Top 5 Games Similar To Pokemon To Play On PC (2022)

The Pokemon series is one of gaming's true juggernauts. It's the best-selling video game series of all time and has been adapted into just about every medium known to man. Its fame has created quite a few imitators, enough to create a brand new "creature collector" genre.

In this article, Gurugamer is going to showcase the top 5 best games similar to Pokemon to play on PC.

1. Coromon

Coromon is, obviously, inspired by Pokemon, but if I had to say, it is inspired most of all by older versions of Pokemon, like Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald. The gameplay is fundamentally Pokemon with a few tweaks and QoLs and a fun shiny/IV system. The monster designs lean toward the "cool" side rather than cute, with earthier, dark color palettes. There are a bunch of novel moves and abilities, but the elemental type system is unfortunately a bit more simplified than Pokemon's 18-type system, however. Also, the monster count is about 110, which might leave collectors hungry for more.

The plot/writing is whimsical and adventurous, it is structured like a traditional JRPG where you travel the world and help various people with their problems while collecting what you need. The sprite work is gorgeous and detailed and definitely the strongest aspect of the game. Despite the strong art, I think the attack sound effects are a bit weak.

The difficulty is well-balanced, a tad harder than a basic Pokemon campaign in normal mode. But there are lots of custom difficulties modifiers and options to crank up the difficulty as you please.

2. Slime Rancher

Slime Rancher is a tycoon-farming game, and among the genre of builder/tycoon/farming games, my favorite part is progression; seeing numbers go up. The game is split into two parts: exploration and farming. Exploration is by far the most fleshed-out part, despite being a smaller part compared to the grind that is farming.

Your task is to explore and find keys to explore further, find the rarest slimes and cross-breed them, upgrade your ranch, and use technology to ranch even smarter.

There are many different kinds of slimes, They all have a favorite food, All Slimes poop out their own plort kind if you feed them and poop out 2 of those plorts if you feed them their favorite food. Plorts are worth money. The goal of the game is to farm these plorts and upgrade your farm and its technology.

You own a blow/suck gun that can hold slimes, plorts, fruits, etc, You can upgrade the capacity, but you can also upgrade your speed, your jetpack, and even your ranch itself. Then there are end-game technologies like teleporters, mining equipment to extract extra rare crafting materials. You can even craft decorations for your slimes, like googly eyes.

3. Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth: Complete Edition

Cybersleuth is a relatively by-the-books JRPG. If you can't stand sitting through a lot of cutscenes, don't bother as this game is riddled with them. Additionally, there is no voiced english dialogue, so you're going to have to be doing a lot of reading.

A core mechanic of the game that sets it apart from your average 'pokemon rip-off' is that Digimon don't have a defined 'line' they follow linearly. You can digivolve your digimon into a multitude of different potential forms based on the stats they have, and in order to increase your digimon's potential, you're encouraged to 'de-digivolve' them back into their weaker forms and raise them back up again. For that reason, if you hate grinding, you may not like the cybersleuth formula very much (Or, you could be like me, and stack platinum numemon or platinum sukamon to grind exp- look it up.).

Combat works on a timeline based system, with a linear line showing portraits to represent the order of each battle participant's next move. The more speed you have, the more times you'll appear in the timeline. Some bosses get multiple turns, and the interface does a good job of making it clear who's going and when they're going for multiple turns in advance.

Every digimon has two types that influence their weaknesses, an elemental type, and an attribute. The attributes (Virus, Vaccine, Data) work in a sort of rock paper scissors system and grant the greatest advantages, whereas attributes do the same but to a much lesser extent. Think if you fused the Fire Emblem weapon triangle and pokemon type advantages into one game. As such, you're encouraged to diversify your team to make up for this. This can cheapen some boss fights however, as you'll be much better off if you go in with a full team that resists the boss's attribute.

4. Nexomon: Extinction

Nexomon: Extinction is basically a Pokemon game with a few different mechanics, but never strays too far away from Pokémons’ original form. The battles are fun, the world is amazingly designed and exciting to explore, there are tons of Nexomon to capture and the story is intriguing. Even though there are a few problems here and there they don’t fault the enjoyment of this game all that much.

Battles are practically the same as Pokémon but with a stamina bar added instead of PP points for each individual skill. Each skill takes a specific amount of stamina points and each Nexomon has a stamina stat to determine how much stamina they have. It does change the mechanics slightly, but it also adds to the annoyance of having to refill their stamina bar either by healing or using potions.

Mechanically, every fight in Nexomon is a lot more even than in Pokémon. You won’t be able to bust your way through several Tamers before having to heal, even if you have a type advantage. Thankfully the Tamers can easily be avoided as you explore the world but that then leads to your Nexomon eventually being under-leveled because you’ve had to avoid them to try and make it to the next town. You can fight every Tamer, but unless you have a bunch of money to spend on healing supplies you’ll constantly be going back and forth to healing centers. Tamers do scale with your level as do the wild Nexomon so even if you have to grind it isn’t much of a problem. None of this really hinders the battles too much to make it unenjoyable, more of a slight inconvenience that you'll occasionally be reminded about now and then during the game.

5. Temtem

It's not a "Pokemon Killer", BUT I believe it's entirely unfair to expect any game to do that. The only thing that is going to kill pokemon is pokemon and gamefreak itself.

In its own right, TemTem is a highly enjoyable game in the mon collecting genre with absolutely charming creatures to befriend and perfect, a battle system that sets it apart from pokemon with a stamina system and a minimization of rng, incredibly challenging NPC opponents, and a world that stands to benefit immensely from the infrastructure the MMO platform demands, should it succeed.

It definitely feels like the developers made the Pokemon game THEY wanted to play, and luckily it happens to be what I want too! It's clearly a passion project and you can see a lot of thought went into it. The Temtem concepts are creative and cute and the whole thing feels like I'm playing a Pokemon game for the first time. The co-op is remarkably well done and "just works" as you'd expect it to.

Quite notably, I rarely ever feel over-leveled. Even when I'm 10-20+ levels above an opponent, I can't always predict when I can get a one-hit KO. Type matchups really matter and the difficulty feels appropriate for a more mature Pokemon enjoyer.