WrenchNinja
Member
It's been a couple of years since these two titles have come out, and there's been some backlash toward them. I don't exactly love these titles, I've actually got a lot of problems with them, but I wanted to go back to them one more time before Sun and Moon. In any case, I've come to change my opinion on the game quite a bit
The beauty of Bio-diversity
X and Y do something no other Pokemon game has done before, given you such a huge amount of Pokemon to choose from right from the get go. Before the first gym battle agaisnt Viola in Santalune City, here are all of the Pokemon available to you
Chespin/Fennekin/Froakie
Caterpie/Metapod
Weedle/Kakuna
Pidgey
Zigzagoon
Fletchling
Bunnelby
Scatterbug
Pikachu
Pansage
Pansear
Panpour
Azurill
Dunsparce
Burmy
Bidoof
Psyduck
Farfetch'd
Riolu
Litleo
That's over 20 different Pokemon! That is totally insane! You've got coverage with Grass, Water, Fire, Normal, Bug, Poison, Flying, Electric, and even Fighting. And it's a lot like this on every route and area you go to. You'll always get around 8 or 9 different Pokemon being available from one route to another. Kalos route 7 for example has Smeargle, Volbeat, Illumise, Roselia, Croagunk, Ducklett, Swirlix/Spritzee, and Flabebe variants. Kalos route 15 has Mightyena, Skorupi, Watchog, Liepard, Foongus, Pawniard, Klefki, Lombre, and Floatzel. This kind of variety is unheard of with Pokemon, most routes and areas in older titles will at most have maybe 3 or 4 different Pokemon with some rare exceptions. And this extends to the Pokedex, the number of Pokemon is so large they had to split the Pokedex into three just to make it more managable. There are so many Pokemon that they even started to give you experience just for catching them.
Now, you might ask why any of that's the big deal, the game is easy, so what if there are a lot of Pokemon? Well that gets to my next point.
What the exp. share is actually for
The exp.share, if you don't know, is a key item in X and Y that shares experience with your entire party even if only one Pokemon was in the battle. Now a lot of players choose their teams pretty early in the game and switch out accordingly. The problem with this is, the game wasn't balanced around that idea, so if your whole team, which you probably had most from the very beginning, was with you by the end game and you've been fighting every trainer there is, your Pokemon will be massively overleveled to make everything incredibly easy.
Now here's where I came to the realisation that I was playing the game wrong, or at least I wasn't playing the game the way they intended. The exp. shares main goal is to help weaker Pokemon catch up, well this is supposed to be in conjunction with you switching out your team constantly with all the new Pokemon you run into every route. When you play the game like that, it makes things a lot more, well I wouldn't say challenging since a lot of trainers are still pretty weak and only have one or two Pokemon most of time, but they're a lot less easy to get around. I mean why else would they give you this item and give you so much variety? Now you could say that sounds more like a self imposed challenge, and y'know what, you're right, it is. But it makes this game a lot more fun compared to steamrolling everything with your fully evolved starter by the time you run into Grant in Cyllage City.
The Battle Chateau
So I never paid any mind to the chateau in my first playthrough, but I just realised how it's such a great place to get money and exp. Not to mention the fact that as you rise through the ranks, you're able to rebattle gym leaders which is pretty cool. I don't know, not much else to say about it, think it's just neato.
The Friend Safari
Now, this isn't that great of a feature now-a-days, but at launch when everyone was playing Pokemon, this thing was the bomb. A place post game where the game would use your friends in your friends list to populate small areas where you could catch Pokemon, some of them even starter Pokemon, with their hidden abilities. This place was pretty rocking and I gained a lot of friends at the time. Where else can you catch wild Ivysaur? That's the dream, man.
Who needs the Cable Club and Wireless club?
So this should be obvious to anyone but these games have made trading and battling a lot less tedious since you can now trade and battle whenever and whereever you are in the game. No more having to go the Pokemon Centre to do this and that, no more Global Trade Station being a physical location you have to go to. Everything is with you in the P.S.S. (Player Search System). Along with that you have O-powers which makes things like gaining exp, money, and hatching eggs faster.
Horde Battles
Okay, I've always hated ev training. I still do, but Horde battle make it a lot easier, especially with EV enhancing items. Instead of having to fight individual pokemon one at a time and having to keep track of that, you can fight them 5 at a time and cutting down the time it takes to make competitive ready Pokemon.
"Genwun"
So I see this used as criticism a lot. I don't share this hatred for gen 1 and its fans like some people, but even I had some raised eyebrows at some of the references to Red and Blue. You've got Santalune Forest having the same layout as Virdian Forest, you getting one of the Kanto starters once you arrive in Lumiose City, all three having mega evolutions and Charizard having two to itself, the Snorlax you have to wake up with a Pokeflute just outside Camphrier Town, the free Lapras you get outside of Shalour City, the legendary birds being the trio in the game and not even really being a trio since you can only catch one of them based off your starter, and Mewtwo being available end game in a place called "Unknown Dungeon" along with having two Mega Stones. Now when you get down to it, most of this is just fanservice, and it doesn't have a huge part in the game. They're small references, and heck the references stop by the time you get your third gym badge until post Elite 4, so I don't really feel like this is valid criticism of the game. This is supposed to be celebratory of the franchise, so using it as a con seems counterproductive when so much of the game is original.
I'd probably get into the story of the games too, but it's really underdeveloped. I will say after replaying the game, I noticed what Team Flare was doing whereas before, I wasn't paying attention. That doesn't really change the fact that they suck, but at least their end game stuff is built up. I will say, some of the region's backstory by itself is pretty interesting. The Pokemon War, the history of the utimate weapon and the Kalos King, the origins of mega evolution, and some of the towns are alright for what they are.
