Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Pokemon Pokopia Review - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: March 2, 2026

Go to Factormeals.com/kindafunny50off and use code kindafunny50offto get 50% off your first box, plus Free Breakfast for 1 Year. Thank you for the support! Run of Show - - Start - Jordan Middler is Here! - Pokemon Pokopia Review - Ads - Performance, Music, & Price - Late Game Goals - SuperChats Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Be like me and head to FactorMeals.com slash Kind of Funny 50 off and use code Kind of Funny 50 off to get 50% off and free breakfast for a year. Eat like a pro this month with Factor. If you want to get our shows ad free and our exclusive shows, go to patreon.com slash Kind of Funny. What's up everybody? Welcome to the Kind of Funny games cast for Monday March 2nd. I'm one of your host, Greg Miller, alongside Christmas in March. Joey O'L. Ooh, I get a new month. I know, right? It's always fun. And you're on the games cast.

It just doesn't happen enough, I think. Yeah. My lanes for games are like very defined. But people knew it. When they saw Pocopia, they knew it. And they probably also knew that we'd also get another rare appearance from the big man from VGC. Dot News, Jordan Midler. Hello, Greg.

Hello, Joey. You've made the correct habitat. And I have appeared. Oh, that makes sense whenever he starts playing the game. Jordan, thank you so much for coming in to spend time with us today. you know how much we love you. Of course. It's Pokemon time,

and I had to be here with the kind of funny's number one Pokemon fans. So I'm ready to talk, Pocopia. And I had to be here with maybe the internet's number one Pokemon fan,

Jordan, Middleland, Jordan. I think, you know, obviously people follow your adventures on VGC. dot news all the time. If not, go over there, get on the Patreon,

support these guys. They are doing incredible stuff. But you going to the Pokemon theme park, you go into the European, whatever the heck it was called. And more importantly, you, rising the Lodon,

ranks so quickly. I haven't talked about this on content too much because when would I, right, Joey? But you need to understand that Uncle Jordan outclasses every other uncle that kind of funny. Uncle Jordan's, when we went to Pokemon World's Uncle Jordan

rolled with the Miller fam. And Ben is so enamored with Uncle Jordan. Loves Uncle Jordan so much. And above and beyond that, Uncle Jordan to this day will see or hear a story, see a Instagram post, and then what's at me a voice memo to play for Ben.

Like Ben loves hearing from Uncle Jordan. You're an amazing person, Jordan Midler. I appreciate that. I speak the language of Pokemon and that's the language that Ben wants to speak. So he had a brief dalliance into the world of Star Wars and Star Wars is fine that we're indoctrinating them fully

into the Pokemon universe. Yeah, we are. There is no doubt about that. I can spend the entire show talking about how he has been indoctrinated where we're at the car. Today, of course, at school, they do a thing. called letter share where every week they focus on a new letter, a new

Zophonic or whatever, and you bring in something and have the kids guess it. Today we're on Q, which is tough for a normal kid, but for Ben, Quaxley. Send in the Quacksley. I'm like, Ben, we need to write three clues and no one in class is going to these kids haven't even seen video games most of them. We had one of his friends over and it was like, hey, do you want to play

a game? And this kid knew nothing about Mario. Ben's trying to encourage him and he couldn't do it. And then handing a controller to a kid that's never held one. Did not go well. did not go well. But we started playing with that NEX playground, which I'll talk about another time. Because, of course,

this is your Pokemon Popopia review for the Kind of Funny Gamescast. Remember, of course, if you are watching live, be part of our review. YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny Games. Give me your burning, spoiler-free questions.

We'll do our best to answer them. Of course, let us know what you need, to know if this is a purchasing decision for you. I'd love to be there. YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny Game Super Chat. Of course, thank you to our Patreon producers, Carl Jacobs, Omega Buster,

and Delaney this, Be like them on patreon.com slash kind of funny. But for now, let's begin with what is and forever will be. Topic of the show. Yes, Pokemon, Pocopia is out this week. We have been playing it and we are ready to weigh in with reviews. Maybe reviews so far. We'll see where that all shakes out because I do have a bone to pick, of course.

Give it to me. As we all know. This is a real bone. I get it. I get it. I get that like there's a difference in some people's eyes between press and influencer, content creator,

whatever the fuck. Joey, when did we get Pokemon Popopia? You got yours before mine, but I got mine last- like 12 hours. I can't remember. This has been like the sole thing in my brain for the last week.

I got mine Saturday night. Of what? Do you remember the day? Last Saturday. Okay. Like a weekend a day ago. I was going to say if you're an audio listener and trying to go through it right,

that means that we, I got mine on Friday the 27th. You got yours on the 28th. Yes. Which is not terrible for a Nintendo review for us, of course. Okay, cool. Wasn't it a week before that? Oh, you're right. Sorry, sorry.

The 20th and the 21st. Yeah, yeah. Thank you very much. 20th and 20th, 20th, 21st, right? So not terrible. A week and two days for a review. Okay. Pocopia, humongous fucking game.

Joey, how many hours do you think you've logged in it so far? Um, you know, that's a great question. I'm going to say 30? Okay. Yeah. My profile says 35 right now. Okay. So I've been 35 in Pokemon Popopia,

which I felt good about. A work week, not too bad. You know what I mean? Yeah. Jordan, how long have you had the game? How many hours did you log? I can't remember if I'm legally allowed to say, but it's just around,

just beyond where you guys got it. And I have, according to the Nintendo Switch to 100 and 20 hours and Pokemon, Pocopia. Or more. Who can say? You're a psychopath and I love you so goddamn much, Jordan. But that makes me really exciting.

That's job sediously. Okay. Okay. Okay. Gotcha. Even if you were legally, you had it more days than me. You had more days than me. Yeah.

