Pokemon Black Version 2

Screenshots

Notes

The first DS pokemon game. First of 5 in fact. It's definitely a Pokemon game, that's most of what I think about it. I'm not super familiar with Black 2 as opposed to the GBA games.

The pacing is a little strange. It felt like the first 6 gyms come rapid-fire, really fast, and then it suddenly slows down with a lot more world to explore in the top right of the map and the Team Plasma storyline resolving before you get to finish up the game.

The game's really trying to force you with a bunch of minigame crap that I don't care about which annoyed me. Pokemon cinema, the shopping mall thing, the weird pokemon world championship (why is this not part of the main plot about you becoming pokemon champion and instead a minigame unlocked half way through?). All of it can get thrown in the bin as far as I'm concerned.

I played the game in a pretty normal/casual way, built a decent team, and walked through the game without doing anything too fancy. I did find that my levels were falling a bit behind late in the game (probably due to not exploring the whole world and grinding all the available trainers) so I just cheated in some rare candies to keep up. No shame, just wanted to get through it in a timely fashion.

Overall, as I said above, it's definitely a pokemon game, but on the downward slope towards modern mainline Pokemon games which I stopped enjoying at all around Pokemon Sun/Moon (excessive cutscenes, minigame junk forced on the player, not really accomodating experienced players even with a "skip tutorial" option, etc.).