First, some context. Before Miitopia was released, there was a simple simulation game known as Tomodachi Life, which basically let your Miis act out a slice-of-life anime series, complete with slapstick hijinks, love triangles, holiday celebrations, and delightfully trippy dream sequences. Within Tomodachi Life was a minigame where four of your Miis perform a parody of Final Fantasy. That minigame became the basic template for Miitopia. Although the inspiration for the gameplay seems to have shifted. Rather than being a parody of Final Fantasy, this game draws its inspiration from Darkest Dungeon. Both games involve a party of four heroes automatically progressing through mostly linear dungeons with the occasional branching path, with the player only taking control when the party encounter enemies. Unlike Darkest Dungeon, your Miis don't have to worry about a Stress gauge that slowly drains them of their sanity as they are forced to confront increasingly disturbing monsters. Nor do they die permanently should they fall in battle. Basically, if you're interested in Darkest Dungeon but are turned off by the Stress (pun completely intended) of micromanaging a party that could kick the bucket at any time should you make a bad call, Miitopia is basically a simpler, more beginner friendly version of Darkest Dungeon's core gameplay.
Our story begins with your Mii (who will serve the role of protagonist for the remainder of the story campaign) wandering around the peaceful meadows of Greenhorne. Yes, Greenhorne. As in, Green-Horn. This game is filled to the brim with puns. Anyway, after a quick trip into a small village populated entirely by Miis, an evil Mii known as the Dark Lord appears and steals the faces of everyone in town except for yourself (and the dubious mayor). Seeing as your Mii is by default a Lawful Good character he/she decides to rescue the stolen faces and confront the Dark Lord. A mysterious amulet given to them earlier by a worried mother Mii awakens dormant power within, and your Mii becomes a Dungeons & Dragons style adventurer. After meeting up with even more adventurers, your Mii goes on a heroic quest to rescue as many faces as possible, beating the crab-cakes out of horrific monsters and collecting treasure.
The core gameplay consists of a party of four Miis traveling through an area automatically, while random events play ever so often to keep things from getting too repetitive. These events could range from finding a treasure chest containing a new item, an enemy encounter, an argument between party members, or even just some silly nonsense such as one of your Miis taking a quick nap, or getting their MP restored by sitting on a cactus (don't ask how that works, not even I know, and frankly I don't WANT to know). But once an enemy encounter does break out (guaranteed to happen at least once per area), we dive into the combat system.
Each party member has a set of abilities and skills based on their class (which in this game are called Jobs), with basic attacks being painfully weak but don't cost MP, while stronger attacks and spells will require that you spend a certain amount of MP. However, unlike a lot of RPGs, the only Mii you, the player, can control directly is the very first Mii you create for the campaign, with the rest of the party being handled by A.I. Said A.I. tends to vary in terms of intelligence and performance. On some Jobs, the A.I. is a crucial aspect of the team, always making the right play at the right time. On other Jobs, the A.I. tends to be laughably stupid, such as wasting precious healing items when they themselves have a spell that heals the entire party, or spamming low-tier spells when they have a higher tier and thus can do more damage. The Tank and Flower classes are the worst offenders. The Tank's gimmick is that it has the strongest psychical attacks in the game, but certain abilities have a chance to hit other party members. Its later skills ditch this gimmick and deal more damage and don't consume nearly as much MP as the skills that have a chance to hit allies. However, an A.I. controlled Tank will always prioritize using skills like Wild Shot (which has a 30% chance of hitting an ally) and Human Cannonball (which requires that you sacrifice a teammate in order to deal tremendous damage) over Laser Beam (which never hits allies) and Hot Shot (which is literally a better version of Wild Shot, and with no chance of hitting an ally at all).
The Flower, meanwhile is supposed to be equal parts defensive wall and supportive healer. But for some reason the A.I. for this Job seems to refuse to use healing spells, and as such wastes healing items like potions and bananas. On top of this, the class can grant buffs to party members by altering their emotional state, and the A.I. is overly fond of making party members get Angry (which boosts the power of basic attacks in exchange for disabling the more advanced skills). Now, on psychical Jobs like the aforementioned Tank or the Knight, this is by no means a problem, and in the case of the Tank its actually beneficial, since it stops it from spamming Wild Shot and Human Cannonball. But on the jobs that are heavily reliant on skills or spells for their role, such as the Wizard or the Cleric, this can be disastrous as neither of those Jobs are meant to use their basic attacks.
