It won't cause the display of many pearly whites
| Platform | Presentation | Controls | Variety | Audio | Depth | Value & Fun | OVERALL |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nintendo DS | 3.50 | 4.00 | 7.00 | 6.00 | 8.00 | 5.75 | 5.95 |
| General Information |
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Previously played game in the series: Game Boy - Pokemon Blue, Yellow, Silver; N64 - Pokemon Stadium Video Review (Part 1) Video Review (Part 2) |
| Gameplay Description |
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Pokemon Pearl is an RPG in which you take the role of a pokemon trainer. A trainer captures creatures called pokemon and trains them for use in battles against other trainers. Your goal is to become the pokemon champion by defeating all eight gym leaders, the elite four trainers, and then the champion. The battle system has you carrying six pokemon at a time and fighting in turn-based battles. Each pokemon has up to four moves to choose from, each with an element (fire, water, etc.) and a attack style (either physical or projectile). Each pokemon has a type itself, which gives it strengths and weaknesses against types of moves (e.g. fire is weak against water). |
| Dedication Meter | 30.00 |
| Pokemon is a very light RPG that doesn't require you to really devote yourself to the game. However lack of tutorial and pertinent information means you'll have to search or figure out a lot of things on your own or else the experience can be very frustrating. | |
| Presentation | 3.50 |
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Pokemon Pearl looks like Pokemon. The game maintains that same angled top-down viewpoint with sprite characters and vibrant colours. It mixes it up, though, using subtle 3D for the overworld with great effect. The character sprites in the overworld feel a bit lifeless, though, when compared with a game like Custom Robo Arena. Once in battle, the game also keeps in line with previous games. You see the battle from behind your own pokemon, and your opponent is at the top of the screen on some sort of weird platform thing. This is where Pearl could have pushed the visuals much more. The backgrounds are a bland smear of colours that have nothing to do with the environment and the attack effects and pokemon "animations" of the sprite blinking are becoming very dated. As a plus, the in battle sprite design is excellent. Ultimately the technical aspects of the visuals matter very little with regards to pokemon--it just isn't at all about eye candy. What it is about, though, is character and item management with lots and lots of collecting. When it comes to the presentational requirements to go along with that, Pokemon Pearl is an utter failure. The first thing to notice is the fact that you are not provided with any information about pokemon weaknesses. The battle system hinges on the strengths and weaknesses of the different pokemon and the game does nothing to explain it. In the original pokemon game, it was a bit easier to follow type weaknesses as there were fewer types, as well as those type advantages having some semblance of logic (fire weak against water, for example, is logical). In Pearl, there are 17 different types, and I personally would not come to the logical conclusion that "steel" is weak against "fighting" moves. Further, the towns are poorly laid out. The towns are larger than in previous games, but mostly just a hassle to get around and are filled with houses of pointless NPCs. Amongst the mess of those pointless NPCs, there are some important people, such as the Move Deleter, who allows you to make your pokemon forget moves you normally cannot, allowing you to make the most of your four available move slots. The Move Deleter, however, is in an unmarked house that looks just like ever other house. The most pressing issue, however, is the frustratingly slow pacing of everything visual. Enter a battle and you have to wait for the opposing pokemon or trainer to slide across the screen followed by a pause, then if it's a trainer do a pokeball throwing animation and have the pokemon come out. That pokemon then does its annoying battle cry before you are allowed to do your own pokeball animation and annoying battle cry. Finally your menus appear and you can do something. Oh, but if you have the utter misfortune of fighting in the fog, you will find out why it is the single worst game mechanic ever. This lowers every pokemon's accuracy, making moves a matter of luck. If that weren't bad enough, after every single round of moves you have to sit through an animation of fog on the screen followed by the caption "The fog is deep..." The same general thing happens with all weather effects, including rain, hail, sandstorms etc. The fact that pokemon can temporarily generate these effects means that it does have to tell you whether it still applies, but a simple icon would have done the trick. Everything in the game has a delay. Moving pokemon, text (no option for instant appear). Saving takes a long time. Even if you turn off battle animations there is a second delay for the move, then it still does every other animation. It is exceedingly aggrevating when you are passing through an area of wild pokemon in which after every single encounter you have to wait for it to scroll across do it's cry, you throw your ball and hear your own pokemon just so you can press "Run" and take another five steps and run into another. The issues don't end there, however. The direction in the overworld is severely lacking. There are instances in which you are given absolutely no clue as to where to go, which means trying to get to whichever towns you haven't been to and seeing if the guy blocking the path has moved. No? Well, time to wander over the next spot then. There's even one instance in which for reasons unexplained you have to climb up a mountain to find an event. The presentation downright harms the experience, dragging it down and overall making the game less enjoyable. |
