Pokemon Black and White was the second generation released on the DS which is a first since each past generation has it’s own console, the 1st original game boy, 2nd Game Boy Colour, though it was playable on the game boy and 3rd had the Game Boy Advance. These games are the first time that the Pokemon Company, a group who usually only work on the console games such as XD and Colosseum who are owned by Nintendo themselves rather than Game Freak, worked on a main series game and do you know what the series really benefits from this. First let’s start with the 1st generation story shall we, kid goes on journey, fights 8 gym leaders, deals with some terrorists along the way, becomes Champion. 2nd Generation, kid goes on journey, fights 8 gym leaders, deals with some terrorists along the way, becomes champion, does another 8 gyms, fights old champion. 3rd Generation, kid goes on journey, fights 8 gym leaders, deals with some terrorists along the way, fights big monster to save world, becomes champion. 4th generation, kid goes on journey, fights 8 gym leaders, deals with some terrorists along the way, fights big monster to save the world, becomes champion. Starting to notice a pattern here. I’m not saying the first four generations were bad games, well the 3rd kinda is, but anyway here’s the basics of the 5th generation, kid goes on journey, discovers terrorist plot to take away everyone’s Pokemon and awaken a giant monster, fight 8 gym leaders along the way, unable to stop awakening of monster, seek out opposite monster, chase down villain at elite four, beat elite four, storm villain’s castle, defeat villain, find another big bad behind him and beat him. Very very different isn’t it. The Pokemon Company’s inclusion rekindled the spark of a series that’s become rather stagnant over the years, I mean Game Freak can design some good monsters and can build a good game, but storywise they need some help and that’s what the Pokemon Company provides.
The story starts out of course with you picking your gender, we have the male character Hilbert who looks like your typical Ash Ketchum like trainer or the female trainer, Hilda who wears short shorts, now I now they say the trainers are aged up from the originals so I’m praying she’s 16 at least otherwise it’s just plain wrong and considering Japan’s legal age which is 12, it probably is as wrong as I’m thinking it is. Course the artwork in the actual game isn’t as bad as some of the shit that’s over the internet, but what do you expect, it’s the fucking internet and no I'm not going to show you any of it, I'm still emotionly scarred thanks to Jungle De Ikou.
The game provides you with two rivals, the main one who takes the monster stronger than you pick and the other who picks the weaker one, mainly cause that’s all that’s left. So what are the grass, fire and water types this time, well for Grass it’s the snake on legs Snivy.
For Water it’s the otter, Oshawatt
and For Fire, the starter I chose, it’s the pig Tepig, wait a minute a burning pig, anyone else fancy some bacon right about now?
Of course the monster design of the series is better than the last couple of generations, not as good as gen 6 mind, but all Pokemon you encounter before beating the game are all new, so no Zubats and Geodudes when entering caves and it leveled the playing field between old players and new, since old players will tend to drift towards old monsters as they already know what they are capable of. The environments are a lot bigger and there are in fact less routes, but, this is because the already existing routes are mostly huge. Many of them are shaped that if they were made on old consoles they’d be classed as different routes, so no route 10, turn a corner, route 11, in fact before beating the game Route 11 is as about high a number routes will go if you just stick to the main routes. This also means that while one area of Route 1 has level 5 monsters, another area unreachable without surf has level 30’s. Many of the areas on the maps are connected by bridges the camera will zoom out for giving you a much grander view and that’s the thing everything feels so much bigger, brighter and much more like a real world. Oh and you always wondered how Pewter City was a city with like four houses well, let’s just say the 3rd gym city, looks and feels like a city, it’s filled with freaking skyscrapers and out to sea is an island with a lighthouse containing a legendary only available via mystery gift, which I have by the way. Of course city designs are much different as they are based differently. The old generations were very much based on Japanese cities whilst these ones are heavily based on American ones, with the 3rd Gym City based on New York City and the 4th Gym City based on Las Vegas which you even have to cross a desert to reach, sorta like the real vegas, I think. It has been stated that all of Unova is based on New York, map wise this is true, but there are areas that resemble other parts of america.
Oh yeah that reminds me, Emolga, this little bugger is Electric and Flying and despite the game telling you over and over to take on the electric gym with ground types, guess what the leader has two of...
Dick Move Game Freak, Dick Move.
Anywho the environments now have a more 3d feel which is included in the gym designs whose puzzles are a lot more intelligent than the old games one, they’ll really make you think.
Time is still a factor in the game’s workings, but it’s not just day and night, seasons effect the game as well, though these change once a month rather than how they actually change, but some monsters are more common or only available in a certain month and these even affect areas on the map, some places being unaccessible during much of the year but in the winter snow piles up allowing you to reach the area. Of course version differences well apart from the usual different monsters and different big legendaries, we have area differences, the last gym city for example in Black is futuristic whilst in White it’s rustic and one whole town is completely different, on Black it’s Black City and on White, it’s a forest.
