Review | Pokémon Pokopia

I’ll be honest. When Pokémon Pokopia was first announced, I had almost immediately written it off as “not for me”. The reveal trailer showed just a single area, and lots of focus on what seemed to be farming and Minecraft-like block building.

But then more and more info surfaced, like it being made by the same people behind Dragon Quest Builders 2, and while I have not played it myself yet, I had heard great things about it. Fast-Forward a few months and a code landed in my inbox and I was considering assigning it to another writer, when my daughter, who had seen the ads on TV, begged me to keep it so we could play it together. I couldn’t turn down the sad puppy-dog eyes and installed the game.

I think I was hooked about 30 minutes later. Let’s see why that is, and why Pokémon Pokopia is already one of the best games of 2026.

Things I liked!

• Ditto is cute, the world is dark | The game starts with Ditto transforming into a human and Professor Tangrowth helping you on your journey to restore the world. Something unspeakable happened to the planet (spoiler warning: humans ruined it, who would have thought?), and now it’s up to you to rebuild it, find hints of where the humans have fled off to, and make new homes for Pokémon to live in along the way.

• It’s super satisfying | While I’m not into terraforming much (I always disliked Minecraft with a passion), somehow it’s not as cumbersome here, and it always feels rather satisfying to make straight roads, or even the ground for building projects. You’ll get the ability to water the ground from Squirtle as one of the first unlocks in the game. At first, you’ll just make dry soil humid again so grass and other plants can grow on it, but later you’ll team up with Piplup or other water Pokémon and clear away dirt, PowerWash Simulator style. It’s incredibly wholesome and just makes you feel good as you return colour to the world and Pokémon pop up left and right.

• The habitat system is brilliant | You don’t have to capture Pokémon in Pokopia; you just have to build habitats where the corresponding Pokémon will feel at home. The game is grid-based, and just placing items or furniture close together will create a new habitat where they might later appear. Some of the rarer Pokémon will require a specific item that is hard to come by, but it’s always a thrill when you spot a new item in the world and suddenly have the potential to have many more friends in your town.

• It’s huge | My main concern from the first trailer(s) was that all of the captured footage was from the starting town, and I thought we would be limited to just that. But not only is the starting town already bigger than what you get in Animal Crossing, but you also get a total of 5 regions just like it. And there are 300+ Pokémon to find and interact with.

• The Pokémon have more identity than ever before | Since you’re a Pokémon yourself, you can talk to others, and it’s such a treat to finally be able to talk to them (outside of the Mystery Dungeon games, that never quite spoke to me). They all have fitting personalities, interact in funny ways with other Pokémon in the world, and will request fitting items for them to improve their homes.

• It has co-op | You can visit other players online and go to dream islands together to build, have fun or just mine some resources. But what’s rather unique is that it also supports local Game Share, which also works on the Switch 1. My daughter loved walking around in Pallet Town and rebuilding the world with me, deciding where to put which furniture. And my son would always want to play what is essentially Call of Duty’s Prop Hunt with me: we take turns transforming into an object in the world, and then the other has to come find you in a game of “hot and cold”. The fact that you can build your own multiplayer games inside this already massive single-player experience is huge and makes Pokopia worth every penny.

Mixed & disliked!

• Rigid Story Progression | To progress the story, you’ll have to build a Pokécenter in each new hub and fulfil various requests of specific Pokémon you meet there. Surprisingly, it was unclear to me a few times what I had to do next, despite the game telling me and Professor Tangrowth hinting at stuff. In the very first zone, I was stuck for almost an hour, thinking I had missed something with Onix’s quest. And when the Professor told me to go to the water, I thought it was the ocean near Onix, since that was the current quest. Turned out I had to go the exact opposite way to find Kyogre. But there is no in-game pointer telling you where to go next to move the story along.

• Some vital abilities unlock too late | To move the game along, you’re better off focusing on getting as far into each new region as possible, before first building out the previous one. I lost hours building houses for my Pokémon out of blocks, doors, windows and furniture + I was terraforming entire regions by hand, but later in the game you’ll just be able to fly around as Magnemite, and it becomes sooooo much easier. Prepare for a long grindy quest at the end if you haven’t been hoarding certain items, though.

• Walking around is slow | You can get a quicker run going, but the pat-pat-pat noise it makes is super annoying to me somehow, so as soon as I unlocked the ability to fly, I used that. You can also roll quicker in your graveler form, but you’ll risk destroying stuff you don’t want to, and you can also place rail tracks everywhere and use a mine cart to get around, but that takes ages to set up.

• Collision & bugs | I’ve had quite a few Pokémon that managed to get themselves stuck between objects, or when they were following me, they’d block my way out of a narrow passage. On over a dozen occasions, I also had Pokémon spawning on top of their new habitat, and I had to climb up to them, just to be able to talk with them.

• Pathing issues of vital story characters | A few times in the game, you’ll need to get certain Pokémon to follow you to a certain location, and they can have difficulties finding their way across. Having to build a bridge for them and put stairs everywhere so they can easily follow you isn’t my idea of a good time, but it was vital.

• Storage issues | You start with a rather small inventory yourself, not being able to carry a lot of items around, but luckily this upgrades with each new Pokécenter you bring to a certain level. But you’ll HAVE to also build a ton of storage boxes and ideally right next to a workbench, or you can’t use the items inside for crafting. What would have made a WORLD of difference to me is that you could craft using items from within ANY storage box in the world. It’s super frustrating if you need a specific material and you know you have a ton of them, but you first have to go and find or empty that box first.
  
  Similarly, I would have really appreciated a solution inside a Pokémon center, to browse ALL of your owned items across the world and get a hint of where they are stored, or a solution to teleport them into your inventory. At some point, I went nuts looking for Mystery slates with Unknown/Mew on them, and I knew I had them somewhere, but couldn’t for the life of me remember where I stored them. I truly hope this is something that will be considered for a future patch.

How long did I play the review before publishing? 65 hours
How long to beat the story? Doable in 20 hours, but you’d be mad to ignore all of the side stuff
How long to complete? I’d guess about 80-100 hours if you’re efficient & lucky with legendaries, I’m at 255/300 Pokémon found with just under 70 hours played at the time of writing.
You’ll love this game if you like these | Dragon Quest Builders 2, Animal Crossing, Pokémon games

CONCLUSION

Score: 93/100

A wholesome and uplifting game that came at a time when I needed it the most. Pokémon Pokopia takes all of the best elements from Animal Crossing, Minecraft and adds in the one ingredient that always guarantees good sales: Pokémon. This will keep you busy for hours, and it’s very easy to pick up, but almost impossible to put down. It’s one of the easiest games to recommend owning a Nintendo Switch 2 for right now, so don’t sleep on this one!