Pokemon X&Y the 6th generation of pokemon felt like it came too soon, it's been less than even half a year later since Black 2 & White 2's release. Despite that, I was very pleased but then when they revealed Mega Evolutions I had doubts and those doubts came to fruition when I realized they revealed about half of this generation's pokemon already. The total amount of 6th generation is only 69 new pokemon, the rest are the rehashed designs of the previous generations Mega Forms sadly. Yet this wasn't my only issue, the game is far too easy. Sure pokemon games have always been easy at times leading to eventually be difficult. But his game is extremely easy, and the reason why is this generation's version of the Exp Share. In past pokemon main titles the Exp Share was a held item and the pokemon holding it would receive half the exp points of the active pokemon's victory without needing to be in battle at all which is nice for training weaker pokemon. That's not the case for X&Y, the exp share gives your active pokemon 100% of the exp and ALL of your inactive party pokemon get 50% of that. So this pretty much eliminates the need to grind at all and its handed to you pretty early in the game. Thankfully you can turn the exp share off anytime you wish out of battle and all will be well if you aren't already addicted from using it.
Other easy things are that a lot of items and certain pokemon that both would be hard to find and obtain in previous titles are just simply handed to you in this game which is all far too convenient. For example a rival will hand you a HM (Hidden Machine) you can only use right after you just got the badge to be allowed to use it . Then following from that you get a pokemon that can use said HM perfectly without needing to get a HM slave (a fan term for a pokemon in your party that is solely for HM attacks only) to prepare for said HMs ahead of time as usual. The same can be said for the high catch rate of certain legendary pokemon that aren't even worth using a Master Ball at all.
You hardly need to work for anything in this game unlike the past games, even effort value training as been streamlined. With the Super Training feature, you select one of your pokemon to aim soccer balls at various body parts on blown up balloon versions of other pokemon that have high base stat of the Mini game you're trying to give your own pokemon's effort value points to. You rack up a certain amount of points with each hit of your soccer ball using the touch screen then afterwards your pokemon is awarded effort value points of that stat you choose to do the mini game of as well as a training bag. These training bags variety from Small, Medium or Large. Small gives your pokemon 1 EV, Medium is 4 EVs, and Large is 12 EVs. For every 4 EVs put in to your pokemon's stat, it will increase by 1. There is only enough space for 12 bags only, so even ones of the same name and size will still take up different spot. Oddly enough when being awarded of S,M & L bags is that even if you do the super training within a shorter time you are still sometimes give a S bag instead and other times if you take longer you'll get an L bag. It just doesn't make any sense to give you the worst bag from completing the training fast and then praise you with a good bag if you did poorly but taking too long. There are other kinds of training bags that double the amount of EVs your pokemon gets next time they do their next Super Training Game and others that appear only when leaving the bottom screen on the Super Training set like the Reset Bag which removes all of your pokemon's EVs completely. There are further Super Training mini games that only fully EV trained pokemon can play, and those games are a bit more challenging then the three levels of EV super training, and these games sometimes award you certain rare items that if you're skillful enough can get plenty of.
