After playing White 2 and finding it a bit of a drag, I skipped X & Y. My wife got it and was impressed, but I felt the need to step back. When this one came around though, it felt good for both of us to play it together. We agree that it’s probably the best one yet, and has lots of good features and improvements to the systems, but there’s drawbacks and even appreciated features that have been removed.
For this game, I planned out my team beforehand. I picked out one Mon from each generation to fill my team, with a good mix of typing and cool Pokes that I liked. I also had fun nicknaming them after Doctor Who companions. I ended up with Donna the Ninetales, Rory the Lanturn, Ace the Breloom, Frobisher the Glaceon, Captain Jack the Archeops, and Romana the Malamar. It was a fun team, and much more interesting than being stuck with a Poochyena or Swellow for the first few hours.
This leads to the first issue: a rather boring set of Pokemon available. Most of the time, you’ll be battling the same monsters again and again from a small pool of Hoenn natives, in the wild and with trainers. Sure the familiarity means you know how to deal with them, but it’s just bland and the game really doesn’t need to be any easier; I had no difficulties at any time with the challenge, which was disappointing.
A small range of Mons is symptomatic of a larger problem with these games: their status as remakes forces them into slavish adherence to the originals. It didn’t have to be this way, and they did a few things to the world to make it more interesting, but it still feels like an old game. The grid-based movement feels restrictive in this day and age, especially since they have taken half-steps to allowing freer movement—but only in certain areas. Hoenn too feels very samey, and my wife assures me that X&Y’s variety leads to this feeling like a step back—which it is, as it was designed years ago.
As for those missing features I mentioned earlier: once again, having your first Poke follow you around—HGSS’s star feature—is absent. Add on to this the lack of appearance customisation, which debuted in X&Y, on top of the game’s environments blending together somewhat, and screenshots begin to be hard to tell apart.
That’s not to say that it’s all bad; as I said, this may in fact be the best in terms of systems. The gameplay and UI are streamlined, so it’s better than ever in terms of playability. Movement, despite the jarring grid/free conflicts, is great with more options and control, not to mention the amazing Soar function that removes the need for Fly permanently. The bottom screen has tons of great options too, with the new AreaNav (map) and DexNav (showing you the area’s wild Pokemon) seeming almost no-brainers in their usefulness, along with X&Y’s less universally useful features that return wholesale.
Secret Bases and Mirage Spots, the other additions, are also fun and add variety. Decorating your own base didn’t hook me as much as I would have liked, but is a meaty update to the feature as it was in the original. These are added on top of a towering stack of features and activities, not all of which have to be bothered with, as I’ve come to realise, to enjoy the game fully. The post-game Delta Episode was also a good idea and cool, but let down a little by the dumb characters (the plot is very lacklustre in general, actually).
Still, the DexNav and the cloud-based cross-platform Pokebank storage system meant that this is the one where we finally went for full Pokedex completion. And, with the help of our HG and White 2 games, I’m very happy to say we achieved it! We missed a few mythical ones, due to GTS hacks not working anymore and not being willing to do browser hack injection, but it still counts. It feels good 2 B A Master. It feels like we’ve achieved all we can (and burnt ourselves out with intense breeding and evolving), so I’ll say Gen 7 will have to be pretty special to get me playing again soon.
I wish this game had done more to stand out from its source. I did own Ruby back in the day, but was only halfway through when we were robbed of our GBA and games on holiday. The nostalgia element that was leaned on quite heavily just did not factor in for me, and the music was simply annoying. Each new game should strive to better those that came before, and not make the compromises that made this a weaker game. Ah well, despite it all it was good fun and a great Pokemon game.
