Miitopia Demo Impressions
I’m testing out a new weekly currently unnamed feature where I look at demos and early access games. Let me know what you think and what you’d like to see! Feel free to comment here with any suggestions.
This week I've only had time for one demo since I’ve been working overtime mid-move, which I can assure you, is a special kind of hell. As I haven’t had much leasure time, I picked up my Switch, and saw the demo for Miitopia launched.
Miitopia is not a new game but rather a port of the 2016 3DS game--with an extensively expanded character creator. Customization is better, and more varied than the 3DS version, and sharing custom characters is fairly simple by Nintendo standards. I've seen some amazing and wonderful designs, as well as some pretty out there characters. My husband really liked the guy with the 8-bit Wooper sprite for a face. I suggest taking a glance at some of the wacky things made in it, as I'd like to keep this fairly brief and could just gush over some of the creations.
The plot for the game is pretty bog standard fantasy rpg stuff. You are an ordinary villager passing through the world of Miitopia, when suddenly the Dark Lord appears and steals the faces of some of the friendly locals and suddenly you're thrust into your role as hero destined to stop the Dark Lord.
What makes this game unique is the ability to customize 99.9 percent of the characters. From the npcs in the villages, to the characters in your party, to even the Dark Lord, it’s completely up to you who fills your world. On top of that, you can change who is who on a whim. This gives the game a lot of personality, and is honestly the main selling point. I love customization, be it through mods or the game itself. I absolutely adore that I’m adventuring through the game with Froppy from My Hero Academia as my best friend.
As the game progresses, the party expands with whoever you want for up to 4 members. I personally have me, Froppy from My Hero Academia, Zoro from One Piece, and Vivian from Paper Mario. From character creation, classes and personalities are assigned, which will decide the flow of combat.
While this game has a basic RPG element of fighting evil via turn-based combat, there’s a lot of focus on building relationships between party members. The party talks while adventuring, share rooms at the inn, can do one-on-one hang-outs with each other, and many other activities. I absolutely adore games with interpersonal relationships, and I got into this part super hard. As the party grows closer, they support each other more in combat and more actions are unlocked. It’s worth noting that I could only control my main characters, and my party members acted are their own. This is a little unfortunate as the AI is not great.
Miitopia is definitely one of those unique Japanese games that’s very niche. I see this more appealing as an accessible rpg to fans of The Sims and Tomodachi Life rather than Dragon Quest. But I adore it, and have already preordered the main game.