Pokémon Black and White

Pokemon Black and White
Truth and ideals collide!
Protagonist(s): Hilbert Hilda Genre(s): RPG Rating(s): ESRB: E Platform(s): Nintendo DS Release Date: JP: September 18, 2010 EU: March 4, 2011 NA: March 6, 2011 AU: March 10, 2011 Developer(s): Game Freak Publisher(s): Nintendo The Pokémon Company Country: Japan Series: Pokémon Predecessor: Pokémon Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum Successor: Pokémon Black 2 and White 2

Pokémon Black and White are a pair of games in series of Pokémon RPG games. The are part of Generation V of Pokémon. They were released for the Nintendo DS. It has additional features when played on a Nintendo DSi system.

Why It Makes You Gotta Catch 'Em All In Unova

1. For the first time in the series, the region the game takes place in, Unova, isn't based in Japan. Instead, it's based on New York, USA. This symbolizes the series going more worldwide, and from Gen V onwards each new region is now based on different countries across the world. This region's Pokédex contains only Pokémon introduced in this generation.
2. A whopping 156 new Pokémon introduced, the most of any generation.
3. No Pokémon from previous generations are available until post-game, which encourages players to try out the new ones and give teams a more fresh feeling.
   • Lore-wise, this is explained as the game taking place in a distant country far away from the first four regions.
4. It is the first time the series takes a more story driven approach, featuring one of the most fleshed out and engaging plots in the franchise, with more memorable characters such as N, Ghetsis, Cheren, Bianca, Alder, Iris, among others, and Team Plasma being one of the best villainous teams.
   • The Gym Leaders are also more involved with the story and are not just one time boss fights unlike most other installments.
   • It helps that the said Trainers have fantastic character designs and are some of best-looking Trainers in the main series.
5. Some routes and cities completely change depending on if you're playing Black or White.
6. Pokémon are now fully animated sprites that show the Pokémon's full body at all times during battles. The battle camera is more dynamic, zooming in and out as Pokémon use their moves.
   • In addition, the battle animations are back to normal pacing such as Ice Beam and Flamethrower, which is good.
7. The experience gain formula is overhauled so that lower-leveled Pokémon grow faster. It also discourages grinding as higher-leveled Pokémon gain less experience. Wild Audino can really help with making Pokémon grow.
8. Introduces a Season system, which rotates between Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter each month. Certain events, weather conditions, encounter rates, and routes layouts change depending on the current season.
   • The Deerling and Sawsbuck line were introduced to demonstrate the effects of alternating seasons.
9. TMs are now permanent and these cannot be consumed, which is a big improvement over the past generations starting from Gen 3.
10. New to this Generation is Hidden Abilities, which are Pokémon with a special unique ability that can only be obtained through special circumstances such as Event, Dream World etc.
11. There's not as much HMs as in previous games. In addition, only one HM, being Cut, is required for beating the game, which is amazing. Additionally, there's no need to have badges to use HM moves outside of battle.
12. There are many nice locations and areas around the Unova region itself such as Driftveil City, Skyarrow Bridge, Castelia City, Accumula Town and several more cities and towns that make the region feel unique and breathtakingly gorgeous on par with previous regions like Sinnoh, Hoenn, and Kalos.
13. Many of the new Pokémon are either cute (Oshawott, Maractus, Lillipup, Whimsicott), cool (Bisharp, Sawk, Drilbur, Scrafty, Krookodile) or just plain amazing overall (Zoroark, Scolipede, Galvantula, Mienshao, Golurk, Reshiram, Zekrom), making Gen V having, hands down, the best monster designs in the series overall.
14. It is home to easily the best set of gym challenges in the series to date, as many of them have complicated paths and tends to have parts of the stage where you have to memorise which part is the safest route to go and with the right amount of thinking, these gym challenges could be considered challenging for newbies who haven't gotten into the series yet but it still feels to them since they aren't cheap and can be easily get the player challenged on how they have to complete the challenges and most of them will be easily done when you've finished them, which makes them a blast to play.
15. The soundtrack is absolutely amazing with several memorable music tracks such as the iconic theme music for Accumula Town, which has become a meme thanks to being associated with the Furret Walk meme that was popular during the late 2010's when internet culture was at it's peak.
16. Generally are amazing to play online competitively with friends, especially back when it was released in 2010, thanks to the C-Gear service and it's amazing functionality.
17. Colorful graphics that are a huge improvement from the previous titles, as there is a lot more side scrolling with three dimensional diagonals being used and the color palette being a lot more vibrant and nicer looking when compared to Diamond & Pearl, which used a more duller and GBA-esque color palette to imitate Ruby & Sapphire from 2002, and since it's now pushing the DS to it's limits this time around with the improved animations and sprite quality, it means that the graphics will look a lot more better as a result and they do in this case, with these titles being the best-looking 2D titles in the series and looking fairly polished for DS standards.
18. Unlike previous games, poisoned Pokémon do not lose HP outside of battle, so you do not have to worry about them losing HP when you run around.
19. The game implements triple and rotation battles into the series to make the battle system more fresh and innovative, which is a nice feature to implement since it allows the game to be more competitive and use a layer of strategy that hadn't been used in the previous four gens, making the game feel unique when compared to the previous entries in the series at that point.
20. Pokémon Musicals are a nice replacement for Pokémon Contests from Gens 3 and 4, with more originality and focus on it's source material than what Contests did previously.
21. It took the series in an extremely new and inventive direction that later games would adapt the exact new thing and build upon it in an extremely interesting and clever way, such as the non-Japan-based region, more strategized gameplay and mechanics, the lack of a third game in favor of a sequel, enhanced or DLC pack version instead, and improving the franchise's iconic art style so much that it looks up to point with many modern games of today's standards.
22. Tons of unique type combinations introduced in this gen, possibly the most in the series to date (such as Grass/Steel with Ferroseed, Ghost/Fire with Litwick, Ground/Dark with Sandile, Bug/Electric with Joltik and Dragon/Ice with Kyurem). This game also introduces a pure Flying-type, Tornadus.
23. The gameplay from previous titles is still on point with these games, if not better thanks to the new variety of gimmicks and game mechanics that make the game feel fresh and exciting when compared to other titles in the series and make it easily one of the overall best gameplay experiences in the series to date with many improvements over previous titles and more battle mechanics that feel strategic and give the game a lot more of a tactical-vibe to it.

