5th Gen The New Unova Pokédex

[Pendraflare]

In Black 2 and White 2, there were well over 100 Pokémon added to the Pokédex alongside the new Pokémon that Black and White exclusively featured for the game. This was done previously with Platinum, the previous extra game for Sinnoh. While the previous game had only new Pokémon for you to use in the main story, here those that missed their old Pokémon get a chance to use quite a few and throw them into the party. Pokémon distribution in Unova sure changed over the two years between the games!

What did you think of the New Unova Pokédex? Did you like having more variety than just the new Pokémon? Did you miss them while playing Black and White? Or did you not like it and think that they should have had only new Pokémon again? If not, why? (I can't stress that enough.) Discuss.

 

[Nah]

While I definitely liked that Black/White had only the new Pokemon available until you cleared the main story line, I don't think it would've been a good idea to do that twice in a row. After having that it way in B/W, it was nice to change it up a little again by re-introducing the older Pokemon, and gives you a little variety since if you played Black/White you already know all the new Pokemon. It also made the fact that Black/White are only the 2nd main series games to feature all new Pokemon before beating the E4 a little more special; that impact would've been diminished if B2/W2 also made you go with only gen 5 pokes, ya know?

 

[Amore]

I would have to agree with all of the above.

I also liked how there seemed to be a focus in bringing back a few more Hoenn pokémon, with 24 families overall - including giving me the chance to finally use a Zangoose during the main storyline of a game, after Black gave me my first chance to actually capture one myself. Lucario being one of the few Sinnoh pokémon was an extremely good shout too, especially giving it as a Riolu so early on. The bad thing about DPPt was that Riolu was pretty much useless, by the time it got up to strength it would evolve anyway, so this kinda makes up for it.
In particular, I think shout outs deserve to be made to the availability of Spoink/Grumpig and Castform! Two of my favourite Hoenn pokémon, finally available in 3D!

 

[Pendraflare]

As for me, I do quite like the New Unova Pokédex expansion. It does have a lot of great selections for you to choose from and make a team out of, and while the new Pokémon exclusive thing from BW was nice (and i'm gonna talk about that in a bit), after playing through that it did make for an enjoyable time playing through again with the Pokémon that got left out from that. Move Tutors certainly threw into that spice, making it quite reminiscent of Platinum but with a less frustrating system to put up with.

And regarding how some may argue that it sucked after having only new Pokémon... First off, we didn't see people complaining about how Platinum added more Pokémon to the Sinnoh Dex after what little DP had, did we? How would you imagine the Gym Leaders/Elite Four/etcetera if the Pokédex didn't change at all? They'd have pretty much the exact same teams given the small amount of options BW had. Would that be enjoyable? I don't think so. (Granted, in BW2 some of them have been considered even worse, but still.) Not to mention as Zekrom said before me, it wouldn't have felt the same if the sequels had only the new ones again considering it was already done in the first games.

Speaking of such, all the extra options can make the game considerably less challenging than BW, at least on Normal Mode, since you have more things that can counter important fights. And there was a small amount of Pokémon I question the inclusion of (Delibird, Shuckle, and COMBEE AND VESPIQUEN to name a couple), and a few I would've liked to see (like the Houndour, Scyther and Duskull evolution lines, and maybe a Sinnoh Pokémon or two). Not to mention not being able to get the fossils or Croagunk before post-game was a bit underwhelming. But all things considered I can definitely say I enjoy the New Unova Pokédex for its wide selections.

 

[Yato]

I really enjoyed being able to find only new Pokemon in BW before post-game. However, I agree with Zekrom that it would've been good to do the same for the sequels. BW having only new Pokemon pretty much forced people to get used to them; by BW2 they would likely know at least the general details about most, if not all the Gen. V Pokemon (barring event ones), so not adding old Pokemon would make BW2's gameplay rather dull. Thus, I was glad that old Pokemon were added and was especially happy that many weren't found in most the other generations (such as the Pika and Geodude lines).

 

[Altairis]

I really liked the new Unova Pokedex in BW2 because they made a lot of fan favorites like Lucario and Flygon available. The teams that I had in BW2 were some of my favorites :) Not only did I use a mix of Pokemon that I knew and loved, I also used a lot of new Pokemon as well. BW forced me to use a lot of new Pokemon, and I didn't end up liking half of them, so it was nice to have a mix.

 

[Gulpin]

Honestly, the PokeDex in Black 2 and White 2 was so dang broad that it gave too many choices, making it so difficult to actually decide on a team. It also distracted too much from the native Unova Pokemon, which there were more than enough to choose from alone without adding so many earlier generation Pokemon. This fact really keeps me from using the sequels in challenges, because I'd rather use Unova Pokemon in Unova and they almost don't even seem as available as they were in the original Unova dex.

 

[Pendraflare]

Honestly, the PokeDex in Black 2 and White 2 was so dang broad that it gave too many choices, making it so difficult to actually decide on a team. It also distracted too much from the native Unova Pokemon, which there were more than enough to choose from alone without adding so many earlier generation Pokemon. This fact really keeps me from using the sequels in challenges, because I'd rather use Unova Pokemon in Unova and they almost don't even seem as available as they were in the original Unova dex.

