Miitopia

Miitopia (2016) is a role-playing adventure game where you embark on a quest to save your friends and thwart a Dark Lord's evil plans. You do this by recruiting various cartoon-looking characters to join your party in turn-based battles with the Dark Lord's monsters. It's an unusual game because you need to nudge the relationships in your party in a positive direction as this then helps in the combat.

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You begin in a town attacked by the Dark Lord, who steals the faces of townspeople and plants them onto peaceful creatures -- transforming them into monsters. You gather a party of heroes, who can resemble famous people or those in your family. They help you work to defeat the Dark Lord's monsters and free the townspeople's faces.

As you progress, you unlock jobs for your party, such as Warrior, Thief, or even a Pop Star. Each of these offers unique abilities, like the Warrior is great at melee combat. Along the way your party builds relationships with one another, benefitting your effectiveness in battle. For example, if a character praises another after they defeat an enemy, it grows their bond and gives a bonus to the recipient's next move.

Although these relationships have a life of their own, you can help by placing them in the same room during Inn rests, or getting them to support each other in combat with Skills like Healing. During these rest periods, you also send characters on independent expeditions in search of better equipment or items.

This results in a quirky, humourous adventure where the characters take on a social-life of their own. Some may find this becomes overly repetitive, but the simple interactions make it a game you can play casually while watching something else. It creates a novel experience that focuses on using the power of friendship to save the world.

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Our examiner, Joe Eaton, first checked Miitopia 20 months ago. It was re-examined by Jo Robertson and updated 10 months ago.