Miitopia is a turn based RPG made by Nintendo for the 3DS in 2016. Miitopia is about a dark lord that stole the faces of the citizens of the miitopia island, leaving you and your friends to save the island and defeat the Dark Lord. This game is very fun to play, although it is a turn based RPG so replay ability is almost out of the question it is soul crushing. I spent a lot of my summer playing Miitopia because of the gimmick of filling the roles of your character, the Dark Lord, and your teammates with any mii. With 3DS's streetpass, you can take any mii made from other people and fill the roles with them. It's a great game that I suggest to anyone but it's not without its flaws.
Narrative The plot is very simple, a Dark Lord steals the faces of the citizens and you and your friends have to save those faces, but there's a twist. It's turns out the Dark Lord was a normal person possessed by an evil spirit. The evil spirit was a person who hated their own face so much they casted their face away, filling the soul with hatred. That's as far as the narrative goes, you go through different areas helping different people and areas by slaying monsters and recusing faces by defeating bosses.The dialogue is silly and fun all around, you don't control what your characters say so they feel like their own little characters. The game is very simple and innocent, except the twerkeys but we'll get to those. Gameplay The game itself is quite linear, when you properly start the game you're given a map selection screen where you're able to pick a level. There are optional levels but it all funnels to a certain point of a town or a boss you need to defeat. The levels often have branching paths but what they do it mostly give coin, challenge, or make you want to do all of the paths because you want every level to be completed like me. Now to the battles, you are only allow to control your character, what your teammates do is out of your control. Sometimes, depending on what personality you've given a character, a character will do something related to that trait, like not attacking a monster or giving items to teammates if they're kind. Personalities make battle unpredictable and fun and could be considered as a different class all together, but that doesn't mean battles can be all too fun. If you get a certain ability that does a lot of damage, you won't find a lot of reasons to use your other abilities because they don't do as much damage, making battles a grind. You can level up your characters through battle and improve their stats by feeding them food you've collected in battle at the inn. The inn is where you stop to rest at the end of every level, in inns you can place two teammates in each room. Putting teammates in the same room fills their friendship meter, which in turns allows them to do things like team up on the enemy or take damage for each other if one is about to die.The game is built to be unpredictable in what your team does and says, it's like you're a god watching down on this team instead of being apart of it, and I really like that design. Visual The game has a pretty distinct art style, very close to Tomodachi Life on the 3DS, the animations are smooth and the models for characters looks good on the 3DS. It uses colors a lot, there is no dull looking place in Miitopia it's all very imaginative. Art was just very appealing to look at but not anything to write home about. Audio Miitopia's music is amazing, the music in this game is a treat in it of itself it's incredible. Each piece compliments each part of the island you explore and they all just bop like they are really good, definitely suggest to listening to the OST. But away from the music, when a mii talks a speech bubble appears above their hand and says what they're saying, there is no voice acting just random little sounds to indicate that they are speaking. Game sounds were normally in the background, the music is the main focus of the audio department and I say it really paid off for them. Interface A lot of the game is controlled by the touchpad of the 3DS, just tap to action to do it. There are button inputs you can use the joystick and A button to go through menus but this game was definitely touchpad first.The menu was user friendly and I'd expect that for a nintendo game since they are normally family friendly in game design. Miitopia is a 3DS exclusive so there's no graphics or audio settings because you really don't have to change the graphics and you can turn off your volume on the 3DS itself. Everything in this game is very easy and streamlined, the maps are short and easy to run through and I can find just about anything within the menus, no complaints here. Accessibility In the front of the case it says that Miitopia was made for everyone 7+, and with streamlined elements I think they nailed the accessibility, except for one thing. Replaying Miitopia feels like a chore, the game does have random moments but the core story is still linear so running through the game again loses a lot of the charm. Having access to fun replayability is not common with a lot of turn based RPG since getting rid of all the progress you've done and starting anew isn't so fun, especially when you're only given one save slot like in Miitopia. That's the one aspect of Accessibility Miitopia is lacking in, everything else is quite easy to do not counting New Lumos aka the challenge world as that is in the post game. Technical Miitopia ran great with no problems from my end, the game is structurally sound in terms of technical sides. The game was built for the 3DS so I'd expect it to work on a 3DS, I've not come across any bugs, glitches, or crashes throughout my run. Conclusion Miitopia is a cute, weird game that I love, it has fun random moments, odd humor, and jsut sucks you in with it's gameplay and presentation. This game is more or less untalked about now a days and it one of the only reasons I still have a Nintendo 3DS. The only problem is just replaying it because once you've played through it once, you've seen everything the game has to offer. But besides that I'm giving it a 4/5 stars, pick it up and try it out, it's a fun little adventure.
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The views and opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and Do Not represent those of Durham School of the Arts or Durham Public Schools.
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