#plus the catching mechanism and the partner pokémon (i love eevee so much)

[c0nnverse]

my core series pokeymon ranking

[cwtwheely]

Pokémon Let's Go Review

Well... this has been a contentious Pokémon game, hasn't it?

While fans were excited that Pokémon was going to be released on the Switch (even if some were disappointed that there would be no more main series games on the 3DS), knowing that the first would include Go elements put some off entirely. Which is understandable; it took about two years for the app to fully form, and its "gameplay" is rudimentary.

But I like Go regardless, and I was looking forward to Let's Go, especially after learning that it was a remake of Yellow (which desperately needed a remake, as the original is incredibly dated).

As for this? I love it. I've been playing it as much as I can since it was released, and I've been having so much fun.

First off, let's talk about the Go aspect. Yes, you no longer battle most of the Pokémon you encounter, but they make sure you have enough of an incentive to catch them other than filling the Pokédex. And it all comes down to catch combos.

Catch combos are earned by catching one species of Pokémon over and over again (you can encounter another Pokémon, run from it and not break the combo). The higher the combo, the more candy and berries you earn.

Candy, which can also be earned by transferring Pokémon to the professor, replace the God awful medical based boosters from the other games which were so expensive and scarce to find in the wild. There are 6 different candy you can earn:

Health - raises HP

Mighty - raises Attack

Tough - raises Defence

Smart - raises Special Attack

Courage - raises Special Defence

Quick - raises Speed

These candy come in normal size (can be used on any Pokémon), large (only work on Pokémon above level 30) and extra large (only work on Pokémon above level 60). There are also Pokémon-specific candy (like Go) which raise every stat of that Pokémon and its evolutionary line (eg: Charmander candy works on Charizard), and the rare candy retains its main series effect of raising the level of a Pokémon.

With these, it's never been easier to unleash the true potential of your Pokémon. It's gotten me into competitive battling a lot more than I thought. And if any system needs to bleed into the main series, it's the candy system.

That said, if it does become a mainstay, it needs a tweak. While I'm not too fussed about grinding for the candy, using them can be incredibly tedious and unnecessarily time consuming. It takes, at most, 10 minutes to fully raise a Pokémon, and that's if you have enough candy to get it that far.

In Go these days, if you have more than one rare candy, and you want to give them all to one Pokémon, you can do so in seconds. It would be nice if that was possible with the Let's Go candy system too, especially with the Pokémon specific candy.

Catch combos offer more benefits than just candy. The further along a chain you get, the more likely you are to find one with the best base stats. You can check these with the Judge feature, which is given to you once you catch 30 different species and talk to an aide on the eastern building out of Fuschia City (heading to Lavender Town). It's another feature that makes it so much easier to invest in getting the best out of your favourite Pokémon (and another feature that needs to be kept).

And, yes, chain combos make things easier to find shiny Pokémon. With a combo over 30, odds are slashed from 1 in just over 4,000 to one in 341. And these odds are made better if you set a lure off and (once you've registered every Pokémon in the Pokédex) the shiny charm.

Also, the higher the combo, the more experience your Pokémon get. While that's great, as is the even distribution of EXP for every Pokémon in your team, it's not ideal. Say you've built a team that you're not entirely happy with. You find a Pokémon you want to include, but realise it's at a much lower level. The only way to build that Pokémon up is to remove all of your current team and grind it up, which is the only major flaw with the catching mechanic. Fortunately, this could only be an issue with any future Let's Go games (if they make more of them).

Yes, some will say "just send it out first in trainer battles!"

You need your stronger Pokémon to support that weaker one, so all the EXP your weak Pokémon gets, your stronger one gets, too (actually, the higher level one gets more, I think). Y

Your team still shares EXP from trainer battles, so you have the same problem.

There aren't as many Trainers as there are wild Pokémon.

Whether they stick with Go catching mechanics, revert to normal, allow players to battle, beat then catch Pokémon (like they do with Snorlax, the Electrode in the Power Plant or the Legendaries) or allow players to choose the best option for them, chain combos should be kept, especially if they're wanting to double down on the competitive scene and allowing everyone a chance to get involved in it.

The catching itself is... alright. While I do like using the Poké Ball Plus, the gyroscope technology in handheld mode is also really good. That said, in a game made to be as accessible as possible, disabled people are abandoned by them.

As someone who is disabled, I'm incredibly fortunate to have little issue using them... for now. One wrong move, however, and I could probably never play the game again. Granted, that's a worst case scenario, but with my condition, that is also a possibility. For a full report on this, I'll refer you to this Kotaku article:

Seriously Nintendo, stop forcing us to accept motion controls! They utterly destroyed Star Fox Zero and they are restrictive as all hell for a series that's meant to be universal! Make them an option if you must, but for God's sake, motion controls should never be the only way to play on a home console!

