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Pokemon X (3DS)

Status: Finished playing
I started playing this game on Thursday 25 December, 2014  //  I stopped playing this game on: Tuesday 31 March, 2015
Current opinion of this game
No comment, yet.

March 31, 2015 03:09:27 PM
Ok, this entry is long overdue. Good news is that I can now say that I have, for the very first time in my life, finished a Pokemon game in the main series. Another way to put that is that it's taken this long (20 years?) for them to refine the design of the game to a point where I've been willing to put in the hours to play, rather than (mostly) put in hours to grind.

I must say that it was fun, and I appreciate ALL the weird little extra things there are to do in the game, but I appreciate more being able to get a "vanilla" experience with the full story. Well, sort of vanilla, trading Pokemon was fun and definitely made the game more interesting.


January 2, 2015 06:39:01 PM
Only two badges to go! I got caught up for a but there collecting pokemon I'd missed (and levelling up others) but then I realized that the whole levelling side of things will be a lot easier once I'm done...so, now I'm trying to race to end as quickly as possible.

Another small change I've enjoyed is that TMs and HMs are no longer single-use items. It's a bit annoying that you can trade a pokemon you've taught an HM though. Also, you can't "overwrite" an existing HM ability with a new one. Sigh.

I also really wish I could auto-sort my boxed alphabetically or by pokedex or something...it's really hard to tell sometimes which pokemon I have available for wondertrading and which ones I actually want to keep.


December 29, 2014 03:51:06 PM
I have a confession to make. I've played a few Pokemon games, but I've never finished the main campaign of any of them. I also tend to play every other one. It seems like this one, I'm already 20 hours in, might be the combo-breaker. The main difference is that my son is playing the other one and we've been (at least initially) pacing each other. He's now way ahead - I think he's already finished, while I still have 4 gym badges left to go. Oh well.

The trading parts are still really neat, espcially in the beginning when pretty much anything you get via Wondertrade (a sort of secret trade, you don't know what you'll get) is new and exciting. It also helps when you play with someone who has been reading up on all the different Pokemon and their evolutions and so on. I remembered many, but there's so many new ones in the newer games that it's hard to keep track.

Yes, it's pretty much the same game it's always been, though the following things jump out this time (for me, these may not be new things to this game):

a. Not all the trainer battles are forced. It used to be you'd run a gauntlet with trainer after trainer coming for you. Now there are many that you can walk around if you're careful.

b. Sometimes you get attacked by a horde of Pokemon. At first I thought it was kind of cool, but mostly they're really annoying. You spend a lot of time just sitting around watching them all do their moves before you get one in.

c. I like how many of the "crucial" items (e.g. the xp share) appear pretty early in the game. It takes out a lot of the grind, which is a nice thing in my book. Same with the bike (and before that the roller skates). This time, though I think I'm less than halfway through, I have a lot of the items/moves that help with transportation and take the slog out of the backtracking you wouldn't otherwise want to do.

d. I've received some non-Pokemon X or Y beasties via wondertrade. I have no idea how that is, and it kind of screws up the pokedex count which is a bit lame. But still, it is neat to run into some older Pokemon.

e. I really don't get the point of the O-Powers. I understand what they are, but the don't last long enough and they don't seem that useful. People don't seem to use them at all.


 
kudos for original design to Rodrigo Barria