(I haven't written a view here in a while, hopefully this should still remain pretty clear.)
Miitopia: An Epic Face-Off Between Good and Evil
Having released as of the end of July, Miitopia was showcased on the 3DS frequently via their Miitopia: Casting Call (Essentially, a Demo of the game, as well as the ability to create/import Miis.) For what the game showed, it looked like it was going to be a rather interesting integration between using Miis that users had already created to import them into a Role-Playing Game environment. The concept is quite good, actually going beyond the already established method that Tomodachi Life made with having Miis as islanders and travelers. What's more, the game not only has you import and create Miis simply for playing as the characters you use in your party, but you can also use the Miis for various faces in the game as well. In my own iteration, I actually had my dad as the bad guy of the game; he got a good laugh out of it.
While these concepts promise a more interactive, appealing game that can be enjoyed for a long while, the game is riddled with various pain points and problems that detract from the game's overall appeal. From the inconvenient to the more infuriating, the game comes with an assortment of baffling game-play decisions that make not only the main portion of the game somewhat difficult to slog through, but hammers even harder in the post-game.
Graphics
One thing I will credit Nintendo on with their games is how much focus they put on making the environment vibrant, noticeable, and easy on the eyes. Miitopia does well in depicting the world and background where it counts, for example when traveling through an area wrought with lava and fire, you will see bubbles of lava building and bursting in the background among a cavernous environment.
As far as for graphics on special abilities and the Miis themselves, facial changes and the like are done well when they are needed (For example, a character crying, reacting to being hit, or even getting angry.) Special Abilities have simpler graphics, something I do believe could have utilized more of the 3DS's capabilities; most of the abilities look more like they were made for an older generation of game, even some of the more "spectacular" abilities that should depict a more fascinating display.
Music & Sound
Probably the best part of Miitopia would be the soundtrack; as strange as that may sound for a game like this, the game's music is actually pretty clear and enjoyable. The music tracks do not sound out of place when they play, and many of the tracks do well in setting the mood that the scene currently playing should feel. The game actually gives you achievements (In the form of medals) for hearing each of the musical tracks of the game, which is a nice incentive to try and listen to them all. On top of that, you will also build a collection of the music you hear as you listen to each track, so you can go back and listen to them at any time.
As far as the game's sound effects outside of music goes, they are what you would expect from a Nintendo-style Role-Playing game; many of the attack sounds give off somewhat amplified variations of what they should sound like, implying how damaging attacks work, and generic system-generated sounds seem to be used for most of the special abilities; overall the sound effects of the game are pretty self-explanatory, and while they don't detract from the game, they certainly don't really enhance anything about it either.
Gameplay
A lot to cover here, so I will break it down into sub-sections:
Characters (Sharing)
As said before, when you create a character (A Mii), you are able to create one from scratch, or import one from another Mii resource; the game actually has the ability to import Miis from your Mii Maker, from the game Tomodachi Life, or scanned via a QR Code. What's more, some user-generated Miis can be used if they have already been uploaded by another player via Mii Casting (Which allows the Mii uploaded to be used as a system-generated Mii for other players to find.) This is actually a very neat concept that allows players to share their Mii creations to be used in a Role-Playing environment, even allowing the player to give their Mii a specific behavior when showing up in another player's game. (For example, you can have a Mii act as a Culinarian, talking about food and what delicacies they're looking for.) The ability to do this and share your Miis is one of Miitopia's strongpoints, as in late-game these Miis you share may actually ask your own Mii for help, giving you missions and gifts for helping them out. The game also has a Questionnaire System that it asks every 24 hours, helping to sort out Miis that have been shared and place them as part of the game's story appropriately per the questions it asks. (It may ask about which Mii looks the meanest, or looks the hungriest, as a few small examples.)
Characters (NPCs)
Continuing along with Shared characters, you are able to import Miis, create Miis, or scan Miis via QR code to take the role of various non-player characters in Miitopia. What's more, is that you can change the face of each of the characters you assign at any time (There are a few exceptions, however.) It can be rather funny to set up a bunch of the non-player characters as family members and see how the game treats them later, or you can even just have Miitopia automatically assign the faces to each of the characters on its own. This feature adds a personalized touch to Miitopia, allowing the player to take on some control of the game's story. Want to have it where your Evil Sister steals the faces of all the neighborhood kids? Or perhaps have it where the Mayor of the first town happens to be a Mii version of Spiderman? You've got the freedom to do so here.
