Pokémon Pokopia review – the best Pokémon game on Switch 2

The latest Pokémon spin-off is a bizarre mixture of Fallout, Minecraft, and Animal Crossing and it’s the best thing to happen to the franchise in years.

The 30th anniversary of Pokémon catches the franchise at an important crossroads. The last two mainline entries have been disappointing, and the series now has a well-earned reputation for being low-tech and low budget, despite the near infinite profits reaped from trading card and merchandise sales.

Last year’s Pokémon Legends: Z-A was a step in the right direction, and the recent reveal of Pokémon Winds and Waves was promising, but the days when Pokémon was renowned for being a great and innovative role-playing series are far in the past. Winds and Waves won’t be out until 2027, so for now the only way the series can try to rejuvenate its reputation is via spin-offs, reissues, and perhaps more remakes.

We’re not sure that anyone was particularly looking forward to Pokopia – a strange mix between Minecraft, Fallout 4, and Animal Crossing – but much to our surprise it’s turned out to be the best Pokémon game we’ve played in at least a decade.

Pokopia is not an easy game to describe but if you played Dragon Quest Builders 1 or 2 then it’s basically that but with a thick coat of Pokémon spread on top. That’s not an idle comparison, as developer Omega Force (who are best known for the Dynasty Warriors franchise, despite almost everything else they do being much better) worked on the second entry.

The backstory is only roughly sketched out at the beginning, as you take on the role of a Ditto – a Gen I pokémon who can transform into any other creature but can never get the eyes and mouth right – who has changed into a human and woken up in a post-apocalyptic world in which there are no humans or pokémon anywhere, except for a lone Tangrowth who thought it was the only living creature left.

We’d love to know whether the similarities with Fallout 4 are intentional or not but as you explore the deserted world you find half destroyed buildings and infrastructure everywhere, with the streets littered with detritus that you can collect and use as raw materials for crafting, in a manner very similar to Animal Crossing.

You can repair or completely remodel whatever you want, as while the crafting works like Animal Crossing – as you construct furniture and decorations – the whole game world is made up of Minecraft style blocks. These can be collected and moved as you see fit; although many have different properties, depending on whether they’re one of the multiple variations of earth, rock, and minerals.

The game is split into a number of separate areas, each of which has suffered a different ecological disaster, from the first one being a parched desert, to another being flooded, and other covered in volcanic ash. All of this can be cleaned up and reused or you can mostly ignore the landscape, unless it’s part of a narratively critical mission, and just live amongst the sad relics of a destroyed world – which is not how we ever thought we’d be describing a Pokémon game.

There’s so much to do and see in Pokopia and we haven’t even got to the most important part yet which, as you might guess, revolves around the pokémon themselves. Apart from a lone Squirtle at the start, each critter can only be tempted back from wherever they were (none of them seem to know) by recreating the specific habitat they prefer, a little like Rare’s Viva Piñata.

This can range from four clumps of tall grass, to a tree and a bed of flowers, to a punching bag and bench or a collection of moss near a hot spring. You often can’t make a habitat until you discover or craft the items needed and even then, you have to wait for a pokémon to turn up (you can set up a camera to alert you when one arrives).

Sometimes you have to buy the necessary item from the PC at a destroyed Pokémon Center, whose currency you earn by completing simple tasks, like growing vegetables or improving the comfort level of existing pokémon. You manage the latter by talking to a pokémon and finding out what they want, which may be a new home or an item of a particular type.

This all results in a game which is at once dizzyingly complicated – with hidden secrets around every corner and new requests constantly popping up – and extremely laid back. You don’t have to do anything at any time and many tasks that involve pokémon, especially constructing buildings, take a considerable period of in-game time; so you just have to come back later, almost like a mobile game.

Pokopia is many things but it’s first and foremost a cosy game, where you can spend hours fixing up the beach front in what is implied to be Vermillion City or running around completing every errand possible. This can range from constructing a home for Onix (so he’ll in turn help you bulldoze the ruins of the Pokémon Center, ready for rebuilding) to learning to cook and how the various meals can augment your abilities.

Dittos, or at least the Ditto you play as, are a sort of Swiss army knife of pokémon and not only do you learn the moves of various pokémon you meet (squirting water, growing bushes, punching rocks, etc.) by transforming into them, but you also learn things like Strength, that helps you push large boulders, or you can have other pokémon follow you around and do things like breath fire or help clean up mud.

Dragon Quest Builders was always good, but we expected this to be a dumbed down version, and instead it’s the opposite. It’s much more open-ended and the whole habitat creation gimmick is a great spin on the usual gotta catch ‘em all imperative. Since evolution isn’t a factor (Charmander, for example, has a different habitat associated with it than Charmeleon) it becomes the core gameplay element, as far as pokémon are concerned, but it’s so varied and intricate it always stays interesting.

By the time we’ve got to the end of the review process we’ve usually had enough of a game, at least for a while, but with Pokopia we can’t wait to get back to it and finish clearing up Bleak Beach and properly fixing up the railway in Rocky Ridges.

One of the big problems with the recent mainline games is they’ve lost the sense of wonder that the series used to have; the ability to be surprised at the hidden depth and unexpected locations – especially as it seemed impossible to have such an intricate game squeezed into a tiny Game Boy cartridge. But Pokopia inspires a similar sense of surprise, as it constantly proves to be bigger and more involved than you initially assumed.

It’s a charming and wonderfully paced experience that hides its complex systems behind simple controls and some deceptively clever signposting. At times we did wonder whether the Minecraft aspect was really necessary but while you could, in theory, have done it all Fallout 4 style, and not used the block system – especially as selecting specific blocks can be a bit fiddly – it’s clearly this way not just for practical reasons but to try and appeal more to kids.

Other than that, our only qualms are that, as usual, the game looks low-tech and the lack of voice-acting feels cheap and distracting. Although there’s no bugs or jank and, in this case, the scale and customisability of the landscape do look quite good and it’s really just the limited animation of the pokémon that feels below par. This is especially true when you contrast the inarguably adorable Ditto, which is unique to this game, with the bog standard pokémon models that have no doubt been imported from existing titles.

Funnier dialogue would’ve been nice too, but while there’s occasionally a mildly amusing comment most of it just reads like a dull children’s book, where all the pokémon – even the various legendaries that pop up from time to time – talk like glib teenagers.

But these are impressively mild problems in a game that constantly surprises in the range and volume of content it offers, and the freedom with which it allows you to explore its world and systems. There’s even a relatively substantial multiplayer element. It was only turned on a few days before the embargo but it seems at least the equal to Animal Crossing, allowing up to three other people to join you in your world.

For those that miss the glory days of Pokémon on Nintendo’s various portable-only systems we strongly recommend this as the best thing to have happened to the series since then. No doubt Winds and Waves will be a fairly traditional experience, which is fine as long as it does it with verve and at least some level of technical competence, but Pokopia is something unique and unexpected.

It may be a strange combination of elements, from other famous games, but the resulting concoction is the breath of fresh air the series needs and proof that innovation in the franchise is not just possible but necessary, for keeping fans’ interest and attracting new ones. Pokémon can evolve successfully, we just didn’t expect Pokopia would be the game to prove it.

Formats: Nintendo Switch 2
Price: £58.99
Publisher: The Pokémon Company
Developer: Game Freak and Omega Force
Release Date: 5th March 2026
Age Rating: 3

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