Like past gens they've often introduced new ways of battling, and this for this gen there's two more to add . One of them being Inverse Battles, its basically opposite day for resists and weaknesses. For example Dragon types are weak to their own typing but for an Inverse Battle using a dragon type attack on one would be doing half damage instead. And the usual types that resist their same type of attacks will be super effective respectively. It adds a interesting layer of depth that takes all you knew of what was effective and no so effective and flips it so you might have to think before confirming what attack to use for once. The other kind of "new" way of battling are Sky Battles. Every so often you'll encounter Trainer that is on a high cliff or some sort and they'll ask to battle you of your own choosing if you have at least one pokemon in your party that is a flying type and/or has the ability Levitate and only those kind of pokemon will be all you battle with for these kinds of battles. Certain pokemon despite being a flying type cannot participate in these Sky Battles. Reason being is only that some flying pokemon 3D models are on the ground instead of constantly flying in mid air which is silly reasoning yes but that's why. As I quoted earlier as saying "new" way of battling, because this isn't new kind of battling at all, if anything it limits you almost entirely. You can't use specific attacks in these battles, besides the obvious that ground attacks won't work. But that's not what I'm getting at, you can't moves like Surf for example just because you're in mid air, but when since pokemon games had that kind of limiting "realism" like having a fire type battling on the water have them use dig which would near kill them realistically or have a pokemon use dive during a battle that takes place solid ground with no near water source. All sky battles are just limited regular battles that only exclusive pokemon can join on while talking away a good chunk of certain attacks you're allowed to use. This way of battling doesn't add anything at all to pokemon battles what so ever compared to strategic depth that double, triple, rotation battle elements have in the past. It's an unnecessary to addition battles entirely.
Online wi-fi for battling fellow trainers across the world is easier then ever with the Player Search System or PSS for short and like the super training, this is available to at the beginning of the game with an extremely user friendly interface. A newly added trading feature called the Wonder Trade. This feature is a trolling fan's delight as you do a blind trade, put any pokemon to trade and get a random pokemon back. Honestly its such an odd feature overall but it isn't without the hilarity to see what pokemon you got and if that random player as a sense of humor, what they named it too. Added feature accessible via PSS are O-powers, different kinds are given do you by man you'll encounter in each town and city's pokemon center or hotel. Each time he'll give you a different kind of O-power. These powers increase the amount of various things you'd get in the game, if it be money, exp, critical hit rate, healing during battle from it and the list goes on. All of these O-powers can be leveled up individually to increase the amount they give and they last for set certain period of time with a limited frequent use before having a cooldown period. You can use these O-powers on your friends too and the cooldown for it will be less compared to if you used it on yourself. So this makes you wanna help your friends out while benefiting from it in the process. It might seem like the O for O-powers could mean Over as in Overpowered and may be especially in later levels of it. It sort of feels like legal cheating so to speak. Just another use that makes this game even easier I'd say.
A long over due feature in this franchise is Pokemon Amie, The touch screen it used to pet your pokemon in certain areas on their body. Based off the sound of rubbing them if the sound makes high pitch they like being rubbed their but if its a high bass sound your pokemon will certainly have a sad or angry look to let you know it hates it. Using this feature can be very immersive and is a nice way of increasing your pokemon's affection for you especially for ones that can only evolve that way. You can also feed them macaroons which are called Pokepuffs that you earn from doing these mini games aside from super training. These mini games require you have at least 3 pokemon in your party to do, and are of tap and drag matching berries each of your pokemon want (sadly you don't get any actual berries from it), doing a well timed bouncing yawn off one of your pokemon's face and a mix match puzzle of a still moving picture of three of your pokemon in your party. Completely any of these mini games gets you more Pokepuffs and there are higher stages of difficult for each game, and the higher difficultly the better and rare Pokepuffs given.
Another element that long time fans have been dying to have is customizing your character's appearance. Finally we can stop looking like the clones of the default male and female character designs see of ourselves when playing online battles. It starts after choosing your gender beginning the game by choose one of 3 skin tones, pale, white, or lightly tanned. Sure it's not much variety in terms of ethnicity, but it's a step in the right direction. There's even changing your eye color with different colored contacts. As well as changing your hair color and hairstyle by visiting a salon in the largest city ever created in pokemon main title game to date. Now for clothes, for almost in each town and city there will be a boutique store for you spend your money to buy different articles of clothing, If it be a hat, shirt, pants, dress, bag/purse, shoes. The specific store in that town or city will usually sell two to three types of clothing so you'll need to go to another store that sells the other parts and vice versa. You can change your clothes in each boutique's changing room or change at any pokemon center which will be the only places to change your color contacts too. The clothes you can buy in store change each day, so check back and you might just find something new to buy from that same store. A well added feature to this If you like more then one combination of clothes you have you character wear you can set up to six slots saving your character's set of clothing so you can switch sets of outfits without needing to re-equip different clothes again. The appearance customization as whole is a feature I hope will continue on in the next main title games as it was implemented pretty well for a first try overall.
