These days I love Pokemon for its fantasy zoology aspect. This is basically my dream game.
It is a shame that the game does not explain its scoring system properly and some people thought (incorrectly) that any grinding is required to level up a stage.
It is a shame that the game does not explain its scoring system properly and some people thought (incorrectly) that any grinding is required to level up a stage.
its kinda funny
eu detesto que o jeito de interagir com os pokémon são muito escondidos e não fazem muito sentido
tipo, no primeiro jogo: toca a flauta e o Snorlax acorda, fazia sentido; jogava maçã no Meowth e derrubava ele da colina, etc;
Nesse jogo era "aperta scan joga maçã dá dois pulos joga o sal por trás do ombro gira em sentido antihorário e aí o Heracross vai dar um sorriso diferente", tipo ???? mais ou menos impossível jogar e liberar todas as interações sem a internet
tipo, no primeiro jogo: toca a flauta e o Snorlax acorda, fazia sentido; jogava maçã no Meowth e derrubava ele da colina, etc;
Nesse jogo era "aperta scan joga maçã dá dois pulos joga o sal por trás do ombro gira em sentido antihorário e aí o Heracross vai dar um sorriso diferente", tipo ???? mais ou menos impossível jogar e liberar todas as interações sem a internet
visually beautiful but kinda boring otherwise
One of the few modern games that feels like it has the feeling of discovery of a game from the N64 era.
This game is packed with so many tiny details that I feel like even after playing, I still have so much to see. It's a very consistently cute game with alot of really neat levels and sections.
It's alittle too slow paced and I wish that the game still let me throw mustard gas at the Pokémon.
The game does have Espurr, god speed.
This game is packed with so many tiny details that I feel like even after playing, I still have so much to see. It's a very consistently cute game with alot of really neat levels and sections.
It's alittle too slow paced and I wish that the game still let me throw mustard gas at the Pokémon.
The game does have Espurr, god speed.
NOT TODD
cute game, a picture I took of bidoof was my discord profile pic for almost two years
very fun, haven't finished, but i loooove seeing pokemon act like animals and taking pictures of them, it's so fun and i giggle and kick my feet every time
This is the best looking switch game i know of. The gameplay is fun and they managed to make photo taking engaging throughout with the interaction of a living feeling world. Sadly once you completed it there isnt that much more to do but i will probably replay it a couple of times in the future.
pokemon games should look like this
Pokémon as a series is disappointing.
When I was growing up, I had championed for games like Pokémon Snap and Pokémon Channel. They represented the willingness for the Pokémon franchise to try new, unconventional gameplay styles that were playful and unique, and I loved them for those reasons. I would often romantize to myself that Pokémon Snap was exemplary of spin offs that far exceeded their source material. I still feel that's partially true, though perhaps not the perfect example. There's aspects of Pokémon Snap that really let you understand Pokémon and learn to appreciate each and every one of them, much more than the mainline games or card games could ever show. Observing an animal really helps you understand them, it lets know their quirks and how they interact within their environment. Of course, the anime also existed, but the Pokémon Snap gave a tangibility to it all. Pokémon Snap plays more into the biological research angle that the Pokémon series has toyed around with, but doesn't quite epitomize the loving bond between the player and Pokémon that Game Freak has set out to accomplish with it's design goal.
This design goal becomes a herculean effort to accomplish when Game Freak, along with The Pokémon Company itself, has made me fall out of love with Pokémon.
I had loathed Pokémon for most of my teenage years. Even now when I'm at my most optimistic, I struggle to feel positive towards the Pokémon franchise like I once did growing up. Game Freak and Creatures Inc have more or less been operating the Pokémon series like it's never needed to make any drastic changes, and frankly, from a sales position, their strategy appears to be valid. Unfortunately, this has become alienating towards me in particular. Throughout the years, I'd try to dip my toes back into the series, but to no prevail. Even worse, as I would go back to playing those older titles, the issues I've had with Pokémon in the present would affect my ability to move forward and backwards within the series: I desire the unconventional, and Pokémon, while novel within it's first few entries, sticks to it's established conventions to a T. If you've played one game, you've pretty much played them all, making the entire series feeling it's been played out for decades.
