So after 215 hours, more than my entire time with the other 4 Youkai Watch games I've played COMBINED (they clock in a smidgen over 200 hours all together), I'm comfortable putting down Youkai Watch 3. God damn, WHAT A GAME. Needless to say, I REALLY liked this game. It continued the good trend that Sangokushi started and just kept it going and going and going.

The story is head and shoulders above any of the other main-series games. The main gimmick with the 3rd game's plot is that you have Keita (Nathan), along with Jibanyan and Whisper, moving to the USA and having wacky adventures there with a new Tom Sawyer-type friend while a new protagonist Inaho (who has no English-localized name yet, as far as I know) gets her own Youkai Watch and tags up with USAPyon to start their own detective agency! Each of them has their own 5 chapters all to themselves, with their stories occasionally linking up (you can't progress any further in one without going a bit further in the other), and each character having their own inventories, quests, and youkai collections. Then, once they both completely chapter 5, they of course meet and join up their collections and inventories to go through another 5 chapters.

The comedy and refernces are just off the wall. There was more than one time I couldn't help but burst out laughing just because of how off the wall or how on point the parodies were. Star Wars, X-Files, Indiana Jones, Slenderman, Twin Peaks, Terminator, just to name a few of the ones I can recall off the top of my head. On that same note, this game also has some really good messages it puts through its story. Things about not being ashamed of being a big nerd/otaku, that bad people can change for the better, that single-parent families are super normal and there's nothing wrong with them. Every element of the storytelling has improved so so much. You can really tell they took a 2-year gap between YW2 and this one, because the effort shows.

It also shows in places like the scads of content this game has. Just about the entire old map of Youkai Watch 2 is in this game, with the only exceptions I could find were that you cannot time travel to the past-main city and that the hell and heaven post-game gauntlet areas have been omitted (but replaced with another kind of smaller gauntlet. The America area and all the maps it has are freaking huge. Not quite as big and packed as the original Japanese map, but it's still a much larger improvement than just Kemamoto and Nagisaki in the 2nd game. This is like if past-Sakura Newtown actually had a huge amount of content to do in it and wasn't just huge and empty. It took me some 150 hours to even get around to finishing the main story, and that wasn't just from running around hunting impossible to find youkai, that was from doing side quests, doing the main story, and doing the incredibly improved new Busters Treasure Mode.

The stand-alone Youkai Watch Busters game that came out a couple years back doesn't hold a candle to how incredibly fun and expansive the Busters mode included alongside the main game is in Youkai Watch 3. Gone are the recycling of old maps and collecting of orbs for XP, and here to stay are procedurally generated maps of corridors and rooms filled with monsters, treasures, and traps, almost like a real-time mystery dungeon game. Couple that with a bunch of new youkai and big bosses to fight and an extremely improved loot system with no time wasting-crafting and you have a mode that is far far more fun and compelling to play even though youkai don't have a choice of moves to pick from and the story that runs through it is fairly shallow and nearly entirely separate from the main game's narrative.

On that note, the way the main game is even played has be really radically revamped. Taking cues from YW Sangokushi, no longer are your youkai bound to a ring that you just switch around back and forth, but now are free to move, 3 at a time, around a 3x3 grid while your other 3 wait in reserves. Youkai standing directly in front of other youkai will draw attacks away from the ones standing directly behind them, and one standing side-by-side will do small supporting attacks when the other connected youkai does a real attack. Super-moves have also been totally changed to support this, with the mini-games to activate them now all new as well as their AOE's no longer universal, but specified to certain areas of the opponent's 3x3 grid (most of the time). There are a good few new de-buff removing mini-games as well, as well there being 3 levels of difficulty that debuffs can have (meaning they're more difficult to remove). Couple that in with the 200 or so new youkai and the 3 significant post-launch free expansions (one re-adding the Kemamoto area and the others mostly putting in new silly sidequests, adding new powerful youkai to recruit/fight, and expanding the Busters mode) and this game is just one giant pile of brand new that works really well to their benefit.

Verdict: Highly recommended. While it certainly doesn't have the finesse in its presentation and quality of writing that something like FFVI does, this is still probably my new favorite 3DS game ever, and near the top of my list for favorite RPG's ever. I can't think of any other that I've played that I've come even close to how much this one grabbed me. This is also head and shoulders in quality and quantity of any Pokemon game I've ever played. I'm really hoping this pushes Nintendo to up the ante in 8th gen, because I really liked most of the changes in 7th, but I think there's still more they could do to freshen up the series. Even if they don't, YW3 has certainly cemented me as a Youkai Watch fan.

I only finished Chapter 10 but damn I've been dragging this too much to do the actual post game
I loved the game but I still prefer 2's combat system and specially the Dream Model fucking sucks, I don't really like the pistol thing and it was miles less hype-y than Zeroshiki
The feature-creep was awful but I enjoyed it much more than 2's where I was burnt out after 20 hours but I raked 70 here
I audibly screamed when I went 5 chapters without Key Quests and then after the protagonists join they reintroduced them again
I was disappointed they shafted Katie even though she was there and was even a Yokai but even though they would've been written exactly the same, I would've liked her better than Nate in her relationships with Mack and Inaho, I think it just fits better
And well, obviously my eternal fight with the series is that it never should have been localized because it loses its cultural roots so I played Sukiyaki instead of the international release

I'd like to play 4 but it kinda saddens me they Dexited in Yokai Watch after the beautiful plethora of Yokai 3 has but well