Pokémon Pokopia game review

Hello friends!! Welcome to today’s video game review of Pokémon Pokopia!!

There are some games that feel immediately familiar the moment you start them. Not in a this is the same game again way, but in the comforting sense that the developers clearly understand the games you already love.

Pokopia is exactly that kind of game.

If I had to describe it in one sentence, I’d say it’s the love child of Pokémon and Animal Crossing: New Horizons —and, like many well-adjusted children of two very successful parents, it somehow ends up being better than both of them.

Or at least… it scratches the same itch while doing enough new things to keep you happily glued to your screen for an alarming number of hours. (In my case: about 40 hours and counting. Yes, I’m aware it’s only been out for 10 days, but I have been sick at home with a chest infection.)

Anyway, let’s have a look at the game Pokémon Pokopia!!

Pokémon Pokopia game review

Title: Pokémon Pokopia
Developer: Game Freak, Omega Force
Publisher: Nintendo, The Pokémon Company
Release date: 5 March 2026
Players: 1 (single player only, but you can play locally or online with up to 3 friends)
Platforms: Nintendo Switch 2
Genre: Simulation, Inventory Management
Nintendo store (Aus)

Pokémon Pokopia

Play as a Ditto to shape an empty land into a beautiful home for a variety of Pokémon. There’s so much to do, including collecting berries, rocks and wood, building furniture, growing vegetables in fields you’ve tilled, creating homes for Pokémon you meet, and more.

Nintendo

catching Pokémon, but cozier

At its core, Pokopia is still about collecting Pokémon, and that part of the game absolutely delivers.

The Pokémon themselves are adorable. The designs lean heavily into the cute and cozy aesthetic, and the game really encourages you to build a world around them rather than just stuffing them into storage globes. (For combat that I always hated. Why couldn’t I just hang out with my Pokémon in previous games too?!)

Which is where the Animal Crossing influence comes in.

You don’t just catch Pokémon — you build habitats for them. All Pokémon are attracted to certain types of land features, whether it be 4 clumps of grass, a tree and 4 flowers next to the sea, or a garbage bin, a pile of rubbish and a sign (yes, that’s a real habitat).

And for the game to progress, your Pokémon have to be happy! They have to love where they live.

So, the game then asks you to build them houses as well as habitats, and then decorate them. Which occasionally feels like the developers looked at the design board and thought “You know what this needs? More real estate.”

But I want my Pokémon to love me. So you design spaces where they can live, giving them toys and lights and beds, and in doing so, slowly develop your town. Watching it grow from a fairly empty starting area into something bustling and lived-in is incredibly satisfying.

This can be resource and time heavy as well, as you need certain types of Pokémon to build the houses, but then you also might need them for a quest five minutes later. And houses can take hours to build.

It’s charming, but sometimes feels a little redundant.

the game world

Pokopia’s world is big. REALLY BIG. Exploring it can be genuinely rewarding — you’ll stumble across new areas, hidden resources, and Pokémon you weren’t expecting. The sense of discovery is one of the game’s strongest features.

But the terrain can also feel… a bit much.

There are mountains literally everywhere. And you can’t really jump very high.

After a while I found myself having the same reaction I do in Minecraft: Should I just mine all of this? For ease? Apparently I was a flat earther in a previous life.

Look, the world is beautiful (in a cutesy way), but the sheer number of cliffs, hills, and resource-heavy landscapes can make progression feel a little tedious at times. When every direction involves another climb, another resource node, or another chunk of terrain to clear (so you can fit more houses in), the sense of scale occasionally tips into mild exhaustion.

Still, if you like wandering and seeing what’s over the next ridge, Pokopia absolutely rewards that curiosity.

questing

If one of your challenges with Animal Crossing was a lack of purpose, you won’t have that here. Pokopia has a million (ok, not quite) mini challenges and quests happening. You’ve got the main storyline challenges (actually called really important challenges), daily challenges, world/town challenges, and then Pokémon character challenges.

Basically you’ll never be bored, because Pokopia absolutely nails the “just one more thing” gameplay loop.

Just one more Pokémon to catch. Just one more habitat to build. And just one more mountain to climb (or complain about).

For those of us with ADHD, it’s the kind of game where you sit down intending to play for an hour and suddenly realise it’s midnight. (Which is probably why I’ve quietly sunk 40+ hours into it already — and I’m not even close to done.)

One of the more amusing quirks of my playthrough is that I’ve repeatedly completed quests before they were officially given to me.

I’ll wander around exploring, collecting things, or building something — and then later a character will say: “Hey, could you go and do this?” And the game immediately responds with: Quest Complete.

Or, I’ll just get a box flash up on screen saying “Railway project complete”. (For the record, I was just fixing what I perceived as broken because it annoyed my brain.)

Which leaves me slightly confused about what the quest was supposed to achieve in the first place.

It’s not game-breaking, but it does give the whole quest system a slightly chaotic energy. On the plus side, it reinforces the game’s sense of freedom: you can wander around doing your own thing and often still make progress.

final thoughts

Pokopia feels like a thoughtful mash-up of two beloved formulas.

It captures the collecting joy of Pokémon and the cosy world-building of Animal Crossing, while adding enough of its own identity to keep things fresh.

The world can sometimes feel overly mountainous, and the quest system occasionally trips over itself, and constantly checking if your Pokémon are happy feels a little people-pleasery — but these things haven’t stopped me from getting thoroughly absorbed in the game.

If you like games that reward exploration, collecting, and slowly building up a world of your own, Pokopia is an easy recommendation.

Just be prepared to build a lot of houses.

And maybe mine a few mountains along the way.

Have you played Pokémon Pokopia?