Following our import review of Miitopia, I quickly grew unexcited for the quirky Mii RPG. After spending some time with the forthcoming American release of the 3DS game though, I’m way more interested in what seems to be more of a Tomodachi Life follow-up than I anticipated. It doesn’t seem to be a deep RPG, but if you liked the aquarium-like chicanery of Tomodachi Life, maybe Miitopia is something you should keep your eye on.

The game pulls from your collection of Miis that are on your system or in your Tomodachi Life save file. Additionally, Nintendo will put up a Mii Central service that you can use to download Miis from a server. When you have these Miis, you can start building your adventure by casting your party, your villain, and various NPCs. The villainous dark lord (which you can give the face of the Mii of your own arch nemesis) has stolen people’s faces, so it’s up to your noble Mii heroes to try to save the day. Each character has their own class, whether it’s a warrior, a cook, or a pop star. It’s all very goofy.

In battle, you only control the hero as the other characters automatically attack. Your options aren’t too varied, as you basically just use attacks and special attacks, but a certain unpredictability exists in the combat that makes it neat. Your other party members can say random things or take random actions. On replay, different things can happen or be said. A lot of this just seems like Tomodachi Life in traditional RPG form. The combat is very passive, though, so much so that I threw it onto the “auto battle” option for a chunk of my demo.

The appeal of Miitopia seems to be to watch the characters interact, though. In between battles, you stay at inns, where you can put your party members into different rooms and increase their bonds. You can also feed them and try to build up their stats. Give them an allowance and directions to buy a certain items and they might do that. Or they might just buy a banana. Once again, it’s all very wacky.

I’m not totally sold on Miitopia from what I played, but it might just be quirky enough for me to want to mess around with some Mii adventures when it launches on July 28.