Ten and a half years ago, I got my first and only 3DS - the sleek red Xerneas and Yveltal edition - and went to a midnight release of this game. The first couple weeks of playing it in my spare time, with my social network of college students or recent grads who had grown up on Pokemon, but never grown out of it, able to connect for battles and trades with the greatest of ease, was a magical experience with this franchise that drove home its communal nature and got somewhat close to approximating the Pokemon fervor of its Gameboy/N64 heyday. (Of course, this would be outdone by Pokemon Go a few years later.)
But when the fun of seeing my friends online and literally poking them for a quick battle began to dwindle, I realized I had no interest in finishing the game itself, and abandoned it after capturing the legendary. It was the first Pokemon game I had played at that point which I put aside before reaching the credits. I became convinced the only fun I'd had with this game at all was in its social aspect. Therefore the impression this game left in my brain for the past decade was that it was boring, its story was a low point even for the lackluster standards of the Pokemon series, and that despite a few major steps forward, this was one of the worst mainline Pokemon games.
...And then they announced Legends Z-A, nostalgia for Kalos started going around again, and I wondered, was Gen 6 really that bad? It was time for me to revisit and find out.
I started from a fresh file to get the whole experience. The first few hours of the game were agonizingly slow and easy, despite me putting some challenge rules in place almost immediately, such as turning off the EXP share and vowing to never use non-held items in battle. But once it got going, the game grew on me more and more. I'm still not the biggest fan of the art style that tries to straddle the line between chibi sprites and full 3D models, but the world is quite lovely and well-realized. Poké-France has a decent amount of character and mystery to it, and some of the artistic elements have great appeal, such as the trainer designs and the cut-in illustrations of them before battles.
The writing alternates from feeling extremely childish to occasionally having trainers that floored me by saying something unexpected. The trainers in the Battle Chateau, as parodies of elite socialites (and the occasional android maid?) offer some great examples of this. There's also a "your power level is over 9000" line in this game, as well as a "my body is ready" reference, and probably some other memes I didn't pick up on, which made it feel like a time capsule indeed. Make of that what you will.
As for the story, it feels like less than the sum of its fascinating parts. An ancient war in which countless Pokemon (and humans?) lost their lives; a regal giant who mourned his beloved little flower fairy and brought her back to life, only to have the Pokemon leave in despair after seeing the destruction that had been wrought for her own sake while she was dead - there is some surprisingly serious subject matter which is undercut by the limitations of a "kid-friendly" Pokemon story and the juvenile level of the writing. While putting this story directly in front of the player, the game also doesn't dwell on it too much, as if it's almost embarrassed it commited to telling such a serious tale, imagining young kids couldn't handle it.
Of course, this more interesting history ties into the modern-day dilemma posed by Team Flare, often considered one of the most laughable evil teams in Pokemon. But I actually think Flare are more thematically interesting than they seem at first. Their focus on fashion and beauty is just a facade (and frankly, they look far more garish than stylish). The meaning behind Team Flare is simply a story of people who have declared their own superiority as a tautology; they defined what was "cool", they took that identity for themselves and they decided NO ONE ELSE DESERVES TO LIVE. And to no surprise, what's secretly behind this in-group classification is the ability to pay your way in; and it's all orchestrated by a social media/tech mogul. It's a blunt look at in-group/out-group psychology and the idea that societal misfits and have-nots are without merit. ...Or they're just a bunch of absurd people with hairdos that look like flaming poop.
Overall, this game is nothing fantastic, and moreover it will never - it CAN never - be again what it was at launch. But it's also a pleasant, unobjectionable game with some almost-interesting concepts and its heart in the right place, and I'm glad I gave it another chance. Pokemon X and Y may have started the series down some paths that Game Freak has still never exactly learned how to handle; the animated 3D Pokemon models often manage to feel more lifeless in battle than completely static sprites ever did due to their blank expressions, stiff poses and goofy perfunctory animations; the game's character customization is so frustratingly limited that they might as well have not had it at all... but it did give us a new type which is an extremely special occasion, and advanced the idea of Pokemon as being more of virtual and interactable pets in addition to just fighters, which I have enjoyed ever since.
