This is an ongoing list where I attempt to do the following: Play, Complete, and Rank every video game in the known universe in order to finally answer the age old question "What is the greatest game of all time?" For previous entries find the links on the attached spreadsheet.
How did I do?
| Category | Completion level |
|---|---|
| Beat the game | Yes |
| Miis made | 49 |
| Hours played | 35 + |
Ok. Ok. I know I said I was going to talk about Flower next, but I had to call an audible. Miitopia has taken over my gaming life and now that I finally beat it I need to discuss it. There is a lot to talk about here, so let's dive in.
Miitopia would describe itself as an RPG light where you get to control the cast with your family and friends. A game to get newcomers to RPGs a jumping off point to see if they like the genre. I would say that is a bit generous, but lets discuss. Miitopia has RPG mechanics and is trying to call to mind some of your favorite old school JRPGS. Playable characters pick jobs that determine their stat increase as well as what abilities they can learn and use. You gain experience for fighting in battles, and equipment you gain (armor and weapons) are job specific . Each of those mechanics though come with a big BUT that would be off-putting for fans of JRPGS, and perhaps set up new RPG players incorrectly if they moved from Miitopia to another RPG.
You do get to pick jobs for your main character and travelling companions, but outside of specific events (more on that later) these are set in stone for most of the game, so you don't really get to experiment and see which job classes work well together. When you are given the chance to change jobs, you level back down to 1, have only the beginning equipment for that job and are a liability in battle until you gain some new levels. While you could potentially slowly change your teams jobs so that only one person is a liability at a time, for nearly all players it makes more sense to stick to the jobs you have leveled up since grinding for XP isn't really in this game's DNA.
Equipment you gain is essentially random as there are no shops to do purchases before battles. At the end of each "level," one or more of your party members MAY want to go shopping, in which case they will ask for X amount of gold to buy the item they are dreaming of. When you give them money, there is a chance that they get distracted and spend some of the money instead on a healing item. In these instances they don't purchase the weapon or armor, and have to wait until they want to go shopping again at the end of a different level. While they will never buy equipment that is worse than what they have equipped, you could find that they are buying weapons and never armor or vice versa. The only other two ways of getting equipment is playing a roulette game at an inn, where you have a chance at winning the item as a prize, or by finding a treasure chest in the world that drops equipment. It will only drop one piece for someone in your current party, and once the treasure chest is open it is open for good. This equipment system won't deter much of your progress if you are exploring the whole world, but can be frustrating if you have a character who specifically needs armor to survive tough fights but never asks to buy any.
Combat itself is carried out where you only control one character (the main one). If your main character is not in the party at all (story reasons), then you are watching battles play out with zero input. I would not consider this game difficult in nearly any way, shape or form, but there are bosses or baddies that can put you in a rough spot and not being able to strategize with your party makeup can get really frustrating. If the enemies are close to death, but your team is busy trying to use status affecting magic, or healing the party, you may find a battle prolonged when it really shouldn't be. It also works in reverse if you are desperate for a healer to heal, but they attack or waste their turn you could find yourself with an unnecessary death. The game does try to mitigate this, by giving you healing and MP boosting items that you can use X amount of before you need to refill them at an inn, but you have to pause the game every time to use them, and they would be unnecessary if you could just control your team.
When you go through levels, you just automatically follow a straight line, and can sometimes make a decision as to which fork in the road you take. Battles always take place at the same spot on each map, and if you want to explore all areas you have to re-play levels just to go down a different fork. It is where you can tell the game designers troll you, because there are levels that have like 5 different forks where you have to explore all of them if you want the appeasing flag on each level.
So yes, this game has RPG makings, you also travel through towns, explore areas for treasure, sometimes take on sidequests, etc.. but nearly everything has been neutered under the guise of making the game more accessible when I don't know if actually accomplishes that.
Before I get to that point, I might be burying the lead. This games main draw is that you can cast the entire collection of characters as the Miis you have on your Switch. Now, I don't need to be the person that tells you that the Switch is not really a console for Miis, since most games don't use them and they are not a central part of profiles anymore, but this game leads in hard. Before starting this game I had about 5 Miis on my switch, and while I knew I would need more I assumed I would be able to slow play it and create based on the characters coming up. How wrong I was... This is my warning to anyone who wants to pick up this game despite reading this. Start making Miis now! Make Miis well before you start this game, make them early and make them often and never stop making them. Before you even start the game I would recommend having AT LEAST 50 Miis made. Yes, 50 Miis.. I finished with less than 50 and used default characters in place because I was just so tired of creating Miis, but the game is only fun when it is customized for you. The default characters are boring and the game does not do any story telling element that makes you care, they are just set dressing. While you changing a default character to your next door neighbor Bob, is not going to make the story pop, it at least can provide a slightly better moment when you picture your neighbor doing whatever it is they are doing. Also if you think you will just approach it as I did, and make them as the roles come up, then prepare yourself to have playthroughs come to a complete stop when you have to make 5 or 6 miis in a row to cast an entire town before you play on. You can technically cast the same character in multiple roles, lord knows I did on small occasions, but I would advise against it. Having your neighbor Bob have a conversation with your neighbor Bob, kinda defeats the purpose to the game.