Even the spin off that I praised for pushing the boundaries have seemingly fallen to the way side in favor for more safer titles. Gachas, mobile games, trendy gameplay stylings that attract the largest audience possible. Occasionally you have your rare spark of imagination like with Detective Pikachu or Arceus, but rarely do these games have the budget or team to back up the concept. Pokémon has become stagnant from the overwhelming amount of entries reiterating the same core concept. And it just doesn't appeal to me anymore.
I say this, but I am a simple man. I'm not one of those cynical critics with their furrowed brows and their arms crossed, sticking my snobbish nose up at a game for merely being a retread of the original game. Sometimes conventions can be fantastic if they work to build off the original, or to massively refine the original. But fatigue does set in, and Pokémon hasn't done enough within it's entries to justify their sequels.
But Pokémon Snap always had that potential to do just that.
I've always wanted a new Pokémon Snap. For what seems like eons, I've waited for Nintendo/Game Freak to bring the concept to the modern age, birthing a new game with a a fresh new look and feel, capturing yet expanding the horizons of the simplistic N64 original. There were murmurs during the Wii U era that imagined the concept of a Pokémon Snap game using the Wii U game pad, which had me watered my mouth with anticipation like a Rockruff with yummy rocks. (I'm not sure if he actually eats rocks, but he looks like he would.)
Having received my wish in 2021, you'd think I'd be jonesing to pick up a copy as soon as I could. Instead, I stopped myself. My big green snobbish nose turned up at the mere thought of giving the Pokémon Company any money after the wake of Sword and Shield. My round stomach jiggled around in my loosely fit high society tux, nudging my tie slightly as I chortled at the mindless drones who kept blindly purchasing Pokémon games, my monocle creating condensation from shedding warm tears of laughter. Ohhh, I was so above you all! And yet, here I was! A year or two later, knowingly buying the buggy, broken mess by the name of Pokémon Scarlet to appease a friend of mine! I was partaking in the slop! I'm apart of the problem!
At this point, I unconsciously realized that maybe I should just support games that deserve it, rather than punish a game for no reason on principle. And, while I'm at it, not yuck someone's yum even if I don't fully understand it. So, I ended up putting the game on my wishlist, and lo and behold, I received the game as a gift for Christmas. Another wish granted.
Unfortunately, after having played New Pokémon Snap, I... also realized I may have wished upon a Mankey's paw.
... Okay, that's partially hyperbole. New Pokémon Snap is admittedly, a fun enough game in it's own right. It encapsulates the same gameplay as the original, and brings the visuals up to a modern standard. On that front, I received exactly what I wanted! Areas are these large vistas with multiple paths through a level, carrying a wider range of variety to the settings you'll be exploring. There's even some old areas too! That melted my heart a little! Pokémon have all these adorable animations, there's small little stories that are told within the worlds, my favorite being a Pichu and a Scorbunny getting chased by a Dodrio as you're shrunken down to an ant's size. It feels like a theme park ride! The quality of life enhancements, the expanded photo features, the multiple paths to an area, all of it is great!
But it's the little things within New Pokémon Snap that really bother me. And they compound into big things.
Progression within the game is dependant on two things: score and taking pictures of glowing crystal flowers. Your score is dependant on the quality of pictures you take, but you'll find yourself needing to replay levels in order to grind up towards that next level. The original game also had this in places, but was nowhere near as invasive. The original Pokémon Snap also made great use of interacting with the environment in order to progress within the game. New Pokémon Snap has this, but it's often automated, and is rather confusing to figure out if a new path has opened for you unless you just decided to randomly replay one of them. This caused a lot of unnecessary frustration within my playthrough.
The crystal flowers also caused unnecessary frustration for me. I may have skipped some kind of dialogue the Professor may had explained to me, but I was somehow left unaware how to progress any further than the first 2 areas. I spent plenty of time thinking "how can I be missing something? These levels are literally on-rails, I must be missing something to activate in environment like in the original game", only to scrape through a level once again to find nothing. I eventually looked up a walkthrough, only to be in utter disbelief that THIS was the marker to help me progress forward.
