Pokemon: Let’s Go, Eevee!

Genre: Turn-Based Monster Collecting JRPG

Players: 1-2 Co-Op (Local), 2 Competitive / Content Sharing (Local Wireless, Online)

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Review:

Pokemon: Let’s Go, Eevee!, released on Nintendo Switch in 2018 alongside its partner game, Pokemon: Let’s Go, Pikachu!, is a Turn-Based Monster Collecting JRPG that does many different things at once. This is a game that brings the gameplay elements of the popular mobile game, Pokemon Go, to the home console, reimagining that experience to work without its AR Game elements. This game also combines those elements with more traditional elements of the mainline Pokemon franchise, creating a hybrid of sorts of the two types of games. Finally, this game is a ground-up remake or re-imagining of the very first Pokemon games, Pokemon Red, Pokemon Blue, and Pokemon Yellow: Special Pikachu Edition. The result is a game that is both extremely familiar to anyone who’s played earlier games in the series, while simultaneously being refreshingly new.

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A New Pokemon Gameplay Evolution?

To describe how this game plays, it’s best to start with something familiar, the typical mainline Pokemon game. Much as with those games, you’ll be traveling around from village to village catching Pokemon, fighting trainers with your own custom team, with those battles being the same sort of turn-based battles the mainline games are known for, with the same moves and strategies. In fact, as a remake of the first generation of Pokemon games, the map and story are very similar to what was in those games.

What’s changed from mainline Pokemon games? Well, the big difference here is what happens when you encounter wild Pokemon.

In the mainline games, encountering a wild Pokemon starts a battle, and capturing the Pokemon involves fighting to whittle its health down, then choosing a Pokeball from the menu, with various factors determining your odds of a successful capture. Conversely, in Pokemon Go on mobile devices, there’s no battling to weaken the Pokemon, and players would use the touchscreen to toss their Pokeball at the wild Pokemon, with their success determined by the strength of the Pokemon, whether you fed that Pokemon a berry to make it more amenable to being captured, and how well you aimed and timed your ball toss with a shrinking concentric circle superimposed over the Pokemon.

What this game does in these situations is closer to Pokemon Go, but not exactly like it. Encountering a wild Pokemon doesn’t have you battling, and does come down to a combination of timing, aiming, and the use of berries. However, there’s no use of touchscreen here, even in portable mode which would make this an obvious choice. Rather, aiming is done via gyroscopic motion control, either using the Joy-Con in docked mode, the Nintendo Switch system in portable mode, or using the Pokeball Plus accessory created specifically for use with this game (and which I do not have to test out for this review, sorry).

This brings me to one of the first big issues with Pokemon Let’s Go – this game is extremely finicky about how it wants you to play it, and players don’t really have much in the way of options in this regard. If you’re playing the game in docked mode (and don’t have a Pokeball Plus), you’re playing it with a single Joy-Con held in one hand, period. If you’re playing the game in portable mode, you’re using the Nintendo Switch’s built-in gyroscopic motion-sensing, period. There’s no option to aim using traditional analog stick controls, no option to use two Joy-Cons to control your character and their movement, and absolutely no option to use the Nintendo Switch Pro controller.

Another change to the gameplay is the way in which you level up your Pokemon. Battles have you leveling up your team much in the same way as the mainline games, but you can also earn experience for your team by catching wild Pokemon, even though none of your Pokemon actually do anything during these encounters. In addition, you can send off excess Pokemon to Professor Oak in exchange for candy to increase your Pokemon’s stats, though unlike Pokemon Go, this candy isn’t specific to any one type of Pokemon.

In a way, this frees up the gameplay of the game, but it also makes it feel a bit less meaningful. Grinding to improve your Pokemon just doesn’t mean as much when none of your Pokemon are actually doing anything to earn their experience points, and battles being restricted to only fights with other trainers makes them feel detached from the rest of the experience. And while it’s theoretically liberating to not have to seek out a specific Pokemon type to get the candy you need to power-up your preferred Pokemon, it also means that you could just waste time catching any Pokemon and it would have the same result.

Due to these half-measures, Pokemon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Pokemon: Let’s Go, Eevee! end up missing out on some of what makes mainline Pokemon games compelling and what makes Pokemon Go compelling, too. It’s still enjoyable, but it kinda’ makes me wish that I was either playing an actual console version of Pokemon Go, or a more traditional remake of Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow.

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A New Flavor of Pokemon Eye/Ear Candy

On that note, just in terms of presentation, this is an absolutely beautiful remake of the first generation of Pokemon games. The story is very similar to, but different from all of those games – for one thing, your rival (Blue, Gary, or whatever you opted to name him) is much friendlier, closer in tone to more modern rivals in the series (for better or worse), and people you meet more frequently comment on your relationship with your Eevee.

However, it’s the audiovisual presentation that really shines here. Pokemon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Pokemon: Let’s Go, Eevee! Feature a visual style that closely resembles the original games, but modernizes them with full 3D visuals. Everything here looks sleek and polished, with a good amount of detail while maintaining a colorful, cartoony look, and with some nice flourishes here and there, such as the colorful new transition for trainer battles. Oddly, this game looks more visually-striking and more graphically-impressive than Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Pokemon Shining Pearl, which would come out on Nintendo Switch a full three years later.

In terms of audio, Pokemon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Pokemon: Let’s Go, Eevee! Make use of the same digitized sounds the rest of the franchise uses for Pokemon, save for Pikachu and Eevee themselves, who are both voiced. This is nothing special, but what is special is the completely remastered music. This game’s soundtrack takes what is one of the best and most iconic soundtracks of the entire Pokemon franchise and re-records it with new orchestrations that are absolutely delightful, and it is a joy to re-discover the great tunes of the first-gen games in such high-quality.

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Building a New Pokemon Team

In terms of new and special features added into this version of the game, players can invite a friend to join them, making for an easier co-op version of the same sort of gameplay, which is a fun spin on the formula. They can also connect to their copy of Pokemon Go to trade Pokemon between the two, which is a fantastic feature… or it would be, except the game limits this sort of Pokemon transfer to only the 151 Pokemon that appeared in the first-generation Pokemon games. Frustrating.

While I know that much of this review probably sounds negative, I do like Pokemon: Let’s Go, Pikachu!, I’m just frustrated that its conflicting elements keep it from being a better game. I can’t help but feel that if this game truly committed to being a straight remake of Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow, or if it committed to being a reworking of Pokemon Go for consoles, it could have been something truly excellent. As it is, it’s still enjoyable, but it feels like it’s an experience that’s caught between two other potential games that both would have been better.

tl;dr – Pokemon: Let’s Go, Eevee! (and its partner game, Pokemon: Let’s Go, Pikachu!) is a Turn-Based Monster Collecting JRPG that combines a remake of the original Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow with gameplay elements of the mobile game Pokemon Go. While it’s still enjoyable, I feel like splitting the difference between the two styles of gameplay ultimately leaves this game feeling weaker than it would have if it simply focused on one of the two exclusively. It’s still a fun experiment, but not nearly as satisfying as its inspirations.

Grade: C+

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