Nearly all of what I wrote gets to my biggest complaint with the game, in that it does not respect your time. I went into Miitopia having really enjoyed my time with "Tomadochi Life." In that world you make a Mii every once in awhile, have them move into your apartment and see what weird stuff they get up to. Maybe you make Guy Fieri, and he falls in love with your wife and you joke about it constantly, it was a game you check on and play in small 20-30 minute doses until you got your fill for the day. In Miitopia, you don't really get any of that charm. Characters interact with each other on occasion, but the makers didn't create enough unique instances to make them feel interesting. For a game as long as it is (I will get to that next) you are bound to see the same interactions and dialogue over and over and over again, and it's stuff that wasn't funny the first time it came up, and it certainly isn't funny the 70th time it came up. It is telling that this game has a fast forward button, and for over 50% of the game I had it held down at nearly every chance I could. While you could potentially ignore all of these events, you want them to occur, because that is how you build comradery with your team that unlock abilities. Want characters to help you defend or attack enemies, well they need to spend enough time together to raise their friendship level. That just means you have to fast forward the 15th time you had to watch a scene where the characters get a new hairdo or do pushups as training.
There are outing tickets you can earn which helps raise the friendship level faster of two party members, it is telling that I finished the game with 50 + of these tickets. I was so sick of watching these cutscenes play out, that I just stopped doing them. Could my team have been better and learned even more abilities, almost certainly, but if it meant I had to spend another 2-3 hours with the game just watching cutscenes I would have broke my switch.
Earlier I said I was obsessed with this game, and that obsession just comes in trying to beat it. It wasn't hard, but it just took forever. The 35 hours my switch says it took to beat, felt like 80 and it didn't help that the game's story has so many false stops that you would be excused if you got to the first one and put the game down forever. I would sit down and think that I am going to beat this game tonight, only to see a whole new world open up, or a locked door that I need to go find 4 keys for. What boggles my mind, is that if they is truly a RPG light for beginners, why they decided to make it so long. If this was a 10-15 hour game it would be perfect. Something you could potentially run again, with characters in different roles, and you try new jobs. To know that this is essentially a 40 hour game and that was me fast forwarding the game and skipping events means it could easily be longer. When I finally beat the game, I wasn't relieved, just angry that Post-game content unlocked as if I wanted to keep this train rolling. I looked up what the post game content is, and its basically harder battles and a couple more jobs you can learn, but I can't imagine actually grinding in this game and enjoying it enough to sign up for more.
While I can't comment on the Post-game content being more enjoyable (maybe the upped difficulty means its better).. I do question why does this exist. The Switch doesn't have trophies or achievements, presumably beating the towers of hard bosses is to brag about how good your team is, but without physically showing someone your Miitopia save, you can't really even brag about all those extra hours played. I'm sure this isn't about bragging, but its just weird this opens up after the game as if you getting a new job for your characters, leveling them up, and beating some bosses for no "story" reason is your driving factor in playing another 10 hours of this game. Combat isn't really the best part since you do the same 2-3 moves every battle and only control one character.
I do think there is a good core idea here to making a beginner friendly RPG, but they lost it during creation. This game needed to be 10 + hours shorter, have either more unique interactions or less frequent ones, and the difficulty tweaks need to make it 1 to 2 degrees harder. If it is a 3 out of 10 now, it needs to be a 4 or 5 out of 10 to make the game more enjoyable. I know everyone won't agree with me on this, but I wish there was a random assign button for giving the Miis their roles. I would have loved to not know who was going to show up out of my cast of characters. Maybe the main villain is my cat, or my son, and my party is made of a weird hodgepodge of characters. I get why they didn't do that, but if the game was shorter, it would be something fun to see who is cast as who in a 10 hour game.
That's also not to say there aren't some good things about the game. I was actively enjoying my time in the first 5-10 hours of the game. I would show my wife what weird stuff was happening, and what jobs could be assigned out. At the end they take cues from other RPGs and do some things that are interesting to. I eluded to the fact they split the team up, which when you play 20 hours together to have to do some elements without relying on the same core you always do is very nice, but I wish they leaned on that more, or let you control the leader of that party so you aren't just sitting and watching half the battles until the teams regroup. I also really liked how the final battle plays out, which I won't spoil, but made me really thinking strategy for the first time in the whole game.
When all things are said and done though, Miitopia just doesn't respect your time playing it. It started off as a game I would potentially introduce my kids to, they could be the star of a game, have mom and dad be in their party, etc., but when I finished it I can't imagine my kids playing this game, not now, not ever. Its got a lot of systems to balance for newcomers (friendship points, jobs, stats, random equipment, etc.) and it is too boring for people who have played games with any RPG elements before. I beat the game, finally excited to get back to playing enjoyable games, but left asking myself who is this game really for?
Is this the greatest game of all time?: Nope
Where does it rank: I have Miitopia as the 43rd greatest game of all time. It sits above "When Vikings attack" and below "Bugs Bunny Birthday Blowout." Miitopia will find its audience, and if you are someone who isn't interested in beating games just playing for 5-10 hours, you will probably have some fun, but beating this game felt like a real chore.
Up Next: Flower (PS3)... for real this time
Anyone looking for it: here is the link to the list and more if you are interested in following along with me (this is not a self promotion). Here. I added links on the spreadsheet for quick navigation. Now if you missed a blog of a game you want to read about, you can get to it quickly, rather than having to scroll through my previous blogs wondering when it came up.
Thanks for Listening.
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