You had more days. 120 hours. I thought I was doing well with 35. This is equal parts terrifying and exciting. I can't, I can't decide which end I'm going to end up on. And that is definitely a conversation. So you can take all Joey and I's reviews with a grain of salt if you want on how much

we've played. if you want to clock it is a review in progress or review so far, whatever. I am so sad on one hand that the review period is over. Yeah. Because now, of course, everything else keeps coming. I'm going to keep playing a word probably when I can't. Other things are going to come in and be a part of it and be a problem with it. But more of like, last night you and I were texting where I was like, have you seen this?

I'm trying to find that. And you said, oh my God, the way you're talking about it makes me think there's so much more. And I'm like, I think we've only scratched the surface. Yeah. Jordan we turn our eyes to you at the top of 120 hours. Talk to me about Pokemon Popopia. How do you have more to do? Is there more going on for you?

And then of course, I would like, I know you gave it a five out of five over on VGC. Dot News. You are in our land now, our country. I'll need you to convert that to the kind of funny review scale for me. I shall do. Before we get to that 10 point nonsense, I will say that the real Pokemon Pocopia starts after. than a hundred hours, so you're almost there.

And see, for me, this was my problem of playing it where it was like, we're gonna get in, but like, I was like steamrolling through environments, leaving them in shambles. Like I'm like, I, I've played a lot of Animal Crossing in my life, a lot. And I know that

like I want everything unlocked so I can use it to make the towns as beautiful as possible. So like, oh, see, I play so different. I kept fucking pushing. And there'd be a night or two where I was like, you know what, Joey? I'm just gonna fuck around in this area and build homes and have a great time. And yeah, so it's like, I'm still so hungry to roll the credits, which I have not done,

so that I can have everything. Anyways, Jordan Come. So for me, at this point, I still have maybe 30 or so Pokemon to find for the polka decks. There's also the habitat decks, which has a hell of a lot of habitats in it as well. You don't have to find all of those to find the Pokemon, but we'll kind of get into that when we get into the weeds. For me, I'm now in very much the post-game stage where it's all about. about making each of my zones as prim and proper as possible,

getting all the Pokemon's moods up to the highest tier, raising the environment levels of each individual zone. Yeah, I think once you roll credits, that is very much the, congratulations, you've finished the tutorial, you understand how this game works, now go and do your Minecraft and Animal Crossing stuff because you're basically light loose at that point. And where would you put this on the kind of funny scale?

Oh, kind of funny scale. I'm going to go for a nine amazing. I think this game is really, really special. I think it's the best Pokemon spin-off ever. My complaints with it are things that are nitpicky to the point where I was like, if I put this in a review, does this seem like I'm doing it purely to be negative? And when I say that, I mean, like, the loading times between areas are quite long, but that's because there are a million things being loaded in every time you,

you change areas and small moments like there's a bit of a late game grind if you're not prepared for it if you play if you play the game in a certain very methodical way you wouldn't even notice that that late game grind because you would have been doing things that already take care of it but those are really my only complaints I would have loved the the story content as it were to be slightly longer but I'm saying that after rolling the credits at 40 hours so that feels like I'm being extremely greedy we're close well that was my thing of like you know the video game review or hat is always so hard to wear at these times when there's an looming embargo and so like when I did redacted, we don't want to spoil this, we will not

spoil things for you. When I did redact it and it was like, oh, you should go look at this thing. I was like, oh, we're, this is it. Because like what I wasn't prepared for with Pocopi is how I personally think engaging the story is in terms of what you already know from any trailer you've watched or hurting people talk about this. Right. You are a, you are a ditto who takes on this role of looking like a human, your old trainer, and there's no humans around, there's just Pokemon, what happened?

And the last of us like storytelling of finding documents and being like, wait, you find so much nonsense, so much just fun world-dilling stuff. And then you find the one that is like, wait, what the fuck happened here?

And do you find all this? Like when it was fine, like, oh, well, we need to go towards this. I was like, here we fucking go, let's go.

Into Jordan's point, I was on it. I am a psychopath again. I am a Animal Crossing, Dave O'Since and GameCube. So I've got chests on chests on chests of things I've collected and then just store it and just thrown away. I don't know what I'm going to need this for, but I'm not going to use it. And so then to get to this end and just clock it out, nail it on and then get to this hard stop of like, oh shit. There's three things I need that I have not even seen in this game.

Yeah. Fuck, I have more to do here. And that's awesome number one. But then so like, ah, fuck, I felt like I was close. Yeah. I was so close to it. Yeah. I feel like the review timeline for, and like how you play games, which is not something I

experience very often because I don't really do it. Yeah. It's like so counterintuitive to how I would normally play this game in terms of like, I'm a completionist. I want to unlock as many Pokemon and unlock as many habitats in that first world before I move on to the next thing. So I don't have to double back and stuff like that. But this one I really kind of tried to mainline.

And even that, I feel like there's so much that I will have. have to go back and do, which will be fine. But 30 hours in there, where are you going to put on the review scale? I'm giving it a nine. Yeah. It is, I was not really excited about this before, up until the previews came out, because I'm not a Pokemon girl. Like, I've only ever played Pokemon Snap, as everybody knows, one and two.

And so I have, like, no real connection to, like, a lot of Pokemon characters for the most part. And so all the previews and stuff like that, I was like, am I going to care about, like, catching all of these. Yeah, yeah. But then when everybody started talking about

how much like Viva Paniata it was, the little, uh, antenna. Yeah, went completely up. I was like, Viva Pena, yada, you are now speaking my language.

And that's definitely the it scratches on this of like, making the right habitats of the right things happen. You got to decorate it. Oh, it just scratches the right itch in my brain for sure. Um, and it now makes me like care more about Pokemon. I now feel like I understand like Nick's playthrough that we watched.

Yeah. Of like, oh, now I understand my Nick was like so excited to get like specific moves and then when those pop in here, I'm like, oh, I can progress and I understand it now. Yeah, for sure. It makes you understand. I think in a different way. Yeah, I'm right there with both of you. And I'm specifically with you, Jordan, where like Tim was taught asked me last night how I was feeling. And I was like, man, I'm like, I sent him a voice memo walking cold at midnight. Bedtime. I was like, I was trying to grind to the end. So I was ignoring your text all night long.

