Last night I polished off the new Elite Four in the latest generation of Pokemon. I clawed my way to the top fighting tooth and nail, and let me say that it was not easy. Not nearly as easy as the Elite 5th (or Champion) or the magic bum that follows after that. None the less, it's been an amazing journey and will continue to hold my attention with all its joyous post-game.
Let me be clear now. This won't be a review because, by professional standards, I don't believe that I can be a fair judge. I'm too saturated with childhood nostalgia and will inevitably overlook glaring flaws in favor of the glimmering new features. This is going to be an editorial where I gush about how much I've loved every second of Pokemon Y. Let's get down to it.
Pokemon Y does a couple great things straight off the bat. First and foremost, you walk out the front door with your running shoes on. No more must you suffer through 20 minutes of dragging your feet around your hometown before getting your first step towards quicker movement. Next, your starter doesn't actually get handed to you by the local Pokemon Prof. as has been the norm for the past 17 years. Instead, you meet up with your local band of aspiring Pokemon trainers who stand in for the usual rivals. There's Shauna and Calem, who act as the stereotypical rivals who will take the other two starters. Beyond them you have Tierno and Trevor who pursue Pokemon related careers, although far different than your average trainers. Trevor's goal is to see every Pokemon across the world and fill out his Pokedex. Tierno, on the other hand, wants to build the ultimate Pokemon dance team. Yup. That's a thing.
The story is the same. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. You travel across the Kalos region (loosely based off of France - even has it's own mini-Eiffel Tower), battle eight gym leaders, earn their eight badges, approach the Pokemon League and trash the Elite Four (Five, really). Along the way, there's a dastardly band of Pokemon trainers (this time called Team Flare). They're headed by a guy with really big, really red, really pointy hair who wants to create "a beautiful world for just his team". You foil his plot and have the opportunity to catch the box art legendary Pokemon in the grand crescendo.
But that's not the fun part. There's a shitton of improvements that have been made since the last time I played one of these titles (Gen V - Diamond ver.). Already mentioned the running shoes. Still can't get over that one. The experience system has been damn near overhauled. Each time you down a Poke, the victorious party member, and each member that participated gets the FULL experience value. With EXP Share turned on, even those that didn't participate get half the points. The day-care center gets introduced early on as well, which is kind of a shame, since you don't see hair or hide of a Ditto until just before the final badge.
In addition to the usual bike (which no longer has different gears), there's the nifty addition of roller skates as well. They're slower than the bike and a tad-bit harder to control, but the game's mechanics allowed the designers some interesting ways to put objects in hard to reach places. The ability to grind rails to reach different locations and perform tricks when jumping off of ramps are welcome additions.
The type chart has been flipped around a bit in this new release with the introduction of the Fairy-type (don't know what I'm talking about? Memorize this.). Finally a way to beat down all those OP Dragon-type Pokemon (that didn't have a secondary type that was ALSO weak to Ice, making Ice Beam do 4x damage. I'm a poke-geek. Don't judge). Not only did they introduce new Pokemon of this type, they've also ret-conned Pokemon from previous generations to either have Fairy as an additional type, or have adjusted them to fit the Fairy-type that they should have had originally.
Oh, and there's this little thing where the whole game is rendered in 3D. Not like, migraine-inducing-3DS 3D, but like way-better-than-Pokemon-Stadium 3D. Graphics and animation are top-notch and it's worth keeping the battle animations on to see them. However, if your eyeballs can stomach the 3DS's unique stereoscopic rendering, leaving the 3D on will actually lag the game. In fact, the game does have a little bit of trouble keeping up when there's more than one Poke on screen.
So here's what's cool. Being 23 now, I have a lot stronger grasp on the way the system works. Which Pokemon have higher catch rates, how to EV train, even a vague idea of how breeding works. This greatly extends the joy that can be had from raising a competitive team. But if you're not into that, there's still plenty to be done. As of Generation VI, there are now over 700 different Pokemon released. If you've contracted gotta-catch-'em-all fever, you're gonna be busy for a long time. I know I will be.
-Nik "Latency" Trumble
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