Miraibo GO review - "Still struggling with growing pains a week after launch"

• Scratches that monster-collecting itch
• Too buggy to be enjoyable
• Text is too small; lacks mobile optimisations

You venture out into the great big world - your backpack empty and your wide-eyed innocence intact - only to find yourself faced with a diverse roster of creatures you're just itching to catch. From adorable pups that breathe fire to breathtaking behemoths whose wingspans cover the sky, all these monsters are yours for the taking - all you have to do is chuck a magic ball at them to add them to your collection.

No, it's not Pokemon, and it's not the recent overnight sensation Palworld, either. Miraibo GO aims to replicate that same exhilaration of creature-collecting but with a survival crafting twist - only this time, it's supposed to be done from the palm of your hand. But is this so-called "Pal-like" a noble attempt at catering to a mobile audience, or is it another poor excuse for the real thing?

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Table of contents:

• Miraibo GO visuals
• Miraibo GO gameplay
• Miraibo GO verdict

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Miraibo GO Visuals

I'll talk about the elephant in the room right off the bat - Miraibo GO's creatures (aptly called "Miras"), at least at first glance, don't look too much like blatant rip-offs from Nintendo's own popular IP. Sure, there are similarities, but they still somehow look like they're very much inspired by Pokemon greats rather than repurposed clones (for me, at least, unless there's something I'm not quite seeing). 

They're still cute, still interesting, and they still make me feel like I want to catch them just to complete my collection, so that's a huge tick on character design right there. 

The world is vibrant and gives off this sense of adventure that makes you want to explore - in the world I spawned in, there's even this gigantic skeleton of what seems to be an ancient Mira's remains. You can customise your character a little bit, and the whole thing has some Genshin Impact vibes. Then, you're thrust right into the thick of it where you'll need to build your base from scratch after teleporting through a mysterious cave.

Miraibo GO Gameplay

This is where it all starts to get interesting, as you'll finally get the chance to catch a Mira right from the get-go - that is if you can figure out what the heck you're even supposed to do. To say that there's no hand-holding here is an understatement - there's absolutely no tutorial, no guide, no intro. All you have is this measly little checklist of tasks you need to accomplish, and it's up to you to decipher what everything means and where everything should go.

This very first red flag should have immediately put me off the game, but since I had such high hopes for it - I've been eagerly anticipating this "mobile Palworld" for a while now - I soldiered on. 

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• Choice of Life: Wild Islands review - "Choose your own (island) adventure"

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Now, I knew I could deal with a little bit of fumbling around - constructing my Mira Terminal, how to actually catch a Mira, and how to gather resources to build my measly little settlement. But when things started getting serious - like the mission checklist telling me I needed to eat without actually telling me how to do that - it just took away any kind of enjoyment whatsoever. This particular dilemma had me watching helplessly as my HP slowly whittled itself down because I needed to eat but didn't know how to - god forbid the in-game tutorial told me how to do such a basic task before anything else.

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• 8 monster-taming games to play on mobile

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What's the appeal?

After about a full hour of grasping at straws, I finally got the hang of the things I needed to do to stay functional. I had my basic base, I had Miras working (Assign tasks to your Miras? Sure. How, though?), and I had unlocked enough skills in my Tech tree to craft the essentials I needed. But just when I thought I was about to finally enjoy the game and everything it has to offer, the bugs started scuttling in and didn't stop. 

For one thing, the Miras I summon to my Mira Terminal have a nasty habit of spawning in the middle of a boulder and getting stuck there forever. For another, I can't even lock onto any wild Miras properly without relying on clunky auto-attacks and a companion Mira that simply refuses to attack my target.

At one point, a wild Rolloh I killed just lay there on the grass after it died, and because we were on top of a hill, I accidentally kicked it and its corpse just started rolling down the hillside. True to poor Rolloh's name, down, down, down it went, forever rolling into the depths of the ravine below, a macabre warning to any other wild Mira who might dare to stand in my way.

Never mind all that, and never mind the fact that I initially couldn't even enter the game because all the worlds were full. What really made the game unplayable for me was the UI - everything is laid out with the tiniest font known to man. I have to squint just to see the all-important text that I have to read because there's no tutorial - not to mention learn how to position my fingers with pinpoint accuracy so I can hit the "Use" button instead of the "Batch Use" button that's sitting precariously close to it. 

Precision pointing aside, you'll also have to deal with the lack of any kind of zoom function here, which makes me wonder what the Portrait/Landscape option is even for. For a game that supposedly prides itself in being a mobile version of Palworld, it certainly fails at filling in that market gap, which is just a darn shame. Nothing about the game is remotely "mobile" - no mobile-optimised controls, no quality-of-life features, and no interface that's built for a small screen. I had to start over and play on my tablet just to make it all work on a bigger screen, because playing on my phone just wasn't possible.

There are, of course, SOME good points here - the thrill of exploration and the itch to capture new creatures is very much on-point. There's so much potential for the game to be great, to be honest, but at the moment, it feels like an early access title rather than an official launch. It's definitely not polished enough to have launched globally like it has, and the pros, while present, are immensely overshadowed by the cons.

Overall, Miraibo GO feels like an unfinished piece that's still struggling to find its place. It launched too soon, in my opinion, and if you want to enjoy it in its entirety, I'd say wait a few more weeks - or months, even - before giving it a go, as it's a bit of a miss in its current state.