If you ever find yourself writing about a Pokémon game, it has to have either been notably good, or notably bad, because while Pokémon is probably the most… consistent video game series in regards to quality, then that’s as much of a weakness as it is a strength. If you had to pick a franchise about which “If you’ve played one, you’ve played them all!” was true, then Pokémon would probably be at the top of that list. And yet! Even when Pokémon doesn’t ‘evolve’ – tee hee – then it can still be fun, and worth playing and recommending, and even worth talking about, even just as an excuse to brag about your Level 100 Delphox that you named ‘Starphox’ until your friend said he would’ve gone with ‘Belle Delphox’ and you agreed that it was better and changed it.
So, I got Pokémon Y for Christmas, and despite being released all the way back in 2013 (if you had asked me prior to playing this when the Nintendo 3DS even came out, I would have probably guessed 2014-15) then it’s the most modern Pokémon game I’ve played. I actually thought that it was the next instalment that I had to try, since the most modern game I’d previously played was Platinum, but I completely forgot about Black and White. And Black 2 and White 2. And now that I check on eBay, the sequels are approaching £100, so I probably never will, because piracy is wrong! That’s why I don’t pirate; I just have a best friend who does and I ask him “Hey could you get me Pokémon Black 2?” and he says “Yeah sure,” and gives me a flashcart which for all I know is a totally legit copy that he had lying around in his room and the label fell off so he had to write ‘PKMN BLK 2’ on the label in felt-tip pen. And if the feds are reading, that friend’s name? Elon Musk. (Hey, they got Capone for tax evasion, it’s worth a shot.)
I have played Pokémon Y for a little over a hundred hours, and… well, if you can cast your mind back to two paragraphs ago, I said that the only reason to write about a Pokémon game is if it was notably good or notably bad.
Pokémon Y was not notably good. (You know what else is not notably good? The screenshots used in this blog. I don’t have an emulator and it is not easy to find high-quality 3DS images on the interwebs, so… apologies for that.)
It’s not the worst thing ever – no Pokémon game is the worst thing ever – but… oh boy, it sure does feel like every little thing that could have been bad – ‘bad’ in this sense meaning, as bad as it could feasibly be while still remaining a decent Pokémon game – was bad. Every little thing that could have been irritating, was irritating. Every design choice that could have been better, was not made. It’s actually kind of fascinating just how many ways Pokémon Y just… screws up. And the problem with Pokémon games is that they’re already kind of frustrating by design – no-one likes spending thirty minutes throwing Ultra Balls at a paralyzed, 1HP Legendary Pokémon that just refuses to be caught – but these frustrations are normally overlooked because you’re having a good time. In Pokémon Y, I was not having a good time. I found myself getting annoyed at things like evolution methods, or the basic set-up of fishing (Why can’t you just let me leave the rod in the fucking water until something bites? Why do you have to tell me “Nothing’s biting right now!” so I have to redo the same sequence of buttons five times until I finally get something? Why is it even possible for nothing to be biting right now? What benefit does that serve? “Ooh, let’s extend this already-interminable process even more!”) and other things that are annoying, sure, but have never been that annoying. But they annoyed me this time, because they were happening in Pokémon Y, which means I was already annoyed.
So without further… hang on, I’m looking up a Pokémon that rhymes with ‘ado’. Right, without further Azu…-marill, let’s get into the specifics. And I will need to start with a disclaimer.
Full Disclosure: I played the game wrong
One of the big appeals of games like Pokémon is that you can’t play the game wrong. Did you over-level your starter Pokémon and you’re just using it to solo everything in your path? (Who cares about taking super effective damage when everything dies in one hit, two maximum?) Well, you made that decision! It was your way to play, and it was a valid way to play. This was how I played my first Pokémon game, Pokémon Gold, and by the time it was over, I had a Level 75 Feraligatr that knew Cut, Surf, Strength and Hydro Pump, because I had horrible taste in moves and didn’t really grasp the concept of using one Pokémon as a HM-Slave. So, you might be wondering if that’s how I ruined the game for myself, and… well, let me put it like this.
There’s a bit of a gap in Pokémon Y between the first gym and the second. You have your standard hometown, then the first city that doesn’t really have anything in it, and then a city with a gym! But then Pokémon Y has a massive city – so big that most of it is blocked off the first time you visit – and then another city, and some caves and a sidequest with some fireworks and a trainer mansion where you can farm free EXP, and… okay, I mentioned that my starter was Delphox, who started out as a Fennekin that I named Frennekin. Well, I spent some time in the first few areas, catching all of the available Pokémon, levelling my Caterpie and Weedle into a Butterfree and Beedrill, etc…
All of this is to say… that before I had entered the second gym, my Delphox was Level 70. Before the second gym of the game. And I had a Level 50 Talonflame named Kiara. And a Level 60 Venusaur named Serena II, because I first called my Venusaur that in Pokémon Yellow.
Delphox was Level 100 before the third gym.
As for why, well… we’ll get there, and we’ll get there quickly, but I do feel that it is worth noting before I start laying into this frustrating game, that there was a point where Delphox was probably Level 45, and I could have decided “Should I push ahead with the story before I do anything else?” and I chose not to. Although to be fair, I can’t imagine that the game being more tense and challenging would have actually improved the experience much for me. But let’s move on to the first two problems I had with the game, both of which are connected to how I ended up completely destroying any tension or challenge that the game could have presented.
Making the most efficient way to play also the most boring
I have complained about the problems with gaining EXP in Pokémon Y to a couple of friends, and all of them immediately assumed that I was talking about the Exp. Share item, and how it now gives your entire party 50% of the experience points that you got from the fight (one 100% to the Pokémon that fought and five 50%s for everyone else, for a grand total of… 350%) which makes levelling up a cakewalk and makes the entire game painfully easy. And honestly? I never had a problem with that. You can turn it off if you’d like. That was never my complaint about gaining experience. But I did still have a complaint about it.
See… let’s briefly go over how experience gains worked in previous titles, and why they worked that way. If you are fighting a Gengar that would give you one thousand experience points, and you send out your Arbok, but then change your mind and switch to Wigglytuff and then win the fight, then both of your Pokémon get five hundred experience points. A perfect split. And this is extremely handy when it comes to levelling up your low-level Mons; go fight the Elite Four, send out the Level 5 Charmander your friend just traded you, switch it immediately to something stronger, and by the end of just one fight, it’s probably grown by about twelve levels.
Now. This works because it’s an effective way to get more experience for your lower-level Pokémon, but it’s also important to note that the experience is split. It is reduced to half each. And this is a good thing, because… well, you are literally splitting the fight experience – not the EXP, the actual experience of fighting the Pokémon – half and half. It makes sense, and it’s good that it’s reduced like that, because otherwise, every participant would receive one hundred percent of the experience. Which might sound nice at first, but isn’t. Because if that’s how the game works, then…
Well, then the most effective way to level up every Pokémon in your party, would be to switch them all out in every single encounter that you have, which would be an incredibly boring and tedious way to play the game, and you don’t want to reward your players for playing the game like that. Because if you reward them for doing that, then some of them will.
