Pokemon Let’s Go Pikachu
Fun Factor: 4/5
Pokemon Let’s Go Pikachu and Pokemon Let’s Go Evee are both a classic throwback to the original Pokemon Red, Pokemon Blue, and Pokemon Yellow that was originally released for the Nintendo Gameboy in 1998. It holds very true to the original source material with the exception of a few features that I will cover in this article. The objective of the main story is to become the Pokemon League Champion and collect all the species of pokemon in the world for the player’s Pokedex. Back in 1998, I did actually managed to collect all 151 pokemon by trading with my friends for an entire school year. Unfortunately that only lasted about a week because I accidentally laundered my Game Cartridge and wiped my save data. Let’s go Pikachu largely follows the same formula by having some species of pokemon appear that don’t appear in Let’s Go Evee. Fortunately for me I don’t know a single other person who didn’t buy Let’s Go Evee over Let’s Go Pikachu so I managed to complete my Pokedex much faster than when I was in school. Also for the purpose of completing the Pokedex, if the player has Pokemon Go on their Cell Phone, they may send their Pokemon to the Switch via the Go Park. A lot of the puzzles and dungeons that were in the original series have been simplified so it’s a little easier to finish the game. However they did take away the Game Corner slot machine game and I did miss being able to play the slots for coins.
Learning Curve: Fair
Being a throwback to turn based RPGs, the game play can be mastered even by young children, whom the target audience likely is, in fairly short order. I happen to remember my younger brother being able to defeat the Elite Four end bosses in Pokemon Blue before he could read. The biggest real challenge is remembering what Elemental Weaknesses did what, like Thunder being “Super Effective” against Water and many similar situations. Also all the puzzles from the original Red, Blue, and Yellow versions are much simpler.
Overall Rating: 4/5
I genuinely enjoyed this romp down memory lane. It was changed up a little bit from the original but I feel that almost all the changes were a welcome addition. I think when I was a child playing Pokemon Red, being able to play the whole game with stunning visuals and portable game play was really what I wanted from the start. I also liked having the Pokedex scaled down from the tons of newer pokemon in the franchise now. Except Meltan. I don’t like Meltan, or the “Michelin Man” he turns into. Also the Secret Techniques that Pikachu learns were very nice instead of having to give up competitive potential to be able to solve the over world puzzles was very nice.
