First Impressions: Pokémon X and Y

I've played this game for about four hours now and I have to say I'm impressed. From the word go the game introduces you with a cinematic video that starts the game, the closest to a proper cut scene in the Pokémon series yet. Then you see yourself and the room you're in and I actually had to check if I was playing the right game, the graphics were so different. The next change occurred as soon as you stand up, when I moved the circle pad expecting a normal grid based movement, I was greeted with something that was also free movement! OK, it's no Dragon Quest or Skyrim like movement but it's still a huge improvement.



After seeing two Pokémon (Fletchling and Ryhorn) wandering about as well as people that weren't all the same and walked about too I was beginning to see how big this game was going to be. One look at the town map and I knew this was true. Goodbye circular map, hello lots of random places! How I've missed you. Before all of this though, I met my rival... s. That's because rather than the general one or two there were four of them and they all fulfil different purposes. Trevor is all about knowledge and so wants to complete the Pokédex whereas Tierno is all about dance which I am guessing is the games mini game. Shauna is like the Bianca of the game whereas Serena/ Callum will serve the purpose of battling you.

After meeting these guys and choosing Fenekin for my starter I went a bit further and found a wild Pokémon to battle and promptly stared at the screen for a while. Was that a 3D Pokémon battle with proper animation for moves? I think it was. And did I just get EXP for capturing a Pokémon. I think that happened too. Did that trainer just turn his head? Did I just step down to talk to a preschooler? Does my character look different to Satamer's? These were the questions going through my head.

Well with only 30 mins into the game I had already seen more new mechanics and changes than in quite a few recent Pokémon games thus far.

While the amount of new Pokémon was slightly disappointing, (I think I've seen about five or six, discounting evolutions, so far) they all looked great and I was able to see my old favourites rendered in full 3D. Let's get onto the evolution screen next, shall we. While for most people this will be a small thing, I think that it shows off the new graphical capabilities of the game pretty well. In the original games the two Pokémon sprites would just flicker and merge which, let's face it, is pretty rubbish. Eventually, this progressed to the sprites going white and the silhouette of the sprites flickering in and out for a while and while this added to the suspense it was still a bit boring. Now, of course, the Pokémon polygons flicker and glow while spinning round and eventually forming the new Pokémon in glorious 3D.

I've been talking about the content of the game for some time now I think that it becomes evident mostly in the fact that I have only beaten one gym so far. Now, normally, I would be on my 5th one by now but I am afraid that that is simply not the case. The reason for this is that I was spending a lot of time looking around and talking to everyone I met but also because you only meet the professor in the third city.

And what a city it was. I am, of course, talking about Luminous City and while I have only looked around the southern part of it (the rest is cordoned off due to a black out) it looks to be bigger than entire sections of past games. Not only this but its tall as well, with buildings reaching high in the sky as you roller skate (another feature that allows even freer movement) around them, it was just beautiful.

Well that's all for first impressions but don't worry as a review will be coming soon enough. Now where did I leave my game?

P.S, Pokémon Amie and Pokémon Super Training will be included in the review.

Goodbye for now, Harry