3.5/5 ★ – Lammy's review of Pokémon: Let's Go, Eevee!.

Pokémon: Let's Go, Eevee post-Cerulean Cave review: I'm on the road to Viridian City! The Let's Go games are remakes of Pokémon Yellow, the slightly more anime-inspired title from waaaaay back in Gen 1. You play as a new trainer from Pallet Town, equipped with an Eevee or Pikachu as your starter depending on version and tasked with collecting 8 gym badges and beating the Pokémon League while taking on the villainous Team Rocket and catching a whole bunch of new monster friends along the way. Let's Go fleshes out the famously boilerplate story of Gen 1 a bit, mostly through interactions with your rival, but it's still a desperately thin affair. With this being the series' third trip through Kanto, odds are most fans have been on this ride before, but it's at least serviceable for newcomers I think. Visuals are pretty good, and the music is made up of remixes of Gen 1 tracks which are either okay or incredible depending on your personal nostalgia. Where Let's Go differs most is in its mechanics. First off, the starter Eevee or Pikachu you acquire is MUCH more powerful than they would be otherwise. They have boosted stats, perfect IVs, and access to unique moves to add coverage and compensate for their inability to evolve. Eevee gets more of these moves, and a less exploitable type weakness, so that version's probably easier if that affects your purchase decisions. Secondly, battles against wild Pokémon are vastly different. To try and tie the game into the then new-ish hit mobile game Pokémon GO, the wild battles are distilled to motion-controlled capture screens similar in design to the phone game's Poké Ball throwing mechanic, skipping combat entirely aside from a few static encounters. Also like the phone game, you are incentivized to catch the same creature multiple times and release unwanted duplicates in exchange for stat-boosting candy and other items. I wasn't a huge fan of the catch-and-release mechanics at play here but it does offer a decent twist on the Gen 1 grind loop. Available Pokémon are limited to the original 150 in-game plus applicable Alolan forms, with Mew, Meltan and Melmetal also available through GO connectivity or the Poké Ball Plus peripheral controller that I do not own. Overall, the Let's Go games are a pair of pretty alright but inessential entries in the Pokémon pantheon. I still think Fire Red and Leaf Green are the better Kanto experience, but Let's Go won't steer you wrong if you just want a decent quest to be the very best like no one ever was. 7/10