Characters (In-Game, Party)
For characters to be played in-game, you are given a series of personalities that affect how the character reacts both in combat, and during specific events that happen in the game; an Energetic character, for example, will sometimes be too excited to listen to what command you want to give them, and charge into combat heedlessly; at the same time, an Energetic character can help other characters that are tired or less motivated by cheering them on, restoring some lost stats in the process.
One big thing to take into account though, is that the only Mii you have direct control over is the first Mii you make, who will be the main character. This is one of the game's weakest points; while you have control over the main character, any additional Miis that join your party you will have no direct control over whatsoever; you can change their personalities, faces, even their poses, but their attacks and decisions in mid-battle will always be controlled by the game itself; this can be incredibly frustrating especially in situations where you know what you want a specific Mii to do, but they elect to do something else entirely. (Note: Changing a Mii's personality will not change the game's AI; it will change what effects the personality has on the party, but that's it.)
In addition to being able to have multiple Miis in your party, much like in Tomodachi Life, you can develop relations with your Mii companions; which in turn provide "assist" bonus effects that you can get with actions that include your friends; your allies can jump in to help you land attacks, cheer you on to apply more damage, truly devoted friends can even jump in the way to take attacks for you that would otherwise defeat you. While this system is inherently a very good idea, in post-game this becomes a big problem, especially with abilities where allies take damage for you; you can run into situations where ALL of your allies will move into an enemy attack that will one-hit-kill all of them, leaving you alone to take a beating, if not die along with them. It's clear from this design idea that the game was not planned for long-term play; that being the case, it tends to render most of the post-game material mostly meaningless, or even discourages players from building up relationships with their allies for fear of situations like this happening.
One thing you can do to help not only your own Mii, but your Mii companions, is level them up in combat and, in between combat, feed them "grub" that boosts their stats permanently. Each Mii has their own appetite, which means while one Mii may like one type of food, another may hate it. This calls back once again to Tomodachi Life, where each Mii was different from one another. Collecting grub from battle or by finding it in your travels will help later on as you can feed it to your party, building up their stats so that they will be overall stronger. Each stat has a cap of 99 points, so unfortunately at some point you will have to stop giving your Miis food, as it won't help their stats whatsoever. (Each Mii can only eat so much food per meal, so also pay attention to the food you give them, as to how "full" it makes them.)
Controls
As far as the actual handling of the game, the game's controls are pretty responsive; the game doesn't really require tight controls, or require too much precision; the only real thing that falls into "controls" of the game as far as the flow of combat goes is how you can control things happening mid-battle. As stated before, the only character you have control over during combat is your own, with your allies doing whatever else they want to do; that said, you have two tools that you can use to help your allies and yourself, "sprinkles" and the Safe Spot.
The Sprinkles option is where you can perform a select amount of actions to your Mii or allies to heal them, restore their MP, bring one of them back to life if they've been defeated, "hype" up some of your Miis so they do extra damage for a short period of time, or prevent damage to a Mii entirely for one attack. These are handy, but have limited uses per "stage" you explore; if you're in a hard stage, expect to have to ration your sprinkles wisely. Further, there are times where some of the sprinkles have virtually no use whatsoever due to the way certain enemies function, so take that into account as you learn how enemies work.
The Safe Spot is a location you can put a Mii to recover HP/MP, and cure status effects faster if they currently suffer from them; it's handy for keeping a character out of harm's way (They won't be attacked while in the Safe Spot, but they also can't attack from there as well) and is also helpful if you're working on a weaker character and don't want them being targeted; just be careful as while you have someone in the Safe Spot, you will effectively be in combat a character down. Strategic use of the Safe Spot can help ration your HP/MP sprinkles, and can also help keep Miis you want alive during situations where a weaker one would be struck down quicker.
Story
While a few have complained the story is rather lackluster, I actually find the silly story to be one of the game's more amusing features; the game's story revolves around the concept of whatever Mii you've set up as the bad guy essentially stealing other Mii's faces and putting them on monsters. You, as the main character of the game, must seek out the bad guy and rescue all the faces of the Miis that have had their faces stolen. The game starts out linear enough with its storyline, following the bad guy (He's referred to as the Dark Lord) through Miitopia to return the faces of villagers in towns you visit, and eventually confronting him at his stronghold; the game also provides unique challenges per part of the story, where some traditional Role-playing game tactics may be put to the test. Without giving too much away, I will say "don't get too comfortable that one method you're using in the game will work all the time."
