Soapbox options allow our particular person writers and contributors to voice their opinions on scorching subjects and random stuff they have been chewing over. At the moment, Andy appears again at a pivotal juncture within the Pocket Monster collection which hinted on the path it might take over the next decade…
Like its eponymous creatures, the Pokémon collection has undergone many adjustments all through its evolution. A significant one graced our 3DS screens 10 years in the past right this moment with the worldwide launch of Pokémon X & Y.
The primary essential entries to make use of 3D fashions, with battles offered in stereoscopy, when Pokéfans took our first steps into the France-inspired area of Kalos, we let loose a collective sacré bleu. From its charming medieval villages and dizzying cities to its verdant, autumnal paths, ethereal caves, frostbitten mountains, and fairy-tale forests, X and Y popped with visible splendour. Motion was 8-directional and the digital camera fastened however it might now zoom, pan, and swing to offer this world a way of scope and sparkle to which its predecessors may solely have aspired.
It wasn’t only a graphical overhaul although; there have been mechanical enhancements at play, too. The primary Era VI video games noticed the disclosing of the Fairy kind. This was the primary new kind in 14 years, introducing enchanting new nymphs in addition to granting previous favourites this elemental property to extra simply dispatch dragons. Togepi would now brush off a Draco Meteor to the face whereas Eevee may turn out to be the swish, ribbon-strewn Sylveon.
There may solely have been 72 monsters added to the roster however they made up for this with the gimmick of Mega Evolution. This allowed you to quickly bestow new types, buffed stats, and sometimes modified typings and skills to sure critters. It addressed the difficulty of energy creep, letting long-forgotten ‘mons have their second within the highlight whereas imbuing fights with a aptitude that matched the area’s theme of aesthetical grandiosity. Its essence lives on in Dynamax and Terastallization however these pale compared to how beloved and much-missed Mega Evolution stays right this moment.
Nevertheless, for as a lot as there’s to rejoice about these titles — and the non-public fondness I’ve for them — I can’t assist however see them as one thing of a paradox: the final ‘good’ Pokémon video games and the primary ‘unhealthy’ Pokémon video games.
You may’t be groundbreaking with out leaving a couple of cracks and Gen VI is the place the collection began to really feel rushed, unfinished, or usually missing from a technical standpoint — all issues which can be notably noticeable in the newest era, Scarlet and Violet. That is extensively regarded as because of the modest Recreation Freak group having to develop for extra superior {hardware} whereas beholden to a inflexible (some would say oppressive) launch cycle. Many have been rightly disillusioned that these flagship 3DS titles did not assist the console’s namesake function within the overworld.
Regardless of the case, Kalos arguably lived as much as its identify — taken from the Greek for “magnificence” — and prioritised fashion over substance. This was evident in facets corresponding to corridor-like routes, unchallenging battles (the final Gymnasium Chief solely makes use of three Pokémon, considered one of which solely is aware of three assaults), and half-baked characters. There’s an try at a Stand By Me-style story of 5 children occurring an journey and the notion of a romantic subplot however they’re sadly a forgettable bunch.
Nowhere is this sense of being unfinished extra obvious than in Zygarde, a legendary leviathan that shaped a pseudo-trio together with field mascots Xerneas and Yveltal. Whereas the opposite two play integral components, Zygarde was stuffed away in an optionally available cave, its Pokédex entry suggesting that it might present a secret energy when the ecosystem fell into disarray. Rayquaza, Giratina, and Kyurem had been caught in comparable positions prior to now however had later come again in starring roles of their generations’ third instalments. This custom, coupled with a reveal of Zygarde’s completely different types in Japan’s CoroCoro journal in late 2015, tacitly made a promise of a ‘Pokémon Z’.
This promise was quickly damaged. The beginning of 2016 introduced the announcement of Solar and Moon, dispelling all hope of Z and breaking an 18-year sample. The Nintendo ‘gigaleak’ would later reveal that two subsequent Kalos journeys had been deliberate, making it doubly irritating that they by no means noticed the sunshine of day, presumably because of the builders’ consideration being unfold too thinly throughout different initiatives. Zygarde did in the end discover itself shoehorned into these Twentieth-anniversary titles, awkwardly retconned right into a Hawaiian sojourn the place it served no objective apart from being a collectible.
Other than the swindled serpent, there are a selection of different curios current in X and Y which can be extra ambiguous by way of whether or not they’re unused concepts or puzzling Easter eggs. An notorious one is the ominous ghost woman, who’d seem on an ostensibly regular workplace ground in Lumiose Metropolis and declare that the protagonist was “not the one” earlier than floating away and disappearing ceaselessly. She even will get a web page on the Japanese Pokémon web site’s part that particulars spooky in-game occasions however whether or not she’s a terrorful tease or one other sufferer of Z model syndrome remains to be unknown.
There are additionally areas that trace at a wider world that gamers by no means acquired to expertise. One is the Energy Plant with its a number of entrances that make a degree of telling you that you would be able to’t entry them. Then there’s Couriway City with its railway that may’t a lot as get you again to the central Lumiose terminus. A persistent want of the fanbase is to have the ability to revisit previous areas and we thought this redundant station may ultimately have been our ticket to trip, however any gentle on the finish of the tunnel turned out to be an approaching practice of disappointment.
That’s to not point out the troubling message about “going for assist” scrawled on the again of an indication in Lumiose Station or Everlasting Flower Floette, which featured prominently within the story and was programmed in as a trainable group member however was by no means made legitimately obtainable. In equity, among the video games’ myths have lengthy since been busted: in fact Heatran was by no means meant to look in Jaune Plaza; the Unusual Memento was from Alola; and you’ll’t tip your means into encountering a shiny Pokémon.
And so, a decade on, Kalos continues to carry the title of Most Enigmatic Area, possessing an environment of, at finest, thriller and, at worst, incompletion. Equal components commendable and lamentable, Gen VI’s contribution to aggressive mechanics and enhanced graphics can’t be denied however, sarcastically, for video games that modernised Pokémon and introduced it into 3D, X and Y have been lacking a dimension.