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| Pokémon: Let's Go, Pikachu & Let's Go, Eevee (2018) |
Normally when I do a video game review, I cover the plot in the first paragraph, along with the controls and gameplay. However, the plot in this game is ridiculously paper thin, moreso than in other Pokémon games I've played. I do feel like that's a limitation from the original games these are based on, and I'll touch on that more a little later on. The story is basically you play a character that sets out from their hometown to become a Pokémon master, beat all the gyms, defeat the evil Team Rocket and become the champion. Not much more to it than that. Except this time you get a special Pikachu or Eevee that is basically your companion were you the main character of the Pokémon anime. They're not integrated into the story in a unique or clever way, they just sort of show up and now you have a special Pokémon partner. In terms of gameplay, this installment in the franchise is essentially a meld of the core series Pokémon mechanics and the gameplay from Pokémon Go. Battling, levelling up and even the Pokémon themselves basically function the same as they have in other core games, but catching wild Pokémon is very different. You don't have to weaken them in battle or inflict a status ailment, you just feed it a berry and throw a Poké Ball when the timing is right.
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| Bellsprout |
I'll say this: as someone who's played both the main series Pokémon games and Pokémon Go, they did a fairly good job of mixing the two series' mechanics into one another. This feels like the right way to drag Pokémon Go players into the more in-depth world of regular Pokémon games. Because, at the end of the day, that's what this game was designed to do. The box basically advertises it as 'My first Pokémon game'. With all that being considered, I really can't get too upset at the gameplay being a little stripped back from what I'm used to. Catching Pokémon in this way actually proves to be really fun, and in a different way than catching Pokémon is in the regular games, where it can be a chore at times. Catching lots and lots of Pokémon is front-and-centre here, and it's the main way you train, so implementing factors that reward you for being better at tossing Poké Balls is a great idea. I was a pro by the end of the game, and catching Pokémon is also the main way you gain experience, which is well utilised since your entire party sees an equal gain from this. It's a lot quicker to grind this way, and it means you'll be spending less time in the wild battling random Pokémon to train your current team. Granted, I wasn't spending too long aimlessly running around to level up, since I was pretty over-levelled early on, though that might have been my fault from spending so much time in Viridian Forest trying to catch a Spearow with the right nature just for me to say 'F*** it' and go fight Brock like I should have done an hour ago. But, like I said, I got good at catching Pokémon. I even learned how to use the Poké Ball Plus accessory to full effect. Yeah, I bought that customised controller specifically for Let's Go, primarily because it was the only way to access Mew. But I was surprised by how well it functioned as a controller. It was, of course, specifically built for Pokémon, and it did everything well. I was impressed by how it would light up when attempting to catch something, lit up with the colour of the specific Pokémon when it was successful, as well as playing its cry, and the way it played the Pokémon Center jingle when it was plugged in to charge was a great touch. The only problem with it is that since it's a sphere, it will occasionally go off-angle in your hand, meaning walking around is a little jagged, but it's simple to readjust in those cases.
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| Saffron City Gym |
The presentation is really strong here, and it honestly something I should have, and usually do, lead with. The visuals are crisp and clean and while they're not the most detailed visuals a Pokémon has ever been, it's certainly the prettiest to look at. The animated cutscenes, especially those featuring the legendaries, are beautiful, and it made my first experience with Kanto just that little bit better. Yeah, this is my first time playing a Pokémon game based on the original games, what of it? By the time I owned a DS (and, by extension, Game Boy) Crash Bandicoot had already won my heart and I wasn't really interested in, well, any actual Nintendo property for a long time. As such, I've never really been able to appreciate the world of Kanto, or its music, for that matter. To be honest, it's kind of hard for me to listen to the compressed, 8-bit tunes from the original games; I just find them somewhat grating on the ears, especially with all the high-pitched beeps and whistles. These orchestrated tracks, however, have officially made me fall in love with these tracks. The Gym Leader music, Legendary Pokémon theme and an awful lot of the Route music all got stuck in my head pretty much immediately. I'm generally of the opinion that pretty much everything will sound better orchestrated, and these games make a great case for that. So, before heading into this last paragraph, I want to clarify something I said before: all the things that dumb this game down a little more for kids? I have no problem with them. Being specifically advertised as 'My first Pokémon game', I feel like that's to be expected, and some of these changes actually make the gameplay experience more bearable for me. Not having to run back to the Pokémon Center to change your party is so much nicer, and the ability to rename your Pokémon from anywhere in the world is beautiful, and it's probably the one thing from these games I desperately hope stays in all future installments.
