The Pokémon Puzzle: Is Pokémon overrated?

Ah Pokémon, the game series that had the world captivated in the 90's and early 2000's, and still remains an iconic part of our pop culture today.  Almost everyone knows who Pikachu is, and people still buy tons and tons of Pokémon games with every new iteration of the series.

The ever popular franchise made its debut on the Gameboy in 1996 in Japan.  In the beginning there were only 151 Pokémon, and as of Pokémon X an Y, there are 718 (I think) Pokémon.  Quite an overwhelming amount if you are new to the series.

But this presents the question: does Pokémon deserve all of this praise and nostalgia?  Is it really all that amazing?

Click the link to find out!

On a side note: we will only be discussing the Pokémon games in this article.  TV shows and trading cards are not going to be included in this discussion.


To start, let us look at the aspect of Pokémon with the most glaringly obvious shortcomings:  Its gameplay.

Ever since its inception, the series has always involved capturing wild Pokémon, training them, and using them in battles against gym leaders to become the strongest Pokémon trainer of them all.  Not a terrible concept in theory, but where Pokémon fails is in execution.

Enter: tedious and lazily designed Pokémon gameplay.  Pokémon is definitely one of the most frustrating game series ever created.  Every game is a grind fest from the beginning to the end.  There is no skill to levelling up; just tap a few buttons, and your Pokémon will defeat the opposing Pokémon, or be defeated.  Essentially the person who puts in the most time will always be the more powerful trainer, as there is no element of skill.

Technically you will have to pit the proper Pokémon against every set of enemies to exploit their weaknesses, but that is just about the only amount of skill or strategy involved in any of the Pokémon games.

Exploration is just as tedious as battles, mostly because it involves battling every few seconds.  If you walk so much as a minute without running into some loser who wants to battle you or without running into some random wild Pokémon pouncing on you, you should consider yourself lucky.  At times, these battles can be as frequent as every 5 seconds.  It is a very artificial and lazy way of making the world seem expansive.  Instead of this, Nintendo should have actually made the worlds more expansive, instead of making moving through them so tedious that it only seems like the map is large.

If I had a penny...

Also, in certain areas, such as caves or in tall grass, there will be enemies who randomly attack you without any warning.  You cannot see them, and there is literally no way to avoid them because they are just that; random battles.  There are items to stop these battles from occurring, but I don't think that addresses the basic issues with game design present here.

Enemies should always be visible on the map, and the player should be able to attempt avoiding them if he or she so wishes.  I feel like this is the designer's way of saying they were too lazy to figure out an interesting way for Pokémon battles to commence.  We are in the 2010s, and Pokémon is still stuck in the 90's.  A simple way to address this would be to put simple 3D Pokémon, or even little sprites which try to chase you on the map.  At least it wouldn't seem as cheap, and you could tell if it was a new pokemon you wanted to capture by looking at it, instead of forcing the player into a million stupid pointless battles.

Despite the new bells and whistles created in recent installments, Pokémon hasn't truly tried anything new since its inception, and constantly remains a stagnant game series with little to no innovation whatsoever.

Its storylines leave much to be desired as well.

On top of this garbage, Nintendo has recently been finding it fit to use Pokémon as a face for every single one of their crappy free-to-play games on the 3DS.  The franchise has become nothing but a boring pile of shovelware, and yet people keep gobbling it up.

Conclusion:

So yes, Pokémon is overrated, and it has been for quite some years now.

The only light I can see for this series is the recent Pokken Tournament release, which is apparently quite a good fighting game, and the impending release of Pokémon GO, which I am hoping will revitalize the stagnant series.

Anyways, I hope you enjoyed my article flaming Pokémon.  If you for some reason LOVE Pokémon, tell me why I'm wrong in the comments below!