Even though my financial situation and life in general is very inopportune to continue to collect videogames for now, I still have been buying several editions and games that I certainly don't want to miss. Unfortunately, sacrifices had to be done and I can't keep up the pace like the last few years...
I have been dedicating my spare time into playing Pokémon Go. When it was first announced, I didn't really expect to play it. But the truth is, I gave it a try and found it very addicting, especially when almost everyone else around me is playing the game.
Thanks to this app in particular, I met new areas in the place I live at that I have not visited in many, many years, even though they are just half an hour a walk from my home. Some of those areas improved quite a bit, while others are still a cancer and I don't know why people even buy houses there... I have also been going out with friends almost every night to some stops with lures and rare spawns and I was impressed to see how many people were playing the game. Absolutely crazy! But the hype is almost gone by now. Mostly thanks to Niantic. I'll just skip the server problems from the beginning and focus on the game alone...
At first, any new catch was a good catch. Since I didn't have that many Pokémon in the beginning, whenever I saw something new as a shadow on the radar I got excited and did my best to figure out its location. With the footsteps tracking system, things were interesting, but still, some rare evolved Pokémon were nearly impossible to find. I walked everywhere in every direction and still couldn't find them. Then again, I live in an area where not a single pokémon spawned on my street. 75% of the good spanws that showed up on the radar while I was at home were all at the other side of the rail road, which I can't cross without walking at least 700 meters. At that point, all spawns are surely gone. People who live in rural areas or places with little stops will definitely not enjoy the game as they should, sadly.
Suddenly, the radar became completely bugged, with the tracking system stuck with 3 footsteps, showing creatures that weren't even there or had already despawned. Some apps and tracking websites popped up at this point and they helped quite a bit! Without a tracking system, wandering around uselessly killed all the fun.
Then Niantic took one step further into killing all the fun and removed the steps while banning Pokévision, the best tracker ever created for this game. The game became useless, unless you liked to sit and wait for pokémon to pop up in lures, something I hate to do. I like to walk around, collect pokéstops and find all sorts of creatures in the run. But, again, the random factor with spawns and only a few minutes to catch them make this game boring to play because I can't find nothing new. Eventually, the tracking system was slightly corrected and now it's more accurate, but still not enough.
The thing I like the most in any pokemón game is to actually catch them all. Not just building a strong team to use in battles, but to actually own a livedex. I'm a collector and a completionist when it comes to these little monsters. I still managed to get over 130 pokémon on my dex, but the few ones missing made the game pointless to play. First, you have the continent exclusives, that CAN be born in your local eggs unlike everyone else says (I have witnessed this, twice), but they are a major pain to get. And then the events... Events that may eventually take away your spare time in bad moments, that may not guarantee a catch and probably will make you chose which legendary you may and may not catch. Chances are... getting them all will require way more efforts than it should.
Right now I need to walk a ton of km just to find a new Pokémon or a rare one that I need in order to get more candies. All I find are Pokémon I no longer need, including rare spawns that I already have. Everything I'm getting from eggs are things I already have and most of which are crap even if they have good CP or IVs. 10km eggs take a long time to hatch and I still didn't get anything I'm missing from those, such as Chansey or Lapras... This becomes very tiresome. The candy system is completely unnecessary too. Why do I need to find a sh!t tone of abras and grimers that hardly ever spawn over here just to evolve them? I don't know how many hours it took me to find a grimer and I never managed to find more than three, so I'm stuck at about 10 candies . Shouldn't pokémon evolve by gaining exp when fighting other trainers or gym battles? Or even wild pokémon? This makes no sense to me. After playing for such a long time and walking about 300 km, I realized this game is just pointless. At least in the games you can properly evolve and train your pokémon, transfer them to future games and always use them. I feel there's a lot more meaning into playing the games due to their complexity than this. So, as a result, I completely stopped playing Pokémon Go and went back to Omega Ruby, trying to accomplish my goals of having a near perfect live dex.
What's a perfect live dex to me, you ask? Well, my personal objective is to have one of every single creature with at least 5IV (none being 0) and its hidden ability in both male and female versions. The hidden ability is just a bonus goal I've established. Obviously, not all pokemon have their HA already available and legends cannot be bred, so there are exceptions to this. This requires a lot of breeding and some strategy. I'm not concerned about egg moves or hidden power, nor the 6th imperfect IV being important or not. I've also decided to ignore the nature of the pokémon because I want varied natures. I'm not making a perfect, battle ready live dex with the necessary requirements and moves, just a live dex with great pokemon. For battle purposes I'll have my specific team of six where all these details already matter.
Catching pokémon in the real life was amazingly fun in the beginning, but not anymore. Especially when you realize this game is flawed in so many ways and Niantic or whoever's responsible is doing a horrible job at handling the app properly. The fun disappears when you can't progress in your main objective, which is simply to catch them all. On top of it, you see a lot of potential in the app, but you realzie that Niantic is not making anything about it.
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