Why Pokémon GO Can’t Compete with Handheld Games

Ah, Pokémon GO. It is fun and provokes you to get out into the world and travel parks and pavilions looking for the best Pokémon to battle gyms, and take down raids. You are able to relive your childhood in a creative way with AR technology that gives the vague feeling of the Pokémon being right in front of you. However, why hasn’t Pokémon GO become more famous than the ruling Pokémon games? In this article we will discuss a few key reasons why Pokémon Go can’t, and maybe never will be able to, Compete with the Pokémon games.

Adventure

Of course, we get a sense of adventure through Pokémon GO. However, it is not as in-depth as the story induced adventure we get as we collect the perfect team of 6 to take on gym leaders and antagonists such as Team Rocket, Plasma, Magma, and so on. The adventure found in the Pokémon games will always rule out until they add more specific challenges or random trainer battles to the Pokémon GO community.

Visual Effects

Although the AR (Augmented Reality) that Pokémon GO offers for their mobile game is top of the line and ever evolving. It doesn’t seem to compete with the consistency of the handheld Pokémon games like Pokémon Sun and Moon. The games give you a sense of battle like you can’t get in the wonderful world of Pokémon GO.

With mini videos and cut scenes, the video games just offer more in aesthetics than Pokémon GO attempts to give us. That doesn’t stop Pokémon GO from a continuous advance in their graphics for moves and battle dynamics though. They just can’t compete with the turn based graphics and set up offered by the games. Which leads us to our next point.

The Battle System

The battle system in Pokémon GO isn’t really a skill based system. Though there are type advantages of moves and Pokémon that we would find in the handheld Pokémon games, the constant tapping to unleash the moves is a bit lacking in excitement. It leaves you with more sense of a sore finger than victory when you finish a raid.

The battle system, turn based system, in the handheld Pokémon games requires a tad bit of strategy and skill to overcome other trainers. Being limited to 6 Pokémon per fight, rather than just rejoining the fight with a new team, adds a sense of importance to the fight.

In summary, there are many factors in what makes a Pokémon game great, and though Pokémon GO incorporates a few aspects of that, the sense of adventure and excitement through battling is lacking. The go to for those feelings will always be the handheld Pokémon games until the Pokémon Company finds a way to patch these major holes in their idea. The AR system is a brilliant idea, but many of us were left with a feeling of want when the release of Pokémon GO arrived. The hype overrode the actual game.

We would love to hear your comments on this article. What do you think the reason is, that Pokémon GO can’t compete with the handheld Pokémon games? Or do you feel that it is better than the handhelds, and why? Let us know below.