Pokémon X & Y

Note: I am judging this game almost entirely on the single player mode. I once dabbled in competitive/post-E4 Pokemon, but it's not that important to me when looking at the game as a singular experience. If we're judging by that, then obviously this is the best Pokemon game to date since it's basically the same, just with more quality of life improvements.

This is the sixth generation of Pokemon games, and the series has matured with each entry while staying familiar, becoming more complicated on the gameplay end while maintaining its simple, Dragon Quest-inspired core. The games are still targeted at children, which is a bit surprising considering that the fanbase of the old games might be out for a little more; I know that at several points playing this game I wished the NPCs inhabiting the world spoke in a way that didn't make them seem like tutorials or that they were insulting my intelligence. Well, that's Nintendo for you. And really, it's a point that illustrates many of the problems I had with this game. Pokemon can't decide if it wants to be mind-numbingly easy and pandering to the youngest players or incredibly complicated. Up to this point, the games have done a decent job catering to fans of the RPG and fans of the monster collection and battling, but all of that is basically thrown out the window in X/Y.

Pokemon X/Y is mostly a big improvement on the visual end, but the audio leaves much to be desired. The 3D models for all monsters look great, with only a few showing some laziness. I have to commend Game Freak for going the extra mile on this front: all of the Pokemon have unique animations and react when attacked and attacking. The attacks themselves also look great, as does the world of the game, the characters, and basically everything but Lumiose City, which uses a 3D camera inferior to those seen in N64 games. I have always been a big fan of Pokemon's music, but this game left me cold much of the time. The battle music is the least memorable it's been since the beginning, and I hate how the gym leader battle music is just a techno track with no sense of tune now. On that note, I also miss how the music would change in Black/White when you reached the last Pokemon on a gym leader's team or your party was low on HP. The removal of this feature is baffling to me since it worked so well previously; they could have just reused the songs, even. Most of the field music is good and gives the player a great sense of adventure just like in past games. Sadly, these songs are the only ones that stand out as strong. Overall, I think the game works well on the aesthetic side of things, and this is probably the biggest improvement of the generation.

X/Y starts out pretty well on the gameplay end. This time around, Game Freak capitalized on the huge variety of Pokemon that have become available over the years. At least in the first half of the game, trainers use a satisfying mix of monsters and the player has tons of options to choose from even before the first gym. While I preferred how Black/White focused only on the new creatures, I enjoyed this approach too. It helped to make battles less monotonous and showed what a big series this has become in a fun way. Sadly, midway through the game I noticed trainers using a lot of the same Pokemon over and over, which seemed very odd. Sawk and Throh, for instance, are very common later on. Why use those guys so much when there is a wide pool of Fighting types available and they're among the more boring designs? It seems disjointed. One thing that truly bothered me was the number of Pokemon that trainers used throughout the game. Only one battle, the final one, had a trainer with a team of six, and all of the gym leaders only had three monsters. This was disappointing to me as a player who enjoys a good adversary. Perhaps the designers intended to improve the pace of the game, but I don't think this particular idea worked out well for them.

One of the more controversial additions to the game is the new Experience Share tool. If this device is left on, the entire team of Pokemon gain experience from every battle (and it's 50% of participators' too). While I loved that this helps get weaker Pokemon up to speed and encourages some experimentation, it also makes the game insanely easy. I finished this game with my levels being 10 higher than the final encounter's and I never once stopped to gain levels on purpose. I'm divided on the Experience Share; I think that the increase of pace it provides is mostly beneficial, but perhaps the developers could have made the game more challenging to combat the boon of bonus experience. As it is, X/Y is the easiest Pokemon game by a huge margin, and the games weren't that challenging to begin with.

My favorite new gameplay feature is the more streamlined online interface. If you play the game while online (friend who didn't: why didn't you? We could have had a great time giving each other powers and stuff. Oh well) No longer do you have to travel back to Pokemon Centers to play with your friends. Trading on the go, having a quick battle that doesn't interrupt the game flow, sending your buddy a boost to his money gain... it's all fun stuff that I highly appreciated. In ten years, none of this will matter since nobody's playing the game anymore, but I feel these changes were a good addition to help implement online play better.

The new super training feature is another notable addition. While it involves playing dumb mini-games, I am all for Game Freak cutting the crap and actually showing what is going on behind the scenes with stat growth. For those not in the know, all of the Pokemon games feature a hidden system in which you gain stats by battling certain types of Pokemon. Since generation 3, you've actually had to do this strategically to make a powerful team member for competitive play. In X/Y, the game shows you your stat growth in a chart format, which isn't perfect, but might help some players understand how the system works without resorting to guides, and I appreciate this big time. That said, playing mini-games to increase stats is just stupid and takes forever. To me, a much better solution would be for the player to gain universal stat points through battling and be able to assign those points at will. I could say the same thing about almost every tedious aspect of raising Pokemon, but I realize in the end these things are unlikely to be modified significantly. The post-game will always cater to people who only play Pokemon and leave everyone else in the dust.

