I wasn’t going to Download pokemon quest, but then I saw a post that it had 7.5 million downloads and like a true sucker I immediately went and downloaded it. However so far so good, pokemon continues to make simple but fun mobile games that work.
In a nutshell there’s an island you have to explore for treasure and obviously there are pokemon on the island. You get to choose a starter from squirtle (always my choice), charmander, bulbusaur, pikachu and eevee. Immediately you can go on quests where you fight other pokemon. The combat they do by themselves apart from clicking special attack every now and again and scattering the pokemon when there’s an area attack (you can actually set it completely to auto which is useful as you can level whilst watching TV). The levels are pretty rewarding as you level up your pokemon, collect recipe ingredients and power stones. Power stones are equipped to your pokemon to increase power and hp and some have additional bonuses.
Recipe ingredients are for your cooking pot back at base camp, you attract new pokemon by cooking instead of catching them in the wild, so you cook a tasty meal and befriend them. You can have a team of 3 and it seems to be pretty varied on who’s available, my team is currently wartortle, onyx and machoke (as far as I’ve seen it’s all 1st gen pokemon). You just need to level up and equip more powerful stones to take on more difficult quests. Each quest has a ‘boss’ at the end who is more than likely the fully evolved version of some of the pokemon you’ve encountered in that level, they’re also huge compared to the others
You can also level up by sacrificing other pokemon to yours, so take 2 pidgeys away and get half a level up for your squirrel for example. This is a good method however pokemon aren’t easy to Come by due to the cooking taking some time, but it does help whittle down your party.
In the base camp you can also decorate it for certain bonuses like more item drops or more experience on quests etc. As with all mobile games these come at a price in the form of pm tickets, you get a fair few to begin with, get 50 free every day and also get them rewarded for in game challenges (such as befriending x amount of pokemon or doing so much training). I personally refuse to take part in micro transactions, especially in mobile games I won’t be playing in 3 months, so I’ll see how I get on with what I’ve got. The other annoyance is that there’s essentially a battle limit in the form of a battery. The battery has 5 sections and each battle/quest takes 1 part and takes half an hour to charge 1 section or you can recharge at a cost of pm tickets. But with the decorations….each main boss fight rewards you with a statue, you discover that these statues are the key to unlocking a hidden treasure on the island, so perhaps there is an end game in this mobile game and not just an eternity of micro trans!
I think nostalgia helps it especially as it has the classic gameboy pokemon sounds and there’s the hook of collecting and evolving your pokemon, a fair few you befriend at higher levels so you can actually evolve them pretty quickly which also makes me wanna keep going and getting better pokémon. I’ve also no doubt you’ll learn a special recipe to attract rare pokemon. The graphics are a little odd but I’ve actually enjoyed something different and it’s still pokemon.
I’ve really enjoyed it so far, I’ve been playing it every day since I downloaded it and I don’t think any pokemon fan will be disappointed by this free game.