Many of you have probably missed it in November’s onslaught of chart-topping releases, but Nintendo has snuck out a little creature-catching game that’s been all the rage in Japan for the last few years. Yo-Kai Watch is a bit like the new Pokemon for Japanese kids, complete with its own hugely-popular anime series. Now that the first game is here, we can see what all the fuss is about, and I’ve quite enjoyed the title. In fact, in a few ways I think it’s even cooler than Pokemon .
In Yo-Kai Watch you play a kid who obtains the power to see and speak to Yo-Kai, colorful spirits who embody human traits and emotions. You can recruit a ton of them to your side by defeating them in battle, but that’s pretty much where the direct similarity to a Pokemon game ends. The battle system is real-time and completely different from Pokemon, and the flow of the story is entirely different. Still, there are a few things about Yo-Kai Watch ‘s setting and story that I think The Pokemon Company could learn from.
First, Yo-Kai Watch takes place in our world, and your character has normal kid concerns. You’re not some pre-teen who is tossed out into the wild world to face down dangerous creatures and train them to engage in bizarre gladitorial combat rituals. You’re a normal kid who wants to fit in with her (or his) friends and worries when her parents fight. Now, I’m not saying that all games should take place in the real world – I love fantasy and sci-fi worlds! However, I am suggesting that Pokemon games could spend a bit more time dealing with stories that we can relate to as people. The short episodes that make up the story of Yo-Kai Watch remind me of miniature anime episodes, and that’s exactly what I’ve wanted to see the Pokemon games do a bit more of when it comes to stories.
The people in the Yo-Kai Watch world also feel more real than Pokemon game people. Everybody, from little kids to old folks, in the Pokemon world is obsessed with talking about Pokemon. Almost everybody you talk to gives you meta-game advice about Pokemon or Pokemon-related services. They aren’t people, they’re an extended tutorial delivery service. The people in Yo-Kai Watch, on the other hand, have distinct personalities and problems that you can choose to help them with. Often these problems can be solved by summoning or dispelling a Yo-Kai, but they don’t know that . They just know that their employee is inexplicably late for work, they lost an important toy, or they don’t know how to ask out the object of their affection. In other words, you can see them as actual people with interests unrelated to you and your quest. I would love to see more of that from Pokemon non-player characters.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Yo-Kai can talk! In fact, the little boogers have a ton of personality. Don’t get me wrong, I love my carefully curated Pokemon collection to death, but do I actually know any of these critters that can only say their own names? I know the entire backstory of my main Yo-Kai, Jibanyan. Other Yo-Kai that I meet can ask me for things and clearly get their feelings across… and that’s awfully cool compared to Pokemon. Now, of course it’s not possible at this point to make Pokemon suddenly able to speak to their trainers, but the Pokemon anime certainly spends time helping us get to know certain Pokemon as creatures with specific personalities and problems. I’d love it if the games could do a bit more of that insead of simply treating them as a means to an end.
Yo-Kai Watch isn’t without its problems. The battle system isn’t nearly as deep as Pokemon and some of the quests can be frustrating to solve, relying on random chance. However, I was delighted by its story and setting, which I found far more relatable and emotionally grounded than anything I’ve seen in a Pokemon game. Hopefully the folks at The Pokemon Company are taking a good, long look at this rival to its monster-catching throne and borrowing some of its better ideas to shake up their own formula. Goodness knows that formula could use a bit more shaking up.