Full disclosure: I really like Pokémon. I played the heck out of Blue as a kid, only returning to the series for X and Y on 3DS but getting hooked all over again. So while I want to judge Yo-kai Watch on its own merits, that's probably impossible... especially since I started playing on Pokémon's 20th anniversary!
So if the comparison's unavoidable, why bother avoiding it? Here's how it compared to the most recent Pokémon generation, at least for me.
The Good
Yo-kai Watch is beautiful! The colors, characters and environments feel vibrant and alive. The animation is really terrific. Side-by-side, Yo-kai Watch is just a prettier game than the most recent generation of Pokémon games... and with none of that series' odd 3D restrictions or framerate issues!
The world of Yo-kai Watch feels very "lived-in." I appreciated the game's side quests, which help illustrate that this world is about more than Yo-Kai... Pokémon's famously shallow and monster-obsessed NPCs feel incredibly two-dimensional by comparison!
Many of the Yo-kai designs are truly inventive and appealing.
Yo-kai Watch simplifies grinding by rewarding your entire party with XP for any task they could conceivably learn from, most commonly battles and side quests. As a fan of Pokémon's controversial Exp. Share, I appreciate the lack of guesswork and the relative ease of leveling up one's party.
The mechanic of "befriending" Yo-kai (rather than "catching" them) and the way the game presents their personalities makes them feel more like real, full-fledged characters than trained animals.
The "Meh"
I can take or leave Yo-kai Watch's battle system. Sometimes it feels truly fun and engaging in a way turn-based battles never can be: You're watching a battle play out, and the speed with which you react to certain situations can play a big part in how successful you'll be in battle. But over the course of the game, I found myself using the "fast-forward" option a majority of the time. Perhaps it's preferable to wait for a battle's foregone conclusion rather than manually stepping through such battles as in Pokémon, but it feels less engaging overall.
It didn't help that Yo-kai Watch lacks the simple "rock/paper/scissors" strength and weakness mechanic of Pokémon. There's no straightforward equivalent to "water extinguishes fire." It hints at it, and I'm sure it's in there somewhere, but mostly I just powered through the battles and did fine.
As pretty as Yo-kai Watch is, it also feels much smaller than any of Pokémon's famous regions. The map's four quadrants feel only subtly different from one another, which detracts slightly from the epic-ness of the adventure.
The Bad
The actual mechanic of "befriending" Yo-Kai never stops feeling like a total crap shoot. You eventually learn (possibly through trial-and-error but more likely through Google) that certain Yo-kai like certain food, or that having some Yo-kai in your party will result in a higher success rate of making friends. Neither of these factors ever seem to result in a tangibly better success rate. As someone who enjoys the collecting aspect of Pokémon a lot, it's a real shame that collecting Yo-kai medals involves so little strategy... it is the number one reason I'm fine with my incomplete Yo-kai Medallium.
Another reason is that many Yo-kai are only subtle "palette swaps" of another. While the Pokémon series gets accused of poor creature designs in recent entries, I can at least tell the difference between a Minun and a Plusle. By contrast, the Yo-kai Medallium is padded with tons of characters with identical animations and models. Just try to tell the difference between a Compunzer and Lamedian without consulting a wiki.
Yo-kai Watch's map is pure insanity. Despite the majority of the game's length coming from side quests, you can't set a custom marker. And because Yo-kai Watch's environments are so much more organic than Pokémon's, a functional map is far more necessary. I found myself mostly ignoring side quests until Mirapo let me warp.
You have to wait for cross-walks. Honestly, why?
Takeaways
Yo-kai Watch is a fun spin on the Pokémon formula and a fine compliment to that series. Though it lacks the refinement of the Pokémon games in terms of interface and gameplay, it contributes enough new ideas to justify its existence. I'd play future entries in the series.
