Hot on the heels of the US release of Yo-Kai Watch and close to the European release, Yo-Kai Watch arrives on the mobile market with a puzzle game named Yo-Kai Watch Wibble Wobble. It’s an addictive and fun game filled with enough stuff to keep you hooked for a while. At least, that’s if you can look past the typical mobile game conventions the game has.
Go on a Yokai journey
Yo-Kai Watch Wibble Wobble doesn’t have a narrative. It’s a puzzle game based on the Yo-Kai Watch series with one mechanism seeming the main primary setting and basis. The game starts off with the player turning a stone Gatcha-Pon machine and opening a capsule with Yo-Kai Watch’s mascot, Whisper in it. Whisper will be your guide explaining all the ins and outs of Wibble Wobble. And that’s about all for narrative context. The game has worlds and bosses within them but there’s no real explanation as to the where’s what’s and even why’s. There is some text and dialogue between you and the Yokai you meet and recruit but that’s it. If you want to know what’s going on in this world you will have to play the main games but it’s absolutely not necessary to understand anything in this game.
There’s no story to the game and it doesn’t need it.
Addictive
Yo-Kai Watch Wibble Wobble is a puzzle game. The player must defeat a number of enemies by tapping Wib Wobs in your watch. However in order to actually do damage to the enemy, the player has to connect several of the same kind of Wib Wobs to do more damage. When multiple Wib Wobs are connected they melt together into a bigger Wib Wob that does more damage.The Yokai also attacks back after a certain amount of seconds. You have to defeat the enemy Yokai before they deplete your life bar. It doesn’t end here however. When using a specific kind of Wib Wob enough times, you will be able to activate their Soultimate move for more damage and change the Wib Wobs in your watch.
When connecting Wib Wobs, the player will fill up a bar on the lower screen that, when full, will activate Fever Time. All the Wib Wobs tapped will do more damage but only after Fever time ends. It’s a fun game but it’s not without its flaws. The Wib Wobs act as water bobbing left and right. It’s meant to make the game harder but it can cause some problems. It can be pretty hard to connect Yokai this way and can sometimes cause you to accidentally use a Wib Wob instead of connecting them. The game is also fairly difficult to play on mobile phones.
You can change the Wib Wobs in their watch by selecting different Yokai to fight for you. These Yokai can be leveled up by being used enough and new ones can be recruited after you defeated them. Players can give the opposing Yokai food which they can buy in the store in order to up the chances for the Yokai to join them afterward. An alternative is putting coins in the Gatcha-pon machine for random Yokai. Of course, there is the obligatory encyclopedia where the players are encouraged to “catch them all!”. There are also missions which task you to do certain objectives for rewards.
Wibble Wobble is filled to the brim with stuff to do and Yokai to collect. It’s a fun game until the all too common mobile problems start showing its ugly head. At the top left of the menu screen there’s a timer that starts at 15 minutes and counts down. Next to the counter are spirits. You can have a maximum of 5 spirits and you need one to play a level. Once all spirits are gone you have to wait 15 minutes to get one spirit or you can buy them with in-game currency. The spirits are expensive and of course in-game currency can be bought with real world money. It’s one of those sleazy tricks to get people to fork over money instead of making in-game purchases something worthwhile. Your life bar depletes really quickly too and every time the bar is depleted you can choose to either pay in-game money to continue or start over from the start which cost a spirit. It’s these dirty kind of tactics that make Yokai- Watch less enjoyable.
The game itself is fun. It’s just the ways it tries to get money out of you that’s not as fun.
Wibbling and Wobbling with style
Wibble Wobble looks just like the main games do. The menus look nice colorful and organized and the same can be said of the world maps. The music comes straight from the mainline games. The models used for the Yokai in the game are also from the main games and look great considering the difference in hardware between the 3DS and mobile phones. The animations on the Soultimate moves look great too. Yo-Kai Watch Wibble Wobble looks just like the main games and it looks and sounds nice.
The presentation is clean and smooth.
Closing note:
Yo-Kai Watch Wibble Wobble is a fun game that looks the Yokai part. Its gameplay is fun and creative with a lot of mechanics and stuff to do. The game is filled with extras to do and Yokai’s to collect that’s sure to keep you busy for hours on end. That is if there isn’t some kind of pay wall of some sorts in the way of the fun. Ultimately the game is fun but not fun enough for most to put up with the sleazy ways the game tries to get money out of you. Sooner or later players will eventually drop Wibble Wobble because of it. Perhaps if Wibble Wobble was a full price eShop game without the microtransaction stuff, it would have fared way better. But it’s still a fun ride even if you end up at a toll booth you won’t pay for.
