Pokémon FireRed

Blah blah intro (this section won’t be here for other reviews) #

Hello! Apologies for not getting around to posting this for almost over two months. I have been dead. I kept telling myself, okay, I might be dead but still go write the thing, but it turns out being dead is hard to recover from. Hopefully, though, I can finish this tonight. Even though I am not really that much alive still.

I’ve decided to split reviews up into sections now. Maybe that will help me write them more easily. Maybe I will change my mind, decide it’s a bad idea entirely, or go with different sections. Who knows. Maybe it will make the reviews easier to follow for people rather than having a big ol’ chunk of text like I have done previously. For whoever does read these.

Overview #

So this is a bit of a non-standard review as I had technically started FireRed like a year ago. It’s not at all that it took me that long to finish, just that I ended up forgetting about it competely due to things in life happening and only getting back to it recently. Played it with an actual cart at first, actually, and then on the RG351M once I actually got that. So that save file has been all over the place. I’m not one for Nuzlockes or any kind of challenge runs like that, I like to experience these games as just normal standalone experiences. Controversial opinion these days, I’m just a Pokemon fan. I just felt like playing FireRed at some point, and I felt like continuing it at some point.

For the uninitiated (well, you never know who doesn’t know what these days, but anyway it just felt like a good idea to describe the game I’m playing), Pokemon FireRed is one of the pair of Pokemon FireRed and Pokemon LeafGreen, which are remakes of the original Pokemon Red and Green. I can’t remember if it’s supposed to have a space in it or not, and I don’t have the original box and I never trust the internet on such matters. So there are many ways to review it, many sets of expectations to be had, maybe I should just review it as though “does it hold up as just a good monster collecting RPG”? Or just a good vanilla Pokemon game, since I haven’t really played many other games in the genre that aren’t Pokemon related? Eh, that’ll do. That sounds like something I might do. There will be a lot to talk about here, so naturally, I will just ramble about whatever comes to mind and then not end up talking about all of it.

What’s cool and what isn’t #

Right away there’s a few things unique to this game (these two games) that are cool. You get some sort of an interactive tutorial (which is OPTIONAL) that you can assign to the L button I think it was, and that’d be good if this was literally your first Pokemon game. You get some guy in a portable TV that acts as an extra tutorial as well if you forget. I just think those things are neat, but there is one feature useful to everyone that deserves a mention. When you load up the game, it tells you where you were up to last! And what you were doing! WOOHOO! To be fair, that wasn’t an idea they completely threw away, the gen 4 games do that too. But it’s a frickin good idea! Every game that has the technical capability and not-crunching-the-developers-so-hard should do it! They’d all benefit! Sorry I just thought it was neat. Although, since other games don’t do that, I end up keeping a separate document that I type up with where I’m up to in each game I’m playing until I complete them anyway…

There is also a Fame Checker which is a nice little side quest that I did not bother finishing at all whoops! But I like the idea, it gives you an actual reason to talk to random NPCs, and check random inanimate objects. RPGs often struggle at having a point in exploring that part of the world that doesn’t directly give you free stuff unless they’re a comedy-oriented game, so this is always welcome. Unfortunately it ends up going a bit too far, personally, making you go to completely random parts of the post-game unrelated to the character in question, and also you basically get fuck all for beating it, and Daisy is not famous so for whatever reason they were really stretching there.

What else do we have in here, well, it basically replaces the original games entirely unless you like experimenting with glitches really. There’s no disadvantages over them, this is the ultimate Kanto game (IMPORTANT EDITORIAL NOTE: I have not played Let’s Go Pikachu/Eevee but like, y’know). Aside from just shiny new graphics, the usage of the 3rd generation mechanics from Ruby/Sapphire means that there are so much more Pokemon that are actually viable, more moves to use, better balanced (sorry Psychic types), more options and fun to be had overall. Also, a new island region that no other game goes back to. And one of the toughest level curves, while the final battle rematch isn’t the highest levelled in the main Pokemon series, it might overall be harder. Maybe. I appreciate that there’s an optional challenge for those who want one (like me).

