Yo-Kai Watch 2: Psychic Specters Review–The definitive Yo-Kai experience

If something’s good, it’s good enough to copy. That’s most likely a solid reason for why TV is still flooded with a hellish schedule of overweight weapon bidding on the pre-determined contents of storage lockers in multiple TV shows. The same could easily be said for video games, and especially Pokémon. What developer Game Freak created more than twenty years ago was a game that opened the floodgates for imitators to pour through.

All of a sudden the industry was filled with stabs at the Poke-crown, with contenders ranging from NeoPets, Monster Rancher and that damn Beyblade trying to grab a piece of the pocket monster pie. Some of these properties were good! Digimon and Yu Gi Oh! being noticeable examples. Yo-Kai Watch also fits into that latter category.

It’s a franchise which has managed to re-engineer the ideas of Pokémon into its own identity, giving kids something to enjoy and collect. Yo-Kai Watch has one other thing in common with Pokemon now: Its taken a page out of the Nintendo book and created two games which are equal yet different. Bony Spirits and Fleshy Souls was that particular pair of games for Yo-Kai Watch 2, which gave fans exclusive content per game chosen.

Yo-Kai Watch 2: Psychic Specters, is the Pokémon Crystal/Emerald/Platinum to those titles. It’s a best of collection, a compilation of everything that Fleshy Souls and Bony Spirits had to offer, but with a few new flourishes thrown in for good measure. It’s fortunately still a good RPG, a collectathon of the recently deceased that you befriend and use in quick-fire battles.

It’s those very battles where Yo-Kai Watch has alaways managed to be more than a Pokémon clone, with each fight making full use of the Nintendo 3DS touchscreen to augment attacks. Your Yo-Kai are largely autonomous, attacking foes on their own initiative while you soup them up with Soultimate power-ups that require some mini-gaming on your part.

It’s good stuff and if you’re eager to read more then I’m not retyping everything out. Here’s the original link to my Yo-Kai Watch 2 review from earlier this year.

So what’s really different in Psychic Specters? What’s really changed? A few additions to the formula, is the answer to that question. In addition to new M Soultimate moves that add some tag team flavour to battle, there’s also a host of new locales to visit and explore. There’s Harrrisvale and San Fantastico, a version of Springdale from more than sixty years ago and other time-travelling elements and the core combat feels a tad bit more refined and balanced.

There’s also new quizzes, Challenge Doors and a much-improved train system that is a godsend for fans who are tired of hoofing it between locations. Not only that, but the trains themselves add a new dynamic scenery to an otherwise gorgeous handheld game as you journey across the land with your bestest phantasm pals by your side.

All of this, plus a new selection of missions that adds so much more to the tail that Bony Spirits and Fleshy Souls started, that doesn’t sacrifice the progress you made within either thanks to an import save data function. There’s more to it, with psychic Specters being the ultimate version of the Yo-Kai Watch 2 experience.

Last Updated: October 16, 2017