Why Pokemon Pokopia Beats Animal Crossing New Horizons For Me

I expected another gentle life sim, but Pokopia surprised me by doing what New Horizons never quite could. The levels of excitement sparked by Pokémon Pokopia feel extremely reminiscent of those Animal Crossing: New Horizons generated back in 2020, where suddenly many of my non-gamer friends reached out to let me know that they were now proud Nintendo Switch owners also.

I’ve spent an unreasonable amount of my life in cozy game worlds where your biggest responsibility is deciding where a sofa should go. On the surface, both games are feeding a yearning for slow routines and gentle progression that, for many, is lost in their day-to-day lives. However, the more time I spend with Pokopia, the more I realize that despite the numerous comparisons online, they actually don’t feel that similar when playing.

Oddly enough, my main complaint has nothing to do with the general gameplay loop or decorating systems, but everything to do with the personality of your virtual roommates, or in the case of New Horizons, their lack thereof.

The Problem with Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Don’t get me wrong, New Horizons did a lot of things right — it did manage to occupy many of us during lockdown, after all — but as a long-term fan of the series that spent countless hours with its predecessors, there was one detail that stopped me in my tracks. The characters in-game felt utterly devoid of their once so charming personalities.

Staying true to earlier entries in the series, New Horizons keeps the personality system intact. There are eight types, each shaping how villagers speak, behave and what their favorite activities are. On paper, nothing is missing, but when playing the game, I noticed some stark differences that strongly affected how much I enjoyed New Horizons.

Older Animal Crossing games had a lot of bite. Villagers were snarky and sometimes downright confrontational, with some of them questioning my outfits or my general life choices. Others would be unapologetically rude, often leading to conversations that, whilst being extremely out-of-pocket, were also deeply memorable. I want the virtual worlds I’m building to feel slightly unpredictable, and I most definitely want my villagers to have moods that don’t solely revolve around flattering me.

But really, it’s not just about them being sassy for the sake of it. What made previous Animal Crossing games special is the fact that it would take genuine effort to get certain personality types to warm up to me. Friendship wasn't automatic, and some personality types were a lot more stubborn than others. The feeling of slowly winning over a snooty villager is unmatched, and was preceded by lots of awkward conversations and gifts that missed the mark.

What Makes Pokémon Pokopia Shine

Pokopia, on the other hand, succeeds beautifully in making the occupants of its world feel alive. So far, I do not get the feeling that their dialogue is pulled from a limited pool of safe, reusable lines. This is a stark difference that felt apparent from the very start, especially since the Pokémon don’t just talk to me, but to each other too.

And wow, does it make a difference. They react, interrupt and sometimes even argue. Truthfully, filling out the data in the Pokedex is a very rewarding exercise in itself, but doing so and knowing that my in-game world will feel more bustling with each new Pokémon moving in has been filling my heart with so much joy.

I want Bellsprout to be a little bit timid and to sound genuinely unnerved when it discovers Oddish eats dirt. I want Charmander to be loud, clumsy and a bit unaware of how dramatic it is. And I most definitely want a front-row seat every time Heracross and Pinsir trash-talk each other before battling it out.

In some ways, it kind of caught me by surprise just how much enjoyment it has been adding to my entire experience. Turns out, I actually don’t mind building perfect habitats and constantly being dragged around the map to fulfill special requests nearly as much when routine interactions are enjoyable and the world exists independently of me instead of it just reacting to my input.

Pokopia Delivers What New Horizons Only Teased

Apart from the lack of meaningful bonds with my villagers, the one thing that bothered me the most when I first started playing New Horizons was just how little there was to do in those early days. After the initial setup, progress slowed down to a crawl. And the experience gets worse if, like me, you’re a night owl and prefer playing at night, since so much of the game is tied to the actual real-life day-night cycle.

Truthfully, the memories of that kept my expectations for Pokopia in check. I went into the game with the assumption that it would keep the rhythm of brief daily check-ins and light maintenance. I was so positively surprised when, after my first 10 minutes of daily gameplay — saying hello to the Pokémon, checking the daily missions, checking the daily shop — there still was an actual game waiting to be played.

Spiritually, Pokopia feels closer to Dragon Quest Builders, with its structure revolving around exploration, creative building and steady progress which is driven by objectives, but it’s easy to see why many of us instinctively compare it to Animal Crossing. Between the coziness and soft color palette, it does seem similar, but once you spend real time with it, you’ll notice that the design philosophy is fundamentally different.

Ultimately, Animal Crossing: New Horizons asked me to exist in its world, but Pokémon Pokopia consistently gives me reasons to engage with it. And I think it will for a long time, since we are already set to get our first special event soon.