This review contains spoilers
Pokémon Black/White has probably become the most widely praised duology of the entire series lately. I was rather skeptical of that reputation; I remember when everyone whined about these games back in the day, nowadays people say its the peak of the series and that just came off as odd to me. Truth be told, I never much cared for White (the one I always owned while my bro had Black) as a kid. I remember being actively annoyed this duo got special treatment with the full blown sequels, which is something we would never see again in Pokémon. Closest thing to it was Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, but, as far as I know (those are the only two mainline games I skipped entirely), they didn't feel like nearly as much of true sequels as Black 2 and White 2 did. So, this month, I decided to finally give Pokémon White a fair shake. I had been starting playthroughs again and again throughout the years, but I never took the time to truly go through it all and beat it until now. Is it the masterpiece people claim it is? Well, no. However, I do think it was a really solid experience and I finally understand why people praise this one so much nowadays.
Pokémon White's core gameplay is just like any other Pokémon game post Gen 4, though it did add some new gimmicks and tricks up its sleeve. I have never seen anyone give a single shit about Triple Battles and I do not care for it either. Seasons are kinda cool in that they change the way the world can be interacted with, but it mostly felt like fluff to me. One nice change that started with Black/White and carried on to most other games after is the fact that TMs are now infinite use, good quality of life addition in my opinion. It's also worth noting that HMs feel so much less obtrusive in this game's design than it does in the ones that came before it; I only had to use Cut once and the rest was Surf and Fly (and you technically don't even need Fly if you don't mind walking everywhere on foot). HMs get very annoying in the past games with how many there are and how they are necessary for progression, with it probably being the worst in Diamond/Pearl, so its great to see that they way scaled back on the importance of HMs in Black/White. Unfortunately this game also has some unique features that can no longer be accessed because time is a cruel mistress. The entire bottom screen gets filled up with this thing called a C-Gear, made for things you can do on this hot new thing the DS had called Wi-Fi connection. Yea uh none of that works now obviously aside from local connection stuff. There's also the whole Dream World thing, which let you stick your Pokémon on your computer through the Pokémon website for you to interact with and explore a dream world together. This service also got shut down, although I do remember actually getting the chance to mess around with it as a kid back when it was relevant and that was fun. If I had to compare it to anything, I'd say it was sort of like a point-and-click adventure game with static sprites. Really minor thing that I doubt anyone would play today if it still existed, but it was a cool novelty at the time that has been lost.
The region design of Pokémon Black/White is alright. The design is almost painfully linear since progression is literally going around in a circle on the map, but frankly I don't see linearity as a bad thing in Pokémon of all series so long as there are some interestingly designed places. And there...kinda are, I guess? There's no equivalent to the dungeons or caves in old games that you actually had a chance of getting lost in, but the scenery is very nice and you can tell there was extra focus put in there. Actually this game is a little too ambitious with the scenery, it kinda makes the game look like shit sometimes in all honesty. There are a few areas that zoom the camera way out whenever you're there to really make it feel big, but, while this is cool in concept, it just makes everything look like an ugly pixelated mess. That's a bit of an exaggeration on my part since its not like its garbage, but it really does look pretty awful in my opinion and you can tell DS Pokémon games weren't meant for that sort of dynamic camera angle. Well, regardless, I thought this new (at the time) region of Unova was pretty good and I liked what it had to offer. Main problem? The availability of Pokémon. Now, I don't mind this much myself since I like the new creatures Unova has to offer, but those that are looking for literally any opportunity to get the old Pokémon you know and love will be sorely disappointed. In that way, this game almost feels like a reboot of the series, with a good chunk of Pokémon designs in Unova that are meant to emulate the Pokémon of Red/Blue/Yellow like how Woobat is an obvious Zubat expy and Trubbish seems to take a similar design role as Grimer. Your mileage may vary wildly on whether you loathe, love, or just don't mind this design decision, but regardless I felt it was worth bringing up. I think this was a major reason why old fans generally felt so turned off by Black/White.
