The reviews have come in for the charming-looking Detective Pikachu Returns, and they are decidedly mixed, with the game sitting at 68 on the review aggregation site Metacritic. Reviewers report some notable improvements over the original game and a few things that detract them from the experience, including some decidedly empty open spaces. Though if you were a fan of the original, this is still surely on your wish list. Detective Pikachu Returns is out this Friday, and our review will be published in due course. For now, here are some excerpts from some of the notable reviews which were published earlier today.
“However, after years of anticipation for part two to come out, is the Pokemon franchise’s return to Ryme City worth the wait? Thankfully, the answer is a resounding yes! Detective Pikachu Returns delivers a charming story that is not only a satisfying resolution to Tim Goodman’s saga but is also a heartwarming adventure that lets players see a new side to many of their favorite Pokemon.”
“Detective Pikachu Returns is a charming Pokemon mystery adventure that is anchored by a heartfelt story. While its cases are accessible and just mildly challenging, the game’s puzzle-solving and level designs are incredibly fun. Where Detective Pikachu Returns really shines, though, is how it shows off the unique personalities of every Pokemon in a way the franchise has rarely done before. Ultimately, the long-awaited sequel is a satisfying conclusion to Tim Goodman and Pikachu’s saga. But the spinoff is worth diving into regardless if you’ve played the original, as you will get to see your favorite Pokemon fleshed out like you’ve never seen before.”
Siliconera 8/10
“Don’t worry if you didn’t play the 2016 original. The opening of Detective Pikachu Returns includes a quick, handy recap of the most important events that you really need to know in order to conceptually understand what’s about to happen in the new game, and it’s not like it assumes you already know how its mechanics work. There are a few tweaks compared to the original, which do seem for the better, but actually playing should feel relatively familiar to anyone with prior experience.”
“And there is a lot of back and forth. I frequently found myself butting up against just how fast Tim or Pikachu could move because it was never quite fast enough to make traversal across environments anything but time consuming. It’s not that the spaces are particularly big or unwieldy; they are just largely empty and devoid of anything to do once you’ve been through once or twice, despite the fact that it feels like the game sends you through far more than that. It’s a double whammy, in that it is just big enough to feel empty and annoying while not big enough to feel a real sense of place.”
“My opinion of Detective Pikachu Returns is largely summarized by how I feel about Pikachu’s little running animation. It’s delightful to see him run pell-mell after Tim, hat flapping about, off to his little job that he finds such pride in. It’s just the right amount of serious, which is to say only barely. But it’s repetitive, and as charming as it is, the joy I initially found had diminishing returns. In the end, instead of chuckling, I only found myself wishing he’d run faster so that the busywork on the other end of his journey would be over all the more swiftly.”
Games Radar+ 3/5
“Detective Pikachu Returns tries something different. It introduces a lot of parts early on without specifically revealing the purpose of the puzzling objects at its center, and then takes its time explaining their meaning. Without getting into too many details, a priceless gem is stolen, but then that stone becomes central to the larger events, but its true purpose remains unknown for most of my estimated 17-hour runtime. Even though there are a lot of other moving parts, it’s not too complicated to figure out their places in the plot, and it’s still satisfying to watch them come together. It’s a bit predictable, though, and you’ll very likely figure it out way before the characters do.”
“As I mentioned, this is a family-oriented visual novel, so none of the cases are too complex. In fact, it seems like Nintendo has taken it down a notch from the first one, which was already clearly targeted at younger players. Gone are many of the more complicated puzzles and how the clues and evidence are laid out. Previously, you had to sometimes approach an investigation by picking apart a conversation and highlighting a word, or having to decipher symbols that even Detective Pikachu won’t reveal the answer to. “
“The mystery story of Detective Pikachu Returns makes some bizarre and unexpectedly dark choices to get to its underwhelmingly predictable conclusion, and as a result it’s unclear who this is all for. Is it for young kids who will find the simplified puzzles about right, or adults who grew up with Pikachu and can handle the more mature themes of the second half? It’s still a cute, bubbly, animated adventure with humor, unique pokemon to meet, and a mystery to solve, but the mystery solving is long-winded, the visuals are lackluster, and the gameplay is so basic it might as well not be there at al”
IGN 6.10