What makes the A.I.'s incompetency on those Jobs even more baffling is that it handles other jobs perfectly. The Imp job always begins the battle with Sweet Whispers, which lowers the enemies' defense, letting the rest of the team deal more damage. It also has a similar ability to the Flower's emotion control (where the Flower makes party members Angry, The Imp makes them Hyper, but for the sake of simplicity they are treated as the same status affect), the only difference being that the Imp will ONLY use it on Jobs that have a strong basic attack to begin with, rather than the Flower trying to make the entire party Angry. The Princess job is arguably even better, since it too has a defense lowering spell that it almost always opens up with, but also possesses the ability to make opponents waste their turn. On top of this, if a party members MP runs low, the Princess will automatically restore it by giving them tea. Oh, and I'm not sure if the Princess in my playthrough just got RNG-blessed (I have heard that the stats of Miis are randomized, but I'm not too sure about that), but she wounded up becoming my best magic-damage dealer in the game, and the moment she spotted an opening between the debuffing and turn-stalling, she took it to cast some spells that dealt anywhere between 300-600 damage a hit. This got taken up to eleven with the final boss battle, where the strategy basically boiled down to "Keep the Princess alive so she can repeatedly nuke the final boss".
Now, just about every other reviewer docked some points simply because the player can only control one Mii, but personally, my problem is that there is no way to adjust the A.I. of the other party members. Imagine if you go into options and toggle which spells a character can and cannot use. Heck, I'd just take something basic like three simple options that adjust the frequency certain abilities are used, like telling a healer to cast supportive spells more often, or telling a damage dealer to focus entirely on damage output and nothing else. But other than that, I don't mind.
On a more positive note, the combat itself is surprisingly fun. It isn't reinventing the wheel here, but it at least takes notes of how to make a good Turn-Based RPG. And frankly, the sheer absurdity of some of the Jobs makes it greatly amusing. As much as I dislike the Flower (at least when the A.I. is controlling it), I will admit that having a Mii dressed up as a FLOWER of all things is chuckle-worthy. And so is beating goblins, griffins, and the like over the head with a Fire-Magic enhanced frying pan, courtesy of the Chef. Or even the Scientist's ability to hack into The Fourth Wall and cause enemies to glitch out so hard they take damage from the glitches. There are more serious jobs in case you would rather take the game seriously (for some reason), so if you dislike the idea of most of the classes being wacky joke characters, fret not, the more serious jobs, such as the Knight, Wizard, and Thief have you covered.
My favorite job in the game would have to be the Pop Star. It is, in all but name, a bard. And bards are the most underrated archetype in all of role-playing games. Seriously, why can't the Holy Trinity be Paladin-Mage-Bard instead of Paladin-Mage-Thief? For those of you not familiar with the Bard archetype, the bard is a support-based character with a slew of offensive abilities. The bard's main role is to buff the rest of the party up with the power of song and dance. Usually their music is hand-waved as having magical properties. The Pop Star fits this role to a T, using Encore to give party members an extra turn, Love Song to boost MP, and Out of Tune, which as the image above clearly says, is an area-of-effect that deals damage to allies. Unlike the Tank's Wild Shot and Human Cannonball, Out of Tune not only deals only a mere 1-5 damage (depending on how many Miis partake in the song), but it also doesn't damage the relationship between the Pop Star and the rest of the party (while the Tank's abilities do). Oh, and speaking of which...
| Oh hey, it's Midna from Legend of Zelda. |
As you use specific Miis, the relationships between them will deepen. Upon reaching a certain threshold, the Miis will gain several passive abilities that have a set chance to activate under certain circumstances. The frequency these passives activate increase as the bond between specific Miis improves. However, there are some abilities that will harm relationships between Miis, such as the Tank's Wild Shot/Human Cannonball, or the Chef's Spicy Dish (in addition to random events that sometimes worsens relationships). If the grudge between two Miis gets out of hand, they will, and I kid you not, start bickering and fighting each other, even in the middle of battle. While the grudges can be healed overtime, while they are active, it can make combat encounters trickier to deal with, since you're not only fighting the monsters, but also trying to keep your Knight from tearing your Chef limb from limb.
