Yo-Kai Watch 2: Bony Spirits is one of the sequels to the first Yo-Kai Watch for the 3DS. It is only one of the sequels because it was first released split into two versions with basically the same game but different Yo-Kai in each, similar to Pokemon games. There was a third version released with extra content that you can transfer the save into, known as Psychic Specters. The background to the game is that the player obtains a Yo-Kai watch which will grant them the ability to see Yo-Kai. Yo-Kai are mischievous spirits in the world who are responsible for the odd behavior of people. The player can fight and befriend Yo-Kai and have them join the party. There are various ways to befriend Yo-Kai. The most common method is after battling them, there is a chance that they will join. You can boost this chance by giving them items during the battle. Unfortunately, befriending Yo-Kai this way is too reliant on luck which sours the experience. The other way to gain Yo-Kai is through gacha in the game. You can find coins (or use the 3DS’s play coins from walking) to get a chance at a Yo-Kai but there is a high chance you will get an item from this instead. There are also specific Yo-Kai that you obtain through story missions and sidequests. The game boasts over 300 Yo-Kai but unless you specifically go out of your way to hunt them, you won’t gather much of a party.
The battle system has not changed much compared to the first game. You bring in a party of six Yo-Kai, three of which can fight at any one time. The battle system is passive as your Yo-Kai will auto-battle, however, the player has specific limited input. The player can decide when to use ultimate attacks, pick a target to focus their attacks on, use items, swap party members using the wheel on the touchscreen, and “purify” their Yo-Kai if they are inspirited. To engage the player a bit more, when using ultimate attacks or purifying Yo-Kai, there are mini-games that use the touchscreen. These mini-games involving spinning a wheel or tapping objects as they fly past. The game is set in the same town with the same map as the first game. The biggest flaw is that the beginning is 90% the same as the first game. There is a heavy sense of repetition and a dash of laziness right there. It can be tough sitting through the tutorial sections and it takes around four hours before you finally see any new content in terms of dungeons and explorable areas.
Despite reusing a big chunk of the first game, the world remains surprisingly big and filled with sidequests. The downside is that the whole game is filled with pointless fetch quests and slay quests. You are forced to clear sidequests in order to proceed with the story. Some quests have horrible designs with no proper objectives so it is a stab in the dark at how to progress, making it a frustrating part of the game. The pacing is really slow and the things that happen isn’t interesting at all. It’s very easy to lose your interest while you’re plodding along. Your character loses their memories and it never feels like it is being resolved or explained. The focus on mundane slice-of-life activities makes the game boring and hard to focus on. There is a bunch of new areas but the game takes part in too many of the same places so it feels somewhat repetitive, especially when it forces you to backtrack after you complete an objective.
There are a few quality of life annoyances. There are limited fast travel points when they are a requirement built into the quests, making it a pain to find one around. Travelling by train is another major source of pointless time waster, you are forced to sit through multiple stations all the while with nothing happening. You just want to get to your destination but the game forces you to sit through 10 minutes of blandness. There are sections where you are forced to befriend a certain Yo-Kai in order to proceed, and as these are luck based, these are really annoying “obstacles”. The game packs in too many side activities and systems that do not add to the core gameplay at all. Your watch has numerous apps that you are bombarded with in the beginning and then never mentioned again. Random Terror Time occurrences where you have to find an exit without being caught ends up being more of an annoyance than anything.
The game isn’t too hard overall although the difficulty of bosses is out of whack. Since you can do a lot more damage than they can, the developers instead made it such that the bosses hit really hard. One hit and your Yo-Kai will lose 80% of their health which is yet another annoyance when you Yo-Kai gets two-hit KO’d. there is a significant difficulty spike in the last chapter which is jarring when you have been doing fine so far but have now hit a brick wall and have to end up grinding for a few hours. The game takes around 15 hours to complete if you focus on only the story quests and skip the meaningless sidequests. Even so, there is way too much filler in the game. Once you beat the game, there are some post-game content including a boss rush and some new quests. Some of this content requires a huge jump in your Yo-Kai’s levels compared to when you’ve finished the game. Overall, Yo-Kai Watch 2: Bony Spirits tries to expand on the original with more Yo-Kai, more areas, and more stuff to do. Sadly, not everything gels together. The story is sub-par and very boring, the gameplay is bland, generic and too repetitive. The game will easily lose your interest and it’s a shame because if you dive right down to its very core, it is not too bad, just marred by too much fluff.
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