The story and characters are actually something really unique about this game for the time in my opinion. Old Pokémon games did have story and characters obviously, but I felt like they weren't nearly as much of a focus here as they were in Black/White. At most, you'd get one or two characters important to the narrative that get some development, like how your rival in Gold/Silver has a neat character arc of going from a delinquent crook to someone that's actually respectable or Ruby/Sapphire throwing the inexperienced fledgling trainer Wally at you and then suddenly remembering he exists near the end of the game so he can fight you at Victory Road (okay that's hyperbole again on my part). In Black/White, it feels like the characters are given more focus and development. You get two rivals - Cheren and Bianca - and I was surprised by how charming and fleshed out (by Pokémon standards) they are. Nowadays people tend to regard "friendly rivals" with bitterness, but these two pull it off very well in my opinion. Bianca is the happy-go-lucky clumsy girl that wants to go on an adventure for fun and to find herself, while Cheren is a smug know-it-all nerd that went on his adventure purely to become a strong trainer. Both have their moments to shine in the narrative outside of just constantly pestering you for battles, since Cheren is often there for or shows up after important fights and Bianca has an arc of her own where she slowly realizes that she isn't quite cut out for becoming a full fledged Pokémon master and has to find another path in life (she later becomes the assistant to Professor Juniper in Pokémon Black 2 and White 2 which was a great way to take her character in my opinion). I would have liked if Bianca's whole deal with her dad was explored more; this is the only time an adult has ever actually questioned why every young child needs to go capture dangerous monsters to use in fights against other dangerous monsters and its never given a straight answer. He's an overprotective helicopter father, sure, and he's probably the entire reason why Bianca is such a sheltered awkward girl, but when she goes out on an adventure on her own without his permission you can sort of understand why he'd be worried about that. He shows up to her, tries to get her to come back home, and then the Electric gym leader Elesa shows up out of nowhere to tell him to let her make her own decision. He just says "Oh, yea I was wrong the whole time, go do what your heart desires" and leaves. Real quick to change his mind there, but alright. Also, speaking of Elesa, one thing I really like about this game's story is that gym leaders actually do things. They feel like authority figures now since they often help fight Team Plasma grunts, whereas in previous games they're kinda just there to give you a badge and never be seen again. It was a nice touch that made the story more engaging.
I'm going to dedicate a paragraph to Team Plasma because they are really interesting and were by far the most complex evil team at the time (and maybe even still in the current day), but, at the same time, I feel there was plenty of missed potential there. They're sort of like a religious cult, wearing dumb costumes themed after knights and constantly preaching about "Pokémon liberation". They even have a few sages that they treat like divine leaders. Also, Pokémon liberation is their idea that all captured Pokémon should be stolen by trainers because battling is wrong. In my opinion, that's the really intriguing thing about Team Plasma. After years of it just being a commonly accepted thing that Pokémon battles are all fine and dandy despite certain questions being raised about how ethical it is in real life discussions and speculation, Team Plasma comes into the picture and we actually get an in-universe questioning of the morality of Pokémon battling. This could be really interesting, with a wide range of possible moral justifications or criticisms...but the main disappointing thing about Team Plasma to me is how this is not really explored. None of the characters (that aren't part of Plasma obviously) even consider this alternate perspective and they instantly jump to it being nonsense. I really don't like that the story completely validates this immediate distrust of Plasma when there could have been an interesting clash of ideals shown here, which the game even has as a central theme considering that Zekrom and Reshiram are the legendary Pokémon associated with ideals and truth respectively. Team Plasma are shown to be obviously evil from early on, with that scene of the grunts attacking a Munna to harvest its energy in particular really standing out. Of course there's also plenty more scenes of Team Plasma grunts being just as much of obviously evil doofuses as the other evil teams in Pokémon. I think the idea behind this was to show how groups with seemingly good purposes can be secretly insidious and hypocritical, which I can appreciate, but I still think it would have been nice for there to be at least some moral conflict in our characters about what Team Plasma is proposing. N (the man with a full name so silly that even he just wants to be called N) is literally the only person in the entire team that genuinely believes in their ideology and he is probably the most interesting character in all of Pokémon partially because of that. He is a bit of a strange guy, since characters remark on how he speaks too fast and he claims to be able to talk to Pokémon (I don't think it was ever actually confirmed in the story but it is treated as a real power of his). Even though N genuinely believes in his goal, he kind of comes off as crazy to the other characters since literally no one else thinks he's right. Probably doesn't help his case of preaching against Pokémon being captured and used for battling when he...well, battles you with Pokémon he caught for fighting. Nonetheless, I do think he was a neat character and I see why people like him so much. While N is the "king" of Team Plasma, Ghetsis is the real leader, and he is probably the most evil bastard in all of Pokémon. You see, N has been in Ghetsis' control since he was a child, and Ghetsis was actually grooming N to be his twisted heir the whole time, feeding N misinformation to use as a tool for spreading his regime. I think it was implied that Ghetsis abuses him, especially since, when N inevitably loses to you, Ghetsis essentially calls N a worthless freak that could never have a social life. So, yea, overall I wish Team Plasma had more moral greyness and complexity to them, but this is still one of the most interesting teams in Pokémon history so I gotta give it props for that. This was right after Mr. "I'm miserable and I want to destroy the universe" in Pokémon Diamond/Pearl/Platinum and the two absolute morons in Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald arguing over flooding the world VS making everyone die of heatstroke as if either were a rational outcome at all.
