Yo-Kai Watch

A Worthy Pokémon Competitor

by Kyle Hilliard

Yo-kai Watch is a big seller in Japan, and it's easy to see why. The Pokémon comparisons are inevitable; you explore an open world collecting creatures (Yo-kai ghosts) to build your army, and the Yo-kai are capable of evolution as they gain experience. Yo-kai Watch even has an accompanying anime series which recently started airing in North America. Despite its overlaps with Nintendo's juggernaut franchise, Yo-kai Watch is far from a rip-off. It's a well-designed entry in the collectible creature genre that does plenty to establish its own identity.

The titular Yo-kai are ghosts haunting the world unseen by humans. Circumstances allow you to see them where others can't and recruit them to your team, where they help you fight the bad ghosts and retrieve more of the good ones. Exploring a secret world unseen by others and building your small ghost army has a certain charm, and helping them evolve and grow quickly becomes an exciting venture.

Finding the Yo-kai requires active searching on the part of the player. Getting ambushed by Yo-kai is a rare occasion, allowing you to avoid combat if you're not looking for a fight. I generally find random battles to be frustrating, and I am glad to see Yo-kai eschew this common RPG nuisance.

Collecting the ghosts involves simply fighting them with the crew you have already amassed. You won't be throwing a Pokéball equivalent; the creatures randomly decide to become your friends after a battle. The likelihood of them joining you can be increased by feeding enemy Yo-kai health items, which opens an interesting research game of figuring out what kind of food each Yo-kai likes and wants to eat. I like this style of collection, as it disconnects getting new creatures directly to a specific type of inventory item. If you want a specific Yo-kai, your best bet is to seek out an area where lots of them hang out and just keep fighting. You miss out on recruiting that rare Yo-kai from time to time, but you also get all kinds of others without actively trying or expending inventory, which is a worthy trade-off.

See the rest of the review at Game Informer