Yeah. I was like, for me, I'm like, at the last night, I was like, I want to sleep on it because I'm right where you are, Jordan, of like, I feel like the things I would bring up in nitpick are nitpicks to a degree. They're real. The loading times are too long, I think, when you're switching between areas, right? Then there's stuff like this where it's like, I haven't rolled credits, so it's like, is this a real problem or not? Of like, I really wish there was some magic spell or something to that effect

that linked all my item boxes. So it wasn't me being like, well, I put shit in this place. So I got to, and I'm like, when it was like... Which one did I put it in? When I was telling you last night, I'm like, have you? seen a desk and I was like I know that I have them and I was like you were like yeah and I'm like wait I found it I found it

it was over here stuck to way in this thing it's like then it's like well what if I just again this is the problem of a review embargo of like I was like as soon as this is all done we're gonna take this section of this this one this area and I'm just gonna put everything there nothing will be stored anywhere else I will bring it all I will work from this area because it's like so

annoying having everything spread out but again the way we were doing and trying to go and yeah but it's like this is is a nine. This is an amazing game. If you were asking movie, how do I describe this game? This game is amazing. I think any of the little foibles and faults or whatever. You know, Jordan, I really thought it was interesting. You're obviously so much further than me, but your summation on VGC, right? I thought nailed an interesting point. Pokemon Pocopia is an excellent life simulation game that takes the best bits from the champions of the genre and evolves it into something that

Pokemon fans and cozy game fans will love. Late game grinding doesn't dull an adventure that's full of discovery at 100 hours as it is at one, which is beautifully written, as always, great job. But that grinding at the end or trying to find this thing, like, I don't want last night's experience of like, I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it. Oh, fuck, I'm not going to be able to get this mountain. Like, that hurt, but I don't want that to affect it because I know,

I know how many more hours I am going to be playing this game. Like, this is going to be a problem. I know what the next review I need to move to is, which we should be getting codes for momentarily. And it's like, I do it or will I say you know what I'll stay and do this and let the other guys leave you know I don't know like that's this game is a

is a dream come true for somebody I think who loves Animal Crossing obviously as an IP but love New Horizons but still ran into like man what am I doing next what am I doing here and I think being thrown into this game

it's going to be interesting to see how the different fandoms come at it and react to it because I think at a glance when we first saw it, it was like, oh, cool. Obviously, it's Dragon Quest Builders, but I don't think that has, is somebody who played it and loved it on Vita. I don't think that has the cachet in terms of mindshare. So I think a lot of people looked at originally like, oh, cool, it's Minecraft

meets Animal Crossing, which is true, but there's so many, go do this, go do that, the Viva Penaata. You have to build habitats to get the Pokemon, then you have to take care of the Pokemon and make them, like, Jordan, do you think people who jump in expecting this just to be Pokemon Minecraft are going to be, put off or taken aback by the amount of no no do this unlock that like not everything is just going to be here from the start

I think potentially but I think the game also offers a hell of a lot of different ways to play it I think the Viva Pignat in Paris is a great one and actually someone in our comments was saying it's not quite Minecraft and Animal Crossing and I was like yeah but it's an internet headline and only old people remember Viva Pinaa that's why we picked those

I agree but the I think for me the Minecraft element, each element that it takes from another game seems to appear at different moments. At the start of the game, it's much more about discovering Pokemon and getting to grips with the habitats, and you have very little at your disposal, presumably not to overwhelm players and potentially young players. But as the game goes on and on, and you get to the later moments, and you just have an infinite amount of different building blocks and furniture and all these things to build your kind of late game paradise. That is the more

Minecraft element of it. There is literal mining as well. So there is the kind of copper and iron system which can be kind of complicated at some point and I wish you could automate slightly more. I wanted a production line of Pokemon to be constantly going out and getting iron for me and bringing it back. But again, that's like a little, it's not that game. It's not like a Factorio or anything like that. So yeah, I think players that want kind of a hardcore Minecraft experience, it's not that there's no combat there's no danger you can drop from the absolute top of the map and ditto will just like flubber on the floor so it's not it's not a tough experience in anyway it's uh even falling in lava right like they just put you right back to the last blocky touch it's not like you're losing anything yeah that that's not kind of the the goal of the game it's certainly Minecraft inspired in some ways and i think Minecraft's Lego like building formula is perfect and there's a reason it's been the language of a lot of games it's the same reason so many games so many games stole the Arkham combat. It's like, well, if someone's already perfected it,

there's no point trying to do it any better. And I think especially for younger players who are obviously very Ophay with Minecraft, combining that with Pokemon. It's like two biggest IPs in the world. Let's Pokemon speak to these Minecraft players in a way they'll understand. But yeah, I think the Vio Penaenaata comparison

is the most apt one, if people remember what that was. Joey, how much do you see this being? a forever game for you, or at least ongoing thing? Yeah. I've never carried my switch around more since I've gotten my switch too. It's coming everywhere

with me. I've never spent more time in like our living room watching TV and like playing this. They're like, oh, you're being like real social with everybody out here. I was like, yeah, I've got like, this is I can't be in my bed. This is like couch gamer hours for sure. The thing also,

because I do really love this game, I think the reason that it doesn't hit a 10 for me because I'm so scared that we're going to get hit with the Animal Crossing problem upon launch of what does multiplayer look like? Is that going to be a pain? How are these like islands working collaboratively and stuff like that? And that is like the big unknown. And I think that that has like the potential to really change the temperature of how people feel about this game. Jordan, did you get to do any online stuff? So I played online in the preview when I went to Japan and played it. And it seems to be it's like you're four detos, you're working together on the multiplayer-specific

sandbox island that is just off of the first island. And that's kind of the main kind of hub for that stuff. I do get what you're saying, Joy. For me, I am an island. I do not want anyone to come over and mess up with my town. I'm quite happy to stick on. Oh, yeah. I don't want anybody messing with my own stuff.

