Pokémon: Let's Go, Pikachu! (2018)

This is by far the most fun I've had with a Pokemon game! I picked this up and couldn't stop playing it until I reached over 100 hours!!

My first Pokemon game was Yellow so I loved that you can have Pikachu as my your partner who travels with you once again except this time you can pet, poke, tickle, feed, hair style, and dress up Pikachu! There are also plenty of nice outfit customizations for the player character! I loved seeing the redesigned towns, gym leaders, and hearing the new versions of the original music. The 3D models and VFX during battles were quite impressive and satisfying as well!

My favorite redesigned mechanics are:

1. Seeing pokemon roam the world and running only into the ones you want to catch (instead of aimlessly running in the grass to just get a random pokemon like in other games)
2. Being able to use outside-of-battle abilities like fly/surf without relying on HMs.
3. TMs are no longer consumable and can be used unlimited times.
4. You can set ANY pokemon to follow you! Some pokemon will even let you ride them like Charizard, Gyarados, and Persian!
5. Your Pokemon box is in your backpack so you can withdraw/deposit pokemon at any time.
6. Auto exp share: All your party pokemon gain exp when battling/catching pokemon.

The random NPC, gyms leaders, and elite 4 battles were fun and challenging. I had fun evenly leveling up most of my pokemon (leveling up in this game is pretty fast) instead of only leveling a few of them. That allowed me to try different team combinations but also make sure I dont have a few pokemon that are overleveled and would make the game too easy.

This is my first ever Pokemon game!

And I ended up really enjoying myself. My kiddos have been super into Pokemon for a while now and their enthusiasm led me to finally playing my first one. I thought it was going to be Arceus, but when the rubber hit the road I decided it would be fun to start here, with Let's Go, Evee.

And I'm glad I did! I ended up having a great time. A simple story with a simple premise: Become the best Pokemon trainer in the Kanto region! Which I was apparently up to this particular challenge :) Nothing too difficult. Your normal everyday straightforward RPG. I appreciate that the battle system is similar to Persona in the way that it rewards you by knowing the weaknesses of each type. I just wish there was an easy way to figure this out. I ended up with a cheat sheet in front of me a little more often than I'd care to admit.

I had a great time chatting and talking with my kids as I played also. And now that I've beat the game I think I'm gonna take some time to level up some Pokemon (and get some legendary/rare ones) and then trade them over to them so they can get some enjoyment out of that. My son has already beaten the game and has been on the quest to capture Mewtwo. So I think I'll do that, but I'm gonna let him do that on his own I think for the sense of completion of doing it himself. My daughter still hasn't beat the game, but she could if she wanted to. She is over-leveled for the Elite 4 and once she goes in she will demolish just fine. She says she wants to be stronger though 😂 which I can appreciate.

I had a great time with this and I am going to play Scarlet/Violet later this year with my kids and I am genuinely looking forward to it.

It doesn't take much to tempt me back into the world of Kanto, this was one of the first world's I explored as a young kid and Let's Go is a great example of an old gem given a new lick of paint. The near 40 hours I spent on this game were a joy, everything from battle's, exploration and yes even the controversial catching system kept me interested and by the end I was more than happy to have trekked this much adored landscape one more time. Also that EXP share is a godsend! Only thing missing for me was the damn Safari Zone...

Playing this game was kind of a drag until a friend joined me, it made the game way easier but it was a lot of fun ! With that said, i don't think i'll ever play this game again, it was a nice little distraction (a 60$ distraction mind you) but nothing more than that.

3.5 out of 5, wouldn't go to Kanto again.

(Ps: please let us go back to Kalos)

I just wrote a massive review that was deleted because I took too long, so I'll summarise by saying this:

Pokémon Let's Go Eevee perfectly balances the things I loved about the first gen Pokémon games with current-day mechanics and concessions. It had all the classic characters (including delightful interactions with Jesse, James and Meowth, not to mention the kid who always wears shorts), allowed me to show off my highly specialised knowledge of moves and types to my wife, and still remained straightforward and fun. Switching the catching mechanic to the Pokémon Go style was bold, but I think it worked. This was a great pleasure to play, though a little on the easy side (what with everyone in the party getting xp every time you battled or caught a Pokemon, and always having access to your box to switch out your party if some of them fainted).

This game rekindled my love for Pokémon, and was a wonderful 40 hours with my wife catching all 150 again. What a gift!

