Have you heard of Yo-Kai Watch? This Nintendo franchise is releasing for the first time in North America next week and here’s everything you need to know about the million selling anime and videogame series.
Title: Yo-Kai Watch
Publisher: Level 5 and Nintendo
Platform: 3DS
Release Date: November 6th, 2015
Where to buy: $39.99 from Amazon.com
Concept: From what I can see, this looks very similar to pokemon, except you can control a party of 3 cute monsters simultaneously in a single battle. You use your stylus to search different areas until you find a Yokai and you then have the opportunity to befriend them. You raise and train the Yokai to make them stronger. There’s 200 different Yokai to find.
Last Week Nintendo released an English demo on the Nintendo E-shop which you can download for free here.
Story: The story of Yo-kai Watch is that Yo-kai are mischievous spirits which exist in the real world, though unseen by humans. One day your character helps a ghost who grants them a special watch to detect the presence of Yo-kai. Yo-kai are not ghosts, monsters, or pets. Instead Yo-kai is the Japanese belief that all objects, both living, and inanimate possess a “spirit”. These Yo-kai sometimes come from humans, or sometimes animals, or sometimes even every day objects. Unlike Pokemon, there’s really not a grand quest or anything; instead it’s a story about innocence and discovering a magical world that’s always been there but has been hidden to most people.
Graphics: The graphics in Yo-Kai Watch are cute and there are a large variety of Yo-Kai to befriend within the game. The colors and images are very sharp and it’s all done in a cute anime style.
There are also a number of anime, manga, and toys and other merchandise that go along with this series. Nintendo hopes to create the next “pokemon craze” and make a lot of money off of merchandising – which has been working quite well for them overseas. Let’s see if this series takes off as well in North America.
Also, the first game, does not have different versions like Pokemon having different monsters in each version and encouraging trading amongst players. This is one feature I will miss and really the main draw of Pokemon for a lot of gamers. However, it looks like the 2nd game, which is already out in Japan, does have two versions and may focus on different Yo-kai in each one, making trading necessary to “catch em all”.
I read that you can choose a male or female player character, but have no further info on if the player characters can be further customized.
If you happen to be going to PAX in Australia you will get hands on time with Yo-Kai Watch and get to see the premiere of the anime before it goes live in December.
Last of all, Nintendo lists this title as 2 players. I assume it will feature battling eachother’s Yo-kai similar to Pokemon Battles.