For a game I only picked up because it was $13 on Play Asia at one point and time, I enjoyed this game IMMENSELY. It is by FAR the most competent and fun Pokemon-like I have ever played, and I can completely see why it is SO popular here and abroad (but mostly abroad ;p). I'm not sure if I'm ready to say that I enjoy Youkai Watch more than Pokemon, but I enjoyed it a lot. I'm not sure how much of that is just having something so technically competant but so different from Pokemon when Pokemon has been so similar for so long, though, however.
First things first out of the way: For those of you who might've guessed otherwise (as I did), not being a Layton game does not mean that Level-5 can suddenly write well. The story is a total pacing cluster-fuck, with new, VERY plot significant characters being introduced right up until the very last chapter, characters whom you've never even met up to that point except perhaps in passing (literally, like on the street). The story comes to the last chapter really suddenly, and even though the game tries to do things like introduce mystery characters who seem all mysterious, it doesn't use them to any noteworth effect. HOWEVER, being as this is FAR more silly and mechanically-oriented (at least in terms of its presentation) than something like Layton, I felt that the bad pacing didn't really hurt the game too much. The characters themselves are very fun and silly, especially Whisper and your main character, so you never really feel like you just hate everyone, just that you're not that involved in the overarching plot of things.
The gameplay itself is certainly not without its problems, but it's the most fun spin on the Pokemon formula I've encountered. First up is the good stuff. The game plays like a real-time Pokemon where your whole team battles at once. You have three active and three inactive Youkai at a time on a wheel-system, and you can literally rotate the wheel to rotate them in and out as they become hurt or incapacitated. Your Youkai fight completely on their own, and other than giving them items to affect their "personality" (i.e. battle move-priorities), there's not a whole lot you can do about it. Granted, different Youkai do have different moves, you don't really have an easy way of viewing all of these moves in a UI of some kind, so it works best just to try different Youkai configurations to see what works. Although, just because your Youkai move by themselves, that doesn't mean that you don't have any way of keeping occupied yourself.
In battle, the things you, the player, can do will usually keep you occupied enough that you rarely have down time. First off, each Youkai has a super-move that can be used by playing one of a random series of mini-games. The top-screen action doesn't stop while you're doing these mini-games, so getting fast at them is a real strategy tactic. Additionally, when your guys get status effects (burn, slow, paralyze, etc.) you can rotate (literally) them out to do a different set of mini-games to get them back to tip-top shape. You also get extra EXP for doing those mini-games, so it's well worth it. You do need to have your Youkai's special-meter full before you can do special moves though, which is good, because some are VASTLY better than others (depending on the Youkai). You can also equip one item on each Youkai which will shuffle their stats in some way (almost every item with a stat benefit has some negative effect on some other stat, to keep them from being straight up "why the fuck wouldn't you use it"-buffs). On top of the above, you can literally 'pin' a target for your Youkai to focus on (and you can also use that pin to pop bubbles that float past the top screen for power-ups and items, no joke), as well as use items to feed to your Youkai or the enemy, which brings me to how you even catch these guys.
There is no such thing as a Youkai-Pokeball. Instead, this is much more like the awful Ni No Kuni method of catching monsters: You beat them up and then just hope to god that they decide to join you after the battle. You can give them their favorite type of food (of which there is no record or indication of in the game. You've gotta figure it out with trial and error and then just remember who likes which specific category of food) to up your chances, but it's usually never by any significant feeling margin. Especially because there are some Youkai which are legitimately very rare (like Noko) who appear very rarely, sometimes EXTREMELY rarely (there was one that will appear randomly in place of another Youkai, and I saw but two of in my fifty hours of play), this makes it a SUUUUUPER pain in the ass to actually get Youkai you really want reliably or in any meaningfully quick fashion. You can also only feed enemy Youkai (even a food they don't like) once during battle, so there's no food-spam option. This is, in my opinion, what Youkai Watch gets the most wrong about the Pokemon formula, and is my biggest hesitation with recommending the game to another fan of the genre.
That said, the above method of forcing you to fight tons of Youkai does have some useful side-effects. First off, this game has no trainers. Even though you have a party of six Youkai which you can rotate, you will never fight another Youkai Watch-kateer, so you'll only ever fight up to three other Youkai at a time. Additionally, becasue there are no trianers, the wild Youkai you fight are just far tougher than wild Pokemon tend to be. Because you have to fight Youkai very repetedly to catch them, this led to me accidentally doing a TON of grinding I hadn't intended to do, just because I wanted to catch all of dem Youkai. Wild Youkai also drop money, so I also never had any remote money problem despite all of the Youkai food I had to keep buying. It's basically the equivalent of if there were unlimited Pokemon trainers to fight, and the only way to catch Pokemon was to hope that the trainer gave you them once you beat them in battle. It's an interesting and somewhat useful side-effect, but I don't think that it outweighs the more significant problem posed in Youkai befriending (You don't capture, you befriend (with violence)!).