Overall, Pokémon White gets 4 stars out of me. Solid Pokémon game that I really like the ideas of, but I think the execution was just a little disappointing in some areas. Definitely felt like the most ambitious of its time in my opinion, which deserves props for a series as formulaic as Pokémon. I didn't mention this in the review, but I also enjoy a lot of the new creatures added in this game; Vanillite (and its evolutions) and Golurk are genuinely some of my favorite Pokémon and there are plenty of great designs overall.
Pokémon White's core gameplay is just like any other Pokémon game post Gen 4, though it did add some new gimmicks and tricks up its sleeve. I have never seen anyone give a single shit about Triple Battles and I do not care for it either. Seasons are kinda cool in that they change the way the world can be interacted with, but it mostly felt like fluff to me. One nice change that started with Black/White and carried on to most other games after is the fact that TMs are now infinite use, good quality of life addition in my opinion. It's also worth noting that HMs feel so much less obtrusive in this game's design than it does in the ones that came before it; I only had to use Cut once and the rest was Surf and Fly (and you technically don't even need Fly if you don't mind walking everywhere on foot). HMs get very annoying in the past games with how many there are and how they are necessary for progression, with it probably being the worst in Diamond/Pearl, so its great to see that they way scaled back on the importance of HMs in Black/White. Unfortunately this game also has some unique features that can no longer be accessed because time is a cruel mistress. The entire bottom screen gets filled up with this thing called a C-Gear, made for things you can do on this hot new thing the DS had called Wi-Fi connection. Yea uh none of that works now obviously aside from local connection stuff. There's also the whole Dream World thing, which let you stick your Pokémon on your computer through the Pokémon website for you to interact with and explore a dream world together. This service also got shut down, although I do remember actually getting the chance to mess around with it as a kid back when it was relevant and that was fun. If I had to compare it to anything, I'd say it was sort of like a point-and-click adventure game with static sprites. Really minor thing that I doubt anyone would play today if it still existed, but it was a cool novelty at the time that has been lost.
The region design of Pokémon Black/White is alright. The design is almost painfully linear since progression is literally going around in a circle on the map, but frankly I don't see linearity as a bad thing in Pokémon of all series so long as there are some interestingly designed places. And there...kinda are, I guess? There's no equivalent to the dungeons or caves in old games that you actually had a chance of getting lost in, but the scenery is very nice and you can tell there was extra focus put in there. Actually this game is a little too ambitious with the scenery, it kinda makes the game look like shit sometimes in all honesty. There are a few areas that zoom the camera way out whenever you're there to really make it feel big, but, while this is cool in concept, it just makes everything look like an ugly pixelated mess. That's a bit of an exaggeration on my part since its not like its garbage, but it really does look pretty awful in my opinion and you can tell DS Pokémon games weren't meant for that sort of dynamic camera angle. Well, regardless, I thought this new (at the time) region of Unova was pretty good and I liked what it had to offer. Main problem? The availability of Pokémon. Now, I don't mind this much myself since I like the new creatures Unova has to offer, but those that are looking for literally any opportunity to get the old Pokémon you know and love will be sorely disappointed. In that way, this game almost feels like a reboot of the series, with a good chunk of Pokémon designs in Unova that are meant to emulate the Pokémon of Red/Blue/Yellow like how Woobat is an obvious Zubat expy and Trubbish seems to take a similar design role as Grimer. Your mileage may vary wildly on whether you loathe, love, or just don't mind this design decision, but regardless I felt it was worth bringing up. I think this was a major reason why old fans generally felt so turned off by Black/White.
The story and characters are actually something really unique about this game for the time in my opinion. Old Pokémon games did have story and characters obviously, but I felt like they weren't nearly as much of a focus here as they were in Black/White. At most, you'd get one or two characters important to the narrative that get some development, like how your rival in Gold/Silver has a neat character arc of going from a delinquent crook to someone that's actually respectable or Ruby/Sapphire throwing the inexperienced fledgling trainer Wally at you and then suddenly remembering he exists near the end of the game so he can fight you at Victory Road (okay that's hyperbole again on my part). In Black/White, it feels like the characters are given more focus and development. You get two rivals - Cheren and Bianca - and I was surprised by how charming and fleshed out (by Pokémon standards) they are. Nowadays people tend to regard "friendly rivals" with bitterness, but these two pull it off very well in my opinion. Bianca is the happy-go-lucky clumsy girl that wants to go on an adventure for fun and to find herself, while Cheren is a smug know-it-all nerd that went on his adventure purely to become a strong trainer. Both have their moments to shine in the narrative outside of just constantly pestering you for battles, since Cheren is often there for or shows up after important fights and Bianca has an arc of her own where she slowly realizes that she isn't quite cut out for becoming a full fledged Pokémon master and has to find another path in life (she later becomes the assistant to Professor Juniper in Pokémon Black 2 and White 2 which was a great way to take her character in my opinion). I would have liked if Bianca's whole deal with her dad was explored more; this is the only time an adult has ever actually questioned why every young child needs to go capture dangerous monsters to use in fights against other dangerous monsters and its never given a straight answer. He's an overprotective helicopter father, sure, and he's probably the entire reason why Bianca is such a sheltered awkward girl, but when she goes out on an adventure on her own without his permission you can sort of understand why he'd be worried about that. He shows up to her, tries to get her to come back home, and then the Electric gym leader Elesa shows up out of nowhere to tell him to let her make her own decision. He just says "Oh, yea I was wrong the whole time, go do what your heart desires" and leaves. Real quick to change his mind there, but alright. Also, speaking of Elesa, one thing I really like about this game's story is that gym leaders actually do things. They feel like authority figures now since they often help fight Team Plasma grunts, whereas in previous games they're kinda just there to give you a badge and never be seen again. It was a nice touch that made the story more engaging.
