I know the game has gotten a lot of love, and I am completely fine with that — to each their own.
For the record I have been a huge fan of the franchise since it’s inception over a decade ago.
BUT my problem lies with the over-hype, and what I feel like are bold-faced lies made by major gaming news outlets, like IGN, who said the game would be different in many ways than it actually is.
It feels like they were payed off to say that any concerns that anyone who might have reservations about buying the game had were resolved.
1. The Game is Far Too Easy
I expected the game to be easier than the previous games, and even looked forward to that at one point to save time from the old grind-y gameplay style that the original games had.
However, this game has been FAR too easy. By the first gym, I had fought maybe 10 battles in the wild and caught about 20 Pokémon by just throwing a pokéball at them.
Even so, with no effort other than being guided to exactly where to go the past 2-3 hours, all I had to do was spam A and I was able to beat the first gym leader’s grass type Pokémon with my WATER TYPE starter.
I literally don’t see how the game could get any easier than this.
2. The Game Has Almost No Exploration
Yes, there is a degree of exploration in a few select regions where you can control the camera and wander around to find Pokémon (which is so far one of the game’s best features) but compared to what they advertised for the past year with gameplay and theatrical trailers, the game is still completely on rails other than those few areas.
If you aren’t in a place where you can control the camera, not only do you have about one or two short paths to take at all times, but they patronize you by having people and Pokémon lead you to destinations 20 steps at a time when all they really had to say was “go left” because there is literally no way to get lost in the first place.
3. There Is No Attention to Detail in the Environments
I will say that the detail of the game lies in the greatly improved Pokémon designs and some amazing battle animations, but that’s not what I meant here.
The environments feel extremely basic for any game that could call itself an adventure, even for the relatively low standards on the switch.
To top it off, every time that you enter an urbanized area like the towns or mines, you have no control over the camera. This means that as much as they have improved the graphics from previous games, there’s no way to actually look around or enjoy the improved scenery, which has very little background detail to offer in the first place.
4. There is Hardly Any Story
One of the things that instantly set me off was that my rival, Hop, was constantly challenging me to a battle, even though his skills never seem to improve. As far as the story goes, there is some development here, but in the first five battles I was able to one-shot each of his pokemon only to get the exact same response from him like ‘oh, you understand how type match ups work’
Besides this, most of the NPCs offer now color text other than ‘you should go do that thing you’re already doing’
At least in the old games there was some fun one-line jokes or comments that left you with a hint of mystery about what to do next
5. Reviewers Boasted the Ability to Skip Tutorials, But That Is Few and Far Between
Major reviewers talked about the amazing ability to skip tutorials in the early game which would make it better for long time players since they wouldn’t have to sit through as much before getting to the meat of the game.
While this is technically true, you barely get the option. Even with skipping every tutorial that you possibly could, you still have to be dragged along and click A without any real choices to be made for the first 1 1/2 hours of the game. And after that, when you think you’ve made it to the first gym, you don’t even get to fight, you just get to keep walking to another route filled with effortlessly terrible trainers that you are forced to fight
Why You May Still Love It
These were just my personal complaints, and I’m sure many of you will still adore the game almost entirely. I’m displeased with the game not necessarily because of how these things are, but because I feel like I have been constantly lied to for the past month about how amazing these ‘new’ features are, when really most of them don’t exist the way they were portrayed (like the skipping of tutorials) and the other ‘new’ features are really just mixed in from the Pokémon Go features, like raid battles and EXP candies
Despite all of this, some features really do stand out from the old games:
– Drastically improved graphics
– New pokemon and new forms of older Pokémon
– Ability to invite your friends for raid battles
– Amazing battle animations that actually feel tailored to each Pokémon
– Ability to see Pokémon in the wild instead of just running through grass for random spawns
– EXP share to take away from the hardcore grinding aspect of the original games
– Ability to change your party from the menu instead of having to go to a PokéCenter
In the end, I’m sure most people will still love the game and hate me for posting this, but I feel betrayed by the misrepresentation of everything this game supposedly fixed about the series, and the insane amount of hype surrounding those accusations.
