Pokémon GO (Android) Review

Great review! I am happy that you manage to stay balanced about what might be the biggest thing in gaming in years. But seriously? I agree with you... I am really curious about how they decided to turn religious buildings into gyms and not putting anything at all out in rural areas... It feels a little skewed. But it has caused some funny things to happen to say the least  I hope it gets fixed though so that people outside the urbanized zones gets to play, seems like something not exactly working as intended.

I am seriously not surprised that Nintendo entered the market and broke record after record though. They have IPs that sell unlike anything else in the world and they have the creativity and bravery to work outside the box if needed. Meanwhile I have to wait for this to release to experience it, and Miitomo as well that is yet not released where I live as I really do not feel like risking my account to get a head start.

Not for me, but it's great to see lots of people really enjoying it! it's been a huge success!

I'm still enjoying it, but not for much longer, I'm afraid. The Gyms have poor AI, so it's easy to capture one, and the nearby gym just constantly changes hands been me and five or six other people. I'm quickly running out of things to do, though. Visit more pokestops to get more pokeballs so I can catch another 70 Rattatas and 107 Pidgeys... I'm level 15 now, and the really rare ones are starting to appear, but the battling is so weak that I'm losing motivation to search for them. I imagine that by Tuesday I'll have uninstalled it, but I'll look in on it from time to time to see if they've added any actual gameplay. :/

I believe they've mentioned they're listening to feedback and will try to implement the things people are asking for, namely battling between friends and possibly trading.

I'm an idiot and don't have roaming data, just wifi, so can't make the most of this game yet, and the Vodafone site won't let me log in to see if I can upgrade. Mad that I'm only considering upgrading to experience this game lol.

( Edited 15.07.2016 23:45 by Azuardo )

lol Az you're not the only one, I don't have any mobile data plan, so I can't really experience the game. Plus, after initially being told the game wouldn't even install on a phone that has anything less than 2GB of RAM, I found that it runs on mine but it's just too laggy and stuttery to be enjoyable, so not only I can't play because I'd be stuck at home,but I'd need to upgrade my phone if I wanted to really enjoy the thing. If I could afford doing so I totaly would, but I simply can't .

I know that Niantic has said it, but I don't believe they'll go that far. It would require overhauling the entire game. I also don't believe for a second that they didn't know from the very beginning that players would go "Wait a minute. This is a Pokemon game. So... where is the Pokemon battling and Pokemon trading?"

Earlier today as I went from Poke-Stop to Poke-Stop, there was another guy playing behind me, doing the very same thing. We didn't even speak to each other. That should never happen with a game that has "Pokemon" in the title.

On top of that, the design is bad. It's well and good that I'm encountering Abra, Ponyta, and Gastly now that I'm level 16, but... They're still so rare that they're useless. They're just Dex entries, really. They're no more powerful than random Pidgeys I find, so it's kinda like playing the original Gen 1 game, but still encountering Pidgeys and Rattatas in Saffron City.

I don't see any way for them to fix that. Removing the Candy requirement from powering up Pokemon would be a great start, since then I could actually level up the rare Pokemon and make them competitive with the Flareon and Snorlax I've had for ten levels, but there's a lot of dissonance with this being a "Pokemon" game. There's a reason every gym is capped with a Flareon, Jolteon, or Vaporeon. No other Pokemon matters. And even though I've got a lot of history with the MMO Aion and grinding, I can't even fathom how much time it would take to get an Alakazam. Even worse, even if I did manage to, the Alakazam wouldn't be any better than the Snorlax I already have.

I guess the playing field is too even. I don't think a level 8 trainer with a freshly evolved Flareon should be able to easily kick me out of the gym, but it's so easy to take a gym that I've simply started leaving my starter Charmander with 12 CP defending gyms when I take them. It just doesn't make sense to leave a powerful one--someone is going to take the gym, and nothing can be done to stop it. So why use a Pokemon I'd have to use 4 Super Potions to heal?

Wow... O.O Is it really that easy taking over gyms... Sounds really weird to me. :/

They have indeed confirmed trading is coming, as well as a few other things. They confirmed this quite early. I think even at E3 (or around that time).
This company takes a very different - very unNintendo - approach to development. They don't release finished products so much as prototypes they keep adding too over time.

" also reportedly provided Niantic with Full Access to the email accounts of all iOS players who signed up with a Google account, though this has since been fixed, "

Was actually never true to start with. There was some bad missreporting based on a guess made by one hacker who found a error.
There was a bug, but no 3rd party software - no mater how bugged - gains "full access" to a signin gmail account. It couldn't read your mail, or send messages. What it did do, however, was get your email and phonenumber. 

