I don’t think any series has come and gone throughout my whole life quite like Pokémon has. Thinking back to 2019: I played through Pokémon Crystal with a band of friends, and it brought back a lot of my dormant love for it. We planned our teams together, helped come up with nicknames, and tried to each catch a shiny of choice before the end of the game. By the end of the game, not only did it have that usual special Pokémon feel like you really went on a journey with your lovingly raised lil guys, my other friend’s Pokémon had also floated vaguely through my mind. Pokémon’s natural strengths of telling little wordless stories through your playthroughs all seem to shine when you do it side by side with others. Recently I’ve been playing Dragon Quest 3 - I named my party after my friends, and was really endeared by how their classes naturally make them interact with each other. 2 of my other friends, who are besties, are a mage and a priestess, and the mage is frail so the priestess has to heal them a bunch. Gotta love how classic RPGs remind me of people, but I gotta love how Pokémon brings my friends together at least just as much.

And at this point, it’s fair to say that Pokémon’s natural social subtleties are proven to be more than theory or novelty. The iconic 90s Pokémon boom pushed the series so far into the collective consciousness that it made people fear it was a cult - and they were probably right. Those catholics laid in bed in a cold sweat despite the pistols in their wardrobes, because they knew that Zubat was an entity that could not be killed in as simple ways as bullet murder. The uniqueness of every person’s playthrough would prove to lend itself perfectly to internet content; nuzlockes and all their siblings spawning an endless stream of noise forever. Twitch Plays Pokémon proved to us that democracy is not real, only for Pokémon Go to prove that world peace might still be possible regardless. So when I tell you all of this, you have to believe me that 4 player co-op is the most natural evolution to the series since Scizor.

Scarlet and Violet arrives as the first games in the series with cooperative multiplayer, and well, I think they nailed it! Mind you it’s not true co-op in the sense you battle against enemies together, but more MMO-esque in that you all simultaneously exist together while the story goes by. I recall the first few hours of the game; me and 3 friends immediately came together to make absolutely no story progress, and just spelunk around looking for some of the new weirdos this game added. Pokémon’s social nature has always linked me up with people to have casual conversations suddenly interrupted by a “DUDE IS THAT PHANPY”, but this time, we were all screaming. Stumbling onto cool Pokémon spots feels particularly special when I’m bugging my friends to follow me so we can catch that Flamingo Pokémon.

One story that stuck out to me the most is one much further in. I bugged my friend to check out this giant cave I found, and they say they’ll search for the new rock Pokémon Glimmet in it before logging off. We spend like, literally an hour running around, trying to find this thing, and we just can’t. I came up with this plan on the spot: dude…what if we just make a bunch of sandwiches until one of them gives us a rock encounter buff. And I scroll through the unchanged 2000s interfacing of Serebii, and find out that the combination of bacon, watercress, mustard, jalapeno, and egg might do the trick. This game forced my hand into making bizarro sandwiches, and I obliged faithfully; not too long after succeeding, we found a little crevice in the corner of the cave where a bunch of them spawned. It’s kinda silly, but that moment felt special - Pokémon Scarlet had forced my hand to try strange tricks to find an equally strange obscure new Pokémon in its corners. Simulacrum of Pikablu-flavoured playground rumours waft through this game endlessly, and unraveling even the most incidental of secrets feels like a revelation. At this moment I had to equate Scarlet and Violet to a dungeon master, casually weaving scenarios for my friends to lightly problem solve together. But of course, in a game as big as this, superficiality isn’t absent.

So here we enter the “oh god oh fuck they messed up” section of this: this game launched like it needed at least another year of polish. I continuously thought while playing “how do i even like…talk about this game”. Rather than outrage or laughter, I’m in this middle of the road perspective where all I’m thinking is…I hope the people who developed this game are okay, it looks like a crunch nightmare. Seeing a composer of all people apologize publicly for a music related glitch broke my heart. I just tried to ask myself as honestly as I could: how much does this game’s launch state actually affect my enjoyment? And the answer is like, yeah, it hurts the game a lot. Where it hits the game the hardest is its pacing - you can really feel how vestigial Pokémon is of 80s game design. As my game sputtered and paused in battles, I really felt the slowness of the game reporting the weather, every individual stat’s increase, every little attack in a multi-hit move, and so on. It didn’t help that this game is lacking the ability to turn off attack animations or “would you like to switch your Pokémon” prompt, unlike previous entries. But anyone who has ever loved a low budget PS2 game like it was family knows that sometimes you don’t just love the game barring the jank, you roll with the jank.

