Ready, set, let’s go!

Which hyper-adorable buddy will you want by your side on your quest to be the best Pokemon trainer?

VIDEOGAMES are an art form that can pose deep, philosophical, soul-searching questions which can shake players to their very core. Pokemon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Pokemon: Let’s Go, Eevee! asks what’s perhaps the most defining question of our generation:

Who would you rather have as your buddy as you embark on your quest to be the best Pokemon trainer around – an electric mouse, or a multi-elemental evolving cat-fox thing?

I joke, but truth is, deciding which version of Let’s Go I’d play (and hence, which starter Pokemon gets to follow me through the rest of the game) was one of the more difficult decisions I’ve had to make, which contrasts with how recommending the game is such a no-brainer, especially to casual fans.

If you first fell in love with Pokemon by playing Pokemon Go on your phone, then get excited, because this excellent game is explicitly designed to welcome players like you to the “main” Pokemon

RPG (role-playing game) series. So, as the title suggests: Let’s Go!

Back to Kanto

To be clear, Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Eevee! are two versions of the same Nintendo Switch game with the primary difference being your starter Pokemon, and some of the species you’ll encounter in-game.

Let’s Go takes players back to the Kanto region where they play a young Pokemon trainer who wants to be the very best – by collecting Pokemon, training them into a kick-ass team, and challenging other trainers until you’re ready to take on the regional champions.

This should sound familiar to longtime Pokemon fans, since Let’s Go is essentially a souped-up remake of one of the first Pokemon games (Pokemon Yellow, which in turn is an enhanced remake of the original Pokemon Red/Blue, which in turn were Pokemon Red/Green in Japan, which in turn makes this a long history lesson you didn’t really need) streamlined to appeal to casual Pokemon Go players.

Longtime hardcore Pokemon players, I’ll come back to you later.

On the ball

Point is, if you’ve enjoyed filling up your Pokedex by throwing Poke Balls on a touchscreen, you’re already halfway to becoming a master in Let’s Go. In Kanto, wild Pokemon appear in and around the tall grass and caves; all you need to do is run up to one of them to start the good ol’ Pokemon Go-styled catching screen.

If you’re playing your Switch in TV mode, you have to physically swing your controller to throw your Poke Ball, which, in my experience, leads to some wonky accuracy issues. Wasting balls can be a problem, because you don’t get free Poke Balls by spinning PokeStops – you need to purchase or find them, and in the early game, money is hard to come by. For an easier time, play Let’s Go in handheld mode, where you can throw your Poke Balls by simply pressing the A button, instead of throwing your controller in frustration.

One new thing that Pokemon Go players will need to quickly learn is the necessity to organise your Pokemon into a team to duel other Pokemon trainers. You see, in the world of Pokemon, if two trainers lock eyes, they must battle – it doesn’t matter if you were just walking past them or running to the toilet, honour must be satisfied in traditional RPG turn-based combat. (This is also why dating is hard in the Pokemon world – if you gaze lovingly at your significant other, your hamster will try to attack her cat.)

This means that new players will need to quickly study the concept of Type weaknesses (Water douses Fire, Fire burns Grass, etc), managing Power Points (your Pokemon can only use their moves so many times before having to rest), and stocking up on medicine because some opponents think it’s hilarious to inflict your pets with lingering poison.

Parking space

Even if all that duelling sounds too big a leap from Pokemon Go to Let’s Go, don’t worry, there are plenty of new features in Let’s Go that will appeal to you. For one, there’s an optional two-player mode that lets a second player join you any time – even in the middle of a battle.

For another, there’s the Go Park, introduced several hours into the game, but acts as the main attraction for Pokemon Go players. The Go Park lets you transfer Gen 1 Pokemon from your Pokemon Go account into your Let’s Go game. So, say you have a favourite Shiny Charmander in Pokemon Go, you can acquire her for your team and then ride her around Kanto like a fantasy dragon master.

Note that the transfer is one-way though, so you can’t bring anything from Let’s Go back to Pokemon Go – except perhaps for the Mystery Boxes that you gain for transferring Pokemon, which supposedly lets you find the elusive Meltan in Pokemon Go.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to talk to the hardcore players.

Where no Mon has gone before

While it’s great that Let’s Go welcomes new players, the question you probably have is: what about you? Is Let’s Go a game for the kind of player who cares about Pokemon IV and breeding and competition and has memorised Pokemon species by their National Pokedex numbers?

Well, the answer is yes ... but with a tentative question mark at the end?

Don’t get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed taking my Eevee down to Saffron City to mop the floor with Team Rocket’s faces, but Let’s Go is a different beast than, say, the recent Pokemon Sun and Moon .Itaddsas many features as it removes, which doesn’t make the game worse, but certainly makes it weirder.

For starters, the elimination of random encounters is a refreshing change to the series, and it makes hunting for specific Pokemon (or avoiding those annoying Zubats) way easier. Plus, there’s a new Catch Combo system where if you keep catching the same Pokemon, you get bonuses that will result in Pokemon with higher IV stats and a higher chance for Shiny Pokemon.

On the other hand, since you no longer battle wild Pokemon (with some exceptions), levelling up your Pokemon becomes less a matter of combat skill, and more a matter of “who has the most Poke balls and also patience”. Yes, your Pokemon team still gains XP from wild Pokemon encounters, even if they now do nothing but stand back and cheer, those lazy buggers.

Hey, buddy

There’s no breeding, Pokemon no longer have passive abilities, and held items have been dropped. Instead of these features, there’s a stronger focus on your starter Pokemon buddy, who you can interact with in a petting minigame (Pikachu and Eevee are so irresistibly cute, you guys) and who appears more prominently in the same story.

Your starter Pokemon won’t evolve beyond its initial adorable state, but this actually isn’t a problem – your Pikachu or Eevee will gain stats that lets them go toe-totoe with a Venusaur, Blastoise, or a Charizard, and they can learn absolutely overpowered exclusive abilities.

The best way to describe the Let’s Go experience for longtime Pokemon fans is that it’s more “familiar retro nostalgia” than “ground-breaking next gen”; in the place of deep and complex mechanics, there’s accessibility and the adorability factor of your starter buddy. I enjoyed its refreshing simplicity, but you really should be aware of what you’re getting into before you return to Kanto.