So rather than giving you like literally everything and anything about this game, since it came out Saturday, I'll just give you guys my review of the game, answer any questions, and leave this thread up as a discussion for the changes.


ALSO: THERE'S GOING TO BE "SPOILERS", so if knowing what pokemon you're given the chance to get, what the potential is for your team to be, etc. is a problem, avoid reading this outside of the ratings

I'll be reviewing Pokemon X.

First off let me say: the pacing may be just a TAD slow at the beginning, muchlike previous games. This immensely gets speed up after you receive Exp.Share.


Exp. Share

This was GOD send tier of importance that they had a new system for this. Every pokemon on your team will get adequately leveled even if not used. This is awesome because typically you'll go threw a town that has a lot of water pokemon, so your Rock/Ground type has no use for like 20 minutes, and then when he becomes relevant again, he'd be too under leveled. That's far far from a problem in this game. I finished the pokemon champion with a level 70, and the entire rest of my team, even a Rock/Dragon fossil pokemon that KO'd or assisted against at most ~12 pokemon was level 64.

The Exp. Share makes catching the huge variety of new and old pokemon in the wild, experimenting, etc. very very easy.


TMs are Renewable

This is again, freaking sweet. Did your pokemon need to forget a move (Like the new and awesome Power-Up Punch?), that's fine. You can remove it and add it as much as you want with these TMs. It makes you feel like you can have more viable pokemon, give them real moves right away, and like every decision you make at level 15 wont haunt you till level 100.

Gameplay is Slower, but Makes for GREAT Gamefeel

What it feels like is 1 on 1 or 2 on 2 Pokemon Stadium no matter who you're facing. That's slower because to get the full effects of the game, it takes long(er), but it's a lot more immersive, and feels more rewarding.

IMMEDIATE exposure to awesome pokemon

You ever play a pokemon game and it feels like you have to go out of your way to get any cool ones? You don't give a shit about the Tentacools and Zubat's, you want Mega Blastoise and Gengar! Well fear not, this game gives you plenty and plenty of shots at getting relevant level interesting pokemon. After the third gym or so I had a Mega Charizard, my fully evolved starter, and a Mega Lucario. Hell before the elite four I encountered a wild level like 58 Haunter.

Not only do you get these awesome pokemon just in the wild no problem, along with receiving cool ones like Lapras, Mega Lucario, Blastoise/Venasaur/Charizard, etc, they actually have move sets! So you won't be catching cool pokemon that knows Tackle/Growl/Take Down/ Ember.

Mega Evolutions are EMPOWERING

You should feel awesome that you are freaking going super saiyan with your Pokemon, and you DO. EVERY TIME. The first time you witness in a mega evolution, the setting is perfect, you feel like god, you get excited as mess, and boy do you feel like they don't have a chance. The only let down is you'll almost rarely get the chance to fight against Mega Evolutions. Feels a bit cheap when you've got a Mega Charizard, Mega Lucario, Mega Abomasnow, and a legendary on your team all essentially for free, and your opponent just has like... Drudigon.

People HEAL Your Team!

You know what was god awful and annoying? Encounter fleets of trainers, especially in caves and whatnot, and having to run back to the Pokecenter. Pokemon X addresses this by leaving Professors, Cops, best friends, and other nice people to heal your team often during long stretches.

The PokeCenter is ALSO the Mart

There's nothing more annoying then having to travel cross town to heal up and buy potions. They fused it up, and it all goes faster now.

Great great mix of new and old

There weren't too many new pokemon in Gen. 6. I think there's like 64? What this means is you get the jump on getting cool new ones with cool never before seen type combinations (Grass/Ghost, Poison/Dragon, Ghost/Steel to name a few of many), but you'll get to have old favorites. If you came in by ruby, you can get your salamance, if you loved Gen 1, you can have a charmander and pikachu and SNORLAX. I was legitimately excited to enter tall grass because I could find ANYTHING and at a reasonable level.

Story line isn't abysmal

You don't walk into this with a Pokemon Yellow attitude where Team Rocket is like "Yo', we like Pikachu. We gunna take it.... and that's your goal". F that shit. Team Flare is here and they've got a plan: to KILL all HUMANS and POKEMON. All of us. If you're not in team flare, they're going to try to murder you all with their doomsday device. This makes you legitimately give a crap about stopping them, and how you do it feels rewarding. And it comes full circle at the end which I won't spoil but I did shed a tear after the ceremony because something awesome happens.

