It’s almost impossible to understate just how much of an impact the original Pokemon games had when they released in 1998. Blue, Red, and the later definitive edition Yellow transcended success and became phenomenas, introducing a whole generation of younger gamers, myself included to Japanese Role Playing Games (JRPG’s from here on out). In addition it boosted, or benefited from depending on your outlook, a physical card game, an anime that helped normalize the medium to American audiences, and probably millions of toys and other memorabilia.
What’s tough is that the first game was such a cultural touchstone, that doing something different runs the risk of alienating fans. To temper this, Developer GameFreak takes advantage of Nintendo hardware longevity and always makes sure to take steps forward for the franchise, while also touching up what came before, either with a definitive version of the game, Yellow in the case of Generation One Pokémon games, Crystal for Generation 2, Emerald for Generation 3 and so forth, but also in straight up remakes. Pokemon Fire Red and Leaf Green were the original games completely remastered for the Gameboy Advance, featuring updated art, enhanced graphics, and even additional content. Soul Silver and Heart Gold were remakes of Gen Two that came to DS, and the Nintendo 3DS even hosted its own set of remakes with Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire while hosting new games like X, Y, Moon, and Sun.
Advances made in new games trickles down to remakes, features tested out in those remakes make their way into new games and everyone’s happy. Fans get new games, nostalgia nerds get new versions of the old games, and Nintendo’s pockets get lined with gold.
That said, I’m a little miffed with Pokémon Let’s Go Pikachu and by extension Pokémon Let’s Go Eevee for playing it a little too safe. The Nintendo Switch, the company’s latest console, is having meteoric success because of how novel of an idea it is; change between having a handheld and having a home console. It’s something completely new and the word of mouth is what’s selling these consoles. Not since the Wii has there been a “holy shit, you’ve gotta see this” piece of gaming hardware. The first Pokémon games to grace it aren’t new games however, they’re remakes of the definitive version of the first game in the series, Pokémon Yellow. And I get why they’d do that, but the new content, while great, isn’t quite enough to make it feel like a new game.
That said though, it’s still a fantastic, fantastic game.
God this game looks so freaking good.
Let’s get the obvious out of the way - for the most part, this is a nearly perfect remake. Everything has been remade from the ground up while keeping a vast majority of the original gamesexactly the same. The game world is identical, the story is more or less exactly the same, and the goal is exactly the same too- become the most powerful Pokémon trainer and collect all 151 Pokémon native to the Kanto region. Along the way you’ll have to battle eight gym leaders to prove your Pokémon are tough enough to take on the Elite Four, the most powerful trainers in the region. You’ll have a rival to battle, a gang of illegal Pokémon dealers to battle, and various light puzzles to solve to find your way in the world.
It’s a fun, 30 hour tour through a place fans know so well. In addition to admittedly gorgeous updated visuals, there are a few tweaks made to the original formula. Some aren’t just welcome, but seem so obvious in hindsight it’s shocking they haven’t appeared sooner. Those are fun, so let’s start with those.
Now, Pokémon appear in the over world. I know. It’s goddamn genius. You can see which Pokémon are in your immediate area and engage or ignore them accordingly. That means no more Zubats in Mt. Moon, no more Tentacools on your way to Cinnebar Island, and no more Gravelers on Victory Road unless you want them. And you might want them, because in addition to seeing which Pokemon you’re about to encounter, they also introduced a new mechanic called chaining. Chaining is a reward for catching the same type of Pokémon over and over again, that leads to more rare and more powerful Pokémon appearing. Just outside of Celadon City I decided to chain together Pidgeys because there were so damn many of them, and before long a level 25 Arcanine showed up. Which was awesome, because I captured him, and he then rain a train on Erika’s team of grass type Pokémon. I don’t particularly care for chaining, but my podcast cohost Sarah is obsessed with it because it increases your chance of finding a shiny Pokémon, that’s to say a rare color variation of a typical monster. Again, not something I care for, but other people seem to enjoy it, so good for them.
Look at all the Zubats I don’t have to run into anymore.
