Always. Pokemon is one of those games that took a very basic approach and proved once again to the world that over-complicating things isn't necessary. While there is a lot of content to Pokemon with 150 monsters, hundreds of moves, different elemental types, and so on, the game itself is built on a very basic premise. I call it basic because in most RPGs there are several types of monsters in the world and your characters that have their own skills and traits and such. In Pokemon, your hero doesn't matter. All of the monsters you fight are also the monsters you use in battle, so really it's like an RPG that forgot to program in the heroes. But the way Pokemon is setup, it works and works well. The premise of Pokemon is that you are a boy searching the world to catch every type of animal/monster in the entire world to make them fight each other like some sadistic cock-fighting, dog-fighting ring. M. Vick uses DOG! There are some people that want to study Pokemon, like Professor Oak, and some who use them as transportation and tools, but most use them to battle each other and become a Pokemon Master. The goal of the game is to travel the world and defeat eight Gym Leaders before finally taking on the Elite 4 and gaining the title of Pokemon Master. And so, that's what you do. You travel to each of the gyms around the world, defeat the leader, get a badge for your victory, and move on to the next gym. Along the way, a few other things happen like encounters with the evil organization Team Rocket, who are attempting to use Pokemon to take over the world (very, very slowly). But honestly, who really cares about that stuff? Gotta catch 'em all! This is a (basically) perfect game for a handheld system because with a handheld device, you aren't wanting a game with a lot of bells and whistles, cunning plot-twists, and things like that. No, handheld devices (to me) are best as games that you can play for short periods at a time, then turn off. Pokemon is like that. You can play for 10 minutes while you're in the waiting room at the dentist's office, then turn it off when they call your name. There doesn't have to be a big plot because you'd probably just forget what's happening anyway. The game hits other gaming fundamentals besides story. The bulk of the game involves catching/evolving all 150 different Pokemon, trying them out in combat, leveling them up, learning new skills, and basically trying to make the ultimate line-up of six Pokemon that are able to fight and defeat another line-up. It means using different Pokemon types, abilities, and so on. Story is normally your driving force to continue your adventure, but in this game your driving force is to be the best. It keeps you playing by placing gyms around the world where you can fight powerful trainers and test out your Pokemon. You can either try to make one diverse team to take on every single gym or you can swap out your regulars to bring in Pokemon of a type that beats the current gym. For example, if your line-up consists of physical or electric or fire Pokemon, then good luck against Brock and his rock-type Pokemon in the Rock Gym.
Uh oh. I knew I should've picked Bulbasaur. Or Squirtle. Anybody but Charmander! The system is very cool because you can't expect to win with all one-type of Pokemon. If you have a team of six Geodudes, then you are in for a world of hurt when you fight a water-type Pokemon. One Water Gun attack will demolish your whole squad one-by-one. The problem is that the game is way too dependent on the levels and a difference of only a few levels can make all the difference. If your opponent is a couple levels ahead of you, then sometimes it doesn't even matter if you have the elemental advantage. Maybe all of his attacks are "not very effective" and all of yours are "super effective," but he's still gonna kick your butt. Yes, stats make a big difference and if your Pokemon has a special attack like Ember (a fire-based attack), it doesn't guarantee that it will do a lot of damage against a grass-type Pokemon (weak to fire) because your Pokemon might have a low Special Attack (magic) stat and your opponent might have a high Special Defense (magic defense), but whether this is true or not, it means that strategy is not as critical as old-fashioned level-grinding. It also works the other way where often an attack against a Pokemon weak to that attack will often be a one-hit kill. At least you can strategize and can swap out Pokemon with weaknesses for those with strengths, but the CPU cannot do this, so it's really easy to even beat gym leaders by putting in the right Pokemon and flooring all the "difficult" enemies in a hit. The real downside of these elemental weaknesses come into play with multi-player. If two players are fighting each other and one sends out a Squirtle and the other a Charmander, the Squirtle is going to most likely win. Not only that, it'll most likely wipe the floor with the Charmander. So what does the Charmander's player do? Swap in his Bulbasaur. Now he has the advantage! So what does Squirtle player do? Swap in his own Charmander! So what does Former-Charmander-Current-Bulbasaur player do? Swap in his own Squirtle! Playing by strategy, you really should never even land a decent blow in a multi-player fight because you're too busy swapping to the Pokemon with the advantage. This shows the big flaw in the elemental Pokemon system. The game is basically Rock-Paper-Scissors, only with a longer list of possible choices. Pokemon fixes that Rock-Paper-Scissors problem is in their combination of elemental types. With 150 Pokemon, it would get very redundant to have 20 fire Pokemon, 20 water, 20 grass, etc. They instead have combinations of types, so you may have a grass/poison type or a water/flying type. These Pokemon have an advantage because they will have strengths in more areas, plus more skill diversity to attack different types of Pokemon, but they have a disadvantage that they now have two weaknesses. Only problem is that a lot of combinations are very present. For example, many bug type are also poison type, so it doesn't create a ton of diversity, but either way, there's a lot of diversity and balance in the game. Balance your stats, your skills, your elements, and so on. You try to create an ultimate team, which is a lot of fun for somebody like me, except that as mentioned before, it all doesn't matter if you just gain a couple extra levels. One thing that is both cool and annoying about the game are the TMs and HMs. TMs and HMs are capable of teaching Pokemon certain moves that they may or may not be able to learn naturally. I don't have as much issue with TMs because they help to diversify your team and make stand-out Pokemon. The only problem I have with TMs is that since you can only have four attacks, sometimes I don't know what an ability does, so I replace a good ability with something bad. Aside from that, you only get one of certain TMs, so you have to be careful about who you give it to. So careful that I often hold onto really good TMs because none of my Pokemon are worthy of using such a mighty technique!
