Pokemon X and Y Review

Pokemon X and Y bring a whole new experience to handheld gaming. The franchise itself has always been one of the best in the industry, but this game is different than the others. The first four generations of Pokemon games were all fantastic games, but then the series went downhill at gen five (in my opinion). This put Pokemon X and Y under a lot of pressure to bring the franchise back to power of handheld games... And the games did very well. There are plenty of new great gameplay additions, an all new story, and a lot of new and well designed Pokemon and characters that make the game a huge step up from the previous generation of Pokemon.

Story: The story in Pokemon X and Y is very similar to the other games. You must battle and beat all 8 gym leaders and travel to the Elite Four to become the new Pokemon Champion. But of course, you run into trouble along the way, trouble called Team Flare. Team Flare is a villainous group of Pokemon trainers set out to create a "beautiful and better" world. You must defeat Team Flare before venturing to the Pokemon League. All in all, it's a pretty simple plot.

The Story in the Pokemon usually consists of long hours of gameplay, but Pokemon X and Y featured a lot more post game aspects, and cut the story line a bit short. In previous games in the series, I could spend hours building up my party's levels so I could get past the next Gym Leader, but now my Pokemon leveled up twice as fast, thanks to the new and improved Exp Share, and I flew through the main story line. That didn't feel right. Spending hours and hours grinding and leveling up your team just to beat the next gym leader was one of the most fun aspects of the games. If you plan on catching all of the Pokemon and completing your Pokedex, then of course you can be entertained for a very long time. But if you are like me and you just want to build up a good team and become the new champion, you might be a little disappointed.

Pokemon X and Y featured a very familiar and similar plot. The main story didn't last as long as most people would have liked, but it was still very enjoyable. Besides, Pokemon was never really about the story, was it?

Verdict = 8.5

Gameplay: Pokemon X and Y both feel and look very different from previous Pokemon games, with the controls, camera angles, and the amazing graphics. It almost seems like you are playing a completely different game until you actually come in contact with Pokemon.

The game features 3D graphics at certain points in the game, and also includes three dimensional modeled characters, which is a huge step up from the 2D sprites in the previous games in the series. The battles are much more improved now that you are able to see the attacks take place with better design and look at the Pokemon in such detail. During the battles, the Pokemon have much more lively and realistic reactions when attacking and taking hits.

Outside of the Pokemon battles when you are riding around on roller skates in the open world, the buildings and nature look much more realistic. Pokemon X and Y feel much more natural when moving around the open world, now that you can move in any direction, including horizontally. You can also ride certain Pokemon in certain areas of the game, which allows the player to interact more with the environment surrounding them.

Training your Pokemon proves to be more challenging at first in Pokemon X and Y. This seemed so because there are very few trainer battles in between cities, so you must train and level up by fighting wild Pokemon for the majority of the game, but with the help of the new EXP share, your Pokemon leveled up and evolved with ease. The Gym leaders also seem a bit more challenging, because the levels of their Pokemon are significantly higher than in previous games, but they prove to be rather simple if you just take your time to train.

Overall, the gameplay of Pokemon X and Y adds a refreshingly new experience to the series. With a ton of replay value and addicting new aspects, this game will surely have you glued to your 3DS for hours on end.

Verdict = 9.5

Characters: You can tell that Game Freak put much more time and effort into creating and designing the Pokemon than they did in the previous generation. The new Pokemon have great details, and they seem much more original with the names and design. The human characters in the game were a great step up from other Pokemon games. Instead encountering three or four people regularly as you're traveling to the Elite Four, you now see several people along your quest.

Pokemon X and Y made me feel much less lonely than all of the others because of the amount of friends that traveled alongside of me during the game, not counting my Pokemon of course. The addition of characters was a great move and a fantastic change of pace for the series.

