Racjin is a less publicized game developer at least in Western discourse, but one with a nonetheless storied past in creating games like
Wizardry: Tale of the Forsaken Land, the excellent
SaGa 2 and
3 DS remakes, and
Final Fantasy Explorers. Into this milieu bursts
Moco Moco Friends, a 2015 3DS RPG that released late in the year in North America and early in the next in Europe, courtesy of Aksys Games. That it was localized at all is notable in light of its inherent nature: it's an RPG aimed at young children, and girls in particular.
You, the person reading this, likely does not need to be told to know that media catering to the interests and tastes of girls and women is habitually underserved, devalued and dismissed at a societal base level, and especially when dealing with video games. It's something that's perceptible to anyone interacting with the field for a given length of time, and the only difference is in how long it takes one to become cognizant of it, usually determined by whether or not you're personally affected or targeted by the relevant aspects of the culture that surrounds us. Within video games, certain sectors or genres are further built into totemic fortresses of gender essentialism, meant to prop up the perceived majority in exclusionary ways and barring entry from those that are dictated not to belong. RPGs, for any number of reasons, can be broadly read this way in how they present and cater themselves, and that's part of the reason why
Moco Moco Friends is so remarkable for what it is: it presents a genuine example of the genre for beginning players while unabashedly creating a distinct RPG for girls wrapped in candy colours, plushies and friendship. A game with this set of traits is rare; one that's not based on any sort of pre-existing license is practically unheard of.
Moco Moco Friends is the story of the titular Moco, a young witch freshly graduated from school, and her misadventures in honing her talents and seeking to become a Plushkin Master, a status achieved only by those who meet and befriend as many of the cute Plushkin creatures as possible inhabiting the world. You don't catch them, coerce them, imprison them... but
befriend them. Monster catching and training games always have an element of subjugation to their mechanical expression, and while battles against Plushkin are a factor in
Moco Moco Friends, their narrative contextualization is about the gentlest it could be, with Moco effectively healing ill Plushkin through contact with her overpowering kindness and being approached in turn by them, seeking further affection. Monster taming narratives have explored themes from dystopic near-futures to lighthearted fantasy to folk tales and digital information, and here the primary influence is in the wider tradition of magical girl genre stories, where friendship is the most powerful force in the world and empathy the strongest weapon to use against one's opponent. The threats to Moco, her friends and even her foes aren't physical violence and death, but insecurities, alienation and loneliness, and that's what everyone bands together to combat. They
will weaponize their true friendship.
This sense of awareness for others and their needs extends to the game's overall design as well. As a game that's meant to be an introduction to a complicated and intimidating genre, Moco Moco Friends does an admirable job of simplifying the convoluted while retaining nuance under the surface. The game's sole town occupies a single screen with clearly delineated and communicated essential services in view, with an optional but beneficial ancillary garden environment attached to the main plaza where one can spend time growing helpful flora. The rest of the time is spent in various dungeon locales, with compact and easy to follow layouts, never deviating from their structure. Combat similarly is intuitively packaged with an appealing interface and a system that prioritizes situational use of abilities drawing from Moco's gradually regenerating magic point pool instead of the attrition of MP recovery usually found in turn-based affairs like this. Even the Plushkin themselves, despite possessing unique traits, elemental affinities and skills, have been balanced such that almost anything works for a given team, freeing the player from analysis paralysis and allowing them to spend time with the ones they think are the cutest, coolest, crudest or any other personal metric one can conjure up.
While older players will likely chafe against at least some aspects of the mechanical design in
Moco Moco Friends, aesthetically the game is a fantastic treat. Every environment achieves a blazingly vibrant, rounded and colourful look that remains compelling even as the layouts stay unchanging--so much so that notorious glutton Moco daydreams of devouring the dungeon whole at times. Moco herself and all her friends benefit from a similarly strong visual design, with much communicated about their characters through colour-coding and clothing design alone. The Plushkins themselves aren't just nominally granted such a moniker, as they're beings of cloth, fabric, buttons, seams, adornments and accessories from the smallest to the largest, and despite the large number of palette swaps and minimally changed evolutionary forms, always remain a delight to encounter (it's extremely distressing to see an injured Plushkin start to visibly unravel and have their stuffing pour out of their frame; it is conversely an immense relief to see them patched up as Moco works her magic on them). The music also stunned me with how absolutely great it turned out to be, making the most of the modest scale of the game with nearly every major theme being irreverently bouncy, positive and infectious. Some favourites:
Fort Pastel,
Crystal Fort,
Pyramaze,
Battle Theme. No one could infer
Moco Moco Friends to have been created with a sizable budget or team from everything the game presents, but within its own context what it offers is thoughtful and made with great care.
Upon reflecting on
Moco Moco Friends, I see a game that "objectively" does not rate compared to many of its peers, but that's not the kind of criticism or media reading I care about, and so I consequently do value it very highly. It's a game that occupies a space in a field that in so many ways would not have it exist or exist in the specific ways that it does, and it is absolutely unapologetic about what it is because media for girls about girls is never something that one should be shamed or made feel lesser for. Here's to Moco and friends, then.