POKEMON

[Jadecavy]

You're... 14 and 15.

[Enigma]

Two people for the price of one

[gotegenks]

I honestly think it's the best in the series. Some of the best/unique characters and dialog I've seen in it, and I generally enjoyed it.

this.

even playing the jap version and not knowing wtf they were saying i already enjoyed the story infinitely more than any of the past games, which says a lot about how crappy the stories usually are, but i really enjoyed it. And the villain in this actually has a point...kinda...

also, the fact that there aren't any old pokemon in the main campaign gives it a totally fresh feel which hasn't been felt since you first picked up red blue or yellow (or in your case, gold/silver)

[Jwalk0]

Pretty much agree with Kariudo. The last new Pokemon game I touched were Crystal, after that the anime gotten stale and the games didnt interest me anymore. But now, after almost a decade I feel the sudden urge to play a new Pokemon game besides the rave reviews and how most of my friends who played the game has felt about it, none of them have complained to me about anything wrong besides B & W having essentially the same formula. I'll probably get Black later this year or when they come out with a 3rd game in this section, which is inevitable. Pokemon Yellow, Silver, Crystal, and Stadiums 1 & 2 sucked alotta time outta me due to their amazing replayablities which is my favorite factor of the games. Sure the plots aren't close to amazing and even character relations are almost non-existent which to me is 2 of the most important things of an RPG but the Pokemon games aren't your normal RPGs and they have addictive gameplay. Still aint checkin out the newer anime though, Ash should've became a Pokemon Master and hooked up with Misty ages ago. He's gonna be fuckin around and doing the same thing for the next 4 decades. And by that time we'll have well over 2000 Pokemon, I'm sure.

[TritioAFB]

What's Pokemon?

[AaronAMV]

fuck i've put in 12 hours already into White.

@_@
it's kept me up for the past 3 nights

[mirkosp]

fuck i've put in 12 hours already into White.

@_@
it's kept me up for the past 3 nights

I'm well past 20 hours, don't worry about yourself.

-----

Anyway, here's the thing about pokémon, for all of the haters.
If nintendo entirely changed the formula, would it really be a sequel to the main series, or would it feel like a spin-off? Say pokémon ranger, they did many different things, however, the formula is very different, and it is just treated as a spin-off, which I'm sure it is.

But let's say the next pokémon in the main series is to have a different way of gameplay. Like, pokémon don't appear at random in the grass, but you can see them roaming around, battles are a smash bros-esque thing, and you don't really have experience points to level up anymore.

Would you really say that it would be a good thing? It could prolly be a very cool game, but would it really feel like a pokémon game? In order for it to have the real pokémon game feel, the core mechanic has to be the same.
That is, you can't really change how the battles are turn based, how you get badges and stuff, have to catch and hatch and train pokémon, etc.
That's just what the game is about.
People generally say that they did cool things with the new types and hatching in G/S/C and nothing really relevent after that, but I would not agree. They did less noticeable changes, perhaps, so that's why people say that.

Anyway, what they can do and they did do is apport improvements, polishments, and innovations to that core mechanic.

So you now realize that in B/W, for the first time, the first Gym is actually thought out so people realize that they just can't only train their starter pokémon and leave the rest of the team behind. Like all you kids liked and used to do in R/B/Y, right?

You now realize that in B/W NPCs actively encourage you to go catch the pokémons near the city of the gym, which are curiously of the exact type you need to beat the gym leader and wind up making a calibrated team with proper pokémons, so you are never in a situation where you have to beat a gym leader with hardly any pokémon that you can catch which would be of the strong type against the gym leader and at a proper level to do so.
Does anybody remember how ridiculously badly thought out Brock was in Yellow (but actually in Red and Blue too, if you didn't pick Squirtle or Bulbasaur)?
You couldn't catch any pokémon of a type of advantage against Brock, so they were encouraging the players to just train one of their pokémon a lot, and win like that. Yellow was even more ridiculous because you could catch Mankey in Route 3, but you couldn't get there until after defeating Brock. To not say, of course, on the more obvious and well known type balance herpderp with psychic pokémon...

You now realize that introducing new pokéballs isn't just for aesthetics, but actually is needed to make the catching more than just a "throw an ultra ball and hope it gets in" but actually a "what ball would be the most effective with this pokémon in this situation".

You now realize that R/S/E was like a whole different game from G/S/C due to the many new things introduced (abilities, natures, double battles) and the incredible polishment on the things that were previously added but not quite thought out nearly as much (EVs and IVs mainly, and how shinies appear too, I guess), D/P/Pt was the worst pokémon in a while but introduced that very cool thing about moves of all kinds that can be Physical or Special, and B/W actually took all this and added the triple battles and rotation battles.
You now realize that adding new pokémon isn't just the fancy thing to say LOL MOAR POKéMON but is actually a necessary step in order to improve the gameplay: new abilities, type and base stats combinations, and moves make for a more balanced and interestingly broader set of possible choices and teams to build.

TL;DR: You now realize that if you think that pokémon has been the same game for 12 years, you're just being closed-minded.

PS: I now realize that holy shit I wrote a wall of text about Pokémon, something is very wrong about this...

[BasharOfTheAges]

I had blue back in the day - until my gameboy broke. That sucked.

[Moonlight Soldier]

Amazon delivered White to me \o/

I have an adorable grass snake. I need to recatch my puppy and chipmunk though. Fail on me for thinking I saved >_<

[Hagaren Viper]

also, the fact that there aren't any old pokemon in the main campaign gives it a totally fresh feel which hasn't been felt since you first picked up red blue or yellow (or in your case, gold/silver)

This is probably my favorite part about the games. I do kinda miss the old faves, but I'll be able to transfer them over after I beta the game, so it's ok. I do hope the next gens keep this tradition, maybe with the exception of bringing back older poke's for new evos [As long as they dont pull a Magmortar and Electvire...]

I'm really enjoying White so far, the battles seem very streamlined, and Im digging the animations. And the evil orginization ACTUALLY HAS A GOOD PLOT. This may very well bump Silver from it's #1 spot.