Pokemon Double Battle disappointment

I've just made my way through Eterna Forest in Pokemon Diamond. So, for the first time, I've experienced the Pokemon games' Double Battles. To be honest, I'm not that impressed. 

A Pokemon battle that's two versus two is more interesting than the usual one-on-one. But it still feels very much like a single battle since you only control your own Pokemon. The result is a battle that's reminiscent of the fights in Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, even  while you have two party members: restrictive.

Being able to control only one member of a two member team just seems like a wasted opportunity to me.

What if two Pokemon of related types could combine techniques?

Or what if doing two techniques in a certain order unleashed some sort of hidden skill?

No doubt the later generations of Pokemon games get into this sort of thing. Though if they don't, then things like Double Battles aren't nearly as innovative as they could be.

Nonetheless, Double Battles do hold some potential for new ways to develop the game's plot since they mean that you temporarily team up with another trainer. 

Disappointingly, though, my partner in the Eterna Forest, Cheryl, looks like she'll be just a one-off character. But, there are another seven gyms to get through, and likely a whole lot of plot to develop. At this point I know almost nothing about Pokemon Diamond's Team Galactic after all. 

Pulled back into Pokemon Diamond

Pokemon Diamond holds a special place among RPGs. It's just got this power to draw me in after only a few minutes of play. I think a lot of it has to do with the game's variety. 

Most RPGs allow players to customize their party members, but the Pokemon games actively encourage you to get as many party members as possible. But, unlike RPGs with huge playable casts like Chrono Cross, party members in Pokemon Diamond have no backstory and are invested with only as much personality as players give them. 

Whether you give your Shinx a nickname or not, it'll always be your Shinx and it's quite easy to build an impression about its personality from how it fares in battle. Not to mention the traits and skills mechanics that the third generation games introduced make each Pokemon just a little bit more unique, leaving players even more to work with when it comes to building their party members' personalities. Though, aside from players projecting personality onto their Pokemon, these mechanics have just a minor impact on the core game.

Anyway, there's enough to do in Pokemon Diamond to make it interesting. And it's refreshingly different from the Red and Blue versions that I'm so much more familiar with. I haven't even gotten to the underground part of the game yet. 

Though I have more or less built up the party that I'll keep until the end of the game: A Machop, a Buizel, a Magikarp (eventually a Gyrados), a Shinx, a Monferno, and a Staravia. The Buizel might get switched out for a ghost, dragon, dark, or psychic type Pokemon, but whether or not that happens will depend on what the game throws at me. En route to badge number two, it just seems that my party is merely under-levelled and not at all unbalanced.

When the Poké-magic is gone

So much for getting back to the backlog proper - Pokemon Diamond's jumped the line again.

Playing a Pokemon game as an adult with a job and bills and so forth is a very foreign experience from playing one as a kid. That might sound like something to be said of any game, but I think that it rings especially true for Pokemon games.

Here's why: it takes time to get the items and pokemon that will make your game truly memorable and unique. Unlike other RPGs, you have so much choice in your party that you've got to do work beyond the usual grinding and getting through the game's story.

When I was a lad playing Pokemon games, I had all the time I needed to catch all the pokemon I could. I had all the time necessary to go side-questing or item-hunting. Now, though, I find myself skipping over pokemon that are difficult to catch (like Abra - rare and quick to teleport away).

Plus, because my pokemon are all at the point where they're neither weak enough to make grinding/fighting wild pokemon a puzzle nor strong enough to make it a breeze, I've found myself contemplating running from battles. When it comes to RPGs I never run just for the sake of saving time.

Perhaps part of why the experience is so different for me is because when I first played the Pokemon games I kept a guide (or at least a listing of where to find all the pokemon) at my side. So far, I've mostly done without on this playthrough.

But, what I'm left wondering is: Is this difference in experience because I'm older or because I'm lacking the sense of concrete-ness that a good guide brings to an otherwise nebulous game?

Mindful grinding

Playing a bit more of Pokemon Diamond after making a trade showed me something. Along with being a classic J-RPG, the game has some puzzle elements, too. In fact, every J-RPG with a regular, battle-based experience system does.

I've just started catching Pokemon and the Bidoof, Starly, and Shinx I now have were caught at level two or three. So I decided to grind them up to level five. At this point the puzzle element of the game kicked in.

The wild Pokemon I was fighting generally used either tackle or growl. Thus, they tended to do the same amount of damage per turn. With this information in mind, I could easily predict how many turns my lead pokemon could last. This knowledge allowed me to predict the number of battles they could go through alone, allowing me to foresee how long they could go before needing to change my lead.

