Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee

[Austrian ViceMaster Alex]

I got the new game on the Switch yesterday. It's fun exploring the area of the original games once more. Being a very close remake many of the modern Pokémon training functions have been removed so this is really back to basics. Graphics are nice, the new catching mechanic takes a bit of getting used to (no more fighting, just catching by throwing balls). Generally the game is a tad on the easy side, especially early on.

[Jeff]

Just beat the E4 this morning. I feel like there were a bunch of things that they got right, but at the same time, wrong.

Wild Pokemon for example. I thought I would miss random battles, but I actually really like the new system. Being able to see Pokemon before you run into them is a game changer. I can actually go through Mt. Moon without being assaulted by Zubats. If I run into one, it's because I wasn't paying attention, or failed to dodge one that flew into me, or yes, because one spawned on top of me. That last one feels a bit like the random battles from the old days, but not to the point of being annoying. And if I want to catch a rare pokemon, I don't have to run from dozens of wild battles until I get what I want, I just have to wander around until the Pokemon I want spawns, and go right to it. What I do miss is being able to battle wild Pokemon. I know you can get experience from catching, but I'd like to be able to grind without having to buy pokeballs. I wouldn't mind being able to see wild pokemon in the overworld make its way over to the main series, as long as they keep wild battles, I wouldn't even mind the Pokemon Go-style catching mode popping up when you select a pokeball from the bag. It would at least be more interesting than the old false swipe + throw routine. On that note, I love what they did with legendaries. KO then catch makes a lot more sense than the old way of just tossing a Master Ball, which always felt cheap, or false swiping, statusing, tossing Ultra Balls, and praying, just to SR and repeat several times.

I also like the fact that you can now max out all stats instead of just two. I never liked the EV cap, and always preferred the old Stat Exp. system, so AVs, which are capless like Stat Exp., are a nice plus. I don't mind that the Game Corner was retconned as an arcade, (in fact, when I first saw the Game Corner sign way back in Red, that's what I assumed it was), but it would be nice if they had some actual minigames you could play on the arcade machines to earn coins. It would be a great way to bring back the surfing Pikachu mini game from Yellow, among others, and make Porygon feel more like a prize again.

There were other things that I would've liked to see in, like abilities, hold items, and breeding. But I understand since this is a spinoff, they wanted to keep things simple. I do like that they got rid of the name rater in favor of renaming your pokemon anywhere, but I'm not sure how I feel about having the box with you wherever you go. It seems like it could make the game too easy, but even though the option was there to swap out a fainted pokemon in the middle of a long cave, I never did it.

Overall, I like it. I wouldn't mind some of the new features becoming standard in Gen 8 and beyond, especially the ones that have fixed the tedium like seeing the pokemon before you run into them. I just hope that they keep all the things like breeding, abilities, and hold items that make Pokemon such a fun and deep game.

[Magmar]

It took me a while to pick up this game, but at last, I scooped it up on Tuesday after talking it through with my partner--for the first time, I needed actual convincing that picking up a game was worth it. A lot of the ruggers on my team had picked it up and seemed to like it, so word of mouth sold me in the end (that and being over Octopath Traveler).

I'm 3 badges down and working my way through Lavender Tower at this point. Hereabouts I think I could give a fairly comprehensive list of what I like about this game and what I wish was different.

But the biggest thing to get out of the way: I wish this game came out 10+ years ago. This doesn't feel like a 2018 video game. This feels like a 2008 Wii game. Nothing about this game feels like it couldn't have run on the Wii engine, from the motion controls, to the fairly limited overworld, to the graphics that aren't a huge improvement from the 3DS titles. So many things are just so static and, considering just how expressive (for example) Link is in the behemoth Breath of the Wild game, there's no excuse for in the year of our lord 2018, your avatar's face (which is identical for all players!) is a consistently creepy smile with sinister eyebrows, for every opportunity for a unique animation (e.g., Eevee jumping into the rafters) to be a black out screen and a skip in the animation...

OK enough about that. Here's what I DO like about this game.

