Infravalorada, los juegos que entre mas juegas, mejores se vuelven. Siguen teniendo muchos defectos. Pero es probablemente de los juegos mas lindos de todo Pokémon, La región no es tan pasajera para estandares de Pokémon, y las rutas y ciudades se ven muy bonitos. El diseño de personajes chibis en el overworld es el peak del diseño artistico de Pokémon, así debieron quedarse, abajo los sprites completos. La unica cagada si es lo de la dificultad; la megaevolución, la mejor mecanica de todas, y la peor implementada: te la regalan al 3 gimnasio nada mas, rotisima, y nadie mas la usa, solo Lysson, y Dianta, que encima no es lo suficientemente dificil. No soy fan de la dificultad, pero aquí si desbalancearon mucho (de los mejores para hacer Locke)

Pokemon is my childhood game. My first one was Pokemon Black and since then, I’ve played almost every one. That is, up to the Nintendo 3DS, because mini-me never mustered enough confidence to ask my parents for one. So, despite being such a fan of the franchise, all I could do when Pokemon X & Y came out was watch a MunchingOrange playthrough, lamenting not being able to play it myself. That was over 10 years ago. Playing Pokemon X today is a weird form of nostalgia that’s hard to put into words. Rather than reliving a past memory, it’s me fulfilling a childhood desire, one that I wanted so badly and sort of experienced through someone else, but never had the chance to actually have.

What immediately stands out is the 3D. This was the first, full 3D, mainline pokemon game, so back when it came out, it really felt revolutionary to see. Even something as simple as moving diagonally was new. Other games had 3D environments, but to see 3D pokemon and NPCs was a big change. It gave the game a more ‘modernised’ feel, whether or not you think that’s a good thing. Today, it doesn’t have the same amount of impact, since plenty of 3D pokemon games have come out by now, but it’s still very different to the previous games.

Something that confuses me is that I’m a big fan of pixel-art and games that use it, however, I might prefer Pokemon in 3D, and I’m not sure I understand why. Perhaps the battles feel livelier or the environment comes to life more. What I do understand though is that running through the 3D world and interacting with all the 3D NPCs is incredibly immersive. The game uses the 3D for some interesting angle changes that swivel the camera in interesting directions. At times, it can be disorienting, but it’s mostly a creative way to maximise the unique presentation.

The next thing that stands out is what comes with a brand new region. Having not played any region beyond 5, I’m pretty unfamiliarised with the Pokemon themselves. Gen 6 introduces 72 new pokemon, which is actually the least amount of any region. I went in wanting to create a fully Kalos team, but there were surprisingly few options. Even the NPCs seemed to have mostly non-Kalos pokemon. Usually when making a team, I’m spoiled for choice, though here it was easy because there were only a handful I liked.

Another thing this game introduces is the new type: Fairy. On paper it’s an interesting change, especially to counter the incredibly powerful dragon-type, but it rarely came up. There was a fairy type gym and they did add fairy type to some of the pre-existing pokemon, but it wasn't nearly as significant as I thought it’d be. Some of the quintessential fairy types like Florges, Aromatisse and Slurpuff didn’t show up until end-game, including their pre-evolutions. It just felt like the game had so much fresh Pokemon and a whole new type but held back on actually showing it to you.

To make up for this, though, the game introduces mega-evolution, which is perhaps the coolest thing Pokemon has ever done, even to this day. Adding a basic 4th evolution would, although spice things up, end up being too drawn out and exhausting. I mean, imagine if your Pokemon wouldn’t evolve until level 60 or something, or if it evolved every few levels. Mega-evolution is a brilliant way to spice up the gameplay without diluting the satisfaction of having a Pokemon evolve. And beyond that, it’s just awesome. The idea of a pokemon reaching its ultimate form for a brief moment when the bond between Pokemon and trainer is at its zenith is cool as hell. Some of the best designs have come from this mechanic and it’s just great to see and experience. Although I do think it was a little underused and didn’t need to be reserved for only a handful of opponents.

In terms of the map and areas, it’s decent, but leaves a little to be desired. There are a few cities and villages that stand out, though most of them are rather forgettable. Quite a lot of them can be summed up as generic villages with no notable features other than perhaps having a vague theme like it being cold. I don’t dislike them, it’s just that they don’t stick out in my memory at all. And then there’s Luminose city. An absolute goliath of a location that clearly has the most effort put into. Its scale is humungous with plenty of cafes, battle cafes, dressers, stylists, a hotel, a train station, a gym, monuments, back alleys, an entire transport service and even an eiffel tower. Your entire POV is even changed to up-close instead of top-down. To explore the place can take up hours, almost like it’s an entire game itself. Needless to say, it’s my favourite location in the game. However, I feel that all the effort went into that single location, leaving the others lackluster.

The gyms have the same problem. Rather than including interesting puzzles or level design, it’s mostly just themed locations that you walk through and fight trainers in until you reach the gym leader. And then the gym leaders themselves don’t stand out too much either. Pokemon has never been known for its puzzles, but the gyms at least are where they normally get creative with it. Instead of inspired, it felt like they were just ticking boxes with these gyms.

