A key sign of both The Pokémon Company and its home developers in Game Freak and Creatures relaxing regulations in the face of Pikachu's enduring popularity, which is a direction we should all celebrate. While thankfully nothing reaches beyond a G rating, Detective Pikachu's eye-grabbing concept is unlike anything the series has ever accomplished before: there's no starry-eyed youths seeking adventure, but a young adult cast on the job; no far-off dreams of being No. 1, but personal drive and soul-searching to discover oneself. All hardly adult, yes, but new territory just the same.
Moreover, Detective Pikachu is a rather rare sort of Pokémon spin-off: there exist games like Pokémon Pinball and Pokémon Snap -- titles that don't revolve around battles -- but even scarcer is the sort revolving around their everyday interactions with humans. Only Hey You, Pikachu! and Pokémon Channel spring to mind, and despite my fond memories for the former, their focus on toddlers hinders their appeal. Detective Pikachu not only avoids this as a mystery-solving adventure game, but its mere premise -- an amnesiac Pikachu searching for his lost memories with the son of his former boss -- immediately dives into a greater picture: namely, how the everyday world of Pokémon operates. Granted, the born cynic would point out such a world would end in apocalypse -- from the very first generation alone, the innate destruction composing Gyarados and Charizard would be catastrophic in everything from unsupervised children to terrorist attacks -- but some simple suspension of disbelief can't smother our fascination in Yenma serving as camera crew, Alakazam as the makeshift guardian of an abandoned amusement park's stray inhabitants, an Accelgor is the police chief's partner, and a lone Mimikyu longing to become a television star.
It also looks really good for 3DS; like, astonishingly, amazingly good. Even putting the actual tech-work aside, the style alone is enough to turn heads -- while thankfully Detective Pikachu doesn't entirely smash series boundaries and dive head-first into realistic humans and monsters (not that The Pokémon Company would've green-lit such a direction in the first place), it's not within Ken Sugimori's signature style, the ever-popular anime, or any other spin-off. Nay, Detective Pikachu remembers the American origins of the "hard-boiled detective" our favorite Pokémon channels, and so we end up with a fleshy Western-styled cast that echoes classic American animation.
In short, it's an alien take on Pokémon; a risk only applicable within the quarantined confines of a spin-off. Thematically, Detective Pikachu works; as an actual game, however, there's room for improvement. Let it be known I've long since fallen out of favor in Pokémon spin-offs -- my familiarity is largely restricted to the Nintendo 64/Game Boy Color era, and while I know there's great titles beyond that nostalgic era (the first Pokémon Mystery Dungeon, for instance), the mediocrity of Pokémon Colosseum and Pokémon Channel weren't soon forgotten -- but even if that weren't the case, I imagine I'd struggle listing Detective Pikachu among the top despite its novelty.
First and foremost, this is still a game designed for children, and while that's hardly offensive in itself, its painless difficulty never let you forget it. I can only think of one puzzle towards the end -- a late-game auction involving numbers -- that gave me any trouble, and that may only be because I'm not a math guy. Otherwise, most everything else is easily deducible, with Pikachu all but pointing out the most necessary of clues thanks to his audio cues. On one hand, in our QOL era, it's humbling Detective Pikachu doesn't want its young audience to waste time, but it comes at the expense of actual hard-earned detective work.
It's been mentioned its easiness lies within there being no real penalties. Granted, I'm not quite sure how that'd work here given how much of it revolves around crime-scene deductions (as opposed to, say, courtroom penalties in Ace Attorney), but as you're walked through most everything, there's no real sense of urgency or stress in crime-solving. Only the quick-time events come close, but they're so effortless I never came close to discovering what occurs upon failure (and even then, barring the climax, they're hardly satisfying attempts at engagement in themselves).
Let's also not beat around the bush and admit Detective Pikachu is a game designed as a serial; in other words, by the game's end, it's abundantly clear it's the set-up for a franchise. Diving into spoiler territory for a moment, it's dedicated to solving more pressing mysteries ("Who is spreading the R Drug?") as opposed to the central one ("Why can Pikachu talk?"); in other words, what happens is interesting, but the build-up for our most desired answers never fully pays off, and I can't deny it doesn't feel like a cop-out.
And yet, boy, is this first chapter fun. While the human cast isn't particularly inventive, it'd be wrong to dismiss them as boilerplate -- the presence of a hard-boiled Pikachu demands an older cast, and so we end up with not doe-eyed children or cartoonish villains but a cast largely exclusive to grown-ups. It could be said our human protagonist in Tim Goodman -- an up-and-coming detective searching for his father, who was Pikachu's former partner -- is merely our vehicle for this new world, but that he's charting new territory is what makes him engaging: be it tackling not world-ending catastrophes but local conspiracies regarding a loved one, navigating the ins-and-outs of everyday Pokémon life, and perhaps even falling in love, we do ultimately root for him.
Of course, it's the titular character that steals the show. To say Detective Pikachu is the most radical deviation yet for Pokémon would be an understatement; obviously, Creatures didn't have him go full-on hard-boiled, and having him cursing like a sailor, violently beating humans and sleeping with Pokémon within his specified Field/Fairy egg groups, but even a child-appropriate "lite" version of this character trope is stunning to witness. Be it his fondness for human women or just listening to his gruff voice courtesy of Kaiji Tang -- who previously won our hearts in Fire Emblem Awakening as the passionate pretender Owain -- it's impossible not to be captivated by the little gremlin even if the much-anticipated Danny DeVito take didn't become reality. If you don't watch his Pika Prompts -- random vignettes depicting his absent-minded foibles -- I suggest you reevaluate your priorities.
The localization is overtly solid, which is vital in a game such as this. As an avid Ace Attorney fan, I know all too well the pain of typos and misspellings leaking through the cracks, and in a voice-heavy game as this one, it's humbling to know The Pokémon Company pulled through (of course, their experience in other text-heavy games like the Mystery Dungeon series assured otherwise). The script takes itself just seriously enough to maintain what's ultimately a fun story, and so there's nary a cheesy line in sight (really, I only recall "nice to meet you" being said a lot for whatever reason, and, well, that's not much of a complaint). Also watch for a blink-and-you'll-miss reference to the anime, involving a certain song lyric Nintendo's localizers can't resist referencing.
Despite itself, Detective Pikachu did not set the world on fire, and yet, for a game I simply found "good," I ultimately have no qualms with any disappointments found within. Neither a god-given miracle nor an abomination desecrating the very name of Pokémon, that it merely succeeds on a pleasant "just fine" means we have a successful blueprint capable of malleable evolution; in other words, a risk well taken, and one we will certainly see elaborated upon. I eagerly look forward not merely to Part Two, but whatever that live-action/CGI movie adaption will bring next year.
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