-I appreciate that once I got through Mt. Moon, the difficulty spike of RBY was kept intact. The time I spent grinding, catching lots of Pokemon for fun, and exploring the mechanics paid off, and my team was able to handle the fight with my rival.

-They kept in the weird channelers. YES. And they are POSSESSED. I was worried they would censor this because of religious sensibilities.

-Chilling with Eevee is pretty cool. Eevee is so twee but not nauseatingly so.

-The size variations of Pokemon being visible differences. This added an interesting dimension to the Pokedex.

-Good change: Got rid of the creepy male gaze dude outside of Erika's gym.

-Optional NPC battles with marginally more difficult trainers for better loot.

What I wasn't a fan of... was kind of a lot.

-The Pokedex isn't accurate. This just blew my mind. I caught a wild Charmander in the Rock Tunnel, and then another... and when I checked the Pokedex map for where they nest, they had no known nest listed! This was baffling. I'm still not sure what to make of this as I crawl through Lavender Tower, that the Pokedex doesn't have complete nest information for the Pokemon. I'm mystified. I guess Bulbasaur and Squirtle have nests somewhere, too?

-Anything that could have conceivably been a puzzle to solve has heavy-handed clues or the answer outright given to you by multiple NPCs or intrusive in-game spoilers. How many characters tell you there's a switch behind the poster in the Game Corner? How many times can the camera pan to the obvious answer for how to retrieve the Lift Key? Idk, small kids could use the extra help, maybe? But the game isn't for a small kid who's too young to be at the reading level to comprehend the game.

-Jessie and James are the biggest "miss" so far. There's so much opportunity there! They are infamously kooky villains--possibly the MOST famous anime villains of all time (except maybe idk if more people know who Vegeta is than Team Rocket?). If you're going to include Jessie and James in a Switch title, they should at least act like Jessie and James. They could trick the player and rival, dress up in strange disguises, have weird plans... or at least, oh FFS, the biggest disappointment to me was that I did not get to hear their voices. Their charm is in their voices, their predictable failures, their recitations, their boundless faith in Ekans and Koffing, and... well...

-Okay, a bigger miss was had. MEOWTH DOES NOT TALK! *THE* MEOWTH! Why include Meowth at all if he's not going to be the sharp-tongued, sophomoric honcho of Team Rocket?

-I get that the background music was remade with nostalgia for the original RBY soundtrack in mind, but again in tyool 2018 video games should have more than 20-second loops of background music that plays for the anticipated 15 or so minutes you spend exploring a new town, shopping, browsing menus, etc. This was a great chance to be creative.

-Again in 2018 I can't believe Pokemon still have the same garbled mechanical cries as they did on a Game Boy 20+ years ago. A few of them kind of work: Tentacool, Voltorb, Magnemite, Porygon, and Staryu don't exactly have mouths, so why not have a more digital sound? Some of them are pretty cool anyway, like Gyarados's cry actually sounds kind of like a serpentine sea monster might, and Gastly's line could conceivably make high-pitched, unnerving noises, as they are barely corporal.

I'm not asking for "Magikarp karp karp Magikarp" because even as a kid watching the anime that just felt stupid. A mouth-less Tentacool should not float by saying "Tentacool Ten ten Tentacool". The whole every Pokemon has its own unique language consisting only of its name thing feels so contrived, especially for those with one-syllable names like Jynx. Why not just accept that they're fictional animals and most animals don't have vocalized language? But that most of them have mouths and they do make some noises? They only need to record maybe 5-6 variants of noises to give the Pokemon characters more personality. Like, this isn't some grand innovative idea. This is imagination 101. Aside from the dozen or so we would know by sound (Koffing, Psyduck, PidgeOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO etc. and yes this was necessary), let's get clever. What could Dratini sound like?

-On a system as powerful as the Switch purports to be, Pokemon and their trainers spend way too much time standing still in the heat of battle. Sure, Butterfree's Psybeam could be delivered at a distance, but Nidorina's Horn Attack? Beedrill's Poison Sting? Electabuzz's Thunderpunch? If their concern is that physical contact is too violent for an RPG that is ostensibly glorified cockfighting, maybe it's time to rethink how Pokemon is marketed in general. It doesn't have to be gory to be good, but technology has come so far that the lack of battle motion just makes fights seem incomplete.