Unfortunately when it comes to what Pokemon you have available… this is where FireRed/LeafGreen just kind of fall apart, I think. It’s important you not just get a wide variety in a Pokemon game, but also for that wide variety to include Pokemon that aren’t shit, and don’t take 5 years to level up to a usable extent. These two games don’t give you that, and to some extent it seems deliberate… being a game in Kanto isn’t a good starting point. Some of the gen 1 Pokemon just plain suck, I’m sorry. Not just in design which is 100% subjective, but just that they don’t have base stats that can really be useful anywhere, or no moves that are actually good and fun to use. God damn Pidgey sucks so much and I hate it. Or they evolve too late to become anything useful any time soon (sad to say Dratini sucks - I did try it), or appear too late in the game and you have to grind a lot to get them up to the same level as the rest of your team, which sucks, but is also something that could have been changed…

Thing is there’s a lot of things here that could have existed, but it’s like executive meddling (or some other reason) decided they wouldn’t be a thing. For example, you can’t evolve Golbat into Crobat until you beat the main storyline of the game… why, though? Was that really something that needed to be done? Would it really have been so sacriligeous if I could get a Crobat before finishing the main game? Would it really be so bad if Zubat actually even potentially had a purpose? I think it wouldn’t be, but it seems like some suit-wearing person decided that the main game must be as close to gen 1 as possible. Because reasons, I guess. And if I think about it too much, it does seem like these games deliberately just existed to fill the void of Pokemon that couldn’t be obtained in Ruby/Sapphire, and so letting you have Pokemon that could already be obtained with other means was just out of scope?

It’s also let down by some things that are resolved in newer games, like TMs being single use and most being only obtainable once per game so you have to overthink who you use them on hence you never use them all hence some Pokemon end up not having interesting moves, or everyone’s favourite HMs and having to be taught to something so you have to waste a team slot or keep swapping Pokemon in and out. That definitely sucks, sorry, it’s one of the problems with the older games. Sorry.

Anyway, there are some nice graphics and music here, these rearrangements of the gen 1 music will remain my favourite. The art style I guess probably looks a bit… small? For a GBA game? But it works. If you imagine the sprites being 2 or 3 times the size they are just to show off that the GBA can, it’d probably look and play like shit, so I’m glad they didn’t do that, and instead stuck to what works. It’s not like they’re ugly sprites or anything.

Accessibility/gotchas/fuck yous #

Hmm I’m not sure what to call this section, but for this game it’s important. I need to address the elephant in the room - the whole paired version gimmick. Yes, that applies to all Pokemon games, but if I’m going to pretend to review this game in a vacuum…

Honestly? Perform a stop it.

Look, I get it. In Japan you all live right next to each other and you all go on crowded trains and everyone is playing games there and it works out fine, or whatever it is I’m supposed to believe. That’s really great, but I’m not in Japan. The society I live in doesn’t work that way… to be honest, I’m not sure it works out in any part of the world. It doesn’t feel like crowded societies are the problem, especially as I live in a crowded part of the burbs anyway (and used to live right in a town centre). That’s just the argument that is made to justify all this.

The problem is that for one, not everyone is going to be playing this game at the same time. If I pretend I’m in some alternate universe 2005 where this game is current around here but also I’m not in high school and so have friends and don’t need to worry about surviving bullying, then yeah, I’m probably going to know some people that are playing this game. I can probably meet up with them… I guess? Actually, that’s the second problem. Not just right now with the lockdowns, meeting up with people is actually hard as it turns out, unless it’s a big organized event. Us adults could go “hey you wanna come hang out” any time we wanted that suits us both, but we just don’t. It’s just not a thing. I don’t really have an answer for why that is, it’s just… a thing, and from what I can tell, not just me being lonely and unlikeable.

But you might argue that emulation and online netplay (when that works) solves this problem… and yeah, it does render those two problems a moot point. Enter the third problem: You have to be not just playing the same game (or a game in the same pair of games) as your friends, but you have to be playing at the same pace as they are. You have to be aiming for the same goals. That’s even less likely to happen, especially if you’re still in real life and have to consider meeting up. Even less likely that you can just go tap your friend on the shoulder who you see playing LeafGreen and go “excuse me mate, can I have your Vulpix”, what if they’re doing one of those fancy wanky challenge runs and they aren’t allowed to send or receive any Pokemon other than the first one they receive in the area? What if they don’t have a Vulpix to give you and they don’t particularly feel like going out of their way to get one? What if they only have one Vulpix, and they’d like to keep it (and Game Freak decided that you don’t get to breed until the post-game)? Their goal must also be to complete the Pokedex, or else it just doesn’t work.