But it very much seemed like that side area, which I'm not sure if we're specifically allowed to name, but it's... Yeah, we don't think we're supposed to row. Yeah. It's the blankest canvas that there is, and it's clearly designed to be like, okay, get all your friends around here, build whatever you want. There's fan favorite Pokemon that are exclusive to this area, although you can bring them to the other islands and stuff like that.

But yeah, I'm interested to see the multiplayer stuff is live and has been live for a couple of days now, so I'm keen to check it out. Yeah, when we tried to do it last week late, we couldn't do it or whatever. Let me throw Barrett. I'm going to toss it into Ascent. So like Mike had sent this Instagram real to me when we talked about it because I was like, okay, cool, sharing the same space in my free world, whatever. It was when Mike started talking about doing, like when we did the games of March and everybody on the panel was excited. Which I was shocked by.

And Mike was like, well, no, they have the ability to create new worlds in the cloud that then you can all go to. And even the owner doesn't need to be there. And you can have a persistent living world. And I was like, holy fucking shit. Yeah, can we listen with this volume up? Share works with the original Nintendo Switch. Your friend doesn't need a Switch to or even their own copy of the game to join the world. That's an insane accessibility feature.

There are also persistent online shared islands. Think Minecraft servers. Friends can access and build on a shared space even when you're not online. The host doesn't need to be present. This is massive for people who play on different schedules. So that sounds crazy. That was not what I was expecting. I'm very much the same way of like

I want infinite time to sit there and roll credits do the thing and then go back to each one of the biomes I'm in and set up the houses do that like I think it's so hard to talk about this game because it is so much like Barnell in the chat earlier

when we were talking about Mike he's like I don't see Minecraft in this I see Animal Crossing and I'm like well when you're in the fucking minds getting your iron ore and your gold ore so you can go back to smelt that in your smelters so you can make the bricks so you can like everything you want to make has like three other things you have to go make to go do the thing which is so Minecraft to me

versus then the late late game which I'm not even there but like the late areas I experimented with then becomes okay now it's animal crossing of what does this biome village area look like to me then it is okay now I'm inside this house I've built what do I want that to look like and what is the theme of that like this game is going to you give yourself to it trounce i think so many people's animal crossing hours which i think is insane yeah i feel like this is one you just have so much more control over things than you do in animal crossing and you have like obviously in your animal crossing island you have your villagers and you have like their houses that are decorated already yeah uh and but in this you have like

infinite semi like number of houses and you can decorate them the way that you want and so it just feels like there's a lot more to do. I feel like the way that I play in the beginning is like, okay, I'm playing this to complete this versus like decorating it the way that I want. Obviously, as you keep playing more, there's more things that you can unlock and stuff like that.

So I feel like I'm going to have to go back and like redecorate all of my stuff and use all the items. And that's why they want to commit early on. Yeah. I was like, I'm not building and decorating. I'm building garbage houses. I'm basically building foundations,

putting the door on them there. You can all live there and stop complaining. Be happy. Get my level up. But it was like, I know that I'm going to come back and like be psychotic. about what I want this village to look like, not that. Even like I threw down on,

I don't want to spoil things. I threw it on a building you can eventually buy and I put it down like, oh, this placement sucks but I just need to get it down, just be done. I'll worry about my roads and organization later. So now Jordan, are you just a madman at that point? Yeah, go for it. It feels to me like when I was young at the peak of Pokemonia

and I had all the little toys, it was a great game to play where like basically there was a village and you were making a little stories with your your Pokemon toys. That's essentially what this game is in video game form. You're like, okay, these two Pokemon live in this house, and then there's this like open garden area, and if they have a certain scale,

they can work in the shop and you can visit the shop. Like, I feel like the made of this world that is just kind of like floating through and observing the world as it goes along. It doesn't feel like a fairground ride where all the Pokemon are waiting for me to return to go, oh, hello, we've just been sitting here. It feels like things have been actually happening,

which is a great magic trick. obviously it's like um then the level of interaction isn't massive and you'll get kind of especially what i am you get repeated um text boxes and stuff like that but a lot of the writing is really funny and it has a lot of references to the wider franchise and stuff that older fans will uh remember so i think it it serves as a really great anniversary game and a year where it seems like we're not getting a new game this is kind of the 30th anniversary game well it's also such an interesting pairing, you know, having Leaf Green and Fire Red come out right around

it, right? Because this has been the ongoing discussion ahead of time, I'm like, wait, is this, is this in Kanto? Is it not? Is it that? The other, and so there's like, again, to your point, being an anniversary game, there's so many callbacks to Pokemon throughout. And it's like, even for me, there's things I'm seeing in there that, like, I would give you a reference as

violent references, but there are things that have been throughout the series forever, as Jen was quick to point out to me. But I was just happy to be back and have those little things but this twist on it. Like they did such a great job of twisting this to the point of like when we were doing the stream

on Friday, me and Tim and I was playing Leave Green for the first time. We went to Ad Break and I was like there are so many things happening in this game that I want to tell you about through the eyes of Pocopia. Yeah.

Like this little reference or that little thing. They're like, it's so brilliant how they do this. And like that's what's crazy about Pokemon, crazy about this game is like there's so many entry points

to this game. Whether it be your fandom of Pokemon, your fandom of Animal Crossing, Minecraft, like, whatever it is, like there's something for you to get into and find here.

And that leads to a question I want to call out here. Tricky Cap is super chatted just like you can on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games while we're live and says, control scheme-wise, how does it compare to Animal Crossing?

I've been searching for a game to play with my girlfriend who gets easily confused by most game controls, but loved Animal Crossing. We've all played a lot of Animal Crossing. Did you feel natural? Yeah, I feel like it's pretty similar.

Yeah. I didn't really use like the wheel which I sure yeah you yeah so again like for as much as we're talking about I think the inventory very similar to Animal Crossing I jumped in last night to look for goldfire of items

and I'd been playing for like three weeks leading into this and I was like oh this is so almost one for one in terms of what it looks like and having things laid out and yada yada but then yeah what you're talking about right is like you know ditto of course is the copycat Pokemon and so he can copy certain Pokemon moves as you've seen in the trailers

right of him watering the grass with a squirrel look, right, of chopping grass with a cut or whatever. Like, there's all these different moves you learn that, yeah, you can either depad through or, yeah,

pull up the wheel. And I started with the wheel and then I thought the game, again, based on trailers, I thought the game was going to be so much more of that. And I think for certain people it could be, this is another one where it's going to be so interesting how you talk about it.

