Pokémon Pokopia: Bubbly Basin Review – Down Where It’s Wetter, That’s Where It’s Better | GameObserver Recommends

Earlier this year, we were treated to what I can say, as a massive lifelong Pokémon fan, is a game that is finally as good as this franchise deserves. Pokopia has risen the ranks to become one of my favorite games of all time over the near-300 hours I have spent with it since it launched in March. Pokémon has meant more to me than I’ve been able to express in words over the years; from my mons keeping me company at age three as my parents divorced, to excitedly searching for info on the internet on Pokémon Ruby that I’d share on the playground every day at age eight, to bonding with lifelong friends in college and beyond over these digital dudes. Pokopia, in addition to essentially being a better version of one of my other favorite games Minecraft, finally gave me an opportunity to give a home to the creatures who had always given me one.

The first paid DLC for Pokopia is the Bubbly Basin, a new town that comes with 50 new Pokémon and over 300 new items. Dropping at the perfect time, just as I was starting to wind down on this addiction, Bubbly Basin is the biggest town yet and is entirely underwater. With that, of course, comes many new features that make underwater building not only accessible, but somehow even better than on land. There are a lot of new free feature updates that dropped with the new DLC as well, so I’ll detail those separately – they are all life-changing improvements.

With this update, dozens of long-awaited and begged for features are available. You can now turn off the annoying Magnemite confirmation text box, making post-game building firmly seamless. Two new items have been added, including the amazing Portal Pod and the Safe. The Safe is really only for multiplayer, but it allows you to lock your own belongings somewhere friends can’t get to them while playing together if that’s needed. The Portal Pod is the game changer though, which is effectively a large chest that has its contents accessible from anywhere you put down another Portal Pod. This means that not only can you access your crafting materials from any world at any time – you can lay down nine or 10 of these in a single world next to a crafting bench so you’re never more than 20 seconds from a fully outfitted crafting station. It’s brilliant, and I don’t remember how I lived without it.

Additionally, there are now hot deposit options in chests – you can choose to, with one button, empty out your inventory into a chest or vice versa. You can also choose to transfer only items that are already in a chest into the chest, which is amazing for depositing and organizing different blocks. There’s a great new option to mass delete blocks by using a trash can, useful for overflow of certain terrain blocks, and also new accessibility options, including a motion sickness mode as well as camera options. A host of old items are now paintable that were not before, and building has been improved for non-block items, allowing players to adjust specific depth of placement while building. And finally, everyone, even without the DLC, has access to Dive, a move that lets you swim around underwater freely.

When loading up the game after purchasing the Season Pass, you’ll get a call from Professor Tangrowth about a strange sight over in Bleak Beach. After investigating, you’ll find the legendary Pokémon Manaphy, who will teach you Dive after you feed them seaweed. This will open access to a new route door that has appeared in Bleak Beach (Vermillion City), which takes you to Bubbly Basin (formerly Cerulean City). After emerging, you’ll be guided by Popplio through the ruined undersea area on a quest to rebuild the old temple to Poseidon (sorry, Manaphy) and restore Cerulean City to something newer and better.

First of all, Bubbly Basin is massive. It’s not only more square footage than any of the existing towns – it also has verticality that no other town features. There’s a few islands above the surface, and these can be easily demolished if you’d like a smooth, pristine surface or can just as easily be built out into an archipelago as you like. The more impressive thing is The Depths – once you swim down far enough anywhere on the map, the lights go out and you enter true pitch blackness. You must bring electricity generation and lights down there with you to explore. After 35 hours in Bubbly Basin, I still haven’t seen even half of what lies down there in the dark.

The major reservation I had going into this DLC was how the underwater controls would work. I was nervous that it’d be hard to navigate, and I’d feel discouraged to build. I could not have been more wrong. Underwater navigation is so seamless and intuitive that I legitimately never want to go above water again. Holding B lets you swim, and holding R1 takes you towards the surface while L1 takes you down. Pressing R1 gets you a single stroke straight upwards, which can be done in quick succession, and spinning the control stick shoots you to the ocean floor. Magnemite works exactly the same underwater as it does on land, and all other powers have been fine-tuned to feel great under the sea  as well. Underwater, you have more navigational control than ever before.

On top of that, you’ll be able to make smoothies with new fruit like watermelons and grapes. Drinking a smoothie will power up Surf and let you turn into Lapras underwater, speeding along with intuitive controls and giving you a new Whirlpool ability. Whirlpool was exciting at first but has turned out to be situationally useful; by hitting R2, you can instantly destroy a 2x2x2 area in front of you. Charging that will let you destroy a 2x2x8 area, which can be useful, but it takes so long you’re better off using Graveler or Rock Smash. Regardless, everything underwater just feels polished and smooth beyond words. I will be spending a long, long time in Bubbly Basin.

There is a wealth of new items available, all of them stylish and exciting. Most items are themed after building components and items you’d find in a pirate ship, luxury cruise ship, submarine, ancient Greek temple, or Middle Kingdom Chinese palace. With so many new sets of building materials and blocks available, it can feel a bit overwhelming deciding what to build. Luckily, once I decided to recreate the entirety of Bikini Bottom from SpongeBob SquarePants, I found I had absolutely no shortage of materials options to make that happen. The Chinese-inspired materials especially look great, and I have already seen some really inspired palaces and royal gardens appear in the subreddit.

The new Pokémon crop has a great and varied selection. One other thing I was worried about was having all water Pokémon, and ending up with a bunch of Pokémon with the Water ability and no access to Grow or Burn. Not so! Corsola, as a literal piece of coral, has the grow ability you can use on underwater crops like sea grapes. Frillish has the attack Will-o-Wisp, and can use its ghost fire underwater to do tasks like baking bricks or running furnaces. You can also bring Pokemon with unique abilities, like Smearguru and Tinkaton, underwater with you by giving them the same bubble-head protection. I created an underwater air space in Sandy’s Tree Dome for them so they’d be comfortable, but they can hang out underwater as long as you like. You can bring not just water Pokémon from other zones here – I relocated Magikarp and Gyarados immediately – but any mon who can breathe underwater no matter the type can join you, including Dragonair.  Every single Pokémon has unique swimming animations that are lore-accurate. Koei Techmo’s Omega Force team really has thought of everything – Pokopia continues to be the most polished game in this franchise’s history with meticulous attention to detail.

Bubbly Basin has not only met my high expectations from the base game, but exceeded them greatly. One of the best games ever made has gotten a lot better, and even ignoring the massive feature updates the paid DLC has a ton to offer. I haven’t even covered some of the more exciting finds that will come about for Pokémon fans, but I’ll leave that for you to discover. Build Cerulean City, Atlantis, Bikini Bottom, Bioshock’s Rapture, whatever you’d like – or build something entirely new that no one has dreamed of before. The world, as they say, is your oyster.

Nirav reviewed Pokémon Pokopia: Bubbly Basin on Nintendo Switch 2 with his own bought copy. This review is based on the version of the game that was available at the time of writing, and our score will not be changed.