An Evening in Pokopia

It’s hard for me to put my finger on exactly what it is that is so compelling about Pokopia. But it’s undeniable. Long time readers may remember that I bought a Switch 2 for my daughter’s family. Pokopia made them buy a second one so that they could play together as a family. I’m not the only member of Team Spode playing, either.

The world of humans and Pokemon has been devastated by an event so far in the past that none alive now remember it. And by “none alive”, I mean Professor Tangrowth, seemingly the only inhabitant of this devastated planet. And you. You are a Ditto, a morphing Pokemon who pops into being near Tangrowth. Your last memories are of battling with your trainer. Exploring, you encounter the Professor, who explains that humans, and all other Pokemon, disappeared so long ago that he cannot even measure the time. Bereft and lonely, you take on the form (and eventually, the name) of your long-disappeared trainer, and start off on a mission to discover what happened to humanity and, along the way, repair the world and reintroduce Pokemon to it.

Pokopia consists of four different ruined cities. Withered Wastelands is first, and where you wake up. It is a dry, desiccated land where rain has not fallen in an age. Professor Tangrowth suggests that if you set up habitats similar to where Pokemon used to live, that they will also magically return — and they do! You’ll soon meet Squirtle, who teaches you how to summon water, and Bulbasaur, who teaches you how to make grass grow. Neither of them remember where they have been until now; they just woke up here.

The basic game loop is much the same. Discovering new habitats (usually by finding “traces of Pokemon”, but you can learn them from other Pokemon or even buy them). Setting up these habitats, befriending the Pokemon who show up, learning from them, taking on their requests, making them comfortable and raising the environment level of the area until such time as you can rebuild that area’s Pokemon Center.

Each area has its own through quest which must be completed to summon the legendary beast of the area and unlock the way to the next area. There is also a global quest that I am unclear about, but awards gym badges as you complete each step. Books and logs and TV monitors scattered around explain, in bits and pieces, what happened to humanity.

A fifth area, Palette Town, can be unlocked toward the beginning of the game. It is a separate area with no particular plot, but can be used for base building. So can any of the other areas; my daughter has an extensive underground base in the very first biome, though she’s completed the game plot.

Pokopia is a cozy game. Since there is no combat or urgency, there’s no rush to get through the game (though completing the game’s story can be done in a weekend if you just do the minimum). Me, I have not come close to finishing the story because I. Love. BASE BUILDING. I’ve just barely opened the fourth biome, and it is very clear that what happened to humanity ended here, but… I can build another home in Palette Town and make some habitats and build a little train that runs around and maybe work on the truly huge construction projects that take an immense amount of resources, and go back to the previous biomes and discover yet even more Pokemon and…

It’s a fun game for fifteen minutes or three hours. Turns out that there’s more to the franchise than sending your children out into the world to enslave sentient animals and force them to fight each other for your amusement. Thirty hours in, I don’t know why my Ditto wants humans to return. They’re doing fine without them.

The game even came with a plush Ditto…