A Tear for Pokopia: Why This Is the Most Emotional Pokémon Game Yet

No spoilers, I promise. But I should warn you that this text might still give away a bit of the emotional weight the game carries. If you haven’t played or finished Pokémon Pokopia yet and want to avoid any bias or influence on your playthrough, I suggest bookmarking this article to read later so we can compare notes.

If I had a dollar for every time a Pokémon game genuinely moved me to tears, I’d have three dollars today.

My Most Emotional Moments in the Pokémon Franchise

Before Pokopia, the one Pokémon game that managed to mess with my emotions in so many ways was Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky (or Time, or Darkness, pick your version). It’s a dungeon crawler—a genre I love and find incredibly addicting—with a humor entirely its own (“SMILES GO FOR MILES!”) and plot twists I never saw coming. A game that could have been simple, using its story just as an excuse for gameplay mechanics, ended up delivering an experience that ranks among the absolute best for me. There’s my first dollar.

From the mainline series, the ones that came closest were Black & White, thanks to the Team Plasma lore and N’s involvement, though I felt it could have gone even deeper. And then came Pokémon Legends Z-A, which surprised me at the very end, pulling an incredulous smile and a tear right out of me. There’s my second dollar.

The Mystery and Melancholy of the Pokopia World

But Pokémon Pokopia managed to dig a bit deeper for me. I already suspected the lore of Pokopia was mysterious and melancholy, especially because of the logs we find throughout the world showing that something happened to this place—and humans are completely gone.

Despite the humor and positive energy of every Pokémon you meet—which fills your heart with a small hope that feels perfectly synced with their own desire to thrive in a suddenly altered world—the game still strikes some heavy, melancholic chords. It can hit you during a brief moment in certain landscapes, or during a specific activity where you suddenly feel isolated. Truly melancholic. And the background music only amplifies that feeling.

As I progressed, I kept getting caught off guard by this lingering feeling that “we aren’t truly happy and complete here yet.”

Even so, I kept pushing forward without knowing exactly what the game expected me to deliver, and with no idea what “beating” the main campaign actually meant. Honestly, I got so caught up helping every Pokémon I ran into that it took me way longer than usual to reach the end. And seriously, everything this game offers goes way beyond just “finishing the story,” so don’t worry about playtimes when deciding if Pokopia is going to consume your time. Because it will.

The Impact of the Post-Credits Scene (No Spoilers)

The thing is, I expected the ending to carry that same melancholic tone I’d randomly felt during my playthrough. But it didn’t.

It was almost funny. When the credits rolled, it took me a few seconds to fully process the very last scene. But when it finally clicked… man. It was a total gut punch. It pulled a genuine tear and a sob out of me as I gasped, “No… so that’s what it was…!”

If you’ve played it, you probably know exactly what I mean. Maybe you felt something similar, or maybe you didn’t quite catch the weight of that final post-credits scene.

But Pokémon Pokopia is, to me, both the most joyful and the most melancholy Pokémon game ever made, and easily one of my favorites. It’s an incredible little universe that I know I’ll keep coming back to, over and over again, just to keep thriving in it.