I wouldn't mind replaying these levels so often if the base speed of the Zero-One wasn't set to a snail's pace. I replayed Pokémon Snap after having finished this title, and the difference was night and day. No overly long and hand holding tutorial, no incredibly slow pacing, you just jumped in right away and barreled down a level in the matter of minutes. This was meant to give unexperienced gamers more time to learn and react, but this process becomes a slog, and actually discourages me from replaying the game. For a game designed to have the player replay levels, that's REALLY bad!
It hurts to state that New Pokémon Snap doesn't live up to expectations because of these issues. Especially when these are issues that with the right fixes, could actually swing my opinion into loving the game. Unfortunately, it's another antecedent added to my schema: Pokémon as a series is just a series of disappointments.
... Again, partially hyperbole. New Pokémon Snap is fairly disappointing, but I still enjoyed my time with it on a moment to moment basis. It's merely the larger whole of the experience that's left me feeling sour. Pokémon may no longer be for me as a whole, and that's fine. I've moved on from the expectation that it had to be something else years ago. New Pokémon Snap, as you may be able to tell from this review, has opened up the wound slightly. But as I've reflected on the game by writing this, I realize that's really unnecessary to feel. New Pokémon Snap may not be the right sequel I was hoping for, but for what it is, it's fun. And even if I were to partake in the same brand of cynicism as I once spouted, and we're to say such typical quotes about disappointing games in a franchise I loved like "it does an injustice to the original game!", there's nothing preventing me from simply going back and playing that original game.
Which is exactly what I did! And you know what? Pokémon Snap is still amazing! And even within this disappointing form, it's still cool! I just think taking pictures of Pokémon doing cute things is cool! Pokémon Snap, no matter how I play it, is always going to be a cool concept to me. And that feeling won't be pushed down by pessimism.
When I was growing up, I had championed for games like Pokémon Snap and Pokémon Channel. They represented the willingness for the Pokémon franchise to try new, unconventional gameplay styles that were playful and unique, and I loved them for those reasons. I would often romantize to myself that Pokémon Snap was exemplary of spin offs that far exceeded their source material. I still feel that's partially true, though perhaps not the perfect example. There's aspects of Pokémon Snap that really let you understand Pokémon and learn to appreciate each and every one of them, much more than the mainline games or card games could ever show. Observing an animal really helps you understand them, it lets know their quirks and how they interact within their environment. Of course, the anime also existed, but the Pokémon Snap gave a tangibility to it all. Pokémon Snap plays more into the biological research angle that the Pokémon series has toyed around with, but doesn't quite epitomize the loving bond between the player and Pokémon that Game Freak has set out to accomplish with it's design goal.
This design goal becomes a herculean effort to accomplish when Game Freak, along with The Pokémon Company itself, has made me fall out of love with Pokémon.
I had loathed Pokémon for most of my teenage years. Even now when I'm at my most optimistic, I struggle to feel positive towards the Pokémon franchise like I once did growing up. Game Freak and Creatures Inc have more or less been operating the Pokémon series like it's never needed to make any drastic changes, and frankly, from a sales position, their strategy appears to be valid. Unfortunately, this has become alienating towards me in particular. Throughout the years, I'd try to dip my toes back into the series, but to no prevail. Even worse, as I would go back to playing those older titles, the issues I've had with Pokémon in the present would affect my ability to move forward and backwards within the series: I desire the unconventional, and Pokémon, while novel within it's first few entries, sticks to it's established conventions to a T. If you've played one game, you've pretty much played them all, making the entire series feeling it's been played out for decades.
Even the spin off that I praised for pushing the boundaries have seemingly fallen to the way side in favor for more safer titles. Gachas, mobile games, trendy gameplay stylings that attract the largest audience possible. Occasionally you have your rare spark of imagination like with Detective Pikachu or Arceus, but rarely do these games have the budget or team to back up the concept. Pokémon has become stagnant from the overwhelming amount of entries reiterating the same core concept. And it just doesn't appeal to me anymore.
I say this, but I am a simple man. I'm not one of those cynical critics with their furrowed brows and their arms crossed, sticking my snobbish nose up at a game for merely being a retread of the original game. Sometimes conventions can be fantastic if they work to build off the original, or to massively refine the original. But fatigue does set in, and Pokémon hasn't done enough within it's entries to justify their sequels.
But Pokémon Snap always had that potential to do just that.
