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Apologies, but I'm in the midst of a incredibly long game right now and so I'm going to have to resort to blogging about yet another smartphone game (mea culpa, mea culpa). I figured now is as good a time as any to blog about Pokémon Go. There's no doubt that Pokémon Go is a cultural phenomenon and has revitalized interest in the 20+ year old franchise. I finally got a smartphone so I could see for myself what all the fuss was about, and overall I've enjoyed the simple mechanics. Compared to the actual games this doesn't feel too much like a watered down experience as the main mechanics are really about walking around to various PokéStops in order to try to catch rare Pokémon. Unlike the main games, you don't evolve Pokémon by levelling them up. Instead you have to catch multiples of the same Pokémon in order to trade them in for Pokémon-specific candies that will enable them to evolve. In practice this makes evolving Pokémon fairly slow since you have to catch the same Pokémon at least 25 times before you can evolve it, and some Pokémon are pretty rare to begin with. You can also collect candies by selecting a Pokémon as your "buddy" and walking around with it, but this is also a slow process.
With the recent update to add a lot of the Gen II Pokémon I'm definitely not going to be completing my Pokédex anytime soon. It's somewhat annoying that late starters like myself are going to have a more difficult time catching Gen I Pokémon, but I guess there wasn't much help for it. The other main aspect of the game, the gyms, seems pretty pointless to me (even Niantic has said that they need to be rehauled), but collecting and evolving Pokémon is still addictive fun and it seems the game is going to be staying in my daily rotation of games for quite some time to come. I don't see myself paying for any items any time soon, though, as I've been doing fine with the regular allotment of items. (Plus I can count myself amongst the many who are getting more exercise as a result of playing the game, haha.)
Go forth with these Pokémon Go links:
- Official website
- Page at pokemon.com
- Details on how to interpret the in-game 'mon appraisals on pokemongodb.net, which includes a lot of other useful info
- Egg rarity chart on Reddit
- Entry at Wikipedia
- Review at NintendoLife