Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

100 or More Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Masterpiece"

This is the first Pokemon game I ever played.It was addicting catching all the different pokemon species.The game plays like many other RPGs with a turn based combat system.You'll travel to different towns and instead of using party members to battle enemies,you'll use creatures named pokemon to battle wild pokemon that attack you randomly as you travel through the world and to battle other pokemon trainers.You'll level up the pokemon and order them to perform attacks/commands.You'll begin the game with one pokemon and you'll have to catch other pokemon(you do so by weakening a pokemon in battle and trapping it inside a pokeball).Each pokemon has different strengths and weaknesses and there's many different species of pokemon and it creates a good amount of variation.

There is grass pokemon who are vulnerable to fire attacks but have powerful physical attacks and more resistant to physical attacks.Fire pokemon and Ice pokemon can damage eachother greatly.Some pokemon are metal and are very resistant to physical attacks but vulnerable to electricity.There's also meteorite pokemon,dragon pokemon and pokemon that can even control the weather.

Different pokemon inhabit different regions of the world.Some of the stronger pokemon are in secret locations.The objective of the game is to travel to all 8 gyms and defeat their trainers and earn all 8 badges so you can battle the elite 4 pokemon trainers.A group of pokemon trainers named Team Aqua try to create havoc by using pokemon as weapons and you'll need to stop them.

What I found made the game fun is trying to catch the rare species of pokemon.There's some pokemon that are the only one of their species that can control weather(by making it rain)and is extremely powerful.There's some other pokemon that are rare and powerful,such as dragon and meteorite pokemon.

Every pokemon you have can only remember 4 different types of attacks.They can only do each attack a certain number of times in battle.So it makes you be tactical in which attacks you choose your pokemon to remember and when to use your most powerful attacks.Certain attacks are powerful but can often miss.Other attacks do less damage but will miss less often.Some pokemon have the ability to disable an enemy pokemon by making them confused or paralysed or to make any pokemon who physically attacks them lose health.

The graphics are great for a GBA game.The towns are charming.There's a village in the forest that has people living in houses built on trees.There's a shopping mall with many departments to explore.There nice seaside locations too.

The music and sound effects of the pokemon are nice.This is definately one of the better sounding pokemon games.

For replay value,you can try to catch all the pokemon after you beat the game and it will take a long time to do so.You can trade pokemon or battle your strongest pokemon against other real life players.You can even make your own treehouse and buy furniture for it.

The game was very addictive and charming for me and was a great experience.