Ultimately, the most problematic element of the game to me is its story. Obviously, I'm not looking for a deep plot or hugely dynamic characters here, but I would appreciate something that gets to the point, doesn't aspire to be what it isn't, and doesn't make me feel stupid for getting invested in it. More specifically, the characters in this game are garbage. The player begins by meeting a group of four other kids who kinda-sorta travel throughout the game alongside him or her. All of the kids have a single character trait that is displayed in the most bland manner possible: a fat guy that loves dancing, a little girl who wants to play nice, a boring rival whose only purpose is to be a rival, and a pointless girl who just wants to fill up the Pokedex and never says anything important. I appreciate Game Freak attempting to show that kids can travel on the Pokemon journey together, which makes a lot of sense, but if characters like these are going to be present, I'd prefer for them to develop or show some sign that the journey was meaningful. As they are now, they're just wasting time. For instance, in once scene you watch a fireworks show with the annoying little girl. It's meant to be an emotional moment that shows how the two are friends and will always be there for each other, but it's completely meaningless because nothing about the little girl or the hero makes us care about them. Some might argue that there's no point in complaining about these things, but since the game goes out of the way to show us these scenes while the older entries zipped along and went fine, I think it's worth bringing up. Pokemon Black/White didn't have a great story, but it attempted to make the rival (N) an interesting character with an arc and that worked out well for the most part. You can't just increase the amount of scenes side characters are present in to make them more effective--those scenes have to be meaningful, and this is where X/Y drops the ball.

The worst and most blatantly bad element of the story is Team Flare's involvement. Team Flare's goal is to create a world of only beautiful people, which is a great sinister plan, but runs in to the same problem as the rivals'. That's all there is to them, and they never show any sort of justification for their actions. Now, it's not like the teams in previous games were a lot better, but in a game that takes more breaks to show you story scenes, some extra development would have been appreciated. For all their faults, Team Plasma in B/W were somewhat sympathetic and made you think about the nature of the Pokemon universe. Team Rocket were out for money and power. Team Flare say they want to change the world because it's a bad place with all these filthy commoners strolling about, but here's the thing: there's no evidence that they may have some justification for their actions. For instance, one way the developers could have made Flare's motives understandable would be to have the Kalos region riddled by crime, pollution, or some other widespread issue. Instead, it seems like the team wants to destroy a world that is practically a utopia with no need for a real economy. It's madness and truly sours the experience; certainly, making a team that is blatantly evil ensures that the player will want to stop them, but it also prevents their actions from making any sense under scrutiny.

Pokemon X/Y is another Pokemon game. If you liked the last ones, you'll enjoy it too, and you may entirely disagree with the points I brought up here. I think this is a significant step back for the series in many ways, but the continued improvements on the mechanical end are noted and appreciated. It's hard to say where the series will go next (I didn't even touch on Mega Evolutions or the Fairy type. They're there) but hopefully Game Freak will try and make a game that is more focused next time.

Everything feels like a walk in a park, which is great for people getting into the game. But this reduced the exploration aspect of the games.

The most use of the HMs has been reduced to just some side paths and items.

Breeding is made easier, which is great, but there’s no fun in going back and forth on a bicycle to catch eggs. (Having an egg incubator would have been great)

The touch screen menus are awfully designed. There should have been tabs on the top to switch between Pokemon Amie, ST Training and other screen.

The Pokemon menu’s insistence on the player to select the Pokemon’s summary to check it’s stats is pretty stupid when the top screen is empty and could have been used for it instead.

The sections in the bag are awful, why on earth are the outside battle items lumped with everything?

Berries have been relegated to a berry field, which could have been streamlined when farming. eg. the removal of weeds definitely takes way too long.

The post-game content is rather disappointing.

The introduction of items just for an evolution is near pointless (sure, this has happened before, but there’s just too many now)

Male players has less customization options (I can’t just get my fix from Style Savvy, y'know)

I know it’s only been in FR/LG and D/P/P, but there’s still no VS. Seeker*

I miss Secret Bases. Here’s hoping they’ll be back in the 3rd gen remakes.

Lumiose City is a pain to navigate

What is up with that camera angle change by the windmill in Dendemille Town?

Team Flare and Lysandre are awful villains; they’re simply annoying and cultish. I swear I wanted to kick them in the balls instead of going through some bullshit Pokemon battle
And their goal isn’t even justifiable. Well, maybe for Lysandre, but the followers have no excuse.

