How good are Pokemon Crimson and Crimson? We played the game

The final installment of the series, “Pokémon Legends: Arceus”, showed how the legendary series can continue to evolve. “Pokémon Crimson and Crimson” only partially picks out the many innovations here. In particular, it increases the freedom of the open world slightly more and also increases the possibilities of collaboration. Is that enough for a hit? We played the game extensively for you at the Pokémon Company in London.

Unforeseen liberties

While most parts of the series published so far are fairly linear, “Pokémon Crimson and Crimson” is increasingly based on an open world and playful freedom. First in the series, the Paldea region is one, from beautiful beaches to snow-covered treetops. You can explore them on foot or on the back of your edition’s flagship Pokemon, Koraidon in “Pokémon Crimson” or Miraidon. With them you can travel across the land, climb high cliffs, swim on the water and even fly. In this way you can reach every corner and every secret of the world. It’s worth it, but it also has its drawbacks. Because while “Pokémon Crimson and Purple” is generally nicer than the much smaller 3D areas of say “Shield and Sword”, our not-yet-final pre-launch version does not run very smoothly and without clearly visible details that sometimes show up a few meters in front of us.

Stars, Champions and Ruler Pokémon

Not only do you have more freedom in exploring, but also in which story path you follow. Can you defeat all the Arena champions first to become the best Poké Trainer in the region? This is possible, although you must first earn it as part of new challenges to complete them. The champion we beat, who is more of a tutorial character, hopefully isn’t representative in this regard, and the stupid quest for screeching sunflowers in the arena’s environment isn’t exactly exciting in terms of gameplay.

You might as well focus on the Team Star first. When you enter their areas, a new feature comes into play that can also be used in the open world: you rush your Pokémon to other species at the touch of a button. This is followed by a boss fight, in our case against the team star trainer Irsa. First against their mightiest pocket monster and then against their Star-Mobile, that is, a vehicle that might be more than that. The third campaign path consists of battles against particularly powerful Ruler Pokémon.

Half-cooked co-op

What “Pokémon Crimson and Crimson” primarily takes over from its predecessor “Arceus” is that all combat takes place directly in the game world, ie apart from certain story battles, not in separate arenas as usual. inherited and expanded from previous games -Options. Now you can invite up to three friends to your party or compete against the same number of fellow fighters in the new Tera Raids. However, the latter work little differently from the raids of earlier installments of the series. Essentially, you no longer have to wait for the actions of your fellow players in the battle against the powerful Pokémon in the raids. In fact, this new co-op principle means the co-op mode makes even less sense there.

It’s different with normal co-op where you can also collect directly in the world with up to four participants. As for trading Pokémon, that’s pretty nice. Otherwise you just walk through the world independently of each other. If you attack a wild Pokémon or if it attacks you, you still fight alone. The highest feeling is a picnic together, where you put together a sandwich for your travel companions with the ingredients you collected earlier. You can’t do much more than that, which is why the co-op is not very appealing and “Pokémon Crimson and Crimson” remains mainly a solo adventure.

outlook

“Pokémon Crimson and Purpur” develops the series in a meaningful way and, in particular, magnifies the open-world approach. Not only does this increase the playful freedom, the technical limits of the switch also become a bit clearer. This is as undeniable as the adventure’s hit potential in the new Paldea region, whose qualities should not only appeal to the biggest fans, despite its potential weaknesses.

“Pokémon Crimson and Crimson” will be released exclusively for Nintendo Switch on November 18, 2022.

Source: Watson