Yo-Kai Watch Blasters: White Dog Squad

Genre: Top-Down Monster-Collecting Action-RPG

Players: 1-4 Co-Op (Local Wireless), StreetPass Supported

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Review:

Yo-Kai Watch Blasters is a Top-Down Monster-Collecting Action-RPG released on Nintendo 3DS in 2018. This game is based on the Blasters minigame that was present in Yo-Kai Watch 2, and it was released in two versions – Red Cat Corps and White Dog Squad, with each version offering a different set of monsters to encounter. Later in 2018, both versions received a major free update, titled Moon Rabbit Crew, downloadable via the eShop.

As a game derived from Yo-Kai Watch 2, it won’t come as a great surprise to see that this game’s presentation shares a lot in common with that one. Which is to say, it’s colorful and cartoony, but not especially impressive. In fact, I would argue that this game looks even less impressive due to the majority of the action taking place a great distance away from the characters, meaning most of the time you won’t see any of their detail. What’s more, while Yo-Kai Watch 1 and 2 featured a decent amount of voice acting, Blasters is like the series’ third game in this regard as the voice clips have been pared down to short expressions. The result is a game that probably has the most underwhelming presentation in the entire Yo-Kai series.

When it comes to the gameplay, one of my frequent complaints about the Yo-Kai Watch series is how indirect and hands-off the combat is, and Blasters seems to aim to correct that, giving players a squad of four of the odd spirit-like Yo-Kai characters to lead into battles that they can freely swap between and directly control. Unfortunately, despite this game retaining a diverse cast of collectable Yo-Kai to form your team with, their move sets are all simple and not particularly interesting, making combat a dull, repetitive affair no matter how you build your team.

You might hope that these issues could be offset somewhat by decent character customization, but you would once again be disappointed – each character can be leveled independently, and equip one stat-enhancing item and one use item, and that’s it. Diablo, this ain’t.

There’s one final element to touch on here, and that is this game’s dual release. As with Yo-Kai Watch 2, the twin releases here seem largely unnecessary. In fact, the characters’ abilities are so bland that I can’t imagine players feeling like they’re missing out terribly by getting one version instead of the other.

In the end, as much as Yo-Kai Watch Blasters would seem to be an answer to my wish for a Yo-Kai game that gives players more direct control, it seems like this was one of those “monkey’s paw” wishes, as the action here is bland and repetitive, character customization is extremely limited, and the presentation is arguably the worst in the series. Only the most die-hard Yo-Kai fans should bother with this one… and probably not even most of those, either.

tl;dr – Yo-Kai Watch Blasters is a Top-Down Monster-Collecting Action-RPG that has players directly controlling a four-character squad in dull, repetitive combat with poor character customization and a lackluster presentation. Even fans of the Yo-Kai Watch series are likely to lose interest in this game before too long.

Grade: C-

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