Pokemon GO is like a love letter to those who spent their childhood watching the adventures of Ash Ketchum or looking for wild Pokémon in the grass with Red. It's been my companion game more than four years now and has grown so much over that time. It never was the perfect game, yet it could always offer something more to those long bus rides and walks.
It started quite simple, more like a half done product. Yet it was all around you, everyone was playing for a short time. I have never seen anything like it. People running for that Lapras for 15 minutes (myself included), because you might never see one again. Gotta catch 'em all!
Then the hype went down a bit, and our group has thinned. One of my best friends and I continued on the journey to be the very best. At this point, the game was still just catching, hatching and battling the gyms with the simplest of battle systems (tap the screen a lot). It became a bit boring, but we didn't give up. Learned some new things that we haven't understood before, encountered some rare Pokémon once in a while and explored nests and regular spawns around the area to evolve our bigger Pokémons. When shiny Magikarp was introduced, the hunt was on. I think i caught like 150 of them one day without a single golden one, but no, we didn't give up.
The big shakeup came with the introduction of Raids. Once again, we started to participate in group activities, meet with new people and battle together. Like other aspects of the game, this wasn't perfect either, but we still had so much fun. New generations of Pokémon have been introduced, once even persuading me to roam the streets after midnight in the snow to catch some new mons and the Pokémon Santa, Delibird. Then came (probably not in this order) the Community days, where we spent hours collecting and shiny hunting with hundreds of other trainers around us in the park, weather effects, daily tasks and Special researches for mythical Pokémon. By that time, my girlfriend also joined me in my journey so it could became a hobby where we spent more time together.
Recent updates also shook up the game a bit, adding more activities when on the road, but also while staying at home. The game could renew itself even during the current pandemic, offering more opportunities to have fun, like team rocket grunts flying to you in their balloons, remote raiding with people all around the world or long distance trading. These all have been built on previously existing features, polishing the experience even more. I also noticed the increase in cash grab events recently, but the good thing is you can always ignore these if you don't want to pay, the offered extras will be available to you later, so you shouldn't feel the fear of missing out. There are so many events nowadays, you will have plenty to do without these.
I mentioned early on that this game is like a love letter, and I mean it. Pokémon main series games have always been exclusive to Nintendo owners and offering limitations, like some Pokémon that you can't catch in one edition or can only trade with others, which makes me feel like I'm missing out. Pokémon GO aims to be the platform, where you can really catch them all one day, with Kalos Pokémon on the horizon, recently introduced mega evolutions and so much more to come. Niantic is a pioneer company in the Augmented Reality too, so expect more features extending the real world experience.
I feel like this game will be here for a long time, which is good, because I'm not planning to stop anytime soon!
