Pokemon Quest Review

  Goddamnit Nintendo.  The Pokemon Company, wtf?  Game Freak, why?  Here I am as a Nintendo fanboy; balls deep into Pokemon Go.  I have pre-ordered the $100 Let's Go edition because I also want the Pokeball plus but I am telling you right now this game is not making me feel great about my pre-order.  So yeah it's a little fun, but what is Pokemon Quest even a thing?

It's a Mobile Game

  There is one thing immediately obvious about Pokemon Quest, as soon as you get more than a few seconds in.  It relies on some of the BS stuff that mobile games use because its free to play.  As you will see on the screenshots we have our energy system, which will gate you from grinding to fast and a premium currency you can use to buy things like statues, which will give a buff.  You get status for clearing areas too but they don't have the type of buffs the other statues do.

  The story in this game is shallow in that you are stuck on some isle that holds Pokemon from the Kanto region (first 150).  You will have different nodes on the map with a battle rating on them.  This rating tells you how hard the level is to take down and you can judge if you want to enter it or not based on your own teams battle level.  This is a tried and true gate taken from the RPG days to get you to grind, which is limited, which adds what I think is an artificial play time to the game.

  Do not come into this game expecting anything close to any battle system that Pokemon has shown us thus far.  When you enter into one of these levels your team of 3 Pokemon will run around attacking spawning Pokemon on a map.  You have the ability to click on one of the enemy pokemon to get them to focus and also tell a Pokemon to use an ability when its off a cooldown.  Most likely you will just press the auto button to walk away and let the gameplay itself.  The game fires off abilities and finds enemies so there is really no reason to be engaged at all.

  To get new Pokemon you will have to go back to your base and create a stew of random drops you get from the level.  Then after a few fights you get a random one that shows up.  It's like a loot box that takes times to unlock.

  The graphics are basic block graphics and the music would be too if it had a shape.

  The game is light on a lot of what makes mobile games trash because Nintendo has a hard filter for this type of stuff.  That being said it's still a mobile game time locked with energy crap and the strength of the Pokemon that you can just buy.  This is something I would put on a mid to bottom tier level of mobile games and I am really not sure what the whole point of this exercise was.  Maybe an easily accessible game for the very young to introduce them to this game because I really don't see a strong market outside of this and avid fans like me who will play anything Pokemon.  That being said I have played this game too much and it's not a bad, "press the start button and let it run" when I am playing a game on my PC.

TL;DR:

  This game is...well it exists on the Switch. You can download it and collect Pokemon but don't expect Pokemon Quest to be anything great.  Or good for that matter.