First Impressions: MIITOPIA is Shallow and Fun

Nintendo recently released a demo for their upcoming game Miitopia on the Nintendo Switch. Miitopia will release on May 21 for $49.99 and I thought that I would take a look at what the game has to offer. If you’re like me, your social media feeds are becoming filled with people sharing really cool Mii creations in the game, but what else is there?

Star in a hilarious adventure alongside your family and friends!

Cast your friends, family, or anyone you choose in a comedy-filled adventure to bring down the face-stealing Dark Lord! Create and customize Mii™ characters, assign them roles, and watch them come to life. Laugh along as your best friend and dear old grandma team up in the fantasy adventure of a lifetime!

First things first, when you first create a Mii, it’s the same creator as for other Switch titles like Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. It’s pretty barebones and nothing to talk about. However, you’ll eventually be able to give your Miis makeup and wigs and that’s where things go nuts. If you look above, you’ll notice that one of my Miis (based on Soos from Gravity Falls) has little scruff marks on his face. This is not possible in the basic editor, but I was able to use stickers to add them. This more robust Mii creator is really nice, especially for the creatives. Some of the work I’m seeing on social media is just on another level.

I also will admit that I am impressed with the overall graphics. They’re very stylized to fit Miis, and they’re not the greatest out there, but there were moments that I was genuinely surprised at how pretty some of the shots were.

How does the game play? Well, you create your Mii and then basically get roped into saving a village and restoring their faces. One awesome thing is that you can completely customize all the characters in the game and even change them later down the road if you desire. You’ll talk with townspeople, go on adventures, and fight monsters that have the stolen faces. The fighting is not very exciting, but maybe that has to do with me choosing a Warrior role (there are a bunch of roles to choose from) and so at the moment, all I can do is attack with my sword. One thing I don’t like is that you eventually unlock other team members, but they appear to be on autopilot. I wish I could control what my team members did.

You also get to manage relationships for your team members to help them work better together which can be a fun element and does add some depth to this very shallow game.

Something else that I’m not a fan of is that when you choose your role, you get new clothes to fit the role and sometimes you just don’t want those clothes, but can’t change them until you buy more. Maybe there’s a way to hide the armor that I just haven’t found yet, but for now it’s a small bummer. I do appreciate that when you buy new gear, you can equip the gear or just equip the new stats. That is cool.

Miitopia looks to be a fun and more chill game. The more robust Mii creation tools are really cool and can give you hours of fun editing new Miis. Based on my experience with the demo, $50 seems a bit steep for the game though. You can always download the demo from the eShop though and determine for yourself what it’s worth.