Yo-kai Watch Standard Edition - Nintendo 3DS

Yo-kai Watch is a monster catching RPG and often compared to Pokemon. I liked the setting of the game and the graphics were colorful and nice to look at. The yo-kai designs are also cool and each one has their own personality. What ultimately made the game bad for me was the yo-kai catching mechanic, which seemed to have really low success rates even when using the best food that each yo-kai liked. If you don't succeed, you have to find them again which can sometimes take a while, and the entire process can get old quick. If you can get past the weird catching mechanic or have better luck than me though, it is a good game.

Yokai Watch is often compared with the Pokemon series, and it does share some similarities. Over time, however, and likely largely due to Pokemon's success, monster collecting games have almost become their own sub-genre. Yokai Watch shares pokemon's monster collecting premise, but that's about where the similarities end. Yokai Watch takes place in a large town, packed with secrets and goodies to find. The game really rewards exploring every inch of its world. The battle system is simple to learn, but challenging and fun to master, with factors such as a Yokai's personality, tribe, abilities and more. The dialogue and characters are simple, but clever, fun, and lively. This is only the first installment in the series, and there are a lot of things to be expanded upon, but Yokai Watch is overall a very polished first entry, with a lot to love.

Level 5 makes this game and they've earned my respect over the years with their great games. This one is no different. Lots of exploration and characters to collect. Great graphics and many hours of fun to be had.

I bought this game for my 9 year old who loves Pokemon. This is a great Pokemon like game. He was thrilled with it and played it all Christmas day.

Only about 9 hours into the game and taking advantage of lots of side requests and favors. Great story, great writing, and a lot of fun to play.

The game boasts a cute cast of characters and a fun story for kids. The Yo-Kai look and feel different enough for each of them to have some personality. The only downside is that in a game as quirky as this every Yo-Kia (in your team of three) fights using the same set 3 Cooking Mama motions (trace, tap, or spin) which is the users only real activity in the battle. I hope in the sequel they expand and improve the battle system. Overall, the game is cute and quite fun.

With all the comparison to Pokemon this has on it, I'm here to say it's actually nothing like Pokemon outside of the aspect you "collect" little monster friends. Yokai Watch puts more emphasis on the fact that you befriended them instead of catching them as in Pokemon. You either fight and defeat a Yokai to impress them so they'll join you, or you befriend them by giving them food to eat in the midst of battle. Even though theres objectives to do, and a story to follow, you still have a good range of freedom to just walk around and explore the city. While some parts of the map may be blocked out in the beginning of the game, there's still plenty of places to go. You'll find there there are very little messages or none at all that read "Where are you going? We need to go -objective here-" The battle system is also quite unique, it's not turn based. But it's not exactly "action" either. I wouldn't really know how to categorize it but it's fun! Your Yokai friends will attack as they will, you don't command them to do anything. After all you can't really control your friend and tell them what to do. They have their own free will. But your assistance is still needed in battle! Swap 'em in and out, purify them of status aliments (or stop them from being insprirted as this game says!) give them items to help them regain HP back and all that good stuff. And help them charge up for their "Soultimate" attack! It's your help that could make or break a battle! So be sure to help your pals out, after all they're helping YOU by fighting for you anyway, it's the least you could do. There's a neat fusion and evolution aspect to your Yokai as well, not much to explain here. I mean if you've played other games that have functions like these you can pretty much guess what it's like.

I really enjoyed playing this game. It's a lot of fun and if you enjoyed the pokemon games you'll probably like this one too.