Give us what we want - a Pokemon review

Header image for Interrobang article CREDIT: GAME FREAK
Sure the game has its good and bad, but it's not enough to get a perfect five out of five from the reviewer.

I’m a Pokéfan, I’ll admit it. When Pokémon came to North America in the ‘90s I was hooked – the cards, the video games, the show, the merchandise. I fell for Pikachu and the gang of 149 friends – 150 when Mew was introduced.

I played almost every Pokémon game released, though mainly focused on the RPGs, as catching and training your own creatures was a huge thing for me. I played Blue, Yellow, Gold, FireRed, Platinum, Diamond, SoulSilver, Black, White 2 and Y.

I played every generation, almost. Timing, money, changing trends – generation three eluded me.

In 2014, Nintendo has seen the rise, fall and rise again of the Pokémon franchise. Last years introduction of X and Y for the 3DS was mixed. A lot of fans loved the graphics, but some weren’t thrilled with the departure from original two-dimension style. People loved that X and Y were set in a pseudo France, following Black and White’s departure from copying Japanese geography. (Black and White was a pseudo New York City, with some arguing ruins in-game lined up with the former Twin Towers location.) But what pretty much everyone complained about was the weak story, something that always plagued Pokémon games and lacked in X and Y.

Then Nintendo announced another remake, Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire. I was thrilled but also worried – X and Y was just an okay game, while the remakes had previously been some of the best games in the franchise.

Nintendo clearly wanted the release to be big, because the company did something completely new – it released a demo. One in which you could later transfer earned items and an exclusive mega evolution to the forthcoming game.

I played through, then did so 30 more times over a week, trying to learn any new scrap of information, talking to every character for a different line of text. I even found the secret mission giving a nugget – one the creators said was extremely rare to find. And while using the starters over and over again, I was hooked on the new story.

So I went on the release date and picked up Omega Ruby, while also getting Alpha Sapphire for my fiancée. I played a few hours that weekend but presentations, essays, tests and exams stood between me and my Pokémon.

Despite this, I still found time to rack up 40 hours even before beating the Elite Four, the group you have to beat at the end of the game, and before finishing the semester.

It was a great game, between the DexNav feature that lets you chain specific Pokémon encounters in the wild; the updated secret bases feature, which truly flourishes in a wireless internet environment; and the new fly HM mechanics, which let you fly to specific routes. I thought Nintendo succeeded much more in this game than X and Y. They even included the much beloved Pokémon Amie and Super Training, X and Y mechanics that let you interact with your Pokémon even more. The story – while initially weak as always – got much better, as Nintendo gave a post game to Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, which starts with an asteroid on a collision course with Earth.

But like most games, there were still negatives.

The most glaring mistake was the ability to customize your character and clothing, a mechanic introduced in X and Y that fans were extremely vocal about losing. While my rival in-game was friendly – I chose the male protagonist and my fiancée chose the female.

To be honest, I didn’t think Nintendo would let through such casual sexism. Your rival berates you simply for being a girl, only grudgingly accepting your skill as a trainer after beating him into submission three separate times throughout the game.

There are smaller issues, but nothing as glaring as these two. And I feel bad, because I’ll still buy the next game, just like fans of other game franchises. At the end of the day, the cons weren’t enough of an issue for me to justify not playing, so I give Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire a four out of five.

Maybe Nintendo will learn from this game – just give the fans what they want.