I think it’s important to remember in this context exactly how Pokémon games start. You want to make headway in the Pokédex; in earlier games, the professor’s assistant will literally not let you progress in some areas (or give you important items) until you have caught an amount of Pokémon that should be trivial. And for that reason, a lot of Pokémon games start by throwing Pokémon at you that evolve early. Caterpie and Weedle? Reach their final forms by Level 10. Rattata? 20. Pidgey? 18 and then 36. Hell, Pokémon Y lets you catch Pansage, Panpour and Pansear, and while they evolve with stones, you can buy those stones as soon as you get to Lumiose City. (If you can find the store among the five hundred other buildings that serve no purpose.) Bidoof, Bunnelby, Burmy, Zigzagoon, Ledyba, Combee, Flabébé and especially Scatterbug; all of these evolve early. And the way I played the game was to evolve them early. Which…
Which meant that the most effective way of levelling up my team, was to play the game in the most boring way possible. And sure, that was my choice, just like it would have been my choice to level-grind in Routes 2 & 3 until my Fennekin reached Level 100. But I never would have been encouraged to do that, because it was boring. And it was also boring levelling up the Pokémon I had just caught, but the game didn’t discourage me from doing that. And it even made it more efficient to level up by playing the game in a very boring way; by swapping out every Pokémon I had in every fight that would give me a decent amount of EXP.
This is still ultimately my fault, and so maybe it’s best to get it out of the way early. Especially because what I should have done if I wanted to level up all of my Pokémon really quickly, was wait until I made it to Route 7, where-
Giving players an early way to farm infinite EXP (and money)
On Route 7, there is a building named the Battle Chateau. It contains six trainers (the number of trainers increases as you increase your rank from Baron to Viscount to Earl to Marquis to Duke, where it caps at ten) and you fight those trainers to increase your rank, which causes tougher trainers to show up, giving you access to more level-ups; and more money, as all of your opponents are quite rich, and you just found the Amulet Coin item that doubles the money you receive from opponents when defeating them. Gym Leaders will also show up once you have beaten them, and apparently members of the Elite Four, who I have never seen because I stopped playing shortly into the post-game. Also, every six minutes, a trainer is replaced, so every hour, the Battle Chateau is ripe to be challenged again.
This isn’t bad. It’s nice to have a place to get a little extra EXP and money. The problem is that it wasn’t a little. The problem is also that… I have a job where two or three days a week, I work from home. And ‘work’ is obviously in quotation marks. And every hour, while checking up on my berries – the berry farm is on the same route as the Battle Chateau – I would pop into the Battle Chateau and do some levelling up. And at no point does the game say “You are doing this too much. We are going to stop improving your rank until you continue the story. Trainers will stop respawning soon.” Instead, within twenty-four hours of discovering the Battle Chateau, I was already rubbing shoulders with the Marquis (… Marquises? Marquis’? Other trainers of that level love sending out Level 35 and 45 Audinos that give you three thousand experience points) and had entered into a work-from-home friendly routine of playing for ten minutes every hour.
This is how Delphox got to Level 70 before the second gym. I also understand that this was my decision, my choice, and my fault, but… you gave me a free EXP farm! What did you expect me to do with it; not level-up my Pokémon? By the time I got to Level 50, I was strictly using it to evolve the things I had caught, but thanks to the Exp. Share (I guess I’ll still complain about it a little) then I couldn’t not also level up the rest of my team. After the third gym, I benched my Delphox until the Elite Four, because it was already Level 100. And after the fourth gym, I benched my Level 100 Venusaur for the same reason. If you happen to get a round of Battle Chateau trainers who like to send out those Audinos, you can enter with a Level 90 Pokémon and still level up two or three times in the space of ten minutes.
And just to remind you, you find the Amulet Coin (doubles money from battles) on the second floor of a palace that you pay a mandatory visit to on Route 6. There are Earls in the Battle Chateau who will pay you five thousand dollars… Pokémon Dollars per fight. There’s a Marquis who gives you ten. The leader of the Elite Four gives you almost fifteen thousand; these are without the Amulet Coin. As a result, then… you know how in some Pokémon games, there’s a joke where a Team Rocket member or someone will try to scam you by asking you to pay five million dollars for a Magikarp? A member of Team Flare asked if I wanted to join for the cost of five million dollars, and I wanted to say yes, because I had seven million dollars. And I can’t stress this enough; I wasn’t even selling the prizes I got.
Let me open up my 3DS real quick and just run through my inventory. Right now, my player-character – who I always name Ness – has 20 Star Pieces, 18 Tiny Mushrooms, 19 Pearls, 22 Stardusts, 13 Big Pearls, 13 Nuggets, and 3 Big Nuggets. And a Pearl String, a Rare Bone and a Balm Mushroom. I am – well, Ness is – walking around with a surplus of items worth (drumroll…) okay, so they’re actually only worth a little over two hundred thousand Pokémon Dollars, but that’s still a lot to have never even considered selling, because I never needed it, because I could make that in two hours in the Battle Chateau. Money was functionally worthless to me in this game, to the point where when I was trying to level up a Dragonair into Dragonite, I just bought twenty Protein, Iron, Calcium, Zinc and Carbos and drugged that poor sucker up so that it would have an easier time winning fights in – where else? – the Battle Chateau. And I didn’t even blink as I spent almost a million dollars on this, because money was meaningless by this point.
Do I think the Battle Chateau should have been removed from the game? No, it was helpful and it certainly helped me level up some Pokémon quicker than it would have taken in the wild. Do I think it needed some tweaks? Absolutely. Because both experience and money were provided to me, before I’d even reached the second gym, in an infinite supply.
Horde Battles are a bad idea, implemented worse
Remember Pokémon Ruby/Sapphire? I do. They were good games. I think I wrote something a dozen years ago on ScrewAttack and eventually republished it here about those games. They were very interesting, because it was around that time that I think it was starting to settle in that the Pokémon series wasn’t really going to undergo any radical changes in the near future, and stick mainly to the same formula. Which is even weirder in retrospect, because Ruby and Sapphire added so much to the formula that by now, they look positively innovative. Berries, abilities, contests, the weather, and double-battles! Everyone loves double battles! Remember the first time you saw two trainers next to each other and wandered up to them, and they sent out two Pokémon instead of just one, and you panicked because your second slot was a Zigzagoon you were using as a HM-slave?
Well, Pokémon Y decided to do you one better… or should I say, three better, because now you can fight five Pokémon at once instead of just two! And it’s so fucking terribly executed (or should I say, Exeggcute-d; no, no I shouldn’t) that this is the only point which I feel I could feasibly split into sub-points.
So I will!
i) Every turn is five times longer.
I have played more than a dozen Pokémon games in my life, and one thing that I have never, ever, ever considered doing is turning off the battle animations. Why would I? They’re fun. Even if you have to see them literally hundreds of times – thousands if they’re the main moves of your own Pokémon – then it’s cool to pick Surf and see a big wave of water crash into your opponent. Sure, if you added up the total cumulative time I’ve spent watching Pokémon attack animations, then you’d probably have at least one full entire day of this; the single finite life upon this Earth that I have. But there’s no guarantee that I would not have spent that time doing something considerably worse than playing Pokémon. I am British, you know. I’d probably be trying to colonize something.
