The game itself is more exciting... and yes it is grindy, but in a more satisfying way. Plus, it's a ridiculous japanese game.

I could tell it was going to be grindy from the outset and kind of went in with the right mindset and preparation; that said there is still a solid amount of depth to the gameplay; albeit the first 20ish years become an afterthought swiftly and I no longer have any interest in doing anything beyond completing all the challenges.

@Brodehouse said:

Tokyo Jungle felt pretty Goddamn grindy to me. I tolerate very little Suffer This Activity To Do A Fun Activity Later. If Tokyo Jungle starts with all the creatures unlocked, and focused on making the core gameplay interesting and with more depth, it would be a better game.

Don't unlock ALL of the animals from the start, but maybe instead of unlocking specific breeds you unlocked a type of animal it'd be better, like "You've now unlocked dogs!" instead of "You've now unlocked the Beagle!"

Keep the game a grind, but a much, MUCH smaller grind.

Tokyo Jungle felt pretty Goddamn grindy to me. I tolerate very little Suffer This Activity To Do A Fun Activity Later.

If Tokyo Jungle starts with all the creatures unlocked, and focused on making the core gameplay interesting and with more depth, it would be a better game.

I showed Tokyo Jungle to my roommate, and 30 minutes into it, our mutual friend came by, and also watched as I played it. After a couple hours of enjoying watching me play it, and the initial hilarity of "holy crap, you just took down a velociraptor with a beagle" wore off, they suddenly swung hard the other way saying "OK, so that's it, you basically just have to grind through all of the animals to get all of the other animals. How is that any less grindy and time-wastey than Pocket Planes, which you occasionally lightly mock us for playing?"

It is true, I have mocked them for playing Pocket Planes in the past, because I generally don't care for it, Farmville, and any browser/mobile free to play game where you give actions and wait for rewards, and there is no real fail state. I only make exceptions for that genre if it's really at the top of its class, like Sim City.

My response to them was that Tokyo Jungle is just a more interesting game to play, because you're doing something in real time where you actually learn how to get better at the game, plus the animals have varying stats and offer a somewhat different experience. As you get better animals, you can last more and more generations. Pocket Planes, while probably the best of that genre, just comes down to how efficiently you can go through the cycle of "dispatch plane, wait, get money and upgrade", and that style of game just loses my interest within a day. Tokyo Jungle just doesn't get boring anywhere near as quickly.

Your taste in games comes down to subjective preferences and what fits your lifestyle, but I still think it is absolutely absurd that they made the comparison in the first place and somehow thought they had caught me in the act of hypocrisy, when Tokyo Jungle's progression doesn't have NEARLY the same degree of grind as Pocket Planes.