Pokemon LeafGreen

Written by Chris Reiter  on May 05, 2005

Review: All the while kids everywhere are busy capturing hundreds of Pokщmon, Nintendo's lounging in a pool of money doing this: "HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!"

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Pokщmon. Every time I've thought of the name it sickened me. Fads often come and go as the popularity of the franchise starts to repeat itself. Sometimes these franchises drive themselves into the ground quickly; but sometimes, just sometimes, they endure. Companies continue to milk every little aspect as long as slaves to their idiocy will contribute the needed dollars to fund the stream of livelihood. Pokщmon is possibly both the longest lasting and stupidest craze I have ever met. Taking its first steps into the world as a Nintendo Game Boy game, Pokщmon soon had its own slot as an anime cartoon on the WB network. Kids and adults alike watched it. They played the games. They bought all the toys. They saw the films. Pokшmon was just a simplistic idea that has come this far only because of one basic concept: Gotta catch 'em all! With hundreds upon thousands of demented little monsters to manifest and a generic team of Pokщmon captors bent on imprisoning each and every one of these creatures, Pokщmon is a fad that seemingly will never go away as long as Nintendo is able to refresh the idea. Here's just one of Nintendo's latest in the handheld phenomenon: Pokщmon LeafGreen.



From a head count, there have been about approximately 20 different Pokщmon games sitting on American retail shelves. Twenty might not be a very big number in itself, but when it comes to one single franchise, that's certainly no small sum considering the time span the series has existed in. Nintendo didn't introduce this Game Boy RPG to Americans until 1998. Two years before then in 1996, Pokщmon was a Japanese-only monster hunting Game Boy RPG. That means the black and white version, not the fancy shmancy colored ones we've got in the present. When Pokщmon did hit Japan, and hit it hard, like a biblical plague, there were but just two versions. They were called simply, Pokщmon Red and Pokщmon Green. Essentially, Pokщmon LeafGreen is the same game that was released in Japan. That is, Pokщmon LeafGreen IS Pokщmon Green. The difference is, Pokщmon LeafGreen is a Game Boy Advance game, whereas Green was for the aged Game Boy. Useless, unneeded cheap marketing? You betcha!

That's just how some of the Pokщmon business got so large, however. If you are (or were) a loyal Pokщmon follower, you'd probably recall the first two American Pokщmon games given the Red and Blue aliases. You know what those games really were? They were the American Game Boy versions of Japan's Pokщmon iterations, or Red and Green. Six years passed by after that, and now with the Game Boy Advance's turn we get yet another revision of these same games under new names -- Pokщmon FireRed and Pokщmon LeafGreen. So, what's the point of retooling and restocking a game that gamers just played a few years ago? Maybe, Nintendo just figures anyone will buy anything that has Pokщmon written on the box. Kids are stupid. Parents don't know the difference. The endless cycle of rehashes will continue so long as there's a way to recycle and reap the rewards.

Always as it has been, always as it will be: Pokщmon LeafGreen is your basic and generic turn-based and text-based type RPG series. How the mediocrity of its simple nature rose up the ranks to be one of the gaming world's best selling franchises of all-time is beyond me. But then again, it's not that Pokщmon has no innovative merits to its name that repeatedly sells the sensation. It's that there are an unlimited number of crazy critters in which to snag that makes Pokшmon such a smoking title all this time. Over the years, I've always kept myself in the dark from Pokщmon's "supposedly" alluring grab. I literally found it impossible to watch the TV show for more than five seconds. The characters and creatures on the series were so obnoxiously cute that I had to shut it off almost immediately after tuning into the show. However, as much as I loathed the show, I was told numerous times by others that the game was far better off than the TV series. I can't say I was never tempted to try to see if what I heard was accurate. This being the first Pokщmon game I've ever experienced, to you who prodded me to give Pokщmon a chance, I see how mistaken all of you were.

In Pokщmon LeafGreen (or from what I'm aware of, any Pokщmon game for that matter), it's the idea that you'll get a chance to obtain every last one of these little rats is what runs the gears in this labored machine. But no, catching every single last Pokщmon is not a requirement; it's an option. You don't even have to nab more than one, even when capturing 'mons is supposedly the juice that's driving this overly dried up engine. Pokщmon LeafGreen essentially has no story. That is to say, it's a tale that's hardly worth the effort to see through to the end. Simply, you're some common Pokщmon trainer. No more, no less. Beginning the game lets you choose your gender -- and if you pick a boy, you'll become an Ash Catchum look-a-like. Name your fake hero whatever the hell you want. It doesn't matter. Mine I called Zork. For a stupid game, I gave myself an identity I could continue to laugh at. But even better, you get to label the arch rival Pokщmon trainer you'll often confront throughout the course of the game (in addition to every single Pokщmon you catch). Since the whole concept of the game is to pick up and train Pokщmon for hours on end, it should be known that battling Pokщmon can't be achieved without first owning a Pokщmon of your own. And so, your first Pokщmon is given to you by the goofy Professor Oak, who's also the uncle of your nemesis in the game. Oak lends both you and his nephew one Pokщmon each from his collection, telling you to ship off into the vastness of the land to find and fill your Pokщdex as full as you can.