But I have never been more tempted to turn off battle animations than I have in Pokémon Y, specifically because of the horde battles. Because for every turn you take, you have to see five moves by your opponents. In a row. They don’t speed up. And there’s no option to turn them off without turning off battle animations altogether. It’s extremely annoying and time-consuming. There are moves that your Pokémon can learn that will hit every opponent at once, but they seem to have been selected mostly at random? Moves like Surf and Earthquake; it’s obviously logical that they would hit everyone at once, but then there are things like ‘Petal Dance doesn’t, but Razor Leaf does,’ which means you have to decide to hang onto an objectively worse move for longer, just to get out of horde battles quicker. And you’re going to want to get out of them as quickly as possible, because-
ii) Did you have to pick the worst Pokémon with the most annoying movesets?
Horde battles don’t actually show up in Pokémon Y until you’ve reached Route 5, and then they skip Route 6 and come back on Route 7, Route 8, the Connecting Cave between them – that’s its name ‘Connecting Cave’ – and so on. So, I understand that they wanted new players to ease into Pokémon fights before hitting them with horde battles, and maybe we could also ease into the horde battles in order to get the hang of- just kidding, in the Connecting Cave, you’ll fight five Zubats at once, and every single one of them knows Confuse Ray. Or Supersonic. Or both. I’m pretty sure it was Confuse Ray though. And there’s five of them, so have fun almost guaranteeing that one of them is going to use Confuse Ray, every single turn of the fight.
But then you get through the Connecting Cave and arrive at Route 8. Perfect, you’ll never have to see a Zubat again. So you walk into a horde battle, are greeted by five Wingulls, and surprise; they also all know Supersonic! Have fun being confused! Again! This continues for more or less the entire game; Route 10? Have fun catching a Yanma! They all know Double Team. And Supersonic (maybe)! Again! Route 11? Nidoran time! They all know Poison Sting! Did you run into a horde of Scraggly? They all know Sand Attack.
To compensate for this, all of the Pokémon you fight in hordes are significantly lower-level than every other Pokémon in the area, but if anything, this just makes it more annoying, because you’re clearly stronger than them, so you’re being held up and inconvenience by a bunch of… frankly, insignificant Pokémon, whose only advantage over you is the power of irritation. Poison, Paralysis, Confusion, Sleep, all the usual ones (there’s one Pokémon I can’t remember because the encounters aren’t even memorable for anything other than irritation, but one shows up in hordes and has the ‘Sturdy’ ability, meaning it cannot be KO’d from any attack while at full health. Very fun fighting five of them at once.) Except this time there’s five of the bastards spamming these moves, and unless you have that magical hit-all attack, you just have to sit there and take it. And that’s even assuming that you want to defeat them all, because-
iii) Some Pokémon can only be caught in hordes
Bad example, you can catch Tauros and Miltank both outside of hordes… but I was really struggling to find those images.
As much as we clown on it, there is something inherently fun and adventurous and childishly innocent about entering a new Route in a Pokémon game and charging into the grass to see what new cool creatures you can find. And it’s fun to catch all of these Pokémon, and even the ones that only have a 5% chance to show up are alright, because… you’re going to bump into them sooner or later. It’s not like the Safari Zone, with limited time, and useless Safari Balls, and you don’t know which of the quadrants has that magical 5% chance.
Horde battles already have a much lower chance of showing up than regular battles. I’ve just checked Bulbapedia, and apparently it’s close to 5%. Not a 5% chance of finding the Pokémon you want in a horde battle, but a 5% chance of getting a horde battle, full stop. And now you have to factor in the 5% chance of the rarer Pokémon appearing, who only show up in hordes. Which is also 5%. Do you know what 5% of 5% is? It’s a quarter of 1%. Those are the odds of getting the Pokémon you want to show up in a horde battle. 0.25%. I want to be intelligent and professional about it, but the revelation that there are Pokémon you have a 0.25% chance of encountering really only deserves the comeback; “Fuck you.”
There are other ways to start horde battles though; if you have a Pokémon that knows Sweet Scent, or you’re in the possession of some Honey – probably from a morally questionable online sponsorship deal – then both of those work. Enjoy saving the game, spamming every ‘Honey’ that you have in the hopes that one of the hordes contains the Pokémon you want, and then having to reload and try again several times. And when it finally works, of course, it was your last Honey, which means you need to go and get more in one of the locations that it respawns in every week. Or training a Combee. Or I think my Zigzagoon picked some up, back when I was still training a Zigzagoon.
But okay, it’s annoying to get the Pokémon to appear, but once they do, everything’s fine, right?
iv) You can only catch one Pokémon per horde
I was wandering through Route 5 one day, having encountered a Minun before but been unable to catch it. The odds of Minun showing up are 5%, so I wasn’t expecting to find one instantly, but to my surprise, I ended up finding four of them at once, plus a single Plusle, in a horde battle! This horde battle also only has a 5% chance of showing up, making it that overall 0.25% chance! I was feeling pretty lucky, let me tell you! I think I was using my Gallade, which at the time was a Kirlia, but it was something that knew False Swipe – because I remember holding on to False Swipe for as long as I was still catching Pokémon – and I got one Plusle and one Minun down to 1HP each. I then selected a Pokéball to throw.
“No good! It’s impossible to aim unless there is only one Pokémon!”
… Impossible to aim?
… Impossible to aim? There’s two of them! I’m not a mathematician – although I am pretty good at the Numbers Round on Countdown – but, but… two? Two is the smallest possible whole number larger than one. More than one is too many? More than one Pokémon and the trainer yells “Whoa, slow down Maurice! There’s no way I can keep track of such a huge number of Pokémon! (two.)” I chose Plusle, obviously, because finding Plusle in a 5% of 5% chance in a horde battle is the only way it shows up in Pokémon Y. Fun.
I’m not exactly surprised, it makes some sense, although in retrospect, I do not understand at all what the harm would be in letting people catch as many Pokémon in a horde battle as they wanted. It’s just- if this had been possible, it would have been the sole redeeming factor about horde battles. Yeah, they’re really annoying, but at least you can catch two Pokémon in one battle! Without that, what’s even the point?
Fun fact; I tried to look up the exact text for the “You can’t throw a Pokéball while there are two Pokémon in a horde battle!” online, but couldn’t find it – it is a weird thing to take a screenshot of – so I booted up the game again to check it myself, went to Route 5, and the first thing I bumped into was a Minun. And the first horde battle I got? Plusle and Minun, again.
v) Some Pokémon attack each other.
… Once again, really sorry about the quality of those images.
Did you know that in the lore – (visibly shudders) sorry, as an on/off Death Battle viewer, the word ‘lore’ just instinctively fills me with dread (go fuck yourself, Kratos. Nine million times universal, my ass) – then Seviper and Zangoose are mortal enemies? That’s pretty funny. And hey, there’s a horde battle in Route 8 just about Cyllage City with four Seviper and one Zangoose! In Pokémon X, it’s four Zangoose and one Seviper. That’s cute! And the Seviper will even attack the Zangoose! Ha ha, oh what fun. A good time was had by all, I’m pooped.
