The Newest Pokémon Game Isn’t What You’d Expect, But It’s Still Surprisingly Good

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A new version of has just hit the tabletop, but it's surprisingly not just a copy and paste of the classic game. Despite being one of the biggest media franchises ever, has surprisingly few tabletop games outside the ever-growing While fans growing up in the 1990s may remember, most recent board games have simply been licensed versions of popular games like and

Earlier this month, Hasbro Gaming released a new version of While two previous licensed editions of were made using Pokémon, this new game features several new mechanics that make the game feel very different from a simple re-skin. The result is a different kind of tabletop game, one that actually tries to capture the feel of the franchise instead of just being a simple cash grab.

The original games were basically Monopoly re-skins, with all the same rules and goals as the original game. In the new ,players are actually vying to capture eight different types of Pokémon, which can be collected from various color-coded biomes. The first player to land on a specific biome must pay a Poké Ball fee to claim the area and explore it for wild Pokémon. Players don't automatically catch Pokémon from these areas — they roll a special die that has a 50/50 catch rate. If players miss an initial throw, they can pay for an extra Poké Ball for another chance to capture the Pokémon.

Once an area is claimed, any other trainer who lands on it has to pay a Poké Ball fee to explore it, similar to paying rent in a normal Monopoly game. However, players also have the option of battling the trainer who controls the biome they landed on. When players battle, each player rolls a six-sided die and adds the number of all the Pokémon they've captured to the roll. The player with the highest roll wins, with ties going to the player who controls the area. As a note, trainers can't try to seize an area if a player controls both areas of the same color.

The capture and battle mechanics make feel very different from normal, a game that's