Upon first inspection, My Pokémon Ranch might come off as a bit of a sim title. It presents you with a feeling that you're not just going to have a bunch of the little critters running around, but you're going to be charged with maintaining their happiness and enriching their in-game lives. The fact is, playing the game never feels like that.
You see, you can take pictures of the little guys, and you can even get their attention to make sure you take good pictures, but beyond that there is nothing worth doing, really. And, to be honest, those activities aren't that great, either. So where's the appeal? DS connectivity, my friends.
The real worth with the DS interaction is using the title as storage space for your vast army of Pokémon you found in the DS games. You can store them in My Pokémon Ranch, which is likely going to be nice for those of you crazy about the pocket monsters, but little-to-no use for everyone else.
When it comes to the game's graphics, however, things are a different story. The graphical style of the game works and presents a very cute and appealing visual package. The Pokémon, ranch and Miis are all integrated into the game well and look colorful, fun and inviting. The Pokémon's animations are also fun, as it's nice to see them scurry about and attack each other now and then. So, here, Nintendo succeeds. But, this really only adds to the title feeling like nothing more than an interactive screen saver.
It's not that My Pokémon Ranch is a bad game. Fans of the franchise will find more than enough here to get them in and playing for quite some time, and the storage space will likely lure some folk in. For the rest of the world, however, the game fails to offer up any meaningful gameplay and comes off as a cute and quick diversion, offering little more than a few minutes of fun before you're off to play something better.
Final score: 6/10