Anyway, I still they're very flawed games but they did do somethings right and I hope Sun and Moon can build off the good that came from them.
The beauty of Bio-diversity
X and Y do something no other Pokemon game has done before, given you such a huge amount of Pokemon to choose from right from the get go. Before the first gym battle agaisnt Viola in Santalune City, here are all of the Pokemon available to you
Chespin/Fennekin/Froakie
Caterpie/Metapod
Weedle/Kakuna
Pidgey
Zigzagoon
Fletchling
Bunnelby
Scatterbug
Pikachu
Pansage
Pansear
Panpour
Azurill
Dunsparce
Burmy
Bidoof
Psyduck
Farfetch'd
Riolu
Litleo
That's over 20 different Pokemon! That is totally insane! You've got coverage with Grass, Water, Fire, Normal, Bug, Poison, Flying, Electric, and even Fighting. And it's a lot like this on every route and area you go to. You'll always get around 8 or 9 different Pokemon being available from one route to another. Kalos route 7 for example has Smeargle, Volbeat, Illumise, Roselia, Croagunk, Ducklett, Swirlix/Spritzee, and Flabebe variants. Kalos route 15 has Mightyena, Skorupi, Watchog, Liepard, Foongus, Pawniard, Klefki, Lombre, and Floatzel. This kind of variety is unheard of with Pokemon, most routes and areas in older titles will at most have maybe 3 or 4 different Pokemon with some rare exceptions. And this extends to the Pokedex, the number of Pokemon is so large they had to split the Pokedex into three just to make it more managable. There are so many Pokemon that they even started to give you experience just for catching them.
Now, you might ask why any of that's the big deal, the game is easy, so what if there are a lot of Pokemon? Well that gets to my next point.
What the exp. share is actually for
The exp.share, if you don't know, is a key item in X and Y that shares experience with your entire party even if only one Pokemon was in the battle. Now a lot of players choose their teams pretty early in the game and switch out accordingly. The problem with this is, the game wasn't balanced around that idea, so if your whole team, which you probably had most from the very beginning, was with you by the end game and you've been fighting every trainer there is, your Pokemon will be massively overleveled to make everything incredibly easy.
Now here's where I came to the realisation that I was playing the game wrong, or at least I wasn't playing the game the way they intended. The exp. shares main goal is to help weaker Pokemon catch up, well this is supposed to be in conjunction with you switching out your team constantly with all the new Pokemon you run into every route. When you play the game like that, it makes things a lot more, well I wouldn't say challenging since a lot of trainers are still pretty weak and only have one or two Pokemon most of time, but they're a lot less easy to get around. I mean why else would they give you this item and give you so much variety? Now you could say that sounds more like a self imposed challenge, and y'know what, you're right, it is. But it makes this game a lot more fun compared to steamrolling everything with your fully evolved starter by the time you run into Grant in Cyllage City.
The Battle Chateau
So I never paid any mind to the chateau in my first playthrough, but I just realised how it's such a great place to get money and exp. Not to mention the fact that as you rise through the ranks, you're able to rebattle gym leaders which is pretty cool. I don't know, not much else to say about it, think it's just neato.
The Friend Safari
Now, this isn't that great of a feature now-a-days, but at launch when everyone was playing Pokemon, this thing was the bomb. A place post game where the game would use your friends in your friends list to populate small areas where you could catch Pokemon, some of them even starter Pokemon, with their hidden abilities. This place was pretty rocking and I gained a lot of friends at the time. Where else can you catch wild Ivysaur? That's the dream, man.
Who needs the Cable Club and Wireless club?
So this should be obvious to anyone but these games have made trading and battling a lot less tedious since you can now trade and battle whenever and whereever you are in the game. No more having to go the Pokemon Centre to do this and that, no more Global Trade Station being a physical location you have to go to. Everything is with you in the P.S.S. (Player Search System). Along with that you have O-powers which makes things like gaining exp, money, and hatching eggs faster.
Horde Battles
Okay, I've always hated ev training. I still do, but Horde battle make it a lot easier, especially with EV enhancing items. Instead of having to fight individual pokemon one at a time and having to keep track of that, you can fight them 5 at a time and cutting down the time it takes to make competitive ready Pokemon.
IVs still suck though.
"Genwun"
So I see this used as criticism a lot. I don't share this hatred for gen 1 and its fans like some people, but even I had some raised eyebrows at some of the references to Red and Blue. You've got Santalune Forest having the same layout as Virdian Forest, you getting one of the Kanto starters once you arrive in Lumiose City, all three having mega evolutions and Charizard having two to itself, the Snorlax you have to wake up with a Pokeflute just outside Camphrier Town, the free Lapras you get outside of Shalour City, the legendary birds being the trio in the game and not even really being a trio since you can only catch one of them based off your starter, and Mewtwo being available end game in a place called "Unknown Dungeon" along with having two Mega Stones. Now when you get down to it, most of this is just fanservice, and it doesn't have a huge part in the game. They're small references, and heck the references stop by the time you get your third gym badge until post Elite 4, so I don't really feel like this is valid criticism of the game. This is supposed to be celebratory of the franchise, so using it as a con seems counterproductive when so much of the game is original.
I'd probably get into the story of the games too, but it's really underdeveloped. I will say after replaying the game, I noticed what Team Flare was doing whereas before, I wasn't paying attention. That doesn't really change the fact that they suck, but at least their end game stuff is built up. I will say, some of the region's backstory by itself is pretty interesting. The Pokemon War, the history of the utimate weapon and the Kalos King, the origins of mega evolution, and some of the towns are alright for what they are.
Anyway, I still they're very flawed games but they did do somethings right and I hope Sun and Moon can build off the good that came from them.
)
