Game Debate #6: Pokemon Red/Blue

[Reed Rothchild | 9,525]

Bump

[SNESNESCUBE64 | 539]

I love Pokemon, but for me, I am not too much a fan of these games. They are nice to play, but in my opinion they aren't quite as good as the other. I think part of my problem here is that I was too young to play these games when they came out, I wasn't around for the hype.

[OptOut | 8,884]

Ten out of ten! These games hit the scene and just blew up at exactly the right time for me! 

Put well over 300 hours into Pokémon Red training my team and collecting all the Pokémon. Even got an official Mew from an Nintendo event back in like 99 or 2000 or something!

And, apart from Paper Mario these are the only RPGs I like, so all you RPG purists probably right I guess... But works for me! 

[AstralSoul | 502]

8. Great games that started a huge franchise that is still going strong. I was incredibly obsessed with these games back in the day but today I find them the most boring of all the main Pokemon games.

[Sumez | 2,950]

Played this once in Japanese back before it got translated (but didn't make it through), then after the English release, and again in the remake. So I think I've given it enough chances.
There's something fascinating about Pokémon, or at least its pop culture phenomena that makes it interesting and at least worth looking into. I can see its addictive "OCD appeal" too, for sure. I've given multiple games in the series a go, and ultimately come out with the same conclusion every single time:

It's a great idea, but it's way too simplistic, does nothing to encourage any amount of genuine tactics or even a solid strategy in its combat despite being a turn based game. The entire game is one long grind, and not a whole lot else, especially if you're going for a full monster collection. If you focus on one "main" pokemon the entire game through, it'll steamroll the second half of the game with no opposition. Seriously, in a game whose entire concept is collecting a huge army of creatures, what kind of logic dictates that all battles should be one-on-one? Most of the times you'll be switching Pokémon is only to make sure they get some EXP.
In its defense, it's a game for kids and was always intended as a game for kids, so there are a lot of reasons why it wouldn't appeal to me. But I think a lot of great games were intended for kids, and are still great, or even masterpieces. Pokémon just feels thoroughly lazy, and even the new games in the series still do.

tl;dr - has potential, but is overrated and I never got any enjoyment out of it. The description listed for a 4/10 rating fits this game perfectly.

Edited July 22, 2020 by Sumez

[Jicsan | 589]

Had to vote, "Never played it, but I'm interested."

As much as I love Nintendo I never got into Pokemon (or Animal Crossing).  I played my first Pokemon game Shield last year and my youngest son played Sword.   We had lots of fun with those and now I guess I'm interested in going back to the older ones.  I did however give up on Moon pretty quickly, but probably just cause we went to those so soon after Sword/Shield.  He didn't give up on Sun as fast as I did.

[Adorabear | 69]

Definitely a 10/10 for me! It was the first game I ever owned, and I played Red, Blue, and Yellow countless times. Pokemon is still one of my favourite series to this day because of these games. Gotta catch 'em all!  

[SpoonMan Abrams X | 697]

On 7/16/2020 at 6:52 PM, fox said:

Average game that got a huge marketing push and tons of hype.  The game is suppose to have this deep paper rock scissor set-up, but I found it easy to just use my two best Pokémon’s best attacks, so why bother collecting 150 more filler characters.  Well is this a classic rpg story at least?  Nope characters say “I like your shoes” then fight you.

I guess it is fine in the “baby’s first rpg” like Mystic Quest kind of way.  If you played any rpgs before this, I think it would be hard to see what the fuss was about.

It's been more fleshed out in games in the series since, but I think that a lot of the appeal comes from the old "easy to pick up, but difficult to master" kind of thing going on. The game even sice the beginning here has excelled at being a very approachable on many levels, it's exceptionally easy and straight forward on the surface but gets surprisingly deep for those looking for those things. When you RPG game has a thriving competitive scene that is saying a lot.

Most of my issues come from distinct lack of polish & substance in some areas and just a lot of bug & balance issues. Second Gen Best Gen (and it has generally greatly improved with each iteration), but this was a worthy start and deserves a lot of the hype imo.

8/10

[croagunk | 798]

Pokémon Red and Blue are 10/10 games for me. These were the first games I ever played. I still play them to this day.