Never thought we’d play as a Ditto in this way, but here we are.
As a fan of Pokémon over the past 30 years, Pokémon Pokopia is the game I’ve been waiting for since I was a kid. From the first moment I got to transform my Ditto into its trainer to getting to talk to and help my favorite Kanto region Pokémon, it made my heart warm. This cozy life sim is a deep and surprisingly profound way to celebrate the 30th anniversary of this franchise.
A whole new way to play Pokémon in a familiar place
Pokémon Pokopia takes place in a post-apocalyptic Kanto where all the humans went missing. You play as a Ditto who’s taken the appearance of a trainer, and your job is to discover new Pokémon and mend the landscape. You get guidance from Professor Tangrowth, who guides you on this experience and helps you figure out what you need to do.
Grass looking thirsty? Good thing Squirtle taught us Water Gun!
Along the way, you discover Pokémon such as the Kanto starters, Rotom, Pikachu, Tinkaton, and more. These Pokémon have various tasks they need help with, such as an Onix who needs help breaking out of a rock cave and a Squirtle who’s dehydrated. It’s so cute, but it’s also a sad and moving experience because these Pokémon genuinely can’t take care of themselves without your help. Being able to talk to them and knowing that they need you tugs at your heart strings and gives you a reason to keep progressing. When you make a Pokémon happy by completing a task for them or building an item for them, it’s a genuine rush of joy that gives that task meaning.
Along with restoring habitats and discovering Pokémon, there’s also the Team Initiation Challenges which require you to accomplish things like building habitats and bringing items to the tower in the Withered Wastelands. The more you play through the game, the more you’ll find what you need to accomplish these tasks.
Smell ya later, Animal Crossing! Hello, Pokopia!
I wanted to take the opportunity to explain why the game might appeal to people who are interested in Animal Crossing: New Horizons but found its different gameplay elements to be tedious and offputting. Pokémon Pokopia incorporates gameplay elements from Dragon Quest Builders and Minecraft such as being able to use attacks you learn from different Pokémon to destroy parts of the environment and cultivate resources. Being able to switch between attacks in real time without going into a menu streamlines resource allocation and makes it easier to progress.
Having a house like this in Pokopia is so much easier than that other Nintendo cozy series.
Another gameplay element that Pokopia has that may appeal to gamers put off by Animal Crossing’s slow-and-steady progression is that you can progress on Pokopia feels faster. Building a leaf hut for you or one of your Pokémon neighbors to live in takes a matter of hours instead of overnight. One might argue that the delayed gratification is part of the charm of Animal Crossing, but it could still be tedious. You also don’t need to wait for items to be delivered to you, and you can get what you want at the Pokémon Center.
Instead of just having neighbors who show up at the beginning of Animal Crossing: New Horizons and come to your island when you build a camp and hotel, you create habitats for Pokémon to be discovered in. The more you explore, the more you discover new habitats that get added to your Habitat Dex. Using the attacks you’ve learned from the Pokémon you encounter, you can create new habitats that attract Pokémon. It’s simple to figure out what you need to do, but it feels so satisfying when a Pokémon pops up and you get to talk to them. This level of discovery that blends elements from the mainline Pokémon games into sandbox games makes it a different experience altogether than Animal Crossing.
So much room and time for activities
My best advice for anyone who wants to start up Pokémon Pokopia and is wondering what they should do is to just wander around, experiment, and vibe. You can build all sorts of habitats, talk to your new neighbors, and mine for resources and see what you find. You can even, and should, take a selfie with a Pokémon. I cannot stress this enough. Photo modes in games are hit-and-miss for me–sometimes I’ll take a quick selfie in a game and I think to myself, “okay this is cool, I guess.” But when you take a selfie with a Pokémon in Pokopia, they really get into it. It’s adorable and never gets old.
🎵 Work, work, work, work.
Pokémon Pokopia is surprisingly an ethically deep game. Our world in real life is a messed up and broken place right now. There’s so much division and deep-rooted anger that makes it difficult to work together as a community to repair the world. Pokémon Pokopia brought up these ideas in my head about the importance of communal working and leaning on our neighbors to solve problems together. Working with a Slowpoke to make it rain so I can help an Onix escape a rock cave made me think about how important it is for the media to get this kind of messaging across that this is the way that the world should and could be. I loved playing as this humble Ditto who took up the challenge of uniting a community and restoring what’s broken. It’s amazing that a Pokémon game could be this profound and it’s something I want more of as the franchise moves forward.
Final Thoughts
As expected, this game looks and plays great on the Switch 2. I didn’t notice any issues and all the Pokémon look more alive, vibrant, and playful than they’ve ever looked. The controls are intuitive and everything plays well. It’s another win for Nintendo’s latest system, and it really says something that the Switch 2 library is running so well that it’s becoming an afterthought to me when I write these reviews. I just naturally expect them to run well and not have the same issues that some games on the original Switch had.
Pokopia really enhances the scope on how to play and engage with Pokémon.
Pokémon Pokopia marks the moment that the series finally reached the expectations I’ve long had for a home console title in this franchise. Pokémon Pokopia is easily one of the best games on the Switch 2, and I’ll go ahead and say it’s better than any Pokémon game on the original Switch. It sets new benchmarks for quality-of-life features and depth in cozy games surprisingly offers a lot with its values of community and our responsibility to rebuild. I’ve never thought of Pokémon as an IP with deep ethics, but here we are in 2026 with a game that reminds us of the mutual obligation that we must work together. It helps that it’s incredibly cute and lets us experience a world in Pokémon that we’ve never seen before.
As a fan of Pokémon over the past 30 years, Pokémon Pokopia is the game I’ve been waiting for since I was a kid. From the first moment I got to transform my Ditto into its trainer to getting to talk to and help my favorite Kanto region Pokémon, it made my heart warm. This cozy life sim is a deep and surprisingly profound way to celebrate the 30th anniversary of this franchise.
