4/5 ★ – ThatsALotaChris's review of Pokémon Black.

I think this Gen undeservedly gets a bad rap. I hear it lumped in with the later Gens as being one of the gimmicky ones, but I challenge that. The only “gimmick” is the triple/rotation battling and that only comes up in like 3 completely avoidable battles. 99.9% of the battles are normal. I also appreciate this game’s attempt at a more dynamic story, which is admittedly a little sloppy here, but it’s at least engaging. After Team Rocket, the villain plots really stopped making sense and ultimately amounted to “this legendary is going to destroy the world in the way I want”. N at the very least has an admirable goal, even if it is profoundly misguided. In terms of gameplay, I think the adventure is right up there with the best. The battling system is faster paced, training is easier, and there’s an entirely new crop of Pokémon to break up the monotony. I never felt bogged down by certain HM’s until the postgame and genuinely enjoyed the overhaul to the graphics and world design. It’s an impressive output for the DS. Now, I don’t think it is as good as the first three Gens for a number of reasons. There are far too many “cutscenes”, the legendaries kind of suck, and the postgame feels a bit anticlimactic. It’s cool that there are three new cities to unlock, but they’re the kind of cities I’d rather have just had access to all along. I thought after finding the Seven Sages I might have one more confrontation with Ghetsis or even N, but after finding the last one, the game is just quietly over. Guess they can’t all end as strong as Gen 2. This Gen also gets a lot of flack for the new Pokémon it introduces, but I like them! Some of the best designs come from this Gen, albeit with some truly bad ones. But I’m glad they tried a wholly new crop instead of expanding on previous Pokémon. The only real negative I have to say about the Unova Pokémon is that there are simply too many legendaries. In addition to the musketeer trio (a worse version of the three dogs) you’ve got your big legendaries (Reshiram, Zekrom, Kyurem), then you have your three roaming genies, ANOTHER addition to the musketeers (Keldeo), two song based entities, and then Genesect??? Why are there so many? I blame Gen 4 for starting this trend but it should have stopped there. There never needs to be more than six legendaries per game: a trio, a dichotomy, and an extra special one. THAT’S IT. Anyway, good game.