The last most notable thing about Youkai is that not only do they have specific ranks (six different ranks, E through S), but they also rarely evolve. Out of 220-ish Youkai, only about 15 or so evolve through levels, and another 15 or so evolve through being combined with other Youkai, and then another 15 or so by being combined with special items. This makes it so that you are quite often switching out Youkai completely to make different or sometimes completely new team configurations just because the stats on higher ranked Youkai are just so much objectively better (although it can take a little while to find a move-set that gels well with your team and personal style). If you've ever played Dragon Quest Monsters/Joker, this will seem fairly famliar to you, but I believe that Youkai watch does that system not just better, but correctly.
The REALLY (really) annoying thing about DQM series is that you need to combine ALL monsters together to make stronger ones, and you really don't have much concept at all of just how strong or spellfully teched out this new monster will be. That process CONSUMES both parents, and you're only left with a child, so you can seriously fuck yourself over and have to do a ton of grinding for a whole new team if you get some unlucky breeds with your main team members. In Youkai watch, it's just straight up replacements, so if a new team member isn't working out, you can just swap the old guy back in, no problems. Additionally, because higher ranked guys might be a bit better, lower ranked guys can still level just as high as anyone else, and since your main team will likely be higher level than most enemies you encounter, there's an incentive to keep lower ranked veterans in your team whom you like, even though they're lower rank. For example, I had a C-rank in my team all the way up to the end of the game, just because he was such high level and a very reliable damage-dealer. Additionally, there are some REALLY good items near the end of the game that can ONLY be equpped on D-rank or lower Youkai, so the game even give you a means of making somewhat squishier, beloved lower-rank Youkai a part of the team even into the late game :)
Verdict: Highly recommended. If you like Pokemon, I think you will like Youkai Watch. My general rule I've noticed with these reviews is that the bigger and impression a game has left on me, the more I wanna tell you about it, so this giant wall of text should probably give you some indication of that x3 . Granted, Sun and Moon did just come out, and if you're still playing that, I'd agree that there's not much reason to invite Youkai into your life atm. However, perhaps when you get bored with Sun/Moon, Youkai Watch would be an excellent way to fill that Poke-void, methinks :)
First things first out of the way: For those of you who might've guessed otherwise (as I did), not being a Layton game does not mean that Level-5 can suddenly write well. The story is a total pacing cluster-fuck, with new, VERY plot significant characters being introduced right up until the very last chapter, characters whom you've never even met up to that point except perhaps in passing (literally, like on the street). The story comes to the last chapter really suddenly, and even though the game tries to do things like introduce mystery characters who seem all mysterious, it doesn't use them to any noteworth effect. HOWEVER, being as this is FAR more silly and mechanically-oriented (at least in terms of its presentation) than something like Layton, I felt that the bad pacing didn't really hurt the game too much. The characters themselves are very fun and silly, especially Whisper and your main character, so you never really feel like you just hate everyone, just that you're not that involved in the overarching plot of things.
The gameplay itself is certainly not without its problems, but it's the most fun spin on the Pokemon formula I've encountered. First up is the good stuff. The game plays like a real-time Pokemon where your whole team battles at once. You have three active and three inactive Youkai at a time on a wheel-system, and you can literally rotate the wheel to rotate them in and out as they become hurt or incapacitated. Your Youkai fight completely on their own, and other than giving them items to affect their "personality" (i.e. battle move-priorities), there's not a whole lot you can do about it. Granted, different Youkai do have different moves, you don't really have an easy way of viewing all of these moves in a UI of some kind, so it works best just to try different Youkai configurations to see what works. Although, just because your Youkai move by themselves, that doesn't mean that you don't have any way of keeping occupied yourself.
In battle, the things you, the player, can do will usually keep you occupied enough that you rarely have down time. First off, each Youkai has a super-move that can be used by playing one of a random series of mini-games. The top-screen action doesn't stop while you're doing these mini-games, so getting fast at them is a real strategy tactic. Additionally, when your guys get status effects (burn, slow, paralyze, etc.) you can rotate (literally) them out to do a different set of mini-games to get them back to tip-top shape. You also get extra EXP for doing those mini-games, so it's well worth it. You do need to have your Youkai's special-meter full before you can do special moves though, which is good, because some are VASTLY better than others (depending on the Youkai). You can also equip one item on each Youkai which will shuffle their stats in some way (almost every item with a stat benefit has some negative effect on some other stat, to keep them from being straight up "why the fuck wouldn't you use it"-buffs). On top of the above, you can literally 'pin' a target for your Youkai to focus on (and you can also use that pin to pop bubbles that float past the top screen for power-ups and items, no joke), as well as use items to feed to your Youkai or the enemy, which brings me to how you even catch these guys.