However, the Pokemon league was one of the most entertaining I’ve played in the franchise. Throughout the game, difficulty was always an issue, and I’d have to constantly maintain a low level to make it challenging. The Pokemon league, on the other hand, was genuinely really hard. I did end up picking cool pokemon rather than strong ones, but my team wasn’t bad by any means. Despite that, I got my ass whooped by the elite 4 members. The water elite 4, for example, could literally one shot every single one of my pokemon with either his Gyrados or Clawitzer. This was definitely the point in the game where I had the most fun because it didn’t pull any of its punches. As opposed to the gym leaders, the elite 4 members and champion were quirky, had standout environments and had that ‘iconic’ quality to them.

This game went for a larger cast of characters than usual, setting you off with 4 ‘companions’ as opposed to just a rival and perhaps one other character. As much as this sounds interesting, it’s really to its detriment. Trying to balance so many side-characters resulted with them being shallow and forgettable. I mean, one of them can be completely and holistically summarised as ‘a guy who likes to dance’, and there’s not anything else to him. It seemed like they might have been developing a romantic subplot with one of them, but it was only hinted at half-way through the game and never really brought up again. For our rival, she is pretty much a bog standard girl who wants to be a strong trainer. That’s about the extent of her character. It’s hard to criticise the character writing knowing that its target demographic is rather young. After all, when I was in that demographic, I had no qualms with it at all. But being older now, it’s hard to enjoy such shallow characters. And the thing that bothers me the most is how easily it could be improved. Our rival’s reason for wanting to be strong is a broad desire to be different. Literally 2 lines of dialogue that give a deeper reason for that or origin for that desire could add so much more depth to her character, but instead of doing something so easily achieved, she remains a surface level character that just wants to be strong. The same goes for the other characters. Their desires and motives aren’t inherently bad, they’re just unexplored and unjustified.

A similar thing can be said for the antagonist, who fuels the main storyline. Surprisingly for a Pokemon game, the antagonist wants to essentially annihilate humanity and all pokemon. I didn’t think Pokemon would go for such a serious storyline, but I’m glad it did. However, I’m not happy with how it was handled. Lysandre’s philosophy is an interesting perspective, but was presented so incoherently. It almost seemed like he was saying ‘I can’t save everyone so, hey, I guess I’ll just kill them all.’ This fits in with his desire for the world to be beautiful, so any amount of suffering or conflict would ruin that, but there’s no deeper reason/justification for him to want the world to be beautiful, and it seems like a huge leap in logic to conclude that everyone should just die then. He lets only Team Flare survive, but by talking to the other NPCs, you can see that pretty much any random person can join Team Flare if they feel like it, so it wouldn’t achieve his goal of preventing conflict or anything—there would just be less of the same people. It’s all just pretty nonsensical. For such a serious storyline, you’d hope it made more sense.

Despite my complaints about Lysandre, he is still pretty interesting. There’s something about conflicted villains that fascinates me. That scene when he’s asked what would happen to the Pokemon and he starts crying was surprisingly powerful. To have such conviction that you’re willing to go through with what you’re doing, despite how much it pains you to do so, gives a lot of flair to his character (pun intended).

Now, you might be wondering how I can give it 4 stars when most of what I’ve done so far is complain. The answer to that is very simple—it’s Pokemon. Indeed, nostalgia is a huge factor. Even if I never played this particular game before, I watched a playthrough 10 years ago and I’ve been playing Pokemon since childhood. But even past that, Pokemon is brilliant. Pokemon has the greatest world-building I’ve ever experienced in a piece of media. With so many facets and elements, seeing how it completely shapes society, the interesting ways it’s integrated into industry and the culture around Pokemon battling, it’s no wonder I wanted to live in the world of Pokemon as a kid (and kind of still do). The gameplay loop is so satisfying with such an intricate and layered turn-based system, with constant variation and personalisation that it never gets old. Also, Pokemon has a great sense of progression. Progress is always signposted with the amount of gym badges you have, the level of your Pokemon, when your Pokemon evolve, and then the culmination of it all at the Pokemon League. It’s such a huge world, but its linear structure plays massively to its advantage, at least for me.

Coming after Pokemon Black and White 2, Pokemon X is definitely a drop in quality. And other than the 3D, it struggles to cement itself in my mind as a stand-out within the franchise. I think that Pokemon has such an incredible amount of potential with the most amazing world I’ve experienced in fiction, and could go in so many interesting directions. Pokemon X didn’t do that, but it’s still Pokemon, so I loved it. I hadn’t played a Pokemon game in a long time and I had been caught up in so many other things, so going back to my roots with this really made me happy.

So, yes, compared to other Pokemon games, Pokemon X isn’t among my favourites, and I have a lot of qualms with it. However, because of a few of its qualities and from it simply being a Pokemon game, I had an amazing time playing it. It truly was a pleasure to go back and play a game I wanted to play so badly 10 years ago. And it also serves as an important reminder to the fact that, damn, I love Pokemon. 8/10.