Didn’t wanna phrase it like this, but this very much felt like a detective game on autopilot. If you’re not chuckling at the cute scenarios of Pokémon co-existing with humans in an urban environment or processing some of the most stellar visuals for a 3DS game, you’re endlessly mashing that A button to effortlessly gather testimony and evidence from an all-star cast of forgettable characters, with really nothing special in the gameplay to make up for it, like the brilliant puzzles in Professor Layton or the hysterical court trials in Ace Attorney. Unless you wanna count stupidly easy QTEs as the substitute for those?… I don’t.

And there is no way to fail or get a game over. If you make a wrong accusation in the moment of truth, there’s absolutely zero penalty for it and you can just select every last option without thinking until you inevitably click on the correct one, meaning there’s zero incentive to pay close attention and avoid failing the interrogation like in Hotel Dusk, where one slip-up can either make the respondent distrust you or land you a game over screen. All the while a Pikachu with an overly gruff voice simps for coffee every 10 or so minutes.

As an unapologetic Professor Layton fanboy and Ace Attorney enjoyer who was looking forward to this game, man… I really wished it could’ve been so much more than just disappointing.

This game is mostly talking with others to gather evidence. So you need to be in the mood for reading. There are very few puzzles or gameplay sections. And what’s there is also on the easy side. So they’re there for the game’s pacing. Luckily the dialogue is engaging and you want to know more about the main characters. The case is solved but it seems they left some things out for a potential sequel. Some flaws would be the lack of customisation options in terms of hints and holding your hands. I got a bit annoyed when Pikachu wouldn’t shut up whilst I was still talking with others or trying to examine an item/document. Also the game is one of the few pretty 3DS games. It’s a shame there’s no 3D at all. It feels like it could have suited it. Overall I enjoyed the game. It’s worth playing if you’re a Pokémon fan who wouldn’t mind reading and is doing it mostly for the Pokémon part and less for the gameplay/seeking challenge part.

Genre: Adventure with light detective elements | Released: 2018 | Platform: Nintendo 3DS | Developer: Creatures | Publisher: Nintendo | Language: English | Length: 10 ish hours | Difficulty: EASY | Do I Need To Play Anything First: No, but you probably should have some knowledge of the Pokémon world | Accessibility Options: None | Monetization: Single purchase | Microtransaction: none | Gambling Elements: none | Content Warning: none | Parenting Guide: mild peril and mild cartoon violence, good for everyone | How Did You Play It: On my Nintendo 3DS | Did you need a guide: Gosh no | Mods: None

Is It Good: It’s fine.

Back of the Box: What Pokémon games should be. Or at least look like.

Detective Pikachu is an average to dull detective game, buoyed by frankly insane presentation and style. This game captures what a world of Pokemon would be like, and for that I enjoyed myself. I have always wanted to play a game as a person in a what feels like a living world, and this game gets closer to that then most. The story is fun in a Saturday cartoon kinda way, butttttt: the movie is better.

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A história no geral é legal, os gráficos são bons e as interações com o Pikachu divertidas.

Porém a progressão do jogo é arrastada, o sistema de investigação sem graça, as formas de resolver os casos pouco criativas e repetitivas.

Recomendo só se você gostar bastante do universo de Pokémon, tem muitas coisas melhores para experimentar antes no 3DS!

POKEMON: DETECTIVE PIKACHU - THE MOVIE might just be the best video game adaptation of all time. It cuts out so much of the tedious story padding, and obvious foreshadowing of the mystery elements which this game suffers from, and just gets right to the good stuff.

In a nutshell: This is a great ACE ATTORNEY game for young kids to play. You engage in a lot of conversations to pick up on noteworthy dialogue, investigate areas to log important clues or visual cues, and tie everything together in a simple "Scooby and the gang solve it all at the end of the episode" moment. Tim is pretty bland, but he's a straight man to Detective Pikachu, who is equal parts goofy and smarmy. The levels are all uniquely distinct and overall the game does a fine job showing off how a "Pokemon inhabited world" would look and operate compared to the "Battles only" mentality of the main-line series.

But what holds the whole game back is that its undemanding difficulty is horribly balanced out by mechanics and a UI that don't even let the player fit together the very easy elements on their own. Pikachu is ALWAYS begging for you to press the button that activates conversations with him, and when you do, all he does is either spell out the obvious for you, or outright give you the answer, removing any sense of reward you might feel for trying to engage with the story on your own. If you try to ignore his prompts, you'll find in some scenarios that you literally cannot proceed through a sequence UNLESS you let him spell it out for you. It's such a buzz kill. The starting set-up menu asked me if I wanted the game to give me hints, which I declined...which makes me wonder how much more hand-holdy a hint system becomes on TOP of having Pikachu nagging at you.

Great concept, wonky execution. Just watch the movie.

Detective Pikachu is a game that I adore the existence of more than the act of actually playing it. Now, that isn't to say it's a terrible experience or anything, but it is a pretty bare-bones adventure game that's clearly intended for a younger audience, featuring a relatively straight-forward story and simple puzzle solving that doesn't have any fail states. If you're playing this game, it's more for the novelty of it than any notion of compelling gameplay.

That said, the aforementioned novelty of Detective Pikachu was more than enough for me to enjoy it, because it's the kind of Pokémon game I wish there were more of. The characters have voice acting. The Pokémon actually feel alive because their voices aren't still locked into digital noise from the 8-bit era. The world is one in which Pokémon coexist with humans in a more natural way and not every single thing revolves around them. Detective Pikachu (the game and the character) radiates charm and personality from every corner and you can absolutely understand at a glance why this was chosen to be made into a movie instead of the core series. It was such an easy fit.

Despite ending with a cliffhanger (that you can easily tell where it was going and the film decides to spell out entirely), I was still mostly satisfied with the time I spent in the world of Detective Pikachu. Even more than the mysterious sequel that was announced and never heard from again, I really wish there were more games in the spirit of this one; not afraid to do something truly different with the IP and respects the fact that games have come a long way since the Game Boy. You don't have to let the past hold you back when it comes to updating this franchise in exciting new ways.