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| Controls | 4.00 |
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Pokemon Pearl would be better if it didn't use any touch controls. Pokemon Pearl would be even better than that if it used only touch controls. Pokemon Pearl would be even better than that if the developers showed even the slightest imagination instead of blindly copying every possible aspect from previous games. It is immediately evident that touch controls were not going to be properly implemented as the bottom screen is relagated to displaying the time. The Poketch is a device created to take up the bottom screen with completely useless functions such as a calculator, a clock, what pokemon are in your boxes, a pedometer and so forth. But I guess there isn't anything useful that could be put down there, such as menus instead of having to access them via buttons. In menus the touch controls are mostly ignored also. You have a screen to organize the six pokemon in your party in which the top screen shows all six pokemon that you can choose the options Summary, Switch, Item, or Cancel using the D-pad and buttons. On the bottom screen, there are six pokeball icons in that correspond to the top screen that allow you to view the Summary of that pokemon. So you have to pull out your stylus as you need two hands to navigate the overworld, choose Pokemon from the menu using the buttons, look at the top screen, remember the relative placement of the pokemon you want to see, then finally touch the bottom screen if you want to use ONE of the THREE options. It's assinine. Similarly terrible is the Pokedex, a Pokemon index that you have. You have a rolodex style view on the top screen that you can scroll through using the D-pad. Up and Down move through each pokemon very slowly, while pressing Right and Left scrolls through five at a time, which is hard to see as it doesn't show many on screen at a time to begin with. If you want to use the search functions or scroll at a different rate, you must then jump to bottom screen where there are buttons for Search, and Check Pokedex, as well as an awful scroll wheel. Search works well and gives several sorting functions, although ironically not a search option. Once you sort them, though, it's back to the top screen. Check Pokedex is the equivalent of Pressing A to view the entry. The scroll wheel pokeball thing is unruly and useless. Your item bag has several categories of items in which you can choose the category via the touch screen, but can only go through and choose items on the top screen with the buttons. Right. When storing your pokemon in PCs, as you can only hold 6 at a time, you have to deposit them separately from withdrawing them, with an annoying second delay when switching back or into one of said options. The touch screen is used for "markings" (useless) or switching boxes (useless). You also must sort the pokemon separately when this could all have been done at the same time just dragging and dropping with the touch screen. In battle you control with the option of your choice. The order of the options (Fight, Bag, Run, Pokemon) is not D-pad friendly, the better method is the touch screen--this after the touch screen being obsolete for the rest of the game. Easy to press and see icons make it quick and simple. The controls are convoluted and the combination of half-assed button and touch screen controls makes the sum total less than the individual parts. The real insult is that dated mechanics, such as depositing and withdrawing pokemon are separate tasks, stubbornly remain. |
|
| Variety | 7.00 |
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If there's one thing you can say about Pokemon Pearl, it's that there's a lot of Pokemon. 493, to be exact. Technically speaking, though, part of the Pokemon series that remains is the fact that there aren't that many in one version, as there are a few that are unavailable unless you trade for them. Pearl feels the need to push this tacky concept even further to the point that there are Pokemon that you can't get unless you import them from Fire Red/Leaf Green versions on the GBA, Emerald on GBA, as well as ones you can't get from anywhere but a Nintendo event. To "Catch them all" has become absolutely absurd. Another way in which the sheer number of pokemon goes to waste is the fact that you can only carry six pokemon at a time, and trying to develop many more that just means you'll have to level grind constantly rather than fight even more than the already large amount of battles. The most frustrating part about how many pokemon there are is the fact that you see the same few pokemon in battle and in the wild ad nauseum. Prepare to see countless Zubats/Golbats, Bronzors, and Medichams. By the end of the game, it is quite plausible that you, just as I did, will have seen fewer than 150 pokemon. Actually, I did not encounter a single wild fire pokemon in the entire game, and I can only recall one possible instance of one in battle. This could be a result of the overcrowded number of different types. In Pokemon Pearl, there are seventeen different types of pokemon. While this arguably increases the depth of the game when it comes to training for battles between you and your friends, it just confuses matters for anyone who wants to play through the single-player game. The number of moves is excellent, however, having many different great concepts and really making you think about the combinations of moves you use for your four moves slots per pokemon. Additionally, there are Technical Machines (TMs) and Hidden Machines (HMs) that you can use to teach your