I am a Pokemon fan. Not a rabid fan but just somebody who has seen most of the movies when they hit Cartoon Network, owns a plush Pikachu (or three) and was quite disappointed that MewTwo didn't make the Super Smash Bros Brawl cut. But those are all asides, occasional distractions. When I say I'm a Pokemon fan, I mean I like the core games. I was aware of the series months before it arrived in America and dove into the Red/Blue/Yellow generation full bore. My interest waned after I played through my copy of Silver and like many a lapsed fan, I didn't start paying a lot of attention again until Diamond and Pearl hit. Having skipped a generation and a number of remakes, I found a lot of fresh and new material in Pearl, including how much more there was to training the Pokemon themselves. There are multiple layers of accessibility in Pokemon that makes it attractive to all manner of gamer, from the basic catch and battle to the whole competitive metagame. I have to ask, however, are we having fun anymore?
When you first crack open your fresh new copy of Diamond/Pearl you are presented with a very simple RPG offering up a fun little quest and not too much of a challenge. Welcome to Tier One of the metagame. Anyone can play at this level, anyone can beat this game. All you need to do is catch monsters with pokeballs, remember water types have an advantage over fire types, and grind, grind, grind to level up your monsters. At some point you may decide to put together a serious team you want to pit against your friends.
Welcome to Tier Two. The first step to serious training is to become more intimately familiar with your Pokemon, what their statistical strengths are and what moves they can learn. Crack open any guide book and with hundreds of critters to choose from you already have a lot of studying to do. You can even breed the little beasties. Pokemon breeding itself opens another level of detail; you can breed moves into a Pokemon that couldn't otherwise learn them. Pokemon also have innate traits and a variety of natures that affect how they act in battle and level up. At this point you begin to realize just how deep this rabbit hole goes.
If you know what Effort Values are then congratulations, you are hard core. This is the third and final Tier of the metagame. To turn those cute little 'mons into true battle monsters, fit to chew their way through the competition, then you want to max out their potentials. At this point you are doing some heavy number crunching and probably are a devotee of serebii.net. Every Pokemon has a range of statistical potential and how their stats increase is affected by what Pokemon they defeat in battle. This is where I just stopped having fun. Actually, I think I started to falter on Tier Two.
When I bought Pearl, I decided I wanted to put together a serious team. I wanted to do all of the breeding for traits and natures and train the little buggers to be the best they could be. Not long into this regime I realized something. This was work. In fact, it was an absolute chore and I really wasn't enjoying any of it. I had neither the time nor inclination to metagame this deeply and I wasn't interested in the super serious competitive circuit so, why bother? EV training actually put me off the game and now it sits, submerged in my backlog, waiting for me to finally get back to it.
Eventually I will pick up Pearl again. When I do it will be to play it in a more casual fashion. My team will not be super charged but I'll have fun with it. I'll also play with a different goal in mind, one no less Herculean but probably a lot more enjoyable. You see, I have never, ever, “caught them all” (or even come close). This time, all four hundred ninety-three Pokemon will be mine! Wanna' trade?
Going Back in There: My Very First Hour With Pokemon, part 1
Going Back in There: My Very First Hour With Pokemon, part 2