In the Pokemon Let’s Go games, you follow a brand new character and brand new rival but revisit the classic Kanto region for the games we all love Pokemon Red/Green/Blue/Yellow. Here is our full Pokemon Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee Review!
Pokemon Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee is developed by Game Freak and published by Nintendo and The Pokemon Company. The game was released on November 16, 2018, for the Nintendo Switch.
For this review, I played Pokemon Let’s Go Eevee, due to only a handful of pokemon being different, and having played the Pikachu counterpart years ago, I didn’t feel like I needed to play the almost exact same game over, because there really are only some minor differences that are not even noticeable to the more casual player. But there are some cool pokemon in both versions, so the version exclusives are always nice to trade with someone who has the opposite version of the one you have.
The story hits the same beats as its original game, but it has some nice additions that fit a bit more to how the anime is, like getting gifted the 3 starter pokemon for characters that are at the same place as the anime and the Team Rocket trio have traveled back to Kanto to do some of their classic stuff, but Meowth doesn’t seem to be talking.
Unlike in the anime, the Team Rocket trio is a very nice welcome due to how scattered around they are, and they don’t overstay their welcome. Team Rocket in general is just the perfect game villain in this game and feels like a nice side thing, unlike how in the anime everything seems to revolve around them and the tricks they pull to steal Pikachu from Ash.
You do not play as Red in this game, but a brand-new character and a brand-new rival that kinda look like the red/blue versions of the main characters but have some new look that can even be changed with some clothes that you can collect, something I really enjoyed doing in the end and was something I didn’t expect having much on my mind as much as it I had. There is 1 character that makes a return to the main story on a few occasions and that’s Blue. He kinda works like Professor Oak’s assistant and goes around the region doing things and kinda helps you in the Team Rocket story arc. Green and Red also show up, but this is only in the post-game.
The new mechanics used in the game borrow some of its core from Pokemon Go, you don’t actually battle to pokemon you want to catch but you just start throwing balls, and balls you need at times because every pokemon can flee (with Abra being an annoying one that you don’t get much time for). While the mechanic is cool, it doesn’t work as intended a lot of the time with balls flying to the left or right when you are trying to throw straight, but also the other way around. This was extremely frustrating at points especially when you finally find a pokemon you want with a low spawn %.
Speaking of spawn %, at some points it can be annoying when you wanna farm a few of 1 pokemon, like my favorite pokemon, Charmander. But something that did surprise me was the Shiny Pokemon, I actually got a shiny Dratini (just like in Pokemon Scarlet) when I was trying to find a normal one, and it already has a low spawn % and not a lot of space to spawn. So it was a nice surprise to see a full-odds shiny Dratini without a combo.
The difficulty curve in the game is a lot higher than I expected, with more trainers than before, but no pokemon to battle, the EXP gain is a lot lower than before and comes mainly from battling trainers if you don’t want to catch 100 pokemon and waste money on the balls. While the battling curve went up, the curve to find all the pokemon went down drastically. Legendary Pokemon used to be something that was hard and special, but here, it felt super easy, all you have to do is walk up to them, defeat them, and then throw some balls. The stress of getting their HP low but not defeating it is gone, but the stress of them just fleeing is as high and maybe even more.
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