The UI has also been completely overhauled. You no longer have a maximum number of items you can hold which is a total godsend. You can have literally every item at once and carry them with you always, which makes navigating the world so much easier that you actually feel like you’re exploring the world instead of just trying to survive it like in the original releases In addition to the items, you also have access to every Pokémon you’ve ever caught at all times, which is kind of mind blowing. While this makes the game easier from a progression standpoint, it removes at least 40% of all headaches the originals caused as well. You no longer have to find a Pokémon Center, remember which Box the Pokémon you’re looking for is in, and change your party with a PC. Now you can just do it all from the same menu and it’s awesome. It’s fanfreakingtastic and I hope to god every remake (emphasis on the word remake) does this going forward.
A pretty ingenious change that’s somewhat related to the UI is the complete revamp of HM’s. In the original games, HM’s were battle moves that were critical to advancing in the game world. Moves like Surf would let you go out onto open water to reach new areas, Flash would illuminate dark areas like the Rock Tunnel, Fly would let you fast travel, Strength would let you move boulders to solve environmental puzzles, and Cut would remove trees that were blocking your way. In the original games it was a groaning exercise - because you could either teach one of these moves to a Pokémon in your main party, or you could stack as many as you could on a single Pokémon you didn’t want to saddle with relatively useless moves, but then you’d essentially have a five member party, weakening your team overall. HM’s have been slowly phasing out of recent releases and Let’s Go has essentially phased them out completely, replacing them with Secret Techniques. All the puzzles from the original game remain in tact - there’s still a bush blocking the Vermillion City Gym, you still need to Surf to get to the Power Plant, and you still need to move Boulders to get out of Victory Road - but instead of forcing your Pokémon to adopt a move begrudgingly, the mascot of your particular game (Eevee or Pikachu respectively), learns what’s called a Secret Technique, a move to use outside of battle that serves the same purpose. Pikachu hops on a surfboard, gets a balloon-strapped bicycle, and all manner of other crazy things to make progressing through the game way less annoying than it ever was in the originals.
On top of seeing wild Pokémon in the world, you can also pull your Pokémon out of their Pokéballs to hang out with you. Your mascot is with you at all times - either on your shoulder or on your head, but you can also have an additional Pokémon follow you around. They’ll let you know if there’s a hidden item nearby but more than that, it’s just nice to have the company, to be honest. The increased screen size and slight shift in perspective combine to almost make the game world feel smaller strictly because you can see more of it - but being able to take members of your team out and hang out with you make it feel more full. Plus, certain Pokémon let you ride them, making the bike pretty irrelevant, which is why they removed it entirely. Who would want a bike when you could ride around on your Arcanine or fly around on a Zapdos? Fools. That’s who.
Also, riding a Snorlax is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen in a game.
Teehee.
The final unanimously positive change is to the story. Things generally flow much better and you really feel like your actions in one city have repercussions in others, which in turn makes it feel like way more of a singular world rather than 8 loosely connected levels. It’s little things in presentation, like dramatic introductions of characters and locations with some basic cinematography that make the world feel bigger. There’s always an impact when you go to a location for the first time or meet a new character. The cinematic language adds weight to your progress through the game, making it feel way more like a story than the original games ever did. You meet a member of the Elite Four shortly after getting your second badge and damn that is such a cool idea that makes you feel like what you’re doing matters and that’s really cool, because you never got that feeling in the original games. While Team Rocket never feels like a genuine threat, subbing in Jesse and James from the anime at least make them a bit more personalized and more persistent than the Team Rocket Grunts you only fought in the original. Also, the big villain reveal at the start of the game’s third act is made way more meaningful thanks to changes in the story as well.
Not all story tweaks are for the better however, and while I hate being negative, this next section is diving right into what I don’t like about the game, because there are a few annoying caveats that come with this remake.
The biggest disappointment has to be the rival. The dude is just so… nice. In a complete departure from the original, your rival is no longer a douchebag, which was the main motivation in the original games. You didn’t want to beat the game as much as you wanted to beat him. But in the Let’s Go series of games, he’s so supportive and generous - he’s still challenging you to battles, but after every bout he gives you some very helpful and expensive items that you’ll need in some of the harder battles. It feels like he’s your friend, and while that’s great, especially for a younger audience who may be playing Pokémon for the first time, it loses a lot of the tension that was in the original game. You almost feel bad for beating hm sometimes because he’s so kind after the fact.
