Pokémon - A toy adventure

Pokémon was born out of Satoshi Tajiri's will of sharing his experiences as a child to search for, capture and collect insects outside his home, alongside the curiosity to see the creatures and the ingenuity to get them. To him, the games of his era could be better, which is why this fixation could help him to reach the desired level of sophistication. Many elements are in fact coherent with this approach: The focus on capturing wild enemies, their differences with domesticated creatures, random encounters exclusively on wild areas, the intent of making each creature unique in elemental affinity and moveset, the turn-based combat as a representation of giving orders to your creatures, etc. To achieve this, Pokémon needs a world where the player can navigate through, explore and discover. Game Freak would take for this the established structure by Dragon Quest as a stat progression through accumulation of experience points to gather levels alongside a lineal advance led by a narrative, and the one by SaGa as a progression of stats depending on the player's decisions during battle. The problem arises because of this: By using established mechanics, the developers didn't take into account how they diminish the creatures' importance and destroy the interest on its world, failing thus in its communicative intent.

Left: Dragon Quest for the Famicom.
Right: Makai Toushi SaGa for the Gameboy.
Both of them were the main inspirations for Pokémon Red.

Japanese role-playing games that are inheritors of Dragon Quest's formula allow to increase stats according to the amount of defeated enemies, and the issue shared by them is the possibility of confronting enemies indifinitely without penalization, since it's possible to position oneself near a healing spot while obtaining experience. The consequence of this is that by accumulating enough levels, enemies stop being a menace due to the player having stats so high that the opponent cannot compete with them. Due to this procedure being allowed to the player as an unlimited free resource, its presence, regardless that it's optional, is enough for the player to unconsciously lose respect to the given world, since how to get through the world becomes solvable and predictable. A lot of games attempt to mitigate this issue due to status effects that are hard to compensate, instant death, reduction of experience gain in high levels, or adjustment of enemy parameters to the player's level. 

Pokémon Red doesn't just lack something to prevent this, but it worsens it by allowing the player to heal without fee and save anywhere, and by adding the stat progression system inherited from SaGa to represent the superiority of trained creatures against wild Pokémon. By making an enemy faint, one obtains stat experience according to the type of enemy that increases a certain stat. Since these points are added directly to the current stats, and enemies lack access to them, there's a considerable superiority from the player above other trainers even on the same level. There could be a nuance in customization by deciding which stats to increase, but in Pokémon Red this doesn't happen since it's possible to get the highest possible stats on every stat, as well as a lack of transparence of the system to the player, and finally because there isn't a single enemy in the game that poses a threat enough for such customization to be relevant. Not even the final bosses, alluded by the game as the most powerful foes, are saved from this because their creatures' movesets are barely even designed, with choices as rancid as using basic moves or without type variety to exploit elemental effectiveness. For example, the final boss's Arcanine has Ember, the weakest Fire-type move, and his Rhydon has Fury Attack, a weak move that doesn't even have his same type and is more proper of non-evolved enemies from the start of the game than an endgame boss.

Pokémon Red's final boss's Arcanine using Ember.

In addition to these elements, the player has the capability to use items during combat, from healing items or reviving items to statboosters of cumulative effect to four times the original value. Here opens itself another gap between player and opponent, since the few enemies that have access to items are just limited to healing, have them in very little amount, and they use it with a very deficient artificial intelligence. Since these items are available in shops to be bought repeatedly, with a maximum of ninety-nine of the same type in the inventory, the player's creatures become invincible tanks, capable of eliminating opponents in one or two hits, regardless of the type of their move, except for total immunity to a certain type.

These two qualities promote a playstyle focused on raising few, if not just one Pokémon, generally the one received at the start, and because of this, the relevance of other creatures is offset. If just one monster is needed to complete the game, regardless whom the player uses and who the opponent is, what purpose does serve then to differentiate the fauna beyond cosmetics if they work similarly on a mechanical level? What's the practical incentive to gather different Pokémon beyond their appearance? At the end, the sentiment left by the game is to be looking for collectible cards instead of searching and catching different beings, and in a game where its fauna is in the foreground, it's disappointing that their importance is superficial. Pokémon Red attempts to lessen this issue by limiting the progress with artificial barriers, only solvable with special moves to lighten dark areas, pushing boulders, cutting trees or swimming in the ocean, thus forcing the player to look for creatures who can learn these moves.

This approach only turns looking for Pokémon into a task, a forced process in an artificial way instead of being born out of one's own interest, but above all, it leads to the second big issue: The implausibility of the world due to its eagerness to be servile to the player. The aforementioned elements contribute to this, since allowing the player advantages that the enemy doesn't have suggests an environment to the protagonist's mercy, but this is increased by how much the player is handholded through the game. Since the cities are visited in a specific order, the path is structured as a hallway, and the progress is limited by arbitrary barriers that are only unlocked once the player defeats a boss, the development of the player isn't natural, and one is conscious of a repetitive sequence of defeating the level boss an accessing the next level, turning the perception of its world in less the natural habitat that it wants to suggest and more a series of levels designed for the player not to be lost into.

