Pokopia is a cozy life sim, a block-building sandbox, and a Pokémon game all at once. I’ve spent over 100 hours in Pokémon Pokopia, and I’ll say it up front: whatever Animal Crossing does next will have big shoes to fill.
The game landed an average of 89 on Metacritic, which put it at number one for 2026 reviews, and that made it the highest-rated Pokémon game in the franchise’s 30-year history. TLDR: if you have a Switch 2 and you don’t have this game, you’re missing out. Here’s why!
What Is the Pokopia Game, Exactly?
If you’re expecting to start as a 10-year-old, knock out stray Pokémon, and do gym battles, you can drop that idea right now. Where we are going is cozy land, full-on weapons-grade whimsy-maxxing.
In the Pokopia game, you play as Ditto instead of a trainer, and there are no gym battles, levels, or trainer fights. In fact, all the towns are empty, and there is no tall grass to hunt for mons.
Our job here is to bring the pokemon back, build up abandoned towns, and terraform the land as we see fit. Finders keepers, am I right? And we definitely found all five towns first… at least in the last 100 years.
If it’s not obviousI’m trying really hard not to spoil the game for you. I know you have questions. Where did the people go? Why are the cities abandoned? Terraforming? No Battles?! What’s going on? Breathe, we are whimsy-maxxing hard today.
Who Should You Give Pokopia To?
Here’s the beauty of a gift that isn’t a battle game: anyone can play it. Your cousin who quit Pokémon at Gen 2, your partner who lives in Animal Crossing, your little brother who just wants to look at Pikachu. All of them get it in ten minutes.
It works for Animal Crossing fans who want more to do, Minecraft players tired of survival modes, and lapsed Pokémon fans who missed the era of strange spin-offs. That said, it’s a Switch 2 exclusive, so double-check before you wrap anything. Also skip it for someone who wants battles or a challenge curve, because they’ll bounce off it.
Pokopia’s Regions Are a Treat to the Eyes
Pokopia’s regions do most of the heavy lifting on the atmosphere of this game. There are four story areas: Withered Wastelands, Bleak Beach, Rocky Ridges, and Sparkling Skylands, plus Palette Town as a fifth permanent town.
The game uses the Kanto region in a far-off future with its best days behind it. Each of these towns is in a state of disrepair and has been severely neglected. Pokémon centers have crumbled, houses only exist in theory and paintings, and the environment do be looking dry, really, really dry.
That’s where we come in: we remove obstacles, chop down trees, water the grass, build back tall grass with over 200 variations to bring the pokémon back from hiding, and rebuild all that crumbles. This is casual gaming at its finest, folks, and I wouldn’t have it any other way!
You start in Withered Wastelands, then take Bleak Beach and Rocky Ridges in either order, and finish with Sparkling Skylands. Or you do whatever well you damn please, I decided to go straight to the beach and discovered electricity so my pokémon and I in other Pokopia regions could stop living in the Stone Age!
Pokopia’s Pokémon Population is Over 300!
Ready to start your real estate empire with our Pokémon Pokopia review? Here’s how the housing market works. You run around the place, find hints about which habitats attract which species. You build the habitats, you wait, and sometimes a mon just strolls in like it’s been here the whole time.
Some of Pokopia’s Pokémon, especially starters, will share a simple tall grass. While others, like that Dragonite in the picture, will demand a boat. Don’t even get me started on Meowth because he will have you running a government, providing electricity, cleaning the streets, building houses, and more before he’s happy.
That’s not all either! Pokopia’s unique Pokémon steal the show with their backstories and tastes. Peakychu, a Pikachu that’s lost its electric charge and gone pale, and Chef Dente, a Greedent with a taste for cooking, and DJ Rotom with his beats are my favorites here.
Not everyone gets that much love, though, Snorlax barely moves and has been engulfed in moss to become Mosslax and I have no clue what Smeargle was up to all alone when I found him painting.
Your Abilities in Pokopia Make or Break Your Experiences
Remember when I said Ditto is the main character? Good! Thanks for paying attention. So Ditto’s whole thing is copying, and it borrows moves from the Pokémon it befriends. The core set is Water Gun, Rock Smash, Strength, Cut, and Leafage.
If it’s not obvious, your Pokémon friends have jobs too, and those are called specialties, which is a different system. Chef Dente can cook up a feast and get others to help, and Trubbish’s Recycle specialty turns non-burnable glass into Iron Ore and Wastepaper into Paper. Piplup can help you clean toxic mud off of the streets.
And the game doesn’t dump it all on you. Things start small with patches of tall grass and fields of flowers, then grow into housing, electricity, farming, and resource refinement. That’s why my beach detour worked out: I found electricity early, and everybody got a lamp, some music, and streetlights!
Cooking For This Pokémon Pokopia Review Made So Much Sense
I did not expect to care about cooking in a Pokémon game. Then I started helping Chef Dente and got my sous chef skills in order. Now I can cook bread from peas, such are the benefits of whimsy-maxxing.
Cooking isn’t a side quest, it plugs straight into the abilities I just gushed about. Cooking and eating meals temporarily upgrade Ditto’s abilities, so you farm and mine more efficiently. Case in point, the Hamburger Steak is what lets you break Gold Ore deposits. Food is literally progression. My mom would be so proud.
To unlock it, you progress Chef Dente’s storyline in Rocky Ridges, which opens after you finish “Yawn up a storm!” in Withered Wastelands. It also feeds your Pokémon’s happiness: there are five flavors to keep in mind when cooking in Pokopia, and each Pokémon has a preference you can find in the Pokédex favorites!
Heads up on the Bread Oven, though. It needs a Burn specialty Pokémon like Magmar or Torkoal to light it, so you can’t bake solo. Also, be honest with yourself, this ain’t a cooking simulator. There are only a handful of crops and recipes.
SeriouslyIf you have the oven unlocked, you don’t need three wheat pieces to cook bread. You can use a leppa berry, tomato, pea, whatever! Just make sure your first input is wheat, and you’re sorted!
Bubbly Basin and the Expansion Pass, Explained
Bubbly Basin is an underwater town. To reach it, you need the Dive move, which comes from the free Version 2.0 update available to everyone, so nobody needs the pass just to swim.
But Nintendo will remain Nintendo, so the pass gets you the town itself, ocean-floor furniture, new outfits for Ditto, and more Pokémon to meet. It’s not extra story content, hell, most people wouldn’t even know the difference until they are 100+ hours into the game, and at that point, the game’s paid for itself!
A gift tipBuying the pass by August 31, 2027 earns a code for 30 rare Pokémetal ingots, which makes it a decent stocking-stuffer add-on, but not something you’d mind missing out on.
Casual Games Don’t Get Much Better Than Pokémon Pokopia
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I feel stupid for not buying a Nintendo Switch 2 sooner. This Pokémon Pokopia review took hours that felt like minutes, and if you couldn’t tell, I was giddy every step of the way while playing the thing.
There is an element of grind, especially late in the game after the 35-hour mark when you’ve unlocked all of the towns. If you loved Animal Crossing but hated the villagers for having the personality of a bread slice, this is it. Pokopia as a game lives rent-free in my mind, and I cannot recommend it enough.
About The Author