...Also Calem please stop whining that you can never beat me when you refuse to catch more than three Pokemon until lategame. You dingus.
Anyway I got surprisingly emotional about finally beating this. It's been 3,000 years.
But when the fun of seeing my friends online and literally poking them for a quick battle began to dwindle, I realized I had no interest in finishing the game itself, and abandoned it after capturing the legendary. It was the first Pokemon game I had played at that point which I put aside before reaching the credits. I became convinced the only fun I'd had with this game at all was in its social aspect. Therefore the impression this game left in my brain for the past decade was that it was boring, its story was a low point even for the lackluster standards of the Pokemon series, and that despite a few major steps forward, this was one of the worst mainline Pokemon games.
...And then they announced Legends Z-A, nostalgia for Kalos started going around again, and I wondered, was Gen 6 really that bad? It was time for me to revisit and find out.
I started from a fresh file to get the whole experience. The first few hours of the game were agonizingly slow and easy, despite me putting some challenge rules in place almost immediately, such as turning off the EXP share and vowing to never use non-held items in battle. But once it got going, the game grew on me more and more. I'm still not the biggest fan of the art style that tries to straddle the line between chibi sprites and full 3D models, but the world is quite lovely and well-realized. Poké-France has a decent amount of character and mystery to it, and some of the artistic elements have great appeal, such as the trainer designs and the cut-in illustrations of them before battles.
The writing alternates from feeling extremely childish to occasionally having trainers that floored me by saying something unexpected. The trainers in the Battle Chateau, as parodies of elite socialites (and the occasional android maid?) offer some great examples of this. There's also a "your power level is over 9000" line in this game, as well as a "my body is ready" reference, and probably some other memes I didn't pick up on, which made it feel like a time capsule indeed. Make of that what you will.
As for the story, it feels like less than the sum of its fascinating parts. An ancient war in which countless Pokemon (and humans?) lost their lives; a regal giant who mourned his beloved little flower fairy and brought her back to life, only to have the Pokemon leave in despair after seeing the destruction that had been wrought for her own sake while she was dead - there is some surprisingly serious subject matter which is undercut by the limitations of a "kid-friendly" Pokemon story and the juvenile level of the writing. While putting this story directly in front of the player, the game also doesn't dwell on it too much, as if it's almost embarrassed it commited to telling such a serious tale, imagining young kids couldn't handle it.
Of course, this more interesting history ties into the modern-day dilemma posed by Team Flare, often considered one of the most laughable evil teams in Pokemon. But I actually think Flare are more thematically interesting than they seem at first. Their focus on fashion and beauty is just a facade (and frankly, they look far more garish than stylish). The meaning behind Team Flare is simply a story of people who have declared their own superiority as a tautology; they defined what was "cool", they took that identity for themselves and they decided NO ONE ELSE DESERVES TO LIVE. And to no surprise, what's secretly behind this in-group classification is the ability to pay your way in; and it's all orchestrated by a social media/tech mogul. It's a blunt look at in-group/out-group psychology and the idea that societal misfits and have-nots are without merit. ...Or they're just a bunch of absurd people with hairdos that look like flaming poop.
Overall, this game is nothing fantastic, and moreover it will never - it CAN never - be again what it was at launch. But it's also a pleasant, unobjectionable game with some almost-interesting concepts and its heart in the right place, and I'm glad I gave it another chance. Pokemon X and Y may have started the series down some paths that Game Freak has still never exactly learned how to handle; the animated 3D Pokemon models often manage to feel more lifeless in battle than completely static sprites ever did due to their blank expressions, stiff poses and goofy perfunctory animations; the game's character customization is so frustratingly limited that they might as well have not had it at all... but it did give us a new type which is an extremely special occasion, and advanced the idea of Pokemon as being more of virtual and interactable pets in addition to just fighters, which I have enjoyed ever since.
...Also Calem please stop whining that you can never beat me when you refuse to catch more than three Pokemon until lategame. You dingus.
Anyway I got surprisingly emotional about finally beating this. It's been 3,000 years.