how they would finish the storyline: will the humans come back? How would that even work? But if they don’t come back, will it all have been for nothing? It was bittersweet to finish the story with Ditto and Tangrowth still not knowing if their humans will come back. Sending a picture to space made me emotional. What a heartfelt ending.
I think I put a bit more effort into Bleak Beach, though there’s still a long way to go to make it look actually nice. I decided to put the Power Plant there because of the electricity theme. I was SO excited when I discovered this area and realizing it was Vermilion City.
“Finishing” Pokopia coincided with Jo creating a Cloud Island for our group to play around with. Jo is in the same timezone as I am, but Stina is based in the US and Strawberry is in Australia. We used to say it would be fun to play a multiplayer game together, but the timezones make that practically impossible. Playing asynchronously through the Cloud Island was the perfect solution for our problem and it became a little ritual for me to log in and check out what the others had done while I was asleep or what pokémon appeared.
Our Cloud Island is looking amazing little by little. You can see the apartment complex I built with a room for each one of us, the amazing storage room Stina created, the hot springs, her ravine where we have a little production line, and Jo’s train station that takes you there.
I also made a Cloud Island with Dodo and we had fun building our living room in the game. And we have an agreement that we will only get cute pokémon we like in our island, since we don’t need to complete the pokédex there.
A replica of part of our house, on the right. Don’t mind the placeholder sand blocks.
Speaking of pokédex, now to my goals as of lately. I felt a little lost when I rolled credits and thought, but all my areas still look like a mess. Where do I go from here? That was unexpected as I typically lose interested right away after completing a story. But not this time.
Rocky Ridges stays mostly the same, but I recently removed all the asphalt from the main Skylands island and I’m much happier with how it looks now.
So besides the Cloud Islands, I set some goals for myself. That also coincided with my recent trip, where I took the Switch 2 with me. I realized that while I was traveling, I didn’t really want to work on building and making the areas look cuter; so I focused on making habitats and finding pokémon I still didn’t have registered.
I spent the most time decorating my Pallet Town (and yes that’s how I named it), more than the other areas. Just for these pokémon to walk over the tracks rather than use the carts. Sigh…
As of writing this, I registered 204 habitats (after a Google search, that means I have 5 missing) and 292 pokémon. I know for sure that I still need to register Ho-Oh, Entei and Mew, plus I am still missing fossils to complete a couple of habitats. I’ll be honest that this part is starting to get tedious – it’s just so frustrating that I keep getting repeated fossil parts. Plus, over time the game decided to slow down how often it gives me habitat hints. Why can’t these games make it a bit easier for you when they know you’re about to complete something? 🙂
Pokopia is not a game without its flaws by any means, and it’s not a game for everybody. I wondered, just like I know other players did, why did they add Camouflage to the game? Why did you do a quest to have Slowpoke yawn and then never need him to use the ability again? Why are paint balloons so annoying to use?
And, my biggest complaint of all: why don’t they interact more with everything I build?
But that doesn’t really matter in the end as I keep feeling this childlike amazement even after all these hours. The little details like how certain pokémon walk, the dialogue between them or how your Ditto will do a goofy dance sometimes. I’m sure I will keep going back to it, though probably more casually than now.
Thank you for reading,
-Luna
PS. All screenshots in this post were taken from my own save.
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