Pokémon

Game updates

I am almost done with FF7 Remake, but as more and more people reach the platinum trophy, I have taken a long break from FF7R. It is a single player game and it shows in its postgame… or lack thereof.

FF14 is also a game that I had played regularly but I have stopped playing and dropped out of the subscription since patch 5.3 is going to be late, and I do not anticipate it arriving before mid-July. Perhaps then… I will come back to play it.

The one game that I do play, at least somewhat regularly, is currently Pokémon Shield.

That was not my first Pokémon game.

Pokémon Go / Ingress / Y

Although Pokémon first came to the US in the late 1990s, I never owned a Game Boy, so I started late. At the time, I felt Pokémon titles were games “only kids play” and then you do not play them anymore (contrary to popular sentiment at the time, Pokémon was relatively popular across all age groups and I did own a GameCube for a bit - Pokémon games were always released on a Nintendo handheld). I did not even do the trading card game.

Being an RPG guy, I would have Pokémon on my shortlist. But I never gave them a chance in their early years.

The first real Pokémon game I tried to get into was Pokémon Y (didn’t get X), which is Kalos region Pokémon, back in 2013. But until this year, I never got around to finish Y, I stopped midway through.

Not until the arrival of Niantic and Pokémon Go did I really got into Pokémon. A big reason I got playing with Pokémon Go was my previous days when I played Ingress, Niantic’s first augmented reality game. From 2013-16, I managed to play Ingress (Resistance 16) and get many of the medals.

Niantic’s announcement they’re going to work with Game Freak-Nintendo for a Pokémon themed alternative to Ingress was very intriguing.

I remembered the first time I got into the beta version of Pokémon Go. It was May 2016, and I was in a tour group at the time, and I got the invite. Signed up for the invite, downloaded the beta app. Our group was in Boston at the time and I managed to capture a Pokémon (don’t know which one) and capture a gym… in Fenway Park, of all places (since our group was watching a Red Sox game at the time). Some Fenway Park “gyms” used to be designated as “portals” within the Ingress universe and Pokémon Go used the majority of the Ingress portal database for its “gyms” and “Pokéstops”.

Pokémon Go eventually became Niantic’s most profitable game. However, amidst the popularity, I ran out of power to play it. The highest level you can get is level 40 and I decided to move onto other games where you do not have to travel far to play it. Pokémon Go started to get amazingly popular in 2016 and then died down, but over time, the game has rebounded from its awful launch to be a major tentpole game for Niantic - so much so, Ingress has somehow taken a backseat.

What now?

In recent days, Pokémon Sword / Shield is now out, and despite the furor of select Pokémon being omitted, the latest edition of the Pokémon franchises sold decently.

I’m still going to finish Shield, before moving onto the 3DS Pokémon games (starting with Y).

Some observations:

• The 3DS games, naturally enough, felt very fluid in loading times. There was not a lot of data to move around. With Sword / Shield, there were frame drops.
• Sword / Shield felt easier to play compared to the 3DS games… (i.e. Sword / Shield, you can change your party on the fly - except when in a gym challenge - from your Pokémon boxes. With previous games, you will not be able to do that unless you are at a Pokémon Center.)

There are too many to list here so to keep it short… I’m rediscovering Pokémon, and it has given me a reason to hold onto my 3DS for a long while.