When Nintendo announced this game would have no level scaling, fans took it as something worth controversy, but I saw opportunity. I inject difficult scenarios into these games more every time I replay them: just earlier this year, I did a Pokémon Yellow playthrough where I did the second half of the gyms backwards to fight the hardest ones early. I was ready to be my own dungeon master once again, and I kept my rules simple: no using items from my bag during battle, rely only on held items only, and no use of the new gimmick. I’ll be honest, it didn’t start out all great: I went through the first 2 gyms overleveled from all the catching I was doing, so I had to break out the heavy artillery. I started using 2 teams instead of one, so one could ferment in my box and be underleveled for any challenges I needed. The third gym I fought was the first serious challenge the game had thrown at me; its leader uses the game's gimmick to create a Pokémon with no weaknesses, and it was pretty tight with my team of trashy level twenties. This game has eighteen badges split across its three storylines, and I had challenged one of the Titans already - a boss fight against a giant solo Pokémon. I realized my team was perfectly fit to disable them with ease, having lots of attack and special attack dropping moves, so a thought came to my mind…what if I beat them all right now?

And well, I did it! My entire team was dead besides my Dachsbun, who managed to deal the killing blow to this level 56 Titan. Every titan gives you a new mode of overworld control, and so I had beaten the Metroidvania out of Scarlet to make the rest of my story progress breezy. It definitely felt like the biggest achievement I ever made in this game. Every Team Star boss fight except one took me multiple tries as well, they use special boss Pokémon designed around inflicting specific status effects on you. But I’ll admit, I felt like I would never have a Gym fight harder than that electric gym for the rest of the game after that. I just kept getting to them later than the game expected me to! Worst of all, my best ally had turned against me; the sandwiches I made gave all my Pokémon magic Power of Friendship dodges during story fights.
All things considered, I think this first run I did had decent success, but the amount of times I got to a gym overleveled only to be underwhelmed was a bit frustrating; there’s no indication of a badge’s challenge until you start the fight. Weirdo RPG difficulty obsessives definitely have a lot to chew on here, though - I can only imagine a more thoroughly planned run would be able to turn this game inside out. Especially with how none of the basic overworld trainers are mandatory fights, this game is basically a challenge runner’s dream: a Pokémon boss rush game where you can challenge level 40 bosses with level 10s without large amounts of prep.

The most interesting thing about Scarlet and Violet’s approach to open world is how fermented it feels. Only a few traces exist here of the tried-and-trash Ubisoft tower design, and this certainly isn’t Grand Theft Auto: Like a Dragon - the reality is that this game is basically an 8th Gen AAA NES RPG. Dying ligaments of game design ripped out of Miyamoto’s attic seem to cake both this game’s biggest strengths and flaws. Pokémon Scarlet and Violet are the 2nd best Dragon Quest 1 remake, and they are a D&D session with all of your gay friends. While I see a lot of its core game design as inelegant, this game is all I could ask for when it comes to naturally conducting spontaneous storytelling. Pretty fun ostensible corporate trash to recommend your friends with eighteen asterisks.

Spark 2 is indeed a video game that I played. I have very conflicting feelings about this game. Let's get the obvious positives out of the way: Music is great as per usual with Feperd Games, although admittedly: this is one of the weaker soundtracks in his catalogue, it sorely lacks the variety that Spark 1 or After the Sequel have in terms of music. This isn't to say it isn't a total earworm! But alot of it blends together this time around. Now that I've got that squared away, let's talk about the gameplay:
I'd like to hone in on one specific mechanic here, because I think it specifies a lot of the issues that Spark 2 has. The parry. So, we all love parries right? The scene in which Daigo parries Justin's Super 2 is super iconic. So, it stands to reason; why not put parries in everything? They're fuckin' cool. And therein lies the issue, the parry in this game feels nearly contradictory to the design that it wants to appeal to, instead of routing things out and playing around obstacles, you can just press the parry button and go through them! To give the game some credit, there's still a level of serotonin that comes from this; but it feels incredibly artificial instead of something that comes naturally from the natural skill ceiling. So, why does the game have a parry? That has two answers: 1) Parries are indeed cool! 2) There's a fully fleshed out combat system. The combat system in itself feels so contradictory to going fast, that you hardly ever engage with it in the levels and in the bosses: there's hardly any nuance to it, you simply mash the attack button and parry when you hear the tell. This leads to every boss feeling VERY similar and lacking any real identity outside of a different model and ocassionally different music. There's a story in this game too.
It's not good. This game, at its best, can feel very exhilirating, but it has a whole lot of problems that are TOO prevalent to ignore.

