I had things to do that weekend that didn’t go through endless chance encounters in the console port of a ridiculous four year old 3DS RPG. The problem I ran into was that none of these other things were as simple and straightforward as picking up my pro controller and jumping back Mythopia for a battle or two dozen.
I haven’t played the 3DS version of Mythopia. It came out in 2017 when it seemed silly to play anything on my 3DS, especially an absurd homage to Japanese turn-based role-playing games featuring Nintendo’s player-created Mii characters. How much fun could this be?
So much fun.
Set in a fantasy world populated by Nintendo Mii characters. Mythopia is the story of a brave group of adventurers who want to stop the Dark Lord from stealing the faces of ordinary people and turning them into animated, world-conquering monsters like butterflies and spiders. Each of the game’s enemies is a monster with a stolen Mii face. Sometimes it’s just a single feature like the nose or eyes. Another time it’s the whole face. It would be creepy if the whole thing wasn’t so stupid.
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The players first create their personal avatar, the character they control during the game. I went with my personal Mii, a bald man with a beard and glasses because I’m living this fantasy life, yo. Other characters soon join in, each created from scratch or assigned a Mii character from those on your Switch or downloaded from friends using codes. I used the Miis I made for my family members, twins Archer and Seamus and my partner Eugene. It’s a family affair, my goodness Mythopia Run.
When I make my group members out of family members, the game is more fun for me and more personal. As my characters get to know each other and their relationship levels rise, I see all sorts of cool interactions between my teammates. Archer praised his mother for a particularly effective attack, and Seamus stepped in to protect his father from attack.
As the game progresses, you’ll be given outing tickets that allow you to send out a few characters on a specific date, improve their relationship, and unlock cooperative combat moves. There’s something very cute about taking my virtual spouse to virtual karaoke or virtual fishing with one of my virtual boys.
Unfortunately, at certain points during the game you are separated from your party and forced to adopt a new character class and create new companions. Fortunately, the game allows Miis to be used as characters as many times as you’d like. So I have three full sets of Seamus, Archer, and Eugene characters. I also used Eugenes Mii for the Dark Lord’s face and Seamus for the weirdly overeating king. It’s a whole world of faheys.
Mythopia It’s easy to learn: it loads quickly, with the push of a button, and you’re in an inn with all of your characters ready to eat, buy gear, meet up, or start adventures. These adventures take place in a series of levels that your group will automatically traverse. You take a break when you come across things like forks in the street, treasure chests, or enemies to fight. Battles are relatively simple, or at least so simple that most enemies automatically take care of auto battles.
At the end of a level, your group will return to the inn, where gold can be spent, food eaten, dates eaten and prizes can be won. This is the cycle of Mythopiaand it took hold of me firmly in its claws. It’s a pointless spiral of fun that I can’t escape and that won’t escape until the credits roll in.
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