Pokemon Picross

Genre: Picross Puzzle

Players: 1

.

Review:

WARNING: THIS GAME HEAVILY PUSHES MICROTRANSACTIONS AND USES WAIT MECHANICS

Pokemon Picross, released on Nintendo 3DS in 2015, is a Free-to-Play Picross game that takes the core gameplay of Picross and combines it with Pokemon in a way that doesn’t just add Nintendo’s popular critters as a skin, but actually combines gameplay elements of that game with the Picross gameplay to make for an entirely different, unique experience.

In terms of content, Pokemon Picross is absolutely loaded with puzzles to do – there are over 300 puzzles here, most of which represent the various Pokemon creatures throughout the franchise.. I should note that this game does use wait mechanics to pad this out somewhat, but players can earn in-game currency that can loosen and eventually completely remove this element of the game, but this same in-game currency is also needed to progress from one “area” of the game to the next, and to unlock features within the game.

In any case, it’s somewhat sleazy to include microtransaction elements like this in a game that’s clearly aimed at children, but at the very least it’s easy enough to remove this frustration. Players can do away with the microtransactions entirely by spending about $32 within the game, essentially giving you the option of just making a normal game purchase.

Players can use standard gamepad controls or touchscreen controls to fill in puzzles – the latter are good, though a little inhibited by the small size of the Nintendo 3DS screen. It takes a bit of getting used to the way players are meant to use the circle pad to shift between marking squares and X-ing them, but once you do it feels like second nature.

What’s really clever about this game is the way it handles helpful features like row/column hints and “hint roulette”, and other helpful features. These are not options in a menu, but Pokemon you can add into an active party. More skilled players may simply opt to play without these helper characters, but those who want to make use of this sort of help will find that even this option has become a part of the gameplay, and you must decide which types of help you want to take into each puzzle. I find this clever use of the franchise absolutely thrilling, and I wish more Picross games were this smart about how to shake up the gameplay.

In addition to this, each puzzle has specific goals to complete, adding further depth to the gameplay. You might need to take a specific “type” of Pokemon with you into the puzzle, or take a specific action within the puzzle. None of this completely changes the fundamentals of how the gameplay works, but makes for added variety and challenge.

There is one other issue I need to address here, which is that this game’s levels are mostly linear in nature, which means you can’t simply pick whichever puzzle you want, you have to complete them more or less in order. This combined with the way the game locks content behind spending in-game currency makes Pokemon Picross feel far more restrictive than it needs to be

When it comes to presentation, Pokemon Picross is bright and colorful and features cheerful music, but nothing here is especially noteworthy or memorable. It gets the job done, but doesn’t do much more than that.

Despite its issues, Pokemon Picross may well be my favorite Picross game of all time. The gameplay and controls are pretty much perfect, the amount of content is admirable, the way the game makes assistance options into a gameplay mechanic is inspired, and really my only complaints are the somewhat ugly microtransaction elements, how linear the game is, and how the presentation could be better. But overall, if you have a Nintendo 3DS and enjoy Puzzle games at all, you should absolutely get Pokemon Picross while you can – it’s free-to-play, so you’ve got nothing to lose.

tl;dr – Pokemon Picross is a free-to-play Picross Puzzle game that takes helpful features and options often seen in the genre and turns them into gameplay mechanics, managing them as members of your party of Pokemon. Add to this excellent gameplay and controls and a wealth of Puzzles, and you have a phenomenal Picross game, and really its only flaws are its microtransaction elements are a little bothersome, the puzzles are presented in a largely linear fashion, and the presentation could be improved a bit. But overall this is one of the best Picross games I’ve ever played. If you have a Nintendo 3DS and enjoy Puzzle games, do yourself a favor and download this right now.

Grade: A-

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