I was forewarned, so I named mine NUGGET.

 

In a rare bout of self control, I have not bought the game. I dunno, it's just not worth $60 to me to play through Kanto again even with the QoL changes. Anyone that was on the fence have any thoughts?

 

I'm giving it a pass as well. It does look better than the initial impressions, but I generally skip a few games to get batches of QoL improvements, so waiting for Gen8 next year seems like a good idea.

 

...I may have made a mistake in buying it, honestly. I've played through Kanto so many times in one way or another that I'm quite possibly a bit sick of it. The biggest draw to pokemon to me is the exploration - of new lands and new pokemon. In this game, I'm struggling to work up the will to talk to the NPCs because I already have a general idea of what they'll say about the place. Exploring has been grating because, despite the shiny new graphics, I already know exactly what I'm going to come across. I can't rely on nostalgia when I remember everything so well.

 

I could happily never get new pokemon (as in the creatures) again. I don't see pokemon as 'content' in a new game, which is why i haven't bought one in so long.

 

Spoiler: The Final Verdict

Satoshi. We've known each other many years, but this is the first time you ever came to me with a remake of my favorite game (FireRed and LeafGreen being more visual and gameplay updates than remakes). I can't remember the last time that you invited me to your house for a cup of Moomoo Milk, even though your game is central to my whole childhood. But let's be frank here. You never wanted my friendship. And, uh, you were off cementing the franchise.

I understand. You found paradise in Nintendo and Game Freak, you had a good trade, you made a good living. The fans protected you and there were forums full of apologists. You didn't need a fan like me. But, now you come to me, and you say: "Lamora, here is a remake of the game you love." But you don't leave campy, DBZ-esque Mega Evolutions out (unlike Eggs, new-gen evolutions and other much preferable updates which you did exclude). You don't offer backwards compatability. You don't even bring back Junichi Masuda to make the soundtrack. Instead, you come into my house on the day my game is to be remade, and you ask me to accept this chirpy, prepubescent child as a rival to truly challenge me.

This is not a remake. This is not my game.

What have I ever done to make you treat me so disrespectfully? If you'd remade this game loyal to the original, then I would have bought a Switch and would be playing the game this very day. And if by chance an honest man like yourself should encounter critics, then they would become my enemies. And then they would fear you.

The game isn't bad. Someday, and that day may never come, I'll call upon you to do a real remake of Pokemon Yellow. But until that day - and it is not today - accept this 4 out of 5 as a gift in the memory and name of Gary 'the Goat' Oak.

In the mean time, give this to, uh, Game Shark, to be modded the way it should. I want reliable people, people who aren't going to be carried away and put some sort of Pokemon ReBurst shit in here. After all, we're trainers of taste here.

tl;dr. JK. The game looks pretty good.

 

Bought the bundle to maximize cuteness.

Was out of town for thanksgiving when it was delivered, and then had to wait several days more to download the game as I needed to have new internet service installed because fuck Spectrum.
Finally got to put some hours into it this past week.

I mean hours.

After figuring out the timing for excellent throws and the slight downward adjustment, I proceeded to try and abuse the catch-combo mechanic and get me a shiny Pikachu.

It took 7 hours and ~180 rejects, and a 33-streak was ruined around hour 3, when one particularly skittish rat ran after escaping 5 excellent throws. Fuck that one in particular.

I also stumbled upon a shiny Weedle around that point, but it wasn't a Pikachu and I wasn't ruining my streak for that shit so smell ya later, little worm.
After that, I started to run after one failed catch, so they couldn't run and break my streak, the little bastards.

I decided I would leave my catch combo at 150 and get the shiny at 151, so naturally it only took 10 more before I could move on to Cerulean City.

Worth it? Debatable.

Spoiler: The Smug, Slightly Darker Yellow Rat Herself

I really enjoy the game. It hits all the nostalgia buttons for me, even though I recently replayed the OG Red version on my 3DS. It's different enough, and somewhat self-aware (ten thousand light-years!) in poking fun at itself. I was enraptured by the opening cinematic and the light-hearted atmosphere that made me go :3 for 15 minutes on end. Shiny grinding aside, I've had a lot of fun relaxing and exploring familiar territory in new texture and lighting.

Fire Red, and the romhacks it spawned, was fantastic as a Gen I remake and in its own right. Let's Go is great because it strips away a lot of the dross of the JRPG genre, like random combat encounters in the overworld, and distills the unique aspects of Pokemon.

It's also refreshingly pure, with no moral ambiguity (Protagonist & friends good, Rocket bad), and unlike in Yellow, Pikachu is friendly from the start instead of mimicking the origins with Ash in the anime. Even the rival is wholesome and nice, whom I named Douché to my great dismay, and Gary "Smell You Later" Motherfucking Oak is at worst, a bit smug and condescending.

Admittedly I've become more of a casual gamer as of late, so I enjoy the lack of difficulty and don't mind the game holding my hand through its progression. Pokemon Y and its elite 4 was a significant challenge in part because I didn't recognize half the shit that was coming at me and thus didn't know type advantages, and Gen 3 had the fucking shitwaffle Mach Bike puzzles. In comparison, the simplicity of Let's Go has yet to present me with anything tedious or unfun that I didn't opt into.


