I harbour a slight resentment for Pokemon’s Gen 7. It’s not my least favourite (hi Gen 4!), but I typically consider it to be one of the worst. There are a few good reasons for this - half the game is a tutorial, every change to the formula felt like a change for the worst, and everybody is so damn happy all the time. Evil team, I just beat your ass. Have some humility. Nevertheless, there is some form of redemption for Gen 7 through the Pokemon itself. Pokemon Go, which strips everything bar the Pokemon away, is making me remember how much I like it… at least, when I don’t have to play it. Get lost, Hau, no one likes you.
Pokemon Go is Pokemon distilled to its simplest form. You walk around and catch Pokemon, and that’s kind of it. That’s all there is to it. You don’t need to know anything about type advantage, battling, STAB, levelling up, or anything at all that you might have to deal with in a regular Pokemon game. That’s why it attracted such a huge, casual fanbase at launch. All you had to know is that Pikachu is cute. Sure, you can battle, but that was added well after launch, as were most of the complicated evolutionary methods that nodded to the games, the existence of Team Rocket, and anything else that is considered standard in the game today. There were no tasks, no Raids, no events, no shinies… we didn’t even have Team Leaders. Aside from our Professor, there were no characters of any sort. Just walk around and catch Pokemon.
These days, even though there is a lot more to Pokemon Go, I still think it’s the most casual-friendly Pokemon game, mostly because the daily tasks provide some structure without being challenging, everything else remains optional and largely peripheral, and the emphasis on the ‘Go’ part of the name has been drastically reduced. The back and forth with the pandemic features rollback has made it difficult to understand exactly how Niantic views this game, but if you just want to open up your phone a few times a day and spin the stop by your office and chuck a Poke Ball at a nearby Spheal, you can. With so many events and boosted spawns, any semi-regular player can, if not catch ‘em all, at least catch a lot of ‘em without ever really doing anything.
As Gen 7 settles into Pokemon Go - technically it has been in the game for a while through Alolan variants, but these are the first completely new ‘mons - it does so without Hau, without the lengthy tutorial, and without anything that makes me resent Gen 7. As a result, Pokemon Go has me falling in love with it all over again.
I don’t much care for Pokemon starters. I know this is a controversial opinion, but I find them to be over-hyped and generally some of the weaker designed Pokemon around. There are about five good middle evolution starters in Pokemon’s history, and far too many of them play safe. Gen 7 though has one of the strongest trios. While only Primarina is in the running for my all-time favourite, Decidueye and Incineroar are both great too. Incineroar probably shouldn’t be in Smash, granted, but of all the fighting-style Fire starters, I find it to be the best. Or, given the competition, the least ugly. I know it’s technically Dark-type, but it’s a wrestler and clearly went through the same design circles as the likes of Emboar. Meanwhile, Dartrix is an example of the ugly middle evolutions, but the cute floof of Rowlet and the imposing mystery of Decidueye either side of it make up for that.
Pokemon Go doesn’t always introduce the new gen with the starters, but I suspect it did for Gen 7 because it delivers three surefire hits. I’m just gonna take the L on Gumshoos, the Donald Trump Pokemon, but Pikipek is one of the most interesting Route 1 birds - admittedly competition is light, but still. Oricorio works much better in Pokemon Go too, where for 90 percent of the ‘mons you’re only considering aesthetic choices. Baile style, the version on offer in my region, is my least favourite, and I still find myself thinking ‘huh, Oricorio. Neat’.
There are some great ones still to arrive, too. Komala, Cutiefly, Togedemaru, Palossand, goddamn Mimikyu? My mangosteen queen Tsareena? Pokemon fans were eating in Gen 7, and I don’t think we ever really appreciated it. Through Pokemon Go, it’s getting a second chance.