More info from Nintendo/Game Freak
- Genre: JRPG
- Platform: 3DS
So one of the things that was continually talked about pre-release for these games was how much the 7th generation was going to change up the formula for Pokemon. Having now finished the game, I’m not that convinced they really changed much at all, and in a lot of ways they seem to have stripped out features to get to a simplified base to start the generation. While I’m pretty comfortable saying that as usual, this was a fantastic game and is the best Pokemon entry that’s been released, it feels like another iterative step in the series, and not at all a big change to the formula.
So, I guess to start, let’s look at what actually is new. We’re in a new region, Alola, this time taking place on a bunch of islands. The theme of a lot of the new 80 or so Pokemon in the Gen 7 Pokedex revolves around this, particularly in the large amount of legendaries available in the post-game content. In addition, there’s a handful of Gen 1 Pokemon in new Alola forms, such as the Dark/Normal Rattata or Ice/Steel Sandshrew. In all you’re talking about 100 or so new entries into your overall strategy. There’s also a replacement to Gen 6’s Mega Evolutions called Z-Moves, super powered moves tied to type- or Pokemon-specific Z-Crystals that are found throughout the main story.
So all that is well and good, but is largely comprised of expected changes. From there we have to get into the kinda sort asterisk changes that were really claimed as the big steps forward, as well as some features that were removed from Gen 6 games that are definitely to be missed.
The big one here is the change associated with gyms. Gyms are gone! You aren’t collecting badges! …kind of. Gyms were effectively replaced by a new captain challenge system. Each captain challenge is a special area on each island in which you take on a type-specific challenge. As an example, in one you are tasked with researching a series of disturbances in a lake, culminating in a series of water Pokemon fights, with the reward being a water Z-Crystal. Long story short, they technically aren’t gyms, and technically aren’t badges, the functionality is effectively the same, going from area to area to fight type-restricted fights. Alongside the gym changes, there’s also some big asterisks associated with changes to the Pokemon League that are effectively covered in the story.
As far as removals go, Alpha Sapphire/Omega Ruby extended the gameplay of Gen 6’s post-game in some smart ways that no longer exist. The first big one of these is the Soar feature, where you could fly on the back of Latios or Latias over the Hoenn region, giving you access to both battles against flying Pokemon, as well as a larger number of Soar-exclusive legendary Pokemon areas, and post game content. In addition, the DexNav feature is completely removed. This has two important consequences. First, the per-route visual indicator of what Pokemon are available is gone. Second, the entire hidden Pokemon feature is gone. In general the second-screen experience is effectively only restricted to combat inputs and an always-on Town Map, which fairly heavily simplified the count of non-essential mechanics available to the player. In addition, the removal of Mega Evolutions is at the very least curious given the amount of marketing push it received throughout the entirety of Gen 6.
All that being said, overall I still think the game is a step forward. In shedding some of the old mechanics, they have definitely simplified the game back to a much cleaner slate, giving them a good base to start with looking forward to the probable move to the upcoming Switch. It also provides some questions as to how they are going to handle the assumed Gen 4 remakes when they’re ready to move in that direction. The team at this point seems to have caught up to a lot of the type mechanics added within the last couple of generations, with a lot of the new Pokemon adopting dual-type combos never seen before. The addition of region-specific forms also gave us curious new type combinations, lending a bit of mystery to what kind of Pokemon is coming up next when you’re told that you will be facing a Sandslash. If they really run with some of these features through the rest of Gen 7, we could be set for a huge jump in the quality of the Pokemon games from this point forward.