(Continued from the Pokémon Alpha Sapphire Review...)

Turns out, Pokémon FireRed is just flat-out what I’d wanted out of Alpha Sapphire. My Twilight Princess friend (see the Final Fantasy VII Review) implored me to try it several years after the Alpha Sapphire debacle (because there is truly no escape), and when I finally did (after much procrastination), I…actually became a temporary fan of this series. FireRed was less Absolutely Mortified that I might lose or get stuck and vow never to buy their patented Pikachu merchandise ever again, and more of a confident videogame. Later Pokémen would force the player to admit that they “love Pokémon” before even being allowed to choose a starter, as though swearing their undying allegience to the brand. FireRed let me make honest mistakes and decide that for myself. Turns out, real love takes work. I had to manage which of my Pokémon would receive exp. and at which times (even after nabbing the exp. share), I had to raise each of my ‘mons from the ground-up and spend some amount of brainpower deciding how I’d construct my party. It even had the courtesy to open up at certain junctures and let me decide the order in which I’d tackle its gyms. Finding a new Pokémon somewhere never failed to blast some Good Chemicals into my brain, as I’d quickly begin to wonder whether it had a place as part of the crew. Even if it didn’t, I’d have to consider whether I was equipped with an efficient way to take it down.

Pokémon FireRed is hardly a Herculean Challenge, but it didn’t need to be in order to succeed where Alpha Sapphire failed. The important thing is that it trusted its own systems and guided me using the language it had established. There are genuine discoveries to be made in FireRed, and some of them even feel like they could be the player’s own. Its simple rivalry, sparse story and quaint setting included everything I might’ve wanted, and nothing I didn’t. Here was a game I could thoroughly respect. To think that an empire had been built on the back of its original version on the GameBoy. To think it released after Final Fantasy VII internationally and still slaughtered the competition on the basis of its universally appealing game design. I thought maybe I’d already be bowing my head and succumbing to the scam artistry if the games had stayed this good. After another, I realized that this was not to be.

P.S. I highly discourage playing any Pokémon game on "Shift" Mode. It outright removes a significant piece of the combat puzzle, and I don't think the game does nearly enough to express this. "Set" all the way (I can't begin to tell you how many times I've confused the two. C'mon Game Freak, just call "Set" the "Real Mode").

(To Be Continued in the Pokémon Crystal Review...)