New Ways to Traverse the Region

Ever wanted to jump around on a high speed goat pokemon? You can. Roller blades fun as hell to move around with? You betcha. Need to get over a mountain? NBD there's a public Rhyhorn for that! Want to travel through snow? Mamoswine's got you covered. It made me feel like I was living side by side with pokemon. And not just in the traditional "Snorlax use surf" sort of way.

You Get SOO much money $$$

Gamefreak realized that you hardly care to have random fights against whoever on route to the next city. It's always the least fun part of the game, even though they exhibit some new and cool pokemon. They REWARD you this time by giving you so much cash for beating them that you actually feel like there can be a purpose to it. Like buying TMs, ultra balls, healing items, escape ropes, repels, status restores, etc. I ended the game with like $310,000 and that was with avoiding most trainers on purpose.

Post Game, it has one (Sorta)

Post game grants you access to some neat things. First of all, as a throw back to Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow, you can go to Mystery Dungeon and catch Mewtwo (Mega Mewtwo). You also have a less mentioned Zygarde to catch.

Regardless: You now have a island built around post game. There's a battle tower where you, using a competetive non-banned team can fight to earn points for Stat boosters and much needed items to raise your pokemon up for online battle, and or grant you access into finding other Mega Stones like Mega Alakazam.

Additionally, there's a "Friend Safari Zone", which is a place where you get to continuously try to catch new different pokemon you otherwise wouldn't encounter, in a Safari Zone setting, all based around Friend Codes. The game really pushes the idea that if you have more friends, you'll get more friend codes, thus get more randomized Safari Zones, and catch more and rarer pokemon. This is awesome because friends are cool and why not get rewarded for having some.




*breaths*

Pokemon X:

Game Feel/Graphics: 10/10
Pacing: 8.5/10
Conveyance: 6.5/10
Memorability: 10/10
Improvement Upon it's Prequels: 9.5/10
Difficulty: 1.5/5 (The most and really only black outs I ever had were against the Fighting Gym leader, simply because my starter was weak to Fighting/Flying. I could've just caught a psychic but I just pushed through)

Overall: 9.5/10

There are times I got stuck. For me, someone who knows the freaking accuracy, base power, PP, typings, abilities, and item choices of nearly every pokemon and to have played Gens 1-5 to get stuck not knowing what to do, that's hard. Especially since it's a kid's game. But I wasn't stuck because the game was overly difficult, it wasn't. In fact you'll feel OP most of the time. I was stuck because the game had moments of really poor conveyance. You sometimes knew where to go, but not how. Othertimes you didn't know where to go period and the guy who told you is gone. Other times the 3D gets in the way and you think a rock is blocking your way when you can just walk around it. The biggest offender of this issue is how completely irrelevant HMs are this time around. Sometimes I walked out of a city and a dude was like "WAIT HERE'S FLY/SURF/Strength 'cuz you might need that!". I still haven't got all the HMs, and some of the ones I got like Waterfall, I didn't ever need to use to "beat the game". It felt like traversing the environment wasn't a concern anymore, which is cool because did anyone like HM slaves anyways?

Closing Thoughts

They fixed all the shit that held people up about pokemon. They didn't shove pointless things like beauty contests down your throats to advanced, there was never a time you need to grind, the game escalates quickly, the story didn't drag on, EV/IV training is super streamlined from what I hear, you get your old favorites again, mega evolutions make you feel like Goku *which is ironic since he voices Lucario in the anime*, pokemon you catch are awesome and useable. The game is great. You will feel over-empowered steamrolling through some Gyms with 3 OHKO's from time to time. The game can feel slow when you watch all these move animations, but OHKO'ing your opponent with your Mega Blastoise can help that a lot haha.


It's a great game. It's the best pokemon game that's ever been released by 10 fold of any of your previous favorites. Fairy type just works well, it wasn't forced. The post game revolves around competitive Pokemon, which is appropriate since online play is solid. I highly recommend you get this game.

