Welcome to our review of the Miitopia game on 3DS, a side scrolling RPG that reinvents the Role Playing Game Genre.
I originally played this game way back when we had our hands on the New Nintendo 2DS XL, where we got to play the demo, at that time, I was very charmed by this game and intrigued by how this new side scrolling approach was a breath of fresh air for a genre that is often stuck in its own world.
I was enamored with the craziness this game brought to the table, when you think about the classical RPG battle classes, you think about warriors, mages, healers, … You know, the classical RPG standard, but enter Miitopia, with the ability to make your character a pop star, a cook or even a cat!
So let us talk about this game, while it does keep true to the original RPG genre, it does pretty much its own thing. For starters, I mentioned this before, it’s side scrolling. Allow me to go into detail about this by giving you an idea what this story is all about.
The game starts when a lone wanderer, you, arrives in a town where the bad guy just stole almost everyone’s faces. The characters are Mii’s, hence the Miitopia name. So while the graphics are your typical Mii faces, you can also customize everyone, from your allies to even the enemy, I called him Mounki in my game, after my cat. My allies were all from Mii central where ready made Mii await you, with familiar faces, like Mario, Luigi, Zorro from One Piece, Hatsune Miku, Reggie Fils-Aime, Miyamoto-san, … Really too many to name. At one point I had both Reggie and Miyamoto in my team together with Rosalina. I loved this part, it gave the game a much more personal feeling instead of just being a normal RPG.
When you are playing the game itself, everything is side scrolling, which adds to the simplicity behind this game. You are never stuck in a forest or lost your way, everything in that aspect is crystal clear. While it may sound too easy, this was not my feeling during my very extended gameplay so far.
So back to the storyline, you arrived in town, almost everyone’s faces are gone and the mayor asks you to help out in order to reclaim all faces. Obviously, you do it, setting outside to go reclaim those faces. That is when you learn about the battle system, you can battle the enemies manually or go all automatic, press B to speed up the action and you are off. After beating the enemy, you get to free the face and you can check the counter every time. My only gripe with the game, as you are hours into the game, you still can not just skip the battles completely and you need to keep that button pressed in order to speed up the action, at one point I stopped playing for 2 days just to let my thumb rest as it was beginning to feel numb…
Once you help everyone in town, you set off for the palace basically where they are facing problems now too, more faces being stolen and as you play, more and more stuff starts happening on the side, you gain allies along the way, a prince acts like a spoilt brat, … All the way to your allies being abducted and you are suddenly all alone again…
So yeah, all alone and back to basic level 1…
While it did not feel like a drag, the point of the fighting that often feels overly long comes back into play here, you’d need to power back up, find allies again and while you can use your experience in how to make your team, how to shape your relationships among allies, … You will experience a déjà-vu… But I must be humble, experiencing a numb thumb is mostly due to the fact I played 6 hours in a row, not giving myself some decent rest and well, the game is fun, all the time filled with jokes, smart ways to enjoy relationships among your Mii, …
In conclusion, there really are a lot of positive things to be said about this game, but also the bad part about how the fights feel repetitive, all in all, it is a really good game that does have a certain attraction to keep pulling you back in.
My rating, everything considered is 80%, I would love for this game to have an ultra fast forward function on the battle front…
