Niantic pulled out all the stops for the fifth annual Pokemon GO Fest, which took place this past Saturday and Sunday. The global event offered a combined 16 hours of rewarding challenges, rare spawns, legendary raids, and a pretty awesome narrative thread to tie it all together. The response from players on Pokemon GO’s various subreddits and Discord servers has been overwhelmingly positive. There are always those that are going to be disappointed by missed raid catches, unlucky shiny spawns, and the parts of the game that still desperately need a polish, but overall, I think it’s safe to say that this was the best Pokemon GO Fest yet.
The event ran from 10am-6pm local time on Saturday and Sunday. While most of the festivities were available to all players, those who paid $5 for a GO Fest Pass — down from $15 the previous year — were given access to a lot more content, including a special research assignment, global challenges, bonus experience, free raid passes, cosmetics, and much more. If you played even just a few hours on both days, you likely filled your bags with useful items, caught hundreds of Pokemon, and battled dozens of legendaries in raids.
Related: Pokemon GO: A Complete Guide to Buddy Pokemon and Hearts
Saturday was the more story-driven day between the two, and featured the best chance to catch shiny Pokemon and some of the more uncommon spawns. Each hour of the day featured a different biome, and if you managed to catch all of the Pokemon from that zone, you’d earn some extra experience and rewards. Additionally, all Go Fest participants worked together to complete global challenges which granted more rewards and unlocked a series of new events that will take place over the coming weeks. These timed events and global unlocks gave GO Fest a sense that everyone across the world was playing together and it was a lot of fun to see the progress bars fill up as millions of players caught Pokemon all at once.
One of the things that really impressed me this year was the theme of GO Fest. The musical Pokemon Meloetta made its debut as the grand prize for completing the weekend’s special research assignment. Each step of the quest involved assembling Pokemon to form a band, and players were given several choices about which Pokemon would join the band. In the first step, you’d choose either Rock or Pop, which would cause the background music in the game to change accordingly. Pikachus dressed as either rock or pop stars then started spawning depending on which choice you made. There were a few more choices throughout the research event that all unlocked special event-themed Pokemon in costumes. At the end, each trainer got to catch a Meloetta as she sang on stage surrounded by your band of musical Pokemon. There were a lot more little touches that added to the theme throughout the weekend, and I thought the whole thing came together beautifully.
The first day was definitely the big catch-a-thon of GO Fest, so I headed out to a local community college that had tons of Pokestops scattered around. While I’m still nervous about crowds, it was incredibly heartwarming to see so many other people out playing the game again. It reminded me so much of the first summer of Pokemon GO five years ago, and I loved being out with other trainers chasing down Pokemon together. It made me really aware of how much the game has grown and improved over the years, and while there’s things that I think Niantic still needs to improve, it’s really no surprise to see that the game is bigger than ever.
I personally caught six shinies on Saturday while playing for about six hours. I know there are those that didn’t find any, but I also saw a lot of people mention that they found even more. What made the Saturday event so great was the sheer variety of Pokemon to find. The entire spawn pool changed once every hour so there was always something new to see, but at the same time, you had a good idea of what to expect so you could plan out when you wanted to play. There were tons of starter Pokemon spawning, which are always a fan favorite, but there were also lots of music-themed Pokemon, and of course, lots of event-themed Pokemon to make the day feel extra special and exclusive.
The second day was a lot different from the first. Instead of rotating biomes full of event-themed Pokemon to catch, Sunday was all about the legendaries. Once again, biomes rotated once every hour, but this time, the biomes only determined what type of legendaries would appear in gyms. Trainers could grab a free bundle of remote raid passes to get started, and could earn an additional remote raid pass every time they completed a raid, up to eight times.
Remote raiding was added to the game last year to help players get to more raids during the pandemic, and it had an immediate positive effect on the game. Not only does it help players participate in raids without physically being there, it also allows players to invite friends from anywhere in the world to participate. Batting and catching legendaries with my friends is one of my favorite things about Pokemon GO, and Sunday was a non-stop avalanche of legendary catching.
Before Sunday, my Pokedex had only one legendary (mythical and ultra beasts aren’t considered legendary for some reason). By the end of the day Sunday, I had 18 legendaries, including two shiny ones — Latios and Cobalion. The vast majority of those legendaries were caught with my friends in other countries. Thankfully, I only ended up needing to purchase a couple of remote raid passes. Seeing my legendary collection grow so rapidly was incredibly exciting and made the whole event feel really special. It probably takes an entire year if not longer to catch 17 legendaries, but GO Fest let me do it in a single day.
I had an absolute blast during both days of Pokemon GO Fest. As an infrequent player of the game, it really let me catch up on a lot of Pokemon I missed over the years. I finally completed my Kanto region collection, which feels like a huge milestone for me, and I also managed to snag every single legendary from the Johto region. I played the game for more than 10 hours this weekend and I’m still hyped for more. GO Fest got me back into the game after many months away, and I can’t wait to see what the ultra unlock events have in store for us in the next few weeks.
More than anything else, I loved GO fest because it gave me an opportunity to get out and play the game with other trainers. That’s what Pokemon GO is all about, and it’s been a long time since I got to feel the community aspects of the game. It feels like Niantic learned a lot of lessons from past years and put together an incredibly thoughtful and memorable event. I had the best time, and I’m already excited to play next year's GO Fest.