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| Indigo Plateau |
To that effect, it's a lot of the stuff brought over from the original Pokémon Red & Blue that really end up holding this game back for me. In my opinion, the original Pokémon games are really just surviving on nostalgia at this point. I consider them to be incredibly dated and, at times, backwards, and this game shows that. Only including the original 151 Pokémon is fine, since you don't want to overwhelm new players with all 800+ Pokémon at once. It's the original Kanto Pokédex that I take issue with. Overall, I just don't find it very interesting. Not only are a lot of these Pokémon just poorly designed in my opinion (Electrode, Persian, Fearow and Dugtrio spring to mind), but for there being 151 of them, there's surprisingly very little variety, and a lot of the Pokédex just seems like filler as a result. Why do we need 3 different Grass/Poison types? Why do we need 3 different pure Poison types? Why do we need both Pidgeot and Fearow in the same game? Why is every Fire-type apart from Charizard and Moltres just a pure Fire type? Why are there so many pure Water types? When you just keep seeing the same types of Pokémon over and over again and you can just keep sending out the exact same Pokémon with the exact same strategy to defeat pretty much everything in an area, things can get boring very quickly. I found myself getting really bored by the 2nd half of my playthrough in general. Kanto is such a boring region to look at. Everything looks exactly the same. Every open-world route, every cave, every water route, they all look identical, and the layout of the region is so confusing that it really doesn't help things. Why are Routes 12-15 all just one long path to Fuschia City with nothing interesting or noteworthy along that entire corner of the region? Put something there. Put anything there to make it not seem like, again, filler. Finally, and this is a real hot take coming here, I don't find Team Rocket interesting in the slightest. I actually think they might be the worst evil Team in any Pokémon game. They just do nothing in the entire game, and they barely service the story in any meaningful way. They take over two buildings, gain nothing from either of them, and are dealt with basically immediately. That's all they do, and their big base of operations is put right after the 4th gym, which is confusing for so many reasons. First, it means that the rest of the story has exactly nothing to do with Team Rocket, but also you've got 13 floors of a building which is basically a gauntlet of evil Team Rocket fights, but plonked right in the middle of the story. It makes no sense from a structural standpoint, and when you do finally confront Giovanni again, you beat him in a Gym Battle and he just suddenly decides to abandon evil out of f***ing nowhere. At least with other evil Teams in other games, there's a set goal they're working towards, the evil leader is always getting in your way leading up to a final showdown towards the end of the campaign that actually means something for the side characters and the world as a whole. Here, if Team Rocket weren't involved in the story at all, very little would be different for basically anyone involved in this game. There's a lot from the original Pokémon Red & Blue that's been updated or changed since then that's made the Pokémon series better as a result. These returning elements honestly hindered this game overall for me.
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| Mewtwo |
At the end of the day, though, it's still Pokémon. The basic gameplay is still so much fun, and training your cute little critters into majestic and terrifying creatures that still love you will never get old for me. Pokémon: Let's Go, Pikachu and Let's Go, Eevee (2018) is a fun Pokémon game let down by the source material it's based on. I'd absolutely recommend it for newcomers to the Pokémon franchise. For veterans, I'd advise knowing full well what you're in for before jumping back into the world. 7/10.
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