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Pokemon Generation 5 Review Before I begin the review, I'd like to make the disclaimer that I have not played either of the Generation 4 Pokemon games prior to this. Some of the things I claim are "better" might have existed in one or both of the Generation 4 games and this praise should've been extended to them. And, again, I might reference my earlier reviews a bit, so you might want to read those first. That said, let's begin.
I'd heard good things about Pokemon Black/White and had a niece and nephew who were somewhat interested in the series, so I decided to exploit a "Buy 2 Get 1 Free" sale and buy each of them Black and White and myself Black. I considered getting my wife White, but then I got White as a present, so I passed it along to my wife since it'd be more fun that way. I explain this just to say that I've played Black, but know all the differences with White and I even know the perspective of a young girl and boy on this game. So that being said, I'll sum the game up in three words, followed by a ton of other words to explain it. Those three words: surprisingly pretty good. I do not like that the Pokemon series continues to add so many new Pokemon and they just seem to be getting more ridiculous, so when I heard that Pokemon Black/White was going to add 156 more, I was not pleased. I also heard that the game would only feature the new Pokemon, so again, I was a bit displeased knowing some of my favorite Pokemon wouldn't be available until the end of the game. But then, in execution, it worked excellently. The number and frequency of the Pokemon in the game was handled better than any other Pokemon I've played, including the first games. This was handled well for two reasons. First of all, only using the 156 new Pokemon meant getting to know all new Pokemon. You weren't able to fall back on your old favorites, you had to play this new game for what it was. Secondly, it helped that there were no "Zubats" in this game, for the most part. Zubat became infamous for always appearing in caves, so when there are six different caves in the game, you start getting tired of those dang bats and their "Supersonic" attack. Yeah, I suppose Boldore appears quite a bit, as do others, but for the most part each region features different Pokemon. Or maybe just eliminating Zubat from the roster made it seem like more Pokemon appeared. Either way, it worked. Plus, I finally once again felt compelled to collect them all!
A few other amazing changes. For one, HMs are not used very often. This is good and bad, but mostly good. At first, I was preparing to create my HM mule, giving some useless guy "Cut" and hoping he could also use "Surf" and "Strength." I cut one bush, then it wasn't until about three gyms later that I finally saw another bush to cut. For the most part, the HMs were for sidequests or hidden items, so it isn't required that you ruin all your Pokemon by giving them HMs. Even if you do, you eventually meet a man that can remove abilities and in the same room, a girl that can help Pokemon re-learn old abilities.
Also: TMs are infinite! Yes, now TMs can be given to as many Pokemon as you want, so when you find the TM for Psychic, suddenly all of your psychic Pokemon know that amazing ability. Ahh, Psychic. I was skeptical of it for this reason, thinking that it would be too easy to transform all of your Pokemon into the exact same Pokemon, but the Pokemon's strengths, weaknesses, passive abilities, and ability limitations still make it possible for Pokemon to be unique...ish. We'll get to the negatives of this shortly. But at any rate, there are some amazing additions to this game.
One change I feel may have happened prior to Generation 5 is the use of physical vs special abilities. Generally physical moves were normal-type or maybe fighting-type and were defended by the opponent's defense stat, while elements like fire and grass were special abilities that were defended by the opponent's special defense. This is mixed now and something like Flamethrower is still a special ability, but Flame Charge is physical. What's great about this is the diversity it allows since now a fire-type Pokemon can specialize in physical moves and take down enemies with weak defense, while a fire-type with a higher special stat is used more for those with weak special defense. I enjoy this because it makes me really consider new abilities. Maybe my Pokemon is trying to learn an awesome special attack, but if my Pokemon has a terrible special stat, I might opt to use something slightly weaker that uses its awesome attack stat. This does lead to another Poke-problem that has been plaguing the Poke-verse since the beginning of Poke-time: limited abilities. Seriously, it is time to move on and allow at least a couple more abilities. With so many abilities to learn, TMs to use infinitely, and combinations to exploit, I still find myself using the same abilities and making the same Pokemon all the time. I know this is partly preference and that some people find great uses for moves like "Leer" and "Growl," but with only four ability slots, I am constantly deleting moves that make a Pokemon unique for moves that make them awesome. Pokemon are learning abilities of different types now, so when my grass-type Pokemon wants to learn a water-type move, I'm intrigued. But a grass-type Pokemon does increased damage with grass moves, so I like to keep a physical grass move (for those enemies with low defense or high special defense) and a special grass move (for enemies with low special defense or high defense). Already, I'm down to only two more spots. Next, I need a slot for my spam attack. When you're walking around the world, you don't want to use your five Fire Blasts, so you need something with many uses like Tackle. It also helps to have a normal-type around as well. So now, all of my Pokemon have the same basic mold for 75% of their moves. So now, I take that one water-type move so that I can have a semi-defense against fire-types that normally have an advantage over me, and I'm done. No room for skills that cause status problems or anything that otherwise adds strategy. Again, I know this is my problem, but it annoys me. Argue all you want for "part of the strategy is picking the four abilities," but I'll still argue that it reduces strategy by limiting too much. Pokemon has a serious flaw in the type-weaknesses that will likely never be fixed. One-on-one combat is hard to execute in any turn-based game. There is an issue with things like healing your character. If you do it in battle against a strong opponent, then healing is only used for gaining the life that the opponent's next move will remove, so it's postponing the inevitable. Add in Pokemon's surprisingly-high critical hit rate and healing is actually hindering because a critical will eventually K.O. the healing-to-survive Pokemon. What I'm getting at is that it's surprising they haven't fixed the rock-paper-scissors "my type beats your type so if we're even close to the same level I'm going to win" problem, nor the one-hit kill problem. I don't know what they could do to fix this, but at least allowing more than four abilities might help. Right, getting away from everyday-Pokemon problems, let's continue on to new successes and failures. One both success and failure is the story. Honestly, I go back and forth between loving and hating it. A welcome change to this game is that you actually have two rivals in this game, but both are your friends. Your character, Bianca, and Cheren are all friends that receive the initial Pokemon. Normally, you pick one and your rival picks the one that is the rock to your scissors, giving your rival an advantage. In this one, one of your rivals does just that, while another picks the one that is easily defeated by yours. "Paper," we'll call it. Your trio of heroes work together in this adventure, occasionally stopping to battle each other because...that's what Pokemon do. To avoid spoiling things, I'll only say that your friends both find their own paths in life, which is an interesting concept because it makes the game about much more than just My Pokemon > Your Pokemon, therefore Me = Pokemon Master. The downside to the story is that it goes nowhere. Early on you learn of the eeeevil Team PETA--err, Team Plasma. Oh, that Team Plasma is so evil, I tell you. See, they think it's mean to make Pokemon fight each other and perform all our daily activities like the dinosaurs in The Flintstones.
