I cannot for the life of me glimpse a Pokémon videogame without feeling strongly that someone is trying to sell me a whole lot of something. Look, there’s no significant period in my life when I haven’t been surrounded on at least one side by Poképeople. My earliest friends traded cards and owned massive encyclopedias containing every last scrap of available information, my little brother played its Nintendo DS entries and watched the anime during breakfast, and no matter where I went, somebody had to know what an Articuno was. Some of them would buy both versions of newly released games. My first real girlfriend had literally Caught Them All. I had to dress up as a Pokémon Trainer to complete a group cosplay at Boston Comic Con one year, during which I ran into one of my favorite cartoonists and had my portrait drawn in costume. Now I’ve been immortalized as a Pokéman (if you guys are reading this, I was happy to do it). A brief moment in 2016 proved that all known human religions paled in comparison to the universal power of the very idea of Pokémon existing in Real Life. God loves Pokémon. At least he didn’t pick, I dunno, Kingdom Hearts (or did he?).
Nobody thinks of Pokémon as a JRPG series because its reputation is untouchable. However sick of it I may be, I absolutely cannot deny the genius in its core concept (I mean, I don’t have much of a choice). Yes, anyone can tell you that Dragon Quest V and Shin Megami Tensei had done the whole “monster-recruiting” thing before Pokémon. Wizardry IV: The Return of Werdna did it in 1987, and markedly better than anyone else would ever do it again (god, if only. Can you imagine that? Maybe then I’d be reviewing Wizardry IV right now…). Pokémon did it stronger by designing the entire setting around that one concept, playfully populating it with living capsule toy animals, and stripping out absolutely everything else. Its visual language is clean and understated — enter tall grass, and you’ll run into wild Pokémon. You can catch those. Cross another trainer’s line of sight, and they’ll reveal their brainlessness before hurling frogs at you one at a time. You can’t catch those. You’ve got an idiotic rival. Build your team, be sure to cover a good number of those elemental types, manage each Pokémon’s four move slots in a hyper-elegant RPG character-building system, and watch them evolve into crazy beasts. You already know all of this. Why wasn’t I playing it?
My girlfriend who had Caught Them All sent me Pokémon Alpha Sapphire as a present one year. I appreciated the gift, I was hoping this might be my opportunity to understand this series and relate to her and others who loved it. Unfortunately, that’s…not quite what happened. I played all the way through the entire game (and the post-game) with my eyes glazed all the way over. Try as I might, I couldn’t find much to love about it. Pokémon Alpha Sapphire just up and hands you several legendary Pokémon, an exp. share that extends to your whole party, and an entire Blaziken, and I could not conjure a reason on Earth not to use them at every given opportunity. Without the need to take responsibility for each decision made, I failed to find the real meat of the experience. It introduced cataclysmic story stakes and relentlessly buttered up my player character as the Absolute Best Chosen One Destiny Guy, which kinda flies in the face of what I perceive to be the series’ tonal appeal, being that fantastical things can happen in humble, relatable places. Whether or not it was misguided, it had a substantial effect on my point of view for a good while. I allowed my impression of this game to color my perspective of its series as well as the genre it belonged to. I’d given it a chance, and it wasn’t for me. In retrospect, I might’ve discovered Dragon Quest III a whole lot sooner if she’d suggested a certain other Pokémon remake instead…
(To Be Continued in the Pokémon FireRed Review...)
Nobody thinks of Pokémon as a JRPG series because its reputation is untouchable. However sick of it I may be, I absolutely cannot deny the genius in its core concept (I mean, I don’t have much of a choice). Yes, anyone can tell you that Dragon Quest V and Shin Megami Tensei had done the whole “monster-recruiting” thing before Pokémon. Wizardry IV: The Return of Werdna did it in 1987, and markedly better than anyone else would ever do it again (god, if only. Can you imagine that? Maybe then I’d be reviewing Wizardry IV right now…). Pokémon did it stronger by designing the entire setting around that one concept, playfully populating it with living capsule toy animals, and stripping out absolutely everything else. Its visual language is clean and understated — enter tall grass, and you’ll run into wild Pokémon. You can catch those. Cross another trainer’s line of sight, and they’ll reveal their brainlessness before hurling frogs at you one at a time. You can’t catch those. You’ve got an idiotic rival. Build your team, be sure to cover a good number of those elemental types, manage each Pokémon’s four move slots in a hyper-elegant RPG character-building system, and watch them evolve into crazy beasts. You already know all of this. Why wasn’t I playing it?
My girlfriend who had Caught Them All sent me Pokémon Alpha Sapphire as a present one year. I appreciated the gift, I was hoping this might be my opportunity to understand this series and relate to her and others who loved it. Unfortunately, that’s…not quite what happened. I played all the way through the entire game (and the post-game) with my eyes glazed all the way over. Try as I might, I couldn’t find much to love about it. Pokémon Alpha Sapphire just up and hands you several legendary Pokémon, an exp. share that extends to your whole party, and an entire Blaziken, and I could not conjure a reason on Earth not to use them at every given opportunity. Without the need to take responsibility for each decision made, I failed to find the real meat of the experience. It introduced cataclysmic story stakes and relentlessly buttered up my player character as the Absolute Best Chosen One Destiny Guy, which kinda flies in the face of what I perceive to be the series’ tonal appeal, being that fantastical things can happen in humble, relatable places. Whether or not it was misguided, it had a substantial effect on my point of view for a good while. I allowed my impression of this game to color my perspective of its series as well as the genre it belonged to. I’d given it a chance, and it wasn’t for me. In retrospect, I might’ve discovered Dragon Quest III a whole lot sooner if she’d suggested a certain other Pokémon remake instead…
(To Be Continued in the Pokémon FireRed Review...)