I literally only played this to cope with the distance to Tomodachi Life
Well, not entirely true. I played Miitopia on the 3DS when it first came out. I love Tomodachi Life, I love RPGs, so what's not to like about a combination of both? I never beat it back in the day, though. So when the Switch remaster came around, with an insane mii creator, it was an easy purchase. I then proceeded to only make miis with it and never actually played the game. Skip to now! It's been on my backlog for far too long, Tomodachi Life is in the horizon; let's finally beat Miitopia.
Like I said, the gameplay is a combination of Tomodachi Life and classic turn-based JRPG combat. There's different jobs, of course; each Mii can have different personalities that give them different interactions, as well as each mii have relationships between each other that can cause different events to happen. You can only control your mii, and for the most part, you're an observing force; however, you do have "sprinkles" to take more direct control over recovery, as well as the ability to put miis in a back lane safe spot.
I have two feelings on this. I think it's the perfect representation of WHAT a mii game would be as an RPG. The fun of Tomodachi Life is watching the silliness that occurs, and that's part of the fun of Miitopia. However, and this is my other feeling, I don't think they mesh perfectly. In an RPG, I like taking control of my party members and strategizing and exploring and stuff. When that control is, for the most part, taken away, it kinda takes away some of the joy? Especially since you can only control your guy, it makes some jobs way worse in the NPCs hands, or makes just your gameplay not as fun as it could be. There's a lot of levels with different paths to take, which is in one part cool cause that gives each place a lot of replayability, but in another part... kinda boring. Cause I'm just watching my miis go through path over path over path and I don't really have a lot of control of anything beyond pick a path. It becomes kinda monotonous, especially late game. (Side note, as of writing this, I haven't done post game, so it's very possible that there's a shift, but playing through the Darker Lord section of the game, I imagine it's more like that). It's not bad though. Like, there's a reason I was able to finish it; it's still entertaining enough.
To go into a little more detail about some other essential pieces of the puzzle; relationships are very important. But grinding them is not the best in the world. You want high relationships, but they only increase a bit in the after level inns, or after certain events. I think this mainly becomes a problem when you have your whole party available to you, and introducing everyone to everyone becomes rough, and you're doing harder fights and you don't have the firepower needed (or alternately the wide variety you should have access to). The switch remake does help this though, which I'll clarify in a sec. There's also the food system. You feed your miis foods to increase their stats, but they also have randomly generated likes and dislikes, like Tomodachi. This is great flavor wise! But it does stink when I want my RPG to get stronger and just... nobody likes the food they need. I swear my mage hated EVERYTHING that increased magic. I get why this is all here, the pieces all make perfect sense, I just think the connections are rough around the edges.
Back to the Switch version; it did add a couple things. One is Outings, which are special events you can send a couple miis to to boost their relationships. This is HUGE. This helps the grind of relationships so much, when you can get your hands on the tickets needed (they also add a lot more funny situations for you to see while you play through, break up the monotony). It also adds a horse. The horse isn't... as hype as the outings? But it's nice and I'm glad its there. You can customize it (mine was Invincible from WoW), it gives you extra damage, but it's also another relationship you have to build, and it doesn't always make itself useful in the optimal times.
That's only one half of the game though. The other half, I enjoy FAR more.
The original charm of Miitopia from frame 1 is that it's an RPG where you choose all the characters. Any NPC is a mii that you can customize and slot in your own dudes, as well as your party members. What then occurs is the same sort of fun you get from Mad Libs, seeing things that make surprising sense or are COMPLETELY out of character. Making miis is fun, seeing the miis do things is also fun.
Where the Switch version takes this is upping the customization to 11 with "makeup" and "wigs", essentially "place shapes everywhere on your miis" and "have some extra hair". This leads to some people making complete works of art, but more generally, your mii cast is widened. To really show this, have this nice little visual I spent way too much time on to show My Entire Mii Cast:
(names of miis representing my real friends are censored for privacy's sake)
I tried to generally keep That Mii Style cause I just like it, but you can really see how insane the creator can go (and I'm not even a master with it).
