An Update on Pokémon's First "Sequel"

Best trailer yet for a Pokémon game yet.

Last time I mentioned Black & White 2, they had just been revealed and I was very intrigued. The thought of the first sequel to a handheld Pokémon game baffled me at what possibilities that could imply. That was five months ago, and since then, the two games have been released in Japan and we have a literal truckload of information on hand.

In short, I'll still be picking at least one of the versions up, but the summary below is purely from my outside perspective.

First, the good. There's seemingly a TON of new features in this game. Enough to be on the level of a whole new generation of Pokémon games, and yet this isn't.

Essentially, the entire world of the first two games has aged two years, storyline included. Some areas have changed entirely, others not so much, and whole new areas are now open to explore too. This definitely does not look like your run-of-the-mill "Deluxe" version of Pokémon, like Emerald or Platinum. There's a whole new batch of Pokémon to collect, and when I say new, I mean that it's not all just 5th generation anymore.

My favorite new features are as follows:

1. Difficulty levels. I am shocked. Technically, you must unlock them first by beating the game on it's standard setting, but a Challenge Mode exists as well as an Assist Mode, which I assume to be an easier version.
2. World Tournaments. Reading up on these reminded me a lot of the standard mode of the old Pokémon Stadium games, and that excites me to no end, because I loved those and miss console Pokémon games like nothing else, and the day I recognize the stadium-like Wii game as anything but a glorified item shop will never come. Basically, there are multiple types of tournaments you can enter that are reminiscent of some of Stadium's modes, like Rental and level capped modes. There's even advanced modes where you fight gym leaders and champions from other regions! Nostaligia does indeed reign supreme in Pokémon.
3. Hidden Hollows. All around the world there are little hidden areas where you can find items and (possibly rare) Pokémon with their special Dream World abilities. This is awesome, because not only is it something you can be keeping an eye out for as you travel through each route, but it gives a nice alternative to the online dream world that requires a somewhat constrained process of saving your game properly and uploading your Pokémon, then spending half an hour playing games and whatnot just to get a chance at finding the rare one you're looking for. At least with this, you're not forced to stop playing the game while looking.

There's obviously a lot more than these here, and you can find them all on Serebii's page. Big props to them for covering the whole game (and all the others for that matter)

Still, aside from all of these nice, awesome new features, we are still yet again left with the bitter taste in our mouths. Yes, it is a Pokémon game. Yes, it does have lots of new things that make it different than even it's predecessors. It even continues the tradition in terms of having the "Deluxe" version, which you can consider good or bad. However, when it all comes right down to it, we are left with the same speechless trainer and the same eight badges and victory road. This is a sequel in where it takes place after it's previous games, but the nagging, picky side of me just wants to wrongly dismiss it as "the same game, but with a few changes here and there so they could call it a sequel". That's obviously not true, but you can sort of see my point.

I've said before that you shouldn't fix what's broken, and Pokémon definitely isn't boring or broken, which is why I'll be buying at least one of these anyway, but to defend myself from being a hypocrite, wouldn't we all like something new? Spinoffs aside, we can all agree that the formula is getting a bit stale, and while having a main series is fine, for Generation 6 (you know it's coming, come on now), let's hope they can pull something amazing off with something new in the world of Pokémon.