When you think about magic academies, you almost always assume it has something to do with a skinny boy in round glasses getting whisked away by a friendly bearded giant to a land of witchcraft and wizardry. And when you think about creature collecting, it's always about a boy in a red cap stuffing capture balls in his backpack and setting off from his small town to discover the world.

It's incredibly refreshing, then, to have both of these elements combined in Roco Kingdom, where you enrol in a magic academy not to learn spells with a magic wand but to catch the aforementioned creatures in the wild - red cap and round glasses optional.

For one thing, the creatures themselves - called Jinies - don't look like distant cousins of Pikachu and the gang. And for another, despite the "Pokeballs" still being, well, balls, they're magical in nature, which is perfectly in sync with the magical theme of the world of Carosia.

And because it's an open world, you get to venture out from your magic school and really explore every nook and cranny of the fantasy land laid out beautifully before you. Carosia's colourful setting has effectively reignited that sense of excitement inside me that disappointing games in the genre have long since snuffed out. It's been a long time since I really felt the desire to explore the world around me, and the equally colourful Jinies in the wild only add to that exhilaration.

Because yes, it really is all about the creature-collecting here - not the crafting, not the farming, and certainly not the tedious resource gathering.

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