7 Reasons You Should Really Be Playing Yo-kai Watch

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard of a little thing called Yo-kai Watch. The game and the show are taking the world by storm, and for good reason. They’re kinda really great!
If you’ve played the game or watched the show, we’re sure you’re as hooked on it as we are, but for those of you who are on the fence about giving it a try, we made a list of all the reasons you should totally give it a chance!

7 Reasons You Should Really Be Playing (or Watching) Yo-kai Watch

1. It’s pretty darn funny.
No, really. These weird little ghosties are always cracking jokes and making puns. (and even stealing people’s underwear!) Not to mention the fact that most of them are really weird looking or have funny names. (Cheeksqueak, anyone? He literally looks like a butt.) Most of them aren’t quite as cute as Pokemon, but there’s a few like Jibanyan and Komasan (basically all the ones that look like cats) that are simply adorable. With over 200 Yo-kai to discover, you’re bound to find some favs and the game will have you LOL’ing the entire way through.

2. The battling is really cool and different.
The battle system in the game is pretty awesome. Instead of picking individual moves for the Yo-kai on your team, like most games, they actually fight on their own. Early on in the game, you barely even need to interfere at all unless you really want to.
There are 4 options you can choose from in order to help out your team during battle:
– Soultimate allows you to play a mini game to charge up your Yo-kai and let them perform a special move. The mini games are pretty simple – tap a bunch of blobs really fast or trace shapes without messing up. But it keeps your mind on the battle more than just picking and choosing moves from a list.
– Purify is used for healing wounded Yo-kai.
– Target lets you target specific foes or even weak spots on bosses, which can actually come in handy during tougher battles.
– Item lets you give helpful items to your team or lets you bribe the Foes into becoming your friends using food (a method that works pretty well in real life as well!)

You play with 3 of your Yo-kai team at once, rather than just one at a time and you actually have access to 6 of them at any given time. Your team is laid out for you on a wheel, so you have access to all 6 of your squad at once while battling.
If one gets hurt, just spin the wheel to bring another into the battle. Putting Yo-kai of the same tribe next to each on the wheel other gives them Unity power that makes them stronger.

Even finding the Yo-kai is fun. You have a little radar that lets you know when a Yo-kai presence is detected, and you move your stylus around the screen trying to find it. Once it appears, you have to keep the stylus focused on the creature for a few seconds in order to capture it.

3. You can evolve your Yo-kai to power them up
There’s three ways to do this:
– Synthesis lets you fuse your Yo-kai with everyday objects to transform them into stronger, and sometimes even rare Yo-kai.
– Fusion can only be done by Mr. Zen, but he can fuse two Yo-kai together into truly powerful creature. (Try fusing Jibanyan and Roughraff together. Trust us. The result is amazing. HINT: It’s the rad looking purple cat rocking the sunglasses like it’s his job.)
– Evolution happens automatically when Yo-kai reach a certain level, allowing them to transform into an even better version of themselves.

4. The quests are absolutely ridiculous in the best way possible.
Stopping your parents from having a fight about yogurt, resolving issues about which ramen is best, helping a chocolate loving cat who won’t stop throwing himself into traffic because his owner called him lame for dying. Each quest is more ridiculous than the last and it really helps move the game along and keep you interested. It’s just so silly you can’t help but want to know what happens next.

5. It teaches us all about the importance of traffic safety.
You better properly follow the traffic signals, or you’ll end up paying the price in a battle with a super strong Yo-kai!

6. You now have something to blame all of your problems on.
Late for school? Blame it on a Yo-kai. Bestie in a bad mood today? Blame it on a Yo-kai. As you’ll learn from playing the game, pretty much everything bad and weird can be blamed on Yo-kai. Since they’re ghosts, they spend their days haunting the world around them and causing lots of trouble.

7. There’s lots of other modes to unlock in the game.
You can unlock modes that let you battle with your friends (even if they don’t have the game) and use the 3DS camera to take pictures of Yo-kai in the real world. Then of course, there’s StreetPass, which allows you to meet Yo-kai and collect gifts you might not have gotten otherwise.

7. There’s an equally amazing TV Series!
Not really into gaming? Not a problem! Peep the trailer for a taste of what you can expect on the show. You can catch full episodes on Disney XD or on the official Yo-kai Watch YouTube channel. The show is just as over the top bizarre as the game. If you love the game or the cartoon, you’re in luck, because there’s a slew of toys and other merch to get your hands on to show off your Yo-kai obsession. You know you wanna get your hands on an IRL Yo-kai Watch to slap on your wrist and go on ghost hunting adventures around your town.