The mystery is how we got here
I love me some Pokémon, ever since I first saw the anime laid up in bed with an injury as a freshman in high school. Ash Ketchum the forever ten-year-old and his sassy Pikachu who wasn’t going to stay in its Poke ball and of course my favorite the Squirtle squad leader with this cool sunglass all helped pass the time toward the long wait to fall when the game launched on Game Boy. You best believe I was there day one with Pokémon Blue and I have loved Pokémon ever since and have always thought it would work outside of the traditional RPG genre. Enter Detective Pikachu, a mystery solving game and while I never played the original, I did see the live action movie and enjoyed it, so I hoped I would feel the same about Detective Pikachu Returns.
MSRP: $49.99
Platforms: Switch
Price I’d Pay: $39.99
DPR takes place two years after the original adventure which I learned was on the 3DS. Tim and Pikachu are known for solving an issue that was affecting Pokémon but they still haven’t found Harry; Tim’s father. The game as a whole is separated into a series of cases that allow exploration of various areas through Rhyme City. The tutorial case sees the duo trying to find Pikachu’s hat which was stolen by a Corviknight. The cases all end up feeling like me and that could be due to the game being aimed at kids. However, I found a lot of joy in interviewing the various Pokémon; it’s nice to interact with these creatures outside of shoving them into balls and making them fight.
Detective Pikachu Returns has side quests which they call Local Concerns. These cases are given by humans or Pokémon and are usually different. There is one that comes up quite a bit that involves the Quiz Professor which is actually enjoyable, but they all offer a little diversion from the overall plot of mysteriously kidnapped- Pokénapped Pokémon and of course the case of Tim’s missing father.
Visually DPR is just ‘meh’ as it doesn’t look terrible but on the aging Switch it looks well enough. If you’ve played the latest mainline games in Scarlet and Violet then you have a feel for the visuals. The one issue I had was how empty the city felt even though it’s a very large area. I mentioned above how much I liked interacting with the Pokémon and all this empty space was primed for the developers to add in new creatures hanging out and its just sad to see all this wasted space.
I was happy to see that one of the features allows for Pikachu to ask other Pokémon for help with investigations. Using a Growlithe that can be used to track scent trails or a Luxray with the ability to see thru walls shows the fun that could be had in DPR. Sadly, this feature is underused, unlike the areas where players will control Pikachu and need to stealthily move about. Some of these tasks and even some of the side quests just feel like a need to make the game feel longer and made me long for more time with Growlith or another equally as cool Pokémon.
As I said at the outset, I never played the original game and only saw the movie. While I loved the movie’s story and heart, Detective Pikachu Returns at the end of the day just felt boring to me. In my opinion the best part about the game that sees players use partner Pokémon was wildly underused and the game would have been more fun with more of those. In a year like 2023 where Nintendo is dropping games like Legend of Zelda: TotK, Pikmin 4, Mario Wonder and more I think we can forgive them for having one case that was closed too early.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