Oh, and another thing to consider. When you create a Mii, you have to select a personality for it. These Personalities alter the Mii's dialogue and flavor text (Cautious Miis have a slight stutter when they speak, Stubborn Miis are blunt and to-the-point, etc.). They also grant a set of passives that activate randomly. For example, the Cool Mii has a passive that lets them auto-dodge attacks, Stubborn Miis can attack twice in a row, Energetic Miis can sometimes revive themselves upon being KO'd, Cautious Miis can do warm-up exercises to boost the power of their next attack, and the list goes on. Not all of the passives are positive, however. Stubborn Miis will sometimes refuse to receive healing from a support character, or Kind Miis might give the enemy a chance to surrender, ending the battle early but robbing you of any potential rewards. Frankly, I feel like if they were to incorporate personality quirks as a game mechanic, they should have balanced the personalities better, because some Personalities are comically underpowered compared to others For example, while the Laid-Back personality isn't terrible per se, it's pretty much inferior to the Cool personality in almost every aspect (their passives have almost the same effect, but Laid-Back comes with several caveats such as making an ally take a hit for them when they auto-dodge, or using up double MP when they deal bonus damage). Some Miis' negative quirks can actually be worked around by giving them certain jobs (Stubborn-Cleric, Kind-Pop Star, etc.), but I would rather give Miis Jobs that synergize well their positive quirks (Cool-Tank, Energetic-Knight, Cautious-Princess, etc.) instead of baby-proofing their negatives.
The main appeal of the game is without a doubt the Miis themselves. There are so many ways you can play this game just by using different Miis. You could use Miis based on yourself and your real life friends and family for a self-insert adventure, create a bunch of original Miis just for the story (doing this basically turns the game into a Dungeons & Dragons campaign), or do what I did, and have every Mii be based off of various film, cartoon, video game, and anime characters for a crazy crossover, fanfiction-esque romp through a delightfully trippy world. Seriously, name one other video game where Naruto Uzumaki, Princess Bubblegum, Tony Stark, The Great Papyrus, and Gandalf the Grey all team up to rescue a Minecraft Creeper from the evil clutches of Dark Lord Squidward Tentacles, all while receiving mail from Stan Lee (rest in peace, Stan) and chowing down on exotic cuisine with Soldier 76. Is it ridiculous? Yes. Does it sound like something out of a bad fanfic? Yes. Is it a glorious sight anyway? YES.
| Obligatory UNDERTALE reference is obligatory. |
There are also minigames you can play between dungeons. The first is a roulette wheel that gives you certain prizes, such as a new weapon, some healing items, or a vacation ticket that can be used to raise the bond between any two Miis of your choice. The other is a game of Rock-Paper-Scissors against a robotic hand that could be done to farm money. Now, back when the game first released, there was a persistent rumor that you could cheese the Rock-Paper-Scissors minigame by paying attention to the gesture the robot made before every match (waving with open hand equaled Paper, clenching fist meant Rock, and using two fingers to make a "Bring It!" gesture meant Scissors). However, that rumor has since been disproven, since a quick look through the source code shows that whatever the robot picked was always random, and the animations are just there for flavor. But personally, I eventually stopped using the Rock-Paper-Scissors minigame to make money, as it was simply easier to sell unwanted armor or weapons to make money.