Andre, it's ridiculously easy to capture gyms. The AI controls the defending pokemon, and they attack very slowly and never dodge. Just to see how it went, this morning I took a gym from three people using one Pidgeot. The Pidgeot's CP is 700~, while the defenders were all around 600. So while Pidgeot was more powerful, it shouldn't have been powerful enough to defeat three pokemon. I think Niantic wants gyms to change hands often, since I can only leave one pokemon to defend it, while attackers can use six to take it. If my pokemon successfully defends enough, the gym will gain enough prestige for another player to add a defender, but the odds will always fall heavily for the attacker.

I've stopped leaving behind weak ones, though, because there's another Team Instinct player in the area who can't yet take over a gym because his pokemon aren't strong enough. But he can throw his pokemon at my defender repeatedly, earning prestige since mine will win, and then bolster the gym with a defender and... gain nothing. Other than collecting 10 coins each day, there's no reward for having a gym, and you only need to hold the gym for ten seconds to collect the coins. If ThunderBuns my Snorlax defeats seventy challengers, it means nothing to me. With all that combined, the only thing ensuring that players leave strong defenders is that most players haven't noticed how pointless that is.

Darkflame, that's well and good, but I doubt people will still be playing this coming weekend. I know at least six people who uninstalled it yesterday, when Niantic's servers couldn't handle the load of people wanting to play on a sunny summer Saturday. Myself, I'm level 16 (at a time when must players are still 11-12), and still encountering primarily Pidgey, Rattata, Weedle, and Venonat, none of which have any value to me because of how the game is designed. Unless I'm going to drive 15 miles to another gym (and I'm not going to), I only need one powerful pokemon. So if a pokemon I catch doesn't come close to my top tier, it's literally useless, and I've got 3 CP900-1100 pokemon already. Even though I've caught a second Charmander finally, one Ponyta, one Jigglypuff, one Abra, they're no use to me. A CP400~ pokemon is useless garbage, and there's no way to power them up without collecting numerous specimens. Collecting numerous Charmanders and Abras just isn't feasible, and so there might as well be only Eevees in the game.

All that is to say I don't think it will matter that trading will be added, and that it will be too little way too late. It doesn't have any staying power, because there's just nothing to do, and no point in doing what little there is to do.

But yeah, plenty of apps gain full access to gmail accounts... TypeApp, BlueMail, Thunderbird... Full Access isn't uncommon, and it's required for email apps to work. Whether there was programming in the game capable of reading emails isn't the contention, but there seems no doubt, from what I've found, that it did have access, just not the capability.

If I reviewed the game now, I'd give it a 3 at best. I live in a rural area. Driving to the nearby city just to play Pokemon Go, only to arrive and have the app constantly crash and servers not allowing me to login is unacceptable. Nintendo needs to pull it from app stores until it's at least stable. In ten minutes, I had to force close 6 times, and all of them while trying to catch pokemon that disappeared after the crash. I lost all 6 pokeballs (more, actually, as the pokemon broke out of a few) (of course, Niantic would be happy to sell me some more). After the 6th time, the game simply stopped letting me back in.

Nintendo's long history of releasing finished games is being dragged through the mud, and I'd be embarrassed if I owned the pokemon name and this was happening to it.

Yeah... The servers are the most unstable thing I have ever seen... :/ It is insane to be honest. I have given up on taking gyms, not because of the difficulty, but because it is impossible to get in and fight.

great review! Imagine if you were in the hood and did this review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvVLwquQEIw

I just opened the app for the first time since Friday morning, and I still control the local gym, which confirms for me that no one else is playing, either. Plus, my friends all played, and absolutely no one I know is still talking about it.

When I started walking around, I found only Pidgey, Rattata, Eevee, and Spearow. I'm level 21, and about 10k experience from 22 (they really don't want people leveling past 20--the experience needed skyrockets when you hit 20... I needed 50000 for 21, and 75000 for 22), and it doesn't matter. There are still only those same ones.

Niantic seriously blew it, in my opinion.

Worse yet, when I took another gym Friday, after the fight I had to heal so that I could leave the pokemon defending. When I finished healing a single pokemon, someone had already claimed the gym that *I* cleared out, before I could leave behind the pokemon I used to defeat the gym. That was about the final straw for me, though I did look back into it today. That should never have happened. I should never have the gym taken by someone standing nearby after I cleared it out and before I could tap five things necessary to leave behind a pokemon at the gym that I defeated.

That has happened to me as well several times... The one who clears the gym should have like 2-3 min to claim it before anyone else can. :/

 things to come in the next few decades, once the algorithms become complex enough for the game to "know" that the Bellsprout is standing in front of a bush," 

Tango enabled phones are starting to come out now too, which basically gives depth sensing.
(ie. Pokemon could appear to be behind stuff)

Will take a few years for penetration to be worth it, but I strongly suspect Ninatic will be using both these techniques within a year or two.