Legendaries well, 1st generation we had three legendary birds and a clone, 2nd generation we had three legendary beasts and two legendary birds, 3rd Generation, we had three golems and three pokemon that effect the land, sea and sky, while the 4th we had emotions, time, space, dreams, nightmares, life, death and God. Kinda went overboard there didn’t we. The 5th Generation has three beasts who are based on the three musketeers with one available for download as the fourth, a fire cat like thing, a monster based on music, a prehistoric bug enhanced with machinery, those last three being all mystery gift, a dragon of ice who is the main focus point of the sequals and the monsters of each version, Reshiram the white dragon on Black and my favourite of the pair, Zekrom the black dragon of White, the pair being based on Yin and Yang. Well I have forgotten to mention the three genies, one of lightning, one of wind which makes it the first ever pure flying type, seriously how did it take this long, surely Pidgey could just be flying on it’s own and an earth one which is only available if you have both the other two, which are of course only available on one version each, which really pisses me off, no one is gonna trade a legendary so really you have to buy and complete both versions, and just a question, who the hell is gonna do that, I know I rented Black version so I could have all starters on White, but come on, no one is gonna do that, not unless you’re loaded and prepared to sit and play through the same game twice and don’t get me started on Mystery Gift, well done Nintendo for only allowing the people that can afford decent wi-fi to have certain monsters, well done. Of course these days it’s impossible to get Mew anyway so do you know what the only way to catch them all is, get a fucking cheat cartridge, which annoys me, why are games allowed to be made that need fucking cheat cartridges to fully complete allowed, it’s nearly as bad as releasing a game and making you spend extra cash on levels that should of been included in the game, I’m fucking looking at you Mass Effect 3.
So what of Pokemon Black and White 2, well the main focus is the fusion of kyurem to one of the dragons depending on each version, which is okay but not really good enough for another game to be made, I mean the story is in no way as good as Black and White 1 and the gym replacements are okay even if Cheren has been down played a lot.
Of course saying that if there is one highlight in the game, it's the poison gym, the replacement second gym, her gym and theme are brilliant, while small and not challenging, it gives off a Scott Pilgrim esque feel and that's always cool. It also has the first ever voice acting in a Pokemon game that hasn't been done since, if you don't count Pikachu's new cry.
The game's also introduced Pokestar studios, a mini game where you battle with set monsters to make a movie, but I didn't spend to much time with that.
Anyway back to Black and White 1. The gym designs are somewhat different to the old ones, which can be summed up with the first gym, whatever gym it is depends on what starter you picked, if you picked fire for example, it’s a water gym, if you picked water it’s grass etc. But going on a sidequest to save a girl gets you one of three monkeys which are grass, fire and water, and these also depend on what starter you pick, your fire starter gets you the grass monkey so you take on the water gym and so on.
New monster designs range from the just plain basic such as dog pokemon that sadly don’t look to much different from actually dogs, to out of this world crazy such as a pokemon design based off Ice Cream, I’m so not kidding.
Hell there’s even a pokemon based off goths, my personal favourite Pokemon Gothitelle, hell the only reason I don’t use one in my level 100 party is that I haven’t raised it high enough yet.
New forms of battles have been introduced both including three monsters in battle, triple battle which is a basic three on three battle where certain moves can only hit certain pokemon depending which position they are on the field so it requires much more strategy and Rotation battles which works like this, one pokemon fights at a time with the other two on the field out of the way but can switched around at any time and not count as a turn meaning you can switch and attack in the same turn. Sadly these forms of battle rarely turn up in the games and rotation only happens once in white while Triple only turns up on black once, with Triple being more common on white and vica virsa.
Also included in the game is it’s version of the Battle Tower, known as The Battle Subway which works very much the same, except you fight on subway trains. Did somebody watch ‘end of days’ before designing this seriously. Course this place also acts as a train station allowing you to reach a certain area only accessible by train.
But then this game is filled with it’s own bizarre oddities such as a woman who sometimes appears on a bridge and when you talk to her she vanishes, oh she’s not a glitch, she’s a ghost that haunts the bridge, but does this effect anything in the slightest… well no… it’s just there to make you see WTF.
HM’s are somewhat downplayed these days, no longer requiring gym badges to make them work. Cut is still as useful as even and so is Fly but Surf is rarely needed as Unova is mostly land, same with Waterfall which only has a few uses and same with Dive which is only used in one area and you don’t have to go there. Strength is very downplayed as the few boulders that you push, once pushed into their holes remain there forever so once you’ve pushed them all this HM is useless. But considering the Pokemon Company games this isn’t too surprising since they don’t use them at all. TM’s now are rather expensive and rare, but they are now infinite from this game onwards which means if you use a gym one, you don’t use it, which was always a problem before you got one from a gym but never used it cause you were always afraid you might want it later so it just never got used and rotted in your bag. This is a big improvement meaning that you can use the gym techniques and can risk making a mistake with them.
However this game does make one step back, pokemon can’t follow you around like in HeartGold and SoulSilver, but this was due to both games being made at the same time and by the point it was added to HeartGold and SoulSilver it was too late to add to Black and White, so hopefully it’ll be added to Black and White 2. Though that’s all a rumor and might not be true.
So what are my overall feelings of these games, best Pokemon games ever… no, but it was until X and Y came out, and I know what you're saying, you thought it was best because it was no, well if that were true, I'd say this about Black and White 2 and I'm really not, they took Black and White and kinda took away what made everything awesome in Black and White, except that Roxie is awesome of course. I know the game corner’s missing, which it still is in newer games, but the story is much more complex and the monsters are as a hole much better designed than gen 3 or 4 and some basic monsters even have special versions as sub legendaries on the game, such as one that monster whose normal version is fire but it’s special version can change it’s type to Fire and Psychic. One monster is available as either it’s small form in an egg or it’s big form as a sub legendary at level 70. These games were amazing for their time, but Black and White 1 is way better than 2. I'm The Joel MH signing off!
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