Never thought we’d play as a Ditto in this way, but here we are.
As a fan of Pokémon over the past 30 years, Pokémon Pokopia is the game I’ve been waiting for since I was a kid. From the first moment I got to transform my Ditto into its trainer to getting to talk to and help my favorite Kanto region Pokémon, it made my heart warm. This cozy life sim is a deep and surprisingly profound way to celebrate the 30th anniversary of this franchise.
A whole new way to play Pokémon in a familiar place
Pokémon Pokopia takes place in a post-apocalyptic Kanto where all the humans went missing. You play as a Ditto who’s taken the appearance of a trainer, and your job is to discover new Pokémon and mend the landscape. You get guidance from Professor Tangrowth, who guides you on this experience and helps you figure out what you need to do.
Grass looking thirsty? Good thing Squirtle taught us Water Gun!
Along the way, you discover Pokémon such as the Kanto starters, Rotom, Pikachu, Tinkaton, and more. These Pokémon have various tasks they need help with, such as an Onix who needs help breaking out of a rock cave and a Squirtle who’s dehydrated. It’s so cute, but it’s also a sad and moving experience because these Pokémon genuinely can’t take care of themselves without your help. Being able to talk to them and knowing that they need you tugs at your heart strings and gives you a reason to keep progressing. When you make a Pokémon happy by completing a task for them or building an item for them, it’s a genuine rush of joy that gives that task meaning.
Along with restoring habitats and discovering Pokémon, there’s also the Team Initiation Challenges which require you to accomplish things like building habitats and bringing items to the tower in the Withered Wastelands. The more you play through the game, the more you’ll find what you need to accomplish these tasks.
Smell ya later, Animal Crossing! Hello, Pokopia!
I wanted to take the opportunity to explain why the game might appeal to people who are interested in Animal Crossing: New Horizons but found its different gameplay elements to be tedious and offputting. Pokémon Pokopia incorporates gameplay elements from Dragon Quest Builders and Minecraft such as being able to use attacks you learn from different Pokémon to destroy parts of the environment and cultivate resources. Being able to switch between attacks in real time without going into a menu streamlines resource allocation and makes it easier to progress.
Having a house like this in Pokopia is so much easier than that other Nintendo cozy series.
Another gameplay element that Pokopia has that may appeal to gamers put off by Animal Crossing’s slow-and-steady progression is that you can progress on Pokopia feels faster. Building a leaf hut for you or one of your Pokémon neighbors to live in takes a matter of hours instead of overnight. One might argue that the delayed gratification is part of the charm of Animal Crossing, but it could still be tedious. You also don’t need to wait for items to be delivered to you, and you can get what you want at the Pokémon Center.
Instead of just having neighbors who show up at the beginning of Animal Crossing: New Horizons and come to your island when you build a camp and hotel, you create habitats for Pokémon to be discovered in. The more you explore, the more you discover new habitats that get added to your Habitat Dex. Using the attacks you’ve learned from the Pokémon you encounter, you can create new habitats that attract Pokémon. It’s simple to figure out what you need to do, but it feels so satisfying when a Pokémon pops up and you get to talk to them. This level of discovery that blends elements from the mainline Pokémon games into sandbox games makes it a different experience altogether than Animal Crossing.
So much room and time for activities
My best advice for anyone who wants to start up Pokémon Pokopia and is wondering what they should do is to just wander around, experiment, and vibe. You can build all sorts of habitats, talk to your new neighbors, and mine for resources and see what you find. You can even, and should, take a selfie with a Pokémon. I cannot stress this enough. Photo modes in games are hit-and-miss for me–sometimes I’ll take a quick selfie in a game and I think to myself, “okay this is cool, I guess.” But when you take a selfie with a Pokémon in Pokopia, they really get into it. It’s adorable and never gets old.
🎵 Work, work, work, work.
Pokémon Pokopia is surprisingly an ethically deep game. Our world in real life is a messed up and broken place right now. There’s so much division and deep-rooted anger that makes it difficult to work together as a community to repair the world. Pokémon Pokopia brought up these ideas in my head about the importance of communal working and leaning on our neighbors to solve problems together. Working with a Slowpoke to make it rain so I can help an Onix escape a rock cave made me think about how important it is for the media to get this kind of messaging across that this is the way that the world should and could be. I loved playing as this humble Ditto who took up the challenge of uniting a community and restoring what’s broken. It’s amazing that a Pokémon game could be this profound and it’s something I want more of as the franchise moves forward.
Final Thoughts
As expected, this game looks and plays great on the Switch 2. I didn’t notice any issues and all the Pokémon look more alive, vibrant, and playful than they’ve ever looked. The controls are intuitive and everything plays well. It’s another win for Nintendo’s latest system, and it really says something that the Switch 2 library is running so well that it’s becoming an afterthought to me when I write these reviews. I just naturally expect them to run well and not have the same issues that some games on the original Switch had.
Pokopia really enhances the scope on how to play and engage with Pokémon.
Pokémon Pokopia marks the moment that the series finally reached the expectations I’ve long had for a home console title in this franchise. Pokémon Pokopia is easily one of the best games on the Switch 2, and I’ll go ahead and say it’s better than any Pokémon game on the original Switch. It sets new benchmarks for quality-of-life features and depth in cozy games surprisingly offers a lot with its values of community and our responsibility to rebuild. I’ve never thought of Pokémon as an IP with deep ethics, but here we are in 2026 with a game that reminds us of the mutual obligation that we must work together. It helps that it’s incredibly cute and lets us experience a world in Pokémon that we’ve never seen before.
by Kayla Merritt