Sure, it’s a nice idea, giving multiplayer an actual point. Back in the days of the GB, GBC and GBA, Pokemon games were probably the only reason you would ever buy a link cable (they were compatible with other games too, but nobody cares). Trading and linking was part of the original concept for Pokemon before it actually started development. That’s actually all fine and good. Making it mandatory is not fine, and not good. All they really have to do is just put every Pokemon (that was obtainable in either of the paired versions) in the third version, which they didn’t have for FireRed/LeafGreen, and if people want to trade, they can do that and there’s still an incentive to get the dex filled up faster.

Yes, I know… money. Business. Capitalism. That unfortunately exists and unfortunately infects video games of all kinds. Even if that’s the real reason behind the paired versions… are people actually buying both versions? Do people do that in 2021? When nobody has money, and the $60 or $80 or however much it is sounds like a really steep ask for just one game to begin with? Maybe they still do, I don’t know, but from what I’ve observed, people are just like “yoo I’m getting Version 1, anyone who’s getting Version 2 hmu fam”. If the whole point is to squeeze money out of people, and I’m not that cynical that I believe that’s the entire 100% reason, I don’t think it works anymore.

Don’t even get me started on events. For these 3rd generation games, events literally didn’t happen in this whole country. Imagine defending the practice of being locked out of content in a game because of where you physically live - and it’s not because of region lockout, or licensing, it’s just that they decided some content should be locked behind a physical event (good luck if you don’t have access to travel, or can’t just go out all the time you want) that you have to go to in real life and they only did it in certain parts of the world and even when it did come to your country it was only certain cities which were hundreds of kilometres away. I genuinely do not count anything event-related as even being canon to the Pokemon games, and I will go so far as to die on that hill. It’s ridiculous that they ever did this. I know they’re online now in newer games and that is a rant for another day.

Anyway. As for other stuff you should know… these games do not have a real time clock, so you never need to worry about time based in-game event nonsense. Also means you can’t get Espeon or Umbreon, even post-game, even though Pokemon XD solved that problem (even though the GameCube did have a clock, so it didn’t have to). So if you have a cartridge in real life you don’t have to worry about the battery running out, unless you have a bootleg cart, which in that case who knows what else you have to worry about. Shrug.

Braille is used in the game at some point (in the post game I think), although it’s hardly anything at all and you could honestly just figure it out without knowing Braille. It was supposed to come with the game along with the manual, but if you don’t have that, well… go look it up, doofus. Sick of people blaming the game for them not knowing Braille. I’m not saying I can read it, but it’s not like it’s some super secret code that the game made up? Some people use it regularly in real life.

The updated version of the game (Rev 1) does not apparently do anything interesting, other than fix a typo. It wasn’t even that wrong of a typo, Pidgey is indeed a tiny Pokemon, but that’s not how it was supposed to be listed. There are some other minor fixes too, but they are just so god damned minor that they might as well not exist. Don’t even worry about that one.

It does support the e-Reader, if you’re into that sort of thing, it doesn’t do anything except add some more trainers to Trainer Tower, and also was only released in Japan anyway, and the export versions of the game just have those trainers in the normal Trainer Tower, so don’t even worry about it.

Conclusion #

I stand by what would be a controversial opinion these days. Pokemon is a fine game series by itself, and Game Freak are fine developers, even if you can tell they get screwed over by management a fair bit and also aren’t perfect just as no game developers are. It’s fine. I had fun playing the game. That’s all that matters, right?

Going forward with any other Pokemon games I review in the future, though, I think I will be sticking to “dex hacks” or whatever the term is. The thing where they put all the Pokemon in the game so you don’t have to trade with anyone. That preserves everything else about the games, but gets rid of that one aspect which I just don’t feel works at all. I still think it’s valid of me to review games in this way as I would with any other QoL hack, it just stops me having to go on the rant I went on with every single other game.

As for whether it’s my favourite Pokemon game… I mean, probably not. There’s just not enough not-shit Pokemon available, and it ends up being grindy because the cool ones are near the end of the game. Also, nobody really seems to want to make QoL hacks of it like with Emerald, from what I can tell. But it’s certainly passable, and you could do worse.