It could be that way, whereas for me, I would go, I feel ours. It felt like without really using a move. And I'm doing DIY crafting so much like Animal Crossing or try, to explore, trying to do whatever.

Better, Joey. Yeah, the fact that you can craft multiple items at once. Yeah. Right at the gate. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Thank you.

Jordan, how do you? I saw you nodding along with me on my right track. I think in terms of moves, yeah, the moves are interesting. I ended up using a lot of the,

the rock smash and stuff like that because I was searching for, there's a lot of little glowing cubes around the world and those have certain items in them and some of the items relate to Pokemon that you can get in the Pokedex but those are they randomly appear in the world so I was like leveling

the second area shall we say oh we can we can say what what is it's the area that's based on pure site that's like covered in volcanic ash it's gone basically in my world because I've had to completely level it to get what I was looking for I do I do agree there's basically a few moves that I almost never used there's one specifically that I literally never used other than the quest that gives you it, but I think that's more tied to a multiplayer game. And again,

apologize for being captic about this. The Pokemon embargoes are a different beast. So we have to be very specific. And to time out there too, not only that is a thousand percent true, but like you should play this game without a guide. I would say that. Like the amount of fun I had of asking Joey,

I took a shot last night before, Jordan's going to be asleep. I sent him a WhatsApp. And I was like, you know what? I was just listening to NBC. I know Casey's a big Pokemon. I took a shot on Instagram. Like, are you playing?

And I was like, I had a question about this, but I wouldn't want to go to a guide for it. I would want to that playground nudge you in the right direction, go do this thing or run into that thing or like, no spoilers, but like I'm trying to figure out how to do this thing last night and advance the plot and try to hopefully finish the game. And I'm off in this thing.

And then I heard a voice. And I was like, is this it? Did I stumble it? And I stumbled into something completely different that was also fucking rad and cool. Like, hell yeah, this game awesome. Yeah, the

thing that you were stuck on, which I also got stuck on, by the way, I think that might be reviewer brain, because the answer to that would be kind of negated by someone who plays it more slowly and methodically and isn't just like,

not that we rushed, but the way we play games because of our job, it kind of points us in a certain direction. But yet, that's another slight net pick. Occasionally habitats will require an extremely specific item. And there's no way to be like, give me a hint as to how I get that.

Like if it's not in the shop and I don't have a crafting recipe for it, and I don't remember that this area happens to have a lot of these just in the set dressing, then that can kind of be a roadblock. But I found out that most, if not all, Pokemon can appear in multiple habitats. Yeah. So I was stuck on this habitat for ages and then it just randomly appeared and like four grass in a tree. I was like, okay, that's good. That's like, that's a bit more leeway for some of the items that I think only spawn once in the world. They can, everything can appear in the shop, but the shop's randomized every day.

Yeah. And that's the thing of like, I just said don't do a guide. And I won't do a guide for the thing I'm stuck on when it really is just play the game as a normal person would. But it's more the idea of like, I can't wait to see that the, what I didn't do or how I didn't find or the environments I didn't go to yet and like what people are finding what they're making, how they figure that out and da-da-da. Like there's so much in this game. It's so rich. Yeah. I was a little bit worried when I started this because I am a guide girl for sure.

Like shout out to IGN guides. You guys save me all the time. So I was like, shoot, this is like a lot of things to keep track of and a lot of things to find. But I actually didn't feel like I needed one for most of it if you just play the game. It's just those like random things. And it's like part of it too is like understanding like something that they call it might functionally work as something else. and like, but that's like the trial and error of it, which I think is fun. A lot of people in the chat are saying, I need to see a demo to see if I'd vibe with this.

Joey and myself will be doing a game cast plays of Pokemon Pocopia on Thursday, I do believe, right? Of course, that's the streaming embargo slash worldwide release. So you can see us talk about it there and see the game yourself. Of course, you couldn't see anything on Kind of Funny if you didn't support us. Consider, of course, like, subscribing, sharing all the different ways you can support for free. But why not pick up a kind of funny membership? dot com slash kind of funny games. Apple, Spotify, and of course, patreon.com slash kind of funny. You can toss us a few bucks. Get every episode we do ad free of all of our shows.

Get your daily dose of me, Greg Miller, in a series I call Greg Way, and of course, get good karma for supporting an 11-person, 11-year-old small business. But right now you're not using your benefits. So here's a word from our sponsor. This episode is brought to you by Factor. My go-to shortcut for great food fast. Cold days, big goals, and no time to cook. Factor makes healthy eating easy. with fully prepared meals designed by dietitians and crafted by chefs. So eat well without the planning or cooking. I love Factor because I get to pick from 100 rotating meals, get them delivered to the studio, and then have a meal ready to eat

in those precious few minutes I get between shows. Factor uses quality, functional ingredients, including lean proteins, colorful veggies, whole food ingredients, and healthy fats. Always fresh, never frozen, ready in about two minutes, no prep, No stress. What's not to love? Be like me. Head to FactorMeals.com slash Kind of Funny 50 off and use code Kind of Funny 50 off to get 50% off and free breakfast for a year. Eat like a pro this month with Factor. New subscribers only varies by plan. One free breakfast item per box for one year while subscription is active. Some other people were asking is it a full price game? Yes, of course, $70. They were also asking about the performance. of this switch to exclusive.

Jordan Miller from VGC. dot news another great patreon.com site. You can go support and should. What did you think of the performance on Switch 2 here for this exclusive? Well over on patreon.com slash video games canonical, we thought that, um, oh, it was, the ray tracing was unbelievable 8K.

