Article: Pokemon in 2018: A year review

A collaboration article between Daily Staff writers! Let us know what you think!

What are your thoughts on last year in Pokemon? Good or bad?

pinned bc cool thread

alright so... last year I guess was kinda medicore for Pokemon stuff. gonna toss in my own 2c:

pokemon quest - I feel like this game more or less did its job of providing short-term entertainment... although honestly, I wish there would've been more to the game than just cooking up meals to summon up shiny pokemon galore. I think after your team power level got to a certain point and after you beat the game, there wasn't really a whole lot else to do. And it's not like it took that long to beat the game either. My biggest problem though is that you can only go so far before needing to buy tickets again and without paying money, you'd have to wait once every... two hours? idr I might've gotten the time wrong, something like that. It's just annoying and put me off personally. the game itself is ok but like... it's nothing special, either. not surprised it faded off the radar.

LGPE - It really seems like Game Freak's plan succeeded here in basically providing an arguably fun game that's to entertain the masses up until Gen 8 is released. Hopefully this would put an end to Game Freak's Kanto "pandering" for the last two generations or so, as that seems to be the biggest source of burnout for most fans, and I don't blame them. LGPE may be a fun, cute game, but it's still Kanto at heart, and I know there's a lot of people who yearn for more in their Pokemon games.

Hopefully 2019 brings about something good for Pokemon. I'm cautiously optimistic for Gen 8, especially with Masuda stepping down as Director, which means (hopefully) there won't be any watering down, anymore.

I thought it was a boring and lackluster year. Let's GO was lackluster compared to what GF can do when they're trying harder and I completely forgot about the existence pokemon quest, and I really don't care about the rest, especially GO which still seems to have a big niche community, though the fad mostly died out in late 2016. Out of 2018 I guess I enjoyed movie 21 the most, it was good for a Pokemon movie. I guess Pokemon may not be for me anymore. I enjoyed non GF related Pokemon stuff more in 2018, with Drayano's Renegade Platinum and finishing up Eternal X. Makes me want to do some rom hacking myself.

not the best year but its a good year. i believe pokemon can step up their game for 2019, excited!

2018 was quite a year for the series.

We got Pokémon Crystal on the 3DS Virtual Console. Since I bought it during my outing earlier in the year, I was able to establish some fond memories with the game on multiple playthroughs. I even got a shiny Scyther during Summer. It means I now have access to Lugia and Ho-Oh's objectivity better Abilities, along with some neat moves, like Zap Cannon or Curse.

We got a trailer for the Detective Pikachu movie that made a great first impression, with Ryan Reynolds of all people on board, no less! Danny DeVito would have been a funnier choice, but the veteran that gave us a solid DeadPool this decade might just make this movie a fun and epic experience.

LGPE may be a divisive game, but it was a blast to revisit our roots again with the physical/special split, the Fairy-type and a different experience using GO's mechanics. I do agree that the Kanto pandering really got out of hand this generation because of "muh nostalgia!". At least you can finally have the option to switch off cutscenes. Why it wasn't implemented in S/M or USUM in the first place is inexcusable if the 3DS remakes of SuperStar Saga and Bowser's Inside Story can do exactly that. The game did give me an extra incentive to play GO more frequently.

And of course, we had the surprised Pikachu meme. Nothing special, sure, but a hilarious exploitable reaction image that pokes fun at the karma of certain executed expectations.