I can't think of a series more underappreciated than that of Yo-Kai Watch, and now that the series has been discontinued in the west for a couple years now, words cannot describe how much I miss it. With Level-5's recent projects confirmed to be getting worldwide releases, I'm praying for the series's eventual return.

Anyways, as much as I enjoy the first installment and respect the third, neither of them come close to the absolute masterpiece that is Yo-Kai Watch 2. The game was split into three separate versions a la Pokémon, so I decided to go with its "definitive edition" in Psychic Specters. The original's slice-of-life formula has transformed into a grand adventure through time, befriending the game's many different Yo-Kai along the way.

Playing this game is like wearing a warm blanket and drinking hot chocolate, it's as charming as it is unbelievably cozy every time. There's an ungodly amount of content, damn near everything from the first game is back in all its glory, even something as minuscule as ranking up your titular Yo-Kai Watch sticks out in my mind as unbelievably satisfying. If you can somehow get your hands on it, you can't go wrong with this game.

Personally speaking, THIS is the game Yo-kai Watch 2 should've been from the start.

Not only does it do away with the dual-release format, it also adds a boatload more content onto an already content-packed game.

With this game, the postgame is pretty much endless as you have access to a lot of quests that you don't know where to begin. You can go to Gera Gera Land and have a wondrous time. You can uncover the past of characters like Darknyan, Dame Dedtime, and even Whisper. You can even fight secret bosses along the way.

That's not all, the underwhelming Blasters mode has been updated to Psychic Blasters, containing even more Super Bosses than before. It also becomes more accommodated for the lone player, meaning it's possible to stick it to the Big Boss even when you're alone.

However, the RNG, inconsistent designs, and other miscellaneous problems still persist, but I could be less than bothered by them here.

Overall, a fantastic time, flaws and all. Would highly recommend.

Este juego es mil veces mejor que el primer Yo-Kai Watch, y si alguien quiere iniciarse en estos juegos es mejor que empiece por aquí.
La cantidad de contenido que tiene este juego es brutal, tanto en cantidad de Yo-Kai de los que hacerte amigo como misiones secundarias y storylines, contenido opcional.
Puedes superar la historia, las misiones secundarias, e intentar conseguir todos los Yo-Kai, pero también montar en tren, participar en carreras de bicis, recorrer el camino misterioso y sus tres ramificaciones, el tunel infinito, jugar minijuegos de ritmo, completar preguntablas, encontrar y superar portales místicos... Y eso que solo me he pasado la historia y aún no he empezado el post-game, que es donde "empieza el juego de verdad". Encontré a una persona en internet con 700 horas y que todavía no había visto todo el contenido del juego.
Además la calidad de todo este contenido es impecable y está plagada de pequeños detalles, cosas como que puedes pulsar el botón del semáforo para cruzar y si no lo haces te llamarán la atención o que puedas levantar la tapa del váter de tu casa y sentarte en este hacen que el mundo se sienta pulido.
Las únicas quejas son que la historia principal no es del todo llamativa y dramática ya que es un juego para niños, y que conseguir algunos de los Yo-Kai más exclusivos puede ser aburrido, bien por necesitar un grindeo excesivo o por estar ligados a alguna acción específica como escalar un poste siete días IRL seguidos, o por requerir alguna de las otras versiones de Yo-Kai Watch.
En cuanto al humor, es infantil pero bastante ridículo y abstracto, y puede llegar a sacarte una carcajada.
Es un monster catcher del que es casi imposible aburrirse tanto por cantidad como por calidad, ya le gustaría a cualquier juego de Pokemon estar a este nivel.

I’m still very conflicted on how I feel about Yo-Kai Watch 2. It’s the only one in the series that I would call derivative of one of its predecessors.
And while I can see it being an overall improvement over the first Yo-Kai Watch game, I did still not enjoy it as much; as I believe most of its improvements can be summarized by saying that there is a lot of stuff in this game; you will basically not be able to do everything there is in this game.

The version I played “Psychic Specters” is the definitive Version of Yo-Kai Watch 2, combining the contents of both Bony Spirits and Fleshy Souls, but unlike the Pokémon equivalents, which may mix and match aspects or even add some, this game gives you the choice of which versions content you want to engage with at certain points in the story, which is as interesting as it is flawed, because if you want to truly experience everything there is in this game you now have to either write down every choice you take, to do the opposite on your second playthrough, or basically just play through the base versions one after another on this fancier cartridge.

When it comes to your gameplay loop, this is basically a rehash of the first one. You might expect QoL changes, but I believe it to actually the other way around, as Mirapo, these games fast-travelling system, and the bike will be locked away from you for way longer, the latter you for some reason only unlock at around 85% through the main game. So most of your (early) game will be spend learning the ins and outs of the Yo-Kai Watch train-network, which takes you station by station (makes sense), it will ask you whether or not you want to exit every station, during the rides you will either be encountering people/Yo-Kai that basically tell you nothing, give you an item or battle you.
Another Mirapo related issue is when you travel to the past, you won’t be able to use them at all, with one exception (which doesn’t count), meaning you will have to walk everywhere, in these maze-like past versions of the city, which at least has some of the greatest music of the already great OST.