Around mid-game, you will open up to finally exploring far-off lands that you normally couldn't walk to; while it's nice to see that there's more places to explore, the game actually doesn't open up much further than the few new areas it reveals from this point. The game tries to state that "the world is actually much bigger at this point" but when you actually go to visit each of these new regions opened up for you, it's much less impressive, seeming to be a stripped-down version of one of the four original "worlds" you explore. Even the end-game levels, which should be more numerous and a bit more of a test of how you've adapted to the game, feel less focused on doing that, and more focused on using a frequent gimmick of "splitting up the party" rather than anything else. To me, this comes off as a cop-out to actually designing an effective end-game. What's more, even in the post-game, it doesn't feel much different; the game seems to reach a point where it just stops focusing on the game beyond the first four stages.
Difficulty
At its core, Miitopia is by no means a difficult game; not only is the learning curve on the game rather short, but the game's Sprinkles and Safe Spot system make it difficult to actually "lose" unless you really try; however, this changes later in the game when you come up across opponents with the capability to one-hit-kill your characters, and they show up in groups; what's more; you can't just run past them or avoid them entirely, you must defeat them, only to run into another group of them. This can be a frustrating experience as even a completely maxed-out character can be killed just as easily by these enemies as even a low level character. These enemies are used at an increased frequency both mid-game and post-game, and in their over-use, make for a very unpleasant experience; it feels more like a form of artificial difficulty rather than actually testing you with enemies that have multiple abilities at their disposal. In post-game, you will eventually run into enemies that have a large repertoire of abilities and hard-hitting attacks, though after experiencing the enemies that render your party pointless, it feels almost like a "too little, too late" scenario.
End-Game Content
Thankfully, the game does do a decent job with some of the material at the end of the game, but as mentioned earlier, it feels like some of the material made for post-game wasn't thought through, not taking into account how some people would build their character relationships or builds. The game's primary element post-game are requests from the Traveler's Hub, a location you can visit mid-game where Miis from across the world meet up to look for help. You can take requests from the Traveler's Hub to visit generic dungeons in each of the worlds you've already explored, plus two additional worlds off the main island's coast. Doing these requests will net you great gifts, and eventually earn you medals towards completion of the game. The difficulty of these requests varies depending on your character levels (This includes all your allies, so be conscious of that!)
As I mentioned previously, there are also two additional worlds that you can now explore in the end-game, both of which are meant to be approached by stronger characters. One of the worlds is great for developing your characters beyond post-game, while the other is built more as an endurance test for your party as a whole. Both of these worlds are an enjoyable reward to receive after finishing the main game, and give the game life after the main story; however, after completing these worlds, the game doesn't have much more after that aside from creating new Miis and adding them to your roster to build them up as well. If the game had more life (Or even a few randomly generated maps in each of the worlds you've explored, to make the game seem deeper) it would behoove a player to continue to play past this point, however the game's shine fades at this point.
Final Comments
While I really enjoy Miitopia's kooky demeanor, silly storyline, and expansive job/class list to try out, I feel that not only were there a lot of missed opportunities in the game, but that I had already played a game similar to this, but better. Namely, I looked at the Dragon Quest series, to which the game plays eerily similar to, only with less control over your party members. I feel Miitopia could have looked further beyond the main story and actually focused on character building beyond that, and actually had more material planned for post-game rather than just two additional islands that don't add much more content. Further, the game relies too much on artificial difficulty with one-hit-kill enemies that will likely drive away many players seeking to take their time to actually level up and build a character to become something imposing. I would have appreciated something more for additional dedication to completion of the game, such as providing additional bonuses to characters as they advanced in additional classes; I also find it very discouraging that abilities meant to help you end up actually harming you more later in the game; that alone shows that there was no thought put into designing characters late-game.
If Miitopia ever does get a sequel, hopefully the game takes some of its shortcomings into account and builds upon them; with a few tweaks to how the game progresses and how characters interact with each other, and an actual focus on diversifying difficulty in areas so that actual strategy is needed to progress rather than using cheap quick kill enemies, the game could have a strong sequel learning from all of these. I do wish I could give the game a higher rating, but sadly with so many negative marks on it, and the restriction of only being able to control your own Mii, it feels like 75% of the time you're not even really playing the game, it's playing itself and doing the work for you; the game really needs more player interaction with it to be more enjoyable, and while it tried to do that from various events you encounter throughout the game, it completely dropped the ball on the core elements of what makes a good Role-playing game.