…
That Zangoose is the only Zangoose in the game. And you can’t catch it unless all four Seviper are dead. And they’re all targeting it constantly. It will be dead within two turns. It’s the only one in the game.
There are workarounds to this, but it’s never good in the first place when you need a ‘workaround’ to fulfil what should be as basic a task as ‘catching a Pokémon in a Pokémon game.’ You can either find a move that hits all and will kill the Seviper but not the Zangoose – I heard Earthquake was possible for this, but good luck getting something that knows Earthquake by Route 8 and also won’t immediately one-shot the Zangoose too – or pray for the 1% chance that the Seviper all choose their worst moves, or in my case, my Kirlia/Gallade also knew Heal Pulse by this time, so you can constantly heal the Zangoose, which you then need to weaken to catch. I can see the appeal of horde battles, but they just weren’t executed well at all, to the point where they invite a plethora of annoyances, and no actual improvements on the existing formula of just fighting one thing at a time.
Improving Berries a little too much (and adding a bunch of terrible ones)
Full disclosure: I still consider this an improvement over Pokémon Ruby/Sapphire, but it’s still enough of a mistake to warrant a mention here.
Remember when berries were introduced in the third generation? Cheri, Chesto, Pecha, Rawst, Oran, and a bunch of others that I don’t remember – and also if you asked me what any of these berries did, then… Oran restores 10 HP, because that’s consistently useful, Chesto is Sleep, Cheri is I think Paralysis, and Rawst is Burn. Lum is the berry equivalent of a Full Heal – which you could plant in soil across Hoenn, come back and water them, and boom! Your Chesto berry grew into a plant that bore six Chesto berries, which is like six free Awakenings! Awesome!
There were flaws with this. For one thing, the soil was spread all across Hoenn, to the point where if you wanted to maximize your planting, it would probably take ten minutes of just flying to every location in the game, making your way to every single patch of soil, and planting or watering a berry. And watering never seemed to have an effect on some; I distinctly remember planting my Lum berries – because they were really useful – watering them frequently, checking up on them every few hours for at least twenty-four hours, and coming back and finding a plant that had yielded me… one Lum berry. Perfect.
In Pokémon Y, on the same route as the Battle Chateau, are the Berry Fields! All of the soil in the game is right here, so you only have one location to keep track of. So you head in, you plant five Cheri berries, and every few hours, you come back to make sure you don’t need to water them. Twenty-four hours later, you can return to the Berry Field to collect your merry yield. I planted five Cheri berries, and in return- THIRTEEN?!? Thirteen berries? Just to be clear, I don’t mean in total, I mean each. I-I just got sixty Paralyze Heals by planting a handful of berries and taking minimal care of them. I will not need to buy a Paralyze Heal or plant any more Cheri berries for the entire rest of the game.
And… yeah, this isn’t exactly a fault – oh no, my game is… too convenient – but it is a problem in the same vein as the Battle Chateau. Especially because they’re on the same route. Which means that you will feel very subtly – or not-so-subtly – encouraged to come back once every two hours to water your plants and refight all the new trainers. I mean, if I have to make a choice between ‘planting a Lum berry rewards you with one Lum berry’ and ‘planting a Lum berry rewards you with fifteen Lum berries,’ then I’ll choose the latter every single time, but within four hours of finding the Berry Fields, I had basically nullified all status conditions for the entire rest of the game. I never needed anything more. I don’t think that’s… great?
There’s also a complicated ‘mulch’ system, where you can turn existing berries into mulch, which can be used as fertilizer to grow even more berries, but… why would you need to grow MORE? I planted one Pecha berry, and turned it into thirteen Pecha berries. I then planted thirteen Pecha berries, and turned them into one hundred and twenty-one Pecha berries. I am all set for poison-cures for the entire rest of the game; do you really think I want to experiment making mulch, because I’m scared that I’m not growing berries as effectively as possible?
But Pokémon Y also adds a litany of new berries to try! For instance, there are now eighteen new berries, one for each type of move that a Pokémon can use! And that’s not a coincidence, because the effects of those berries are things like “Reduce the damage of a super-effective Psychic/Grass/Water/Ground attack!” So, something that only comes in handy if I’m getting hit by a super-effective attack; something that I will be actively trying to avoid at all times. Useful! But there are seven more berries that increase one of your Pokémon’s stats if it falls beneath 25% HP! So, again, a situation that I am actively trying to avoid, and which is unlikely to ever occur, given that the Berry Fields are on the same route as the Battle Chateau, so good luck getting my Level 100 Greninja-Gaiden down that low in the first place.
I never used a single one of these berries, and I don’t know anyone who played casually – or competitively – who did. I say ‘competitively’ – I’m sure they have some use in the hardcore Pokémon one-vs-one battle community – but if I have the choice between giving Belle Delphox some Charcoal to hold to buff all fire moves, or the ability to… take slightly-less damage from a super-effective attack that I don’t want them to get hit by in the first place, then I’m sticking with Charcoal.
Lumiose City is gigantic and full of nothing
This was originally going to be a much later entry. After all, there are still game mechanics to cover – changes to TMs, the Pokédex, evolution methods; I haven’t even touched on the story yet – so how bad could one single city in the game be?
Lumiose City is my least-favourite location from any Pokémon game that I have ever played in my life, ever. Worse than any gym. Worse than any slippy-slidey ice cave (I actually love those.) Worse than the eleven-storey Silph Co. building. Worse than any teleporter puzzle, any Team Rocket base, any iteration of Victory Road. It’s worse than any of dark caves in the Pokémon series; including but not limited to the dark cave literally named ‘Dark Cave.’Because even when I was annoyed in all of those other locations, I was still having a good time, broadly speaking.
I didn’t enjoy any part of Lumiose City.
Fun fact; I looked up a collection of areas in Pokémon games that people find annoying (TVTropes, That One Level – Pokémon) and Lumiose City is the only entry on the list to be… a city. Not a cave or a gym or a dungeon or a sea; just a straight-up city. And I can immediately understand why; you see, you might be wondering what the hell could possibly be annoying about a city? You mean the areas with a Pokémon Center, Pokémart and Gym? Those areas? How could a city possibly make it into a list of irritating levels? But I would encourage you to give your mind a little flipperoo (medical term) and look at this the other way around.
How bad must Lumiose City be to end up on that list?
The biggest problem with Lumiose City is… the biggest problem. Or perhaps ‘the bigness problem’. Lumiose City is bigger than every other city in the game, combined. It’s huge. It’s… unpleasantly huge. It’s a nightmare to navigate because it has five entrances, approximately a billion shops – only one of which is actually of any use (the Stone emporium) – and it’s viewed from a street-level perspective. Somewhere, Deku from My Hero Academia just heard the term ‘street-level’ and got really excited and doesn’t know why. That’s a Death Battle joke. Kratos VS Asura is also a Death Battle joke, in a way. C’mon man, that’s two digs in one review, knock it off.
“Oh, come on Dopefish, I’ve played a lot of Pokémon games. I’m sure it can’t be that b-”
Two boulevards.
Four avenues.
Five plazas, surrounding a sixth.