Speaking of which, the soundtrack while brief is as good as in any other Yo-Kai game. The only problem with it being that most of it is taken straight from its prequel, with most new tracks being restricted to the past areas. The most egregious example of old music being used is during one moment where the villains of the chapter show up and the Final Boss theme of the first game just starts playing for some reason.

One change I was really waiting to see is how they fixed how you befriend Yo-Kai, as it is my biggest gripe with the first game and it was (somewhat) fixed in the third one and color me shocked when I found out it’s the worst it has ever been. Now don’t get me wrong here, it’s roughly the same as the first in theory, but this game forces you to befriend Yo-Kai way more than that game. There is one point where you enter a cave, where you must use your Yo-Kai to change the water levels to progress. When I got there my playtime was at around 8 hours, the water can be at three different levels, and you need one specific Yo-Kai per level. Luckily you can encounter them in that cave, but remember if you beat them, it will take a seemingly random amount of time for them to respawn, and they might just not do so at all. So, you better pray that the RNG for them befriending you is in your favor, as the item that guarantees befriending does not exist yet, and guess what happened to me.
One of them, this guy right here, just hates me for some reason, and I spend a bit more than two hours in that cave just hoping that they would befriend me. Well at least you can get the Yo-Kai at the same place where you need them.
A bit later in the game you will hunt down some documents the protagonists dad lost on his way to work, which first forces you to ride the train multiple times, after doing that Whisper tells you to get a Yo-Kai called Flushback which will be able to go through the memories of you father and find out where he left the documents. Now guess three times where you might find such a Yo-Kai. The cave of course and if you didn’t get them last time, have fun walking from one side of the map to the other, if you didn’t activate the Mirapo and do all that encountering in the cave once again, just for that to not give you a clear answer as to where he left the documents.

Now to the thing I was the most disappointed with. The combat system is the same from the first game with two small changes. 1: When charging your soultimate attack, there is one new method of doing so and 2: if you click the center of the Yo-Kai Watch you have two new options, being a stronger soultimate (I think) and the option to spam-click the opponent and either deal damage, steal their soul-charge, or giving you a higher chance to befriend them, which does not solve my previous complaint as you have to first inspirit the enemy, it being random as to which effect it will have on them and it still not guaranteeing it.
Back in 2022 I wrote a review for Yo-Kai Watch 3, in which I called this combat system of Yo-Kai Watch 1 more of an annoyance than fun to mess around with, which is a sentiment I still mostly agree with, and guess what, these two minor changes don’t change much. This is magnified by the fact that I didn’t even like the boss fights in this one as much as I did in the others. There are some winners, but most of them are just bland and don’t require much strategy.
Let’s go back to the tidal cave (with the most minor spoiler warning I can give out), which I’ve spend so much time complaining about. At the end of your first excursion through it you will encounter some pirate-Yo-Kai-boss-guy (I think he is from the early-game of 1), whose name I can’t remember. The only thing I did was using all of my front three Yo-Kai’s soultimate-attack and he was basically already defeated, and this happens here more often than I hoped it would.
I will now talk a bit about the final boss, without spoiling who or what their attacks are, but if you feel unsafe you may skip to the next paragraph. I was really looking forward to seeing if they fixed the difficulty curve of the first one, where it is easy for all of the game, only for the final boss to suddenly become impossible to beat at your current level, which you thought to be over leveled, but in a funny twist of events that didn’t happen at all. This game is so derivative of its predecessor that it even copied the two-hour grind for the final boss.

My last point is on the writing of this game. Now don’t get me wrong these games are not known for their groundbreaking storytelling, with the story basically only existing to give you a reason for why you are now suddenly in an all-out Yo-Kai war, with some funny quips thrown in to lighten the mood, but I found this one in particular to be lacking in the latter. The main villains of these games usually don’t have a presence before the game is already basically over and while they are handled better here than in the first one, this is still mostly the case. My problem however isn’t that they did that again, that was expected, but much rather how they handled the new tribe of Yo-Kai, the Wicked-Tribe), which you can see on the box-art. They also only show up during the end of the game and do nothing, outside of being mini bosses that you can dispatch with two attacks, showcasing maybe the biggest wasted potential in this series. At least they give out around 700 experience points.

Now I spend most of this review being critical of the game but remember that is still an overall improvement over the first game, which is also flawed, but a good game in its own right. I’m just disappointed that it didn’t change more. This is also the end of my journey across the Yo-Kai Watch series, at least until this materializes into something, which started all the way back in 2021, or maybe even 2015 if you count my time with the demo-version of the first one and I don’t want to end it on such a downer, as this is such a great series and definitely worth experiencing, especially the third one, which I was so lucky to buy before the 3DS eshop closed down and has since become one of my favorite games of all time. My final ranking is 3 > 4 > 1 > 2.