Such a puzzle is perhaps nothing compared to those any Professor Layton game offers, but it's still something that brings a little thought to otherwise mindless grinding.

Away game special: 'Where the Xerneas and Yveltal play'

So Pokemon X (and Y) have integrated farming into their gameplay. Not the sort of farming you usually find in an RPG - fighting monsters to fatten your wallet or collect items - but actual farming. We're talking Harvest Moon-style here.

Adding this feature makes sense. Berries have become prrretty important to the Pokemon games. Being able to grow your own definitely puts more agency into the players' hands. Is that a good thing, though?

Giving players more agency also gives them more responsibility. When you had to find berries in Pokemon games all you had to do was remember where the bush was and return to it every now and then. But growing them yourself means you need to mulch the soil, water your plants, pluck out weeds and shake out bugs.

How far can such a feature go before something like farming berries becomes more chore than play?

Waiting for Gogoat

It's been a while since I've played  Pokemon. When the series first came out I was all about the Red, Yellow, and Blue. But, I played them all on an emulator, and so the experience was limited.

Plus, because I'd played the same adventure three times over with a relatively short time between them, I was burned out on Pokemon when the second generation arrived. Besides, Link's Awakening and the Oracle games were so much more interesting.

But I went to one of Ontario's pre-Pokemon X/Y events earlier today and played something a little more modern while en route and in line: Pokemon Diamond. After all, 2007's practically 2013, right? Right?

I made it through the game's introduction and have to say that the series has come a long way. Visually and musically, Diamond is well done. I also appreciate getting a speed boost early in the game. The default walking speed makes it seem like your character has to step crunchily onto every stone or floorboard he/she passes. Being able to choose between a boy amd a girl's quite a leap forward for the series, too.

However, I'm not a fan of the battle menu remembering what you did on your previous turn and defaulting to that. I also feel like I've been dropped into the game without any direction. I'm sure that just a few steps out of Sandgem Town I'll find some information on where to go next, though.

That'll be a good thing, actually, since I won't be playing much Diamond until I get to the Gift Game portion of my Games List.

Away Game Special: Full-on Melodia

HarmoKnight's demo definitely does its job. After having played a bit of the full version of the game, the demo lays out everything you need to know about it. It also gives a clear feel of how the full game plays while showcasing most of the full game's modes and mechanics.

The two major differences between the demo and the full version are the bonus stages (an obvious difference) and the appearance of other playable characters.

What makes the bonus stages relevant to the demo of the game is that they are the Pokemon related stages, of which "Bike" is playable in the demo. Having been made by Game Freak, it's no surprise that there are five Pokemon-inspired stages. Though it's a wonder that there aren't more. Perhaps, though, Game Freak intended for HarmoKnight to be a mostly fresh new IP, the references to its megahit franchise being nothing more than Easter eggs.

Along with the full game's having more stages, different characters appear as you progress. These characters join you on your travels and each brings a different weapon to the adventure. For example, in Marching Hills, you meet the warrior of the realm, Lyra. She, of course, uses a lyre. However, rather than using it to produce sound waves or some such, she uses it as a bow and opens up areas that resemble sidescrolling shooting galleries.

On the whole, it looks like a great game. Plus, HarmoKnight, though still tricky for those with two left thumbs (myself included), is fun enough that replaying stages hardly ever becomes a chore.

Pokemon as a Virtual Reality Pioneer

The online component of Pokemon Black/White (1 and 2) is emblematic of the brand extensions technology makes possible. That such an extension be attached to Pokemon is no surprise, since even the first gen games required you to either buy more than one version or link up with a friend to complete the game. It's a technique that's seen the Pokemon name spread far and wide.

As far as marketing goes this overrunning of everything with Pokemon is great for the brand. People are hungry for Pokemon and anything legitimately released with the name is bound to sell in bulk just about anywhere and everywhere video games are sold. As far as gaming goes, these extensions could mean something else.

The story of the Pokemon games has never been particularly deep, and for the most part its characters are archetypes. But the mechanic of catching 'em all creates a desire - almost a frenzy - in Pokemon fans to play each game to completion. This need to catch 'em all has seen the game spread into AR (Augmented Reality) territory, and to the purely online space of the Global Link (where the Dream World aspect of Black/White is accessed).

Since Pokemon's already spread so far, and catching Pokemon is a lot like catching bugs or collecting plants, Pokemon is in a position to be among the first virtual reality games out there. It's technology that's still years away, perhaps, but after that gap of time is closed, I think a Pokemon game (or maybe just an app) will be quick to follow.