GAMEFURY

Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen – Review (GBA)

The Pokemon series is really no stranger to remakes and reissuing of already released games with some minor improvements. Even before FireRed and LeafGreen, the series already had two remakes in the guise of Pokemon Crystal and Pokemon Yellow. However, those two were less of remakes than essentially a repackaging of their precursors- hardly a package one would be willing to pay for if they had already played the originals. FireRed and LeafGreen represent the first time such an exercise in bringing a classic game to date in terms of visuals and sounds has been undertaken.

For the uninitiated to the Pokemon series (assuming such a species exists), the games are all about trying to tame and enhance, and ultimately use, hundreds upon hundreds of creatures with special elemental powers living all over the land. Successfully mastering these creatures not only makes them more powerful by means of evolution and more powerful attacks learnt, but also opens up new avenues for you in the game, as your Pokemon are the only things you will use in the game. Thus, if there is a rock in your path, and your Pokemon does not know the move to smash it or move it out of your way, you cannot get to the other side.

Collecting them all, you can also battle with other trainers in a sport that is known as Pokemon battling, where trainers pit their captured critters in an acceptable variant of cockfighting. The aim is to win the Pokemon league, a series of such battles, and become the Pokemon Master, whilst simultaneously also cataloguing all species of Pokemon ever documented. No mean feat, that’s for sure.

As with other games, there’s a narrative here, and some bad guys, but as any Poke-veteran ought to know by now, that’s really not what matters. The series has always been known for its super addictive gameplay, and FireRed and LeafGreen excel in that department, much more so than the unsatisfactory Ruby and Sapphire.

The games are remakes of the original Pokemon titles- the ubiquitous pair of games that started all the hype and craze- and for the most part, they never stray from the formula and stays true to the spirit of the originals as well as the series itself, something that the newer games have failed to do satisfactorily. The game stays pretty much identical until you finish the main story. Which is when things start getting absolutely crazy.

Unlike Red and Blue, FireRed and LeafGreen contain 386 Pokemon, and almost all of them are up for capture in these two. After the story has been beaten, a new area, unimaginatively titled the Sevii Isles, is unlocked, where old favourites such as Smeargle, Qwilfish, Hophip, Hoothoot, Unown and the like can be found. Tracking them down and capturing them will eat away chunks of your time, giving the games an almost infinite playthrough time.

And why is it that you can never ever get bored in spite of such an intimidating setup? Because FireRed and LeafGreen, while fan service in every sense of the word, seem to have been specially designed keeping the newcomer in mind. The games start off extremely easy, and the incremental increase in difficulty level is so gradual that you’ll be hard pressed to notice it until the very end of the game. It is also extremely streamlined, with handy helpful hints available at the press of a button, and new terms and objects explained immediately upon acquiring them.

Also, FireRed and LeafGreen are, barring maybe Pokemon Gold and Silver, the pinnacle of the series, the best manifestation of the addictive series formula till date. You know the drill: collect ‘em all to create the strongest possible team. It’s been done before numerous times, after all. But this pair of games manages to make it, incredibly, even more exciting, addictive and involving than any other Pokemon game has till date. Even the casual player will actually want to track down all Pokemon that he can, in an effort to complete his Pokedex as much as humanly possible. That indeed is an impressive achievement, one that has yet to be surpassed, even though these games are now five years old.

The visuals of the game have been upgraded, so that they now resemble the graphics of Ruby and Sapphire. While they are nothing ground breaking, they are pleasing to the eye, and charming and appealing in their own, unique, colour saturated palette way.

The same can be said for the sound and music, though to a lesser extent: the music of this game is in fact nothing but remixes of the tracks that had appeared in the original games, and sometimes, it appears as if the composers were a it too enthusiastic, as they have clearly gone overboard in several places, and ruined the effect. The opposite has been done with the sounds: all the Pokemon cries have been preserved in all their tinny 8 bit glory, and I can’t say that I’m pleased with the outcome.

The games feature wireless multiplayer connectivity, perhaps the only games of any consequence that do on the GBA, but really, the effect is patchy at best, and you’d be better off trading and battling in the traditional way.

So, there you have it: the games are practical carbon copies of the originals until a good 30 hours in, and they don’t stray too much from the formula. Why then, should a veteran of the series bother with them? Simply because, Gold and Silver excluded, these games represent the best possible execution of the classic formula that the series has come to be known so well for. Even if you don’t feel like taking a hike through Kanto again, I’d really ask you to do it, just for the sake of getting into the Pokemon black hole again. And for the newcomer, well, even after the recent DS instalments to the series, there really is no better place to start off than these two, highly excellent games.

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