Pokemon: My reflections on why the series is no longer fun

[blaydcor]

A little over 11 years ago, something incredible happened: I played Pokemon Blue for the first time. I had only vaguely been aware of the game as the one with a bizarre commercial where a fat, crazed bus driver crushed a bunch of weird animals.

I was hooked. I played the game so much that my clock maxed out. I beat the Elite 4 107 times. Before too long all my friends had the game. And then watched the show. And then collected the cards. The whole world had pokemania. My battery back up failed and my file got erased but, unperturbed, I started over and preceded to retrain another full lineup of level 100's. Waiting for yellow version was the first time I got really, really hyped for a game way before it came out.

I have never had a more mindblowing experience than when I first played Silver Version. The graphics looked...good. There was a fancy experience bar in the bottom. NEW pokemon. New gyms. And you could go back to the old gyms. You could even FIGHT ASH (pokemon trainer from Red/Blue).

I got pretty hyped for Ruby/Sapphire too. They finally released and...I actually a a little was disappointed. Not that thsi stopped me from aggresively and addictively blasting my way through it. But...there was nothing incredibly new. Nothing gamechanging. A lotta new critters to catch, a LOT of nice little extras. Contests, those were kinda fun. And of course the obligatory graphical upgrade. Blinded by my love for the series, I ignored a sneaking sense of disappointment in Gamefreak and continued to pours countless hours into the game, but....but...

I couldn't completely deny it. Pokemon was starting to get old.

Diamond and Pearl had me feeling pokemania all over again. This time, I was SURE, there would be monumental changes. Some sort of beefed up quest/story. An upgrade to the battle system. Little things like the return of day and night and the implementation of the touchscreen gave me hope.

I got Pearl on day 1, and quickly came to a heartbreaking conclusion:

They still hadn't changed it.

It's the same damn game. You can get a cake, put all the icing on it you want. Draw cool swirly shapes on it, make the cake bigger and more tiered and dye the icing different colors and cut the peices in different shapes and a million other little things.

But it's still the same cake, and after a while, it stops tasting as good.

I'm still playing the same game I played 10 years ago, with a bunch of minor bells and whistles and cosmetic varnish. That and a hell of a lot more Pokemon, which doesn't really spice up the aging gameplay too much. Ironically, while there's definitely more than ever before in the game, it feels like less of it is worth doing. Things that were once unique and awesome feel stale and tired. The graphic style suddenly feels very dated. Pokemon once felt cutting edge; incredibly unique and completely in a league of its own. Now it feels borderline obsolete. I played thousands of hours of Pokemon when I was kid; going on a bland journey for 8 badges for the 30th time has just lost its edge.

You can go on about Battle Frontiers and refighting trainers and 450+ Pokemon and all that, but none of that makes the basic game any more fun. An apple with a rotten core will never taste good (sorry for all the food analogies).

So, I'm giving up on Pokemon. I traded in Pearl a while back and have zero interest in Platinum. Until Gamefreak actually capitilizes on the ENORMOUS dormant potential that the Pokemon formula has, I'm done with the series. I say it regretfully, sadly; kind of like leaving a close childhood friend who's become a druggie alchoholic that you can simply no longer waste your time with.

I just want to know if anybody feels (at least somewhat) the same: that Pokemon, in its current form, has waaaay overstayed it's welcome, and needs to change.