I have been playing Pokemon since the beginning. I remember when I first got the cards in second grade, I was so excited. Then I eventually got the game, and my life had forever changed. I would (and still do) spend as much time as I can playing the game, catching and leveling as many Pokemon as I could. I have played every generation, I even have paid off the Pokemon White Version that is going to be coming out in Spring 2011. I am that serious of a Pokemon fan. Now after all these years of playing the game I have found some things that I feel would make the whole experience better for everyone. This is a list of things Pokemon needs to do to make the games a million times better:
1. Allow a Pokemon to follow you at all times. They did this in Heart Gold/Soul Silver but it was the first Pokemon in your party. Don't do that, allow the player to choose on of his six to follow him at all times with a menu in the Pokemon tab of your start menu. If they want to choose someone else, all they will have to do is select the next Pokemon they want to have follow them.
2. Get rid of Hm's. They are a waste of a move slot. Are you telling me, that Lapras can't learn how to swim be across a body of water unless it knows Surf? I caught Lapras in a body of water swimming. Making Hm's be a racial perk would make things so much easier for everyone to use. No longer would you have to carry around an Hm slave that is a much lower level than your party just to make sure you can break a rock that is preventing you from getting to a legendary Pokemon. These moves still only be usable once you have gotten the appropriate badge, but I am tired of having to delete a wonderful move to teach my Charizard how to fly. That mother fucker is huge and wouldn't even notice if I was riding on his back across the region.
3. Incorporate some sort of MMO function. With the DS having wi-fi make it so that I can see another trainer running around the same city as me, not just underground. I guess Black and White are doing this, which makes me super excited. Hopefully I can fight them by talking to them and maybe trade as well. No more Union Rooms and waiting forever to get a trade done. Just walking around the city and talking to all the trainers I see. Now that would be cool.
4. More story. In all the Pokemon games there seems to be a story underneath the fact that you have to beat all the gym leaders and become the Pokemon League Champion. The first two generations had Team Rocket, the next one had Team Aqua/Magma, and the fourth has Team Galactic. The fourth generation came the closest to really revealing the story behind Team Galactic, but I really want more. I feel like they could up the game to a whole new level and bring in even more players if they made the plot involving the Team Baddies more clear.
5. Another take from the World of Warcraft, whenever your Pokemon levels, let it regain it's health and Powerpoints. This way you could level more efficiently without having to go out of your way to go to a Poke Center just to get your moves back.
6. Let abilities be hereditary. Meaning, that I can breed Pokemon to gain different abilities instead of the two per species. For example, Infernape only gets blaze, and I would kill for him to have Iron Fist or whatever its name is. If abilities were able to transfer through breeding then I would just have to breed Infernape with a Hitmonchan and there we go, an even more bad ass Infernape.
7. Let there be some sort of system that checks for the levels of my Pokemon compared to the level of a random trainers Pokemon. There's nothing more frustrating than trying to catch a swarming Pokemon in Platinum and then a weak beginning of the game trainer wants to fight. Allow there to be in-game level comparisons and if your Pokemon are say, 15 levels ahead of the trainers, or vice-versa, the battle doesn't happen.
8. Make the storage system better. I just saw in Pokemon Sapphire that I should organize my boxes for particular types. That's a really cool idea! Only if it would automatically send water Pokemon to the water box, and fire Pokemon to the fire box. This would be possible if they added a bit more mechanics into the storage system and settings functions of the game. This then would allow the suggestions made by the game itself be reasonable suggestions for people to use.
These are all I have for right now, I am sure I will come up with more things to write about in this as time goes on. Keep checking on this for more ways to improve Pokemon.
Cheers!