No, it's fine. It's a, it runs very well, which is what it needed to be. It's bright. It's a nice resolution. It doesn't run like base, scarlet and violet. It is a technically

sound Pokemon game. As we say, the load times are a lot, but as soon as I realized that when you break something and don't pick it up, it is still there 50 hours later. I was like, oh no, that's going to be a memory nightmare. So I think the game

probably slows down. The more you play it at this point, I'm waiting like three days for mine to load. But no performance problems on my side. You can even get fairly far away from Pokemon and wide open areas and still see them kind of cutting about and doing their their logic and stuff like that.

So no complaints. I mean, I don't really know. I really like the art style. I don't think it needs to look any better than it does. It's like got a nice kind of pop, fresh art. And the Pokemon have been remodeled as well in this new art style. And I found out. So I'm totally happy with it.

I didn't play any handheld because I didn't leave my house, obviously. Did you do to try the handheld kind of experience? How was that? I exclusively. Joey's a psychopath who only plays your Switch handheld. Joey, when we bought Switch When Switches came in, Joey's like,

I'm just gonna leave my doc here for kind of funny to use which we all abuse and Joey never uses. Joey only plays your Switch hand out. I have one specific use for this and this is on the couch or in bed. I'm usually second screening

some like bullshit thing in the background, which is why I like handheld. But I'm also like not a performance that's not what I pay attention to at all when I'm playing games or anything like that so I'm not the right person. But you played handoff. I did both.

Yeah, no, I played a lot of handheld. I played a lot of, uh, uh, on TV gorgeous both ways, incredible both ways. I, what I wasn't expect, I mean, well, performance wise, no issues like we've both said here now. A lot of, yeah, the loads get egregious. Like they almost have like a, a Google mini game of ditto like running along. Like they didn't go fully into it, but you can make them jump whatever. Uh, that was annoying for me.

And there was a couple ones where like as playing in handheld or even just doing something else like last night, I was drinking a little bit of while I was playing. And it was again, all right, I want to travel back to my home in this area. All right, cool. And I'd reach over there, drink it, look at my phone, look up. And it was like the double confirm. So now we're going. Like, why?

Just go. I already said yes. God dang. It didn't go. No, but it ran great. Handheld was great. I love it both ways. It was, there'd be the nights where I want this full screen and I want everything.

And then there was the nights that like, I'm going to finish that chasing, chasing Amy documentary. All right. Now I'm going to start this Robocop documentary and go. And I'm playing it handheld. a great time. Like it fits wherever it is. The one thing I want to shout out that I wasn't expecting back to, hey, what are we talking about like Minecraft, Animal Cross, what is the soundtrack.

And like being back down in the minds, being inside of the side of a fucking mountain excavating. I was like, this sounds so much like Minecraft. Minecraft always had such a chill, ambient. And like, I'd be getting tired, sleepy playing. It was crazy. Yeah. I think that the, um, the game soundtrack is a mix of.

of new arrangements, but also a lot of classical Janitri Musuda score. Musuda was the person who scored the first couple of generations of games and then went on to direct a lot of the games. So you open with like a Minecraft style song, but it has the Pokemon Center chime layered through it as like a musical refrain. The soundtrack is absolutely ridiculous. It's really, really impressive. And I think that the general atmosphere of the whole game is great, like just sitting in

a town like I'd put my controller down to do something to type something for the review and you just hear the Pokemon like running around and like dancing and DJ Rotoms going crazy playing music and then the normal score will come back in like I think that's all great and originally I was a little bit annoyed because when you see DJ Rotom who was in the Pokemon Presents you can give him CDs and the CDs are from across the whole series and a lovely touch if you find a CD from say red and blue you can use the Game Boy arrangement the game boy arrangement the Game Boy Advance arrangement or the last-door arrangement.

Oh, wow. So they give you a lot options. And then I was like, why can't I hear that throughout the whole world? Why do I not get like a little portable roton? But then I was like, no, actually, this game soundtrack is incredible and deserves to have its own kind of moment that is not just the nostalgia bait that gets me in tears, you know? Yeah, of course. Yeah, I needs to have a little thing.

I like that. Yeah, I don't really listen to. I usually have my music all the way down, which I also. I play this just the way I play this, you know. I don't bother. But I was pleasantly surprised. I think it was because I was here late on Friday when they were doing the stream that I had my music up out there. And I was like, oh, this is really nice.

It's really nice. People that talk about cocoa and music might be onto something, you know. Yeah. Yeah, the game's got so much going on. I think there's still, again, so much to tackle. Jordan, 120 hours in. Are you happy with your areas now? Are they all prim and proper?

They are what you want? No, it's still a wasteland Like the thing for me is My goal in all Pokemon games As it has been from the beginning Got to catch them all And I've still got a few left to go Once that is done

I can sit back and enjoy my work And start to wonder Okay, what do I want this first area To represent originally? I was like, do I just do Kind of one for one remakes Of the towns that they are based on From the original games?

That's like, mm, that becomes very difficult towards the end of the game So I'll do something else And also, the later you get, you unlock more kind of prefab building kits, which we touched on earlier, but this will be an item where you put down like a square essentially to have some space to build it. And then you need a certain amount of items and a certain amount of Pokemon and they build it for you instead of the kind of ramshackle building that Greg was talking about earlier. And I've done a little bit of that. Did either of you time travel? Because there are some builds that make you come back tomorrow.

I did not My game is all messed up because I time traveled for when I was redoing my Animal Crossing Island But I never fixed it for this For building the houses I didn't feel like it was too long Especially like the base level house it was fine There was just like a few quest things that were like come back tomorrow And I was like I don't know what that means on my Like what time is my switch on I don't know what that means

But I at that when I got to those kind of points especially confusing playing that at like three in the morning. Yeah. What am I supposed to do at this point? Which the answer was time travel. But yeah, I don't know what the actual, is it 12 hours? Will that be finished? Those things aren't story critical for anyone that's wondering because I hate that stuff in games.

