Nice figures, underwhelming use so far
Nintendo’s long awaited foray into the toy market is here: the amiibo are ready for purchase, and the flagship game, Super Smash Bros., is right on the horizon.
While the toys look great in person and the setup is painless, so far the actual interactivity is underwhelming. Collector itch aside, I’d definitely recommend waiting until more compatible games are out before committing to any purchases.
Setting up an amiibo with Smash Bros. was one of the easiest things I’ve ever done on the Wii U. All you do is go to the amiibo section on the main menu, touch it to the pad, select an account to register it to, and give it a nickname. From there, you can customize your amiibo “player” with one of the preset color palettes (my pal is a Dark Link skin called Shadow), feed it items to change its stats, and assign it custom movesets where applicable.
From there, you can battle against amiibos as AI opponents, train with them, put them up against other AI fighters, or challenge your friends to take them out. They’ll earn experience points and work their way up to the level cap of 50, at which point their tactics will be maxed out, turning them into a formidable opponent akin to a maxed out CPU setting. From there, they will allegedly adapt new strategies.
Sounds neat, right? Well in reality, it’s not all that exciting. Getting to level 50 can take just one day (or less) for those diligent enough. Plus, after starting up the game and unwrapping a brand new amiibo there won’t be any custom moves unlocked to assign and customize the toy with.
So basically at first, it’s going to be a stock character with a new paint job and a nickname. In short, Nintendo easily could have had this functionality with AI save files on the Wii U’s hard drive without the need to purchase a $12 toy. I haven’t seen anything noticeable in regards to the “post level 50” functionality.
It has also been revealed that amiibo figures can only store data from one game at a time — at which point that data must be deleted. The only three games in the near future that use amiibo functionality besides Smash Bros. are Mario Kart 8, Captain Toad, and Hyrule Warriors, but Kart and Hyrule currently only have an equally underwhelming on-disc DLC type unlock system that will not erase your data. Captain Toad‘s amiibo functionality is unknown.
So basically for now, we’re safe storing Smash amiibo data unfettered by other games. But once Yoshi’s Wooly World, Mario Party 10, and Kirby and the Rainbow Curse arrive, it might get annoying depending on what the amiibo conditions are. Then again, the toys themselves will become a hell of a lot more useful.
Either way you slice it amiibos don’t have me excited quite yet. But they do look pretty damn awesome on my desk.
[This write-up is based on a retail build of the toy provided by the publisher.]