pokemon moves rather than the normal fashion of them learning them as they increase in levels. The overworld is fairly large and the environments have a decent variety. Battles get a bit stales because of previously mentioned repetition of opponent pokemon. The gyms that you have to beat to advance provide solid challenges and solid puzzles. The puzzles get annoying, though, as you have to fight several battles as you solve them, and unless you're so strong that you're walking all over every challenger, you'll have to leave the gym to heal your pokemon. As soon as you heal, the puzzle resets and you have to do everything over again. The game is long, as I completed it in 35 hours, and it has a lot of content. However, the game is artificially lengthened by tedious presentation and repetitious battles, and the value of the many pokemon is hampered by annoying concepts. |
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| Audio | 6.00 |
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Pokemon is typically known for its lighthearted catchy tunes, but there is something inherently lacking in the pep of the jingles in Pearl. Often the background audio fails to even really be music, but rather is more along the lines of atmospheric for a non-atmospheric game. For actual music, the music that plays everytime you get on your bicycle is rather annoying. It has a few high points, but nothing really stands out. The main sound effects in the game are for the attacks and the cries/voices of the pokemon themselves, which both sound very 8-bit. The sounds of the pokemon particularly should be much improved by now, but remain the same staticky harsh square wave sounding messes. |
|
| Depth | 8.00 |
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The reason the pokemon games do so well is that the formula, when done correctly, works. The base of that is the battle system, accented by the methods of obtaining and training your pokemon. The numbers add up to a lot of great combinations of different pokemon and moves. The advanced techniques you can find if you get seriously into battles is amazing. Things are taken aback a bit, though, as the type matches end up most of the time very overwhelming and it becomes mostly about having the right type of pokemon rather than strategy. The daycare is a wealth of potential unto itself, leaving the player with the option of breeding different pokemon, which opens up the door for altered stats and unique movesets unavailable otherwise. The game does little to nothing to explain or encourage this, though, and it is little changed from all the way back in Pokemon Gold/Silver. |
|
| Value & Fun | 5.75 |
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It's difficult to understand how the same developers who created a quality series of games could just eventually forget how to make a good game in that same series, but that's what Game Freak has apparently managed to do. While in sheer time, the game is lengthy, it is stretched with repetitious battles and frustrating overworld design that lacks ingenuity, imagination and quite simply quality. Even Pokemon Silver on the Game Boy has twice the number of gyms, which are the most entertaining portions of Pearl. Although seemingly impossible, Pokemon Pearl has managed to regress the quality of storytelling in Pokemon games. Where there remains the overtold plotline of an evil organization trying to take over the world with legendary pokemon at all costs, Pearl makes it unclear what the organization is doing that is evil and even why they're your enemy. Even what their ultimate goal remains in question the entire game. There is really no reason given for anything you do in the game. You go gym to gym because it's a Pokemon game. You deposit pokemon in a computer because it's a Pokemon game. You fight people called the Elite Four and Gym leaders who are supposedly the best trainers yet don't even try to become pokemon champion, because it's a Pokemon game. And even the foundation of the game in catching pokemon with pokeballs bought from the pokemart is apparently only explained by the fact that it's a Pokemon game. The battle system is slow but fleshed out. Winning a hard-fought battle is exciting and entertaining. Unfortunately, those battles are few and far between, and when they do occur, it's only because you're severely under-leveled. The AI remains horrible with its choice of attacks being apparently completely randomly chosen. If the AI weren't terrible, that would mean you'd have actually difficult battles and the game couldn't reasonably be lengthened through easy battles ad-nauseum as Pearl does as is. Rather than a game structure that allows for tactical wars, you're given essentially an ocean's worth of fish in barrels. Running into a new pokemon is an exciting feeling that is strangely rarer than it should be. The excitement is also hampered by the fact that the number of pokemon you can reasonably juggle is quite limited. The concept of two-on-two battles which was introduced in Pokemon Emerald and remains in Pearl (which is perhaps the highlight of the game) could have been used to make the game about having more than six trained pokemon. As it is, training much more than six stretches the experience points you get from trainer battles quite thin and will force you to simply level grind for those extra pokemon. Catching them all really isn't very useful. Once you complete the game, there's a place where you can battle series of battles using a team of two or three in which items are banned and you face a much wider variety of pokemon. In order to complete the gauntlet you must win seven battles consecutively (you can save and quit inbetween, though), and your pokemon heal after each battle. What this eventually comes down to, though, is fighting six terrible