Alright, so the good news is that the game is good. I can't deny that, it's a good game and actually it's honestly quite a nice evolution (no pun intended) of the pokemon formula.
The core of a Pokemon game is here still. You build a team and battle pokemon the same way you've done in ever game. You are still trying to complete the pokedex. You still battle trainers. All that normal Pokemon shit is still here. But what is different is the way it is all presented. In a way this open-world style Pokemon game is probably what people expected when they showed off the Wild Zone from Sword and Sheild.
Here you are in a zone based open world map, running around freely, looking for crafting materials and roaming pokemon. While a lot of people thought the game would be Monster Hunter-like that is really not the case. The wild pokemon can attack your character and knock you out of you don't dodge their attacks, you never actually fight them with your own hands. Instead if you throw one of your pokemon at them, you'll distract them into a standard pokemon battle.
Filling out the pokedex is the big difference here. Unlike other pokemon games where you just catch the thing and you're done. Arceus takes place in the distant past where people don't know shit about pokemon and in fact a lot of people are scared shitless of them. So just catching them isn't enough, you have to also see them do certain moves x-times, catch them in specific ways (like without being spotted), and catching several of the same kind. What is nice about this system is it builds upon other new mechanics for the pokemon. For example if you use a move like Quick Attack enough times, your pokemon will Master that move and that will allow them to add special buffs to the move like making it stronger, or making it faster. So when the pokedex wants Shinx to use Quick Attack 20 times, it also builds up on you mastering that move so it doesn't feel like a boring grind just to get your check mark.
This is a very cool take on the standard Pokemon game and I wish they had done this with the series earlier.
While the gameplay is great it does have problems. Frame rate issues, texture pop-in, and just some downright ugly graphics in places brings the game down. Still I suppose being a good game is enough, but for me I can't shake the feeling that Gamefreak could have done better. Maybe delaying this game another six months (considering we just got Diamond and Pearl remakes) to allow for polishing the overall look and feel would have been worth the delay.
The core of a Pokemon game is here still. You build a team and battle pokemon the same way you've done in ever game. You are still trying to complete the pokedex. You still battle trainers. All that normal Pokemon shit is still here. But what is different is the way it is all presented. In a way this open-world style Pokemon game is probably what people expected when they showed off the Wild Zone from Sword and Sheild.
Here you are in a zone based open world map, running around freely, looking for crafting materials and roaming pokemon. While a lot of people thought the game would be Monster Hunter-like that is really not the case. The wild pokemon can attack your character and knock you out of you don't dodge their attacks, you never actually fight them with your own hands. Instead if you throw one of your pokemon at them, you'll distract them into a standard pokemon battle.
Filling out the pokedex is the big difference here. Unlike other pokemon games where you just catch the thing and you're done. Arceus takes place in the distant past where people don't know shit about pokemon and in fact a lot of people are scared shitless of them. So just catching them isn't enough, you have to also see them do certain moves x-times, catch them in specific ways (like without being spotted), and catching several of the same kind. What is nice about this system is it builds upon other new mechanics for the pokemon. For example if you use a move like Quick Attack enough times, your pokemon will Master that move and that will allow them to add special buffs to the move like making it stronger, or making it faster. So when the pokedex wants Shinx to use Quick Attack 20 times, it also builds up on you mastering that move so it doesn't feel like a boring grind just to get your check mark.
This is a very cool take on the standard Pokemon game and I wish they had done this with the series earlier.
While the gameplay is great it does have problems. Frame rate issues, texture pop-in, and just some downright ugly graphics in places brings the game down. Still I suppose being a good game is enough, but for me I can't shake the feeling that Gamefreak could have done better. Maybe delaying this game another six months (considering we just got Diamond and Pearl remakes) to allow for polishing the overall look and feel would have been worth the delay.
