Nintendo's site for the game.

On the opposite side of the spectrum from Moco Moco Friends listed before, we have a more shounen-esque monster battling type rpg game, this time featuring creatures based youkai, Japanese monsters from folklore.

I'll admit while I'm interested in the way the game looks, the monsters don't exactly appeal to me. I'll take fluffy plushkins over these goofy looking creatures any day. Though I do think the human characters are adorable, especially the female playable character.

There's an anime based on this series and I think it's already reached 90 episodes in Japan.

I heard about this game a while ago, actually! Looking at it, the monster designs are definitely very silly. I do prefer the aesthetic of Moco Moco Friends.

I'm not sure how to feel about this game, though. I've played Fantasy Life, which also came from Level 5. On one hand, the gameplay itself was very fun. But on the other, Fantasy Life had an absolutely terrible story, and that's largely due to a bad translation. The humor was beyond corny, and the game never really seemed to know when was an appropriate time to stop telling jokes and take the story seriously. Maybe Yo-Kai Watch will have a better overall plot, but I don't have high hopes for the translation. The monsters in this are very much based on Japanese culture, and I doubt it's going to translate very well into the West. They're probably going to Americanize it to hell and back.

But who knows! I see that there's a demo coming out in a few days, so maybe I'll download that and try it.

The Demo is on the E-Shop. I just tried it and wow is it confusing.

Rather than be turn based, the mons attach each other constantly beyond your control. You have to rotate them in and out of the battle using a wheel on the bottom screen. When your mon gets afflicted by a status ailment, you have to rotate them to the back of the party and select a purify option.

There only time I was ever sure my guys were even attacking, was when the "Soulmate" attack is used, which involves charging it up by tracing symbols on the touch screen. Very strange.

I also downloaded the demo yesterday!

I agree about the battle system; it's really confusing, and I don't like it at all. It's like a combination of Pokemon's triple and rotation battles -- the two worst battle types, IMO. There's just so much going on at once, I find it overwhelming. I simply can't pay attention to the battle on the top screen while focusing on my Yo-Kai on the bottom screen.

Maybe this game is good for someone who is REALLY good at multitasking, but I'm honestly going to pass on it. I definitely prefer the turn-based nature of Pokémon.

Plus... Maybe I'm spoiled, but I was expecting something a little...more from the demo. The OR/AS demo allowed you to transfer goodies to the full game, and the Tomodachi Life demo actually started your save file for you. This demo offered absolutely nothing. All it was was a teaser for the game, and nothing more. Boooring.

Hmm

I watched MunchingOrange play the demo. I can see how people can compare this to Pokemon, but they only thing they share similar is battling monsters and catching them (? They said befriend). The gameplay is probably a bit confusing because it's real time base vs turn base. It takes a bit to get use too.  However things happen way to fast in this game! I don't know if I could ever keep up it. 

I never had any interest in this game to begin with and I feel the same way after watching the demo.

For some reason I can't find it on the store. Maybe it's coming out later for Australia.

I'm pretty sure the demo is NA only. My boyfriend couldn't get it, and he's in Europe.

Actually, I think that there's going to be two separate translations of Yo-Kai Watch, just like Fantasy Life. Europe isn't getting the game until 2016, so I imagine that they're probably going to have a different one. If that's the case, Australia will probably get it then too -- Europe and Australia both got the same version of Fantasy Life.

The demo is listed on the Australian classification board's website with a PG rating so we will be getting the demo eventually. I just hope it's some time before December when the game is supposed to come out.

I'm more than willing to give the series a shot and I might even go out and buy the game if I enjoy the demo. If I'm going to be honest though, I don't expect it to overtake Pokemon in popularity in the west like it did in Japan. Pokemon was HUGE back in the day and over the years has built itself a pretty decent sized stake in the market. It's one of those things you just never really grow out of. Everyone I know who played the game when they were younger still plays it to this day.

Plus it came at the right place at the right time when Japanese pop culture was just starting to work its way into the west. The only new Japanese property I can think of that's become popular in recent years is Attack on Titan and even then it's nowhere near as big as Pokemon or DBZ.

Yeah, I don't see Yo-Kai Watch getting too big here, either. I think a large part of the problem is the monsters themselves... Youkai are very much a Japanese thing, and they don't make much sense outside of Japan. The series had to be Americanized in order to make sense to Western audiences, but it lost a lot of the cultural context in translation. That's my opinion.

Target was selling Yo-Kai Watch for pretty cheap (And knowing Nintendo the price isn't going to be going down any time soon) so I decided on a whim to pick up a copy of the game. Been playing for a bit over an hour and it's pretty good so far.

I can think of several reasons why it's more popular in Japan that Pokemon. While the game insists that it all takes place in Pennsylvania, it definitely feels very Japanese. I'm guessing that school age kids from Japan would find it to be a bit more relatable than Pokemon. Also, I feel that kids with low attention spans would probably appreciate the simplistic real time fighting system and the occasional cutscene with voice acting.

Another key difference is that the character your play has a voice and a distinct personality rather than just being a blank slate. I decided to pick the girl player character over the guy since I'm not a fan of Nate's character design. I don't know the specifics of how exactly the dialogue is effected if you play as a girl (I might just have to go back later and check) but it's obvious that they've done a lot more than just combing through the script and replacing 'He' with 'Her'.

Will it do good in the west? Who knows. It's understandable why it's so popular in Japan but I'm not sure whether that can carry over to the west. Although the localisation team seems to have struck a good balance between retaining the Japanese cultural influences while still presenting them in a way that won't be confusing for young children. Plus Nintendo are pretty aggressively marketing  it. It's obvious that they want it to be a hit.




My brother just came back from a trip to Japan and apparently Yo-Kai Watch was everywhere. So even if it doesn't get far here, it seems like it's more than just a small fad back at home. Though I wouldn't mind if they brought the sequels over to the west.

Pennsylvania?? OMFG! I live in Pennsylvania -- why on Earth would they choose here?! This state is trash.

In all seriousness though, I'm glad to hear that the game still retains its Japanese feeling. I was worried that it was going to be a 4kids level localization, but from the sounds of it, they kept things pretty accurate.