Lunchtime Discussion: Pokémon

I know I’m normally a bit broader than this in my discussions, but today we’re going to focus entirely on the Pokémon series of… well stuff really, it must have its logo on anything you can stick a logo on at this point. Now I want to start by saying that I absolutely love Pokémon, it’s an absolutely brilliant franchise. The cartoon is surprisingly good for one that only exists to sell toys and games, and for some reason the Pokémon themselves are just more appealing than other, similar series.

Now having stated my firm backing of Pokémon, it has one, rather significant flaw. Whilst the games are good games, they’re all almost entirely the same. Sure character and place names change, and occasionally they add or remove a few story elements – such as the legendary Pokémon battle in Diamond and Pearl – but the gameplay, the structure, and even elements of the main characters have been pretty much unchanged since Red and Blue.

If you look at other series that have been around the same length of time, even other RPGs which can have a tendency to be a little more formulaic than other genres, they’ve all had some changes made. In most cases, by the fifth iteration of a title, a significant portion of the game’s mechanics, pacing etc… would have undergone some fairly substantial redesigns. However it seems very unlikely that the new Black and White titles will have had any such changes made, and will still be easily recognisable when compared to the series’ origins.

So what do you think? Is Pokémon getting stale? Do you just hate the games? Or are you an ardent fan? Is the game using the same formula for a reason?