Highlights
- Detective Pikachu Returns offers a cute Pokemon-filled adventure for fans, but its puzzle-solving and deduction sections lack the ability for players to discover things at their own pace.
- Players must go through their notebook and gather enough information before starting to deduce the answer to an important question in the game.
- The game restricts players from solving certain parts of the case too early, limiting the experience for those who are familiar with the Pokemon series and frustrating its target audience.
When a player decides to pick up a game like Detective Pikachu Returns, there are a few reasons why the title likely caught their eye. Of course, an obvious one is that fans who play the game likely enjoy Pikachu if not Pokemon in general, but another is that players wish to solve puzzles and fight crime alongside the same Detective Pikachu that's now a movie star.
Detective Pikachu Returns serves as a sequel to the first title found on the 3DS. It may seem like a "sequel" of sorts to the movie, but there are quite a few differences between the two that set them apart, with one important case and its main characters being the only thing that keeps them linked together. In terms of offering fans a cute Pokemon-filled adventure, Detective Pikachu Returns delivers, but its puzzle-solving, and especially its deduction sections, fall flat in allowing its players to discover things on their own and at their own pace.
How Detective Pikachu Returns' Deductions and Puzzles Work
As Tim Goodman, players aren't exactly allowed to interact directly with any elements of Detective Pikachu Returns' puzzle solving. Even if they are, they have to go through their notebook of observations and clues first, which keeps track of important landmarks, items, and witness testimonies throughout the case in question. Once players have gathered enough information, Detective Pikachu will tell players to start deducing the answer to an important question, which will be done through one simple question that'll appear with all the pieces in place.
However, as players try to solve cases in the world of Pokemon, they may find that Detective Pikachu Returns goes against its own detective mantras in one very important way. Namely, if fans end up ahead of the case, they can't take care of the specific piece of the case they're ahead of early in any fashion, and instead have to go through the steps the game wants them to regardless. This may frustrate players when the answer to a case seems obvious, or even worse, makes sense when applied with basic Pokemon franchise knowledge.
How Detective Pikachu Returns Mistakenly Punishes Pokemon Fans
The Detective Pikachu games are only one small part of the larger Pokemon series, which means there are rules and common information that are present between multimedia projects. Examples of this consist of Pikachu always being an Electric-type Pokemon, pocket monsters being able to battle, and so on. Due to this, it's almost expected and a given that Detective Pikachu Returns would pull from other Pokemon games for inspiration with its cases, but this ends up hurting the fans who know the series rather intimately.
One such example of this is the third case of the game, The Fabled Aurora. During this chapter of Detective Pikachu Returns, players find murals of Passimian that tie into statues that help open a secret door. The murals deal with berries, and the statues, when looked at closely, are said to give off sour, sweet, and spicy scents. This gives away that players simply need to put some of the Pokemon series' Berries in the areas that match their scents and flavors.
Detective Pikachu Returns has a way to keep players from solving how to get the spicy berry too early, as it doesn't grow in the trees around the case's location, but it's only used to extend the case as players are forced to still melt the ice of the third mural with the help of the fire-type Pokemon Monferno, even if they already know what to do. It only serves to limit those who know the source material that Detective Pikachu Returns started from, which will likely only annoy a good number of its target audience as a result.
Detective Pikachu Returns is now available on Nintendo Switch.
