Pokemon Leaf Green Review (GBA) By idioticgenius

10 / 10
06 Nov 2005 at 11:30

Review by: idioticgenius

Since I stopped enjoying Pokemon about 5 years ago I was pleasantly surprised when I played the old Pokemon Blue game for Game Boy Colour so I decided to buy this!
This game is amazing, the last game that I enjoyed this much was San Andreas so that shows how addictive this game is!
I haven't even traded any Pokemon yet but I have caught just about every Pokemon it is possible to get in this version in less than 2 weeks (pretty good considering I wasn't expecting to like it!). This game is one of those that keep you playing long after you complete it, trying to get my Jynx, Venusaur, Rhydon, Dragonite, Articuno and Gyarados to level 100 is my next task but I have about 150 others to train as well...

Basically I'm suggesting that you buy the game if you own a GBA...

Okay I know what you're thinking- 'eww he's 14 and he likes Pokemon, I can't believe I know him...', well if you are thinking that then maybe you should put down your murder-everyone-on-screen type games and play a game with some depth, aka this one.

The game, while in some cases using the same character names for Gym Leaders and a few others, has little to do with the TV show. In fact only the storyline is similar (beat the gym leaders and the elite four to beat the game), while the rest can be played as well as you want it to be. The main aim of the game is to complete your two Pokedexes by catching each and every Pokemon, a task only acievable by trading and gaining the skill to do so. You choose your starter Pokemon (Charmander, Squirtle or Bulbasaur) at level 5, beat your rival, then you're on your way, theres a whole world to explore!

There's two ways to go about this, catch yourself a few decent Pokemon then train them until they're powerful enough to take down opponents, or catch everything in sight, and try to get an early lead on your Pokedex, but this isn't reccomended. I did so though, and prevailed easily, I now consider myself to be a pretty formidable opponent on this game, with a level 100 Jynx and a good few legendarys (Articuno, Zapdos, Moltres, Mewtwo, Entei, Suicane and Raikou can all be captured, as can Deoxys, Ho-Oh and Lugia with certain cheat devices).

Graphics don't need to be good, its a Game Boy Advance, colours are plentiful and pretty good and you can actually see the screen, thats good enough for me!

This game has a very high replay factor, you won't wanna put this game down and you will probably waste away in front of your Game Boy Advance before you 'catch em all'! I myself have a pretty good collection, with most of those Pokemon that you CAN capture or evolve without Trading safely in my collection, minus Entei unfortunately...

Sound is pretty good for this, while it doesn't feature an all star cast voicing the grunts of your character it does have a range of sounds, each changing for environments and during battles, its a great achievement if you can make a GBA game's music sound good, yet they accomplished it, and well done to them.

The game has depth, more depth than you'd expect for a seemingly childish game, yet you can now discover the features of your Pokemon, discover behaviour patterns, learn weaknesses and improve on everything using various tools, you can see from this how even with your most powerful Pokemon they canh still be vulnerable. My only complaint is the way they have made version-only Pokemon and put such a hype on the trading, nobody I know owns a Pokemon game and they certainly wouldn't admit it if they did, nor would they give away their beloved starter Pokemon, the reason being that any serious player wants one of each, yet Nintendo made this impossible, damn them, yet congratulations for making this fine game *salutes*

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