With all of that out of the way, the story is... well, pretty much the same as the original Yellow version. There are some tweaks; your rival is friendlier than Blue was, Lorelei helps you with Team Rocket on route 10, you see the Cubone try and interact with its dead mother (the most heartbreaking scene in media since Up), you see Blue take over the Viridian City Gym after you beat Giovanni (explaining why you faced him in Gold, Silver and Crystal).

But on the whole, it's simple yet effective. Frankly, it's a better story than Black and White because it doesn't reek of hypocrisy (they're using Pokémon to try and push a message to not abuse animals) and never takes itself too seriously. Besides which, the twist of Giovanni being the Viridian Gym Leader as a means to boost his operation is so unexpected and well handled that it's never been matched.

But on the whole, you beat the Gyms, catch the Pokémon and be the best. It's a formula that works.

Where the game truly shines, however, is the graphics. By the end of the game, I was thinking "why hasn't Pokémon been on a home console before now?" Sure, they wanted people to come together, which was more likely with handheld consoles. But frankly? It held the visual storytelling back so much. And this game is proof of that.

I've mentioned the Cubone moment before, but that whole subplot is the best, most heartbreaking storytelling the franchise has ever had to offer. But the only time that actually worked, and was properly felt, was in this game.

The Gyms also got an upgrade. Most of them were slight updates, but two (Saffron and Cinnabar) have similar mechanics, but a much different feel. Cinnabar especially is so over the top with its quiz theme is just brilliant. I loved it. Saffron's, however, was just breathtakingly beautiful. It was also TARDIS-like in that it's much bigger on the inside. But it's another example of why the Switch makes the game look so much better.

That said, there were a couple of times where I experienced significant frame rate drops in handheld mode (I can't say if it's the same in docked mode as I don't play it that way). It mainly happens at the start of Viridian Forest when there are a lot of Pokémon on screen (be careful when setting a lure off there). I didn't experience any major bugs or glitches other than that, though.

And yes, your Pokémon can (finally) follow you around again. Some (Arcanine, Persian) you can ride on to traverse the world faster. And you can fly over the overworld on a Charizard or Dragonite once you beat the Elite Four (it's tougher to enter buildings though, so you have to spend a couple of seconds trying to land).

Hopefully this means that this feature will be a mainstay. Not only is it fun to interact with your buddy, but they also help you find hidden items in flowers or rocks.

The only Pokémon you can fully interact with is your starter: Pikachu or Eevee. It's similar to Pokémon Amie from X, Y, Sun and Moon, and... well, it's so charming. I often went in just to see her reactions and I wasn't disappointed. She danced, she got excited, she even gave me presents. It's just adorable! Hopefully this stays as well, only for every Pokémon that follows you around.

The menus are fine as well. But in handheld mode, it is rather cumbersome to use the buttons to navigate through them. The touchscreen can be used to interact with your partner Pokémon, so why it couldn't be used to navigate the menus I don't know. Maybe this is one of the aspects they intentionally stripped back? Either way, all us handheld players to use the touchscreen more for the next game please, Game Freak.

Also, the move selection boxes in battle seem... a tad small. It would be nice if they, and the font in them, were made a bit bigger in future games for those with poor eyesight. It's not like they're working with a small 3DS screen any more.

Overall though, I love this game. Yes, it is a stripped back game compared to Sun and Moon (no abilities, less moves). Yes, it has levelling issues. Yes, it has accessibility issues. But the things the game adds make them a fantastic entry point to the series, and competitive battling as a whole.

Plus, it was nice to experience Yellow with a fresh coat of paint. The hardware really helped to enhance the story (again, the Cubone subplot is heartbreaking), the return of travelling partners was great, seeing the Pokémon in the wild made the world feel more alive than it's ever felt.

I'm really looking forward to what they do with the franchise for generation 8. But to tide people over, this was a great instalment. I'd honestly go as far as to say it's one of my favourite Pokémon games ever, just behind HeartGold, SoulSilver, Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire.

Is Let's Go perfect? Absolutely not. But I've had more fun with this than I have with a Pokémon game since ORAS. It just puts you in the world and explore everything it has to offer. And for a Pokémon game, that's all I really want. It's a lot more fun than sitting through nearly an hour of cutscenes to actually do anything, only to do it again in "follow up" games that could easily have been sold as DLC rather than another full price release.

