Everyone knows I love (J)RPGs, so it should come as no surprise that when I heard about an RPG you can stick Miis in and watch their Tomadachi Life-esque interactions, I was intrigued. Now that the demo is available on the eShop, I picked it up and played through it, and figured I’d do a post about it because why not.

The gist, for those of you unaware, is that you are a traveler in a fantasy world inhabited by Miis. A Dark Lord has begun stealing people’s faces and sticking them on monsters, so you must form a party, fight these monsters, and rescue everyone’s faces. One of the main draws is that everyone here is a Mii. Whenever you are introduced to a new player character, or other key characters such as the Dark Lord, you are asked to cast a Mii in that role, and can do so either by importing one from the 3DS Mii Maker, using data from Tomodachi Life, looking through a list of Miis people have shared online, or just creating a new one right then and there. In a town, the NPCs are all automatically cast using a random selection of shared Miis, but you can change any Mii in the game from the menu. For the player characters you are also asked to choose a personality type, as well as a Job. (I didn’t realize it had a Job System going in, this made me so happy you don’t even know.)

Here’s who I ended up using:

-Pahrak, the laid-back Warrior

-Kairi, the kind Chef

-Ruka, the cautious Mage

-Riku, the cool Thief

-And for the Dark Lord, I skimmed the shared Miis and ended up picking someone’s Waluigi Mii

The various personality types have perks that activate from time to time. Laid-back characters can become “unusually focused” to power up their attacks, or hide behind an ally who takes damage for them. (I’m so sorry Kairi.) They also have an ability to avoid getting status ailments, entitled “Nah.” Kind characters will sometimes go easy on an enemy and not actually attack them, and the enemy will either strike while their guard is down (I’m so sorry Kairi) or be grateful and leave the battle. A cautious character will sometimes take a little extra time to warmup, powering up their attack. Cool characters, meanwhile, will sometimes aim for an enemy’s weak spot to do extra damage, and can also avoid damage entirely with a smooth sidestep. The Jobs available in the demo are Warrior (attack and defense), Mage (magic damage), Cleric (healing), Thief (speed, stealing, normal attack hits all enemies), Chef (attack and healing), and Pop Star (buffs).

There’s a lot of little things that go into this system, so I don’t have time to go over each and every one. Some things I’m a bit uncertain about, such as your Mii, the traveler, being the only one you actually control. The rest of the party is controlled by AI, though it seems a fairly competent AI, and you have some support options available separately from whatever Job your Mii is using. Shops, too, are oddly random—when your characters reach an inn at the end of each area, each character will pick something they want to buy (either a restorative item, their next tier of armor, or their next tier weapon), and you decide who to give the money to. It seems to be random, so if you really want that new sword for your Warrior but they want an HP Banana, you’ve got to go on another adventure and see what they’re thinking after that. Apparently, there’s also a chance that the character will by something other than what they set out to get, but I haven’t encountered that yet. You could say there’s an unusual lack of control here, but…somehow, the game is still a lot of fun. I guess the idea is you’re supposed to trust your party members to do their own thing and back you up? And I mean, that’s essentially the function of the relationship system: you can do various things to bring two characters closer together, and with each new level gained you unlock extra perks such as showing off to do more damage, warning of an incoming attack for a better dodge chance, and comforting someone after they’re hit to raise the relationship value even further. When everyone’s showing off at once, you can lay down some serious hurt.

Since this is a demo it’s obviously not super long. There’s only one town, and a handful of its NPCs have their faces taken and placed on boss monsters; once you defeat them you can go put the face back where it belongs to get a reward, and after restoring everyone in that town, you’re given a key item to pass the castle gate…only for the guard to tell you the demo ends here. But, the available areas will give you a few hours of gameplay, and even after reaching the gate you can still grind if you want. Did I mention the demo’s save data can be transferred to the full version of the game? And since one of the last areas is really good for grinding, I still feel like there’s a lot of value in continuing to play. My characters’ levels and equipment tiers are steadily rising, and more than that, a count of how many enemies you’ve defeated is kept, and at every 50 you get upgrades to your support options. When I do get the full version (which I probably will), I’ll be unstoppable!

(…Though, spoilers, I hear there are two points in the game where your level gets reset, so it’ll probably be short-lived. Not sure what to think about that…)

Anyway, for a relatively short demo of a seemingly simple game, Miitopia has some thoroughly entertaining content for you to play around with, and the transfer function is great incentive to delve deeper into it than you might otherwise. If I can afford it, I definitely want to pick up the full game when it comes out, and I’ll probably keep playing the demo so I’ll be more prepared when I do. It’s not perfect, but when you’ve got a mix of classic RPG flavor and Nintendo humor, how can you possibly say no?