When you fire up the game for the first time, you’ll be greeted with a very important reminder: New Pokémon Snap saves its data automatically , whenever you see a little spinning icon in the top-right corner of the screen. You don’t have to worry about manually saving your game whenever you’re done—just be sure that icon isn’t shown and you can turn it off whenever.
That being said, you’ll be able to select which language you’d like to play the game in, from the 10 different options that are present in the main series games. Any character or location names will be in English throughout this walkthrough, so they may differ if you are playing in another language. Once you choose a language, you are stuck with that language unless you delete your save data, so make sure you’re comfortable with the language you choose. You can also pick the language you want characters to speak in for voice clips, although the only options are English, Japanese, and No voices.
After that, you’ll have eight different choices to represent your player character throughout the game, so choose whichever one you like the best, although keep in mind this cannot be changed throughout the game and there is no further customization of things like clothes, hair, etc. like in the main series games.
You’ll then need to give yourself a name or nickname to use throughout the game. This is what everyone in the game will call you, as well as what will show on any pictures that you share online. You have 12 characters to use for this nickname, including any spaces and punctuation.
After introducing yourself to a few nearby Pokémon, two people will approach you and introduce themselves to you—Professor Mirror and his research assistant, Rita. They are stationed at the Laboratory of Ecology and Natural Sciences, or L.E.N.S. for short, which will serve as your base of operations in the Lental region that the game takes place in.
They’ll talk about the goal of surveying the islands of the Lental region, which no one has done before, with the exception of its discoverer from 100 years in the past, Captain Vince.
They’ll go on for a bit more before taking you into the lab. Professor Mirror will give you the research camera , which is not just what you use for taking pictures, but also serves as your ID card for the lab and has a few other functions on it such as being able to communicate with the rest of the group.
Rita will then volunteer to show you how to use it and will take you outside to do so.
First of all, it’s important to remember that for any tutorials—both in-game and throughout this walkthrough—it will assume you are using the default button layout. You can actually change the button layout in the Settings and it may be good to look into that, but just keep in mind that, if you do so, you’ll have to remember that the in-game tutorials and this walkthrough use the default button layout for their explanations.
By default, you will press the A button to take a picture of a Pokémon. A Vivillon will fly into the screen and Rita will instruct you to take a picture of it using the A button. (If ever you get confused, you can also look at the actions and corresponding buttons in the bottom-right corner of the game.)
Next up, Rita will tell you to line up your camera with the Pokémon rather than just snap a picture of it. You can do this by moving the Left or Right Control Stick to move the pointer in the middle of the screen and look around. (Extra tip: you can move both the Left and Right sticks in a direction to move the pointer a bit faster! There’s also a setting in the Settings menu that allows you to use motion controls to move the camera by moving your controller, although you can still use the control sticks while this setting is enabled, don’t worry.)
Something important to keep in mind about the pointer: the pictures you take are not centered on the pointer! The pictures will always be more or less what’s in the center of your screen , not centered on the pointer, but the pointer can also be used for aiming different tools and for a few interactions, so it’s still important. Ideally, you’ll want the pictures to be taken with the pointer near the middle of the screen with an orange light in the middle of the pointer to indicate you’re looking at something—you get more points if the Pokémon you’re taking a picture of is in the middle of the screen, so that’s a good way to help with that positioning.
Anyway, Rita will tell you to take a picture of a Pikachu that appears, and explain a bit about how the subjects of photos work, which is basically the orange dot in the middle of the pointer along with a box around the subject. Line up your camera with Pikachu and then press A to take a photo of it.
Next, she’ll tell you how to zoom in, which is very important for taking good shots. You can hold in the ZL button to zoom in the camera, which will be very important for taking good pictures, as the size of the Pokémon in the picture affects the score you’ll earn , so you’ll want Pokémon to be centered and as large as possible (without being cropped out of the photo, of course!) to get a higher score and better rating.
One important thing to mention about zooming that isn’t actually explained until later: while you’re zoomed in, you’ll move a little bit slower through each area. You haven’t yet ridden in the vehicle you’ll be riding in throughout the game, as this is just the tutorial, but for each of the areas in the game, you move along a predefined path (with some branching routes), so slowing things down may affect your experience and ability to take shots of certain Pokémon or events—both positively and negatively. Likewise, looking behind you has a similar effect, where it will slow you down a little bit.
After taking the pictures of Vivillon and Pikachu, Rita will talk a little bit more and tell you about the Settings menu, and then you’ll return to the lab for Professor Mirror to evaluate your photos.
The evaluation process happens at the end of each area you visit and you’ll have to pick your best shot for each Pokémon you’ve taken a picture of. Each Pokémon will appear in a folder and you’ll see all of the pictures you took for the given Pokémon in its respective folder.
Your task is to pick the photo you think will earn you the most points for each Pokémon you’ve taken a picture of. Professor Mirror has his own method of scoring, and you’ll earn points based on how well it fits different criteria.
NOTE: If the following is a bit too much to take in, don’t worry! Come back to it later as a reference, or just flip through a bit of it. You don’t need to know all of this immediately, but it’s good to know how the scoring system works and the differences between the different ⭐ ranks.
Each photo you submit has its score calculated from all of the above factors, and you’ll receive that many score points to your total score, which is tracked in your statistics.
Not only that, but there are four different star rankings for every single Pokémon in the game. The star ratings are NOT a factor of how “good” your photo is or its score! Think of them more as four different categories .
With four separate ⭐ ratings, you have four separate opportunities to earn score for each Pokémon in the game. These are each stored separately, so any ⭐ photos of a Pokémon are scored separately than any ⭐⭐ or ⭐⭐⭐ photos, and you’ll get score for all of them combined as you add them to your collection.
If you already have a photo of a Pokémon (at the same ⭐ rank) , you’ll be given the option to replace your existing photo with the newer one. It will show the scores of both the existing photo and the new one—it’s recommended you always keep the photo with the highest score, regardless of if you think one looks better than the other.
And again, just to reiterate, if you already have a ⭐⭐ photo and you take a ⭐⭐⭐ photo, you won’t have to replace anything—these separate ⭐ ranks are stored separately and both will count towards your total score, which is a good thing!
Each of your photos will earn a ranking based on its score. Again, the ⭐–⭐⭐⭐⭐ does not indicate your photo’s score , but instead the color of the stars indicates that photo’s score rank .
These rankings are mostly cosmetic and for your own personal accomplishment—it’s really the actual score number that’s the most important—although you can unlock special titles when you take certain amounts of Gold or Diamond star photos.
These photos will all be saved in the Pokémon Photodex , a special album that keeps track of your evaluated photos for each Pokémon for ⭐–⭐⭐⭐⭐ photos.
After taking your first few photos and hopefully getting a feel for how the controls work, and after getting your photos evaluated by Professor Mirror, you’ll be taken back outside and will be introduced to the vehicle you’ll be riding around in while taking photos out in the wild—the NEO-ONE !
Professor Mirror and Rita will explain a bit more about the NEO-ONE and then you’ll hop inside, ready to embark on your first photo expedition over at the nearby Florio Nature Park !