Stuffing your bag with these creatures is where the game actually becomes densely wearisome. To catch a Pokщmon you need to follow a set of rules. First, only wild Pokщmon can be contained. This means Pokщmon found in random battles rather than the ones up against trainers. Second, you'll need to buy or find Pokщballs to capture them. Money is obtained mainly through the defeat of other Pokщmon trainers, who naturally line up along the roads and inside caves that are between towns, in addition to other such non-city locales such as the Team Rocket underground fortress that you will infiltrate. But in order to gain money to stack up on supplies, you'll need your own potential army of Pokщmon at your every beck and call. This is precisely where the snoozing begins. Not only are you be able to add every new species of Pokщmon you stumble upon in the wild, but you are also be able to compete against the same species of these things over and over again throughout the game's fundamental and aggravatingly slow battle system training sessions.

To get your Pokщmon nice and strong, you need to level up. Gaining experience is the side effect of nauseating battles. Where in normal RPG games you are fitted with a party of maybe three or more characters at a time, in Pokщmon all you get is one little critter in which to push out into the open. Matches are always one on one battles. Unless of course there's a special arrangement with certain trainers who at times show up in deuces and force you to duel with two different Pokщmon against two different Pokщmon at a time. But, this is a rare and special type of event, so you won't be seeing much of that.What this basically means is leveling up Pokщmon is an extremely slow process. While you're able to acquire experience using multiple Pokщmon to defeat a single enemy Pokщmon in battle, only one total sum of experience is gained in this moment of defeat. That means every Pokщmon that appeared and lived during a face-off with the opposing Pokщmon gets a dividend of the total pie. A smaller chunk isn't as good as the whole figure when it's quicker to try and grab a bigger piece for each Pokщmon.

It seems like almost every Pokщmon in the game (or large majorities of them) share the same types of moves, and that's when the dreary battles also become predictable. Sure there's 143 different caricatures of creatures to collect. Though all that's saying is there is 143 directions to stretch a little bit out a very long way. Typical Pokщ powers you see performed often include status effects (i.e., sleep, poison, paralysis, burn, etc.) to standard move sets (quick attack, peck, low kick, life drain, amongst others). It's not that every move is the same. It's just that many of the Pokщmon can attain the same attributes as other Pokщmon. Sure, there are rock, plant, water, flying, poison, and other types of critters, but each individual elemental species shares the same weaknesses, so there's a need of studying what Pokщmon is capable of what. If you are going to seriously play Pokщmon, you'll start this habit of memorizing every single Pokщmon type you face and remember their strengths and imperfections. And it's not just that the battles and experience system moves like a grandpa on stilts in a text-based, turn-based system, but the combat is flawed. The whole method for defeating Pokщmon in any fight situation involves chance. Each move made is based off the numbers in the game. Every move has a certain amount of PP points. If you have no more PP left you can't "flush" the enemy out with that choice of ability anymore. Then you'll have to move to another move. Some moves have performance statistics that won't allow for them to be as useful as certain other methods. Let's say one attack has a 55 accuracy reading. This won't work as well as a separate move with a 100 accuracy on its chart.

There's also the chance that the enemy is of a breed that makes some moves hardly effective or legal at all against their kind. There are several Pokщmon enemies that bombard your own Pokщmon with ample amounts of status effects-related proceedings. These ailments can consist of an array of elements, from poison, to sleep, or something along the lines of constantly subtracting your Pokщmon's accuracy or defensive measures so to drain them of a better chance for success in one or more attributes. The computer essentially takes a lot of cheap shots. That's all it knows how to do. You've got to deal with this predictable consistency all the time. The battle system revolves around luck, basically. You strike first, or the computer strikes first, then you wait to see what happens. A lot of the time, the game decides that it wants to tirelessly annoy you by creating multiple misses on your account and hits for the opposing fiend, so you'll sit there entering the same maneuver until it finally kicks into action. There is a cheap order of tactics your Pokщmon are able to employ just the same as the enemy. One useful tactic with a particular egg Pokщmon gives you the opportunity to douse an enemy with sleep, then cleverly drain its life simultaneously with a seed spore that sucks up HP on its own for your Pokщmon's personal refreshment, and then in a third position beat it to a pulp with a regular strike. But since the game really gets to the point where you just want to rush past each encounter and just get the damn experience in a hurry, enlisting the most powerful standard offensive move your Pokщmon has got to finish off enemies the quickest way possible is what ends up occurring a lot throughout the game. Unless you're an extremely patient person, it's a long and highly tedious expedition to level up some Pokщmon types regularly with this slow-mo craziness going on.