This guy doesn’t suck as much as you want him to.
One rather significant change is to experience system. In the old games, you’d battle wild Pokemon for experience and level up your team that way, but in Let’s Go, the catching mechanic has been lifted from the wildly successful mobile game Pokémon Go, where timing and accuracy of throwing Pokéballs determines how much experience you get and battling has been removed entirely. This makes the longer stretches of the game without a Pokécenter way less stressful and while it doesn’t mitigate grinding, it changes it completely. Before, you could level up your Pokémon for free; you’d battle wild Pokémon and then head back to a Center to heal up your team and get back out there. But now, you can really only level up if you can afford to, since you need money to buy Pokéballs. Thankfully, the trainer battles are still in the game so there’s a good amount of money to be made just progressing through the world, but someone who’s not familiar with what you need and spends all their money on Potions or Paralyze Heals or what have you can spend all their money and not have the resources to level up accordingly, making the game way more difficult than it should be. That said, I think the devs erred on the side of caution and made payouts for winning battles a little higher in this version to compensate, but still, it’s a problem people could run into.
One thing that’s made an appearance in recent games but was curiously absent from Let’s Go, is the the hint system given during battles. If you’ve used a particular type of move against a specific Pokémon, you get a little hint telling you whether it’s effective, super effective, neutral, or not very effective. That’s especially helpful in the new games because personally I don’t know the new Pokémon very well, and sometimes one will look like it’s a fire type for example but actually be another, essentially letting you waste a turn. While it’s the same Pokémon set from the first game, small tweaks like separating Special Attack and Special Defense (nerfing a lot of Pokémon in the process), new type advantages were put into place that weren’t there in the first time around. It would’ve been nice to have a little heads up, just because I still couldn’t tell you what’s super effective against Fairy or Dragon type Pokémon, but this is by no means a knock against the game.
All in all, for every criticism of the game there are at least five things the game did so well. There’s an actual endgame now that makes beating the Elite Four just the starting point of some challenging content, including Master Trainers, people in the world who specialize in one Pokémon species and only by beating them in a mirror match. It’s cool that there’s more content after you beat the game, but man this sucks. Who wants to have a fight between level 75 Caterpies? Who thought that was fun? You can do it for every Pokémon and it’s extremely tedious to beat them all. If you beat them all you get the title of Grand Master trainer which is great, but it doesn’t amount to much. Beating six however unlocks a fight against Ash, I mean Red, the player’s character from the original games. Which is an admittedly neat Easter egg. His Pokémon are the strongest in the game, hovering around level 80.
In fact, after you beat the Elite Four, you can go back and battle a few select trainers again, notably the gym trainers, Red, Blue, and Green - the original characters from the manga. It’s a pretty nice carrot at the end of a very generous stick that extended the game and made is a vast improvement over the original game. But it’s also necessary, since as previously mentioned, you need to beat trainers to have enough money to get Pokéballs to level up and you see where I’m going with this.
If you have a Switch, I cannot recommend this game enough, whether you’ve never played a Pokémon game, played every single one of them, or if the originals are your favorite games of all time. There’s enough new here to make revisiting Kanto worthwhile, and it’s the definitive way to play Pokémon Yellow. And I know that because I was so excited for this game to come out that I bought Pokémon Yellow from the 3DS eShop and replayed it just to make sure. It was nice going back, yes, but going forward anytime I get a hankering for Kanto, I’m booting up Let’s Go, not the original. The quality of life improvements with item and party management make Let’s Go the definitive version for me.
We’ve come a long way.
2019 will see a new Pokémon game come to the Switch, possibly a more traditional one with battling wild Pokémon, but we’ll see. Personally, I would love to see every game in the series remade in the Let’s Go style because as an older fan with a life, it was so incredibly nice seeing fully realized 3D Pokémon models and replaying the same adventure I know so well and playing it on my TV. That was everything I wanted 20 years ago and I’m so happy to have it now. Play this game, it’s a time machine, and Pokémon finally looks the way you’ve always wanted it to.