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Bug Fables I think looks rather charming and distinct from Paper Mario, but Disc Creatures... no, that's just Pokemon RGBY. I can understand wanting to replicate RGBY's off-model aesthetic, but this is borderline plagiarism.

I can't comment on Disc Creatures, but for Bug Fables, I look at it as being more like Mario 64 and Banjo-Kazooie, where one game clearly inspired the other, but both of them are great.

I mean, Bug Fables was purposely made to evoke the classic Paper Mario since the current people in charge of the series's direction (cough Tanabe) seem to absolutely despise and want nothing to do with the classic games for some reason.

Disc Creatures looks more like a mash up of Pokemon and Dragon Quest Monsters. Overworld design like Pokemon but creature design and combat looking way more like DQM. I have no issue with it as I love monster catching styled games. So more the merrier, even if they are 'love childs' or heavily inspired bys.

Perhaps these will help you see things a little differently. They have for me.

Yo-Kai Watch dosent have a monopoly on big attacks, bosses, dances, QR codes, maps and taking pictures

None of those Pokemon have any resemblance to those Dragon Quest monsters. The only ones you have any sort of point on is Krabby and Gyarados, which even then are both super generic designs.

I mean, Dragon Quest came first, so if anything Pokemon copied it lol.

And yet Pokemon made use of none of those things before Yo-Kai Watch despite it being around longer and only waited to do any AFTER Pokemon ORAS got outsold by YKW2 in Japan lol.
With how Pokemon Snap had already been a beloved game for years, the Kimono Girls and their own dance being integral to the story of games like GSC and DQ proving the touch screen could be used for maps in the DS era, Pokemon really has no excuse as to why it waited so long to actually incorporate them. Ironic even moreso with how useless the Rotom Dex map ends up being anyway since the game is criticized for being so linear and it stops working after the story.
Nah, they're pretty easy to spot the resemblances and even besides visually, the Pokemon more or less perform the exact same role in battle and in location compared to their respective Dragon Quest counterpart. i. e. Pidgey line and Grudgerigar being low tier early route bird monsters, Zubat and Dracky being a low tier early route common cave monster, Dragonite and Great Dragon being a late-game high stat rare monster, etc.

I mean, that's all just basic RPG stuff, which, I'd imagine that would imply that every game would just be a knock off of Dungeons and Dragons.

Ah yes. I recall a session where Dungeons and Dragons totally let me use a special QR code that let me obtain a rare ultimate attack while I did a signature dance lol.

I mean, I'm not saying that Yo-Kai watch isn't a bit of a clone of Pokemon, in fact it's kinda obvious, but it's not the only one. There's literal dozens, the collectable creature genre is huge. Digimon, Monster Rancher, hell, even Dragon Quest has the Monster's series. But to call it a 'rip-off' feels a bit rough when it's inspired by. Hell, you could argue that Mega Evolutions are a rip off of Digivolving by this logic since that was a huge criticism about the mechanic back in the day.


They're all games in the same genre, there's gonna be similarities. Yo Kai watch is a bit blatant in the "Dude, let me copy your homework", but I'd be hard pressed to call it a rip off.