Similar to the RPG section, there are pros and cons with this. Pros are obvious, fucking look at that. The creator is amazingly fun to use and create with, and the scope of possible characters is infinitely increased. Don't tell me I could have really had fucking Among Us Crewmate as one of my main antagonists in the same way as just with the old mii maker. Cons: the wig system kinda sucks. It feels super limited and hyper specific, and if Tomodachi Life uses or expands on this creator (god I hope it does), I really want them to broaden the span of that system. Mii hair in general has always been the weakest part of the creator. The other con is as amazing as the makeup system is, you cannot use it on NPCs as you're picking them. What I personally did to fix this, and to not break the gameplay flow of "oh new city let's spend a whole day on character creation" is I precooked everyone before I even started the game, prepping everyone in the whole run. This made for a great RPG section, but it sucked when I was like a week in and I just didn't get to play (I also started my job so that didn't help my time)
I really wanted to use this title joke but MAN does it ruin the integrity of my writing (is that something I have) cause it is hard to think of what it means, but I will do it regardless
I think the interpretation of The Topia I'll use is the set pieces and visuals; I really love the way this game looks. It was originally a 3DS game, so it kinda has this 2D, layered vibe to it. It feels like a stage play, kinda Paper Mario-esque (which double works since the Miis are referred to as actors so this is probably intentional), but on top of that, I love the colors and textures. The desert and the final zone are probably my favorite examples, with the moving sand, or the storm of mii features in space. I also really love when it goes all in on the 2D vibes, looking like it was cut out of paper to make little puppets. It's a perfect vibe for this kinda game.
The actual world generally feels pretty generic RPG, but in a good way. You can even see it in the punny names that it's intentional. The first location Greenhorne is a grassy field, then you have the classic World 2 desert of Neksdor; you have the elf forest (featuring Bigg Forest), and Karkaton, the final zone of hell. There's also the act 2 areas but they didn't really leave as much of an impression on me as much (again except for that final area that was really good)
The game is funny. Which, for a half Tomodachi Life, I sure hope it does. As I said earlier, it's got that Mad Libs charm to it, with the comedy of seeing whatever miis you put in get into the precooked situations. I took a lot of screenshots during my gameplay, so I can actually supply visuals to prove my point:
It's very silly, and there's much more than just this. There's also all the in between bits with just your party; the time they spend with each other in the inn, or the random events mid exploration. I got a lot of giggles during playing. I do think the charm of it kinda fell off in the 2nd act, but that's mostly cause it wasn't really introducing anything new to the table. But that 1st act, when you're meeting a bunch of new people and getting into weird situations? Peak.
There's also an enemy called a Twerkey. Just thought you should know if you didn't already.
The story isn't the deepest thing in the world, but it doesn't have to be and shouldn't be, due to the nature of the game. What it is though, is absolutely PERFECT for what a mii based RPG should be. There's an evil Dark Lord stealing faces and putting them on monsters. That's great! I love that it's based around faces. The 1st act is where I think it's at its strongest, as you're exploring new towns, making new friends, and really hitting different mini arcs, with the last area pulling together all your friends (side note, I love that your character just gets so annoyed with the same shit happening for the 3rd time). The 2nd arc, after you've defeated the Dark Lord, and the Dark Curse has possessed the Great Sage (who, regardless of the face I put on, I very much enjoy), is really where I lose interest in it (and where I stopped in the 3DS version), as you only get the one city of the Traveler's Hub, and the NPCs are far less interesting. It picks back up once you've finally opened the Sky Scraper, and you get the unpossessed Dark Lord to explain the backstory for you. As well as that final fight being an amazing combo of Miis, Bizarro Sephiroth from FFVII, and Bhunivelze from FFXIII Lightning Returns. There might be more in postgame, but I don't think I'll really delve into that any time soon unless I get a fire in me.
Miitopia is not a perfect game. I got bored with it in the 3DS version, and if I wasn't so determined to finish it here, I might have fallen off again. But. Regardless. I wouldn't change it. It might be a flawed combo of two very different types of game, but in a way, it's also kinda perfect? It did something weird, and it went all in on that weirdness, it tried something crazy, and I can only respect it for that! Just cause it's not PERFECTLY tailored to my wants, doesn't mean there's not plenty to enjoy about it. Miitopia is a game that I'm glad was made.
Playing it just makes me more excited for Tomodachi Life though. I just wanna use this mii creator and see my guys do silly things Without me necessarily having to also play an RPG.
Oh also, if you wanna download any of my miis (excluding real people and OCs those are mine), the code is 1RCRW6R.
7/10. Not a perfect combo of aspects, but something that is very charming regardless, and brings a lot of humor and creativity to the table. An experiment, where more should follow in its boldness.