Verdict = 9.5

New Features: There are plenty of new additions to the franchise in these games. The two biggest improvements in Pokemon X and Y are Mega Evolutions, and a 3D display. Mega Evolutions change the Pokemon's appearance, and enhances their stats and abilities. To perform a Mega Evolution, the Pokemon must be holding their own, unique Mega Stone, and the trainer must be wearing a Mega Ring. It may only be used by one Pokemon during a battle, and can only be performed by 26 Pokemon. The new 3D aspect is a great feature, but can only be put into use during battle and in occasional cut scenes.

Other new features include new moving mechanics, a new and improved Exp Share, horde battles, sky battles, and new Pokemon and types. In Pokemon X and Y the player can now move around via roller skates, which brings a much cleaner and smoother feeling to traveling. With the new Experience Share, all members of your party get a fraction of the experienced gained in the battle, instead of only one benched Pokemon. Horde battles are a new feature that consists of up to five Pokemon attacking you in the wild instead of just one. This offers more Exp for the user, but you also must endure attacks from all five Pokemon per turn. Sky battles are battles between you and another trainer, that only feature flying type Pokemon. If you do not have a flying type Pokemon in your party, you can not battle a trainer looking for a sky battle. Pokemon X and Y brings 69 new Pokemon to the franchise, raising the total number from 649 to 718. Fairy type Pokemon are also added to the games, some being new and old Pokemon.

These new features were a gamble made by Gamefreak that turned out incredibly well for the franchise.

Verdict = 9.5

Pokemon X and Y are two new amazing installments in the legendary Pokemon series. Even though the journey to the Elite Four seems like it's been cut a little short, the amount of new features like new ways of battling, Mega Evolution, the new Fairy type, and all new Pokemon make these games a must buy for any fan of the series.

Final Verdict = 9.0

Good review. It would have been better if you mentioned Pokemon Amie, Super Training and the improved online features. Training pokemon and online battles and trades are the largest sources of replay value in X & Y after the main story.

good review, mentioning a couple of the online improvements probably would've been a big plus for the games as a whole too, what with it being the first time nintendo can fully utilize online functionality to a decent degree.

although i shake my head at you for the gen 5 comment, i loved those games!

That's actually not a good review, in terms of the way you formatted and organized everything. First of all, characters is not its own section and is instead a sub-section of gameplay or even story, depending on your personal tastes. Second of all, the same thing goes for new features seciton except you're supposed to review the new features under the other sections; that's the whole point of writing a review besides reviewing a game and sharing your opinion. Also, you never mentioned the graphics, resolution, graphical style, frame-rate, textures, lighting effects, music, sound quality, sound effects, balance of sound and music, controls, game mechanics, and other things. These things would have added more depth and detail to your review, allowing it to be more of a critic review than one made by an amatuer. It even shows to the readers that you truly know everything about the game, inside-out, in which you clearly don't. That is the reason and the others I mentioned above why I never trust the reviews written by random people about apps on the AppStore and Google Play, because they are so inaccurate and don't contain everything about the game. At least make an effort and re-organize the sections of your review.

@gordanchoong: It's not a good review because of the sections I reviewed and how it's formatted? I understand I should have added a "Sound" section, but I don't understand all of the other points you made when saying my review isn't good.

Are you kidding me? Are these terms too technical or something? Aren't you a hardcore gamer or something? I think you're a little kid if you don't even understand what frame-rate, resolution, lighting effects, textures, graphical style, sound quality, balance of sound and music, controls, mechanics, cinematics, dialogue, character development, and verdict are.

@gordanchoong: When the **** did I say I didn't know what those were?

I don't know many reviewers who can go into detail about all of those things or put all of those things into one review.

@jr8zeppelin I'd say try not to block off the review into sections; an essay format, having one point naturally lead into another, would flow better. There's also some weird syntax, incorrect grammar, and some words aren't the words you mean -- you could always move horizontally in pokemon, diagonally . How long have you been writing in general? You can improve a lot, especially with descriptions. What makes the graphics amazing? Try to explain you're amazement instead of just leaving it as a this is amazing!

