I’ve been playing Pokémon Go, on and off, since 2016. I’ve been playing Pokémon since the Red, Blue and Yellow days, when I played them with my kids. It kept them busy during our long trips to drop them off for visitation every couple weeks.
I don’t think I have ever, ever written about the game (that would be wrong, I’ve written about it twice). I even had a Pikachu hoodie, back in the day. And a Pokémon Pikachu imported Gameboy. So…
Pokemon Go
Started playing this when it launched. I was playing Ingress, the previous game from Niantic Labs, and had gotten really turned off by the bizarrely psychotic player base for that game. If you know, you know. I was riding my bike back and forth to work, about eight miles where I was living at that time, so I would play along the way and then do some more serious pokemoning around the gym near my apartment. Since I didn’t know anyone else who played, I eventually drifted away from it. I’d go back now and again. Then my son started playing, and so I’ve been playing daily since.
The game is built around catching Pokemon and visiting Pokestops. But that’s not going to get you very far. The real game is raiding. Back pre-pandemic, that meant going to a place where there were other people playing Pokemon and seeing if they were raiding. This was never going to happen for me, so I just checked out of the whole Pokemon Go phenomenon.
Niantic added remote raiding (which they just signaled they are about to nerf) during the pandemic. You didn’t have to be anywhere near the gym; a friend can invite you and you can redeem a remote raid pass and do the thing. You can play from your couch.
Well, that I could do. And so I started raiding, as much as possible, given the poor quality of my team and my low level. I started back in the game at level 26, and am on the doorstep of 32, but that is just barely in raid level. (The new raids starting this week recommend a minimum level of 35).
Reddit has a subreddit for people looking for remote raiding, and I hung around there for awhile (and I still do), but I was struggling with finding a good raid team for the raids, and I didn’t know what ‘mons I needed to be leveling, and what were there best moves.
Enter Poke Genie. This fan program will let you enter all your critters and pick the best team from among them for any current or known future raids. It will also analyze their moves and suggest better ones. Using Poke Genie, I can now solo all 1 star raids and some 3 star raids. When I began a couple of months ago, all three star raids were impossible for me.
But now, every other day or so, I walk down the street to the three parks in the area — Charter Oak Park, Mt Nebo Park, and the Globe Swimming Center. I grab all the 1 star raids, find gifts, and go raiding. Via Reddit and Poke Genie, I have a bunch of friends from all over the world, and we send each other postcards. Occasionally, they send a baby butterfly.
It’s nice.
But it’s not enough.
Pokémon Shield
The problem with Pokémon Go is that it forces you to go somewhere — which is fine when I have time and the weather is good. I love walking around for an hour in our local parks. But it’s been rainy, and I’ve been busy, and some days I just can’t get out and do the thing.
There’s a bunch of Pokémon games. Sapphire and Violet, Arceus, probably dozens out since the last one I played, Pokémon Omega Ruby. A couple years back, I got a used copy of Pokémon Shield for the Switch at a local junk store. And then I didn’t play it… until now.
Pokemon Omega Ruby had the Primal evolutions for their box art ‘mons (and Groudon, Kyogre and Rayquaza, the three primal ‘mons from the games, are about to appear in Pokemon Go, too). Pokemon Sword and Shield have Dynamax, which are the same thing. And the same thing as Mega Pokemons. In all of these, you send out a ‘mon and you make it grow giant.
Dynamax evolutions happen in gym battles and in Max Raids, which are triggered in the “Wild Area” by finding dens in the ground bursting with dynamax energy. You enter these with three of your friends, or usually, three randomly generated trainers, and raid the boss. It’s the closest to Pokemon Go’s raids as I’ve seen in any of the games. And it has the same careful choosing of the team used to face the Dynamax, though in my experience so far, it is pretty darn easy to hit their elemental weakness and take them out before they do too much damage. The capture of the un-dynamaxed mon afterward is automatic, and is a nice way to get some ‘mons you haven’t seen in wild yet.
The Wild Area might actually be the more innovative element in Pokemon Sword & Shield. It’s kind of similar to the old Pokemon Safari — an area where you just go around catching Pokemon until you’ve had your fill. In Sword & Shield, Pokemon of all levels can be found. You can easily get into trouble and come across Pokemon many times your level, but after each few levels, you can return and get a little deeper into the Wild Area. The Pokedex will let you know where in the Wild Area that cool pocket monster someone tossed at you out in the world can be found, if it’s there at all. (It will also let you know where in the open world it can be found, if you’ve been there). Eventually you can get out on the lakes and fight those Lapras and Gyrados that I, frustratingly, haven’t been able to get yet.
If you need a rest, you can set up camp, no matter where you’re at. This is identical in most ways to Dragon Age: Origins’ camps, without the kid shouting “Enchantments? Enchantments!” all the time. Your team wanders around, and you can talk with them and play with them and increase your mood. My Raboot (named Reboot; that’s him at the top of the page) was a moody cuss who’d start losing his nerve after a few too many battles and beg to be able to go back to camp and play, but he’s been a little more stable since he evolved.
Once you’ve made friends with your team, you can cook a curry to heal their status ailments, bring them back from fainting, regain all their health and stuff. You get graded on your curry, and you can find useful starters and berries in the world.
You have several rivals in Sword & Shield. Your best friend, Hop, whose brother is the League Champion, constantly measures his team against yours and often pops up when you’re being harassed by the local villains, Team Yell, who devote themselves to taking down trainers so that their parasocial paramour, a goth chick who seems more embarrassed by them than anything else, will win the next League Championship. There’s also an androgynous blond haired kid who was endorsed by the Chairman himself. Hop and I were, of course, endorsed by Hop’s brother, so we’re basically nepo-trainers.
Aside from the standard battle the gyms, the elite four, and the champion common to all these games, a secondary plot explores the sources and nature of the Dyna evolution, which is somehow connected to the mysterious Pokemon we met at the very start of the game.
More on that later.
Too many games
Pokémon Go never ends. But Pokémon Shield will, at some point, so I’m hoping I’ll be able to get to the end before I get distracted by something else. Calrain and I have started exploring the Mistlands in Valheim. Team Spode still gets together weekly in Guild Wars 2. I have Tactics Ogre Reborn and Cyberpunk 2077 waiting for me to finish them, and the demo for Octopath Traveler 2 sitting on the PS5, waiting to be played. To say nothing of all the physical board games that want some attention.
I like games that have ends, because then I can take them off my list. It feels a little bad to say that — I’m sure game developers hope players will stay with their games forever, but it is what it is. For now, I’m playing Pokémon. Of some sort or another.