FIFTEEN cafes.
Four restaurants.
Two boutiques.
Three Pokémon Centers.
SIX BUILDINGS just named ‘Office Building’.
And we’re not even close to done; there’s still Lumiose Station, the Hotel, the Museum, and a bunch of other stuff that I do not remember, because none of it is memorable!
Here’s the thing; almost every Pokémon game has that one really big city. Two, in the case of Red/Blue, because Celadon and Saffron City are both pretty large. But even though those cities are big, they’re not too big, and they accomplish this goal in two easy ways. Number one; don’t give the player access to every single building in the city, because then the city becomes a tedious chore to explore. Number two; make sure that absolutely every building that the player can explore has a purpose! The designers of Lumiose City somehow missed this memo, while simultaneously wiping their asses with it; a frankly impressive display of contradiction.
We all know the drill when you enter a new town or city in a Pokémon game. You explore every building, and you have fun doing so because there aren’t too many buildings, and even the ones that serve minimal purpose – i.e. a single NPC announcing “I’m a big fan of this city’s gym leader! She uses rock-type Pokémon!” and that’s it – don’t take up much of your time, and they don’t make the experience negative by any means. If you were to explore every single building in Lumiose City and talk to every single NPC – which you still might like to do, because at least one of them has an item or a TM to give away – then you will have to set aside an hour of your time. There could be a category on speedrun.com solely for talking to everyone in Lumiose City. And just like the buildings, you don’t really remember any of the people you talk to.
The location that I think Lumiose wants to emulate the most is Goldenrod City from Pokémon Gold/Silver, which at the time you enter it, is the biggest city you have explored so far. But let’s go over how many locations in that city I can remember. I won’t count the Pokémon Center or Gym because every notable city has those, even though Goldenrod’s gym is pretty memorable, if only for Whitney and her Miltank that knows Rollout.
There’s a six-storey department store, that’s pretty notable. The Game Corner, obviously. Goldenrod Tunnel, and underground passage, memorable because of the hairdressing twins who can raise your Pokémon’s happiness. The Radio Tower, before, during and after the hostile takeover by Team Rocket. Speaking of which, the Team Rocket base accessible via the Game Corner. The flower shop where you pick up the watering can that lets you fight Sudowoodo. There’s a Name Rater, there’s Bill’s house, creator of Bill’s PC, there’s the Magnet Train which provides you transport to Saffron City once you reach the post-game. And the bike shop, of course! Providing you with one of the most important items for the rest of the game. That’s ten. I just named ten locations in Goldenrod City that I remember, solely because they were worth remembering.
What do I remember from Lumiose City? … Well, there’s a store that sells Fire, Water and Leaf Stones. I remember it because I visited it once to level up my Panpour, Pansage and Pansear. There’s also a grooming salon specifically for Furfrou, because Furfrou can have its hair trimmed into nine different Furfrou fur-forms, which I remember for being notably useless, because oh my God, who the hell cares that much about Furfrou?
…
I went into a cafe and talked to someone and then left the cafe, I remember that.
I think I went to the Museum and someone gave me a TM. It was not a useful TM and it annoyed me because it reinforced that I would need to keep exploring these huge, mostly-useless buildings, in the event that someone had an item to give me.
I believe that I went to a restaurant once, where I was offered the opportunity to pay a ridiculous amount of money for the chance to win a double-battle in a specific number of turns – while aware that my opponent’s Pokémon probably knew Protect or something – all to win a prize that was just barely worth more than the entrance fee. I left without trying.
I think I went to another cafe where I had to pay to get into a nice section, and your reward is that you get to talk to a patron who says “Hey, look at my Pokémon!” and then you see their Pokémon and it’s added to your Pokédex. You don’t have it, you just saw it. That was a let-down.
…
That’s… what, five? Six if I count ‘unnamed Cafe 1’ and ‘unnamed Cafe 2’ as separate entities. I’m already counting unnamed Restaurant. I’m not even exaggerating; Lumiose City just has nothing interesting about it. It feels like at every stage of the design process, it just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger as scope-creep settled in, until even Five Nights at Freddy’s: Security Breach would look at it and say “Jesus! Maybe trim this down a little?”
I will once again say that Lumiose City is my least-favourite location from any Pokémon game, with the added explanation that prior to Lumiose City, I didn’t even have a least-favourite location in a Pokémon game, because why would I? They’re all great. Except this. Hell, Pokémon Legends Z-A (weird name; set for release in October 2025) is set entirely within Lumiose City. Do you know why? Because it’s a big enough setting for an entire Pokémon game! And maybe that game will utilize its size well, but Pokémon X & Y sure didn’t.
Gotta Catch See ‘Em All
Quick question; if the Pokémon series had a catchphrase, what would that catchphrase be? I may have gone ahead and spoiled the question with the name of this segment, but I would argue that the phrase that best describes the series – from a gameplay perspective, at least – is “Gotta Catch ‘Em All.” It’s not just a fun line in the theme song; it is the ultimate goal of any Pokémon trainer seeking to complete the game as best they can. And… it’s also why, until Pokémon Yellow – and the incredible Pokémon Ranger DS games – I had yet to actually achieve one hundred percent completion of any Pokémon title. Catching ‘em all is quite hard. But I really did appreciate the challenge, because filling up the Pokédex with a smorgasbord of creatures that you hadn’t just encountered, but caught, raised, bred, traded, evolved, etc… was a reward unto itself. It felt rewarding because it was genuinely a challenge.
At several points in earlier games, you would bump into an assistant to Professor Oak/Elm/One of the other ones, and they would block your progress behind a requirement of “You must have caught at least ten Pokémon before you can proceed!” or “You must have caught fifty Pokémon before I give you this key item that is sure to be useful on your journey!” And despite this having the potential to be irritating, it never was, because… why the hell were you playing a Pokémon game in the first place if not to catch Pokémon?
This was reflected in how the Pokédex was measured. It didn’t often come up, but not only could you ring Professor Oak/Elm, back in the games when you still had a phone, but when you were fiddling around with Bill’s PC, you could check in the Prof Oak’s PC for a quick Pokédex rating. And he would announce how many Pokémon you had seen, and then, much more importantly, how many Pokémon you had caught. And he would deliver a comment based on that, like “Great job! You’re really getting the hang of this.” or “Remember to go fishing on beaches or in caves to catch even more species!” or “If I was your Dad, I would be very proud of you, and I would totally let you get that Totodile doll you wanted and that your best friend offered to give you because I’m not scared that it would somehow turn you gay!”
So, how does Pokémon Y measure your progress vis-a-vis the Pokédex? Well, you know what’s just as cool as catching Pokémon?
Seeing them. Just once.
You just… see them, and it counts. When you get your Pokédex rated, the comment you get is based entirely on how many species you have seen, not caught. This… look, this obviously isn’t the end of the world or anything, but why? Why change that part of the formula? Why remove the ‘Catch’ in “Gotta Catch ‘Em All”? More than anything, this just raises a question about the Cafes you can visit in Lumiose City, because for the life of me, I couldn’t understand the purpose of paying a few thousand Pokédollars just to sit in the same room as an NPC who, when approached, said “Hey, check out my Lickitung!” and then you briefly saw an image of a Lickitung. And then Lickitung was in your Pokédex forevermore.
