Last time I talked about this, (back here) I was analysing the new designs of the Pokemon themselves but I didn’t know enough about the world, or even the rest of the game in general to talk about it. Now the info has been released and I’ve wised up – let’s get to it.
The land itself is going to be American based, some fans were expecting this. It’s to be set in a place that is New York-esque in the way that characters of many cultures and job descriptions will be wandering around. I say wandering around, but given NPC behavior in past games they’ll probably be walking in a circle and/or pivoting in your direction when you talk to them. In that respect, the game doesn’t look very different.
The player still has a boy/girl choice between a dude and chick with weird hair. I have no idea if guys in past games have had wacky hair seeing as how I rarely see them, but they all seem to wear caps, so who’d know?
The physical size of the sprites on screen look fairly generic. This doesn’t bother me personally. After all they have made some other pretty significant changes (which I’ll get to later) and if the whole layout seems to be good enough, massive changes aren’t neccesary just yet. The game has after all stood the test of time. The only changing graphical evolution has been 3D rendered buildings and weather. Its should be no surprise to anyone that the players aren’t tiny little perfectly formed people in these two new titles.
The new features this time are seasons. One per real-time month, and they do dodgy things like flooding rivers to block a non story related road, and stopping meltable or freezable Pokemon from appearing. This system is made to get everyone to play the thing for more than a few months. If you’re anything like Gamejudgment writer Chris, he is prone to playing a good chunk of the game well into the night after release, and has the game sorted long before all of these newfangled seasons would have rolled around. Except to occasionally train and trade Pokemon between different games of course.
Another new feature is the actual differences between Pokemon Black and White. Before you just had a few different wild Pokemon and the different legendary Pokemon at the end of each game. In Pokemon Black and White we’ve been promised different choices and characters. I’m not sure how actually different it can possibly be without people having to buy both games in order to do everything.
A detail I’m rather glad about is the fact that they are tweaking the actual gameplay. Hardcore players have been taking advantage of the strangest types in the game and the same moves can recur heavily. In Black/White they’re working to make this exploit way more balanced.
So all in all Gamefreaks seems to have made more changes to the franchise than they ever have before. Only playing it will tell though – I can’t wait to review this sucker.
Source-http://i.joystiq.com/2011/02/11/pokemon-black-and-white-preview/
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Why yes, I can finish a Pokemon game within a week. Thanks for pointing that out. X3
Waaait. Does that mean you’re actually gonna buy this on release? D8