‘Pokémon Pokopia’ is better than ‘Animal Crossing: New Horizons’

I’m not alone in my obsession with “Pokopia.” The game appears to be so popular that it has exceeded sales expectations, prompting Amazon to raise the cost of copies of the physical game by $10, bringing the price to $80 (the game is also available for digital download). It’s also the first Switch 2 exclusive game that’s generating enough buzz to make people go out and upgrade to the new console.

The last major Pokémon games in the series, like “Pokémon Scarlet” and “Pokémon Violet,” were met with a lukewarm reception — the games were buggy, and the open-world design wasn’t interesting enough to counteract how rushed they felt. Even as a lifelong Pokémon fan who will buy any game the franchise puts out, I found the latter parts to be fun, but they lose my interest once I complete the main story. However, “Pokopia” exceeded my highest expectations with its breadth and thoughtful design.

There are four main areas in “Pokopia”, as well as a sandbox version of Palette Town for multiplayer play. If I had to guess, I’d say I’ve played twenty straight hours of “Pokopia” since it came out less than a week ago (oops!), and I’m less than halfway through the main story. It seems endless, even if it isn’t – but even then, I can definitely see the developers releasing additional areas to explore as part of the DLC, which I would gladly pay for despite the game’s already high price of $70.

Few games have impressed me in a flow state like this. It’s hard not to compare the feeling I had when “Animal Crossing: New Horizons” first came out, but this time, thankfully, we’re not witnessing the beginning of a pandemic lockdown that would alter our lives indefinitely.

A lot has improved in the world since ‘Animal Crossing’ – yes, coronavirus vaccines! – However, there is so much that I feel. Donald Trump is president again. The federal government is raining down armed agents on ordinary people demonstrating for civil rights. Severe weather has become the norm. Things still look bad.

Like “Animal Crossing,” playing “Pokopia” is a means of escape and distraction, but it’s rooted in our actual world in a way that it’s not while on an island vacation with Tom Nook.

In the post-apocalyptic Kanto of “Pokopia”, you play as a Ditto who has been transformed to look like his former trainer, who has inexplicably gone missing – in fact, all of the humans have disappeared, and when you randomly appear in a cave with Professor Tangrowth, the Gray Vine Pokémon hasn’t seen another creature in many years.

It’s not immediately clear what happened that caused Kanto to evolve into a wasteland, but as Ditto explores the ruins and restores habitats to find new Pokémon, she encounters scraps of diary entries, newspaper articles, and letters that help you piece together what happened: There was some sort of catastrophic weather event, and as a result, all of humanity disappeared. Pikachu appears in the game as “Peakychu”, a pale creature that has lost its ability to produce electricity, and Snorlax sleeps alone in a cave long enough for it to become part of the moss-covered landscape. OK.

The shocking mystery makes each new bit of information seem more exciting, if not ominous.

“We all know that everyone’s beloved music streaming services are having to shut down one after another due to the sharp rise in server fees all over the world,” says one note from the old Poké Mart. “While music fans are still mourning the loss of these streaming services, this is not bad news in the music world!”

The memo goes on to explain the return to the CDs used by our “great-grandparents,” which do not charge a subscription fee, no matter how many times you listen to them.

It’s funny that Nintendo is making fun of the broken model of music streaming, but the bit about server costs seems a little too real at the moment. Since rapidly growing AI tools require a lot of computing power to operate, there are nearly 3,000 energy-intensive data centers under construction in the United States, which will add to the 4,000 already in operation. The demand for more computing power is so high that the tech industry is facing a RAM shortage severe enough to raise the price of new MacBook Pros by as much as $400.

Climate crisis? Server costs? Broken music streaming models? It’s as if Nintendo is trying to say something about the current state of the world.

But while “Animal Crossing” is merely escapism, “Pokopia” at least gives you the sense of rehabilitating an already broken world. It’s disconcerting to see Vermillion City in ruins – but that makes it even more rewarding when you work with other Pokémon to rediscover electricity and light up the landscape, blotting out the dark clouds with a stream of light.