Parents' Guide to Pokémon Quest

This blocky adventure set in the world of the beloved Pokémon franchise has a quirky spin on play but ultimately devolves into repetitive gaming and little user interaction. Previous Pokémon spin-off titles have included pinball, puzzle, and even arcade fighting games. Pokémon Quest puts yet another twist on the formula, mixing crafting and building role-playing game elements with some simplified dungeon-crawling action, all wrapped in a Minecraft-esque coat of paint. The fact that Pokémon Quest tries to be a little bit of everything is both its strength and its weakness.

To progress in Pokémon Quest, you need to follow a relatively straightforward pattern: Cook, recruit, equip, explore. Wash, rinse, and then repeat. Each step relies heavily on the one before. You need to cook the food to recruit the Pokémon, then make sure they're trained and well-equipped with power stones, or they can't make it through the expeditions. And you need to complete expeditions to earn more ingredients and stones. It's not a very deep process, just a repetitive one. One odd twist to the formula is that the combat is the simplest part of the game ... mainly because you don't really need to do anything. Your Pokémon team moves and attacks on its own, with very little interaction. You're only responsible for activating Pokémon abilities, and if you click the Auto button, you don't even need to do that. By contrast, mixing up new recipes and training Pokémon are much more complex, user-involved processes. While entertaining enough to provide an occasional distraction, Pokémon Quest is ultimately a jack-of-all-trades, but a (Pokémon) master of none.