[dexthedragon]

pokémon let’s go eevee - some unfocused rambling thoughts (long)

so, pokémon let's go, from the perspective of someone that's played at least two games of every mainline pokémon generation so far. 

long post after the jump

first thing's first: i cannot play the game how i would like to play it. while in docked mode, you are limited to one single joy con only, or the poké ball plus. none of these options feel quite right to me, either due to weird feeling menu navigation plus throwing with my non-dominant hand (joy-con l), weird feeling overworld movement (joy-con r), or an incredibly tiny analogue stick, having to re-orientate the controller a lot, and not being able to do various things because of a lack of buttons (poké ball plus). the throw direction is sometimes related to how i threw the ball and sometimes it isn't. in handheld mode, it basically feels like BOTW; movement is where it should be, menu navigation is where it should be, catch by making big adjustments with the stick and smaller adjustments with the gyro controls. it's easier, it's more precise my preference would be to play docked using the handheld control scheme with the pro controller, but that's not an option

so, it's a streamlined remake of yellow with a few minor twists along the way - e.g. your rival explicitly isn't Blue, the Bike Shop no longer sells bikes, there's a much greater focus on Cubone during the Pokémon Tower segment.

first the good: it is nice finally seeing the series be freed from the restrictions of 3DS graphics - while still staying faithful with things like trainers making their original weird start of battle poses. kanto feels much bigger and more alive than it did before. the change to be able to see pokemon on the overworld map and catch just the ones you want is really nice, and is something that i do hope makes it into gen 8. the catch mechanics also mean less running back to the pokemon centre because you've run out of PP. one of Oak's aides just casually gives you the IV checker function around Diglett's Cave. some of the twists are kind of interesting. you can dress up your eevee in cute outfits and give it some fun overpowered special moves. the music is some of the absolute best renditions of these melodies, surpassing even the anime's versions. HMs are still gone.

and now the bad: for all the streamlining, it feels a lot slower than it should. i turn off battle animations in every pokémon game where that's possible (and i would recommend doing so here as they're incredibly underwhelming - even if they're another retro throwback, battle revolution still leads the series in this respect), but battles still feel sluggish. the overworld takes longer to run round in (as above, there's no bike), everything takes longer to level up. i'm pretty sure that in yellow itself, i would be further than silph co. at the 8hr mark. it's easier in ways that discourage exploration and experimentation. when you come out of pokémon tower, you see a cutscene of jessie and james saying that they're going to the rocket game corner in celadon city - and sure, where you go after lavender town wasn't clear in the original games, but they could say the "rocket hideout in celadon city" so that you'd still need to look around the city for it. you can't get into brock's gym unless you have a grass or water type pokemon, even though eevee, nidoran, and presumably pikachu would all learn double kick by that point. i've heard that one of the later gyms needs 50 pokémon caught so you can't do a low catch run. at the same time, your partner eevee can basically solo pretty much anything other than some gym leaders and snorlax, which you have to fight as a regular wild Pokémon battle with a 5min time limit (Snorlax would be easy if it didn't have rest). being fair, this is true of a lot of starters, but at least they normally change and evolve as time goes on. held items and abilities have been removed - and combined with gen 1's limited pokemon selection, this means a lot of rby's balance problems are back - though at least more moves are available for enemy trainers to use. (i also would imagine this makes some mega evolutions significantly worse once you get to that point in the game - mega kangaskhan without the ability that makes mega kangaskhan good, for example) you're not completing the pokédex without either a friend that owns the other version (and makes the other choices re: fossils* and hitmon-), or being an avid go player. there's no breeding (despite eggs being in go), there's no GTS, there's no Pokémon Stadium 1 Gym Leader Castle that gives you some of the unique gift Pokémon, so in the case of the fossils* specifically you need to trade yours for your friend's before you evolve it and then trade back so you can both complete things. the lack of GTS in particular feels like a big regression in this respect - i also suspect the battle spot might be gone. even if you are an avid go player, you need to re-catch everything that you transfer from Go - and it's not like Pal Park where you're given special 100% chance Poké Balls only for that area, you need to use your regular supply. transfer 50 high level pokémon and you could be there for hours - and go transfer captures seem to give less XP than regular wild captures if you're like me, you've seen kanto at least four times (rby, gsc, frlg, hgss), plus possibly an additional two for the virtual console releases. some of the details have changed, but you're going to hit fundamentally the same locations and the same plot beats, and the VC releases weren't that long ago. in comparison to spyro, it's been a much longer time since i last re-visited those games, and reignited gave me a much greater sense of "oh, it's this bit! i loved/hated/had repressed memories of this!" - while with kanto, i always know exactly where i need to go and roughly what spawns where, even if let's go makes a few alterations to give some things earlier.

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so yeah, so far, at least, i'd struggle to recommend it if you're a longterm player, look up a differences video on youtube or something.

* note: i haven't been past fuschia yet, so maybe the fossils are catchable in the wild but i doubt it