Pokemon Go Is Making Me Fall In Love With Gen 7 For The First Time

thegamer.com:

I harbour a slight resentment for Pokemon’s Gen 7. It’s not my least favourite (hi Gen 4!), but I typically consider it to be one of the worst. There are a few good reasons for this - half the game is a tutorial, every change to the formula felt like a change for the worst, and everybody is so damn happy all the time. Evil team, I just beat your ass. Have some humility. Nevertheless, there is some form of redemption for Gen 7 through the Pokemon itself. Pokemon Go, which strips everything bar the Pokemon away, is making me remember how much I like it… at least, when I don’t have to play it. Get lost, Hau, no one likes you.

Pokemon Go is Pokemon distilled to its simplest form. You walk around and catch Pokemon, and that’s kind of it. That’s all there is to it. You don’t need to know anything about type advantage, battling, STAB, levelling up, or anything at all that you might have to deal with in a regular Pokemon game. That’s why it attracted such a huge, casual fanbase at launch. All you had to know is that Pikachu is cute. Sure, you can battle, but that was added well after launch, as were most of the complicated evolutionary methods that nodded to the games, the existence of Team Rocket, and anything else that is considered standard in the game today. There were no tasks, no Raids, no events, no shinies… we didn’t even have Team Leaders. Aside from our Professor, there were no characters of any sort. Just walk around and catch Pokemon.

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These days, even though there is a lot more to Pokemon Go, I still think it’s the most casual-friendly Pokemon game, mostly because the daily tasks provide some structure without being