Pokemon Black/White Review

Pokemon has had many incarnations during it's successful franchise. The main series has been acclaimed for it's array of RPG elements and addictive training/catching system while some of the spin-offs have been liked and disliked. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon was fantastic in my opinion as well as Pokemon Colosseum and Gale of Darkness, but others like Pokemon Dash and Pokemon Channel are obvious cash ins on the franchise. Back in 2011, Pokemon Black and White were released (to the joy of many) and throughout that time, I was itching for a chance to play it. Eventually, in 2012, I was granted with this chance. I played through the game and beat the Pokemon League and began writing a blog post about it. Here are my thoughts: 

To begin, the graphics are easily the best in the series. The new camera angles used and designs are fantastic, but where these improve the game a lot, they also prove to be the biggest downfall. When battling, the camera zooms in on Pokemon, and thanks to the DS' weak processing power, you can clearly see the pixels used to build the Pokemon. This would have been fine if it was on the 3DS, but instead, we are greeted with ugly Pokemon. And these Pokemon are indeed ugly for more reasons than just the camera. The design of some of these Pokemon are absolutely stupid and dumb. I laughed out loud when I saw some of them and how stupid they were. Most of them are really disappointing, but there are some which are very cool such as the starters, the legendaries and Gigalith. I love you Gigalith. The other downside to the presentation is the music. It's nowhere near as memorable from the ones in Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald (which by far had the best music) and pretty much fails to capture.

See what I mean about stupid Pokemon?

The story on the other hand is a lot more interesting thanks to Team Plasma. This time, they're not just some goons waiting in a warehouse for you to beat them up. Same with the gym leaders. Both are involved in the story and add more characterisation and flavour to the whole game. Not as much as Colosseum, but at last I feel as though what I'm doing actually matters in the grand scheme of things.

Gameplay still consists of capturing Pokemon, training them into stronger Pokemon, battling everyone and their mothers as well as beating every gym leader ever. Same old same old. But things have improved. Once again, there are more moves and pokemon, but at the same time, you can now re-use TMs. FINALLY!! Pokemon Centres and PokeMarts are now in the same building and there is a new centre for multiplayer battles as well. The new C-Gear allows for much greater functionality with the internet and wi-fi battles and trading. And you can now trade directly from your PC box and that makes things sooooooooooooo much better and overall more functional. So with all these new features, why doesn't Pokemon Black/ White stack up as well against the other games? Well, gameplay wise, it's actually better than the originals as somebody at Nintendo finally decided to stop forcing us to walk around in caves for hours and the pointless HM's have been removed, so what lets is down are the Pokemon. You really feel cheated when you see the promise of 150 new Pokemon and the majority are so stupid. If you've never played Pokemon before, you will love it and if you have, you will still have a great time, but overall, I personally feel as though it couldn't measure up to any of the others. 

I <3 u Gigalith!!!!!!!!