I've always wanted a new Pokémon Snap. For what seems like eons, I've waited for Nintendo/Game Freak to bring the concept to the modern age, birthing a new game with a a fresh new look and feel, capturing yet expanding the horizons of the simplistic N64 original. There were murmurs during the Wii U era that imagined the concept of a Pokémon Snap game using the Wii U game pad, which had me watered my mouth with anticipation like a Rockruff with yummy rocks. (I'm not sure if he actually eats rocks, but he looks like he would.)
Having received my wish in 2021, you'd think I'd be jonesing to pick up a copy as soon as I could. Instead, I stopped myself. My big green snobbish nose turned up at the mere thought of giving the Pokémon Company any money after the wake of Sword and Shield. My round stomach jiggled around in my loosely fit high society tux, nudging my tie slightly as I chortled at the mindless drones who kept blindly purchasing Pokémon games, my monocle creating condensation from shedding warm tears of laughter. Ohhh, I was so above you all! And yet, here I was! A year or two later, knowingly buying the buggy, broken mess by the name of Pokémon Scarlet to appease a friend of mine! I was partaking in the slop! I'm apart of the problem!
At this point, I unconsciously realized that maybe I should just support games that deserve it, rather than punish a game for no reason on principle. And, while I'm at it, not yuck someone's yum even if I don't fully understand it. So, I ended up putting the game on my wishlist, and lo and behold, I received the game as a gift for Christmas. Another wish granted.
Unfortunately, after having played New Pokémon Snap, I... also realized I may have wished upon a Mankey's paw.
... Okay, that's partially hyperbole. New Pokémon Snap is admittedly, a fun enough game in it's own right. It encapsulates the same gameplay as the original, and brings the visuals up to a modern standard. On that front, I received exactly what I wanted! Areas are these large vistas with multiple paths through a level, carrying a wider range of variety to the settings you'll be exploring. There's even some old areas too! That melted my heart a little! Pokémon have all these adorable animations, there's small little stories that are told within the worlds, my favorite being a Pichu and a Scorbunny getting chased by a Dodrio as you're shrunken down to an ant's size. It feels like a theme park ride! The quality of life enhancements, the expanded photo features, the multiple paths to an area, all of it is great!
But it's the little things within New Pokémon Snap that really bother me. And they compound into big things.
Progression within the game is dependant on two things: score and taking pictures of glowing crystal flowers. Your score is dependant on the quality of pictures you take, but you'll find yourself needing to replay levels in order to grind up towards that next level. The original game also had this in places, but was nowhere near as invasive. The original Pokémon Snap also made great use of interacting with the environment in order to progress within the game. New Pokémon Snap has this, but it's often automated, and is rather confusing to figure out if a new path has opened for you unless you just decided to randomly replay one of them. This caused a lot of unnecessary frustration within my playthrough.
The crystal flowers also caused unnecessary frustration for me. I may have skipped some kind of dialogue the Professor may had explained to me, but I was somehow left unaware how to progress any further than the first 2 areas. I spent plenty of time thinking "how can I be missing something? These levels are literally on-rails, I must be missing something to activate in environment like in the original game", only to scrape through a level once again to find nothing. I eventually looked up a walkthrough, only to be in utter disbelief that THIS was the marker to help me progress forward.
I wouldn't mind replaying these levels so often if the base speed of the Zero-One wasn't set to a snail's pace. I replayed Pokémon Snap after having finished this title, and the difference was night and day. No overly long and hand holding tutorial, no incredibly slow pacing, you just jumped in right away and barreled down a level in the matter of minutes. This was meant to give unexperienced gamers more time to learn and react, but this process becomes a slog, and actually discourages me from replaying the game. For a game designed to have the player replay levels, that's REALLY bad!
It hurts to state that New Pokémon Snap doesn't live up to expectations because of these issues. Especially when these are issues that with the right fixes, could actually swing my opinion into loving the game. Unfortunately, it's another antecedent added to my schema: Pokémon as a series is just a series of disappointments.
