This is probably going to be a rather long post, and it's not going to be very related to anything that's really going on in the thread right now. Usually, I wouldn't bother with that, but this is a very long, nice thread, with a very long, nice and sort of everywhere opening post, so I figure it's fine.
It was very odd for me to start playing a Pokemon game again. I haven't really played a Pokemon game since Ruby. I played Pokemon Diamond, but I didn't really enjoy it. That was probably more me than Diamond, by the way. Either way, I was 10 years old last time I properly played a Pokemon game. I'm 20 now, so that's quite a gap.
The sort of stranger thing still, is that I'm playing a Pokemon game by myself. When I was 6 and played Pokemon Red, my entire family had Gameboys and also played it. All the boys in my school played it as well, and we'd frequently talk about it, and play together.
Today, none of those people play Pokemon games anymore. They've outgrown it, or at least that's how they feel. And, I suppose, that's what happened to me as well. When I was 14, and played Diamond/Pearl, my sister was in disbelief that I could still be playing Pokemon. I was far too old for that! I don't think it occured to me then, but she's five years older than me, so she played Pokemon games when she was 14, so it was really a very odd statement.
Either way, I felt she was being kind of silly, but it kind of got to me anyway. It could be that I simply didn't like Pokemon Diamond, but I think it was primarily that I felt this was a game I shouldn't really be playing, so I never truly enjoyed it, and quit playing after the 5th gym or something.
Then I stopped playing Pokemon altogether. I never even considered buying Pokemon Black or White, nor Black or White 2. I'm honestly not sure why. I've never been one to conciously think that I've outgrown something, but it's the only reason I can come up with.
Pokemon X/Y came out the day after I'd had exams 3 days in a row (which also were my first 3 exams in my university), so I decided to get it as a sort of present for myself for managing to do all three exams. Exams in three different areas of maths, three days in a row, was quite exhausting (I'm studying physics, but the actual physics is gated behind a lot of maths).
I nearly changed my mind and decided not to buy it, as I didn't want to sully my childhood Pokemon memories. If Pokemon X had been less fun for me than Pokemon Diamond, I imagine I'd have been quite devastated.
Luckily, it wasn't. It was utterly fantastic. And I think a large portion of the reason I love Pokemon again, is that my perspective has shifted. When I was little, I just utterly loved playing Pokemon. My parents loved it to, but in a very different way. The games were fun for them, of course, but part of the joy was seeing how much I loved it to. I'd talk about the games, ask them what words meant, ask how to calculate multiplied percentages (I was really into maths even at a young age), and draw Pokemon. The greatest artistic performance of my life is still the Charmander I drew at age 7. How I did it completely eludes me, because I've never been able to draw anything nearly as detailed, nor charming, since. Anyway, back to the point, my parents enjoyment of Pokemon was hugely amplified by my love for it (and, to an extent, my siblings, but they're all a lot older than me, so their liking of Pokemon was very different from mine).
But, back to me. As I said, my perspective had shifted. Upon playing Pokemon X, I quickly realised that I didn't enjoy Pokemon as I had when I was 7, but rather the way my parents did. I was playing the game with my 7 year old self.
That probably reads differently than I mean it. The point is that nearly constantly while playing Pokemon X, I couldn't help but feel just how much my 7 year old self would have loved this. Everything from the story (which I personally felt was terrific, especially the AZ bit) to just how adorable Charmander is in 3D.
Upon reaching Victory Road, I was completely shocked at how gorgeous it was. Which is a bit odd, because the cynical part of me would say that I've seen a lot of games that are far more visually impressive than Victory Road. But the combination of the presentation of Victory Road, and the surprise that the overworld in Pokemon could be gorgeous, simply made my day. Then that happened again with the Elite 4 area, which was even more visually impressive.
As I anticipated, I rambled on a bit there, and some things might be a bit overly personal, but that's probably fine.
I genuinely can't see how they could have made this game much better, though.
The visuals were simply marvelous.
The audio was very good - and I believe, far better than it has ever been before, unless Black/White had some very good music)
The story was very engaging, at least to me. The superficial core plot of stopping Team Flare isn't too interesting, but there are a lot of subtle themes that I really enjoyed.
The gameplay was, as always with Pokemon games, roughly as strong as it possibly gets.
Additionally, I really enjoyed that the difficulty wasn't too high. If I had had to do min/maxing to get the strongest possible Pokemon, a lot of the fun would have been lost to me. I never evolved my Charmander, but instead traded for a new one that I evolved to Charizard. I used both, but the Charizard never used Mega Evolution, as I simply didn't like the visuals. As a result, neither of them ended up being extremely effective (The charmander outleveled all my other Pokemon by 6 levels in the end, but was still the weakest overall), but it was very fun, in a way it wouldn't have been had I felt forced to evolve them.
The relatively simple difficulty gives a lot of freedom, and lets you play the game however you want it. I think that's exactly how a Pokemon game should be. If the difficulty becomes so high that the stats of the Pokemon become vastly more important than how you like it, the game loses a lot of its charm.
Pff, that didn't end up very long at all. It's barely over a thousand words!
Also, the comic above is just adorable!
