The review embargo for Pokémon Pokopia just dropped, and the reviews are flooding in over on Metacritic. Thanks to an overwhelmingly glowing response, Pokémon‘s first life-simulation game just became its highest-scoring on the review aggregate site in the history of the franchise. It pushes Pokémon Y out of the top spot thanks to its whopping score of 89, based on 45 positive reviews and just two mixed reviews at time of writing.
Reviews are incredibly high, especially by modern Pokémon standards, with praise for how the game merges the best parts from established genre legends like Minecraft, Dragon Quest Builders and Animal Crossing into its own new thing using the charming world of Pokémon. It has ten perfect 100 scores currently, and even the two mixed reviews only go as low as 60 and 70.
For those unfamiliar, Pokémon Pokopia is the latest Pokémon spin-off game that takes the series in a direction it has never followed before. Being a life simulation game in a similar vein to Animal Crossing, players take control of a Ditto transformed into a human, using your abilities to imitate Pokémon moves to create a habitable environment from the ruins of a now desolate region. Expanding your town brings in new potential Pokémon partners, which also brings new abilities, opportunities and unlockable content.
Reviews are still rolling in and could always make the Metacritic score fluctuate over the next few days, but as it stands at time of writing, Pokémon Pokopia is still top of the chart. Whilst it’s a close race between the 89 of Pokopia and the 88 of Y, Pokémon Pokopia is miles ahead of the next spin-off title Pokémon Puzzle League with a score of 81. This seems to be a promising direction for the future of Pokémon, and a new landmark title in the cozy simulation genre.
