Miitopia Review-in-progess Part 3: Have Mii, Will Travel

Once upon a time, there was a game called Miitopia. In this game, there were turn-based rpg battles and strange trips to Inns. But how do you get from point A (battles) to point B (inns)? How do you move around in Miitopia? And is it interesting? Let’s find out the answers to these questions!

There is no open world in Miitopia. Instead, the map in this game is kind of like the one you find in modern Fire Emblem games: lines that go to dots! You travel the lines, go to the dots & press A, and then you’re in a level. Unlike Fire Emblem though, the levels consist of a lot of walking.

In town levels, you control the walking around. In combat levels, inside and outside of dungeons, the characters automatically walk. These levels are 2D side scrolling; the characters walk left to right. There is a map of the characters progress on the bottom screen. The player can speed up the walking by moving their stylus in front of the progress bar on the bottom screen.

Here’s a warning though: if you speed up the pace of the walking, you may miss some random goofy dialogue!

Goofy dialogue? What am I talking about? Well, as your party walks a level, they will say random things, such as “I want a cat”, “I wonder what that one person we helped is doing..”, etc. Some of the comments are pretty funny. The only problem is, wait for it…repetition. You guessed it. The characters will repeat some of these comments over and over again.

And there are some much funnier moments than their random comments. Sometimes, one or more of your group will stop in the middle of walking and just talk about something random. I’ve seen a lot of strange scenes with my party. Though, yes, there is some repeating scenes for this too.

During this period of walking is when you also run into random battles! The walking time is not boring, although I did find myself speeding things along sometimes. You just never know what’ll happen in these levels though.

The actual levels, dungeons, and towns of Miitopia are really well done. I like the simple but sometimes surprising world map too. There are hidden paths and interesting routes that you can take and the world map is easily assessable to rpg newbies. Miitopia is a well designed game. Its amazing how it takes elements from strategy rpg, jrpg, and sim games and it all works!

We’ll be back Monday with a look at Miitopia’s graphics and sound. Yes, the game plays well but how are the graphics? How is the music? What about the sound effects? We’ll take a look at all that.