Ever since I was a child, and even now while in college, I am still able to return to and enjoy the experience of playing Pokémon. From my beginnings in Pokémon Emerald to my recent entry into Pokémon Y, I have always loved the challenge, choices, and sense of discovery these games have provided.
The first true challenge in these games is understanding each Pokémon types’ effectiveness against each other in battle. While it was extremely easy for me to grasp the relationship between Fire, Grass, and Water types, it took many battle and much reading to realize that Dark was weak against Bug and that Ground was not weak to Fighting. However, these fundamentals are only the start of the game’s difficulty.
The next challenge is in remaining properly prepared through your adventure. Frequent saving and keeping your Pokémon healed can alleviate some of the stress of a surprise rival battle, but unless your team is a higher level than the gym leader you’re about to fight, you will need some sort of strategy to try and take the victory. A prime example from the second generation of games (Pokémon Gold, Silver, and Crystal) is the third gym leader, Whitney, and her Miltank.
To put it bluntly, overcoming this one Pokémon is one of the most difficult achievements of the early game. Miltank has almost everything in its favor: it has the high damaging attack Stomp which can prevent your Pokémon from acting that turn, has enough speed to strike before most of the Pokémon available to the player at that point, can prevent male Pokémon from acting on their turns with Attract, and has the ability to heal half its Health Points back with Milk Drink ten times during the battle.
With all these things stacked in Miltank’s favor, how could one possibly defeat it? Well, the game actually gives you a surprising number of choices in this matter. You could go fight wild Pokémon until you are so high a level there is no threat, you could capture a Machop on the route before entering Goldenrod City and use its Fighting-type moves to gain an advantage, or you could take my favorite route and take advantage of Whitney’s weak link in her team, her Clefairy.
Out of Whitney’s two Pokémon, Clefairy poses little to no threat to any competent player and can be dispatched almost immediately. However, instead of instantly KOing it and moving on to Miltank, one has the option to let it remain on the field and use stat boosting items bought from the local department store (X Attack, X Defense, etc) to make your Pokémon more resistant to damage, more damaging, and faster than Miltank. It is this example that also illustrates the second thing I love about these games: the choices.
While I must admit the game’s story is completely linear, the way you go about finishing that story, building your team, or spending your money, is left completely up to your discretion. You could spend your time carefully catching every Pokémon in each route you explore and build a well balanced team to content with every scenario, or you could simply run through the game as quick as you can with your starter Pokémon and carry a small team of distractions to send out in battle while you heal it. However, no matter what path you decide to take, the game will always provide the third thing I love: a sense of discovery.
In essence, discovery is the primary motivator in the Pokémon games. The professor gives you a Pokédex in the beginning of each game with the hopes that you will complete it. Even if your focus falls solely on beating the Gym Leaders and Elite Four, you will continue to encounter new Pokémon, see new places, and find new items everywhere you go. There is little in life that can rival the joy of finally finding the Leftovers held-item after checking every one of the game’s trash cans up until that point.
All things considered, Pokémon is just a grand old time for everyone to enjoy. It offers the capacity for highly tactical gameplay, countless playstyles, and a great sense of discovery. I can think of little that rivals the experience of playing one of these games, and I hope that feeling continues on through the coming generations of this franchise.