... Again, partially hyperbole. New Pokémon Snap is fairly disappointing, but I still enjoyed my time with it on a moment to moment basis. It's merely the larger whole of the experience that's left me feeling sour. Pokémon may no longer be for me as a whole, and that's fine. I've moved on from the expectation that it had to be something else years ago. New Pokémon Snap, as you may be able to tell from this review, has opened up the wound slightly. But as I've reflected on the game by writing this, I realize that's really unnecessary to feel. New Pokémon Snap may not be the right sequel I was hoping for, but for what it is, it's fun. And even if I were to partake in the same brand of cynicism as I once spouted, and we're to say such typical quotes about disappointing games in a franchise I loved like "it does an injustice to the original game!", there's nothing preventing me from simply going back and playing that original game.
Which is exactly what I did! And you know what? Pokémon Snap is still amazing! And even within this disappointing form, it's still cool! I just think taking pictures of Pokémon doing cute things is cool! Pokémon Snap, no matter how I play it, is always going to be a cool concept to me. And that feeling won't be pushed down by pessimism.
The best Pokemon game on Switch and probably the best photography game ever made. I dreamed about a Pokemon Snap sequel for 20 years and this pretty much met and surpassed all my expectations. Thank god there are developers like Bandai Namco who understand what makes Pokemon great and are willing to put time and care into games that actually make the world of Pokemon feel alive and immersive in a way it hasn’t since I was a kid.
It’s simple and fun and appeals to my nostalgia in a very specific way. The game looks really good, too, and I think that the selection of Illumina Pokémon was fitting and nice. It’s nothing fantastic, but it’s a good time with plenty of charm.
Un-replayable because of the amount of time menus and dialogue take
Wish levels were a teensy bit longer, but the programmed interactions and animations of the pokemon make this a very fun experience especially with spectators
Wish levels were a teensy bit longer, but the programmed interactions and animations of the pokemon make this a very fun experience especially with spectators
They took Pokemon Snap and made it even better! If you've ever wanted to see Pokemon just vibing in their natural habitats this is the game for you
Bigger and shinier than the first one though I would’ve loved a bit more innovation as opposed to an iteration, especially after 20+ years.
Perfection
Its pretty but so boringh
This game is an improvement and more from the original Pokemon Snap in every way!
It's plenty of fun, and it makes going through levels multiple times less of a chore and more rewarding.
It's plenty of fun, and it makes going through levels multiple times less of a chore and more rewarding.
Poknmen photo
Man it’s crazy how something as simple as gyro controls really does make a huge improvement
Cute game and the animation is much higher than Pokemon’s usual standard. Pokémon Snap is one of those meditative games that aren’t really up my alley but I can understand enjoying it more.
cute game. scoring for pokemon feels too obtuse.
I have memories of briefly playing the original on Nintendo 64 so I cannot compare the two.
I was worried that either a) I would get bored of just snapping photos or b) run out of content early on. I'm happily wrong on both! I was satisfied with the number of islands and different types of biomes. I love that you level up the area the more you play. It was exciting to jump in and see what was new.
You get "tools" that can get a wide range of photos. For example, throwing apples (fluffruit) can anger or surprise a Pokemon. You can get new emotions or actions depending on what you use. The story took me about 24 hours to complete with requests. You could speedrun that much faster, but it's a joy to take your time. I did complete 213 requests.
Once you finish the story, you unlock new options and maps. This wasn't short of content. Super fun and adorable.
I was worried that either a) I would get bored of just snapping photos or b) run out of content early on. I'm happily wrong on both! I was satisfied with the number of islands and different types of biomes. I love that you level up the area the more you play. It was exciting to jump in and see what was new.
You get "tools" that can get a wide range of photos. For example, throwing apples (fluffruit) can anger or surprise a Pokemon. You can get new emotions or actions depending on what you use. The story took me about 24 hours to complete with requests. You could speedrun that much faster, but it's a joy to take your time. I did complete 213 requests.
Once you finish the story, you unlock new options and maps. This wasn't short of content. Super fun and adorable.
The best Pokemon game released in the last few years, and the best Pokemon game on Switch.
unironically the best pokemon game on the switch
7/10. Cute gimmick but wears off and gets boring pretty soon.
Fun, spices up what the original was doing, makes into a longer game, but eventually like, it just gets boring, playing the same stage 4 times looking for miniscule detail changes to get those points just got far too annoying, i'll surely never beat this game. No matter how great it is.
Story complete, Research Level MAX on all areas, Photodex - 234/234.
You ever play a game that is 100% made for you?