To say that I was not interested in Miitopia for the Nintendo 3DS upon reading the initial descriptions of the game would be a vast understatement. Another role-playing game, pitting good against evil in order to save a kingdom…how very cliché. I had at least a dozen of those already.
The downfall came one night after work, while I was half asleep and perusing the E-shop. Less than twenty minutes after acquiring the demo and the full game was in my system library. My biggest complaint is that Nintendo’s description did not do anything to give Miitopia the justice that it deserved.
A huge part of the joy in the game lies in all the choices that you get to make. You are allowed to choose a higher good power to work with you and guide you along the way. You also get to do the same with a higher evil power in which to wage a battle against. The choices here range from Jafar, from Aladdin to Goku, from Dragon Ball-Z and everything in between. You are given a party as well.
The choices here are even more extensive. You not only get the already made choices for your party, you also get to choose from Miis that are in your friend’s list or Miis from Tamodochi Life if you have a saved file for that title. If none of these suit you, then you can simply create your own. You then get to assign classes to your party and these range from the typical thief, mage, and warrior and get more unusual as you progress to classes like cat and scientist.
The greater Evil has stolen the faces from the inhabitants of the kingdom and it is up to you to battle monsters that have those faces to return the faces to their rightful owners. You advance through stages fighting the monsters and finding treasure chests that could contain gold, equipment for your party, monsters or game tickets to use at the inns at the end of the stages. Sometimes, they contain monsters themselves though.
The beauty of Miitopia lies in its simplicity. It’s easily picked up and put back down with not much effort needed to remember where you left off or what you were supposed to be doing. It’s an easy game to play when you are tired or when you just don’t have the mental capacity to put into something overly complex for an already overworked brain. This being said, Miitopia is definitely worth a look and goes to show that you should never judge a book by its cover…or in this case, a game by its description.