Viva Piñata: Pocket Paradise

Viva Piñata: Pocket Paradise is a 2008 life simulation video game developed by Rare and published by THQ for the Nintendo DS. It is the sequel to Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise.

Gameplay
In this game you own a garden that you can customize to your will. Piñatas may come to the garden if you meet certain requirements. You can also grow plants and trees, and sell and purchase items. Level up by earning awards which are earned by successfully growing plants, getting Piñatas into your garden, and romancing Piñatas which makes a person deliver an egg to create a new member of the family. Leveling up increases the selection of items you can purchase such as upgrades to your tools, new surface packets, food, buildings, and decorations.

However, not everything is easy and carefree. Some Piñatas will eat other kinds of piñata to meet a certain requirement, be it becoming resident or even to romance. Some kinds of Piñatas just don't like certain other kinds and will fight as soon as they get in contact, such as the Barkbark not liking Kittyfloss. Certain red plants are potentially dangerous to your Piñatas, but are required to meet a certain requirement for a piñata. Also, red sour Piñatas exist primarily to harm your garden by doing bad deeds in your garden, such as eating seeds or starting fights with your Piñatas. Also, after getting your garden level up enough Professor Pester will order Ruffians to attack your garden, and eventually, he himself will start to bash your most expensive Piñatas in your garden, breaking them immediately. You must deal with him immediately lest you lose one of your prized possessions. If a Piñata stays sick for too long, Dastardos will come to destroy it, however you can cure it by various means, the most simple one is to ask Doc Patchingo to cure it for you.

Some actions in Viva Piñata: Pocket Paradise are performed differently from the Xbox 360 games. You for example need to use a Taffly to get fertilizer from a fruit to then use it on your plants, when in the Xbox 360 games you can buy fertilizer from Costolot's Store or use a Taffly. Also, you only need to fertilize a plant once unlike the Xbox 360 games where you need to fertilize a plant three items.

After completing certain objectives a tutorial will appear with one of the main cast for the TV series telling you how to complete the tutorial.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) More than 60 different species of Piñata creatures to discover and make resident in your garden. The kind of creatures you can find include worms, birds, ladybugs, geckos, gorillas, and vultures, among others.
 * 2) Some species of Piñata creatures from Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise are included, such as the Bispotti.
 * 3) Game uses the touch screen to allow you to use tools more easily. The control layout is very well suited for the Nintendo DS. For example you can drag your surface packets or shovel in a zigzag pattern to one end of the screen and back to the other end in less than a second merely using the stylus.
 * 4) Customize your garden with fences, toys, and houses.
 * 5) You can put fences in a diagonal direction, something you can't do on the Xbox 360 games.
 * 6) The game has full-motion video clips of the Viva Piñata TV series attached to the tutorial episodes, retaining the voice acting found in the TV series. These tutorials are unlocked during gameplay when you get the ability to do an action featured in the tutorial and they actually guide you through the step by step on how to preform the action.
 * 7) Good vibrant graphics on the Nintendo DS with little to no slowdown.
 * 8) The new Playground feature allows you to test things without messing up your main gardens.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Garden is very small and gets cramped easily, at least until you reach gardener level five.
 * 2) The touch screen itself can be cramped.
 * 3) You can only get a few accessories for Piñatas.
 * 4) Some stores like Paper Pets aren't available.
 * 5) You can't make all the Piñatas eat the other Piñatas until the current fight is over.

Game Tips

 * 1) Tame the Sour Piñatas as soon as you can, as they do bad things to your garden. If you don't tame them they keep coming back to your garden to do the bad stuff all over again.
 * 2) To get lots of chocolate coins quickly, plant groups of six or more chili vegetables in your garden, sell them after they grow, then replant them.