Tl;dr: Pokemon Go did its job and made me buy throw my money at Nintendo. WP Niantic.

 

Like a true ethicist, I bought the game preowned from gamestop so I could return it for a full refund in 7 days. I played, it's lovely looking, good QoL changes but I got bored after Surge. Pikachu was OP, I like the pokemon following you and the pokemon in overworld is a neat touch. Its lovely, but ultimately I'm glad I didn't purchase the game because I'm tired of Kanto. Looking forward to the new mainline game.

 

So, I know I'm behind the times a bit, but I just got this a few days ago.

I love the combo stuff. I have a shiny bulbasaur with nearly perfect IV's and more than 200 in every stat at lvl 7. That's bananas. But at the same time, it was a lot of work to get that, so I don't feel like I'm cheesing the game.

 

Saw this, but haven't tried the codes (I can't find my console, so never ordered the game). QR codes for shinies. Haven't verified they work though.

 

So I finally picked this up.

I dislike:

Not being able to battle wild pokemon
No more natures
No more held items
No breeding/eggs
Just the dumb downness

I like:

The catch (and combo) system
The size system
It's pretty
Pikachu constantly on your shoulder with a pokemon following makes a good aesthetic
This may contrast with being mad at dumbing down, but the pokemon judge feature is hella convenient

All in all, the likes outweigh the dislikes, but I'm sad that Sword/Shield didn't incorporate some stuff from this. I absolutely fucking love catching giant pokemon or super tiny pokemon. I love the catching minigame (and I feel like literally all dislike about it would be removed by having you battle the pokemon first, because duh that should have been the mechanic anyway). Having your follower pokemon affect your movement is great even if it was supremely limited. Flying on a charizard between routes was great, but it shouldn't have been limited to charizard, aerodacytl and dragonite's species.

All in all, if anything of this is retained, I hope it is the size mechanic. There's no gameplay difference, but I still adore it. There's something completely charming about hunting for size outliers during the game. 8 foot tall charizards (vs 5 ft), 4 foot tall blastoises (vs 5 feet), 7 foot tall golbats. The random fucking 10 foot tall arcanine I found between Lavender and Saffron. It's literally limitless and is my favorite part of the game. Hunting size outliers, big and small, is ludicrously entertaining for me. I only wish that the overworld and battles reflected the sizes. The switch engine should be more than capable of it. I desperately want this mechanic to return. Imagine it. Hunting out and finding a ludicrously large larvitar and training it to a titanic tyranitar. A monstrously massive mamoswine. A super shitty, slight-sized salamence. A gigantic gargantuan grookey. A teensy tiny tauros with an inferiority complex. And yes I enjoyed the alliteration.

8/10

*Note the sizes in the last paragraphs are just examples

 

I finally started playing Let's Go! Eevee, and I'm about forty minutes in.

Before I bought the game, I knew I'd ditch my starter because it can't evolve and is therefore trash, but my Eevee decided to roll female. :/ Until I catch my new designated starter (I'll know it when I see it), I'll keep it around.

The new catching mechanic will take some getting used to, and despite having played Pokemon for over twenty years, I feel a bit lost on what is the proper way to play. No in-game tutorial yet, and looking up an online guide feels so desperate. Obviously, I should be catching as much as I can, but I want to turn off this catching EXP-Share so I'm not over-leveled. I suppose I can look that up, but even with such a low play time, I feel the game is dumbed down and that might not be possible.

Also, moving my avatar with the stick rather than the D-pad is driving me nuts. I'll get used to it though.

 

Just so you know, the starters with their special moves are OP as fuck. Also you can't turn off the exp-share.

 

I hate EXP-Share.

And it's nothing about power. I just don't like using unevolved Pokemon. And my starter's noises are very annoying.

I'm currently in Pewter. Random other thoughts:

- I'm surprisingly not over-leveled yet, but only because trainer battles are useless. I beat up some trainer Pokemon: 3 EXP for the whole party ! I catch a Pokemon: a three-course dinner in power.
- My new starter will be this Nidoran F I found. She's cute. I named her Sara.
- Looks like there's slightly more variety in the Pokemon you can catch. I found a Beedrill in Viridian Forest, which was cool.
- Viridian Forest lags like whoa. I guess there are consequences for having fourteen Pokemon moving on screen.
- Some girl in Viridian Forest mentioned finding a Bulbasaur there. Me: Yes, please!!!
- When I was visiting the museum, my Nidoran ran up to the moon stone exhibit and stared at it. I thought that was a neat touch.
- My avatar is super tanned, it's distracting. Maybe I should have chosen the blonde and hoped for a hair salon later to change it to brown.

Current party: Nidoran F (new starter), Eevee (will dump), Pikachu (not really interested tbh), BIG Metapod (kinda cool), and Kakuna (nah). I've tried to catch every new Pokemon species I've seen, so that's a nice goal the game has given me.

