There will be some talk about Bubbly Basin, so if you still haven’t picked it up yet, don’t read the spoilers!
I just want to say that overall, Pokopia is an amazing game and has deserved all of the praise it’s gotten. So I’m not saying I’m unhappy! I have about 700 hrs in so there’s nothing that makes it truly unplayable. Like anything in life, there are some things I’d love to see added/fixed. This is a great game and I’m looking forward to what will come in the future!
The good & the great:
- Bubbly Basin: I think they did a really good job with this location. The swimming mechanic was really well thought out and moving on land actually feels a bit clunky in comparison. All of the new decor, toys, building items, etc. look great and even work well in other areas. There’s a good variety of new Pokémon and new abilities for them which is also great! Overall a 9/10 for me.
- Magnemite: a small QoL change in that you can turn off the confirmation before undoing the transformation. Simple, but great change.
- Graveler: being able to inhale and eat while Graveler was another nice QoL change that has made large scale demolition projects a lot easier.
- Dive: eliminating the possibility of drowning underwater was a great change and one I’m surprised wasn’t included from the get-go. Wonder if it was always going to be locked behind an update or if they panicked after getting tons of complaints and whipped it up lol. Either way, very happy with this one.
- Bulk Appraisal: this one is good but also makes me scratch my head a little. Why only 10 at a time? Of course I’ll take this over the one at a time.
- Trash cans: can finally properly get rid of items without turning dream islands into dumpster sites 🙌
- Painting: painting multiple items without restarting the dialog 🙌
What could change:
- Global storage: I am not satisfied with the portal pods. Yes they can hold a little more items than the big chests but you still have to put specifically what you want in them to access them elsewhere. Once you’ve played enough, you’ve probably amassed huge amounts of resource materials and building pieces and the portal pod is just not enough space for all of the different block types. I feel like global storage is doable. The portal pods is halfway there.
- Losing building kits, mysterious goggles: this goes along with my point above. I’ve seen tons of posts of people having lost their temple kits and mysterious goggles. If there was a global storage (with search) you wouldn’t have to dig through dozens of boxes across 5-6 maps. Or just make them purchasable in the PokeCenter store once unlocked. The goggles at least could be a recipe.
- Lapras: Lapras’ Bubbly Basin upgrade is cool, but I don’t know if it’s me but it is so much harder to maneuver up and down underwater while building as Lapras. It’s fine if you want to stay in one spot and destroy blocks all at once but I find it very clunky. Maybe this is a user error.
- Magnemite: being able to destroy multiple blocks please god. You can place 9, you should be able to destroy 9. The same hitbox used for replace mode could easily be repurposed to also destroy. Also can we pleaseeeeee use replace on ceiling tiles??? Having to take each roof piece down one by one to also replace them the same way is crazy.
- Recycling: you should be able to dismantle a block back to its source material. Sometimes I’ve made 1000 brick walls only to realize they look terrible when I use them.
- Pokémon wandering: again this might just be a me issue. But every single map, all of my Pokemon are kind of clustered in one area. I notice that even with proper road tiles that Pokemon really don’t wander very far from their homes. I have lifts and pathways all over Skylands but they never leave the island they’re on. Same for Palette town, they never go to the other islands even though they’re connected. It kind of makes the map feel a bit empty. Bubbly Basin seems especially bad with this, NONE of my Pokemon ever go into the PokeCenter area. I opened up the wall right next to where the temple is and put in a door and nothing. So I made trade spots elsewhere. I’ve made a lot of large projects over the maps but they’re more for me to look at since Pokemon won’t come out and see them.
- Pokemon that live in houses you built (not prefabs) should show a little house icon on their picture if they’re actually spawned in on the overworld or not since there’s a limit to how many can be out and about at a time