Pokemon New Compared to Old & what is the e-store like

Hi everyone, I have been out of the Nintendo scene for a long time, and like most some of my most treasured gaming memories were brought to me by this company. The SNES, and N64 were probably my favorite consoles, skipped the cube as the PS2 had a built in DVD player and missed the Wii as i wanted a more "traditional" controller. Anyway enough from memory lane.

I have been considering the 3DSXL, but having a little trouble justifying the expense (just bought a PS4, XBone, Vita, and have 2 tablets). I work away a bit so the tablets and Vita are great for remote gaming / multimedia and the value proposition through the playstation store and PS+ is exceptional, that being said there is only 1 system to get Pokemon on, and hoping handheld smash bros is great.

How are the new Pokemon games compared to the original 3 and Gold / Silver, i am kind of put off by all the new monsters and would like to go back to the original 150 but cannot win everything. Are they still as enjoyable and straightforward or has there been too many things added in that detract or overcomplicate the experience?

I also wanted to know how people find the e-store? Is there good bargains like PS+ where you can get old school nintendo games i.e. lylat wars or classics from the 64 Snes era (original mario kart), and how much do they sell for? PS+ has the FF series at $6.50 a game and classics at $10.45, which from looking at the online e-store everything was still around $40-60, but the nintendo website was not very intuitive.

Pokemon is pretty good. Of the recent ones I would prefer the Soulsilver/HeartGold remakes better than X/Y. I haven't played 5th gen though. If you're needing a game to get you back in to pokemon the 2nd gen remakes were fantastic! X/Y are good games though.

The e-shop is...serviceable. More often than not games cost more on there, though sales do spring up occasionally. Games will usually stay full price (even older ones like the Star Fox 64 3D) compared to retail. I wouldn't get the 3DS just for eshop. There are some good DL only titles on there, and the convenience of having games right on the DS is nice. But lack of sales, price drops and bad Virtual Console really don't make it spectacular. (Though sales and price drops do happen on occasion.)

There's really not much older Pokemon games have to offer that's better than what's delivered in X & Y. The general mechanics of Pokemon games have not changed much, but their gameplay has been improving with every new title. Pokemon X & Y are not the perfect Pokemon game; there's no such thing since every Pokemon game has its faults, but the latest dual release entry is definitely the best and fastest way to hop back into the franchise, see what's new, and learn why so many fans love to battle and trade online. The amount of Pokemon can be intimidating, but the game does not shove it all down your throat. You will not see many of the pokemon available in the game until you start revisiting some routes and dedicate time to hunt them down. X & Y has a healthy diversity of pokemon from previous regions, so expect to see and catch most pokemon from Kanto, Johto, and from the games you have not played. Pokemon is still simple enough for a child to play, but now offers a deeper gameplay experience that can attract its older fans through competitive battles.

The 3DS eShop is not too great. It could be a lot better. It has its occasional sales and is somewhat easy to navigate through. The Virtual Console offers NES, Gameboy, Gameboy Color, and Game Gear games for $2 - $5. The retro library is not the best, but there are many classics available. Unfortunately, the 3DS Virtual Console currently does not have SNES, N64 and Gameboy Advance games. SNES and N64 games are available on the Wii U, though.

I love Pokemon, but X and Y must be the worst I've ever played. It didn't hook me, and I haven't managed to even finish the game - compared to previous generations where not only I'd beat the game, I'd max level at least 6 pokemon and max out the Pokedex within the two versions. I'll keep playing X and Y. It's an okay game. But it definitely didn't hook me like every other one.

Gold and Silver are probably the best, simply because of the number of badges. There is a remake of Gold and Silver on the DS, and the 3DS is backwards compatible with the DS. So those two games are available to replay.

I'd have to say that Pokémon X and Y brought me back into the mix again. Like animeguy said up above, it is not a perfect Pokémon game, but it is by far the most refined game in the series simply because it is the newest one. The improved graphics are quite nice, and the less noticeable improvements to the battle mechanics do make for a better experience.

A double-edged sword for X and Y is that everything has become more streamlined, and more fast-paced. On the one hand this is good because actions that required a lot of menu navigation and item selection before can now be done with quick and simple button-presses, and there are over 700 different kinds of pokemon now so the game encourages you to train many different monsters. On the other hand pokemon gain levels and experience quickly and much more easily, and after the first couple of gyms the game seems to be kind of a breeze. There are downsides, but I'd say on the whole that the changes have improved things, especially the changes from gen 5 which make TMs reusable items like HMs - no more stressing over which pokemon to teach rare TMs to!

As for the newer pokemon, I think they will really grow on you like they did me. I remember in 2006 I was still a 151 purist, and I had trouble accepting the gen 2 and 3 pokemon for a while. But by the time gen 4 rolled around I discovered that I liked a lot of the newer pokemon as well. You'll have your favorites, and there'll be others that you don't care as much about. But in X and Y you'll pretty much end up rotating out a bunch of different pokemon either way you look at it. And I'm sure that you'll find at least a couple of new favorites amongst the 500-or-so pokemon that have been introduced since gen 1. If it eases your mind at all, gen 6 introduces less new pokemon than any other game thus far, instead giving players a better chance to get to know pokemon from across all of the previous games.

Thanks for the feedback. It has quelled my concerns regarding the direction of the Pokemon series. I think i will wait until Smash Bros is available until jump back onto the Nintendo bandwagon.

Hopefully they can make some progress on the e-store.