The question this raises is simply “… Why?” because… bear with me here, and I don’t mean Ursaring. If your goal was to make it easier for the Pokédex to be completed, for the benefit of players who didn’t want to put in the effort of actually catching them, why on earth would you add a method that, at the cost of a little extra effort, allowed them to see those Pokémon? Are you trying to encourage them to go to the effort or not? It’s an incredibly strange design decision.
Then again, maybe there were sincerely noble motives behind this decision. Maybe they didn’t want to put the player through the issue of catching/trading/evolving specific Pokémon because they knew what a pain in the ass it would be.
Evolution Devolution
“Hey, isn’t that image upside down?” NOPE.
From as early as Generation 1, there were Pokémon that were a pain in the ass to evolve. Finding out that you would never get a Gengar, Machamp, Golem or Alakazam unless you had a friend with a link cable was a betrayal of the highest order back then, and it still sucks now, even though trading is much, much easier on the 3DS. But at least Pokémon who evolved via trade was the beginning and the end of this nonsense. Until they added Pokémon that had to be traded while holding a specific item, and Pokémon that only levelled up once they had reached a specific level of happiness, or during a specific time of day, or whatever the fuck was Tyrogue’s deal.
As Pokémon games continued, more and more evolution methods were found. Feebas only evolves into Milotic once you raise its beauty stat far enough (or trade it holding a Prism Scale; presumably because everyone hated that beauty stat bullshit, and because you could only catch Feebas on six specific water tiles in the whole of Route 119,) and in the same game, Shedinja requires you to evolve Nincada into Ninjask with a Pokéball in your inventory and an empty slot in your party. More stones, more happiness-evolutions, more items. None of this was more fun, but it wasn’t overwhelmingly bad either.
… So, as mentioned, I skipped straight to Pokémon Y from Pokémon Platinum, and here are some of the new evolution techniques for some of the Pokémon in this game.
There are new evolution stones, including the Dusk Stone, Dawn Stone and Shiny Stone. You need two Dawn Stones, three Shiny Stones and three Dusk Stones to complete your Pokédex (not counting Misdreavus (trade only) and Minccino (Friend Safari)) and you can only find one Dawn and Shiny, and two Dusk Stones. The only way to earn more is from ‘Secret Super Training’, a spin-off of Super Training, itself a generic mini-game to boost your Pokémon’s stats that I never used, or as a reward from fighting ‘Psychic Inver’ on Route 18, who challenges you to ‘Inverse Battles’ in which all type advantages are reversed. In order to get any of the good rewards, you need to land more than six Super Effective attacks in a battle. This is difficult, because he only has six Pokémon, and you will likely one-shot them all. I just asked my best friend to trade me Pokémon who were holding the stones.
Speaking of trading! Karrablast and Shelmet are two Pokémon who evolve by trade, but only when traded for each other. Spritzee will only evolve if traded while holding a Sachet. Other Pokémon have requirements that are just plain weird; Sliggoo will only evolve if levelled up while it is raining, Riolu must be levelled up with high friendship during the day, Yanma and Piloswine will both only evolve if they know the move Ancientpower, and likewise Lickitung will only become Lickilicky if it knows Rollout. Sneasel and Gligar will only evolve if levelled up while holding items that cannot be obtained until the post-game Battle Maison. Combee will evolve into Vespiquen, but only if it’s a female Combee. Pancham will only evolve if another Pokémon in your party is Dark-type.
The evolution that takes the cake is undeniably Inkay, who must be levelled up… while you are holding the 3DS upside down. Who came up with this? I’m a little torn on it, because on the one hand, it’s terrible. But on the other hand – which is currently holding the 3DS upside down – then at least it’s an evolution that you can get by yourself. No trading or special items required. But it doesn’t change the fact that an overwhelming amount of these evolutions are unnecessary, not fun, and generally a Poképain in the ass.
And that’s not even getting into the sub-point here, which I was going to tactfully name “Breed, Breed, Breed, Get Pregnant, Get Pregnant, Get Pregnant.” I do not understand that reference and you cannot prove otherwise.
Gastly, Voltorb, Magnemite, Swinub, Poochyena, Makuhita, Lotad, Surskit, Duskull, Bonsly, Buizel and Timburr. If you want any of these Pokémon, you have to catch two opposite-sex Pokémon of their evolved forms, and take them down to the daycare, which happens to be on the same route as the Berry Fields and Battle Chateau. Fun fact that I did not realise at the time; Electrode and Magneton do not breed with each other; you have to wait until you catch a Ditto. Which doesn’t even make a whole lot of sense, because presumably the Ditto is transforming into an alternate-gender Electrode or Magneton before… sparks fly. And also you don’t catch a Ditto for ages.
But on top of those, there’s also Pokémon who can only be found through breeding, and whose evolved forms can only be caught in the post-game Friend Safari! So if you wanted a Vulpix, Venonat, Wurmple (that one is weird; you can catch Beautifly in the Friend Safari, but not a Dustox, only a Silcoon,) Seedot, Shinx, Seel, Grimer, Natu, Drillbur or Klink, then you need to make a whole lot of friends, get to catching their evolved forms in the Friend Safari, then breed those forms to finally catch ‘em all. Yeesh, no wonder they seemingly didn’t want you to bother with that. By that point, if you have thirty or so friends to do the Safari with, one of them is probably capable of just getting the Pokémon another way and trading them to you.
But this does bring me on to the Friend Safari, AKA the Lumiose City of game mechanics, because-
The post-game Friend Safari is a Croconaw of shit
The Friend Safari! When you have defeated the Elite Four and been crowned the Pokémon League Champion, your Pokédex is upgraded to… the National Pokédex! Which is very different, because there are some more Pokémon on it, and… that’s about it, really. Nothing special, but hey; I’ve been catching and evolving and breeding Pokémon this whole time to fill out the Pokédex that I already have. Let’s see what fun new post-game content there is to fill this Dex up with new names!
After obtaining the TMV Pass from… (checks notes; look, after Oak and Elm and Birch then I completely forgot all of the Pokémon professors’ names) Professor Sycamore, then the player can catch the train to Kiloude City! Which houses the Battle Maison, which I don’t think I ever tried, because you don’t get any nifty prizes from it. Or maybe you do and I just didn’t care. But I don’t care about that, I care about the Friend Safari! I want to get a Ninetales and a Luxray! And I already have my best friend recorded in my 3DS, so I can head straight in and start catching! I wonder what the Friend Safari looks like?
Safari Zones in other Pokémon games have always been a little hit-or-miss. They’re a very nice concept, and the landscape and layout is often interesting and cool, especially with how many hidden items – and often vital HMs – are found within… but if you’ve ever played some of the older games, you also remember what a giant pain in the ass it is to catch a Tauros, or a Pinsir, or heaven forbid, a fucking Chansey. And you can’t even throw your own Ultra Balls, just bait or rocks that never seem to help. But I still have a generally positive recollection of the experience, in the same way that I have a positive recollection of walking into any new area in a Pokémon game that has a multitude of new creatures to catch.