I'm going to dedicate a paragraph to Team Plasma because they are really interesting and were by far the most complex evil team at the time (and maybe even still in the current day), but, at the same time, I feel there was plenty of missed potential there. They're sort of like a religious cult, wearing dumb costumes themed after knights and constantly preaching about "Pokémon liberation". They even have a few sages that they treat like divine leaders. Also, Pokémon liberation is their idea that all captured Pokémon should be stolen by trainers because battling is wrong. In my opinion, that's the really intriguing thing about Team Plasma. After years of it just being a commonly accepted thing that Pokémon battles are all fine and dandy despite certain questions being raised about how ethical it is in real life discussions and speculation, Team Plasma comes into the picture and we actually get an in-universe questioning of the morality of Pokémon battling. This could be really interesting, with a wide range of possible moral justifications or criticisms...but the main disappointing thing about Team Plasma to me is how this is not really explored. None of the characters (that aren't part of Plasma obviously) even consider this alternate perspective and they instantly jump to it being nonsense. I really don't like that the story completely validates this immediate distrust of Plasma when there could have been an interesting clash of ideals shown here, which the game even has as a central theme considering that Zekrom and Reshiram are the legendary Pokémon associated with ideals and truth respectively. Team Plasma are shown to be obviously evil from early on, with that scene of the grunts attacking a Munna to harvest its energy in particular really standing out. Of course there's also plenty more scenes of Team Plasma grunts being just as much of obviously evil doofuses as the other evil teams in Pokémon. I think the idea behind this was to show how groups with seemingly good purposes can be secretly insidious and hypocritical, which I can appreciate, but I still think it would have been nice for there to be at least some moral conflict in our characters about what Team Plasma is proposing. N (the man with a full name so silly that even he just wants to be called N) is literally the only person in the entire team that genuinely believes in their ideology and he is probably the most interesting character in all of Pokémon partially because of that. He is a bit of a strange guy, since characters remark on how he speaks too fast and he claims to be able to talk to Pokémon (I don't think it was ever actually confirmed in the story but it is treated as a real power of his). Even though N genuinely believes in his goal, he kind of comes off as crazy to the other characters since literally no one else thinks he's right. Probably doesn't help his case of preaching against Pokémon being captured and used for battling when he...well, battles you with Pokémon he caught for fighting. Nonetheless, I do think he was a neat character and I see why people like him so much. While N is the "king" of Team Plasma, Ghetsis is the real leader, and he is probably the most evil bastard in all of Pokémon. You see, N has been in Ghetsis' control since he was a child, and Ghetsis was actually grooming N to be his twisted heir the whole time, feeding N misinformation to use as a tool for spreading his regime. I think it was implied that Ghetsis abuses him, especially since, when N inevitably loses to you, Ghetsis essentially calls N a worthless freak that could never have a social life. So, yea, overall I wish Team Plasma had more moral greyness and complexity to them, but this is still one of the most interesting teams in Pokémon history so I gotta give it props for that. This was right after Mr. "I'm miserable and I want to destroy the universe" in Pokémon Diamond/Pearl/Platinum and the two absolute morons in Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald arguing over flooding the world VS making everyone die of heatstroke as if either were a rational outcome at all.
Overall, Pokémon White gets 4 stars out of me. Solid Pokémon game that I really like the ideas of, but I think the execution was just a little disappointing in some areas. Definitely felt like the most ambitious of its time in my opinion, which deserves props for a series as formulaic as Pokémon. I didn't mention this in the review, but I also enjoy a lot of the new creatures added in this game; Vanillite (and its evolutions) and Golurk are genuinely some of my favorite Pokémon and there are plenty of great designs overall.