4/5 ★ – NerdyBandit's review of Pokémon Yellow.

Beat on January 11, 2023 in ~21 hours. Final team was Pikachu, Onix, Hitmonlee, Lapras, Snorlax, and Chansey. Pokemon Yellow set the standard of the "updated" third version in core series Pokemon games, but is it the "definitive" Gen 1 game in the same way as others claim for later gens' 3rd versions? Kind of, but not really. In short, Yellow Version tweaks things to be more like the anime. There are few major updates or additional content, and the biggest problems I have with Gen 1 are still present, along with some things that could be considered downgrades. The biggest difference is that your starter Pokemon is a Pikachu that, much like in the anime, doesn't evolve and follows you around on the overworld. The rudimentary friendship system and anime voice clips are actually pretty neat, but Pikachu isn't very strong, and I expect that plenty of players wouldn't want to have one on their team. Notably, since a sprinkler can't be turned on to magically make ground Pokemon weak to electric like in the anime, Pikachu is even more hapless than Charmander against Brock, the first gym battle which was already rather intimidating to new and young players lacking super effective moves. (Of course, Butterfree with Confusion remains a viable option, and Mankey was added to Route 22 seemingly to balance this out) The other major difference is completely revamped front battle sprites for all of the pokemon, now in color and more closely reflecting Ken Sugimori's art (and thus the anime). While the original sprites weren't objectively bad in isolation, and a few of the changes might be downgrades (Muk and Tentacruel came to mind during my playthrough), it's mostly a very welcome change, especially having them all in their appropriate colors. And by virtue of primarily removing a couple of Pokemon that were "antagonists" in the anime, and also adding the ability to get all 3 previous starter Pokemon like in the anime, Yellow has the most Pokemon to choose from without trading other players. I guess my only other new gripe is that some of the Gym Leaders' teams were downgraded compared to Red and Blue in order to match the anime, exacerbating preexisting issues with trainer team variety: Erika's Vileplume and Victreebel are now unevolved, Koga has a bunch of unevolved Venonats and no pure Poison types, and Sabrina now has a completely worthless Abra just to have the full evolutionary line (though in removing the non-Psychic Venomoth one could argue this is still an upgrade). That being said, I still obviously had a lot of fun playing the game. Since I'd already beat Gen 1 twice at this point, and since this is the one game where you get an unevolvable starter, I decided to try a "challenge" playthrough by only using Pokemon that don't evolve (with the exception of a Cut user to progress after the S.S. Anne, to my dismay). This made Brock and Hikers pretty annoying since you don't get to catch any Pokemon until Onix in Rock Tunnel, but it gets much easier from there, and was a great opportunity to try some Pokemon that I never use (including some "meta" ones like Snorlax and Chansey, which was literally my first Safari Zone encounter and became my de-facto team mascot next to Pikachu). Also, Pokemon Yellow was the first video game I ever owned, so while it's not a huge upgrade from Red and Blue, it will always have a special place in my heart.