Pokémon Black is from the 5th generation Pokémon games. As I was playing the previous generation, I felt that the Pokémon franchise had become stale and desperately needed a shake-up. Pokémon Black seems to be a partial step in that direction, without fully committing.
Pokémon Black has the same story template as every other game. Playing as a boy or a girl, you start out with one Pokémon and travel the world, catching more Pokémon, training them up, and battling your way to beat the Elite Four; the best trainers around. Your secondary aim is to collect them all, but this is normally only possible by owning other versions, then trading between them. In this version, there's the ability to interact over the internet, but Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection was discontinued in 2014. In addition to your quest to become the best Trainer, the story revolves around Team Plasma who think capturing Pokémon and forcing them to battle is cruel. It's an idea that people have criticised Pokémon for, so for Nintendo to add it into the game is very surprising. However, the implementation is poor. The game never makes you feel guilty about what you are doing, and Team Plasma come across as hypocrites. To fight against the cause, Team Plasma capture/steal Pokémon and make them fight. It makes no sense at all, and so it ends up feeling like you are battling Team Rocket.
Your two friends play the roles as your rival trainers. Cheren is determined to be the Pokémon Champion, whereas Bianca is constantly doubting herself and just wants everyone to be happy. They have stronger personalities compared to rivals in previous games. Additionally, you have the mysterious guy that goes by the name of 'N' who seems to be linked to Team Plasma.
The graphical style has changed a fair bit, so the building design has a different aesthetic, and the character sprites are taller. Outside of battle, there's varying uses of perspective; moments where the camera pans and zooms. This can help you get a better sense of scale, but these features are actually quite jarring, and due to the scale; it can take much longer to travel through the cities. For example, there's a few large bridges and it takes a minute of game time to run uninterrupted from one end to the other. It's a case of style over substance. The battle graphics have had a major overhaul, and now you can see the entire Pokémon, which now have detailed animations.
The user interface has a few annoyances. In battle, the text and health bar looks a bit squished. In your bag, you can organise your items, and obviously will put the most used items at the top of the list. However, new items are added to the top, so this will ruin your order. I also found it annoying that you could see the item list on the bottom screen, but had to look at the top screen to see the quantity.
As expected, even more (155) Pokémon have been introduced. I never understand why all the other countries aren't aware of each other's species. Surely, these Pokémon have always existed, don't these different countries communicate with each other!? In this game, you don't encounter any Pokémon from previous generations until after you complete the main game. This forces you to discover and learn about the new species, but the majority of them are actually bad designs (and bad is a understatement). There's a handful of good ones, but most of them are cringe-worthy and it really seems like they have run out of ideas.
There's some Pokémon that just seem like rejected designs of generation one. Timburr is basically a Machop carrying a log, and it's no surprise that he evolves twice, with his final evolution occurring by trading. Klink and its evolutions are in the same vein as Magnemite; since they are just a set of cogs rather than magnets. Trubbish is a bin bag of rubbish which similar to Grimer and evolves into a large pile of trash. There's Vanillite who is a small ice cream. He evolves into a larger ice cream cone, then a double-cone.
As time progresses, the seasons change. Aside from a few events, a different aesthetic and a couple Pokémon that change during the seasons, this concept feels tacked-on at best. Unless you play the game over a long period of time, you will only see a couple of seasons anyway.
HM moves (the ones you use outside battle) have been severely restricted. Now you have more flexibility with your core team, since you are no longer forced to have a Pokémon that knows Cut, Fly, Strength, Rock Smash, Waterfall etc. Obviously, Fly and Surf are still useful, but your path is no longer blocked by boulders, trees and water. On the downside, the map has become less interesting, since there are no branching paths with secrets along the way. There's no need to back-track, so the whole game just feels more linear. TMs are now reusable which I have mixed feelings about. It makes sense for the weaker moves to be reusable, but the more powerful ones such as Solar Beam can now be taught to as many of your Pokémon as you want.
There's a few other changes worth mentioning. Pokémarts now appear inside Pokécenters so you can heal and stock up on supplies in one visit. I think this is a feature I didn't realise I wanted. When I saw it, I thought "this is an ace idea, why didn't I think of it!?". Another change is that experience points are weighted with the consideration of your opponent's level in relation to your own. This means you will gain even less by grinding against weak opposition, but will receive a major boost by a victory over a stronger opponent. The berry system has been cut down, and now you are given berries by Pokémon Rangers that you meet. Fishing plays a smaller part too, the first rod you receive is the Super Rod after defeating the Elite Four.
Two new styles of battling are introduced: Triple Battles (which is an extension of double battles) and Rotation Battles (which are similar to normal battles, except you can swap Pokémon and attack on the same turn). This feature is barely worth mentioning because you only encounter these battles a couple of times.
I found the Elite Four to be fairly easy, mainly because a lot of their Pokémon are weak to Dark moves and there's plenty of Dark types in the game. Once you defeat the Elite Four, you can access a few new areas. A word of warning though, there's a huge difficulty spike as trainers you meet have level 65+ Pokémon whereas you will be around 15 levels behind. You can find a research facility that allows you to import (not trade though) your Pokémon from the previous generation. Alternatively, you can grind against the stronger wild Pokémon in order to make up the level difference. There's loads of Pokémon to catch in the post-game, so there's plenty to keep you interested after you've completed the story.
If you overlook the poor designs of the Pokémon, Black/White is still a good game. I think my enjoyment of the game was restricted by the fact I've played all the previous generations so the series feels stale. For me, it just didn't do enough to shake up the formula, or didn't make the changes well enough to make a difference.