Hokko Life

A bland alternative to a genre-defining game millions of people are very familiar with.

Despite deriving a lot of its influences from games like Animal Crossing, especially with its island life and anthropomorphic animal inhabitants, Hokko Life severely lacks in personality and unique identity. For a game that promises a relaxing experience, you spend more time walking around trying to find something to do rather than sitting back and enjoying the game's gentle progression. There are a few redeemable factors through customisation and its sound design, but outside of that, Hokko Life doesn't offer anything we haven't seen before.

Hokko Life is a worthwhile experience for fans of Animal Crossing or Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons, just do not expect any online connectivity in the near future.

So, where to begin with Hokko Life? Let’s start with the similarities to a well known game from Nintendo: Animal Crossing. Both games have resource management, building a community from scratch and crafting various tools to assist in your endeavours. See, everything about Hokko Life screams Animal Crossing, right down to the beginning of the game, where we see our young villager taking a short train ride to a quiet run-down village in the middle of nowhere.

Hokko Life is another good entry in the farming/life sim genre but one that needs a bit more care put into it to be great. It borrows a lot from Animal Crossing but doesn’t do most of it near as well whether that be the drive to want to keep playing it or the personalities of the villagers. Customization is this game’s strong suit so if that’s what you really enjoy about these types of games you’ll likely really enjoy this.

Hokko Life is a cosy, creativity filled community sim game.

Hokko Life is usually a game that I would dismiss immediately, as when I look at titles like this normally, they don’t really cater to my gaming preferences. But I really enjoyed it much more than I thought I would. I was slightly concerned at the beginning about whether there would be enough content to remain interested, as the first few hours doesn’t really have a lot of discovering or exploration involved.

Hokko Life is a farming/life sim that tries to make a name for itself but fails to stand out in a genre of more compelling titles.

Hokko Life arrives on Nintendo Switch in an unacceptable technical state, so much so that any possibility of feeling sympathy for the dishes inhabitants of Hokko and for their events fades regardless.

Although it takes advantage of common mechanics and an almost protocol progression system, which can displease those looking for something different from what we've seen before, Hokko Life, without any shame in its references and inspirations, really stands out for its creation system and customization of items and mainly for the enchantment of its light and childish proposal.