"ran out of creativity"
"first gen is the best"
stopped reading
Nostalgia Filter: The review.
I'm not even going to argue here. "Ran out of creativity" is the ISO Standard "complaint" in this series. It's meaningless after five more generations of loved Pokémon.
"Yeah, it's a shame. Here we are in an underground cave with all these lasers, and instead of having a rave we're using it for evil."
I watched the Generation 1 and 2 Pokémon anime, but I didn't play an actual Pokémon game until Diamond, which I enjoyed immensely. Therefore I'm actually glad I didn't play Red/Blue. I might have turned into a genwunner and missed out on Diamond, Heart Gold and White 2.
I stopped after Gen 5 though. I have no interest in the series anymore.
Gen 1 was okay, but I generally preferred the scope of Gen 2 in comparison. And then Gen 3 - which is still my favorite generation, with Pokemon Emerald being my favorite.
Gen 4 was the end of my Pokemon journey though. The story took too long to get through, and it got way too stifling for my liking. Didn't stop me from sinking 220 hours into Platinum, though >_>
Overall, Gen 1 was pretty good and it has its own charm to it - the music is simplistic, but it's impossible to replicate the exact charm of those music tracks. But it wasn't the high point of the series. You seem to have realized this, or at least realized that the mindset isn't appreciated by everyone here, because you seem to have edited your review to remove the more controversial aspects of it.
I didn't edit nothing, Mac. I don't believe in revisionism. Game Boy chiptunes will give you ovarian cancer even if you're a dude if you're exposed to it for too long a time. And don't get me started on whenever some tracks start to drop out in favour of BEEP BEEP CRITICAL HEALTH sounds.
Leave a Comment:
First Installment Wins: The Series
Even after so many years, R/B/Y holds up as hell. The Game Boy's last hurrah, Game Freaks utilized what little potential was left in the platform to bring us perhaps the greatest "casual" RPG of them all. As much as the sequels and stuff contained more content (mostly in the form of, what, 1,543 new Pokey Men when it was obvious they were running out of creativity halfway through G/S? Did they hire the guy who designed the Mega Man bosses or what?) and gameplay additions, they're just all bells and whistles that owes everything to the surprising depth of gameplay found here.
You're a young dude, setting out to trap and enslave animals whose only crime was instinctively trying to protect themselves when you stepped near the grass where they were keeping their eggs. A jerk, basically. Along the way you uncover a plot to, hmm, something something, Mafia, yadda yadda, control the world. In short, who cares. The plot is ancillary in a game like this. It's pretty much a standard Saturday morning cartoon excuse-plot, though I will give it it's got that charming, half-assed, badly translated Mother vibe going on (though not Stylistic Suck this time), which makes it hard to dislike.
Traveling around the world and finding the various Pokey Men and trapping them inside undoubtedly claustrophobia-inducing balls is almost always fun (when you aren't spending 12 accumulated hours fighting Zubats, naturally). You do tend to feel like a boss when you beat some old gambling dude in one-shot with a Blastoise named SHELLSHOCK (the only canon way to play). It may not necessarily be the most balanced game, but being a 10-year old dude at the time, I certainly didn't pay money to get my ass beat by no computer. The gameplay can be a little slow sometimes, and as with most Game Boy games, the slightly atonal music and sounds will drive you crazy for a while, so it's a good thing having sound on ain't an important part of the gameplay.
If you're itching for some dumb Mon-catching and don't wanna spend, like, 200 hours of your life on it, accept no substitutes. Gen I is gonna treat you right.