Glad you liked the game a lot; personally I think it was a good entry, but one that fell flat -- key features were left out in favor of the inevitable third entry, the main quest was extremely short, there wasn't much post game content, very linear which was something I expected with a switch to a 3D engine, and there just wasn't much challenge -- This entry was clearly focused a few key audiences: the competitive community who like to EV and IV train, and the group of people who haven't picked up a pokemon game in 15 years, indicated by the emphasis placed on first generation pokemon.

I'm thinking of picking up one of these soon (I used to play Pokémon back in the day on Gameboy, but it's been a while).

How is this for newcomers? What's the learning curve like for someone who hasn't played a Pokémon game for years?

Pokemon hasn't changed a bit since the Red/Blue/Yellow days. You start in a town, you get a Pokemon, you battle gym leaders and head to the Elite Four, then duke it out with your rival. X and Y also has a lot of the original 150 Pokemon in the game, so you should feel right at home.

A review should stick to talking to the elements that impact the game in the context of what the game is trying to achieve. In the interests of conciseness it is expedient to omit swaths of gameplay details (the 'whats') and focus on the critical ones (the 'hows' and 'whys') that colour the experience negatively or positively.

In the digital age we don't need to be given the details of what a game looks or sounds like because we can always check Youtube. We simply need to be told why the way they are implemented matters to the experience (if it does at all). To that end I think he's smart to omit details on character development which is something I assume (going off older Pokémon games) not important to Pokémon X and Y.

But I'd actually go one step further and eliminate categories altogether. As Minishdriveby put it, having points flow smoothly into each other is a good way to approach things. You can normally do that by have a general thesis statement about what you think about the game that helps tie the paragraphs together. You can see an example of how I did that in a review here - pay close attention to how, where I could, I try to take up a theme from one paragraph and use it to start the next one.

Sorry to get an review analysis geeky here, but I'm trying to get into Games Journalism myself so I'm a bit obsessive :P

Ok cool. Thanks for the info!

@Articuno76: I am too! And yeah, I eliminated categories for my current review in progress for FFX on the Vita. Thanks for the read (And the backup, lol).

Story: Predictable boring structure. Same as older Pokemon games. Not really deep, complex, or substantive

Gameplay: Painfully easy. Grind heavy. Can complete most of the game repeatedly tapping the A button while you watch TV.

Characters: A wide variety of Pokemon and an interesting cast help bring this game to life.

New Features: Added lots of new features. Made a ton of refinements.

Overall, same old game with a fresh coat of paint.

Final Verdict = 6.0

@jr8zeppelin: Speaking of FFX, I have a review for FFX Vita as well. But it was written back in January (based on the import version). It's one I'm not particularly proud of anymore, but I remember thinking it read awesomely after I wrote it :P

Pokemon X and Y is the first Pokemon ever where I've stopped playing in the middle of the game. This is a pretty big change considering that I usually hit level 99 for a party of 6. I wonder if it's because of where I'm at in life, or if the game isn't very good. My main criticism is that the game is very linear. It tells you exactly where to go. I felt there was no essence of exploration, which put me entirely off.

The OP gives these games WAY too much credit. First of all, there's barely ANYTHING of significance included in X and Y at ALL. At best, everything was belatedly streamlined - from hidden abilities to customizations on every hand. The 3D and stereoscopic 3D, for you graphics whores, is abysmal at best. Pick any other 3DS game out there; they will have infinitely superior 3D and stereoscopic 3D. I just found this necessary to say because the fan boys are SO high strung for the 3D nonsense in these games that hey neglect the fact that the terrible jaggies are present, lag increases with the forgettable stereoscopic 3D turned on, and other 3DS games and Vita games actually define an appealing 3D sight.

The games are even more "idiot-friendly" as well; I guess the previous intellect-defiling difficulty of the franchise wasn't dumbfounded enough. The linearity is even more pathetic than the 5th gen game's linearity. I guess they think we'll get hopelessly lost mentally if we stray too far from the remedial beaten path.