For the first time in a long time, Pokémon has gotten a game in a brand new flavor of gameplay. Pokémon Legends: Arceus isn’t exactly innovative, but it is working with a lot of ambition-requiring components that Game Freak has never even dipped their toes into before. My biggest question going into this game was how much of this would feel arbitrary, and how the gameplay loop compares to previous games. It took me about 20 hours to beat the game, but you could have a 40 hour playthrough as well. With blockbuster mechanics and runtime brings new challenges for the series to overcome.


Going over the presentation of the game, Pokémon Legends takes place in Meiji era Sinnoh, a change in style for the series. The graphics are bad! The art direction is fine. The music is shockingly good for a modern Pokémon game. The soundtrack is still comprised of MIDI, but with much nicer sample choice and fantastic composition. Rather than focusing on straightforward remixes, the bulk of the soundtrack uses abstracted isolated melodies from the original material of Pokémon Diamond and Pearl. The identity to how it uses leitmotifs is unique, you can sense a strong understanding of the original source material through it. The storytelling is lightweight and minimal without emphasis on a singular villain, and the campaign ends abruptly. Despite that, the script is fun; the writers have gotten good at writing these shonen filler episode-flavored miniature character arcs. There’s a bit too much dialogue in some places, though. You have to go through the motions a lot in this game – you don’t just rank up when you get enough points, you have to talk to the professor, and then talk to Cyllene. Overall, I enjoyed the setting and thought it fit the gameplay. This game feels a bit like a spiritual remake. Abstractly revisiting the feelings, aesthetics, and inspirations behind the original Diamond and Pearl, while tiptoeing around directly repeating setpieces or plot.

Pokémon Legends has switched up the formula to take place on huge sprawling maps, and the resulting game design is surprisingly clean. The maps themselves are decent, with a lot of verticality, caves, and secret pathways. Traversing them on the game’s various mounts also felt good, they all have good game feel. This game’s strengths lie in how it rewards the player. These maps are covered with collectibles that trickle down into the content and attributes of your team. Pokémon function both as diverse collectibles and interactive obstacles. The game manages to create a variety of interactions out of surprisingly little; simple formations of Pokémon can heavily encourage specific ways of playing. Sometimes rare shy Pokémon will surround a powerful aggressive Pokémon, and being noticed by just one Pokémon can disrupt the chain of events fast. You get a lot of items to make certain play styles easier, but inventory limitation puts weight on which you bring.

At the center of all the best changes this game makes to the format is the new third person aiming. The seamless nature of catching in this game allows for you to spend exactly as much time as you want on every single Pokémon you see. You can run into a crowd of shy Pokémon like Starly — and if you throw pokéballs at them fast enough, you’ll catch around 3/5ths of them. This is good game math, as it encourages the player to put a little effort into trying to catch everything, but a lot of effort into trying to catch something they really want. The catching of Pokémon Legends has a unique relationship with patience. You can make the game a lot easier for yourself if you catch every single thing in your path, clearing obstacles one at a time. The game rewards this through the new Pokédex system filling out after multiple interactions with a Pokémon, and those entries contribute to your rank. However, playing fast means you’ll find new Pokémon quicker.

Combat has also been massively adjusted to fit the pacing of the game, and how quick each interaction with each Pokémon can go. Pokémon at lower levels have much more HP, and don’t scale as much with each level-up. Catching also seems to only take 1-2 pokéballs as long as a Pokémon is at low health; meaning catching in battle has the same pace as catching in the overworld. You can also adjust how much damage you’ll do with your next attack through styles. These traits in combination empower the player to do as much damage as they want, making catching in battles a whole lot more natural. Trainer battles are still around, but much more sparse, and the mechanical changes don’t show improvement here. The early trainers will only use 1 Pokémon, and with how low HP is, it just felt like the later trainer battles were one-hit KO wars. Defeating higher level wild Pokémon 1 on 1 isn’t very engaging either, since outspeeding has been replaced. Where the combat functions its best is in tense 1 vs 3 situations where you have to catch multiple Pokémon at once. Even if the mechanics behind the combat itself aren’t great, it manages to get some interesting things out of having turn based and overworld combat being separated. This game sets a whole new standard for overworld encounters in modern turn-based RPGs as well, there’s a lot of fun risk and reward between choosing to engage with them or avoid them.
There are also “Noble” Pokémon boss fights, which are entirely action-based boss fights. The first 3 feel like baby Monster Hunter attack patterns, and the rest feel like baby bullet-hell attack patterns. If there were full games of these, they wouldn’t be very fun (but the baby bullet-hell game would be x10 better than the baby Monster Hunter game), but they worked well as refreshing changes of pace. The post-game has a lot of half-action half-combat fights where you have to avoid waves of projectiles in order to start a battle, and catch the Pokémon from there. There should be more of those in the sequel! This isn’t exactly a game I’d replay for the combat, but the combat works fine enough to compliment the collecting.

