Happy birthday big dog
I will continue to play video games off grid regardless of societal collapse
I beat Pokémon Black last night.
Injecting gen 1 Pokémon into my team for the whole play through worked out great. Now I’m in the postgame and I feel like all these gen 1-4 critters that are now present shoulda just been there the whole time.
Post game is huge and it was very weird seeing three inaccessible towns on the map. I will be hanging out in postgame for a good while before touching part 2. I always liked N for his basic trainer design and I’m glad he turned around.
The twists at the end were nice to see them trying something different, but didn’t do much for me, still very predictable and not at all interesting when they seemed to be trying so hard. There were two things that seemed to blatantly rip off mother 3: N’s “creepy” playroom, and the pseudo mother 3 theme of love when N turns around and learns a lesson.
Pokémon has always been a spiritual successor to Mother in many ways, but this just didn’t land and seemed too hamfisted IMHO. Also Ghestis theme was just trying to pull a One Winged Angel. They’re assuming you’ve never played those games I guess, because it seems hamfisted to me.
It is great to see the Pokémon industrial complex try and break the chains and do something different, but it still felt so restricted. This was clearly developers crying out:
I know already that part 2 will break the mold even further and this was just opening the door. Also it’s still a beautifully rendered Pokémon experience. It’s still insane to me how well animated all 600+ Pokémon were without using half of them. In the end, I’m still in it just to see my familiar critters dance around on screen, and explore beautiful new areas— that’s all.
Ps: I do like the general art design of B&W, with its two-tone style. Around the time B&W2 were contemporary, I was in the middle of nowhere playing Pokémon tcg official league on campus of a private college I didn’t go to, lol. The two tone energy cards and style were appearing in the tcg as well, and I have a weird nostalgia for it.