That stuff's not story critical. But yeah, there are a couple of comeback tomorrow builds. I never time travel in Animal Crossing. Yeah. And this is the one that broke. Oh. Because it was the thing of like, oh man, I'm. on golden path. I could see the end of this

and it would be the, was it, oh, come back in the end, come back in an hour and I was like absolutely not, jumped out, disconnected from the internet, you know, don't look at the internet for the clock, set an hour, go back in, do the different thing. Yeah, the one early on when it was the bigger pre-fat buildings you're talking about it like, it'll be ready tomorrow

that was, I was totally fine with. Because I didn't feel a crunch yet. I was like, do your thing. Yeah, I don't mind that. And I think on a normal experience, you'd be like, okay, it's not going to be ready to tomorrow. I have 17,000 other things to do. I saw, yeah, I don't know who it was. was or which review. I've read so many reviews today. So much great work out there. And one of them was the idea of like, when these things happen and you're told to come back later, it does, even if it's 10, 20, another day, it doesn't matter because there's so many other things demanding your attention.

Yeah. And again, like there's what I know we're all over the map trying to describe a game that's unwieldy, right? But it's like there's the build the habitat to get the Pokemon to appear. Great. The Pokemon's there. Now they're part of your town. You probably, you want to put them in a house, but to put them in the house, you have to build the house or put down the prefab thing. It'll make the house look really nice, but takes way more resources. And that was when the first prefab went up next to my ram shackled, whatever, that's when I was like, oh, fuck this. I'm not doing any building until the end of the game when I can come back and like put down

my monopoly houses and have them look beautiful. Yeah. You get them in the house. Then on top of that, you talk to them and say, hey, how are you feeling? And they're all, they're never always great. They want an item. They want a thing. They want something in their house to make it look better to feel better.

So then they go up. And this raises your town level. early on, you know, the professor there's talking about it. Like, I forget what the thing is of get your first, it might be get, you know, the town of three or five or whatever it is or whatever, just making the town level happy increase it. I did that and you know, I was like, great. And then you go into the shop at the Pokemon Center like this just little thing.

And it'll be like, cool, here are the daily items and one's blocked out at level 20. I'm like, oh, fucking shit. Okay. This is going to be a thing if I want that and I want that. Yeah, I want everything. You are spinning so many plates in this game. and, you know, Patrick Kloffick, who put up a great review today on crossplay with his daughter, filling out a little sheet, she reviewed it.

I loved it. Oh, that's so cute. When he previewed it, he was like, I'm not usually into the busy work kind of game, but I know so many people already, it's like, this might be a different kind of busy work. It's like, this one is the constantly, oh, I need the Mcuffin to get that other Mcuffin to do the thing, and it's like, none of it feels with the exception of us trying to review on an embargo, like there's, ah, I got, like, there was so many times I was like, I could have left this and gone out of the next thing and gone and like it's it's brilliantly done it's a very very amazing

game. Jordan I want you to know that everybody over on youtube.com slash kind of funny go to YouTube kind of yeah YouTube. YouTube.com slash kind of funny. Of course that's where you could super chat to be part of the show. But in three two, one, that's where you could redeem a free Patreon subscription to VGC. I just put 10 in there. So you could go do that.

Come on. A gift from me that I will make Nick reimburse me for. But I do appreciate that's a one month subscription. Let's get a few super chats up in here. Ollie says as someone who is an Animal Crossing and Pokemon fan but never played Dragon Quest Builders or Minecraft, what can I expect from this? Do you think it'll be too complicated?

No. Yeah. They do a really good job of explaining everything to you. I think the things that I got confused on were the things that I just like spammed through. It's like a Joey problem, not a game problem. Even yesterday I was like, why can I not find this one thing?

and Greg was like, well, it's just this person. I was like, oh, I didn't fully read the, like, instructions and I read it as something else. So it's that kind of stuff. But, like, I don't feel like I was, like, really confused about anything, especially having played so much Animal Crossing recently. Yeah. I think it's, like, pretty close. It's not, like, overly complicated by any means.

Yeah, I mean, obviously, I played a lot of these kind of games, but I felt this on many levels was a step above on explaining things. There would be times where I, and that's why, like, you know, for the thing last night where I'm just trying to roll, and, like, like, you know, This is the first time the game has really said Use this item and I'm like I've never seen that So what am I missing? So many times you go in and you look at the habitat

And like you can hit X and then it'll show you the details of like Oh well no you need this kind of rock This kind of table say any it'll do it like it tells you about the What you actually know like that's great The little things that like I thought were peculiar is like When you go into your polka decks right and see what's going on You get in the lower left corner of the map But you can't full screen the map

You can't really dive in. I wish every Pokemon that I included, I wish I could zoom in and see every Pokemon. Because there's plenty of times I come in, I'm like, gotta go talk to X, Y, and Z. And I run over there and it's like, he's not home.

So now I'll run around and try to find him because I really need him to do X, Y, and Z. Yeah, it is baffling that you can't open up the map. Yeah. Yeah, the map is a weird one. There is a function in the game that some Pokemon have where if you're searching for a specific Pokemon, they can teleport you straight to it,

which seems to be like a kind of work around for that kind of thing. I think there are a lot of Pokemon that have functionality, like this Pokemon can make bricks. This Pokemon can mix concrete and that stuff is all in the poker decks. They could maybe be slightly clearer about that. There was a few kind of moments and I don't know if this was just like a tired brain overplaying it. I was talking to like every single Pokemon trying to give them this beddy being like, do you make paint?

Do you make paint? I have that question. I don't even have time for this. I don't have time for this. Do whatever. They're like, no, not me, not me. And they don't even go, you could go and speak to this guy over here. They're just like, I've never even heard of paint mates.

