Re-played this as part of a Soul Link challenge with a friend, over a decade since I had played it as a kid originally. I had a blast the second time around but admittedly it was way easier even with all the rules I set for myself, mostly because I was prepared for that evil Hydreigon this time(that boss fight permanently made Hydreigon my favorite Pokémon ever, half because I liked his design and half because I begrudgingly admired how easily he steamrolled through my team the first couple times).

Muita gente jogou Pokémon na infância, e quando eu digo que nunca nem encostei em um, é fácil de se surpreender. Bom, eu finalmente corrigi isso com Black. Valeu a pena?

Assim, o loop de gameplay é bem simples e você pega logo de cara: viaja-se de cidade em cidade passando por áreas naturais, nas quais captura-se diferentes Pokémon que serão usados contra os líderes de cada cidade. No processo, um plot sobre uma organização antagonista cria cada vez mais força.

A ideia dessa premissa é muito boa, mas eu sinto que a execução foi levemente aquém pro meu gosto. Esse ciclo de capturar bichos e lutar com eles cansa mais rápido do que deveria, e os vilões não fazem nada de relevante até o final, querendo mais é te ameaçar do que qualquer coisa.

A exceção do grupinho "do mal" é o N. Eu reconheço o valor dele nessa obra e gostei do desenvolvimento dele.

Apesar da leve repetitividade que o jogo tem, que me incomoda, ele consegue divertir mais que entediar exatamente porque o sistema de tipagens dos Pokémon cria uma estratégia que é sempre presente e diferente pra cada líder de ginásio. Essa dinâmica de criar o time ideal pra cada situação é bem massa, por mais que às vezes isso demande grind, que eu também desprezo.

Também confesso que, se eu fosse dev do jogo, eu diminuiria o poder dos ataques super-efetivos e aumentaria o dos pouco efetivos. De leve, pra não quebrar a proposta, mas o suficiente pra deixar as coisas mais justas.

Minha maior crítica seria, sem dúvidas, quanto à quase que obrigação de upar 1 Pokémon por vez. Tem situações em que vai ser preciso aumentar 20 níveis pra tornar alguém usável, e esse processo demora. Agora imagina quando tem que fazer isso com mais de 1 Pokémon? Vish... (Tem um item que ajuda, mas nem tanto assim).

Eu sinto que, se eu tivesse jogado isso na infância, como a maioria, nada dessas coisas que hoje eu considero defeitos me incomodariam. Claro, a jornada valeu a pena. Eu me apeguei aos meus bichinhos e o final foi empolgante.

No geral, Pokémon Black é daorinha, recomendado e tal, eu só sinto que joguei na época errada. Não pela história, mas pela estrutura do game que não achei tão interessante.

Normalmente nunca joguei nenhum jogo da franquia pokémon meu primeiro contato com essa franquia foi pokémon Black e sinceramente gostei do jogo ele é bem bonito e o nosso rival no jogo o "N" ele é um rival bem interessante a história dele é ótima o objetivo que ele tem no jogo também é interessante, a história do jogo é bem construída agora o porém é que depois que se zera o jogo tem o "pós game" e nisso basicamente não tem quase nada pra se fazer só ir atrás nos sábios ficaram na cidade e explorar as cidades que faltaram e só isso, poderia ter mais coisas no pós game, mas o jogo é bem interessante

I want to talk to you about something. It's about when I first met you in Accumula Town. I was shocked when I heard what your Pokémon was saying. I was shocked because that Pokémon said it liked you. It said it wanted to be with you.

Okay, so, my Mega Man marathon was going really well... and then, out of nowhere, I was bitten by the Pokémon bug. I've always wanted to play the Gen 5 games, and I'm glad to finally be doing so. I've heard a lot about them over the years—how they supposedly have the best story in the series (yes, that's a low bar, but, admittedly, the story here is much better than I anticipated), how polarizing some of the new Pokémon designs are, how well-realized Unova is as a region, and so on.

I'm glad to say all of this was true. I'm not sure how they accomplished it, but, for my money, this is the best a Pokémon game has ever looked. Pairing those jaw-dropping visuals with an excellent cast (of course, N and Ghetsis are the biggest draw here) and a gameplay loop refined to a science ensures that Gen 5 makes a strong impression. Also, I don't want anyone to say that Pokémon is too easy if they haven't played this game. The Elite Four, in particular, are absolutely psychotic here. Honestly, the final act of this game is not unlike something you'd see in Final Fantasy. It's awesome.

