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Reuniclus is one of my favourite Pokemon, but I dislike all three starters. On that note, I still think Pokemon Black and White’s Pokedex is one of the series’ weakest in terms of new introductions. I didn’t want to feel bad for siccing my Snivy on an unassuming Munna, or having my Chandelure take down the even-worse-than-Zubat Swoobat. Maybe that’s another reason I didn’t like them. The first games to truly address the possibility that capturing mysterious creatures and condemning them to listless lives in small metal spheres might be bad, actually, they were self-conscious in a way that presented outward value. As a result, they’re a particularly formative part of contemporary Pokemon’s identity. Although some people complain that recent games such as Let’s Go Eevee and Pikachu - and Sword and Shield, to an extent - cater too much to a younger demographic, Pokemon Black and White did the exact opposite. Pokemon Black and White were a bridge that Pokemon had to cross. The idea of having to use a pesky Patrat caused me to bounce off of Pokemon Black as if it was a trampoline designed to propel dissenters to the moon - it’s worth noting that I didn’t return from said moon until I actually played Pokemon Moon, having initially decided to skip Black and White 2.īut now I can see it, clear as day. I wanted to be able to rinse the game with an Empoleon, or Infernape, or Torterra. In hindsight I appreciate Black and White’s approach: the conscious decision that you would be forced into learning about type effectiveness right from the get-go that you would be locked into an absurd amount of narratively necessary battles in the first couple of hours that you would actually need to catch Pokemon and build a makeshift team early on, as opposed to just relying on an overpowered starter, before eventually swapping party members out for more powerful options as you progressed through the game.īut I had just replayed Pokemon Platinum in anticipation of Generation 5. In the case of the former, one of your options is also powerful against the second Gym - on top of that, even if you go with Charmander, who has since cemented itself as the “hard mode” pick, you have a variety of options to choose from in the wild that can annihilate early Trainers and Gyms.
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Two of your starter options have 4x type advantages over the first Gym in the first five, and your starter is needlessly overpowered in the last two. To put that into perspective: consider Generation 1 games like Red, Blue, Yellow, LeafGreen, FireRed, and Let’s Go Eevee and Pikachu. The first Gym is designed to exploit type advantages in such a way that you are immediately on the back foot. You didn’t have one rival, you had two - shortly thereafter, you realized you had three. Pokemon Black and White were, from the moment they started, relentlessly ambitious. Looking back now, ten years later and having since been won over after my younger brother convinced me to give them one more try, I can finally put my finger on why, and I can describe it with two words: growing pains. Black and White were the first mainline Pokemon games I didn’t finish within a week of launch. I have since grown to love Pokemon Black and White, mostly for all of the reasons mentioned above, but it took me a long time to finally admit to that, and even longer to actually finish the game.
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Related: Pokemon LeafGreen And FireRed Are 16 Years Old Today - Here’s Why They Still Matter Over and over again, I turned off my DS and played something else. Over and over again, I got to the first Gym and emerged victorious. They were diverse and sophisticated, focusing on the nefarious scheming of Team Plasma in a way that made previous villains seem almost juvenile, and the nuanced depiction of N as a pillar between right and wrong floating along his own personal trajectory ushered a new kind of maturity into the series. Black and White introduced a record-breaking number of new Pokemon and saw the first implementations of the now standard in-battle sprite animations. So it was weird that, despite my best efforts to stay invested, I simply couldn’t. After journeying through Kanto as a child, before traversing the vast landscapes of Johto, sailing the tumultuous seas of Hoenn, and enduring the harsh, glacial landscapes of Sinnoh, I, personally, was ecstatic about the prospect of finally jumping into the bustling metropolis of Unova.
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On this day ten years ago Pokemon Black and White launched for the Nintendo DS in Japan, introducing fans of the series to its highly-anticipated fifth generation.