So go away. It's like, it's tiny things like that. But once, especially the people who really get into these games and kind of no life them in the same way that I have, that stuff fades into the background. There's very little friction to you doing what you want to do in basically every case. There's a few mining resources that seem like they might be finite. in the world itself, but there's also a mechanic to take you to specific

resource heavy islands that changes every day, and you can go to specific islands based on what item you give this Pokemon. So they have seemingly thought of every little uncomfortable bit of friction and taking it out, although there will always

be some when millions of people were playing it as opposed to whoever played it. Exactly. Yeah, I think that's another thing to be applauded. Obviously, we know from Animal Crossing, hey, go off and go visit an island and you can, but you never know what you're going to get. Again, not to spoil the stuff, but as Jordan's talking about, like, you can have all these items and you can click on it and be like, all right, I'm going to take you to an island or whatever,

a world and it'll have, it'll show you the things that will have. And you can say, oh, I don't want to go there. And then you go to the next one. Okay. And then when you find the one you want, which I thought was really nice, you can go there and then the rest of the day, you can come back to that same thing. It's not like you get one shot to fill your pockets and then whatever. If you find the one you need the rocks, there you go.

Yeah. Really smart. Yeah, I didn't, I didn't even touch those. Again, I think, there's just so much to do in so little time. I'm like, I just have to keep going. Well, that was the thing of like today running back where I was like, okay, cool, you know, pressure's off. Let's go start wearing out habitat. You know, I was like last night I'm building out more things and I'm like,

I've put down the foundation. I put a door on it. Why isn't it working? And then it was like the, well, I think for so many people would be like probably 101. Here I am 35 hours. I was going to be like, oh, I'm too close to that habitat. Is that what's happening? I included this.

Okay, no, delete that. Okay, free standing. Here's this pile of garbage that'll hopefully get me what I need so I can put down the nice houses. Too many goddamn nice houses out there. Oh, I know. Yeah. But it is the thing of like, I keep putting down the lower ones and then I don't have the

stuff to build. Well, that was the thing for me. It felt so empowering like what it would have been, yeah, Saturday night into Sunday morning when I was recapping Jen and I was like, last night was the turning point of the power fantasy. where suddenly it was like everything everyone needed, I either already had it made or I knew how to make it, come to all my furnaces where I'm already cooking everything I would need.

Like I can do this and it's like suddenly I saw like, here we are where it's going to snowball down the hill up. I can build houses no problem. The nice ones rather than my crap ones. I know. I didn't even think about building. As soon as I realized that you had to get a lot of like iron ingots and bronze ingots, I was like, okay, for the rest of the night, I'm in the mines.

I'm going to have 99 of everything so that it's not a problem going forward and I think I'm just getting towards the end of my stores as I'm making the five-story colonial houses that require a ridiculous amount of stuff and all that stuff unlocks as you go.

I think they do quite a good job of not giving you access to stuff that you would have no way of building really is doled out more sensibly than that. And yeah, like they have so many smart things in there like, you know, I don't know, there's a way that if you see something in the world,

you can then just take a photo of it in game and then go to a printer and then for a cost, get that made, which I was like, what a brilliant way to do that of like, instead of like waiting for the shop to have the thing, to have the stuff, like I was ready to go. That's why I was hoping the things I needed last night I could do it.

I can't do it because it's not the for a thing. God damn it. It is always fun when you have those moments and you're like, oh, I just could have. The answer is more simple than we would ever expect. Of course, of course. But yeah, I'm so impressed. Like I was already so looking forward to this.

When Bless came back from New York at that preview and was like, dude, this could be your game of the year, the way you play Animal Crossing, the way you play all these kind of games. I'm stoked that it landed this way. It is so great. I think it's such a nice compliment to have it alongside Leaf Green, where it's like, there is no,

somebody asked a long time ago, there is no fighting, there's no battling, anything like that in this game. It's just living in a peaceful Pokemon world and meeting Pokemon. Of course, you are a Pokemon, so you can actually talk to the Pokemon, which was a trip when you started actually having, conversations like, damn, that's cool. I like that. That's weird.

Good stuff, man. Good stuff all around. I just can't wait to play more. Yeah, I know. That is definitely it. You know, I'm right there with you, Joey. We'll be playing Thursday, of course, on the games cast plays. Jordan, what is it? Are you, is your coverage done for Pokemon, Pokopia? Editorially, yeah, we'll do bits and pieces once it's launched. But for me, I need to get this Pocodex complete. My biggest, the biggest joy of reviewing games is, being able to it's impossible to spoil me on a game because you do not have it like the general public cannot put the whole thing on TikTok and this game is full of

moments that you should not be spoiled on so I need to see the last couple of secrets that it has left for me and I think that as you play this game you will continue to think what is this story doing and how dark are they going to get this is that Pokemon game like what what could possibly be going on here and let me tell you the answer I could not believe I can't wait. I'm dying to fucking wait.

All right. So nine's across the board from all of us here. That kind of funny. And of course, VGC, where you should keep up with Jordan Miller,

VGC. dot news, Patreon.com slash video games chronicle. Anything else you want to promote Jordan? Um, just the idea of

giving VGC money because we desperately desperately need it. Do you think Andy can afford to have me sitting playing two million hours of Pocopia

and putting up no news the site's going to be on its knees i'm joking kiskelyan does all the news i just i just float around and play Pokemon and um buy Pokemon cards etc and so on but no um thank you to kind of funny as always for all the support the amount of people in our discord and in our comments and things like that that say oh we we came over from kind of funny we appreciate you best friends very dearly as someone who has been a best friend before best friends were even kicking a ball i was i was back in the day you know who ryan clements is i do So it's a joy of a life to be on the channel and to spend so much time annoying you, Greg.

So thank you. I love it so much, Jordan. You could never annoy us. You're the best. Everybody go follow VGC. Of course, you hear us talk about them all the time and kind of funny games daily. More importantly, go over there, click on his review. So Andy goes, wow, this got a lot of traffic today.

They go do that. We can take credit for it somehow. That'll be great. Joey, of course, thank you for coming in. Thank you. I'm excited for this place. I want to see your world. I want you to see my world.

I know. That was my whole thing. I was like, now I got to get in shape for Thursday. When you were like, now we're going to stop playing. I'm like,

no, I can't show up looking like a schlub. I know. I have so much stuff everywhere. Everybody, thank you for watching. Remember, of course, Kind of Funny Games cast runs you

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But until next time, it's been our pleasure to serve you. Ditto!