A look back at: Pokemon Yellow

 

Technically speaking, this is the very first RPG I ever touched. I never really owned it, but I did get a chance to borrow the game to feel how it played. I really did think that Pokemon games would be like this game, but this game to this day remains surprisingly the most unique. It seems Game Freak would end up utilizing the formula of "release two Pokemon games with the same settings but a few mutual exclusives", then release another with the same setting and then enhance things a bit more. We see this first with Yellow of course, which would be loosely based on the anime so it makes you feel as if you're playing as Ash, even including Team Rocket's iconic goons and trying to get the starters in accordance to how Ash had got them (well, not really).

Though there is something to consider. The first gym against Brock is actually much harder than it would be in Red/Blue because Pikachu doesn't stand a chance with its electric attacks there. Compared to Charmander, who normally would be the hardmode against Brock then, but the Special stat of Brock's mons aren't that good anyways and he has no Rock type moves. They alleviated this somewhat in Yellow by allowing you to explore west of Viridian and hopefully finding a Mankey. So yeah, subtle changes are out and about to ensure that the gameplay, as tough as it would be for starter-hogs like I used to be back then, would make it more interesting. Even with this though, the rest of Yellow is a lot like Red/Blue regardless.

There really is not much else to say. Pokemon often gets flak for recycling the same sort of things over and over again, but this really is only prevalent if the settings are the same, so in other words, if the generations are the same. True, the Gen-1 games get perhaps the most flak, owing to a dumb fanbase that prefers them over everything else despite all the flaws that Gen-1 already has. Future gens will of course offer more features, some are controversial but even those have their interesting gimmicks and makes you think a lot more. In any case, Game Freak at least picks things up better each time.