"More than enough to choose from"? That explains why the Elite Four in BW only had four Pokémon, doesn't it? (They do in the sequels as well but Challenge Mode ups them to five.) Not to mention a lot of types didn't have all that many evolution lines as far as my recollection goes. Just for the record, how many types were there in BW that if you were doing, say, a Monotype, you could actually make a full team out of?

And not wanting to play the games because of all the extra Pokémon, to me that's like saying that when playing Emerald (or RS for that matter) you'd only want to use Hoenn Pokémon. And if you think this Pokédex shutting out the region's natives isn't a good thing, just look at XY, which is even broader, has less than 1/6 of the Kalos Pokédex being Kalos native, and more old Pokémon than the entirety of BW2's Pokédex has from both old and new.

I guess that while Platinum expanded the Sinnoh Pokédex, it added less than half the total Pokémon that Diamond and Pearl had, so I could possibly understand why you'd be distasted by this in comparison. Still don't feel the same way myself. Not trying to be rude/off-topic here here, just trying to express my disagreement with your points/opinion.

 

[Nah]

Honestly, the PokeDex in Black 2 and White 2 was so dang broad that it gave too many choices, making it so difficult to actually decide on a team. It also distracted too much from the native Unova Pokemon, which there were more than enough to choose from alone without adding so many earlier generation Pokemon. This fact really keeps me from using the sequels in challenges, because I'd rather use Unova Pokemon in Unova and they almost don't even seem as available as they were in the original Unova dex.

Isn't X/Y's regional dex bigger than B2/W2's? And it had less new pokes too.

 

[Gulpin]

"More than enough to choose from"? That explains why the Elite Four in BW only had four Pokémon, doesn't it? (They do in the sequels as well but Challenge Mode ups them to five.) Not to mention a lot of types didn't have all that many evolution lines as far as my recollection goes. Just for the record, how many types were there in BW that if you were doing, say, a Monotype, you could actually make a full team out of?

And not wanting to play the games because of all the extra Pokémon, to me that's like saying that when playing Emerald (or RS for that matter) you'd only want to use Hoenn Pokémon. And if you think this Pokédex shutting out the region's natives isn't a good thing, just look at XY, which is even broader, has less than 1/6 of the Kalos Pokédex being Kalos native, and more old Pokémon than the entirety of BW2's Pokédex has from both old and new.

I guess that while Platinum expanded the Sinnoh Pokédex, it added less than half the total Pokémon that Diamond and Pearl had, so I could possibly understand why you'd be distasted by this in comparison. Still don't feel the same way myself. Not trying to be rude/off-topic here here, just trying to express my disagreement with your points/opinion.

I guess from my point of view with monotypes, I prefer teams of 3-4. A full team of six is undesirable, and if I were to play through B2/W2 I would end up leaving a lot of the available Pokemon out, which I don't like to do. For me, Gen V introduced enough Pokemon on its own to fill up a region. I think the expansion was kind of odd because suddenly Unova became filled with foreign-region Pokemon which kind of went against the 'fresh start Gen V' idea.

The reason I love the original Unova dex for monotype purposes is that it makes team-building extremely easy. For example, a Poison monotype in BW would consist of the only three avaialbe, making for a good-sized team that covers all native-Unova Poison Pokemon. But if I were to try the same monotype in B2W2, I would have to choose between nine Poison-types. So many options makes it harder for me to decide on a team, especially when I don't really want more than four Pokemon.

Isn't X/Y's regional dex bigger than B2/W2's? And it had less new pokes too.

For some reason, the fact that X/Y had fewer native Pokemon made it feel like it was necessary to include the non-Kalos Pokemon. I do think that X/Y's dex is a little too big as well, but it's not like I have experienced Kalos without so many Pokemon like I did with Unova.

 

[Hikamaru]

Even though my first-run Black 2 team only had two non-Unovian Pokemon, I still liked the expansion to the Unova Dex in these games. It gave players much more variety when it comes to teambuilding and also, not everyone loved the Pokemon in Unova so having the older options really helped benefit those nostalgia freaks too. While Kalos had a much bigger regional dex, that was only because Kalos introduced a minimal number of new Pokemon.

 

[Pendraflare]

Honestly, I'm gonna make a dirty confession and admit that as i'm playing through Black 2 for my Time Warp Challenge, I can understand what Gulpin means to somewhat of an extent about the Pokédex making it hard to decide on a proper team. When I did my Red Mono-Color on White I was basically locked for my team that I had for a good chunk of the game. Here, I do find myself having over ten Pokémon in total and I haven't even taken on Clay yet, so again I do get where he (Gulpin) is coming from, but I still am not completely on the same side as him.

Although like I said, even though a broad Pokédex might leave more options than necessary (with both BW2 and XY), one thing to give credit for is that it gives you a good chance to get creative with your strategies.