...I know! What jerks! So in their quest to stop Pokexploitation, they've decided they're going to just take everybody's Pokemon and make everybody release their Pokemon. It's a neat concept for the game, but the problem is, I feel like I'm the bad guy in the game most of the time. They want Pokemon liberation, but I'm part of the group that says "No, we love our Pokemon and can't mow our lawns without them! All of our shelves are full of Pokemon products and there's actually no signs of human life in this world! If we release all the Pokemon, we'll be eaten! Therefore, I'm leaving 150 Pokemon stored in a computer because I MUST own them, but don't care to use them!" And so, we fight back. Now, kind of an obvious spoiler here, but Team Plasma isn't actually a bunch of good guys. They mug people for their Pokemon and of course have an evil ultimatum.
But even still, the other problem I have with the game is my character's lack of a role in the game. Bianca has a role in it, uniting with people as we go and befriending everybody. Cheren has a role as he does...stuff. But my character is a silent protagonist, which is very awkward considering I'm the one with the awesomest Pokemon ever. I kind of feel like a thug in the game because my friends tell me "Hey, Bob, kick that guy's butt!" and without a single word, I do it. "Go to that tower and stop Team Plasma!" Grunt. Nod. "Go save my Pokemon!" Grunt. Nod. "Ride on this ferris wheel with me!" Grunt. Nod. It feels weird to me. Just a small thing, but I also had issues with the translation of the game. It might just be crazy me and my crazy wife, but both of us felt the dialogue was...off. Sometimes what people said just didn't make a lot of sense. Basic conversation was fine, but whenever it was time for evil ramblings of super plans of something involving a prophecy, I'd often have to read, re-read, shrug, and confirm many of the dialogue boxes. Maybe I'm just dumb, but it just felt poorly worded at times. I understood what happened, but it just felt...off.
So, in general, I wasn't terribly thrilled by the plot of this game. It just didn't really...go anywhere, plus the plot didn't tie in very well to what you were doing. It seemed almost awkward since most Pokemon games, this one included, are about becoming Pokemon Master and defeating the Elite 4, but this game really didn't even mention that very much. I'd be fine with this except that there were still gyms and an Elite 4 at the end. Each time I reached one, it just felt like I was bothering everybody. You get to a new city and go straight for the Pokecenter, then the gym, but...oh. Gym leader is gone. Sometimes you even see them leaving and they're like "Sorry, BRB." I almost felt like the game didn't want to do the gym/Elite 4 thing, but they were obligated to do it. Kinda weird. The pacing was just awkward. Am I saving the world? Am I defeating gym leaders? Am I doing both? Why?
Despite the awkward pacing of the game, I like the game because it's probably the best Pokemon game of the series. They've definitely listened to fans and criticism because almost everything that was once annoying has been fixed. Moves can be relearned and HMs deleted, not too many Pokemon, touch screen controls are generally fluid, except that for some reason you can't push "up" to move from "Run" to "Fight" if you're not using touch screen, causing the occasional "oops I ran away but meant to fight" issue, and so many other positive changes. I'd say the only thing that feels like it should've been updated was the Pokemon Box system. It's pretty functional, but they still use the Withdraw/Deposit/Move/Etc option and I don't understand why. It's so hard to withdraw and deposit separately, so I generally use the move option, which allows you to select Pokemon from your party and move them into your box or move boxed Pokemon around to arrange them or whatever. Move seems to do everything, so I think they need to ditch the other options, focus on making move slightly more user-friendly (basically just put your party-Pokemon always on the screen and not in a pull-down menu). That's just a nitpick though. But for one nitpick, there are also a ton of elements and changes I'm not even mentioning that are done very well; from balanced multiplayer options to Poke-Centers merging with Poke-Marts (convenient!) to constantly changing seasons (it's weird, but effective), there is a lot to this game that works very well. Another great perk to the game: after-dungeons. If you know me, you know I love a good after-dungeon. You only need to be about level 65ish to beat the game, so why even bother leveling any higher? Well, some new areas open up that finally allow you to catch the four billion other Pokemon from other games (though honestly I have no interest in it), plus there are some decent challenges and even a level-boost for the Elite 4 to keep some competition in the game after you've finished. All in all, a great job on that part. The playability of the game is high and I do recommend this game to those that may have strayed away from Pokemon.
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