For 90% of the time, the combat featured in Yokai Watch 2 is very hands off. In most random encounters, so long as you aren't trying to get the enemy to join you, the player can go make a sandwich while the battle resolves itself. Yokai battles work on a 3 vs 3 basis, with all of the player's Yokai and the enemy Yokai all attacking and doing abilities automatically. So long as you've got a Yokai that heals occasionally, you're pretty much set for all common encounters. If you're in a hurry, you can activate a Soultimate, a move Yokai can use once a meter is filled. Doing so requires doing a brief mini-game, which I never saw a problem with, actually. If a game wants an attack to have a long wind-up, having the player complete a mini-game isn't a terrible solution, in my opinion. The player can also freely rotate their party, swapping Yokai between the active battle area, and the back area, leading to them having access to six Yokai in every battle. When the player is actually fighting a powerful enemy, combat is a delightful mix of optimizing Yokai locations and waiting for the ideal time to activate a lengthy Soultimate attack. It's just unlikely you'll ever have to work that hard throughout Yokai Watch 2's campaign. Still, I rarely saw the combat as a chore, likely due to how fast it all flows in most instances.
Outside of combat, Yokai Watch 2's world is very open. And with an open map, can you guess what a lot of the quests end up being? That's right, fetch quests! Lots of them. Combine this with the transportation system in the game, having to ride trains, which you actually have to wait a while for every stop, it can get pretty painful to be asked to traverse across the game world for item X. Yet... the game is still fun. There's plenty of side quests and side activities to do all throughout the game, most of which I found pretty enjoyable. It doesn't hurt that Yokai Watch 2 is a pretty game. Interiors in particular are often really well detailed, and the world seems surprisingly alive for a 3DS game. What also helps is the sense of growth the game gives you. Later on, you unlock better transportation abilities, which helps cut down backtracking drastically. The downside to this is that the game starts very slowly, and although I've not played the first game, I've heard the beginning retreads much of that game's events.
The story is... passable. You play as either a boy named Nate or a Girl named Katie. Your Yokai watch you used in the previous game is stolen, along with your memories of Yokai. For the most part, the story is pretty generic Saturday morning cartoon writing. It is generally well written, with there being a few decent jokes here and there. The big conflict between the Fleshy Souls and Bony Spirits isn't that interesting, but most of the time the characters in the story are fairly likable and entertaining. The only character I really felt any connection to was Nathaniel, but I won't spoil his story here.
Spoiler Warning: There is one scenario, however, that I feel the need to talk about. The Final boss is truly one of the worst I have ever seen. It is uniquely awful, being both fairly difficult and requiring that the player utilize a function never properly explained in the game. You will NEED a guide for this boss, and the fact that such an obtuse and poorly designed boss was put in a game aiming at a children's demographic is absolutely insane to me. This is a cheap ploy to either get kids to grind or to get them to buy a strategy guide. Upon reading how to defeat the boss, I didn't personally need to grind, and found the battle fun and difficult, but the battle would've quite simply been impossible on my own. That is BAD game design, plain and simple, and mars an otherwise enjoyable game.
Yokai Watch 2 isn't a perfect game. It is, however, a game I enjoyed a ton. It gets the ideal of pick-up and-play pretty much down pat, and it can be a blast in short bursts. If you're looking for depth in story or game-play, there's better games for you. But if you want a fun time, you could do a lot worse than Yokai Watch 2 Fleshy Souls & Bony Spirits.
My Score: 8.5/10
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