At the top of a seemingly ordinary mountain in Pokemon Silver you find a familiar figure. A few dozen or so hours before, you shrugged off the finality of the Pokemon League and indulged your motivation to continue exploring a virtual world that seemed endless to you, crossing a small unassuming river to find yourself setting foot in a whole new continent with more Gyms to conquer and new Pokemon to discover. Shocked and ecstatic to find out you knew this new world like the back of your hand, you return to an older game affected by the passage of time and your previous presence in it. Having exhausted both Johto and Kanto, you proceed past the bounds of its world and up the summit of a seemingly ordinary mountain where you find a familiar figure. To anyone who lived through that experience during their childhood and stood in front of a mute Trainer Red that threw a lvl 81 Pikachu at them, you know that at that very moment that was as good as videogames were gonna get.
And in some sense, that has always been true to me. Despite losing interest in the franchise over the years, Pokemon occupies a special place in my heart as it was the first video game I truly surrendered myself to, at a time where the magic and enigma of video games weren't lost to me and the reward of exploration and experimentation weren't bogged down by hindering familiarity with game design, and while Pokemon is now bigger than it's ever been, it has never again been able to recapture the same mania of the late 90s I was fortunate to have witnessed. Excuse me while I step away from my unbiased persona for a sec to tell you that if you didn't play Pokemon in a pre-internet age, where secrets and rumours were exchanged word of mouth by snot nosed lying kids, doing battles and trades meant having to deal with the annoying neighbour rich bully that had the one link cable, and where the game extented past the screen into a shared cult of watching the tv show, collecting the trading cards and buying the toys, then the Pokemon experience is no longer accessible to you because you simply. weren't. there.
Anyways, Arceus is none of that. Understandably and rightfully so, it doesn't try to remake the unremakeable but instead demonstrates to be the most effort Game Freak has put into the series in 20+ years of stagnation, being the closest Pokemon has ever gotten to creating the fantasy sequel me and many others envisioned all those years ago while being transfixed by a Game Boy and a small cartridge. It sounds shallow on paper, but it's astounding how drastically being able to see the critters moving around in the distance in full 3D changes the entire series. Reducing the scope beyond the simplicity of Gen 1, Arceus removes the towns, gyms, trainer battles and traditional progression of the main series to focus exclusively on the core experience of "catching them all", and while that ends up being a bare bones gameplay loop, it sustains its appeal through free form BOTW like set of landscapes that present the Pokemon as wild dangerous beasts to be carefully observed and approached and that give brief glimpses of the kind of excitement for exploration encountered in those old games of yore.
Does Arceus get a pass, that its contemporaries wouldnt benefit from, just for being Pokemon? Yeah. Catching one Pokemon means you have essentially catched them all, as they all share the same behaviors, movements and animations while stumbling about their primitive AI, battles are included in a meandering compromise of broken and mindless combat with little strategy and bond between your team, and the lack of interaction between the Pokemon and the environments they inhabit relegate the few and far between moments of personality and characterization to the quests and cutscenes. But goddammit, I'm human too, and I would be lying if I said I didn't get a sense of eager satisfaction everytime I watched that pokeball jump around into a sucessful catch. It's not the dream Pokemon game we have learned to forget over the decades, it will probably take another 20+ years to get there. But it's an evolution, and that has to mean something in the case of Pokemon.
And in some sense, that has always been true to me. Despite losing interest in the franchise over the years, Pokemon occupies a special place in my heart as it was the first video game I truly surrendered myself to, at a time where the magic and enigma of video games weren't lost to me and the reward of exploration and experimentation weren't bogged down by hindering familiarity with game design, and while Pokemon is now bigger than it's ever been, it has never again been able to recapture the same mania of the late 90s I was fortunate to have witnessed. Excuse me while I step away from my unbiased persona for a sec to tell you that if you didn't play Pokemon in a pre-internet age, where secrets and rumours were exchanged word of mouth by snot nosed lying kids, doing battles and trades meant having to deal with the annoying neighbour rich bully that had the one link cable, and where the game extented past the screen into a shared cult of watching the tv show, collecting the trading cards and buying the toys, then the Pokemon experience is no longer accessible to you because you simply. weren't. there.
Anyways, Arceus is none of that. Understandably and rightfully so, it doesn't try to remake the unremakeable but instead demonstrates to be the most effort Game Freak has put into the series in 20+ years of stagnation, being the closest Pokemon has ever gotten to creating the fantasy sequel me and many others envisioned all those years ago while being transfixed by a Game Boy and a small cartridge. It sounds shallow on paper, but it's astounding how drastically being able to see the critters moving around in the distance in full 3D changes the entire series. Reducing the scope beyond the simplicity of Gen 1, Arceus removes the towns, gyms, trainer battles and traditional progression of the main series to focus exclusively on the core experience of "catching them all", and while that ends up being a bare bones gameplay loop, it sustains its appeal through free form BOTW like set of landscapes that present the Pokemon as wild dangerous beasts to be carefully observed and approached and that give brief glimpses of the kind of excitement for exploration encountered in those old games of yore.
Does Arceus get a pass, that its contemporaries wouldnt benefit from, just for being Pokemon? Yeah. Catching one Pokemon means you have essentially catched them all, as they all share the same behaviors, movements and animations while stumbling about their primitive AI, battles are included in a meandering compromise of broken and mindless combat with little strategy and bond between your team, and the lack of interaction between the Pokemon and the environments they inhabit relegate the few and far between moments of personality and characterization to the quests and cutscenes. But goddammit, I'm human too, and I would be lying if I said I didn't get a sense of eager satisfaction everytime I watched that pokeball jump around into a sucessful catch. It's not the dream Pokemon game we have learned to forget over the decades, it will probably take another 20+ years to get there. But it's an evolution, and that has to mean something in the case of Pokemon.
3 Comments
The problem with the battle system is that the priority mechanics make it really frustrating and unfair, as you can no longer change your team before getting hit by an inevitable one hit kill move. So it's even more of a "my Pokemon does a super effective move and now your Pokemon does a super effective move" dynamic
This comment was deleted
Your review oozes so much raw passion to the extent that it makes me want to play this game even if I outgrew the Pokémon magic.
Just like you, Pokémon always comes to mind if I were to be asked what one of the video game franchises I first fell in love with. Seeing the series' sloth-like direction, I can't deny that it really saddens me to witness its present state. But, you see, I'm human too. I really need to revisit Pokémon and playing Arceus would probably be the best choice.
Just like you, Pokémon always comes to mind if I were to be asked what one of the video game franchises I first fell in love with. Seeing the series' sloth-like direction, I can't deny that it really saddens me to witness its present state. But, you see, I'm human too. I really need to revisit Pokémon and playing Arceus would probably be the best choice.
SunlitSonata
1 year ago