opponents followed by one stacked opponent. So you have to waste twenty minutes of your life to fight one battle in which your opponent may just have a lucky combination of types that screws you outright and you have to start over. It's more fun that most battles during the game, however. It's worth repeating that the biggest hinderance to the game is the how sluggish everything moves and the repetiton of battles rather than a poor battle system of game formula. Using a timer from the point that the random encounter music plays to the point that you can control your character on the overworld (tapping the spot for run until it lets you), it took 19.5 seconds. Additionally, with a sample size of seven encounters, the average was one encounter for every 11 steps, which is about a little less than the size from one side of the screen to the other. The menus are a cesspool of monotony. Even turning off the battle animations still leaves a second delay for the attack and leaves every other animation in tact, making the option virtually useless. On top of that, there are just stupid, stupid, stupid design choices. The fog is awful. Separate deposit/withdraw? Really? There a section of mud in which you occasionally just get stuck and have to move back and forth to become unstuck. You're not being attacked in this game, so this is pointless. No wait, the point of this game seems to be to aggrevate the player, so it fits that purpose perfectly. Personally, the most annoying to me is that you still cannot forget HM moves. HM moves are TMs that you can use over and over to teach a move to pokemon who fit the criteria. HMs are also special in the fact that they are used to perform tasks in the overworld such as fly from town to town or cut branches from your path (thus allowing you to progress in the game). Yet despite the fact that you can reuse the HMs, you still cannot forget them normally. For a little history for those who aren't familiar with the Game Boy games, there is a reason for this seemingly moronic game mechanic: Since the first games were on Game Boy, there were some technical limitations including how many items you could carry at a time (50). Since you could only carry so many items, you could deposit move into your PC (which is not an option in Pearl as you carry all your items all the time). If in Pokemon Blue, for example, you deposited the HM Cut and went into an area that required it to get in and out, then subsequently forgot the move Cut, you would be trapped. In Pokemon Pearl this is not an issue, therefor there is no reason to not be able to forget them at any time (as a side note, I'd also suggest that you not have to teach them to a pokemon at all). What this does is essentially forces you to dedicate a placement on your team to a pokemon that you do not train but rather use simple for HMs (known to fans as an HM Slave). I am hereby speaking out against slavery! Free the slaves! |
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| Value & Fun (with online) | 6.00 |
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This is an interesting category due to another aggrevating design choice from the developer. You cannot battle random opponents online, only those with whom you've exchanged friend codes. I do not consider this as additional value in my reviews, but if you have several people you can battle with through this method, then this game may garner some additional interest. For those who aren't going to bother with the hassle of getting mutual friends, there are a couple online features. The first and most prominent are the online trades. This works very well and allows you to search for trades or put your own pokemon up for trade. The way the system works is that if you put your own pokemon up for trade, you can list minimum/maximum level (although limited to set groups of ten) and the pokemon species you'll trade it for (limited to a single choice). For example, you can put up a Gyarados for a Chancey with a level of at least 40. Additionally, you can search for pokemon using those same two parameters and if you have the pokemon that the trainer with that pokemon up for trade, you can offer it and have the trade happen immediately. It can be difficult to find something by search, though, but putting something up for trade overnight works very well. Due to Nintendo not wanting its servers to crash, you're limited to putting up one pokemon at a time. There is also a very strange online feature in which you can download data from other trainers and battle their teams controlled by the terrible AI. It's really not worth explaining it any further. |
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| Overall | 5.89 |
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It's pretty common that fans of the Game Boy Pokemon games are looking to get back into the series with Pokemon Diamond and Pearl, but to put it bluntly, Pearl is worse than those Game Boy games. Those games did what the hardware allowed and the rest went to game design. Pearl is lost in a sea of dated mechanics, poor design and trying to add new things that offer nothing to the player. Pokemon Pearl is a mess--a functional mess--but a mess nonetheless. |
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| Overall (with online) | 5.95 |
| If you're hardcore into pokemon battling and building the ultimate team, you may be able to salvage your money's worth using the online system by exchanging friend codes over the Internet. However, I'd expect a frustrating experience trying to schedule battles. The online trading is a bonus, but given how few pokemon you can use during the campaign, it's not exactly a revolution. I can't reasonably recommend this game to anyone. | |
Posted by Ellyoda Mon, 20 Aug 2007 00:00:00
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