-Another one of these but in 2018 can we please get past some of the weird sexism among the NPCs? I mean, yay for having kickass girl/women trainers later in the game, but it just feels weird that there are lots of boy characters out talking about Pokemon fights and strategies, and girl characters whether they fight you or not are predominantly like "I love shopping!!! Look at my cute jewelry and makeup!" No reason these characters shouldn't exist, but they're... everywhere. It just feels like something you'd find a game made by mostly, or entirely, men in the 1990s. They definitely shoehorn in additional characters, like Lorelei rocks up near Rock Tunnel and beats the crap out of some badniks. Cool. And I'm not asking for every character to be a raging warrior or saying lasses/beauties shouldn't exist, but like, even the music that plays when you encounter adult women professional trainers is cuter and gentler than the music that plays when you encounter little boys who raise bugs. It comes across as antiquated.

-Just saying, there is space in this game for more variance based on gender, too. All the professional NPC classes are men, but adult women are "generic attractive Beauty". All these NPCs walk once and mostly just stand still during battles. It isn't a massive animation lift to also have women sailors, rockers, electricians, nerds, scientists, etc. This appears effectively done in the newest generations, but in a game that doesn't necessarily take place in 1995 we could refresh some of these 1995 choices. I mean yay for female Rocket Grunts, but so far, the only named women characters I've encountered outside of one-line NPC battles are Misty, Jessie, and Lorelei. (I've heard about Erika and Sabrina and their being attractive via the creep in the GAME FREAK office, though.) But I have encountered Rival, Professor Oak, Blue, Brock, Lt. Surge, the Captain, Giovanni, Archer, James, and heard about Bruno and Mr. Fuji.

[Katie]

My husband and I decided to buy the Switch mainly for this game! For me personally, this is my first gaming system since PS2. Husband has had a few flavors of XBox but I personally never played on them so I've been out of the gaming world for some time. And this is my first Pokemon game (other than Pokemon GO) since Ruby. I feel like I am the target audience because I've loved it so far. Going from RBY/GSC/RS graphics to this is awesome. I love being able to see Pokemon walking around and I can choose to go encounter them or not. I love my little starter Pikachu on my shoulder, wearing his little formal tux/suit thing. I love the only-slightly updated music and Pokemon cries because they are just so full of nostalgia. And the Pokeflute tune! I want to make that my ringtone, and the Pokemon Center heal tune as my text tone. Such nostalgia, such happy feelings.

Right now I have 4 badges, and currently I'm in Silph Co. HQ but I think I skipped a step since my husband has 5 badges and has not been to Silph Co yet. Oops. He's playing with a walkthrough while I am trying to do it all by memory/figuring it out. He already got a Mystery Box for PoGO but I haven't yet, so I need to find my way back to Fuschia city once I finish Silph.

It's a cute game, though, and it's an easy play for those who aren't gamers.

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

Hey, can you choose the game language in the beginning like you were able to in Sun/Moon? Of course, I'd be very much interested in playing the game in its original Japanese language. I also heard Nintendo Switch isn't region-locked so I could order an import, though. However, I don't even have Nintendo Switch yet so this is only a plan!

[Austrian ViceMaster Alex]

Yes, you can set the language when you start a new game (but cannot change it again after).

[Magmar]

Right now I have 4 badges, and currently I'm in Silph Co. HQ but I think I skipped a step since my husband has 5 badges and has not been to Silph Co yet. Oops. He's playing with a walkthrough while I am trying to do it all by memory/figuring it out. He already got a Mystery Box for PoGO but I haven't yet, so I need to find my way back to Fuschia city once I finish Silph.

For some reason in the back of my head, I remembered that Silph Co trainers are hilariously underleveled if you've gone through all the side routes and done the Koga gym, so I thought of doing it the way you did--but chose to go to fuchsia first because of the Pokemon Go integration.

Speaking of PoGO, all I need is two Omanyte/Kabuto to finish that dastardly research series lol