Still, it's not all perfect. With this UI, it can be pretty cumbersome to accomplish even the most basic of tasks, such as switching Pokémon out of your party or customizing held items. Also, I assume it'll be difficult for players to access this game's long-shuttered online features, which make up an enormous portion of the optional content. If you're emulator-savvy and you know how to connect to a fan DNS server, you can get it done, but most will not be privy to how to do any of that. All of this could be Pokémon Black's age showing, but it's worth mentioning in 2024.

Anyway, yeah, this game rocks. On to Black 2.

I’ve been working on this one for a couple weeks now, writing and rewriting things to make sure I get my points across the best way I can. I’ve been around the Pokémon scene for a long while, I know how rabid and toxic discussion around Pokémon can be, both online and offline. Anything even slightly resembling criticism of this game is, let’s just say, very heavily frowned upon nowadays, to put it lightly; I know the minefield I’m about to walk through for this review, so I need to really make this count. I’ve got a lot of stuff on my mind regarding this game that I need to let out somewhere, and I’ll be damned if I don’t let it out of my head so I can finally stop thinking about it and put my mind towards writing other stuff.

Unlike most Pokémon games, prior to this playthrough, I had only played Black and White a single time, and it was all the way back when the games first came out 13 years ago, Jesus Christ I feel old. So, with the (official) release of the Delta emulator on iOS, and having plenty of empty time to myself during my long commutes to and from work, I decided I'd finally give this game a replay; only this time, with the version I hadn't played instead, to relive my childhood nostalgia with 13 more years of life experience under my belt. Maybe it's my tastes evolving a lot over the years; or the fact that I played Chrono Trigger, of all games, right before starting this one during my work commutes; but, man, this game is nowhere near as good as I remember it being. I used to have this pristine image of the game as one of the best games I’d ever played, but now that those rose-tinted glasses are off…man. I miss childhood, when I wasn’t brainrotted by internet bullshit and could enjoy things without a care in the world. Now I’m a working college dropout who has to worry about taxes and real-world issues and writing reviews nobody will read for my own satisfaction. Ugh.

Anyway, let's get some compliments out of the way first before I tear this childhood darling of mine to shreds. This game was quite infamously reviled at launch for its lack of being able to obtain any older Pokémon before completing the main story, among other things that nobody cares about anymore. However, this is actually a cool and good thing, as the people down in the seventh circle of Hell known as r/pokemon will also be very keen to tell you; it forces you to find new Pokémon to use, and in turn, encourages you to interact with the region more, instead of just relying on the same old favorites (This point will come up again later, so put a pin in that). Secondly, the new Pokémon themselves were also pretty reviled at the time, but have grown to become some of the most beloved in the franchise over time, as is pretty much always the case with age, especially in regards to Pokémon fans, it seems. Krookodile, Golurk, Haxorus, Hydreigon, and Volcarona are some favorites of mine, but some unexpected ones you might not think of that I’m very fond of are Reuniclus, Vanilluxe, Durant, and, perhaps the oddest ball of them all, Heatmor.

This next bit may come across as an unrelated tangent, but this is all for a point, so bear with me here. I often bemoan the lack of full party EXP sharing in older Pokémon games; this applies to the other older games as much as it does Black and White. It makes replaying them an absolute chore with all the grinding that’s required of you in those games, now that I'm used to how the modern games do it. From playing many newer, better-designed JRPGs, especially the newer Pokémon games (more so the Alola games, Let’s Go, and Sword and Shield than any of the others; the games after Sword and Shield all have their own slew of design issues for largely unrelated reasons), I’ve come to think that the lack of full party EXP sharing is a genuinely awful "feature”; I don't think I'll ever understand why so many people are hellbent on defending its existence, especially in regards to Pokémon games. Like, is it a nostalgia thing? Is it Stockholm Syndrome? I see people all over saying it’s a difficulty thing, but I don’t buy that in the slightest; it doesn’t make the game legitimately harder, all it does is just make the main story more tedious to get through by artificially inflating the runtime through forced grinding, and makes the postgame significantly grindier than it already would have been otherwise. You can only legitimately get one EXP Share per save file, so you’re either gonna be switch-grinding to level up your team, which takes way too long to get through one encounter, or you’ll only be leveling a maximum of two Pokémon at once, three if you do a double grass encounter. It sucked ass back in the day, it sucks ass now, I hate it, and I do not miss it. All that being said…solely in the context of Black and White specifically, this dated-as-hell “feature”…actually kind of works? The keywords there are kind of, because it still doesn’t get rid of the problem entirely, like the games from X and Y onward do; it just has a unique workaround to the problem that the other older games don’t. So, you know how I said before that Black and White doesn’t let you catch a single Pokémon not native to Unova until postgame? Yeah, it’s time to take that pin out. The lack of full party EXP sharing inadvertently pushed me to catch different Pokémon throughout the game that might help me in an upcoming Gym battle, replacing the ones that fell behind in levels; and because the Unova dex is all new Pokémon, it simultaneously helps the player get more acquainted with the new Pokémon and find some new favorites. I already knew the entire Unova dex, since I’ve played every game since this one and have had 13 god damn years to get to know them, but in a vacuum, that’s how it should go. In a Thracia 776-esque twist, they took an awful feature that I hate with every blood cell in my JRPG-infested veins and actually made it good, on complete accident, because of other circumstances that make it work in that context. Wow. Game design. I mean, that didn’t stop me from using my Sawk to solo the entire last 40% of the game, because the wild Pokémon levels fall off faster than you do down the cliffs at Victory Road after that point, but still. Up until, like, Chargestone Cave, they had a good run. SkinnyPete the Sawk, you were the realest one.

