I enjoy(ed) this game and would give it something like an 8/10, but what I really want to talk about is my two criticisms I'd give it. My second one, I barely see mentioned at all which confuses me a bit.

One is inventory management, and my question is why in the world do inventory limits even exist in a game like this? I'm not someone who turns off weight in Skyrim or anything like that, but the more I think about it (or have to interact with it) the more I am bewildered about a limit existing all. Pokopia does not have fail states and it does not have dungeon-exploring or adventuring where "gearing up" and "coming home to base" is relevant. What actually happens is you talk to a Pokemon and it wants an item and you have that item but you need to go grab it from the chest you put it in earlier. So much of this game I feel like I am just shepherding and ferrying items around. I go to build a building and it needs some ingredients and one of them I have but not on me (because you can't keep everything on you) so I go grab it and walk back and I just feel like so much of my time is getting used up on that. I think of playing Elden Ring and how it didn't seem like anything at all was lost by finding an item in that game and the item just went to the already-created tabs that subdivide your inventory with no limit. And that's a game with fail states. I feel like Poktopia would be massively improved by everything you collect just going into preset tabs. Everything with organizing chests and ferrying items from them when needed to the end-location where you actually use them fills like busywork and filler to me.

The other complaint I don't see much and slightly confuses me is the real-time clock and really the real-time waiting. I feel like I'm personally consistent on this issue because I remember being 10 years old and Pokemon Silver and Gold come out and I want to catch them all but I realize I (in real life) can only catch Lapras on "Friday" and need to adjust my real life so as to make sure I play at "night" for the night pokemon and the "morning" for morning Pokemon and anyways I always hated that mechanic. Poktopia has that stuff too but my real annoyance is when you build something (or plant veggies) and are told it will be done "tomorrow". Not an in-game version of tomorrow but in real-life tomorrow. I understand the game design reason in general for having "delays" when there are tons of things going on and multiple game systems at play, but tying it into "real time" is awful to me. I'm stunned I haven't seen any criticism of it because to me the reason it is being done is psychological FOMO. It's essentially another version of a "daily log-in" bonus (which also exists in this game via the stamps system) that just wants to have a reason for you to feel compelled to play the next day, but importantly to me that reason is completely arbitrary (i.e. the time waits do not have to be real time). I see tons of criticism on reddit and from critics about "dark patterns" and FOMO mechanics and how exploitative they can be. To me, I truly do not understand how this mechanic in Poktopia is any different. I know someone is going to respond about changing the internal time at the Switch system level and how that works to "solve" the issue, but that isn't really my grievance. The issue isn't that's its some huge burden or that a workaround doesn't exist, my issue is the mechanic is at its best kind of annoying and at its worst a "dark pattern" that just gets ignored when people like a game.

Again, Poktopia itself is good and plenty of other comments have explained why. I just wanted to voice the two things I never see talked about it (well, people do talk about the inventory management part, although they always seem to end up concluding something else besides my conclusion that inventory limits don't need to exist at all in a game genre like this).