I also love insulting crap like the neutered Exp. Share telling me how much more of an idiot gamer I must be because of the experience whoring. It mattered not that I could turn it off; it's the message that crap like this sends to me as a gamer. Even kids aren't this inept and stupid, developers.

I just miss the good old days of figuring things out for myself (because, you know, some of us have a functioning and normal to abnormal-sized brain that we'd like to use for once these days in games) and raising my Pokémon without such a needless and aggressive hand-holding assist. I mean, enough of these exist to make me feel like the biggest dummy in existence when I play a modern-era rudimentary fundamental- I mean game, developers.

Mega-Evolutions couldn't be more limited and predictable. You can only have one in your team per battle. They are battle-specific. They aren't exactly "evolutions". Evolution implies changing into a more developed form and remaining in it; these things devolve after battle. Glad we cleared the fact that everyone, Game Freak included, became willfully ignorant to how evolution actually works. I mean, six generations strong, and people suddenly "forget" how one of the main concepts of the franchise works.

There's also the fact that everyone knows what Pokémon has a mega-evolution; so, nine times out of ten, just like their required hold item, they are going to be just as predictable to take down. So much for using a real strategy with these things; the most you can really do is stall a bit with them. If I see something like an Aggron or one of the 1st gen starters on someone's team (you know, Pokémon that people wouldn't use otherwise), that already destroys any chance that player has at surprising me or anyone with a contingency plan with Pokémon like that. Then again, team preview destroyed the whole element of surprise to begin with; mega evolutions simply made it worse.

What is this Pokémon Amie advertising vehicle crap? You mean there's another forgettable mini-game in a main stream Pokémon game that will remain exclusive to its generation? Oh gee; where have I seen this before? I give them props for Super Training however; there's nothing better than using the whole "mini-game in a main stream Pokémon game, let alone game" cliché for a fruitful purpose for once. Simplified EV training, compared to mindless "fun" with Pokémon Amie and other fruitless mini-games in the Pokémon games, is something I'm all for. I don't need a game within a game to have mindless and fruitless fun, Game Freak.

Ah, yes; can't forget about the "meta-game" and multi-player stuff. People like to think that this is what Pokemon is strictly about, since the single player campaign is always neglected. How ignorant, yet, understandable when you think about it. As I said before, however, this, like everything else, has been belatedly streamlined.

Every damn enhancement under the Lunatone is there that you would expect from a new generation of Pokemon and its hardware. Yet, it's just multi-player stuff that should have been present at least two Pokemon generations ago. Just pray they don't shut down their online servers for these games, and others with multi-player features, in the near future....

You also got to love the post game content....if there was anything there to write home about! The only other thing, than Super Training, I found to be a step up, though a belated one, was the sheer variety in Pokémon available in the games. Never before was this a thing in the "preemptive" versions. You would usually have to wait until the "enhancement" version (or in Black 2/White 2's case, versions) for this phenomenon, which should have been a standard from the beginning. I guess they were waiting to make enough Pokémon to do this....or maybe this was another ploy to make these games look good.

I'm seeing these games selling for under $30, new, which is below their retail value, on Amazon alone. With that said, clearly X and Y aren't that great. People are simply trying to justify their unrewarded overhype with these games. Who could blame them, eh? If I fell for the lie that is the obvious ad vehicle drivel Nintendo and Game Freak usually rambles on with for every "new" Pokemon game, I'd try to save face too.

I mean, catch phrases like "first full 3D Pokémon games" and "new Pokemon", despite Game Freak presenting less than 75 new ones, sounds so scrumptious and promising, do they not? Yet, it's the same old song and dance superstructure we all came to know for over 15 years with Pokemon under that superficial and fictitious bravado. Let's not pretend that Pokemon X and Y are any different.

Ah, nothing of value I assume. Carry on with the topic folks!