You know that with the holidays approaching, it’s time for mildly family-friendly fare to make an appearance, trying to not so much appeal to younger gamers, but to their parents and grandparents looking for something cute and age-appropriate as gifts. In the old days they’d need to trot on down to the game store, looking lost and bewildered as they scanned the rows of game boxes and tried to ask for help in finding something appropriate. Now they can hit the massive digital monster that is the eShop, looking for the same sorts of things, but not having as much help available to avoid making simple mistakes. There’s no doubt that on the surface Sophia's Animal Clinic - Mission Wildlife Park has the look of the sort of game they’d be looking for, but if they played it even for a little while they’d quickly learn that they should look elsewhere.

I suppose the first hint that something could be amiss would be the game’s main and character art, which have quite a number of hallmarks of being AI generated. Granted, it’s possible that such areas simply didn’t come together satisfactorily in time for launch, with the rest of the experience feeling polished, but that simply isn’t the case either. Saying that the gameplay feels clunky would be accurate, and if the hope is that you’d be able to hand this off to your kids for some fun that problem only multiplies. 

Given that this feels more like a work sim than a casual title, you’re going to have to move around and look for pretty well anything you need to use. Even with tools and the things you need being highlighted, this can be a bit of a chore as there are plenty of items around you that you can’t do anything with, they just slow you down. Worse, once you do get the right gear in hand you’ll often then need to randomly scan around on animals to look for treatment areas, and even when you find them the controls can sometimes feel uncooperative for actually getting the job done. Some tasks work a little better than others, each working out effectively as a mini game of sorts, but many of them are too basic to be satisfying, especially for anyone who is used to playing competent titles.

That brings us full circle back to the question of who this is even for. On the one hand it requires too much reading and unsatisfying mucking around to likely be appropriate or have appeal for kids, but on the other it’s too basic and tedious for anyone older to settle for this generally overpriced mess. Honestly I’ve played mobile games that are better conceived and more entertaining than this, and some of them are even free, helping to make this game’s glaring issues all the more egregious.