Ahh... a new Pokemon game. I've always enjoyed this game franchise. The games have a ton of replayability, and surprising depth - so surprising that I though they had surprising depth before I was surprised by finding out they had even more surprising depth beyond the surprise I had already experienced! It's... surprising.

Anyways, the combat system is actually very complex and lots of possibilities exist. It's a very good series. I never got into the cartoons or movies or anything - of course, I never got into ANY cartoons or movies, really.

So we're here today to talk about the new releases. The main advertised feature of the new releases is the 107 new Pokemon, bringing the total up to 493. However, for experienced Pokefans, that's certainly not the exciting change. They've redesigned the move system so that moves are distinctly separated between physical and "special" attacks, instead of being classified by their type. So moves like ice punch are finally a physical attack. In addition, the most exciting change in my opinion is the ability to battle and trade over WiFi - over the internet with anyone around the world. No regions, no limits, just all-out madness. Very cool.

I definitely don't care for one major change, though. This one is more subtle. It seems that GameFreaks have taken the liberty of adding a number of pauses and slowdowns to dialouge boxes and events, especially in battle. The text speed even on the highest setting is barely faster than my normal reading speed, and since I don't read the same text 20 times because I know exactly what it says - it gets annoying. It's as if they purposely just adding a half a second here, two seconds there, and so on, just to lengthen battles and slow things down.

This has been my bane for years. In fact, ever since Final Fantasy 7. FF7 marked a new leaf for Square, where they went from the snappy quick battles of the best, to big flashy cinemas for actions in each battle - that can't be skipped! I really don't want to see the same summon 92 times while I'm leveling up my party - just as I don't want to see Go! Chimchar!! at the beginning of every Pokemon battle and have to wait a good 4 seconds just for the Pokemon to land on the field. That's not counting the numerous smaller pauses in the middle. (intimidates trait, anyone?)

Does this drive anyone else nuts?