Another thing I should warn you about. Seeing as this is technically a sequel to Tomodachi Life, game mechanics from that game were reused here. Namely, you cannot buy better armor or weapons whenever you want (like literally every RPG ever), and instead you have to wait for the Mii you want new gear for to go to town and do some shopping. All you do is provide them enough money to buy whatever it is they want, rather than manually picking and choosing what to buy yourself. As far as I'm aware what Miis want to buy is slightly random. I say "slightly" because if the party is running low on items such as Healing Bananas, they will more frequently request money to buy those items. If they have an overabundance of items, they will more frequently request money to buy armor and weaponry, and they will always buy something with better stats than what they have currently. However, in the case of armor and weapon shopping, there is a small chance (I believe 25%, but don't quote me on that) that they will get swindled while in town and will return with nothing but a single Banana. They give any leftover money back to you either way, so it isn't a complete waste if they get swindled. And while the fact that Miis can get swindled while shopping is goofy and comedic on paper, in practice it gets really annoying really fast, especially when it happens several times in a row.
My biggest criticism of Miitopia comes in the form of the Sickness Mechanic. It only becomes prevalent once you have access to all ten party members at once (for story reasons, the additional party members get separated from your main Mii no less than three times, but after the third time you can swap them all out at your leisure). Randomly, once per-ingame day, one of your Miis has a chance to catch an illness, and will need to sit out the next couple of dungeons (it takes 3-5 ingame days for a Mii to recover from Sickness). Now the intent of the mechanic is to make sure the player has a back up team ready and don't just breeze through the game with a single overpowered team. However, I feel that the Sickness mechanic, while a good idea on paper, has more than a few balancing issues. Chief among them being that given which Mii catches Sickness is random, it's entirely possible for a Mii to get Sick, recover, and then get Sick again the next day. As such, I had a Mii grossly underleveled compared to everyone else because he kept getting Sick. And what's worse is after the main story is completed and you start doing post-game content (there is a surprisingly large amount of stuff to do after the credits roll) the invisible source-code flag that made your main Mii immune to Sickness gets removed, meaning it now becomes possible for the only Mii you can control to be forced to sit out the next couple of dungeons, at which point battles become completely automatic with no player input.
Overall, Miitopia is a great, but flawed RPG that's brought down by some design choices that seemed good on paper but aren't well balanced in practice. But the whole game has a charm to it that makes it a worthwhile experience, if you are willing to put up with the randomness and the haphazard teammate AI. If we are to get another Mii-focused game in this style, I hope that Nintendo takes what Miitopia did right, make it even better, and iron out this game's flaws.With that being said, I give Miitopia 6 customizable, bobble-headed avatars out of 10. Actually, no, let's make 6.5 out of 10, the extra decimal points are just for the sheer audacity of letting me have a party consisting of all my favorite video game, film, cartoon, and anime characters.
As for the presentation, the graphics and art style are decent. I understand there's only so much a 3DS can handle (I played it on 2DS, by the way), but for what it does, it's nice to look at. The environments and designs of the generic monsters are probably the weakest aspect of the game, at least for me. Neither are bad, just really forgettable compared to the rest of the game. The bosses are better, if only because bosses in this game are identified by having a Mii's face attached to it, and depending on who's face it is, it can make some bosses look hilarious (such as a UFO with the adorably derpy face of Ugandan Knuckles, a Painting depicting the infamous ugly mug of the Troll Face, and a giant frog with Eevee's features affixed to its stomach). The battle and cutscene animations are easily the highlight of the game's visuals, being hilariously over-the-top even if you DON'T base your Miis off of fictional characters from other franchises. And some of the animations fit really well, should you choose to do what I did. Because there's a certain joy to knowing that my Great Papyrus Mii's favorite food is spaghetti, loving it so much that he flies into the air in a state of pure bliss every time he eats a dish.
The game's soundtrack is surprisingly well-made. While the generic battle theme does get old fast, literally every other song is nearly perfect. The King's theme is regal and bombastic, which fits well with the character (or at least how he's supposed to be played). The Elf Sisters' theme is mystical and enchanting, and then gets remixed into a weirdly catchy musical number. The final boss theme is energetic and fast-paced, which gets your blood pumping. But the greatest song in the game is the song that plays when you encounter Rare Snurps, an enemy that gives extremely powerful rewards if defeated, such as 500,000 EXP or a food item that raises all stats. The theme music here is a mind-blowing techno beat that wouldn't be out of place at a rave.
| This game's meme potential is arguably the main selling point. |
Awesome read! Detail oriented!
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