That's right I got Bubblebeam! Didn't see that coming, didja!? My big issue is with HMs. HMs, like TMs, teach a Pokemon a certain ability. But HMs are actually required abilities. These abilities are how you use your pokemon to cut down trees, move boulders, or otherwise overcome barriers so that you can progress the plot. It's a good mechanism for "locking" paths so that you have to progress in a specific order, but the problem is that HMs must replace one of your Pokemon's four precious ability slots, and typically, the skills they provide aren't all that great in combat. And to make matters worse, if your Pokemon learns an HM ability, that ability can never be removed. I understand that the developers didn't want you Surfing out to an island, then unlearning Surf so that you get stuck on that island forever, but there should be some way to remove them. Since I don't like "ruining" my Pokemon, I tend to make an HM-mule out of the game's onlyLickitung: Marc (he's traded to you by an in-game character, so you cannot rename ol' Marc). Lickitung is the only Pokemon capable of learning 3/5 essential HMs. So basically, my team is down to only 5 Pokemon since the sixth slot is the Pokeslave.
Aww, come on Level 3 Nidoran Male! Can't you just let me by? I'll cut your grass! I'll move some rocks! I'll even let you use my tongue as a surfboard! One problem I have with the game is the game's theme: "Gotta catch 'em all." There are 150 Pokemon and the game wants you to capture all 150. Here's a couple problems. One is that you don't need to catch them all. In fact, if you do, you're probably going to have a very weak team because of the afformentioned levels issue. If you take the time to catch all the Pokemon and evolve them (will discuss in a minute), then your core team is not going to get the experience they need to beat the game. It can be remedied by lots of level-grinding, or possibly by beating the game first and then getting all 150 Pokemon, but there's too much emphasis on catching all types when you really don't need to.
Aww, do I gotta? I have more problems with "catch 'em all." Particularly the fact that...you can't. First, I'll mention that there aren't 150 different Pokemon. Many of the Pokemon can "evolve" into a stronger version. Charmander evolves into Charmeleon, who evolves into Charizard. When this happens, it counts as having 3 different Pokemon. Some have 3 forms, some have 2, some only have 1, and Eevee has several. So really, there aren't 150 Pokemon to catch, but more like 80 to catch and 70 to evolve. Don't quote me on that. I'll bet a lot of people have memorized the exact breakdown, but not me. But even when combining catching and evolving Pokemon, you still can't get 150. There's another piece to this puzzle, and that's marketing! The creators of Pokemon took a huge risk and it worked. That huge risk was the strategy of "two versions!" Originally it was Red and Green, but the States saw Red and Blue, so it's what I'll talk about. Pokemon Red and Pokemon Blue were the same game except for a few Pokemon that were purposely left out. Why left out? Because if you want all 150, you have to trade with somebody with the other version! How this worked I have no idea, but it did. I even owned a link cable back in the day so that I could make these trades. And luckily, I had a friend with Pokemon Blue, plus a sister that later had Pokemon Yellow. Why is Yellow important? It isn't, except that I was able to start a game, grab a Bulbasaur, give it to her, restart my game, grab a Squirtle, trade it to her, restart my game, and play with all three starter Pokemon! Yeah, back in the day, I was totally into the thing that I'm now going to pretend I'm not interested in, and that's catching them all. Pokemon combined elements of a trading card collection and a video game and it worked just as they'd hoped. Some people bought both versions, even though they're thesame game. Only difference? This one has a Mankey, and the other has a Sandshrew! Basically, there were about ten Pokemon that you could not get if you didn't trade. Plus, a few Pokemon only evolve when you trade them, so again, can not get without a friend (or at least a second GameBoy + Pokemon game). The people that marketed this game are genius. They had Pokestuff everywhere. The anime, the card game, the movies, everything marketed the Pokemon idea and it really didn't matter if you even knew which came first because you owned, watched, and played 'em all! Somehow the idea of "you can't just buy one game to play this game" paid off and birthed this huge series.
No comments:
Post a Comment