802+ Pokemon Retrospective - Gen 5 (Part 1)

So begins the romp into the endgame. Between the shiny Sandygast egg and all of the preparing I had to do to fit this into the last four days of 2016, I'm confident that I'll be able to get things done handily.

Rating scale:

Excellent (9-10 stars - is a 10/10 rating)
Good (7-8 stars)
Servicable (5-6 stars)
Not A Fan (3-4 stars)
Hate (1-2 stars - don't worry about this one. I actually don't hate that many Pokemon.)

[FONT=verdana, geneva, lucida, lucida grande, arial, helvetica, sans-serif]Unova (#494-#563)[/FONT][FONT=verdana, geneva, lucida, lucida grande, arial, helvetica, sans-serif]
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[Theme for this part: Route 1 (Unova)]

Games:

• Black and White 1 (September 18th, 2010)
• Black and White 2 (June 23rd, 2012)

The fifth generation of Pokemon was certainly a rollercoaster. On one hand, a fancy new region based on America (of all things) with a total of 155(!) new Pokemon... on the other, it was completely linear and you couldn't catch anything other than those 155.

It's also the generation where the plot started to kick it from "alright we have a vague story going on here" to an actual deconstructive look at Pokemon and human relationships.

Team Plasma were definitely an interesting set of characters thanks to their "royalty" theme and how they had an actual reason for what they did - they wanted to free Pokemon from people. The best part is that their plan to separate Pokemon from humans would have worked if it weren't for your character stomping in through their base. (Releasing every Pokemon deposited in the PC? Imagine how that would have gone if that worked?)

N gets a special mention due to having the most visceral backstory out of any Pokemon character - not only do they have one of the coolest looks out of any of the human characters, they're a person that was raised with Pokemon ever since he was a little boy. His real parents are never seen (maybe Ghetsis killed them?) and he generally led a hard life if him having Ghetsis as a father figure is of any indication.

I know many people would find Black and White polarizing, but me personally? It's arguably my favorite gen in the series (although most of my affection can be attributed to the sequel games) for its story and gameplay advancements. A major problem I had with Sinnoh was that the battles were too slow, but BW comes to the rescue by having the fastest battle system in the series. (Even more so than the 3D games)

Like no joke, the speed of the fights in Gen 5 is addicting to me - from the way Pokemon are released into battle to how the HP bar empties immediately when a move is completed. It's fantastic. Although, I'll admit, there were quite a few features that should have been better - the Dream World and the introduction of Hidden abilities.

(Oh, there's also the introduction of Triple and Rotation Battles, but those are just cumbersome to me. You could also re-use TMs indefinitely! That's incredibly important to mention.)

Essentially, the Dream World was an online service that involved putting one of your Pokemon to sleep so you can go through a dream world of sorts. Here you could plant berries (because Unova lacks soft soil or something) and befriend one new Pokemon per visit, with said Pokemon having their hidden ability - a secret third ability that tends to err from "incredible asset" to "mediocre".

The problem with this, though? Due to all the traffic the service got, Game Freak limited how people would use it - you could only enter the Dream World once a day. That's bad enough in of itself, but then there was the horribly frustrating issue of the servers always being down for maintenance... I honestly cannot blame you if you have never tried the Dream World due to all of the complications it had.

The theme for Unova's mons (and arguably the region itself, seeing as Opelucid and Black City/White Forest change on the version) are opposites, ranging from nature and Pokemon to humanity and industry. Reshiram and Zekrom are the most obvious examples of this, but there's also smaller ones like Braviary and Mandibuzz (bald eagle that embodies AMERICAN Unovan patriotism vs scumbag vulture), the Kami trio (prankster storm spirits vs a temperate land spirit), etc.

It's all neat stuff and I'll talk about the sequel games in the next Unova part.

Never thought I'd see a Pokemon you rated as hate. @_@ Been reading since Kanto part one & never saw that coming...