There are many truly exceptional games that remain trapped in Japan, either due to a perceived lack of interest from Western fans or a lack of resources to cover the fairly expensive localization costs. While every so often, fans are vocal enough to shift a developer’s sentiment toward localizing a game, for the most part, some of gaming’s greatest titles are destined to rely exclusively on fan translations, or worse still, the ever-inconsistent Google Translate, to help players muddle their way through. It is a shame, but an understandable consequence of language barriers and the necessary allocation of already limited and quickly dwindling funds.
Of course, naturally, this means that some of the most well-received and legendarily good RPGs produced in Japan are inaccessible to anyone who doesn’t speak the language. Such is the case with the critically acclaimed fourth entry in the lesser-known yet unequivocally beloved series Yo-Kai Watch. Despite initial promises of bringing the game to Western audiences, it seems like developer Level-5 has all but abandoned the idea. What could have been another huge success remains a frustrating absence, as it really does seem like Yo-Kai Watch 4 will simply never leave Japan.
Yo-Kai Watch 4 was released exclusively in Japan back in June 2019 for the Nintendo Switch, with a PlayStation 4 port coming later that year. In 2023, Level-5 released it in China, and that was the last we heard of it. Despite being critically received and a part of a long-running series that had, up until the fourth entry, been released in the West, Yo-Kai Watch 4 has never been localized in English or indeed any language beyond Japanese and Chinese. Even its re-release, Yo-Kai Watch 4++ (which was the version ported to PS4), never traveled across the seas to American soil.
To those familiar with Level-5, this may not come as a huge surprise. Despite announcing in 2019 that Yo-Kai Watch 4 would be localized, the company practically disbanded its US offices in 2020 and stopped bringing its games to the West after that point. It wasn’t until Megaton Musashi W: Wired received a global release in 2024 that it began refocusing on Western audiences. We’ve since gotten one of the biggest Nintendo Switch games ever made in the form of Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road and the unequivocally incredible Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time. With a new Professor Layton on the horizon and Decapolice yet to release, it seems like Level-5 has once again changed its stance on Western releases for its library of amazing games.
Of course, one might hope that this means Yo-Kai Watch 4 will finally make the transition from being a Japanese exclusive to getting a Western release. However, despite being a true competitor to Pokémon, Yo-Kai Watch never quite met sales expectations. Frankly, it is a miracle we got the other three games. Considering it has been nearly 7 years since the game originally released, it seems highly unlikely that Level-5 will bother porting it over. It is a shame, as Yo-Kai Watch was really an excellent alternative to Pokémon, and, in many ways, superseded Game Freak’s creature collector. It is why, despite the fact that we’re unlikely to ever see Yo-Kai Watch 4 come to the West, Level-5 shouldn’t give up on bringing the series as a whole to other countries.
If you’ve never played Yo-Kai Watch, you may be curious as to what all the fuss is about. It wasn’t just Level-5’s attempt at capitalizing on the Pokémon trend, as Yo-Kai Watch went above and beyond what Game Freak offered on the 3DS and Nintendo Switch, but it did encapsulate a lot of the same elements that made those games great. You explored gorgeous 3D environments inspired by Japanese suburbs and countryside villages while locating and capturing the titular Yo-Kai, evil and sometimes not-so-evil spirits, being a nuisance to the living humans around them.
The first game in the series told a more episodic narrative, while later games began incorporating more ambitious stories involving time travel and numerous locations. Yo-Kai Watch, despite being fairly squarely aimed at children, always sought to tell far more elevated and nuanced narratives than its Pokémon contemporaries. Even at Yo-Kai Watch’s worst moments, the production value and storytelling were far greater than Pokémon. Beyond narrative, Yo-Kai Watch made good use of the 3DS itself, something Pokémon never really did, and the Nintendo Switch version absolutely made the most of the improved hardware by introducing never-before-seen locations, numerous protagonists, and stunning 3D visuals.
I am a huge fan of the earlier 3DS Yo-Kai Watch games and have always maintained that it is the far superior series when it comes to the creature-collecting subgenre. However, evidently, the rest of the world never felt the same. Still, in an era in which Pokémon is floundering, and we’re waiting a fairly long time until the next mainline game (which could end up being another flop), a AAA game like Yo-Kai Watch 4 could end up being a smash hit, if only because it fills a void many desperately want filled.
With Level-5 recommitting to its Western audience, it makes sense to attempt, once more, to bring Yo-Kai Watch overseas. The Switch had a much larger player base than the 3DS, Pokémon is performing critically worse than ever before and proving more divisive among fans, and indie alternatives appear to be doing incredibly well. If Yo-Kai Watch 4 is destined to remain an RPG forever trapped in Japan, then I hope that Level-5 at least considers bringing any future entries to the West, should it even bother continuing the series in its traditional form in the first place.
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