LogFAQs > #931328755

I remember making a big rukus about this game before it came out, obviously it didn't fit my idea of what a Kanto remake could be. I didn't have high expectations for pokemon but I at least expected something akin to a moveable camera and topography, something to make the game feel like we were exploring our old home anew.

Then the game came out, and people claimed to be having fun with it, and I shut up, because look, game freak makes games that are poorly thought out yet fun. I figured I was too hard on it, and decided to get it if I ever had the opportunity to play the two player with someone else. Recently, my girlfriend who likes the early games and pokemon go was staying over for a week so I picked it up. She's also one of those super positive pokemon fans that doesn't really see all the flaws in design like I do.

I don't actually know where to start with this, the game gets so much wrong that I feel entitled to a refund for buying an incomplete game. First of all, the game overexplains the controls to the player sooo much, which yeah it's pokemon, but the game doesn't even adjust the controls to the controller. So while she's playing she has no idea what button to press because the game is telling her to press buttons that aren't even on her joycon, the interface is heavily reliant on pressing different buttons to do different things too so this isn't a minor issue. Second, even when the second player catches a pokemon, inputs are frozen for the second player regarding anything relating to the pokemon. Which means to nickname the pokemon I caught, I have to take her controller away and pause the game and name something and then give it back. Double Battles are equally bad, as the game makes you take turns selecting your move, as opposed to having two sides of the screen that you input at the same time. So this make the already slow battle system even more sluggish. Picking a pokemon to follow behind you is equally a nightmare, it took us a lot of time to even figure out how to organize the team so the pokemon we wanted to fight with were both following us.

I'm glossing over the things I think everyone already knows about two player, like the fact second player can't interact with anything and is shot into space every time there's a cutscene.

She made a comment that the game was too hard to play without falling asleep, which I totally get. There's nothing really that makes Kanto interesting or new, and battles take so long and have so little consequence that you don't really feel like they're worth it.

Which brings me to another point that I didn't see anyone complain about: Experience is busted, and battles aren't worth it. The game rewards barely any exp for trainer battles, and it's weirdly spread out amoung your party so even keeping a pokemon in front doesn't make it gain any extra exp. My Pikachu is constantly the highest leveled pokemon on my team despite never using it. After beating a pokemon twice my level and getting no exp, I did a little test and found out that catching a level 9 oddish nets you considerably more exp than taking down a level 20 opponent.

The box system is also awful, I've heard people talking good things about being able to switch pokemon on the fly without going to the PC. But the interface is really bad, and there's no good way of organization. Sun and Moon's switch when you catch worked much better and served the purpose 90% of the time, and the PC was almost perfect the way it's been the past few years.

There's lots more things to complain about, but I think they've all been covered pre-release. The graphics are bad, I get weird choppy slowdown just walking around towns, catching pokemon can only be done functionally in portable mode, there's pokemon sizes, but those sizes don't transfer into the battle (or at least not in a way that's noticable) so whats the point, there's a rival who tells you what doors to walk through and cheers you on for just being there, Jesse and James are in it but not the Jesse and James from the Anime, just different characters with the same design and face. Any sort of open world aspect from the first game has been replaced with being ushered around from area to area. I was honestly surprised the game let me leave lavender town to go to celadon first, only to have the rocket in celadon tell me I need to go back to lavender town for no reason. The whole thing feels like a fan game designed in the unity engine.

I played it until pokemon go park, because I was interested in the pokemon go transfer and how it worked, obviously that found a way to upset me too. Despite pokemon having OTs and real world locations in the park, that information is deleted as soon as you catch it, the nicknames aren't saved, so pokemon are back to just being your name. It would have been worth the novelty to keep a persian in my livingdex that came from chicago, but it seems this game has managed to remove anything that could be considered remotely fun or interesting.

Anyway TL;DR this game is even worse than you might think, please don't buy it if you haven't already. And if you did buy it and managed to enjoy it, you're objectively wrong, I'm so sorry to tell you that you have no standards for gameplay.

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wird