Detective Pikachu Demo Review

Detective Pikachu is a strange game. Talking Pokemon is not a new concept, but it's the first time we've seen a Pokemon be voice acted outside the typical Pokemon cries you hear in the anime. Aside from that, Detective Pikachu is a fairly normal Pokemon spinoff, which is to say it's very unique and original.

The story of Detective Pikachu is actually somewhat interesting. You and a Pikachu that only you can understand have to figure out why Pokemon are acting strangely. What makes the story engaging is that you have to do various missions to help civilians.

As unique as the game was already, the graphics in this game are unlike any Pokemon game we've seen before. Everything in this game looks incredibly smooth and well animated, unlike other games in the series which tend to have more jagged edges. The art style of this game reminds me of the Pokemon anime.

Unfortunately the music didn't really do anything for me. It's serviceable, but after playing the demo I was a bit disappointed with the soundtrack. When it comes to other aspects of the sound design I was surprised that Pikachu's voice eventually stopped being weird. I was also shocked that Pokemon cries resembled what you'd hear in the anime, rather than the garbled noise you hear in the main series games.

Gameplay is where I was the most disappointed with the demo. You get to walk around a town finding clues about where a girl's missing necklace is. During the process, you are stopped constantly by Pikachu telling you what to do. If you haven't ever touched a Pokemon game or are rather young this might be helpful, but I was annoyed by the fact I was basically just pressing the "A" button in the right spots until a cutscene would play where Pikachu solved the case. I would hope the full game doesn't do this the whole time, but the demo doesn't give me a ton of hope.

Ultimately I'm not in love with Detective Pikachu based on the demo. When the demo ended I just kinda thought "that's it?" and when on my way. The demo left no impact on me. I was left without ever even feeling slightly challenged. And maybe the full game does a better job, but a good demo will represent the game it's based on, and I left this one very unimpressed.