Pokémon Legends: Arceus is a big step forward, but steps aren’t everything; it’s important to remember where we stand now. And where we stand now happens to be pretty good this time around! From these new mechanics, as well as the new style system, it’s clear that Pokémon is willing to learn from contemporary adventure games and JRPGs. The gameplay also carries the DNA of Pokémon Snap, showing introspection from the developers as well. The most surprising part of that is how naturally it involves big selling point mechanics like crafting and open worlds. New mechanics and world design are tastefully implemented and acknowledge long-time series flaws regarding the unengaging side of catching, and improve upon it. This is the best Pokémon has ever been at monster collection, its tagline mechanic. The new mechanics aren’t actually the part of the game that needs iteration; it’s more about broad aspects like storyline, graphics, and combat. Pokémon’s mainline games have been in 3D for about 8 years, and I found those games to use 3D rather superficially. This game uses 3D with purpose, and it’s a strong purpose too.

I'm genuinely struggling to say anything interesting about this game, because truth be told it's all over the place.

The controls are passable, but barely. Sonic's turning is awful, the jumping and double jumping feel sluggish, and he has almost no air control whatsoever. The infinite spindash is kinda fun and has some flow to it if you try and keep it going, but most of Lost World's level design has you stopping and breaking any sense of flow you had for a variety of reasons so you can't really get much value from it. The charged homing attack and kick attack are borderline pointless additions. What do these moves really add in the grand scheme of things, exactly? The charged homing attack feels like a boring solution to a made up problem: they have enemies that need multiple hits to kill, so you can just...awkwardly sit there and lock on to an enemy to slowly charge the homing attack and take him out instantly. Sometimes the number of charges needed increases with no intuitive indication whatsoever (like with the Zavok fight in Sky Road), it just seems random. The kick has similar issues, some enemies need to be kicked before they're able to be homing attacked, or some enemies are immune to the homing attack entirely and need to be kicked. Again, no intuitive indication of this whatsoever, just blind guessing.

The game has little faith in the mechanics it presents. The parkour, for instance, seems cool but is barely utilized outside of a few walls that are literal straight lines. When you do try and experiment with parkour, the game slaps you on the wrist and forces you up whatever you were climbing anyway. For instance, you see a wall in an act in Windy Hill, your first instinct is to wall climb, but when you approach it the game gets cold feet and hammers you with tons of automated hidden springs to bounce you up the wall instead. It's just really head scratching

The levels themselves can range from average to dull. Platforming is nothing you haven't seen before and the controls don't help with this issue, the cylindrical tube based level design isn't engaging as all the optional paths you can take are pretty much identical and all of them are more or less a straight line anyway. I've seen people compare this to Mario Galaxy on the basis that "both have planets for level design", but Mario Galaxy actively takes full advantage of the main mechanic it has: the anti gravity, while this game has absolutely nothing to do with anti gravity at all. It just has spherical and tube like level design because...reasons. No exciting slopes or loops in these areas just...curved flat ground. Great. Thanks.

This game also cannot decide what it wants to be as it constantly throws new gameplay gimmicks at you all the time. One minute you run automatically and cannot stop, another you're a snowball that you cannot get out of, one instance you're forced to play pinball, another you're playing a stealth level avoiding detection from a robotic owl, or you could be playing...a flappy bird esc skydiving level? Stage themes often change around for no reason (like the bizarrely out of place food world in desert ruins, or the casino in Frozen Factory), the wisps return with no explanation given, and all of the returning ones are slower, clunkier to use and less fun than in Colors (because being forced to press A after every single Color power usage was completely necessary). New wisp powers just make me scratch my head. There's Asteroid which is just glorified Frenzy and appears in like 2 levels, Eagle where you fly through the air very slowly through a whole bunch of...nothing, Rhythm where...umm...you tap the screen a bunch? And get rings? Don't even get me started on bomb. There isn't even a mechanic like Colors where you're encouraged to go back to previous stages and use the new wisps you've unlocked to find new passages and areas, they're relegated to the stage they're in and that's that (hover is in this game for a grand total of 1 stage and nothing else).

I don't get Lost World. I don't get the new clunky control scheme and mechanics, I don't get the incredibly bland level design that has no faith in its actual mechanics, I don't get the absurd amount of gimmicks and new playstyles that are constantly thrown at you, I don't get the overly cutesy cartoony aesthetic, I don't get why the story tries way too hard to be edgy despite this (and is unintentionally the funniest Sonic story because of it, seriously it's a great watch), I don't get why so many things about this game are unexplained or unexplored, I just really don't get it. Music is incredibly jazzy and bangs really hard to be expected, I don't even know what to say about it as a whole. It's not awful, but it certainly isn't good either.