Too adorable for its own good, the game must have a gentle touch of adequate punning in its name-Pokémon Friends. The game is a puzzling adventure with plushie making. The game boasts roughly 1200 puzzles to try, with more than enough chances of making virtual Pokémon plushies- a cute killing-time endeavor, or yet another scratching-their-heads product from Pokémon Company, depending on whom you ask.
Having landed on almost every peculiar combination of mobile platform one can muster in imagination, it hasn’t arrived on Switch. Already, some stones have been planted, along with shrill voices filled with anger. Some creative-combination of a brain tea-ser and digital arts and crafts: players get to ask the puzzles that unlock materials and go ahead and stitch their own adorable Pokémon plushies. All the vibes of “why not on Switch though?” Especially given that the game is free on the phone and cannot be located on Nintendo’s own console.
Reactions? Mixed, anyway. Shooter software are excited, and one compared it to the Prof. Layton games and said that it was “friggin exciting.” Another user sarcastically responded with, “Wow, phone game, so impressive.” And another joked, “Entire game based on the mechanic of the Water gym puzzle in the Hoenn games? Interesting.”
And then there are the 1200 puzzles. That makes some players side-eye the number very hard; one definitely asked, “1200 puzzles? Or you mean 30?” Ouch, that hurt. Meanwhile, Belgian fans are merely frustrated for it being officially disallowed in their territory—classic Nintendo.
On the other hand, at least it’s not another microtransaction-heavy, gacha-style program, right? Hence, it’s wholesome, easy to understand, and free in some way that feels like filler content between big Pokémon releases. Let’s be real: after mainline games got mixed reviews recently, maybe this little puzzle offshoot isn’t such a bad idea.
Still, the question remains: …who’s it actually made for? Ultra big puzzle fans? Crafting aficionados? People who REALLY miss those gym puzzles from the older days? Well, out now, so if you’ve ever dreamed of doing 1000 puzzles just to create a Pikachu plushie digitally, your wish has come true.
As for the rest of us? We might just keep waiting for gameplay news from Pokémon Legends: Z-A. Or, yeah… Anything about Switch 2.