As I mentioned earlier in the review Mega Evolutions, this is basically having a final form of a pokemon (or a pokemon that doesn't have an evolution at all) of a previous gen having them holding a mega stone that is specifically for that pokemon and during battle you can choose to Mega Evolve them which doesn't even take up a turn thankfully. Mega Forms of pokemon changes them drastically too, a pokemon's in Mega Form will have certain base stats increase to legendary status as well for some mega forms their typing and ability will change too, some for the better and some for worse sadly. This adds new strategies to older pokemon as well as making some be actually useful for competitive battles, while making already powerful pokemon be even more powerful. To maintain balance of both trainers not having all mega evolved pokemon in their parties during battle, you can only mega evolve just one or your pokemon for that battle. This evolution isn't permanent, so think like Digimon evolution as they change back after the battle ends. I feel this is what most of this generation's "new" pokemon went into which these redesigns of past pokemon which is a shame honestly. Its seems like a distraction for one track minded fans to ignore the lack of real new pokemon. It seems most fans have fallen for it entirely.
Not very far in the game at all, you'll be able to get one of the Kanto starters from the red & blue/green versions along with their appropriate mega stone for you to later mega evolve them into. This takes away a lot of the impact that usually comes with you choosing your starter a game's current generation as this happens just an hour or two into the game you get another starter. It would have been more fitting for you not to choose a kanto starter at all until after you've beaten the pokemon league. It just makes the starters of this current generation feel overshadowed for long time fans of nostalgia since the 1st ever generation starters are ever so ripe for the picking.
The team villains for this generation are Team Flair who to want to make world beautiful. Usually a villain team will have a certain goal to accomplish within then main title game, but Team Flair doesn't seem to truly have one despite their claims. Their plans are all over the place, you figure at first they want the world to look pretty, then they want money. Then their end result doesn't really add up since they don't succeed in achieving anything it all. At least past villain teams accomplished what they originally set out to do before you as the main trainer stopped them. That just isn't the case with Team Flair and their ironically tacky awkward red orange suits since they're all about beauty and fashion. Any ounce of storyline reveals itself at one moment after you get your 7th badge then disappears for a while then comes back at the end of the game before the credits. I miss the narrative that Black & White had, that game challenged the whole ideal being a pokemon trainer from a PETA perspective if you will. Sadly X&Y dreadfully lacked in the storytelling department almost entirely. Even past main titles besides Black & White had great story telling in their own ways left for fan speculation and lore, but for X&Y there were too little moments of this nearly fleeting.
Really X&Y feels very empty, like a radiant holy grail with nothing inside, sure its a pretty graphical 3D upgrade but has lackluster adventure. It just seemed like most things weren't done fully just to put out a 3D main title game that rebalances the meta a whole with the introduction of the new fairy type to stand against the overpowered typing of dragons. Not just new fairy type pokemon but even previous pokemon get fairy added to their typing and some have their typing completely change to just fairy now. Fighting type attacks that were "Super Effective" on that normal type pokemon in the past aren't anymore now being fairy (which resist fighting). So veterans will have to relearn what still works and doesn't work. Fairy type is a grand game changer all for the better. More rebalance is that steel lose their resists to ghost and dark, and grass types aren't effected by any of the powder moves including the overpowered Spore. And ghost aren't affected by any attacks or abilities they would prevent them from being switched out like arena trap or mean look. Like I said it all just feels like rushed 3D simulator to rebalance how broken the meta as gotten the past generation.
If you want to play a pokemon main title for a grand experience of a standard journey like past titles go replay previous titles and if you're looking for a pretty package with hardly anything with of value within, then you'll most likely love pokemon X&Y.