I am not going to lie, and I am going to proudly admit, that I have played every Pokémon game to-date. And now, it is your turn not to lie and to proudly admit, that you have too. There, shameless.
I chose White 2 (Black 2 is also available), which leaves off where the Black and White versions took off, except two years into the future. This is also Nintendo’s first release of a sequel for any of the games in the Pokémon series. And, for some reason, Nintendo decided to release the game on a normal 2004 DS format as opposed to the 3DS which has been out for a while.
As far as it being a series game, it didn’t change much. You start out as a young adventure enthusiast who picks out a starer Pokêmon and sets out to travel the world and discover all of the creatures and battle all of trainers just like you to reach the coveted title of being a “Pokémon Master”.
But when it comes to comparing it to other games in the series, this version steps it up a couple notches. Even from the game’s counter part, White, which was released just a year ago, the graphics have been slightly upgraded to give a more dynamic “punch”. Why not just release the game on the 3DS?
But other than that, the game’s Pokédex has been expanded so that you can encounter older and more creatures, earlier on in the game (“praise da lawd,” said the hipster scrolling through their Tumblr feed who infuriatingly states that they only like the original 150 when someone slightly mentions anything about the new series).
Also, the map has been added onto as well. New regions have been added to the north east corner of the map, and your home town in now located in a new section on the south west corner. Along with that, many of the cities have been rebuilt, gyms have been revamped, and even some of the gym leaders have been replaced.
Even though I have not gotten into the game halfway yet, I can already tell that the sequel is going to reveal many mysteries and seems like it is going to avoid any redundancy, which will allow it to fuel many hours of emotional nostalgia for me and any other people playing. Also, the fact that I can get some of my favorite older Pokémon early on in the game does not hurt either.