The
start of a longstanding remake tradition.
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| Console: GameBoy Advance |
With all of this in mind, I decided to review the games that started this remake tradition. Pokémon FireRed & LeafGreen. Are these GBA games, over 15 years later, still worth playing? Yes, they are. As a matter of fact, I'd say that they are the definitive games to play if you want that original Kanto region, 151 Pokémon experience.
Let’s dive in.
The plot of FireRed & LeafGreen is
(surprise) nothing special. It’s very basic, with not many developments across
the 30-hour campaign. You’re mostly just focused on getting from gym to gym
while your rival and Team Rocket pop up occasionally to make life difficult for
you. There’s no strong narrative that will keep you engaged, just a string of
well-designed characters with fun dialogue that’ll point you along your
journey. It’s the core gameplay and the Pokémon themselves that keeps you
engaged, but I’ll get to that later. As remakes, FireRed & LeafGreen do
very little in terms of expanding the plot. It’s a near one-on-one translation
from the original Red & Blue with only a small change here or there to
correct errors that were in the original.
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| Your "friendly" rival Blue. Back in the days when using quotations with friendly was necessary. |
It does have one significant change and that has
to do with the brand new post-game content. FireRed & LeafGreen introduces
the Sevii Islands, a group of small islands located south of Kanto. A group of
islands akin to the anime’s Orange Islands. These are first introduced at the
end of the campaign, briefly interrupting your gym challenge at a point in
which the originals didn’t have anything going on. The added post-game story
and area is welcoming, it gives you something to do after becoming champion, but
its sadly also disappointing. The post-game story is really short and not that
interesting. It’s more a means to introduce the Sevii islands then anything
else.
The gameplay of FireRed & LeafGreen is, well, it’s Pokémon through and through. It is split into two sections: journeying across the overworld and the battles. In the overworld section, you travel across Kanto using your trust running shoes and later bike. You get from city to city, talking to people, getting into battles finding items etc. You know how it goes. The HM’s is one of the ways the game hinders your progress. To keep you from entering area’s you aren’t supposed to go yet. A Pokémon needs to have learned a specific move to, for example, cut down a tree and progress. This system has always been annoying with fans as the system feels archaic and outdated these days. There are many downsides to this system, not least is the fact that these HM’s can’t easily be removed from a Pokémon’s move set. FireRed & LeafGreen are almost 20 years old, so while the HM system is annoying and hindering, you do have to get that in mind.
That said, FireRed & LeafGreen does offer the player free-er exploration than most Pokémon games. Even more so than Pokémon Sword & Shield, in a way at least. Just like the original Red & Blue, you can tackle the middle-section of Gym Leaders, in any order you want. The level caps for the gyms aren’t really adjusted for this for all gym leaders, so do keep that in mind.
When encountering a Pokémon in the tall grass through a random encounter or enter a trainer when coming in their line of vision, you enter a battle. The battles are quite simple and as such, I won’t go into them too deeply. It’s a turn-based battle system in which you, well, take turns attacking your opponent. A Pokémon faints AKA is defeated when its HP is reduced to zero. Who defeats all of the opponents Pokémon first is the winner simple. When encountering a wild Pokémon, you can also try to catch it by throwing a PokéBall at it. The lower the HP of the Pokémon, if they are under a status condition and the effectiveness of the PokéBall all factor in if the catch is successful or not. There are more nuances to it but this is the gist of it. I’m fairly certain most people knew all of this already but it’s a review after all. Got to at least explain it a little bit.
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| A typical wild Pokémon battle. |
Also: it provides a good jumping point for something I want to highlight. Yes, the Dark & Steel types are now present in the game, unlike the originals. However, this doesn’t have too much of an effect as there are very few moves and Pokémon of these types available during the main campaign. It’s more something for the post-game. No, what I mean are the changes that have been made to the battle system. More accurately, the changes that have been since these games released and how that makes the battles different here then they are in, let’s say, Sword & Shield. One of the changes is that the special/physical split hasn’t happened yet for the moves. That one is less important to a general audience I feel as the lack of this change won’t be affected by this. Some Pokémon will be more or less useful then you remember them being, but that’s about it. No, it’s the change in how attack effectiveness that I want to talk about.
One of the biggest complaints about modern Pokémon games is their difficulty.
Many feel that they are way too easy. Yes, the Pokémon Company have indeed
taken steps to make the games more approachable but FireRed & LeafGreen
aren’t really any more difficult I find. What difficulty is there is more so
due to the lack of polish/lack of quality of life updates. For example: even
when my Pokémon were heavily under level, I still managed to get one-hit KO’s
when I had the type advantage. The difficulty more came from large level gaps
and such, requiring me to do some heavy grinding to keep up. Modern games have
made steps to make certain aspects less difficult. But, they've also adjusted
others in the opposite direction, like reducing the bonus you get for landing a
super-effective move, to balance it all out.
So in short: FireRed & LeafGreen aren’t necessarily more difficult than the modern Pokémon games, they’re just difficult in a different way.
As the Pokémon themselves are always the main attraction for many for these
games, let’s briefly talk about them. The 151 Pokémon that make up the Kanto
region are the original and by now iconic ones. From Bulbasaur to Mew. The
original 151 have never been my favourite crop of Pocket Monsters but they’re
designs are all strong. Basic, but good. Not much to be disappointed about.
After you’ve finished the game, you’ll be able to evolve Pokémon into their ‘new’ evolutions as well as find Johto Pokémon in the Sevii Islands. That’s were another criticism of mine lies. That the evolutions of Pokémon from the original 151 that were released in Gold & Silver are only available after the main game. It’s a decision I don’t understand, but I digress before I start a rant. I feel it’s unnecessarily limiting is what you need to know.
The graphics of FireRed & LeafGreen matches those of the other Pokémon GBA titles, Ruby, Sapphire & Emerald. It runs on the same engine as those games after all, so there not that different from those games. The games are far from taxing for the hardware, so they run very smooth. No staggering or screen tare or anything like that here. The entire look of the game is sprite based, unlike the 3D models you see nowadays. The graphics are a marked improvement over those of the previous generation of games, Gold & Silver, with much better colour and more details. The Pokémon sprites aren’t yet animated sadly, so that’s a nit-pick of mine. The moves are still fully animated though and are remarkably better then they have been in previous titles.
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| A look at Pallet Town, you're starting point, in the GBA engine. |
Finally, the soundtrack is OK. It’s not my
absolute favourite though for two reasons: one is that almost the entire sound
design is lifted from Ruby & Sapphire. These tracks have a distinct sound
that doesn’t match with the Kanto region. The tracks that have been re-recorded
form the original Red & Blue also suffer from, in my opinion, trying to
match which it does so poorly.
Conclusion
Are Pokémon FireRed & LeafGreen worth
playing nowadays? Yes, they are. As I already said in the opening, I would even
go as far as to say that they are the definitive way to play the original Kanto
region. Unlike the original Fire & Blue, the game looks much better and are
much more stable. None of those weird bugs and glitches here. They also offer
the traditional Pokémon experience and not the simplified, Pokémon Go-style
gameplay that the 2018 Let’s Go games have. It also offers unique content to
the player, most prominently the Sevii island. This content might not be as
good as it could have been, but it’s still nice to have in here.
If you want to play through Kanto with the
original 151 crop of Pokémon, then FireRed & LeafGreen are the way to go.
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