I haven't posted here in years, which is odd considering there are times when I play more Pokémon than smash.
I guess I'll amuse you by posting my thoughts on the newest entries. I played through the Japanese version of White and picked the Fire starter. This is because I want to buy the English Black and start with Grass for my "real" run.
Aesthetically the overworld looks about the same, but the new battle animations are a definite step up. The music deserves a mention, because it is quite good and even changes during critical moments in battle, such as your HP getting in the red zone or a Gym Leader sending in his last Pokémon.
As for the new batch of Pokémon themselves, they took a lot of getting used to for me and I can't say I really like more than a few. You're restricted to them until you beat the Elite Four, which kind of sucks because some types barely get any coverage. Believe it or not, there's only a few Water Pokémon you can feasibly take on your journey, despite it being the most dominant type. This is probably why you can get a Grass, Water or Fire monkey to supplement your starter before even taking on the first gym. I always go through the games with four Pokémon from as early as possible and ended up using:
Fire/Fighting, Normal, Grass, Water/Ground
All in all they got the job done (obviously), but I will go with a different team entirely when I do my Black run. Grass starter and Ground/Dark crocodile at the very least.
A noteworthy aspect of gameplay is experience scaling, which means the experience you receive is partially based on the discrepancy between your level and the opponent's. This makes it so you don't easily outgrow your opponents, which makes for decent difficulty (even moreso because I never knew what was coming up next). The opposing trainers were usually around my level and the Elite Four were the exact same level or even slightly higher. Speaking of the E4, the first time you face them they're not accompanied by a Champion and you can fight them in any order. They use Ghost, Dark, Psychic and Fighting and all have three L48 and one L50 Pokémon. After the E4 the first trainer you meet goes beyond level 60 by the way, which is effectively a 10 level jump with no area inbetween, although there are a few "boss battles" I'm not going to spoil just after the E4 and before the credits.
Other random facts:
-I was nearing 20 hours of play time after the credits. This is a good length, especially considering there's more to uncover as all I did was the main story run, in which you don't even visit the entire world.
-You can use TMs as often as you want without them disappearing!
-I caught a shiny Giaru. >_>
-Still no Dark gym. Besides the first gym effectively counterpicking your starter there weren't a whole lot of surprises. Types after the first gym are Normal, Bug, Electric, Ground, Flying, Ice and Dragon.
I'll gladly answer questions, although information is all over the internet and I wonder how many people are actually playing the games now. I can't understand Japanese at all, but the game is really straightforward for the most part and I had no trouble making it through, other than the aforementioned not knowing what was going to be switched in being annoying sometimes. Real men don't switch anyway, right? I am looking forward to actually understanding the story in the English release, as it looked interesting.
Now it's time to dive into the competitive metagame, although I always feel experience beats theorycraft. I hope there will be a stable online environment soon!
I guess I'll amuse you by posting my thoughts on the newest entries. I played through the Japanese version of White and picked the Fire starter. This is because I want to buy the English Black and start with Grass for my "real" run.
Aesthetically the overworld looks about the same, but the new battle animations are a definite step up. The music deserves a mention, because it is quite good and even changes during critical moments in battle, such as your HP getting in the red zone or a Gym Leader sending in his last Pokémon.
As for the new batch of Pokémon themselves, they took a lot of getting used to for me and I can't say I really like more than a few. You're restricted to them until you beat the Elite Four, which kind of sucks because some types barely get any coverage. Believe it or not, there's only a few Water Pokémon you can feasibly take on your journey, despite it being the most dominant type. This is probably why you can get a Grass, Water or Fire monkey to supplement your starter before even taking on the first gym. I always go through the games with four Pokémon from as early as possible and ended up using:
Fire/Fighting, Normal, Grass, Water/Ground
All in all they got the job done (obviously), but I will go with a different team entirely when I do my Black run. Grass starter and Ground/Dark crocodile at the very least.
A noteworthy aspect of gameplay is experience scaling, which means the experience you receive is partially based on the discrepancy between your level and the opponent's. This makes it so you don't easily outgrow your opponents, which makes for decent difficulty (even moreso because I never knew what was coming up next). The opposing trainers were usually around my level and the Elite Four were the exact same level or even slightly higher. Speaking of the E4, the first time you face them they're not accompanied by a Champion and you can fight them in any order. They use Ghost, Dark, Psychic and Fighting and all have three L48 and one L50 Pokémon. After the E4 the first trainer you meet goes beyond level 60 by the way, which is effectively a 10 level jump with no area inbetween, although there are a few "boss battles" I'm not going to spoil just after the E4 and before the credits.
Other random facts:
-I was nearing 20 hours of play time after the credits. This is a good length, especially considering there's more to uncover as all I did was the main story run, in which you don't even visit the entire world.
-You can use TMs as often as you want without them disappearing!
-I caught a shiny Giaru. >_>
-Still no Dark gym. Besides the first gym effectively counterpicking your starter there weren't a whole lot of surprises. Types after the first gym are Normal, Bug, Electric, Ground, Flying, Ice and Dragon.
I'll gladly answer questions, although information is all over the internet and I wonder how many people are actually playing the games now. I can't understand Japanese at all, but the game is really straightforward for the most part and I had no trouble making it through, other than the aforementioned not knowing what was going to be switched in being annoying sometimes. Real men don't switch anyway, right? I am looking forward to actually understanding the story in the English release, as it looked interesting.
Now it's time to dive into the competitive metagame, although I always feel experience beats theorycraft. I hope there will be a stable online environment soon!
