Yo-kai Watch review

Yo-kai Watch was engineered to be the next big thing.

From the very beginning, Yo-kai Watch seems as though it was designed with a specific purpose in mind: to become the next Pokémon-level franchise.

This is evident from its frequent anime-style cutscenes, monsters brimming with distinct personalities just waiting to become action figures and its episodic narrative, which is often borrowed directly from Yo-kai Watch's television companion. Yet in developing the monster-collecting role-playing game, Level-5 has brought a surprising amount of depth, without sacrificing an entertaining cast of characters or a refreshingly lighthearted tone.

Yo-kai Watch lays out its simple storyline quickly. You play as a young boy or girl who gains the ability to see various spirits, called Yo-kai, inhabiting a suburban town. Aided by your self-proclaimed "Yo-kai butler," Whisper, along with your titular monster-tracking watch, you set out on various adventures around town. You'll have to collect and fight Yo-kai in order to help out townsfolk who are suffering from the spirits' various negative effects. These events range from warding off the memory-blocking Yo-kai Wazzat, who renders your father so forgetful as to almost botch an important work meeting, to taking down a boss monster who stole an old man's pair of underpants.

Yo-kai Watch doesn't take itself seriously, and that sense of humor sets it apart from just another creature battler. Superficially, the core premise and battle mechanics resemble not just Pokémon, but similar series like Digimon and even Shin Megami Tensei to an overwhelming degree. You fight off Yo-kai using other Yo-kai, which you acquire by hunting them down with help from your watch's sensor. At some points, Yo-kai will volunteer to join you after you help them with a task. Once you befriend them, they'll offer you a medal to either take around with you or store in your monster encyclopedia for safekeeping and future reference. You can carry up to six medals at a time to be used during battle, and Yo-kai can level up and eventually evolve into stronger monsters over time.

It's important to solidify a core team, because much of Yo-kai Watch is spent using your six fighters in battles against other Yo-kai, Big Bads or otherwise. All matches are conducted three-on-three, and instead of inputting commands directly, you control a wheel on the 3DS's lower screen. You spin the wheel in order to select which members of your party are leading the charge.

The lack of direct control left me feeling disconnected from the characters I had spent time collecting and assembling into a suitable team, especially since the bulk of the player's time in battle is spent focusing squarely on the lower screen, where special attacks, healing and other mechanics are controlled.

Not only is the touchscreen used for cycling through fighters, it also serves the purpose of gauging a Yo-kai's health and unleashing its special attack. In addition to a standard health bar, each Yo-kai has a Soultimate meter.

Paying attention to the touchscreen is critical, the Soultimate gauge especially. The meter fills up gradually as a battle carries on, and once it's full, the option to launch a minigame of sorts appears on the bottom screen. You must successfully complete the minigame to actually unleash the Yo-kai's special attack.

The Soultimate system is sort of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, every single character in the game has its own Soultimate attack, which is impressive and makes each one distinct and fun to try out in battle. On the other, the process of charging the attack can be tedious. Using the touchscreen, the minigame requires one of three things: spinning circles around your monster, tapping orange energy bubbles or tracing a selection of symbols. The required minigame is always chosen at random. It's a test of endurance over actual strategy. Spinning circles with the stylus as fast as possible during a particularly long boss battle isn't just tiring, but painful.

Yo-kai Watch's plethora of optional side quests work far better. Because I could complete them at my leisure, I used the side quests as a way to become better acquainted with the world map. The game takes place almost exclusively in your town of Springdale, but its areas are large with plenty to explore. I was able to learn the nooks and crannies of the town via these side quests, and I had no problem leaving them unfinished when they got annoying.

More than anything, the side quests are just one of the many showcases for Yo-kai Watch's pervasive sense of humor. Creatures make jokes about government bailouts, neighbors talk openly about their unattractive spouses — the tone is refreshingly self-aware and completely lacking in pretense. This adventure isn't a grandiose, epic RPG, and I didn't feel like a hero after it ended; I enjoyed leading the life of a normal girl in slightly extraordinary circumstances.

That sense of everyday normality amid the wackiness is something Yo-kai Watch shares with its anime counterpart, a similarity that is striking and blatant. Not only does each chapter function as an episode, replete with "To Be Continued"s and occasional anime cutscenes, but some of them mirror actual episodes from the television series. Level-5 even goes so far as to include a preview of the actual Yo-kai Watch manga inside of the game. There are constant reminders that this game is meant to sell you on a line of toys and other merchandise.