Pokemon Fire Red Review

Remember years back when Pokemon was extremely popular? Though it is still rather popular today, it is no where near as big as it was back then. Now that Nintendo decided to remake one of the greatest games ever released, is it worth your money or should you just play your old Game Boy copy again?

In the beginning of the game Professor Oak introduces you to the world of Pokemon, and gives you a choice of some of the three famous Pokemon of all time: Charmander, Bulbasaur, or Squirtle. I picked Charmander if you wanted to know. Soon after you get your Pokemon, you get to meet your rival (you get to name him whatever you want). The entire story of Pokemon is simply to be the best. I felt that Pokemon Advance went in the wrong direction because the story was mainly about saving the world. While the whole “Pokemon are friends� theme was played a lot, it was pretty bearable. All I can suggest to the writers is to allow some Pokemon to have some sidequests. I have seen some parts of the show (stop laughing) and a lot of Pokemon that Ash or whatever his name is catches have a story to tell. I am not asking for every Pokemon to have a sidequest, just asking for a couple of Pokemon to have it (like the three beginning Pokemon).

Let it be known that this game is really made for the people who haven’t played the original Pokemon games. There is a feature that allows you to read all your past conversations, there is a help feature that can be accessed anywhere, there is a flashback feature you get to see whatever important thing you did between the last time you saved and now. All of those features make this game seem as if it’s aimed to the younger audience and not the audience that liked the original game.

Every map that was in the original game is pretty much the same in this game. It’s hard to believe Nintendo didn’t change any map in this game. While more dungeons would have been very nice, there is still a lot of stuff to do in this game.

I couldn’t remember a single flaw in the original Pokemon games, but sadly there are some pretty big flaws in this game. The biggest flaw in this game is that you can’t catch all the Pokemon without spending a lot of money. In the original Pokemon games, all you had to do is spend a lot of time to catch them all. Now if you want to catch them all, not only do you connect to the other version of this game, you have to connect to Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire AND connect to Pokemon Coliseum for the Gamecube. If you don’t have friends that have all this stuff, you can easily spend over 300 dollars. Oh Nintendo, why do you like to con the consumers?

While the graphics are good, they could have been better. In Pokemon Crystal, the Pokemon actually moved when you encountered them. Pokemon Leaf Green/Fire Red doesn’t have such a feature. While the Pokemon are drawn rather nicely, I really did wish the developers spent more time on the moves. It would have been impressive if the Pokemon’s moves were on the level of like games like Golden Sun. The sound is mediocre. Nothing really good, while it is nothing really bad. Some of the music was nice to hear, but the quality of the noises made by the Pokemon could have been improved.

The replay value is outstandingly high. It isn’t that hard to imagine if you got over 100 hours of gameplay. Trying to catch the most Pokemon you can and leveling them up like crazy is pretty addictive. There is a great multiplayer mode. There is a ton of strategy involved in this game. There are 350+ Pokemon, and you are only allowed to have 6 in your team. Try to find the perfect balance, and then you can easily beat all your friends.

I suggest you get this game if you never played the original. Nintendo should have added a lot more and should have stayed away from the connectivity features, but this games shows the original game is still surprisingly fun even until this day. If you had fond memories with the original games, wait until it gets cheaper to purchase it if you want to walk down memory lane. Nintendo’s ability to sell the same product multiple times is quite evident. If the Big N does decided to remake Pokemon Crystal (my favorite game in the series) and does the same poor job of adding extra features that they did with this game, well then, I won’t even bother playing it.