without a shred of doubt the worst video game i have ever played in my life. the time reverse mechanic is cool for like five seconds before you realize that it makes every potential difficult choice completely fucking pointless because you can just immediately change your mind if you're unhappy with the consequences of a dialogue option lol. not to mention the game trivializes mental health issues unlike anything i've ever seen and even tries to make you feel bad for a domestic abuser by the end. truly impressive how terrible everything about this is. that said i would be lying if i didn't have tears in my eyes from laughter at the moment where, in an alternate reality, your best friend asks you to assist in her suicide and the game prompts you to press square to "accept", circle to "refuse", and X to say "i don't know". a once-in-a-generation dumpster fire everyone should experience at least once, if at least to feel better about their own work. begging everyone who unironically likes this game to seek help as soon as they can

I don't remember why I even bought this game. I didn't enjoy my time with the first Yo-Kai Watch and don't like RPG's that much, but I'm definitely not disappointed.
The combat system of Yo-Kai Watch 1 was always more an annoyance for me. Luckily this game doesn't have that combat system but an actually fun one. They didn't do away with three of your Yo-Kai being in battle at one time, but this time they are organized on a 3x3 grid and you can use any combination of Yo-Kai and put them anywhere you want on that grid. Some combinations are considered offensive some defensive making this system already more strategic than the old one. Some of the enemies attacks will also be telegraphed on the bottom screen making it so that you can actually avoid being hit instead of just tanking the hit.
The gameplay outside of the combat system was also really fun. This (for me) is one of those games I can play while doing something else, because this game isn't that hard. I had 2 E-Rank Yo-Kai in my team when I beat it, but I wouldn't consider that a bad thing.
The ost of this game is really good (just listen to the Rongo Swirll theme), the characters are fun and due to most of this game playing out in the USA there are lots of jokes about said country, which are always welcome. There were only a few minor gripes I had with this game.
1: While I don't really have that much of a problem with the key-quest system this game is built around, there were some that just didn't work for me. This could be because I can't update my game (for reasons I will get to later), or because of me having to play the german translation of the game.
2: There were a few occasions where you had to have befriended a certain kind of Yo-Kai to progress. There is a certain point where you are trapped in an enclosed space. The Yo-Kai you need are available there, but they could just not feel like befriending you. It took me around two hours until I could progress. There is an item that makes it so that Yo-Kai always befriend you, but do to the player character being trapped there you can not get that item.
3: You play most of the game as two characters at once. The problem I have with this comes when these characters stories inevitably collide. Until that point you should have two teams and two item bags. So what they do is that they just merge them together. The items being merged together isn't a problem, but you now have to decide between these two teams because the maximum team size isn't increased. Another implication of that is that there isn't really a reason to switch characters. They obviously make up excuses to make you switch characters, but some of them are just not good at all.
But as I said these are only minor gripes and didn't really destroy my enjoyment of the game and I would totally still recommend you to play this game, if you can get it.
The problem with buying this game is that it is one of the most expensive 3Ds games available. I got it digitally for 40€ but that came with it own problems.
This is a 27000 Block (Nintendo 3Ds storage unit) game. My New Nintendo 2Ds XL, with only one other game on it, barely had enough space to download this game, but I don't have enough space to download the update now.
But if you have 40€ worth of eshop gift cards and a basically unused 3Ds system I would totally recommend this game to you.

arguably one of the best games on the 3DS, and one of the best moncolle games of its generation.

but i still gotta dock a point for how awful the pacing is for the first several chapters.

story and cast are a bit weaker than YW2 and the revamped battle system is a point of contention (especially since everyone in online battles insists on using solar enma), but YW3 is by no means a bad game. hell, once you get over the hump halfway through the story, you'll discover plenty of things to do in the world of yokai watch 3 compared to its predecessors.

this is easily the most content-packed of the 3ds yokai watch games. two playable characters to swap between in a MASSIVE world, dozens of collectables and minigames to discover, and a recruitable roster of yokai that'd make alola's national dex blush. there's even a mystery-dungeon-like sidegame where you can explore dungeons with your recruited yokai in action-rpg style!

unfortunately, all this means the difficulty is a little bit skewed and after a certain point, it can become very easy to break the game in two. especially if you end up "accidentally" powerleveling your yokai in aforementioned mystery dungeon sidegame to the point where most of the story battles become trivial. like i did. oops.

there's also three postgame-level elite yokai you can easily recruit before the final story boss that are well over his recommended level.

y-yeah.

that aside, this is still a great time and it's easy to sink a lot of hours just exploring everything YW3 has to offer. i'd still recommend YW2 as a starting point especially since the gameplay changes, amount of content, and crappy early-game pacing might be daunting to some. that, and uh. good luck with finding a physical copy of this at an affordable price!

i'm kicking the rat kid into orbit for making me go through that mushroom sidequest.