Game review: My Pokemon Ranch

My Pokemon Ranch, the first Pokemon Wii-Ware game, available for download off the Wii Shop channel for 1,000 Wii points (about $10). Is it worth it? Well, if you have a copy of Pokemon Diamond and/or Pearl, and if you’re a Pokemon fan who likes seeing the little critters be as cute as they can be, then perhaps you should consider this simple yet totally adorable game…

Pokemon Ranch is basically a game that’s “just for fun” without any major goals or complex features. In the game, you transfer pokemon from your Diamond or Pearl game into the Wii game and watch them interact with each other. Hayley, the ranch’s owner, also brings her pokemon into the ranch, and as more pokemon are brought in, the ranch’s level increases and the ranch itself expands, allowing you to bring in more and more pokemon. In addition, you can also bring Miis into the ranch, trade pokemon with Hayley, and take snapshots of your pokemon which you can then save onto an SD card.

Any Pokemon fan should find this game adorable, but only if they’re interested in the “cute” aspect of Pokemon, as opposed to just the “battle” and “RPG” aspect of the regular hand-held games. Fans who are only interested in battling and raising Pokemon might not get much from this game. However, because Hayley offers to trade pokemon with rare attacks and rare hold items, or even a Mew if your ranch reaches Level 25, players of the regular pokemon games might find this feature alluring. And, in order to trade for these pokemon, Hayley will ask for pokemon that you’ve seen in your Poke-dex but haven’t actually caught, which may give players more of an incentive to “catch ’em all” in their DS games. And yes, pokemon transferred into the ranch from the DS games can be transferred back into the DS games as long as it’s the same save file that they’re originally from.

Besides the ability to trade for rare pokemon and items with Hayley, the main appeal of this game, if you haven’t already guessed, is its sheer cuteness ^.^ All of the pokemon transferred into the ranch become small, chibi, origami-looking versions of themselves. Nintendo pulled out all the stops to make all 480+ pokemon look totally adorable in their “ranch form”; even intimidating pokemon like Giratina and Charizard appear small and cuddly in the game. Other cuteness factors are the ability to pick up pokemon and place them on top of each other (as I did with Skitty and Dialga in the snapshot above ^^), watch them play with random toys that appear in the ranch such as launching themselves from a toy cannon or jumping into a water fountain, and going on parade with them, where they walk one by one into your line of sight and you can take snapshots of them. After your ranch reaches Level 4, instead of the camera moving automatically, you can access Free Mode and move around the ranch on your own, zoom in and out, and focus on or pick up any pokemon or toy you want. And of course, you can just sit back and watch the pokemon interact on their own, such as playing with the toys or with the Miis, randomly attacking each other, sleeping, or just being their cute selves. As if cuteness didn’t already abound in this game, Nintendo threw in some more subtle cute things, for example, if you pick up one of the pokemon, the other pokemon will happily converge all around it, and when a pokemon is transferred out of the ranch and back into the DS game, all of the pokemon around it will look up in unison as it’s transferred away.

The main drawback of Pokemon Ranch is that the only significant things you can really do are trade pokemon with Hayley and take snapshots of your pokemon. Other than that, most of the game is comprised of expanding the ranch by transferring more and more pokemon, watching the pokemon interact, and kawaii-ploding over the cute things they do. So once again, this game will only appeal to Pokemon fans who enjoy the cuteness of the pokemon themselves rather than just battling them. You can play the game without a copy of Diamond or Pearl, but the only pokemon interacting will be Hayley’s pokemon, and since she only brings new ones once a day, it’ll be a long time before things get interesting.

In summary, if you’re a Pokemon fan with a copy of Diamond and Pearl and are interested in seeing how cute pokemon can be when they’re not battling, then you’ll probably want to give this game a try. Or if you’re just looking to trade with Hayley for rare pokemon and items (and are willing to transfer 999 pokemon into the ranch just to get Mew! XD) then this game might be worth it too. For me, I think $10 is an okay price for the warm, fuzzy feeling I get when I see lots of cute pokemon doing cute things ^^