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Pokemon is probably the franchise that I love the most so I decided to review each generation of games, starting with Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow. Considered by many the best Pokémon games, or at least the best generation!
To write the best review I could I wanted to play these games in their original cartridges. However, my games weren’t in very good conditions, as you see from the above photo. Even after changing their batteries and clean them up the only one that works is Pokemon Yellow. I really wanted to complete at least one game at 100% with no glitches, something that I never did has a kid. So, no point in going through Pokemon Yellow since there is no way I can get all the Pokemon without the other two games… In the end, I decided to buy Pokémon Blue from the Nintendo 3DS Eshop and with the help of my brothers I ended up completing it for the first time ever!
The Journey
Although Pokémon Yellow is the most recent game out of the three, and the better looking one, I decided to play the Pokémon Blue since it was the first Pokemon game I’ve played. While playing through it I was looking for a completely different experience from when I was a kid. Which meant capturing as many Pokemon as I could along the way to complete the PokéDex and train a team of 6 Pokemon to beat the Elite Four. These were two things that I never did when I was younger. Usually, I’d get one or two overpowered mons and beat the game with them. Also, I’d always choose Squirtle no matter what, so to change things I chose Bulbasaur.
I always thought that Bulbasaur was the weakest of the three but I was wrong. It has access to Razor Leaf, a move with a high-crit chance. And, in this generation your crit chance scales with your speed. Which means that at some point Razor Leaf will always crit! This is so broken… More broken than this is Slash on a Persian, works the same way but it hits harder!
I really wanted a team of 6 in this play-through but one thing bothered me. In the first generation there is no Exp.Share like in the new games which means you need to grind and level up each Pokemon individually. While having only three or four Pokemons on your team this will not be much of a problem but beyond that, you’ll have to spend some time griding. To ease things I decided to take some shortcuts. I captured a Clefairy (best looking Pokemon in the game) as soon as possible since it levels up pretty fast. I asked my brother to trade me a Geodude so it would gain 1.5x exp. And I decided to add one of the legendary birds to my team since they were all at level 50. Articuno was the best choice so I could beat Lance’s dragons with ease.
For the last two Pokémon, I went for Meowth for that broken Slash move and got a Dratini from the Game Corner. Getting Dratini was such a mistake! I knew that he leveled up slowly and I was fine with that, but its move-pool? Terrible! The only attack move he has until level 30 is Wrap… And the only dragon-type move it gets is Dragon Rage. Which by the way is the only dragon-type move in the game! In this regard he was a mistake to get but I soon realized how broken Dragonite was… All you have to do, most of the time, is use Agility and Wrap and you win every single time, except against ghosts and maybe rock-types.
Dragonite isn’t the only one that has a bad move-pool though. Almost every Pokémon suffers from this, that is why they added TM’s in the game. However, once you use them, they are gone. So, while using a TM think carefully to whom you are giving it. The only exception to this are the HM’s or the TM’s that can be purchased either in the Celadon Mall or Game Corner.
These were by far the biggest flaws of this game and despite them you will have fun playing the game. Except that there is one more, the Safari Zone… I spent hours with my brothers trying to capture Tauros, Scyther, Pinsir and Kangaskhan. Never in my life I want to this again. The capture rates are nonsense. To make thing easy you can you use a certain glitch but I didn’t want to use since it would ruin the overall experience. One day I’ll write about my favorite glitches in the first generation though!
At the end of the game I had my team well leveled up and the Pokémon League was a breeze. Afterwards I dedicated my time to filling the Dex. This was a bit tedious but I had my brothers to help. You might be wondering what do you get if you complete it? A diploma, you get a diploma. In the Japanese version of the game, you can actually get a Mew, but a diploma is fine no worries. I got Mew via a glitch later on to make sure I had all 151 Pokemon.
Despite all this I had fun playing the game, like always.
Final Thoughts
For whom is this game? I truly believe that any person can enjoy it in their own way. If you are a fan of collecting creatures and make them battle then this is the right game for you! I think that I honestly will never get tired of these games. In each play-through I always try to do something that I’ve never done before to keep things fresh. This is why I’ve played through these games more times than I could count.
If you only know the newer generations I strongly advise you to go back and play this. As I said before there are many broken things in this game, but in the end it is still Pokémon. The Pokémon that I and millions of other people have grown up with. Every time I turn on the game and hear that intro song nostalgia hits me like a truck. The new games are great sure but these have something that the new ones will never get. That feeling of playing side by side with your friends and plugging in your link cable to trade and battle.