Pokémon Pokopia has certainly had its hooks in me over the past few weeks. I've rolled credits on the surprisingly tear-jerking main story, built up all environment levels to maximum, and now I'm busy creating my own town from scratch among the eerily empty fields where Palette Town once stood.
It's this latest building project that's got me thinking about my place in the world of Pokopia. As my desire to build bigger and better has spun out of control, I've come to the horrifying realization that the resources around me are finite. To put it bluntly, I need seashells. I need hundreds of them. Unfortunately, I seem to have picked Pokopia clean of the things, and as such, I'm having to rely on daily excursions to Dream Islands to get my fill.
Paved paradise
Pokemon Pokopia review: "Just too good to put down"
I'll admit, the fact that the resources in Pokopia's main biomes could be finite never once occurred to me in my nearly 100 hours so far. I was too busy careening around with a belly full of hamburgers, swinging boxing gloves and hoovering up iron, gold, and entire beaches worth of sand. Now, I'm paying the price.
Of course, visiting Dream Islands isn't the worst thing in the world, though it has got me thinking about just how destructive I've become to the natural environments of Pokopia. My first few hours involved carefully curating bespoke natural habitats out of grass, streams, and flower beds, inviting Pokémon out of their unseen hidey holes and tidying the place up for them.
At some point, however, things changed, and I was squeezing as many Pokémon into as few buildings as possible, and knocking down entire hills to flatten the land and make way for more building sites.
I believe it was my discovery of electricity that started my downfall. There was a quest in the main story that tasked me with restoring the power lines in Bleak Beach. I needed to use a furnace to increase the supply to the various streetlights I'd plonked down around the town, and without much thought I loaded all of my lumber into it.
Then I saw the fire burst into life, and the furnace started to spew little puffs of smoke from its chimney. I remember side-eyeing every palm tree in sight after that, and thinking to myself: "Oh, this definitely isn't good." I've since run electrical power lines and pylons all over every other Pokopia biome.
Pokémon Pokopia, like many other Pokémon games before it, imbues its story with heavy environmentalist themes. You arrive in a world decimated by natural disasters, one that humans have had to evacuate and leave their Pokémon behind. It's unclear whether humans were indeed the sole cause of such issues, but hey, we've not got the best track record.
I'm only human
I remember side-eyeing every palm tree in sight after that, and thinking to myself: "Oh, this definitely isn't good."
Even though I've now switched to all renewable power sources, and at least made a slight effort to keep my powerlines out of the way of natural Pokémon habitats, I can't help but wonder whether I might be repeating the mistakes of the humans that came before me. Perhaps it's just how games like this are designed, or some modern human impulse to urbanise at all costs.
In truth, the Pokémon of Pokopia were perfectly satisfied with their natural habitats; it's me that needed to erect buildings, straighten up the paths, and clear entire mountains to make way for minecart railway lines. And now, I've used up every seashell in the world to build my walls. I'm running out of Pokémetal too, and soon enough, I'm going to have to clear some of the beaches around Bleak Beach of sand so that I can make enough glass for window panes.
More worryingly, I've actually just learned that there are some Pokémon that can produce a steady supply of resources like squishy clay (which I need for my precious bricks), and even iron ore, just by existing. Maybe there's one for sea shells.
Maybe I can force that Pokémon to live in a space with another Pokémon that can then crush the shells down and I can have plaster walls being made without even having to lift a finger! Or maybe, just maybe, the world of Pokopia, and its inhabitants, are better off without me.
Is Pokopia already one of the best Pokemon games? The jury's still out, but check out our ranking to see where you'd place it.