Personally not happy with the lack of good Pokemon design.

Solax:

9 of the examples you just provided are different typings from one another. Not to mention 7 of the pokemon you posted about were from Generation 1, which was 15 or so years ago, so yeah there's going to be similarities.

did a reasonable job explaining that Pokemon, just like animals, have the right to "evolution" in the sense that we think of with animals, where birds, fish, etc. of different regions will be similar with minor differences based off their surroundings and challenges.


Also:



<coolest pidgey ever




Combo Pokemon



Coolest Pathetic Bat



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I can see where you're coming from though. At the same time, you have to reinvent the wheel a bit once your on your 6th Generation of game. I think this is part of the reason why X and Y feature less new pokemon and more enjoyment of lots of regions. Also, they expanded on cool pokemon of past, like Mega Lucario.

But it's not their largest blunder or offender. Pokemon had all the room in the world to be unique and original with it's designs when it first came out and we still stuck eyeballs on a pokeball and called it a day.



I'm not pretending like Pokemon design was even a highlight of this generation, hence why I didn't even list it, but it's easy to forgive. A lot of the repeats at least hold different typing. With everything else they did for us, I can live with the fact that there were only a few major gems like the sword Pokemon.

If you use EXP share won't some of your pokemons stats be lower than normal because you missed out on some of +3 an 4s?

For the sake of the pokemon universe I'm gunna say Voltorb and Electrode came before te pokeball and the humans were inspired by such colors and made the pokeball in it's likeness

Roselia and Flabebe comparison is a bit of a stretch and what was said before the pokemon are Animals and there are bound to be similarities between the pokemon. Also the pokemon are said to have come from one being and that's mew. Chances are some are gunna look a like if we bring the lore into this.

Vivillon is bad ass sorta. I don't like how it looks, but it could be taught or learn cool moves like Infestation, Poison Powder, Struggle Bug and Return or Stun Powder.

If you're new to the series but like the concept, this is more than likely going to be one of the best ones to start off trying.

Those of us who played the Red/Blue with Charmander as a starter can tell you it wasn't always as streamlined and fleshed out as it is today.

Please tell me I'm not the only one to buy a 3ds just because of this game.

Hax do a giveaway please, poor and I need Y

@Chamara:

Not every pokemon has a mega evolution, and the ones that do will require work for you to to get the item. Some of which you'll get from the main storyline, some of which you'll have to work for. Mewtwo and Charizard are the only pokemon who have version specific Mega Evolutions, so you'll be fine outside of that.

Global trading and fighting is still a thing. In fact there's now an additional feature called "Wonder Trading". This essentially lets you put a pokemon out for trade, and you'll be given a random pokemon someone else put up. Hayden's YouTube showed him trading a Pikachu and just randomly got an Abra.

I don't know if 3v3 fighting was removed all together; however, it wasn't used during the storyline. That being said, there's a new "horde" feature, where you'll encounter 5 of the same pokemon at the same time. Neat addition.

I'm not aware of another way to play the game yet without a 3DS, outside of having a 2DS.

Finding rare pokemon in the safari zone is back and better than ever, not worse. You can only catch so many pokemon on your version without help; however, randomly spawned safari zones exist for each and every Friend Code you have. So have 5 friends? You have 5 more SZ's to look for rare pokemon in.

In terms of challenge: Pokemon's never been challenging by just "completion". The fun you'll have will come from how exciting all these features and gameplay elements add to the current formula, the game feel from the 3D fights, and most importantly: the amount of experimentation and freedom you have with your team. If you're looking for a challenge, it'll be playing against other opponents. Pokemon is a very competitive E-Sport if you're willing to get into it all.

Not all of them will be the same

I ran into 4 Sevipers and a mongoose thingy, it fast and strong. So, they were attaking the mongoose and I tried saving it, but failed to do so because it didn't live passed the 1st turn.

I just saw an Articuno in the wild. Ran away before I was even prompted to throw a ball at it.

What a jerk.

I too have a lot to be desired of my team. I think the format for the " Battle Tower " to be 3 on 3, so I'll probably do a Fire/Water/Grass core. Thinking Blaziken / Gyrados / Ferrothorn if I can find them and raise them up decently.