Pokémon-Amie is probably the absolute cutest thing in Pokémon X/Y - maybe the entire series - to be devised. (And I am not intending that to be derogatory; I’m being rather serious.) It could even be one of the most beneficial aspects of Pokémon X/Y, given what it could do to your battle strategy and whatever personal attachments you have to your Pokémon.

To access Pokémon-Amie simply press L/R to find it on the bottom screen, like the PSS and Super Training apps. There, you can tap on a Pokémon. If you opt to switch it out, you can see its various stats regarding Pokémon-Amie and the other Pokémon with which you may want to play. Once you want to play, do so!

Within the Pokémon-Amie interactive, you can do a number of things.

• You can pet your Pokémon by rubbing them using the stylus and Touch Screen, which raises their affection. Just rub repeatedly and a number of hearts (or a music note) should appear. The implications of this are in the next section.
• You can “ make faces “ with your Pokémon. Quite literally. This does require a pretty bright area (like, I needed to be in a well-windowed area in the daytime) and a clean inner 3DS/2DS camera. When a certain green face-like icon appears in the lower-left, you can play this little mini-game. Basically, do what it tells you (wink this eye, tilt your this way, open your mouth this much, etc.) and you can raise your Pokémon’s affection!
• You can run your stylus along the Touch Screen in areas where nothing are - it’s basically to mimic you waving your finger in random motions. It doesn’t really raise affection, but the reaction’s pretty cute for some Pokémon.
• Similarly, you can use the microphone to speak with your Pokémon.
• You can feed your Pokémon PokéPuffs. PokéPuffs can be accessed via the top-left icon in the interactive. From there, you can grab a PokéPuff - if you don’t like what you see, maybe you should scroll left (put the stylus in the middle of the selection area and swipe left).
• You can also play mini-games with them, discussed in later sections - basically, they raise Enjoyment and Affection, as well as lowering Fullness.

Anyways, that’s the basics of Pokémon-Amie. So, you may be asking why we should go through this? Well, as your Pokémon’s affection rating goes up, a variety of things can happen - sometimes very beneficial things, as it were! Generally, if you see a heart or your Pokémon looks at you during battle, then, yeah, it was caused by Pokémon-Amie.

• Random in-battle dialogue changes to evoke emotional reactions from you (i.e. “It looks like it’s about to cry” may appear at low HP)
• You may pet the Pokémon after a battle if it was the Pokémon that finished it
• Critical-hit ratio can be increased
• Evasion rate can be increased
• Pokémon may recover early from status ailments
• EXP. can be boosted!
• Pokémon might survive attacks that would normally KO it!

Pokemon-Amie Statistics¶

There are three primary statistics in Pokémon-Amie.

• Affection : By far the most important, this can help to determine the awards you get, detailed at the end of the previous section. It is raised by petting Pokémon, playing Make Faces with them, playing mini-games, and feeding Pokémon PokéPuffs. It maxes at five hearts. This stat is completely independent of the Pokémon’s actual Happiness stat!
• Fullness : This determines how many PokéPuffs your Pokémon can eat: there’s a general “1 PokéPuff, 1 unit” correspondence here. If the Pokémon begins to eat slower or even just ignore the food, then the Pokémon is getting fuller. In other words, it’s a long and tedious process to raise Affection by just eating - the quickest way to a Pokémon’s heart is not through it’s stomach. =) Anyways, this is lowered by playing mini-games.
• Enjoyment : Simply put, it denotes how often you play mini-games: the more music notes, the more you’ve played mini-games with it recently.

Regarding Affection, it is denoted by how hearts a Pokémon has given off when you’ve done various activities with it.

Minigames: Berry Picker¶

This particular minigame is the leftmost of those given to you. There are several difficulties: Easy, Normal, Hard, and Unlimited. As the difficulty increases, your Pokémon get more demanding faster and you’ll have more Berries to contend with.

The goal is to tap and drag the Berries on the Touch Screen to the Pokémon requesting them: you’ve probably played a mini-game like this if you’ve played Mario Party DS. The Berry the Pokémon wants is in the little thought bubble next to it - drag the Berry into the thought bubble and the Pokémon will go off, giving you a point.

If you do it fast enough, you’ll get additional points, denoted by an orange note in lieu of a yellow one. Most of the difficulties are timed except Unlimited - in that difficulty, you are to get as many Berries done as possible, as the difficulty slowly racks up, up to the point that you fail to give the Pokémon a Berry fast enough or the proper Berry three times.

As for some tips… When the Pokémon begin to come in groups, try to set up a bit of a method of going to them rather than hectically spotting Pokémon needing a Berry. I, for example, tend to go sequential, generally left to right. If you spot Pokémon popping up out of sync, go for whoever came up first.

And generally try to familiar yourself with the position of the Berries as you go: if you can do that, then you just need to look at the Pokémon for who wants what.

Minigames: Head It¶

The concept of this mini-game is to make the Pokémon bounce back balls of yarn using their heads. Tap the Pokémon and it’ll bounce back the ball of yarn. Doing so earns you one point, but you can earn three if you bounce it back at the right time.

Continually hitting the ball in sequence is good as well and gives a combo - starting around 10~15 hits, regardless of the “right time” bonus, you’ll also get a “FEVER” double bonus.

That means you could get up to six hits! Your combo breaks, though, if you miss the yarn or fail to hit it. As time goes on, more and more Pokémon come to play, and the yarn balls increase in quantity, speed, and variety of speeds.

At the end, you can hit an extra large yarn ball for bonus points - however, you don’t get that in Unlimited mode, since it is not timed and just ends upon missing three balls of yarn.

As the difficulty increases (from Easy, Normal, Hard to Unlimited), you generally have to deal with multiple Pokémon more often, have more complex series of yarn balls to contend with, and the balls obviously will vary in speed more.

As for some tips? Well… A lot of the time, there’s actually a rhythmic pattern to the balls dropping, despite it being on one or three Pokémon, so you can use that to your advantage. However, when doing so, listen for “out of place” sounds, like a low-pitched whistle, to indicate a yarn ball is going to fall at a different-than-normal speed.

Minigames: Tile Puzzle¶

The Tile Puzzle mini-games are debatably the hardest of the three to go for. In these puzzles, you need to tap two tiles of the puzzle to switch them around: if they fit in their proper positions, then they’ll stick there and lose their dashed cyan border. You need to get them all to fit as quickly as possible.

Normally, this would seem simple if it weren’t for the pictures actually being dynamic: they can move around and change quite suddenly to throw you off! In Unlimited mode, you will go through the puzzles sequentially with a time limit imposed: you gain more time for correctly moving pieces and for completing puzzles, with the game ending when time runs out.

Like all the other mini-games, there are several difficulties: Easy, Normal, Hard, and Unlimited. As the difficulty increases, each puzzle will have more pieces to contend with.

And tips? Well, first start with the corner pieces - unlike the more recent tradition of puzzles from the Mario & Luigi RPG series, the pieces are not rotated, so they look as they should. You can look at the colored border around the tile to get an idea of where it fits.

From there, go for the edge pieces - remember that the edges will have their colors blend about halfway between the corner pieces. And from there, you’re mostly on your own with the central pieces.