Bad Qualities

1. Transferring Pokémon from Gen IV to Gen V requires two Nintendo DS systems as well as two games of the same language.
2. Though many non-Unova native Pokémon can be caught postgame, a lot of others (including some popular Pokémon like Pikachu and Charizard) require Poké Transfer to be obtained, which is inconvenient as detailed in BQ#1.
3. Ghetsis (the leader of Team Plasma and N's foster father), despite his badass character design, is not only extremely unlikable, but also incredibly hard. Many fans have considered him to be the most hated, most difficult villainous team boss in the main series so far.
   • At least he gets his comeuppance in both the end of this game pair's main story and their sequel.
4. The gym battle with Elesa is extremely annoying, due to her Pokémon being over-leveled and being way too fast to defeat, and thanks to them all learning Volt Switch, it can make the battle seem rather unfair and frustrating at best.
5. Some fans may feel put off with the new direction that these games took and will have a bit of a hard time coping with the changes that Game Freak had to fully implement into these games, since they're meant to be reboots on the Pokémon franchise and are meant to refresh the series back up for a new generation of gamers everywhere.
6. Pokémon Storage System Box names are subject to the four-number limit. This was thankfully removed in the sequels.

Trivia

1. The Driftveil City theme is pretty popular to the point of being in the subject of memes.
2. During the 2024 Gigaleak incident, the Mistralton City Gym Leader Skyla became an internet meme due to jokes surrounding her as Latina and because of a character document that describes her as "sexy pilot" and not by her name. Not only that, but comparisons between her and Jennifer Lopez were rampart too due to her document stating that her design is inspired by Jennifer and her beta early design being more reminiscent to the celebrity.
3. Amoonguss and Foongus became known for the Among Us jokes years later.

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