Eva Blume

I truly believe this game would be fun for a first-time Pokémon player, but if you’re a returning player and have played the other games before (the 3DS or DS games, more specifically), I would not recommend this game. The experience felt like a large step down from the other games. Although there were some improvements, such as portable Pokémon boxes and camping (you get to cook food for them!!), there were heavy disappointments that just outweighed the improvements by far too much. I found the story to be the main problem. There was no big, bad evil team and leader to hate and make winning feel so satisfying. In fact, for 99% of the game there was no antagonism at all. For people who care about the story, this is an enormous problem. Your character doesn’t feel important at all. You barely get to know the other characters, which makes their stories boring to sit through. Your adventure has a linear goal without any good reason to achieve it. This makes the game very easy to take right out of your switch and forget about it in the closet. I kept telling myself, “The story can’t be THAT bad, can it?” I refused to believe how short and shallow it was, and I kept waiting for some great twist that would suddenly make the story interesting and prove me wrong. I kept on waiting for it until the credits rolled. Another glaring problem was how easy the game was. It almost felt like the game was afraid to push the player at all. I never found myself stepping back from a battle I couldn’t win and deciding to train my pokémon a little more, or reproaching the battle with a different strategy. All you had to do was catch six Pokémon and plow through. If it were cheaper, I would say this game would be perfect for very young players who have never played Pokémon before. For more long-time players, however, I would not recommend purchasing this game. It’s just not worth it.