Once, I launched the game and viewed a single cut-scene before the inquiry was made. And seeing as this is a Nintendo game in 2017, you will be asked constantly if you’d like to continue playing. The tasks you’ll take care of while at the inn (shopping, eating for extra stats, playing a roulette, and adjusting your party) will take as long (or longer) than the area itself. Monster fights, goofy scenes, and the occasional lever will interrupt the automatic walk, and at the end of each area (which take a minute or two to get through) is an inn. Speech bubbles with sometimes entertaining drivel (and several fart jokes) will pop up regularly, but after the first few minutes are no longer worth paying attention to. Your characters will walk through it (or run, if you hold B- which I recommend if you’re ever paying attention). The game’s map has some diversions, including a wandering chef and an excitable quiz master, that provide minor distractions while you’re questing through identical areas (in terms of gameplay). You’ll work from level one to ten three times in a row before it all comes together, and during the third round especially you’ll wish you could still be level twelve, with a friendship rating of 28 with another party member, and with an entire party whose stats have been extensively expanded by food. They won’t have a solid repertoire of skills to compliment each other. Your new characters won’t have those relationships that let them back each other up. However, this comes at the expense of the building battle system. A new party made up of new classes gives you the opportunity to bring other Miis (and by extension other friends, popular characters, or pieces of art) into your adventure. Once your combat does begin to demand a little bit extra, and begin to reward your relationships and pre-laid strategies, the game decides (a couple of times) to bring you back to square one. You’ll pull allies out of harm’s way so that they can recover from status ailments, and put them back at the opportune moment, perhaps dodging extra damage in the meantime. Many of those boss battles, and only more the less grinding you did, require you to pay attention, to sprinkle healing pixie dust to regain health or MP after every round, to consider and reconsider your next move whenever you get a chance to make it. It’s a joy when your Cat, who sharpened his claws (to double the damage of his next attack), uses a powerful single target move on the boss, after an Imp lowered its defense by whispering sweet nothings into its ears, and all three party members decide to help out, causing numbers to fill your screen and your foe to fall.
Somehow, though, the battles still come together in that way RPG battles do, when all the active abilities, strategies, and plans you’ve been building come to fruition. You’re only picking a fourth of the moves used by the party, after all. It’s a little more active than all that when you’re paying attention, but not by much. You decide who goes into battle.Īnd you root for them, while they grind, while they build relationships, while they hate each other, and while they fight against dangerous bosses. You decide who to equip with what, and who to give bonus experience and stats to (by feeding them with morsels of monster meat). You pick your party’s classes, and can often pick harder or easier routes through different areas.
You put a bunch of characters together, and you give them the foundation to make the right choices. It becomes, then, a sort of RPG simulator. Party members will even decide how they want to spend your money. You can make your character fight automatically. Your party members act without your input (no matter what). The characters make their way through dungeons on their own, only requiring the rare tap of an exclamation on the bottom screen, or a button press when you run into a chest.
Almost every part of the experience is automatic. Miitopia seems to be built for multi-tasking. Miitopia streamlines the formula, and sometimes eschews it entirely. There are dark lords and powerful sages, but the dark lords might be Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine, and the powerful sage might be your neighbor’s dog. There are classes, but the classes include a Cat, a Flower, and a Princess. Its a simple RPG that takes the expected tropes and adds humorous spins. You’re sometimes the playwright, sometimes the casting director, and often the audience. Tomodachi Life meets traditional RPG for an entertaining, but simple, adventure in Miitopia for 3DS.
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