Pokemon Red and Blue

Pokemon Red and Blue Overview

Pokemon Red and Blue were the original Pokemon games that launched one of the most successful video games series in history. Players take on the role of a new Pokemon trainer who must set out to catch all the Pokemon and collect all the gym badges. There are countless ways to play this amazing game and the replay value is very high. Overall the game is a must play for any serious gamer.

Pokemon Red and Blue Screenshots

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Full Review

Pokemon Red and Blue Review

Some say Pokemon are the devil incarnate. Some say they are only for kids under the age of 10. Personally, I say that Pokemon is an inexplicably addictive portable RPG.

Pokemon Red and Blue collectively make up the firstPokemon game. Although they come in two colorful cartridges, rest assured that they are the same game, essentially two halves of a whole.

Like so many other Game Boy titles, the first Pokemon games are not particularly attractive. Some might call the graphics primitive. They probably have a point. Although the graphical quality of the game doesn’t need to be that high, I did find them to be insufficient. The limited colors tended to leave everything on the map somewhat indistinguishable, essentially meaning that it was hard to get around because half the spots you could go looked alike.

Usually the worst I say about the music and sound effects of a game is ‘they’re better than silence’. This is not so true about Pokemon. Fine for a few minutes, I eventually gave in and just turned the sound on my Game Boy all the way down. I couldn’t take it anymore. I preferred silence. I’ve heard worse (like the same music at triple speed), but you’ll definitely need to find something else to listen to after 5 minutes.

The premise of the game is simple in the extreme. You are given the role of a young lad who wishes to become a great Pokemon trainer. To do so, you travel the land from city to city, raising a team and combating the respected trainers, called Gym Leaders, in each town. When you’ve garnered enough respect (i.e., beat them all), you can go challenge the mightiest trainers in the land and become a champion. Although you have occasional run-ins with your less wholesome rival and some downright ‘evil’ trainers, they are but small wrinkles in your quest.

There are not really any characters in the game, at least not compared to most RPGs. Although any other trainers you meet have some semblance of personality condensed into their four or five lines of dialog (sometimes just one), you aren’t suppose to really care about them. This game is about combat!

Outside of combat, the game maintains its devotion to simplicity. Some obstacles are placed in your path to limit your destination options, overcome by teaching certain abilities to your Pokemon. There are a couple boulder pushing puzzles thrown in for good measure. Littering the path though are random battles (which are wild Pokemon you could catch for your team) and fellow trainers, the vast majority of whom would like to see just how good a trainer you are.

When that happens, both of your teams will enter battle. The battles are one on one, but you can have up to five other Pokemon you could switch in, or to take over should one ‘faint’ (HP at zero). Each of your Pokemon can have up to four maneuvers learned, each having a certain number of times it can be used without rest. Each move belongs to one of 15 ‘Types’. Each Type is more effective against some, and less against others. How effective is determined by what Type (or Types, as they could be two) the opposing Pokemon is. The effectiveness of the different types against each other is essential to success in Pokemon. Pokemon are also more adept at using Moves of the same Type as they belong to, so a Pokemon using a move of their Type against another who belongs to a Type weak against said Type will do massive damage.

In addition to the addictive goodness of pummeling the opposition, after achieving your goal you enter a bonus dungeon and challenge the mightiest of wild Pokemon. You can also go all out and try to pick up all 150 breeds of the creatures, or find a buddy and pit your teams against each other.

However, you need all this additional play, because in addition to being short, the game is overly easy. Although you have many options to customize a team, the Red and Blue version don’t make you use any of them. More than once I’ve been able to muscle my way through the entire game with a single Pokemon, and indeed it was actually easier than doing so with a full team of six. It doesn’t cost the game much addictiveness, but it definitely caused me to think less of it.

Final Grade: 80%

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