There is no such thing as a Youkai-Pokeball. Instead, this is much more like the awful Ni No Kuni method of catching monsters: You beat them up and then just hope to god that they decide to join you after the battle. You can give them their favorite type of food (of which there is no record or indication of in the game. You've gotta figure it out with trial and error and then just remember who likes which specific category of food) to up your chances, but it's usually never by any significant feeling margin. Especially because there are some Youkai which are legitimately very rare (like Noko) who appear very rarely, sometimes EXTREMELY rarely (there was one that will appear randomly in place of another Youkai, and I saw but two of in my fifty hours of play), this makes it a SUUUUUPER pain in the ass to actually get Youkai you really want reliably or in any meaningfully quick fashion. You can also only feed enemy Youkai (even a food they don't like) once during battle, so there's no food-spam option. This is, in my opinion, what Youkai Watch gets the most wrong about the Pokemon formula, and is my biggest hesitation with recommending the game to another fan of the genre.
That said, the above method of forcing you to fight tons of Youkai does have some useful side-effects. First off, this game has no trainers. Even though you have a party of six Youkai which you can rotate, you will never fight another Youkai Watch-kateer, so you'll only ever fight up to three other Youkai at a time. Additionally, becasue there are no trianers, the wild Youkai you fight are just far tougher than wild Pokemon tend to be. Because you have to fight Youkai very repetedly to catch them, this led to me accidentally doing a TON of grinding I hadn't intended to do, just because I wanted to catch all of dem Youkai. Wild Youkai also drop money, so I also never had any remote money problem despite all of the Youkai food I had to keep buying. It's basically the equivalent of if there were unlimited Pokemon trainers to fight, and the only way to catch Pokemon was to hope that the trainer gave you them once you beat them in battle. It's an interesting and somewhat useful side-effect, but I don't think that it outweighs the more significant problem posed in Youkai befriending (You don't capture, you befriend (with violence)!).
The last most notable thing about Youkai is that not only do they have specific ranks (six different ranks, E through S), but they also rarely evolve. Out of 220-ish Youkai, only about 15 or so evolve through levels, and another 15 or so evolve through being combined with other Youkai, and then another 15 or so by being combined with special items. This makes it so that you are quite often switching out Youkai completely to make different or sometimes completely new team configurations just because the stats on higher ranked Youkai are just so much objectively better (although it can take a little while to find a move-set that gels well with your team and personal style). If you've ever played Dragon Quest Monsters/Joker, this will seem fairly famliar to you, but I believe that Youkai watch does that system not just better, but correctly.
The REALLY (really) annoying thing about DQM series is that you need to combine ALL monsters together to make stronger ones, and you really don't have much concept at all of just how strong or spellfully teched out this new monster will be. That process CONSUMES both parents, and you're only left with a child, so you can seriously fuck yourself over and have to do a ton of grinding for a whole new team if you get some unlucky breeds with your main team members. In Youkai watch, it's just straight up replacements, so if a new team member isn't working out, you can just swap the old guy back in, no problems. Additionally, because higher ranked guys might be a bit better, lower ranked guys can still level just as high as anyone else, and since your main team will likely be higher level than most enemies you encounter, there's an incentive to keep lower ranked veterans in your team whom you like, even though they're lower rank. For example, I had a C-rank in my team all the way up to the end of the game, just because he was such high level and a very reliable damage-dealer. Additionally, there are some REALLY good items near the end of the game that can ONLY be equpped on D-rank or lower Youkai, so the game even give you a means of making somewhat squishier, beloved lower-rank Youkai a part of the team even into the late game :)
Verdict: Highly recommended. If you like Pokemon, I think you will like Youkai Watch. My general rule I've noticed with these reviews is that the bigger and impression a game has left on me, the more I wanna tell you about it, so this giant wall of text should probably give you some indication of that x3 . Granted, Sun and Moon did just come out, and if you're still playing that, I'd agree that there's not much reason to invite Youkai into your life atm. However, perhaps when you get bored with Sun/Moon, Youkai Watch would be an excellent way to fill that Poke-void, methinks :)