Pokémon simply endures. It’s been around for nearly 20 years now, and doesn’t care whether you’ve been paying attention all this time or not. For many like me the obsession has given way to a resignation that maybe you really don’t need to catch them all, at least as far as the games themselves go. But with a new handheld generation finally comes an update that promises to capture us all over again. This time, Pokémon X and Y arrives with a long overdue graphical update as well as gameplay tweaks that catch the franchise up to some of the things we’re used to nowadays in our streamlined AAA experiences.

While Game Freak has slapped on a fresh coat of paint on just about everything in the game, the main plot outline is unmeddled with. Once again you’re plunked into the role of a boy or girl living in a corner of the Pokémon universe (this time the so-called “Kalo”s region, modeled after France) who gets whisked away on their coming of age quest to become a Pokémon champion, filling your Pokedex and foiling the evil plans of the new baddies on the block, Team Flare, who in a jab against the likes of Greenpeace, wants to preserve the world’s beauty at any cost (much like Team Plasma in Pokémon Black/White mocks the aims of PETA, I suppose, but nowhere near as deep).

Likewise the core gameplay is very much the same, with the same turn-based, rock/paper/scissor type strategy between the different types of Pokémon dominating affairs as you wade through the grass to add to your collection and hop from gym to gym collecting badges. There is a new Pokémon type at least: Fairy, which has been introduced to balance off against the Dragon type Pokémon running amok in the universe that were only weak to fellow Dragons and Ice types. Other changes in the Pokémon X and Y focus on giving you more things to do, and making things that were previously a hassle much simpler. For instance, no longer do you have to wait until you get to a bike shop a couple towns down the road to move about quickly, instead you get roller skates to add to your shoes from practically the beginning of the game (though bikes still exist later on of course!). This allows the overworld a little more breathing room and keeps the early portion of your exploration from being a slow slog. Another tweak is moving the Exp. Share item back into the Key Items part of your inventory, which allows it to be turned on and off for your entire party instead of being limited to the Pokémon that holds it. The way it works now is superior as well as it no longer steals XP from Pokémon in battle but gives 50% of the XP earned to the ones sitting out. This makes it much easier to keep your entire roster around the same level. In addition, Pokémon will earn XP even when you’re only capturing wild specimens, so you no longer have to decide between grinding and filling your Pokedex. The side effect of all this of course is that if you take the time to take advantage of these tweaks, you’ll most likely be overleveled for every challenger you come across in the story, but we all know they’re suckers who roll with only one type anyway, right? Finally, when you’ve got your favorite Pokémon maxed out and you’re past a certain point in the story, some of them can undergo what’s called “Mega Evolution” by holding special tailored items to them during battles, increasing their stats even further.

Other additions include a whole slew of optional extra game modes or mini games which you can access with the bottom screen. These include Super Training, a kind of target shooting mini game that allows you to level up specific stats on your Pokémon, and Pokémon Amie, which allows you to pet and play with your Pokémon in order to boost their overall friendliness towards you. Besides those are a couple new battle types including Sky Battles (Flying Pokémon only, though for some reason my Farfetch’d doesn’t count?) and Horde Encounters which face you off against multiple weaker Pokémon at the same time, which can be quite annoying and not really worth your time unless you want to capture one of them. Multiplayer is vastly improved in its options as well. Using the Player Search System (PSS) in the bottom screen you can interact with strangers “around” you in the game (not actually seeing them except for their little profile icons) by requesting battles and trades. There is of course a worldwide matchmaking system with optional ranking and tournaments (though in my experience, don’t bother unless all your Pokémon are maxed out or you turn on the rule that makes everyone level 50), and the Global Trade System now allows you to search for Pokémon you haven’t even encountered yet if you know the name, or if you’re feeling bored or lucky, you can even initiate a blind trade with someone else in the world using the new Wonder Trade feature. Extra cool, though it’ll cost you, is the ability to store up to 3000 of your Pokémon in the Pokeman Bank cloud for transfer between multiple copies of the game. The service also enables you to upload Pokémon from Black and White 1 & 2 as well. It seems a bit frivolous now, but if they tie it into a future Wii U game (hint, hint, nudge nudge) I’m down for that! If all that weren’t enough, you can even customize your trainer’s style and look and even throw together some videos of yourself to show off to others, which is a nice touch among the others which slowly inches us further towards the MMO we’ve all been pleading for.

These are all nice under the hood adjustments, but what really should get Pokefans excited is the revamped graphical engine. Sprites have been substituted for 3D models, from the overworld, to the Pokedex, to the battle models and animations themselves, and they look absolutely gorgeous overall. Disappointingly however for those of us who enjoy the glasses free stereoscopic 3D feature of our 3DSes, it’s been disabled for almost everything in the game except for cutscenes and the battles. Unfortunately there’s probably a good reason for that, as the cranked up detail really cuts into the framerate of the game, and for 3D effects it has to draw everything twice, so the battles in particular can suffer at times compared to keeping it 2D. I feel like the game could have been optimized to handle things better, considering that the cartoonish style makes it far from the most demanding 3DS game. If you picked up one of the newer, cheaper 2DSes to play this game, safe to say you really aren’t missing out on anything. Game Freak also seems to be a bit too in love with a couple locations, including the central Lumiose City, which plays horrible games with your camera as you cruise around it, making needed locations harder to find than necessary. The spiffed up soundtrack more than makes up for it though, battle songs are as catchy as ever and no longer grate on the ears as the old days of synthesized squeaks.

Whether you’ve been on board for all the games since Blue and Red, skipped a few like me, or are a complete newcomer to the franchise (really?), Pokémon X and Y has managed to add a new level of polish on what has become a cornerstone of the gaming industry. There’s only one thing that could really make it better and that’s to give in and make it a MMORPG already!

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Don’t forget to read our Pokémon Y Review written by Eric Kelly!

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