For those not in the know, Pokemon X is a handheld RPG video game belonging to a long series of games related to the core video-game canon associated with the Pokemon brand. Pokemon X along with its sister Pokemon Y are apart of the Sixth Generation of Pokemon games.
With the recent announcements of the Seventh Generation games, Pokemon Sun and Pokemon Moon, I decided it was finally time for me to play one of the Sixth Generation games. My good friend Daniel even let me borrow his Nintendo 3-DS so I wouldn't have to buy a whole new system, which was pretty much my reason for not playing it sooner. So just before Spring Break I went to Target and bought a copy of Pokemon X on sale $8 off, no doubt in response to the announcement of Gen-7.
So I spent a lot of Spring Break playing Pokemon X, and this past weekend I completed the story by defeating the Elite Four, the Champion, and (spoiler alert) a 3,000-year-old giant named AZ. So, without any better ideas of what to post in my blog, I'm going to tell you what I think about it.
But first a little bit about who I am as a Pokemon trainer. The story mode dominates my experience when playing Pokemon. I do not play Pokemon competitively. I like to watch videos of really amazing competition battles, but it's not my thing. I really like to develop relationships with my pokemon through the story. I know it sounds lame or weird, but that is the biggest joy I get from Pokemon. It's why it's the only video game I spend money on. I play through stories multiple times, and when that gets boring I do Nuzlockes. Nuzlocke is a way of making the difficulty of the games much more by following self-imposed rules, and it creates much deeper bonds between the player and their Pokemon.
That being said, at 27 years old I have been playing Pokemon since Pokemon Red Version. I got Pokemon Red Version for Christmas when I was 11, and I loved it right from the beginning. I was a huge fan of the anime, and to be able to have my own Pokemon experience when I choose how I battle and with whom was absolutely thrilling. I still remember the smell of the Pumpkin Spice Yankee Candle my mother had lit that Christmas morning.
Before Pokemon X, I had played through the stories of all the previous generations. (Gen-1: Red and Yellow; Gen-2: Silver; Gen-3: Ruby, Sapphire, Fire Red, and Emerald; Gen-4: Pearl and Platinum; Gen-5: Black (1) and White 2.) The Second Generation was by far my favorite, and the Third was my least favorite, for reasons well-known to us Gen-Oners out there. Since then, I have liked each new generation more and more. So, what do I think of Pokemon X?
I love it! The graphics and overall design are absolutely breathtaking. I love the whole concept of the value of beauty in the world and how it was expressed throughout the game. I love the new region, Kalos: it's huge, it features a variety of environments, and (being based on France) its full of public art and a whole lot of scenery that is just fun to look at. I've visited Paris and Versailles and the character of both those places was captured so perfectly while still remaining in the aesthetic boundaries of previous settlements and cities in the Pokemon World, especially Versailles (Parfum Palace and Route 6). The new fairy typing helped to mix things up and keep battling feeling fresh, while asserting itself as a logical expansion of the elemental types. The actual story itself is pretty good too as far a Pokemon stories go and the ending is by far the most beautiful ending to any Pokemon story. I nearly cried. It was perfect.
I did have a major criticism halfway through the game, but I turned it into an opportunity. In Pokemon X and Y, game designers did two things that really sped up the leveling-up process for Pokemon in the game, so much so that I was way ahead in level than my challengers in the story about halfway through the story (the fifth gym badge). They re-engineered the Exp. Share item to give all Pokemon in your party Exp. points in battle. Now a lot of people online fault this as the main reason why this happens, but I will remind you that this is how it was back in the First Generation. Before Exp. Share, there was EXP. ALL, and it functioned the exact same way. But, back then you didn't get it until after your second or third badge and you needed to have caught, i think, 20 Pokemon. You get it pretty early on in Pokemon X and Y. They biggest change in these games that I think was the main cause of my problem was that Pokemon now received Exp. points in battle if you catch the wild Pokemon you are battling. Combine that with the largest Regional Pokedex to date (450 pokemon available in Kalos), and such a huge region with so many challengers, and you end up 10 levels ahead of the Lumiose City Gym Leader. The Exp. Share, just meant I didn't have to keep swapping Pokemon.
So what's a Pokemon story fan like me supposed to do in that situation? Well, I took a radical step that I had never taken before on a Pokemon journey, and it paid off. By the fifth gym, my team had pretty much solidified at that point, which in and of itself is weird for me. I had no Legendaries yet, and I deposited my mega-evolving gift Lucario in the PC. So, not being OK with this, I decided to deposit all six of my best Pokemon that had pretty much been my team since the second gym, and train up a whole new team, which I affectionately called my B Team. That paid off so well on the enjoyment factor. By the time I reached the Elite Four I had 12 awesome Pokemon to choose from, all just under the average level of the Elite Four, so it made my final challenge so much more fun and significant than in previous games where I train up full one team.
All in all, Pokemon X definitely measures up to and even exceeds the standards set by the main-series games of the five previous generations. This summer I plan to play through Pokemon Omega Ruby or Pokemon Alpha Sapphire, the other two games in this generation that are remakes of the Gen-3 games Pokemon Ruby and Pokemon Sapphire. If they are as good as I am reading, the Sixth Generation of Pokemon may surpass even my love of the Second Generation.
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