Miitopia review: The perfect storm of chaos and joy

Miitopia was a giant hit in my household. I had already been all about it since its 3DS days when it…admittedly…did not perform as well as I hoped. But that was in 2016. 2021 is a greatly different world and one I feel is much more ready for something like Miitopia.

In Miitopia, an evil dark lord is stealing the faces of the people in the kingdom, and you and your party are tasked with recovering them and bringing peace back to the realm.

The thing that makes Miitopia stand out is that it’s populated entirely by Miis. Not just your party but everywhere. Any time you encounter a new character you’re told their personality and what they do and you get to design and name that character. Any time you enter a new town you’re given bios on every inhabitant and get to create the entire town.

My town, personally, has a party of me, my wife, and my two kids going after the evil Jack Hartmann. Along the way, we encounter other characters like a kindly chef who gifts us food named Guy Fieri and a great sage who will show up from time to time to save us named Iwata. The characters I based on my family learned to get along and my kids at one point considered dine and dashing.

Having full control of your characters like this creates a world that is very much your own, making even the most boring moment interesting because it’s populated by characters you know.

I can see this being a huge benefit for streamers too as having a stream in which, every time you have to create a new town, you can name them after followers and things like this to give viewers a sense of connection to their favorite streamers.

In the case of my kids, it allowed them to add characters from their favorite stories like Calvin (from Calvin and Hobbes) and the Hilo from the popular children’s books and watch them head out on adventures.

For me, it gives me the option to put memes everywhere. It allowed me to create a king based on Steve Rodgers who has a daughter named Princess Shield who’s in a love triangle between the obnoxious John Walker and the underdog Sam Wilson. Memes everywhere.

And if you have Amiibos, there’s a ridiculous wealth of Nintendo-themed costumes you can unlock allowing you to dress your character like anything from Squidkids to Samus from Link to Luigi.

As for the battles themselves, they’re fairly automated with the exception of your main character. The other three members of your party fight on their own based on their personality. The character I based on my five-year-old will sometimes get overexcited and hurt himself tripping while running at the enemy. The one based on my seven-year-old will occasionally display indifference to enemies and, as a result, not get enraged or bothered by their actions.

Because of this, I personally recommend making your character the “chef” class. Not only can you cook food to make sure your team is healed in battle but you also get awesome attacks like hitting the enemy with a hot skillet or feeding a teammate spicy food so they breathe fire. It allows a lot more control over the entire party than most classes.

I’ll admit if you’re going into this game looking for a deep RPG with a heavy story and a massive challenge you won’t find it here but if you’re looking for that and you pick up a game with a case like Miitopia’s, that’s on you dawg.

Miitopia sets out to do one thing and one thing only, create a satirical RPG world where you can cast every character allowing fun things to happen. And at that, the game excels and succeeds in a way no other game does. Now excuse me while I tell my family a campfire story.