Demo Impressions: Yo-Kai Watch

By Harry Sheridan

November 2nd, 2015

 

When I first heard of Yo-Kai Watch, months ago, I was immediately interested in the series. A game where you run around collecting monsters that you can train and battle against other monsters? Considering my love for Pokemon, this game sounded right up my alley! I watched a few episodes of the anime to learn a little bit more about the series and I was definitely interested in getting the game when it was released in November. Fast forward to the present. Now that the demo has been released for the American 3DS eshop, I finally get to try out this game that I’ve been interested in for quite some time. Does it hold up to my expectations?

 

Visually, I was very impressed with Yo-Kai Watch. The game has a very clean, charming look that’s reminiscent of one of the game’s biggest influences, being Pokemon. While I definitely like the overall art direction, it was the Yo-Kai designs in particular that had me completely enamoured (Seriously, these little guys are all kinds of weird, cool, and adorable). Based on creatures from Japanese folklore, the Yo-Kai designs can range from your typical ghost or fire cat to a sentient wall or a poodle with a creepy old guy face.

 

Now this is where I talk about the part of Yo-Kai Watch that I wasn’t so fond of. And that’d be the core gameplay mechanics. While playing Yo-Kai Watch, I quickly found that I wasn’t a fan of the battle system, which has you pitting a team of up to six Yo-Kai (with three in battle at a time) against a team of up to three enemy Yo-Kai. Now, this probably wouldn’t be such a big deal for me (after all, Pokemon has had Triple Battles for a couple of years now), if it wasn’t for the fact that the Yo-Kai attack each other automatically. This lack of control made it very difficult for me to enjoy the battles, especially in the battles that featured six Yo-Kai on the field at once (which felt far too chaotic). I’m sure this system works better once you’ve gotten used to it, but I was definitely not a fan of it during the demo. (Another thing I didn’t like in Yo-Kai Watch was the heavy use of touch controls, although that wasn’t nearly as much of a turn-off as the battles were.)

 

Overall, I have very mixed feelings on Yo-Kai Watch. On paper, Yo-Kai Watch should be a great game for me: I’m a big fan of RPGs, I love “monster trainer” games like Pokemon, and I love the crazy designs of the game’s wide array of monsters; however, once I played the demo, I really didn’t enjoy the game as much as I hoped I would. I’m still holding out hope that the full game will be better (often times, I’ve found that demos for RPGs haven’t been very indicative of the quality of the final product), but this is a game I might have to wait a while before buying.