Game Freak didn't have much confidence when creating Pokémon Red, since a lot of the planned content was cut, and this game is plagued by programming errors that can render the cartridge unusable, which is why it's no exaggeration to call it an unfinished game. The developers were conscious of the limitations of this system, and because of it the sequels would complete the original idea or adjust the formula to attempt to lessen its gravity. Pokémon Gold introduces changes in the enironment according to the day of the week and the daytime, such as the available fauna or the presence of some characters, increasing thus the attention of the player to its secrets, it adds a pairing and raising system to improve the possibilities for optimization, and it decides to make the enemies' movesets more competent to have an acceptable damage output. Pokémon Ruby would limit the amount of stat experience for a Pokémon to impede the player to get every stat to their maximum value and would add passive skills and personalities to the creatures that affect their stats to create more variety. Pokémon Black introduces climate changes according to the date in the calendar that affects the fauna and the events, it abstains to force moves on the field to advance and instead it uses them as a possibility to unlock shortcuts or new areas, and it reduces the experience gain if one is above the enemies' levels. Though because of being derivative of a previous entry, none of this solves the problem from its root, since the advantage of the player over the opponent is preserved, and adjustments that opt for the player's commodity are added, like the forced encounter with a powerful Pokémon that trivializes the game from Ruby onwards (except for the fifth generation), characters dispersed through the world that give away healing items, powerful techniques or simply items to sell and buy more resources from Black onwards. Because these sequels add more content as creatures, moves or elemental types, the irrelevance of most elements to the player becomes more noticeable, worsening the situation even more.

Then Pokémon X is released, which is the point where the series stopped attempting to solve their inconveniences and instead opts to acommodate to the player as much as possible by introducing the concept of mega-evolutions that consists on increasing the stats drastically for the duration of the battle, and giving away a key item to make the whole party gain experience so that the team keeps up in similar levels. Pokémon Sun would epitomize the whole amount of issues that the series has been gathering, choosing to double the effect of temporary statboosters, giving twice as much monetary resources in comparison to the previous games, giving away access to Z-moves as part of the narrative, which are so powerful that they can easily defeat enemies in one hit once per battle. Finally, there are mechanics to groom a Pokémon, which has an effect in-battle by increasing the experience gain, allowing to survive fatal strikes, increasing the avoid and critical hit rate, etc.

To illustrate better everything said so far, let's take as an example Brionne Lv28 (the water-type Pokémon you receive at the start of Sun) with 64 Sp. Att., 52 Def before factoring stat experience in. With two X Special Attack they reach 192 Sp. Att., whereas with a X Defense they reach 104 Def. Against Totem Lurantis's 62 Atk, 55 Sp. Def (a fully evolved grass-type Pokémon that serves as a boss), who is uncapable of increasing their stats, Brionne receives 50 HP damage by Solar Blade, a grass-type attack effective against water-type Pokémon, which is easy to heal with usage of Super Potions, whereas Lurantis is eliminated in one hit by Brionne's Scald-Z, a water-type attack that grass-type Pokémon resist.

Totem Lurantis being defeated in one hit by Brionne in Pokémon Moon.

Each of these elements worsens what was said about Pokémon Red, but maybe the decision that ends up eliminating the relevance of the creatures is the removal of the usefulness of moves on the field. Now flying or swimming doesn't even involve looking for a Pokémon that can use the moves, but rather a helper that arrives each time they're called and doesn't even belong to the player's team and is given to them for free. At least Pokémon Red gave a reason to look for monsters, as forced as it was. Now one can simply navigate through the world exclusively with the starter and the Pokémon represented on the cover for the endgame part, without inconvenience just like a park.

Pokémon would benefit if it stopped to adhere so much to Dragon Quest's structure, since its unbalance on the relationship between player and opponent is harmful to a game where the novelty of the enemies is a crucial part. The most disappointing thing is that to create this effect, Game Freak only needed to look at other close examples that do it better.

Final Fantasy 2 for the Famicom.

For example, Final Fantasy 2, spiritual predecessor of SaGa and thus indirect predecessor of Pokémon, also has a stat progression system according to how the player decides to train their characters, in this case increasing durability the more hits they receive, the strength the more physical attacks they make, the speed the more they avoid, and the magic proficiency the more spells are used. The catch is that stats can also get reduced if the player focuses too much on a certain stat, limiting the capability of the player to trivialize the game with arbitrarily maximized stats. These aspects alongside the abstainment of physical barrier during most of the game and a dangerous fauna even from the start gives a somber, unpredictable quality to the navigation through this world, very fitting to the melodramatic plot that unfolds, where death awaits at each corner. Even if it's possible to dissipate the illusion due to a lack of polishment in the mechanics, to try to understand them and adapt oneself becomes relevant.

Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei for the Famicom.

On the other hand, in Megami Tensei, the first game with monster capture mechanics to make enemies join your party, the player's human characters are quickly shown to be impotent against enemies, which is why having strong allies is important for the progress. Given that monsters don't gain experience to level-up, searching for and experimenting with new creatures, or fusing them to obtain better creatures becomes essential, and given the limite amount of techniques in humans or demons, to consider which ones are most convenient becomes a key decision since creatures have skills or stats that are different from other creature and are immutable. That's how there's a truly varied bestiary that awakes interest from a mechanical standpoint. These elements alongside the opressive and labyrinthine design, the possibility to save exclusively at the starting village, and the defeat just with the death of the human characters, complement the apocalyptic ambience of its narrative where humans have to adapt to their indomitable enemies and risk themselves to survive.

In spite of their issues, these games manage with similar resources to create an ambience that's resistant to the player, and because of that, one that requires attention from them to overcome it, which in Pokémon doesn't happen. This is noteworthy since the promise of a world inhabited by a striking fauna to contemplate and capture is the main selling point of Pokémon, which is why many enthusiasts of the series get excited by the content after the main campaign, and the possibility to use their teams in multiplayer combat, since it's then that players have the whole world to explore to their will, and there tends to be a place with unlimited trainers and well-prepared teams. The addition of the Battle Frontier in Pokémon Emerald gave the starting point of a completely new game that could last forever, motivating the player to improve their team to adapt to any randomly generated situation, with different rulesets and where the only source of improvement is the raising system for optimization. Though this measure doesn't solve the artificiality of its world due to how segregated it's from the game, since to access it one has to tolerate an insipid main campaign, and because its geographical position is distant from the rest of the region. A Pokémon game that would focus itself on creating curiosity for experimentation and understanding of the ecosystem that surrounds the player during the whole game would be more effective.

This is interesting since in spite of the lackluster design and programming errors, it's precisely the first generation the one closer to this ideal and the one that expresses it with most strength. It's probably unintentional and a result of technical limitations, but the first generation is the only one that abstains of any forced explanations, without tutorials, without a type chart, or even an explanation of what moves can do, relying exclusively on the player discovering by himself the innate effectiveness of their creatures. It's also the one whose simple story is more fitting to the innocent perspective of a child that runs away from home and discovers the world, in contrast to the plots filled with ideological, apocalyptic conspiracies that flood the series from Ruby onwards, which regardless of their quality, dillute the approach of the personal journey by relegating the player to a secondary role, reaching such an extreme point in Pokémon Sun where the family conflict of the deuteragonist and the player's motivation are so distanced that the game has to force itself to remind the player of their existence during the climax. Finally, because in spite of its artificiality, it's the game that's built the most around mystery, with the Victory Road accessible from the start, but impenetable without badges, with the wonder of what's there beyond with each unlocked limit the more one ascends to the summit, and the most powerful creatures are optional, not even alluded by other characters, and hidden in the depths of the earth (Zapdos, Articuno, Mewtwo), or behind numerous levels of training (Dragonite), without forced events, and the merit on obtaining them is on the player. It's an effect that its remake cannot simulate properly due to the additions from the third generation that removes some of these aspects. Unfortunately, this isn't worth much and doesn't save the game because it vanishes quickly, and relies exclusively on the game being unbeknown to the player. Once the inner workings of the game are deciphered and the unbalance is noticeable, the mystery disappears. Precisely because of this, Pokémon has been uncapable of replicating the social phenomenon that it was back in the 90s, when rumours about what was possible or not in the games ran rampant, and legends about hidden mythical creatures like Mew were in the word of mouth.

Mew, a creature in the data of the
game, but unobtainable without glitches.

A notoriously deficient combat system alongside a linear navigation in hallways in a game where fighting and exploration is the main action results in an anodyne experience, but one that could be compensated by other aspects. However, that these two aspects undermine Tajiri's original intent drastically results in a failure. For the first entry, this is understandable, but the negligence of fixing the inconveniences in the sequels due to conservatism and eagerness to acceptance is representative of Game Freak's lack of interest on creating a resonant experience with their premise. 

When one starts a Pokémon playthrough for the first time, a Pokémon expert welcomes us with the promise of a legend unfolding upon our path in a world filled with dreams and adventures. Though nowadays, coming back to the games as an adult makes one realize about the unfulfilled promise, and that the adventure that took over our dreams isn't more than a toy. A simple plastic trinket.