Handheld Wars #170 - Pokémon (Round 7) (Civil War)

Sorry I'm late to the party. I meant to share my thoughts on Pokemon XY last week, but I was busy with chores thurs and fri. and then I had some legal stuff come up over the weekend which needed my attention, so I couldn't get to a wifi spot.

Believe it or not, I actually bought myself a 2DS in the 2013 holiday season JUST so I could play Pokemon X or Y (in my case X), which came out the month prior. I really got caught up in the hype for X & Y. They were the first fully 3D handheld entries in the series, and after hearing how many returning pokemon were featured in them, caught pokemon fever again. So I went out and got myself a 2DS and Pokemon X, my first pokemon game since Ruby for GBA. And...I was rather disappointed by it.

I didn't hate the game. I played through it once and didn't regret it. But it definitely felt convoluted and fell short in some areas. For starters, Gamefreak packed in so many returning pokemon to the game that it robbed the region of Kalos of any sort of convincing identity of its own. I mean, I don't understand how a subtropical forested region like Hoenn (gen 3's setting) can have less pokemon biodiversity than a temperate region based on France. It's like Gamefreak wasn't taking the specifics of the previous pokemon regions into consideration when designing Kalos. Either that, or they were under some serious pressure to follow focus group tests or something. Either way I was really baffled and unconvinced by the number of returning pokemon. The only logical conclusion I could come to that made sense canon-wise was that all of these familiar pokemon running amuk were captive pokemon that escaped from a local safari zone or something. Anyway, that leads to to my next biggest complaint: the lack of new pokemon. Gen 6 had the smallest roaster of new pokemon of any gen so far. Only like 50 or so new pokemon were introduced, which was dwarfed by the hundreds of returning pokemon running around. Kalos must have a reccord amount of invasive species. I also don't understand how Hoenn, a region adjacent to Kanto and Johto, has less gen 1 & 2 pokemon native to it than Kalos, which is located nowhere near the first four pokemon regions on the planet the pokemon universe takes place on? Maybe I'm just overanalyzing this, but my point is that gen 6's pokemon roaster felt stale and lacked originality.

I'm also not sure what to think of some aspects of the game. for one thing, I didn't understand the story. It was about a giant ghost running around and communicating with the player character or something. For a pokemon game, gen 6's story was really weird and I don't remember a thing about it. The single player campaign also seemed noticebly shorter than the previous games in the series, which really detracted from my enjoyment of the game, since I only really care about the single player.

OH, and there's one particular new addition that's either love-it-or-hate-it: mega evolutions



Personally, I found the concept polarizing but ultimately I hated it. The one aspect about mega evolutions that I liked were the designs themselves, which really did look souped-up and kick-ass by pokemon standards, turning ordinary pokemon into legendaries in terms of appearance and stats. However I disliked everything else about the mechanic. I don't like the idea of "temporary evolutions". It makes no sense. That's not how evolution works. I like the idea of legendary-esq evolutions, but not if they're only temporary and available to every pokemon, because then it makes the fully-evolved all seem irrelevant. It would have been cool if, as a reward for beating the elite four, the player was gifted a mega stone that could permanently transform one pokemon into a mega evolution, which would have greatly enhanced the game's replay value. But instead Gamefreak overdid it with the mega evolution concept, which made it feel like a gimmick. Sigh.

However, despite all these complaints, the game did a number of things right. Firstly, the visuals were great. The 3D battle models looked terrific and were animated acceptably, a huge improvement over gen V cruddy looking spritework. Secondly, the audio design and color scheme were both great as well. Thirdly, the multiplayer portion of the game was satisfying unlike the single player campaign. I didn't play into it that much since I'm not uber competitive when it comes to pokemon, but I enjoyed what I experienced.

Overall, Pokemon X/Y was enjoyable and featured beautiful 3D pokemon models but lacked the personality and passion of the earlier gens that I had come to love, instead focusing on cramming as much variety into the gameplay as possible while neglecting the single player campaign. So, outside of the multiplayer and competitive aspect, I don't think it's really worth it. Not bad, but far from the greatness of gens 1 and 2, depending on how you look at it. Personally I give it a 3/5.