My Thoughts on Pokémon: Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee!

When I woke up this morning, I'd completely forgotten about the recent Pokémon rumours (it was 6am, don't blame me). I had a notification on my phone from Pokémon GO, informing me about the appearance of Alolan Exeggutor. So I opened the app with the intention of catching one, when I was given a news update with the title "Say Alola to Pokémon: Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee! with Alolan Exeggutor".

After the initial heart attack, all the recent rumours came flooding back to me and I scrambled to check Twitter with the hopes of finding some more information. I was presented with countless articles from news sites, so I picked one and started reading about the latest Pokémon games.

I have to say, reading about these games at 6:10am, I felt pretty disappointed. Whilst it was the Pokémon Yellow remake that rumours had been mentioning, small things such as no wild Pokémon battles, Pokémon GO style catching, no online play and Pokémon encounters no longer being random really surprised me (despite most of them already being rumoured), and not in a good way. It sounded a lot like an extremely simplified version of the main series games, and that's not what I was hoping for with these games.

I managed to find a trailer for Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee! at around 6:30am. This was the first footage of the game I'd seen, and, as is par for the course with Pokémon trailers recently, I loved it. Everyone working in the marketing department for Pokémon is doing an amazing job. In just over three minutes, (almost) every worry I had about the game had vanished.

The games look great, the Pokémon GO catching might not be as bad as I initially thought, and I'm so happy that Pokémon will follow you again. Also, local multiplayer is really exciting and I'm definitely looking forward to that. All that said however, I am a little disappointed it'll just be the original 151 Pokémon; they could've at least added in pre-evolutions and evolutions for Kanto Pokémon. But hey, maybe they'll add more in the future, like they did with GO?

Whilst I'm not really bothered about the lack of online or the large amount of Pokémon GO integration (which looks to have been done really well; even the Poké Ball accessory looks good) too much, the lack of random encounters and wild battles still got to me. Random encounters I can kind of understand, but the fact that there's no more battling to weaken wild Pokémon is odd to me. It's the main reason why these games just feel overly simplified to me.

I suppose it doesn't really matter too much though, because chances are I'm probably not the main target audience. These games seem to be primarily intended as a way to get Pokémon GO players into the core series of Pokémon games, whilst still offering a return to Kanto for people that are already fans of the series. And that's fine, because let me tell you, I can't wait to return and see Kanto in HD for the first time. Yes, it might be overdone, and it might be a nostalgia cash-grab, but that won't stop me from having fun.

All in all... I'm pretty excited for these games. Even more so now I know that there's a full, core Pokémon experience still coming late next year. But that kind of leads into the thoughts I had this morning; "is this where Pokémon is going now?". While that doesn't seem to be the case completely, I'm wondering if the Let's Go idea will be used again in the future. Could this be a new series of remakes? Could we see Let's Go, Ho-Oh! and Let's Go, Lugia!?

Personally, I hope not. While these games do look good, I hope they're a one-off (unless they're a lot better than I'm expecting). Mainly because I'm a Gen 4 fanboy and I really want Game Freak to do Diamond and Pearl remakes properly sometime in the future. That said, I can totally see this becoming a regular series, especially if it sells well (and we all know it will).

These games feel 100% like a way to get Pokémon GO players into the core series of games and tide the rest of us over until we get the next core games in 2019. From a business perspective, it's a brilliant idea, and I hope it works out for them.

Honestly, my thoughts are all over the place regarding these games, as I'm sure you can tell in this piece. Right now I'm cautiously excited, but I have a lot of questions. How will training your Pokémon work if there's no wild battles? Is Kanto more or less identical to the original games? Is the story going to be the standard 8 Gyms with Team Rocket in the middle? Hopefully we'll get some more details in the coming weeks, otherwise the wait til November is going to be a painful one.

Regardless, the toughest question of all is one posed by Game Freak themselves. Pikachu or Eevee?

also the box art is one of the cutest things I've ever seen in my entire life