Ooblets offers a smirking fusion of monster collecting, farming simulation, and relationship building. This delightful chill pill is harder to swallow, however, thanks to a lengthy, grueling progression that will test your patience in less than pleasant ways.
The adventure takes players to Badgetown, a quirky village where residents live in harmony with Pokémon-like creatures called Ooblets. Despite your status as a newcomer, the townsfolk turn to you to restore the city to its former glory. This includes quests like reopening buildings and cleaning up junk while making friends at the same time. In many ways, Ooblets feels like a more purposeful Animal Crossing, which appealed to me as someone who prefers working towards specific goals.
Checking off your to-do list requires the help of Ooblets. These critters serve as partners and protectors and come in many types and rarities. Though cute, some of their designs feel uninspired. For every spring-legged jellyfish there’s an ooblet, best described as “a mushroom with a smiley face” or “a simple bird.” Instead of catching Ooblets, you must obtain their seeds and then grow one on your farm. How do you get seeds? Defeating ooblets in dance battles is the humorous take on the game of turn-based combat.
Dance Battles pit squads as large as six ooblets against each other. Orders take the form of cards, adding an element of randomness. Many cards have a point value, and the goal is to play enough to reach a total, represented by a counter, before your opponent. However, they can only play a certain number of cards each turn based on how many beats (basically mana points) they require. You don’t build your deck; Instead, you have a permanent selection of general-purpose cards with Ooblets that bring unique abilities and thus dictate your lineup. One Ooblet burdens the opponent’s deck with useless cards, another focuses on weakening their attack power, while others increase your card’s power by creating Hype.
Despite the strategic elements, dance battles are a walk in the park. I’ve never lost one in 30+ hours of play, and it didn’t matter what combination of ooblets I used since the AI rarely plays aggressively. I wish dance fights would challenge me more because they became an uninteresting formality, especially on quests that require you to complete multiple fights in a row. However, I do respect the combat system as a nice, non-violent introduction to turn-based combat for younger or inexperienced players.
Luckily, most of the experience unfolds on your farm. Not only do you grow new Ooblets, but you also grow crops by plowing land and irrigating it. This became my favorite part of Ooblets. I have enjoyed designing my farm and systems to produce crops as optimally as possible (which sometimes takes days). It gets even better when you construct tools to make the work more autonomous, like B. automatic sprinklers. You can also assign additional Ooblets to your farm to take care of chores like weeding or harvesting the ripe crops while you’re away, which is a nice incentive to keep as many of these little helpers as possible.
Growing crops and gathering materials, whether they’re plucked from the earth, fished from the sea, or recycled from trash, is vital to Ooblet’s progress. Any major quest will require players to deliver bundles of materials, whether it’s restoring Badgetown’s clubhouses, repairing a hot air balloon to travel to new towns, or completing a slew of hol quests. It’s important to always have a little bit of everything with you; You can’t even challenge Ooblets to dance battles unless you’re carrying a specific crop or dish made from it. When you encounter new Ooblets, they lose their excitement when they need a vegetable you left stocked, forcing you to wander home.
Quests began to lose their appeal once I realized they’re the same, sometimes tedious, exercise in farming or gathering materials. As a result, I was often at the mercy of meters and the clock, creating stretches where I meandered with few essential options until a vital resource sprouted or replenished itself. Also, these obstacles to progress sometimes go overboard. On a campaign mission, I had to grind up hundreds of valuable gummies, the game’s currency, to pay an arcade hacker. Another job repeatedly forced me to climb up and down a mountain path guarded by NPCs whose wishes could only be granted by returning home. Rewarding some tasks with Wishies, a secondary currency spent on upgrades, helps, but it’s not enough.
Other items and activities don’t click fully either. Running a store is unnecessarily tedious as batches of items can only be sold in single quantities, making replenishment tedious. Making the rounds to chat the same group of citizens every day to build friendship counters that unlock decent rewards also loses its appeal. I started avoiding the dance barn that hosts dance fight tournaments to win a daily prize because I was bored of the fight. Locations outside of Badgetown offer little incentive to revisit them once you’ve completed their campaign quests, aside from collecting missing Ooblets. Given how important eating food is to keeping your energy up, a gauge that consumes throughout the day and drives many basic actions, I was annoyed that snacks couldn’t be consumed without going to the menu, even if it was equipped.
Ooblets offers solid fun and I enjoy its upbeat tone. I just wish gaming didn’t feel so much like work. Eventually, despite the pride I took in my farm, clearing checklists felt more of a chore than rewarding. It’s fun as long as you’re willing to work for it.