The story is by far and away the most praised aspect of Black and White, with it often being called the best one in the series, and is seen as the only time a main series Pokémon game has ever tried to have a 🄳🄴🄴🄿 and 🄼🄰🅃🅄🅁🄴 narrative. Talking about Black and White and not addressing the story wouldn’t be a proper review, so I kind of have to. While I agree that the story has more depth to it than most mainline Pokémon stories, I’d say calling it mature is one hell of a stretch if I’ve ever seen one. I really have to word this carefully, as to make sure the point I want to get across, actually gets across. There’s a potential iceberg of a rich story here, as there’s a lot to infer about the game’s events and messages based on what the game doesn’t tell the player directly; the issue I have with it is what the game decides to leave above the surface of the water, as there is not much there. I get that Pokémon is a series meant for all ages to be able to enjoy, but like…man. For a game’s story that gets this much praise nowadays, the way this game is written, especially in regards to the stuff involving Team Plasma, is comically bad. The game feels like it’s afraid that players will somehow miss the point that Team Plasma is in the wrong, so it feels like it has to make every member, sans the actually important ones, generic evil team doofuses who serve as only obstacles for the player to defeat, like every other evil team grunt and admin you encounter once and never again. Except, in this case, they make even less sense, because their personalities and actions completely contradict the ideals that they themselves are supposed to be preaching, and that their true leader pretends to preach: they talk big game about liberating Pokémon from their trainers of the Pokémon’s own free will, and meanwhile they just go and kidnap other people’s Pokémon and wait for the player to come to them and take them back because plot. Hell, Ghetsis is often portrayed by everyone and their mom as this conniving evil genius bastard, meanwhile here he is, monologuing every little detail of his evil plans to take over the region to the 14-year-old kid who keeps wrecking Team Plasma’s shit, and has consistently proven to be the single biggest threat to his evil plan succeeding. Black and White has the subtlety of a wrecking ball in its messaging and themes, and ultimately, to me, falls flat on its face because of that. It wants to tell a more mature and morally ambiguous story, but lacks the subtlety and nuance in its writing to actually make it work. In short, it’s a good idea for a story that’s written horribly, which is why it fails in my eyes.

I do not like this game nearly as much as I used to. Call be biased, contrarian, o b j e c t i v e l y wrong, whatever. I’ve heard it all before, and it ain’t gonna magically change my mind. Things change over time, and I am no different. It’s a part of life. I grew up, my mind changed over the years, and sometimes, revisiting things you once loved just ain’t the same. Nostalgia is a very powerful drug.

Beautiful story even outside of pokemon's standards, with a good message for children yet really enjoyable for adults by dealing with mature themes, well built characters and fair difficulty, not too hard nor too easy, and they really brought out NDS's full capabilities for maps and backgrounds. Also, very good encounter design, the game flows incredibly well if you explore all the routes and dungeons available before each city gym (gym leader's pokemon's type is always weak to the previous route's pokemon and useful MTs are strategically placed). Special mentions for the OST, some of the bests and most inspired of the franchise. Favourite pokemon game.

At the time, I didn't play it because the design of most new Pokémon was too different for me. Around three years later I finally gave it a try and felt like a clown for my previous decision. I missed out on the release of the Pokémon game with the absolute best story and characters, an amazing soundtrack that ties to the gameplay, and something that Gamefreak made with effort, and a clear vision. Someone dreamt to realize this game. And it was the last time, sadly, for the franchise. And I feel that the ruin of Pokémon, starting with XY, is a byproduct of everyone who ignored Black and White like me.