 

A tip on catching rare shit in areas. Build up streaks of capturing the same PKMN. After 10 rare ones start showing up more. After ~150 shinies are quite common

Bulbasaur in Viridian Forest, Charmander in Rock Tunnel, Squirtle that route above Cerulean City by Bill's House.

Just in case you want your own menagerie of starters and don't want to use the gift ones

 

Okay @MonkeyEpoxy is both right and wrong. Rare spawns start showing up after a catch combo of 10 or more. Bulbasaur in Viridian, Charmander and Squirtle elsewhere. (Don't want to spoil it for you.)

Shines become more common the higher you chain up until 31. After a catch combo of 31 the chances of date spawns or shines will not increase. At 31 catches the odds are somewhere around 250/1.

Recently my kid asked me to get him a shiny Squirtle so I caught 31 Bellsprouts, let two shiny Psyduck go and eventually got the Squirtle.

The exp thing isn't that bad. About midway through the game you might find yourself underlevelled unless you've been OCD about catching.

The starters are also gift Pokémon as well as wild but they're special and have max IVs. I find this a bit gamey so I just went looking for the wild ones.

If you can manage to find a pole all plus it's worth getting it so you can get New simply because Mew is a funny little dude that reacts to things and will wander off when it gets curious about something.

Riding Pokémon is a lot of fun and gets better once you beat the champion.

 

Day Two:

I’m in Cerulean City. Current team is Nidorina (my starter), and various other fodder I don’t give a shit about. I haven’t found any Pokemon aside from my starter that I want to keep yet, which is slightly disappointing. I hope more Pokemon variety happens after Cerulean City because I really don’t want to just have one Pokemon until Lavender, but my knowledge of Vermillion and its surrounding routes gives me little hope.

I tried for a Bulbasaur in Viridian Forest, but my two tries ended with the Caterpie fleeing on catch six, so I gave up. I don’t want any gift starters, so I guess I’m going without Bulbasaur.

Random other thoughts:

- I’m not as over-leveled as I thought. Even with only my Nidorina fighting, I’m still only at Level 17. This is because trainer battles give trash EXP and are a waste of time. I don’t catch Pokemon unless they’re a new species or I’m going for a rare spawn, so that might explain that.
- I don’t understand the point of big/small Pokemon. Do they do anything? Do they look different in the over-world when following my avatar?
- All trainers tend to have one Pokemon. Considering trainer battles are useless, this is probably a good thing.
- When I met my rival at the beginning of the game, I named him Blue because this was a remake right? Well, the real Blue introduced himself in Pewter and now I’m sorta embarrassed.

 

Past 3 throws (or 2, or even 1 when they get high enough to make you paranoid), bounce out from combat. Running doesn't break up the streak.

No, size doesn't change anything on the overworld or anything stats wise. It's just a fun little thing that I adored. More than half my game was hunting size outliers and I desperately hope that mechanic comes back.

The only thing about them game mechanic wise would be moves that are affected by weight since that goes up and down with tiny and huge too. But I think Low-Kick and Grass Knot are the only moves in that game that has that mechanic. But shit, for all I know it may calculate damage based on the average weight that's in the pokedex.

 

Day Three:

How do I explain this... <_<

It started normal. I was in Vermilion City, catching new Pokemon out east and avoiding all trainers because what’s the point. I got bored, ventured back into town, when a young lady sitting on a bench implied that if I caught five Meowth and showed her, she would give me a Growlithe.

I knew before I started my fire-type would either be an Arcanine or a Rapidash, and considering Growlithe is Pikachu-exclusive, I was very interested.

I ventured north, trying to remember if Meowth appeared over here. One minute in, a Chansey leapt from the grass. Previous to this, I had a tragic and failed encounter with a Mr. Mime, and a rush of adrenaline filled me as I cornered that Chansey.

Great Balls = chosen.

Razz Berries = thrown.

Third ball caught that round pink pillow, and with a skip in my step, I wandered up to Cerulean to get my Meowth. Chansey is a very amusing following Pokemon. She takes up so much of the path as she bounces along, and while she wouldn’t be a great battling Pokemon (in-game it’s attack, attack, attack for me), she makes me happy. She’s also only two-feet tall. If this was real life, I could pick her up easily. She’d be a lap Chansey. My god.

I get north of Cerulean. I know Meowth are here. I catch two before a Squirtle clears it’s throat.

Am I going to get shit for accidentally getting two rare spawns in five minutes? I think to myself.

I catch him. He’s cute. I wasn’t intending to use a Squirtle, but maybe I should? Oh well, more Meowth.

One minute later. ONE MINUTE LATER.

Another Squirtle popped up. I catch it. It’s female. I feel trapped and locked in to this water-type. I just wanted some goddamn Meowth.

I quit the game because my lunch was over and I didn’t want to find a shiny.

Current team: Nidorina, Chansey, my Squirtle twins.

 

Also, because it took me an embarrassingly long time to realize - the berries only work on the next pokeball thrown, not the entire battle.

I was mildly irked when I realized that