So, in Pokémon X & Y, the Friend Safari looks like this.
…
That is a blank field. That is the most visually uninteresting location they could have gone with. That is… okay, so you’re getting a 0/10 for presentation here. But hey, it’s not about graphics, it’s about gameplay. I am ready to catch some new Pokémon! Let’s run around until- whoop! It’s my first encounter in the Friend Safari!
… Okay, it was an Audino, and I’ve already caught one of those. You can find them in rustling bushes on Route 6. But hey, Audino is neat, I guess. Let’s see what the next- ooh, a Kecleon! Again, I caught one of them on Route 6. But I’m sure if I keep looking…
…
Okay, so five minutes have passed and I have exclusively only found Audino and Kecleon. Let me look up the details about this ‘Friend Safari’ because I think I might be doing something wrong. Let’s check the rules here for just- just a…
…
…
Are you fucking kidding me?
…
…
Okay, so, here’s how the Friend Safari works, in case you didn’t know. And I’ll start with the big one; for every friend you add, you get access to a field where you can catch three Pokémon. Three. One plus two. Three. That is a fucking pathetic number, made even more pathetic that it’s initially only two, unless the player you have added has also beaten the Elite Four. So I was stuck with just Audino and Kecleon.
There is a different type of Safari for every type of Pokémon, so… eighteen in total. And of those eighteen, there are three different variations of each. And those variations pull from a pool of four Pokémon, so it’s entirely possible – and likely, given that there are fifty-four chances for it to happen – that the Pokémon you miss out on is one that isn’t available anywhere but the Friend Safari. Better luck next time! Should’ve made more friends. Obviously fifty-four wasn’t enough.
I don’t understand in the first place why Pokémon who are freely available outside of the Friend Safari even bother to show up in the Friend Safari, but this was the moment – the moment that the game told me that I would need to befriend more than fifty-four other players (in the year 2025) in order to complete this Pokédex – that I just gave up. I completed the other Pokédexes – Central, Coastal and Mountain – and just did not care to complete the National one. Why would I? What am I getting for it? An in-game certificate from an NPC in a location I already forgot? Congratulations Pokémon Y, you made me not want to catch ‘em all.
And even if you didn’t need fifty-four friends – oh, and the Safari you get is decided by their friend code, which they cannot change, so they need to be fifty-four friends with the specific friend code you need – then where’s the fun? The Safari Zone was fun because it looked like a Safari Zone. This is just… what even is this? Fifty-four empty, featureless fields for you to run around in to find Pokémon to check off of the list of remaining Pokémon to catch. I get that what I’m describing is literally just the core gameplay loop of basically every Pokémon game, but usually it’s disguised or enhanced to make it appear to be so much more than that. The Friend Safari feels like it was designed by AI. It fulfils the purpose of catching Pokémon, but in the most soulless, robotic way possible.
Also, I don’t have fifty-four friends, and fuck you for reminding me of that and gating off your post-game until I level up my social links like a Persona protagonist.
The Story
Okay… who here remembers that ProZD sketch? That doesn’t narrow it down because the guy has hundreds and they’re all fantastic, but one of his greatest and most iconic – as well as the first one I watched – was “when you start a new game and you meet the character you know is going to betray you”.
As I just said, this was the first ProZD sketch I ever saw, several years ago. I had not yet played Pokémon Y. And I’m ashamed to say that I connected the skit to Pokémon Y thematically – as in “Wow, this Lysandre guy sure is a great example of that video!” – before I even realised that… the villain in ProZD’s video is named Lysandreoth. Literally just Lysandre plus Sephiroth. Good job, me. Hey, I’m roasting the crap out of Pokémon Y here, I may as well acknowledge my own… uh, what’s the polite word for stupidity?
Anyway, this is Lysandre.
He dresses like the bad guy in a Pokémon game. The very first time you meet him, he says “I’ve tried to learn as much about Pokémon as I can to help build a brighter future. … Knowledge is power, after all. Put it to good use. Now listen! It is vital that this world become a better place. And the people and Pokémon chosen to make that world better must work tirelessly to achieve this goal. … My desire… it is for a more beautiful world!”
So yeah. He seems nice. But next, you bump into him in Café Soleil in Lumiose City (if you can fucking find it amongst the hundred other buildings.) Where he’s talking to Dianthe, who you only meet I think twice, but she’s given just enough focus to spoil that she’s blatantly the Champion. I miss Lance.
“You played a young girl so wonderfully in your debut on the silver screen. Wouldn’t you rather remain young and beautiful forever and always play such roles? You were chosen to be a movie star, correct? Isn’t it your duty to be ever beautiful? Everything beautiful should stay that way forever. (X only) I would make this world unchanging and eternal so all beauty will last forever. (Y only) I would end the world in an instant so that beauty never fades. I can’t stand the thought of the world becoming uglier.”
This is the point where you realise that, oh boy, ProZD really wasn’t kidding around was he? This guy just actually talks like that. All the time. And Professor Sycamore is just like “Oh, that Lysandre. What a character.” Then you bump into him in Lysandre Café – the café where Team Flare are always hanging out nearby for some reason – and he continues-
“People can be divided into two groups. Those who give… and those who take… it’s just as how the Kalos region’s two Legendary Pokémon gave life and took life. I want to be the kind of person who gives… but in this world, some foolish humans exist who would show their strength by taking what isn’t theirs. They’re filth!” Something something, superweapon. “What the king of Kalos did was reprehensible, but… the ultimate weapon did manage to wash the world clean of that era’s filth.” You sadly do not have the option to tell anyone that Lysandre is clearly the bad guy. At this point, it would’ve been considerably more entertaining if he hadn’t been the bad guy, and he was just… really really bad at choosing his words, and didn’t have much in terms of a filter.
He rings you up again in Coumarine City on your Holo Caster to congratulate you for being able to wield Mega Evolution. “That is truly wonderful. With that power, you can steer your future in a better direction! We can’t just cover up the old filth with new filth! I implore you to consider what we need to do to change the world into a new, beautiful world!”
And you’re like “Lysandre… this is only the fourth conversation we’ve had.
The fifth conversation he has is more ruminating on Mega Evolution, and convo no. 6 is him openly admitting that he’s going to destroy this imperfect world and wipe away its impurities to make it as beautiful as him. Everyone else is apparently really surprised by this.
I can’t say that this is a serious negative point against the game, because in order for that to be true, I would have to have been otherwise seriously invested in the plot of this Pokémon game. I don’t think I’ve ever been invested in the plot of a Pokémon game. And that’s a shame; Pokémon games are good, they’ve just never been able to really make me… feel anything on a narrative level. I was going to say ‘on an emotional level’ but I remembered how relieved I was when I finally caught a Chansey in Pokémon Gold, or how happy I was when my Togepi finally evolved into a Togetic, how excited I am whenever I enter an ice cave with a slippy-slidey puzzle, or how annoyed I was when I got lost in Lumiose City for the sixteenth fucking time, so that would be a lie. Chalk this one up to nothing more than a missed opportunity.