Retarded fighting is just one of the game's high points. Or in this case, sucky points. Zork (the character of the game, my version of him) is born without legs. Guided with the directional pad, there's no such button that'll increase the steady flow of Zork at first. Zork has to plod his way through towns, through buildings, and through everything until the game finally at one point grants him the power to run. Wowee! Naturally, this slightly faster pace only picks up through outside locales. Why the hell does Zork need running power when he can just dawdle his way through the insides of buildings? I mean, who doesn't love traveling at a snail's pace? Later in the game, Zork will receive a bike. Even further down the line, he can immobilize himself over water. Flying (or in other words, instantly appearing in one town from another distant location) is another option. The reason I figure why there's no running ability to begin with is to deceive players by building up a sense of "specialness" just to give players something extra to do within the game's confines at a marginal rate. Me, I'd prefer for the evolution process for the most essential additions such as running to happen much quicker or already be an integrated game aspect. Some of these other properties mentioned are actually part of a whole other system within the game. These are called the HMs (Hidden Machines), which relate to the family of TMs (Technical Machines). About the HMs and TMs, these are actually moves gained instead of learned. By defeating Gym leaders in pursuit of becoming the ultimate Pokщmon trainer (Gym leaders are the top Pokщmon masters of each town you'll have to shape your Pokщmon up for and ultimately defeat), Zork then gets rewarded with a discernible badge from them. The badge grants a distinct power all its own in some unseen way (like giving Zork the advantage of keeping all Pokщmon in his collection content). These badges also represent the ability to activate HMs specifically. HMs are rare types of tricks that by allowing selective Pokщmon to learn, enable them to do things like process light inside darkened caves, to cut down trees blocking the routes through outdoor passage ways, to crush rocks blocking paths, and as mentioned before to fly from town to town in an instant. These moves are harder to delete than the standard ones Pokщmon normally adapt to. Ridding them is kind of pointless anyway, when they become some of the best combat techniques in an arsenal. Not to mention they're essential for clearing paths of trees, riding on top of water, and stuff like that. TMs are like HMs, only these moves are acquired much more frequently and can be replaced without a problem. TMs range from all sorts of battle uses, from the power to activate duplicate clones of one Pokщmon's self and raise evasiveness, to rock collapsing and water-pulsing blasts.

Mentioning simplicity and repetitiveness brings to mind Pokщmon's lackluster effort behind its visual and sound-based elements. If you wanted to hear the same exact synthesized battle theme a million times in a row and beyond, you've got it in Pokщmon LeafGreen. Exploratory tunes? Thinner than sliced bread. No matter what, there just isn't a lot of variety to listen to aside from some campy machine-generated tracks. Amidst some general happier and slower melodies while strolling through the outdoor pathways around and between towns, there is also some speedier up-tempo tracks found in battle. This goes without saying then that audio is without its extra change of shorts. Aside from the numerous moves able to be activated within combat, like rocks tumbling down, water gushing, bubbles bursting, Pokщmon snoring, electronic beams zapping, lights flashing and slashing...there is a limited default amount of audio effects. Of these is a hilarious bumpy effect whenever your character slams into an object -- be it a wall, a person, or even a bush. The game's sound is designed around all these old-fashioned byte effects, which may be adequate; however, are far from addictive. Pokщmon LeafGreen isn't a very exciting game for the eyes either. There are some interesting species of Pokщmon in the game but these are best seen when in combat using the pale, lifeless battle windows that feature two or more Pokщmon in a watercolor-filled, pencil-drawn anime sort of way. Of bird, monkey, rat, bull, fish, plant, rock, dragon, and lots of thingamajig Pokщmon too, there are lots of kinds to see but only some of them actually look appealing (like Pikachu, the yellow, beady-eyed cat). Watch out though -- Pokщmon do emerge as ugly when they evolve. They turn into hideous deformities for some reason. Machop for instance (a blue, Smurf-like little fellow) becomes a muscle-bound hulk with multiple limbs. When not engaged in any kind of attack, Pokщmon LeafGreen, without its warping, sliding elemental animations is just simplicity at its basest form. Dot-eyed little people shift on keyed paths up and down, left and right, or just wait there in town or outside it for battle purposes in grass and dirt covered, water-edged topdown routes. What's cool about the game is watching as the tiny pixelated models of people or Pokщmon reflect in small bodies of water or riding a bike over sand will indent on the surface creased tracks. Otherwise, overall, Pokщmon LeafGreen is primitive.