If there's one game the Pocket Tactics team is looking forward to, it's Pokémon Pokopia. I'll admit, even I'm curious to give the cozy-sim spin on the series a look. When the game lands on March 5, 2026, you might wonder how much time you'll need to spare. After all, slice-of-life games can easily eat up your time - just look at Animal Crossing. In a recent interview with the game's chief director, Takuto Edagawa, he talks about what to expect at launch.
Speaking with IGN, Edagawa expresses how the new Switch game doesn't end when the credits appear. You might be done with its main offering of content, but Pokémon Pokopia has more to show you if you keep playing. "The main motivation for this game is typically not to go to the end [credits] end. The whole concept is to create the world with Pokémon and live with the Pokémon." Getting to this point is down to how you approach the game.
Edagawa adds that "as an average, it'll be about 20 to 40 hours, but it would really depend on how the players play the game. There's more things to experience after the end [credits] roll […] but I believe that players are encouraged to and will be motivated to continue to play the game." It's quite a vague answer, but it does have us wondering what the game has up its sleeve in those endgame hours.
We recently got hands-on with the game at Nintendo's Frankfurt HQ. Our trusty hardware editor, Connor Christie, says in his Pokémon Pokopia preview that "the world is just more interactive than I've experienced in Animal Crossing or a lot of other cozy games, offering little moments of discovery." If you want to know which game it surprisingly shares more in common with, be sure to read the full preview.
Pokémon Pokopia pre-orders are still live, and there are exclusive pre-order rewards, depending on which region you're based in. I do like a good co-op experience, and this looks like one that I could sink some time into with a few friends as a peaceful respite from getting knocked out in ARC Raiders. If you're keen to play it, let us know what you think over in the Pocket Tactics Discord server.