TM: Total Mismanagement, Tragic Mistake
In another instance of “I can see how this is beneficial under certain circumstances but it rather does ruin the challenge of the game,” then Pokémon Y changed TMs. Well, they actually changed in Black and White, but as mentioned, I accidentally skipped those, so we’re talking about them here instead.
In keeping with the strategic acumen required to maximize the efficiency of your team, TMs – Technical Machines (what a weird name for them) – are powerful, versatile moves to be found, gifted and bought that can be taught to your Pokémon. And you really need to be in at least third-gear in your brainmobile, because these TMs are not only powerful, but also rare. If you find the TM for Thunderbolt – probably my go-to pick for the best Electric-type move in the game, because Thunder misses just a little too much for my liking – then you have to really mull it over; do I teach this to my main Electric-type Pokémon that already has some good moves, but this is a great one too and it should know it? Or do I teach it to my Pokémon of a completely different type which is turns out can learn Thunderbolt, giving it some added variety?
And what makes this decision so difficult is that you can only use a TM once. And while some of them can be bought multiple times – usually the rubbish ones, to be honest – and others can be won in the Game Corner for an exorbitant amount of coins – usually the amazing ones, to be honest – then generally speaking, if you find a TM or someone gives you one, then that is the only TM of that moves that you will ever receive for the entire game. Yes, Psychic is an absolutely phenomenal move that no six-Mon team can do without, but who do you teach it to?
Well, why not teach it to absolutely everyone who can possibly learn it, because TMs can now be used an infinite number of times? Perfect! Earthquake, Flamethrower and Thunderbolt for everyone. Bish-bash-bosh. Job done.
… I understand that, a lot like my issues with over-levelling in the early game, this is ultimately my decision. Nobody held a gun to my head and forced me to teach Psychic and Flamethrower and Earthquake to multiple Pokémon. But much like the over-levelling, the question is “Well, if that option is available to you, why wouldn’t you? And I am over-exaggerating a little; in my final party of six, I think there were only two moves known by multiple Pokémon. Gallade and Delphox both knew Psychic, and Greninja and Gallade (again) both knew Night Slash. I think two Pokémon knew Flamethrower as well, but that was mainly because Delphox was out of my party by the time I reached the third gym because they were already Level 100.
This was not a bad change at all, honestly. If this was the worst thing I could find to say about Pokémon Y, then I would either not be talking about it at all, or writing a wholly positive review. But in addition to the changes to experience, berries, money, and general difficulty, then it felt like another tiny way in which challenge took a backseat. Although I appreciate that it’s a lot easier now to see which TMs you’re missing if you were trying to collect them all. And also, hell, why wouldn’t you just teach everything Earthquake if you had the chance?
Let’s Finally Talk About Mega Evolutions
I don’t get it. I never needed them and you only have like three mandatory fights across the entire game against people who actually use it. Also the Mega Evolution Stone takes up whatever your Pokémon’s held item would be. And you need a different stone for every Mega Evolution, which is dumb and time-consuming and if you have a favourite Pokémon then you probably won’t even find their stone until long into the post-game. If they even had a Mega Evolution. That’s all I have to say about that.
…
No, really. That’s it. I never used them and they weren’t very interesting. Sometimes I do a bait-and-switch where I pretend to barely talk about something and then come back to it, but… there really isn’t anything more to say about them. I’m so glad that Pokémon Y gave me some very circumstantial situations to get even stronger for a fight that I was already going to win in one hit. Also, it felt very funny flexing on my opponents. Lysandre crying out “Alright, you’ve forced me to use my trump card… here it is! Gyarados! TRANSFORM!!!” and then you have to fight Mega Gyarados, and it’s all very tense until my Level 100 Ampharos uses Thunderbolt and kills it in one hit. And you know what? I even had Ampharosite, and didn’t even use it.
Conclusion
With all of this said – eleven points and five-ish sub-points about why Pokémon Y is a huge disappointment – then did I have a bad time with the game?
…
No. I don’t think I’ve ever had a bad time with a Pokémon game. I’ve played Red, Blue, Yellow, Gold, Sapphire, Leaf Green, Heart Gold, Platinum, Colosseum, XD: Gale of Darkness, Pokémon Snap, Pokémon Ranger, and Pokémon Picross – wait, no, that one actually is a load of crap – and now Y, and not a single one of those has been a bad time. Not even really Pokémon Picross, because it was just an ugly freemium game that became more enjoyable when my friend modded in unlimited currency; thanks, Elon! (C’mon Nintendo, sue him already.)
But while Pokémon Y is not a bad time… it is definitely the least-good time I’ve had with a Pokémon game in a very long time. The difficulty is non-existent, the pacing is all over the place, the Battle Chateau makes it way too easy to leave yourself over-levelled for the entire rest of the game in a little more than an hour, the story is forgettable – which, for a Pokémon game, means extra-forgettable – and the bold new additions fell flat, failing to feel bold or even particularly new. On top of that, Lumiose City is the only city in a Pokémon game to make it onto TVTropes’ ‘worst levels’ page, and the Friend Safari is aggressively, insultingly bad. I would give Pokémon Y probably… a 6/10.
Is that a bad game? No, not at all! A 6/10 game is one that I had fun with and would probably still recommend. But Pokémon Y is a 6/10 game in a series that otherwise never even fell below an 8. … Except for Pokémon Picross – that game gets a 3/10 for the enshittification for the sake of microtransactions – but every core game in the series has been an 8/10 at worst. … Except also probably Pokémon Colosseum, but that one barely counts. But what I mean is that Pokémon Y is the worst core game in the Pokémon series that I have played so far, and… that’s not good. It is not good when things are less-good than they used to be. This is the kind of hard-hitting journalism you can only find on dopefishblog.
But maybe this can also be a positive thing, and not just because I don’t want to end this review on a downer. Does it not speak to the consistent quality and cosy nature of the Pokémon series that even the mediocre games are good? That I can complain for… oh geez, twelve thousand words, and still admit at the end “But overall I still had a good time and I don’t regret playing this,”? Well, maybe. But it’s a little worrying nonetheless. The biggest criticism I can aim at the core Pokémon series is that – ironically, given the subject matter – it hasn’t evolved much in thirty years. Pokémon Y is, at its core, the same game as Pokémon Red, just with some added bells and whistles. And for most Pokémon games, that’s enough for me. It was just that this time, all of the bells and whistles were made out of onions and failure.
So that’s Pokémon Y; an okay video game that I nonetheless really wanted to complain about, because it was the first time a Pokémon game had ever given me so much to complain about. These games came out twelve years ago, so the idea that this long-outdated review will have any impact on the series moving forwards is laughable – it would be laughable even if I was posting this in 2013 – but I suppose I can say that Pokémon Y has made me hesitate just a little more before I start Pokémon Moon. I’m excited for the opportunity for the series to bounce back, but disappointed that they need to bounce back in the first place.
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Also, I should really play Pokémon Black and Pokémon Black 2 first. When’s the last time I finished a DS game, come to think of it? I still need to play The World Ends With You, and Bowser’s Inside Story, and Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, and- yeesh, all of these new games are kind of intimidating me, I’ll just play something cosy like Pokémon.
-Dopefish
The Dopefish 