I'm not ashamed to say I was wrong about this game. At first, back in 2018 when we saw the reveal through the Nintendo Direct I was disappointed in Gamefreak's offering. Like many players I was hoping for a gen 8 game, not a watered down, Go-esque Kanto remake. When I saw wild battles were gone, the catch mechanics and motion controls, I was simply not interested.

Then I started seeing gameplay and it looks like the story was pretty great. It was a remixed version of the original story which was always fun. Shiny hunting looked like great fun and you can't complain with 1/250 shiny odds! Pokemon in the overworld made sense now. I mean, who liked trudging through Rock Tunnel constantly encountering Zubats. Like I said, I was wrong about this game. Besides this isn't a core game, gen 8 will come in 2019.

Nintendo's decision to entice new players and convert Go players to RPG pokemon players is genius. They will build up their player base so when gen 8 comes, even more fans can experience it.

This game would be a 5/5 however for me there is one thing holding it back, the catching methods. If you play while in docked mode the motion controls are an absolute nightmare. They simply don't work. If a Pokemon moves to the left or right, 9/10 times you will miss the throw despite throwing in the right direction. The Switch cannot seem to register these movements which begs the question, did they test this properly when making the game or do they just not care? You can catch in handheld mode, and it does make the movements easier, however you still need to move the Switch around, which is not ideal. Pokemon can also flee now...yay. Thankfully they do have a tell so you can run away first and not break the chain. But imagine you're in docked mode and you encounter a shiny flying Pokemon, you will consistently miss the throws and the Pokemon will run away through no fault of you own.

That being said this is still a great game for old and new players.

So I only bought this game because my four-year-old daughter loves Eevee. We bought her the Build a Bear Eevee plush and she dressed up like Eevee for Halloween. It only felt right to get her the Eevee game.

A week before the release of Let's Go, a friend asked me for my hype level. I shrugged and said meh. I've played through the Kanto region four times now (Blue, Gold, FireRed, HeartGold). This seemed like the worst version of that experience. The graphics were just better, but the gameplay looked like a watered down version of the mobile game.

And yet...

I know it is Dark Soul's world and we just live in it, but easy games are a blast in moderation. There is something about being a 10-year-old and defeating adults by using one Eevee over and over again. Maybe it is that old Nintendo charm carrying the experience, but I found myself grinning while playing a game I assumed I would hate.

My daughter loves it too. She has beaten Lt. Surge all by herself. I just read the dialogue to her. Her Eevee is named Sweetie. I named mine Odie.

The lesson to be learned from Pokemon is how contagious joy is. Everything about the game mechanically is fine. I would even say the motion controls while the switch is docked are bad. But the unending cheer of the game overcomes any other issues I had. I love this stupid bad game. And I will probably dive in again whenever Gamefreak decides to release Let's Go Marill.

I wasn't so sure about this game when I picked it up, but I absolutely loved it. This is a remake of Pokemon Yellow, but it's far from a boring rehash. The game provides a fresh take on quite a few of the Pokemon conventions, and most of them work really well.

Some examples include the introduction of Secret Techniques, which remove the need to use up a move slot with an HM, which makes planning battle moves much easier. Your Pokemon box is also portable now, so you can switch out team members with ease.

Like many, I was doubtful that I'd enjoy the Go-style capture system in this game, but for the most part it worked. I enjoyed most that I could see Pokemon on the map and choose whether to participate in an encounter or not. That said, the motion controls were sometimes finicky. And, like in Go, some Pokemon are stubbornly resistant to capture for no discernible reason. But aside from these frustrations, the system was easy to manage and actually rather fun. It provided a nice change of pace from the random battles and the eventual boredom that comes with it.

Seemingly to make up for the lack of battles with wild Pokemon, the trainers and gyms in this game were much more difficult that I expected. Not to say that they were overly challenging. I never felt something was too hard, but quite a few battles kept me on my toes and made me work for my victory. It's funny because I remember my gen 1 and 2 games as being so difficult, and as time passed, I wondered if they were or if they just seemed that way because I was a child. I feel like this remake really validated that feeling for me because it provided more of a challenge than I expected, and more than some of the more recent games have provided.

The post-game is almost overwhelmingly huge, with lots of new battles and Pokemon. But this actually quite nice because usually, aside from the chance to catch a new legendary, I feel that the post-game in Pokemon often lacks enough to continue my interest in playing.

All in all, I was very pleasantly surprised by the game. I did obviously mention a few downsides to the game, but I didn't think they did enough for me to take off a star. This is undoubtedly one of the best games I played this year, and any fan of Pokemon should look into this, especially if you're feeling trepidatious. Trust me, it was worth it.