Well…to start with, please don’t ask me anything about the storyline. It’s all in Japanese, so I’ve just about got that Team Galaxy have turquoise hair and are a bit bad, and ancient ruins are somehow involved. On the other hand, this is a pokémon game, so there probably isn’t much more to it than that, anyway.

On to more technical things...The graphics are pretty. Most people look at it and say, first of all, “Oh, that’s just like the GBA games with a bigger head”, but then they see the buildings. And how they change angle slightly relative to the player…and different altitudes in an area being visible through gaps and over cliffs…and how the camera ever so slightly dips or lifts when you go down or up a slope. Sure, it doesn’t absolutely utilise the DS to its full capacity, but then graphics were never what these games were about. The water’s lovely though. And there are lots of nice colours, especially in the evening battles.

Sound…is much the same as it’s ever been. I’ve never liked handheld music, and this hasn’t changed my mind…it’s a bit more detailed and interesting than on R/S/E, but not really much of an improvement. Turn the volume down and listen to your own music, is my advice.

Onto the gameplay…there are a few fun new moves – at least I think they’re new moves, I can’t be sure in Japanese. I’m sure all you teambuilder types are way ahead of me on this, anyway. But yeah, some interesting new moves have probably been introduced, as well as some cool new pokémon. I’ve not used that many of the new ones, but the electric dog/lion thing is an excellent pokémon, especially when it evolves in time for the water gym. Subomi, the Roselia pre-evo, is an interesting one, fairly useful towards the beginning of the game, then it goes and evolves, gets a couple of better moves, and is a bit stronger, and suddenly Roselia’s given much more of a useful role in the game – I must admit I never remotely considered using them before.

Wild battles get on my nerves in this game even more than they used to – there are much larger expanses of grass than we’ve seen before, and I’m fairly sure random encounters are more frequent than they were in previous games. Caves are still packed with Zubats and Golbats, which really don’t like you running away from them… So this is, if not a negative point, at least an annoying one about this generation… It takes longer to get anywhere. On the plus side, Routes seem to hold a wider variety of different wild pokémon than they used to, which at least makes for more interesting journeys.

An interesting little feature are the occasional trainers who join up with you for a stroll around, fighting double battles with everyone, including wild pokémon, which, again, breaks with the tedium of a long journey.

These are just my first impressions. I haven’t completed the game yet, and I’m certain there’s a huge amount I’ve left out and not seen, and probably won’t until I have the game in English. Anyways, it’s a good game, all said – some boring bits, but the interesting novelty breaks that more often than not.

Thanks to Lord Barnabat for this!

Page written by Psythor.

Digg this! | del.icio.us | Reddit | Stumble Upon | Facebook

Tags: None!