Since Pokemon’s release back in 1996 on the original Gameboy with Pokemon Red and Pokemon Blue, I had been hooked on the pocket monsters all through their growth on the handheld devices, then the
N64 and Game Cube. Just like every other boy I had drawn and written stories about Pokemon in real life… then Niantic came up with the brilliant idea to cross Pokemon with smart phones/tablets with the real world through Augmented Reality and mixing all of that together and creating the wonderful world of Pokemon GO (insert my inner child running in circles screaming at the top of my lungs in highly anticipated excitement)!! Predictably, as with any big endeavor, Niantic has had their fair share of difficulties with the game since it’s release, and are to this day troubleshooting issues. But do you know what?? The only reason they are is because they continue to try to expand the game adding new generations and features to keep us, the consumers, interested in an ever growing game. So first of all to all you haters who complain and moan every time there’s a hiccup in the game… let’s just take a deep breath and chill. This is the first of it’s kind on this massive of a scale that is world wide popular with so many players constantly joining and with content and events expanding on a pretty regular basis I think it’s time that instead of looking for the problems with thegame, we look at all the majority of stuff that has gone right and that Niantic has gone to great lengths to fix to give us such an enjoyable game. So before I shoot into what I consider the best key points of the games, highlighting the changes from the beginning to what the game has evolved into now,

I  would like to give Niantic and all of the developers of Pokemon GO (including Nintendo and all of the developers of Pokemon) a heart felt and very sincere thank you for providing us all with such an amazing universe to fall in love with that is still growing after all these. So thank you for all of your hard work, imagination, and time that you have given us!

Catching a Pokemon:
When you first start the game, just like in the originals, you begin with the opportunity to catch one of the original three starters. Bulbasuar, the Slytherin moody grass Pokemon. Charmander, the over excited, loyal Hufflepuff fire Pokemon. Squirtle, the Ravenclaw of the group who knows it all water type Pokemon. Unbeknownst to all of us in the beginning you could walk away from these several times and a Pikachu would appear (high pitched girly scream here). YES!! You could get Pikachu as your starter! I had restarted my entire game from level 12 or so when I found that out just so I could get Pikachu as my starter! Anyway… where was I? Oh yeah, so the premise of the game is that it’s set in the real world
with a live GPS map that you walk around on and find Pokemon in the wild. By clicking on the Pokemon they go into the catching screen. Unlike in the games you don’t battle wild Pokemon to weaken them to catch them, now you just throw pokeballs at them. Just like in the game you have to wait the three shakes for the catch, or you randomly and very excitingly, get a catch right away. As you’re collection builds and you level up to level 5 you get to decide on a team.

I’m a little biased here because I am of
course on the best team of all.

Team Mystic

Of course there are 2 other teams as well I suppose I have to mention to be a fair minded writer.

Team Instinct is no it alls and are represented by Zapdos and is yellow

Team Valor is the meanies and represented by Moltres and is red

 

Team Mystic is of course the best team. As I was saying… once you reach level 5 you may decide your team and you begin to battle in the gyms to begin to take them and claim them from your team.

Pokemon Gyms:

The gym system has been completely reworked since the beginning of the game. Before when a team took control you could put as many Pokemon as a team could in, but each trainer could only put one. Also you could have multiples of Pokemon in them. Some Pokemon were stupidly strong (Blissey) and when anyone saw one or more their first inclination was “screw this”. Well Niantic heard our cry for change!! They swooped in like the heroes they are and they reworked it to not only have an awesome and beautiful screen showing the trainer and his/her Pokemon, the gym location, and the raid eggs (I’ll get to that in a minute). They also now only allowed 6 Pokemon into the gym at a time which makes this much more like the games. Very wisely as well they only allowed one Pokemon of it’s kind in there. So instead of facing a team of ten million Blissey’s from Team Instinct (because someone they were literally the only team I EVER saw put more than one or two Blissey’s into one gym), there could only be one Blissey. You could still put a pre-evolution of the same Pokemon into it, so for example a gym could have a Chansey and a Blissey in it. Gyms also became additional Pokestops, and when your team controls it you yield team bonuses giving more items. There are also special events in which you will get more pokeballs, potions, revives… I have a stupid amount of revives now thanks to the fighting event over the summer. This is probably also a good point to point out that a lot of Pokemon have been reworked so they’re a lot more manageable as well and not always impossible to beat without entire teams of Pokemon to work against them until you get to…. RAID BOSSES!!

Pokemon Raids:

I’m probably not the only who’s seen Tyrantaur do that think:

So what are Pokemon Raids? Well every day from like 6:00 AM to 8:00 AM at Pokemon Gyms across the world there are giant eggs that appear with timers over them. If you see this that means that a raid is about to start! Raids are crazy strong Pokemon that if you and a team of up to 20 trainers can beat them you have a chance to catch that strong Pokemon. Now not all Raids are like that Tyranitaur. There are actually 5 tiers of Raid battles. Tier 1 and Tier 2 appear as pink eggs and are soft easy battles one person can pretty easily beat and they yield pretty small rewards. Tier 3 is one that you can probably solo especially in the upper 20 levels and higher. Tier 4 get a friend. Tier 5… get LOTS of friends, strangers, dogs, monkeys, anything that you can teach to constantly push the attack button because you will definitely need a lot of help! These are usually legendary Pokemon they release in month long rotations. When you win a Raid you get prizes like revives, star dust, rare candies, etc.

Pokemon Community Days:

Once a month they have a special designated day for 3 hours that they release en masse, swarms of a specific Pokemon. They rotate every other month doing starter Pokemon, so Novembers was Cyndaquil. During these days you can catch said Pokemon’s shiny form, and if you evolve it to it’s final form it learns a special powerful move it will only be able to learn in that time. I literally just read about December’s Community DAYS. From November 30 at 1:00 PM PST until Sunday, December 2^nd at 11:00 PM PST you are able to catch ALL OF THE POKEMON COMMUNITY DAY POKEMON FROM THIS PAST YEAR!!!

Trading and Trading Items:

Lastly, now you are able to make friends and register them to you Pokemon GO and when you are close to each other you are able to trade Pokemon together. It takes stardust to do this so if you’re interested save your stardust and don’t use it all leveling up your Pokemon. You can also trade items to friends around the world anytime, anywhere as long as you are registered friends. You are limited to one gift per friend per day. You get gifts at Pokestops when you spin them just like any other item, and you can go and trade them to your friends.

So my fellow trainers, it’s time we get off the couch and stop enjoying Pokemon the way it was meant to be and hit the streets, woods, mountains… I was going to say swimming but I would highly NOT recommend that and say leave your phone nice and dry on the side or wherever it’s safe at. Get out into the world, exercise, enjoy the beautiful world we live in and go on adventures and continue to catch them all! Thank you so much for reading my article, and if I missed any of your favorite features and you’d like me to touch on it next time leave it in the comments or shoot me an email! Have a great  superFans.