It’s another adults-don’t-do-shit-and-let-the-kids save the day situation

The Champion doesn’t do shit in the story at all

Your “rivals”/friends aren’t even that memorable

Why have a friend who dances when there’s barely anything in the game to do with dancing? Why not a photographer? Or a someone who’s actively trying to take down Team Flare?

The gyms aren’t as challenging in terms of puzzles, except for the Ice gym. Most of them aren’t even puzzles at all.

Maybe it’s the decreased encounter rate(?), but the dungeons are are awfully short compared to the previous games

I was pretty disappointed with the ice puzzles in Frost Cavern. I honestly hoped it was going to be like the Ice Path back in G/S/C, but I was sorely disappointed.
For example, I think there’s a TM if you turn right instead of going straight to the boss. The puzzle was merely solved by going diagonally at a certain point.

I guess this is because I’m getting old, but it would have been useful to use the Pokedex in battle to check the Pokemon’s type.

Choosing items during the battle can be a pain. How comes you can’t use the L and R buttons to switch pages?

Apart from that, the friend safari is pretty cool.

Apologies if this was incredibly negative, I’m getting old.

So i have been discovering a lot of pokemon games recently, basically playing them since i stopped at gen III when i was a kid. So far i played platinum, black 1 and black 2, and so i finally arrive at the infamous gen VI with pokemon X. The first one to mark the transition to 3d, and i understand that the strain on development costed cuts elsewhere but thats really no excuse for a game that feels severly underdeveloped.

First of lets start with the positives, as the core of the series is still here and i still found it moderatively enjoyable to beat. The gameplay is snappy, and most of the 3d models and animations look great for the most part. Its a very comfy game to play despite all of its short comings, and there is a light breezy charm to it that i enjoy.

This games has a serious gen I fetish, by offering a gen I one starter in addition to your starter, most of the legendaries in the game are from gen I, and giving a lot of mega evolutions to gen I. Which is the most interesting new mechanic that is severely underutilized, in the sense that only 2 trainers in the game can use it. Its understandable for story reasons that it isnt wide spread, but it would be more interesting if all major battles featured a mega evolution.

The game's easyness prevents it from being greater. I already mentioned how there are only 2 trainers that have acess to mega evolution, which already puts you at a big advantage, but its not only that. Actually its the unbalanced xp share system (which makes your party get over 10 levels the opponents by the end of the game, even more if you use lucky egg), the lackluster trainer's teams (lacking items, with elite four members using unevolved pokemon, and only 2 trainers having 6 pokemon), and the braindead AI. The game is just way too easy, and without the challenge it doesnt even provide with the incentive to use the best part of the game, which is the satisfying battle system. Why use that when you can comfortably one shot everything for the majority of the game?

The map design is too linear, lacking surprises and offering very meager post game content. It really feels like a rollercoster ride through the majority of the early game, with pretty varied but uninteractible locations. I feel that there was a lot of effort placed in things that do nothing to the core experience, like being able to customize the clothing or visit cafes or taking photos. These feel like wasted resources that could have used to build more interesting gen VI pokemon or at least more interesting dungeons.

I played the game with the challenge to use pokemon introduced in gen VI, since black 1 did this and it was a great experience to find new pokemon to love. This time around i felt that it was a genuine challenge to do this early on, as there are very little gen VI pokemon available at the start that i found interesting. This meant that half of the game was carried by greninja at the front. Eventually it did got additionally talonflame, tyrantrum, pangoro (as an HM slave), lucario (unused basically, but felt i needed a mega evolution in the party), and Xerneas..Xerneas ended up clearing the pokemon league almost by itself, and that was the best case scenario as the rest was way overleveled for that challenge. Another example of the game being too easy as it just gives you the best pokemon of the game before the last gym.

The story is also very poor. It seems that the more matured story of the black and white games was too much, and they went the extreme opposite way and making the story as childish as possible. The side characters are annoying, and the dialogue is terrible at tellling the player what to do, taking away exploration from a lot of quests.

Overall i have a lot of criticism for this game, even if i still enjoyed playing it. But coming from Black 2 to this one the downfall is just massive.

brought in megas to the franchise but is boring

For whatever reason, I found this to be the best in the series in a long time. A game this focused on presentation needed the jump to 3D way sooner, and although it makes the TM obstacles stand out more, the presentation is a lot closer to cohesive now, aided by a soundtrack that perfectly marries classical and industrial elements. Changes like the EXP Share and Pokemon-amie both take some of the weight off and make the combat more inviting and also draw attention to its fundamental shortcomings.

The story rides the line between invigorating and forgettable, with a suitably bitter main rival and a cheesy evil team who knows their place in the story, but a laughably nihilistic main villain whose evil nature no one seems to catch on to. But overall, this is simply where Pokemon was closest to the master game I perceive in my head, made mostly possible by the upgrades in hardware.