Pokémon Black and White are the best Pokémon games yet. At least until the next ones come out.
Pokémon is a highly iterative series. The games, which involve traveling a massive world while battling and capturing a wide variety of monsters, improve with each new entry, adding fresh monsters and moves and refining the core gameplay mechanics.
Pokémon Black and White, which hit stores Sunday for the Nintendo DS, don't reinvent the wheel any more than their predecessors did. But these new games do offer the slickest and most polished Pokémon experience yet.
The premise is the same as always: You play the role of a young kid who is tasked with catching and training hundreds of different monsters on a quest to become a Pokémon battling champion. Along the way, you will deal with a shady organization that wants to destroy the world.
Black and White weave complicated themes like freedom and independence into this by-now-familiar story, giving the games a dark seriousness that is decidedly un-Pokémon.
But the biggest changes that Black and White bring to the table are the 156 new collectible pocket monsters, bringing the series' 15-year total to 649.
Previous Pokémon games added their own new creatures, but they always allowed you to collect the new ones with the old ones. In contrast, Pokémon Black and White's only available Pokémon are the brand-new ones. You won't find any Pikachus or Squirtles here.
This is a welcome change. In previous Pokémon titles, I would always end up catching the monsters I was familiar with, rarely paying attention to the new creatures. Black and White forces you to train a team of new favorites without relying on classic powerhouses like Gengar and Gyarados.
This would be annoying if the new pocket monster designs weren't so great. There are your standard cutesy designs like Litwick, which is literally just a candle with eyes and an adorable smile. But then there are Pokémon that look like they really mean business: Haxorus is a giant bipedal dragon with a head that resembles the blade of a battle ax.
The battle system is the same as always. Players build a team of six pocket monsters, with each creature having four moves. Every Pokémon has one or two elemental types and each type is vulnerable to or resists another type.
Pokémon has always had a deep battle system with lots of opportunities for strategy and customization. But these skirmishes have also always been notoriously sluggish, with constant message pop-ups and slow animations. Black and White almost completely fix this problem. The battles are now quick and responsive, without any of the annoying messages or repeating animations that plagued earlier titles.
The Pokémon themselves have animations now, too. Instead of being static sprites, they jump around and make facial expressions. This not only adds character to the previously lifeless creatures but makes the battles feel more dynamic and exciting.
Another welcome improvement is that TMs, which contain specific moves you can teach your Pokémon, no longer expire after use. This is great because in past Pokémon games, the only way to get some of the rarer TMs was to waste hours of your life on the various minigames.
Pokémon Black and White feature their own set of problems, however.
There is a huge amount of necessary level-grinding. Not as much as there used to be – it helps that lower-level Pokémon now earn more experience points when they defeat a higher-level monster. But there were still parts in Black and White where I had to pause my quest and train monsters for a good hour.
The random encounter rate also shoots through the roof, especially in dungeons. Sometimes I couldn't go three or four steps without getting into a random battle with a wild Pokémon. Items available for purchase can make Pokémon leave you alone for a limited time but I don't think these should be necessary in the first place.
The good news is that these problems will probably be fixed in the next games. Pokémon is a series that never reinvents the wheel, but instead continues to polish the basic design until it sparkles.
Make no mistake – Pokémon Black and White are the best games in the series. But I'll be saying the same thing about the next games. And it will be true.
WIRED Cute and cool new monsters; speedy and deep battle system; intriguing story.
TIRED Lots of grinding; next game will inevitably be better.
$35, Nintendo
Rating: 
Read Game|Life's game ratings guide.
Images courtesy Nintendo
See Also:- What's New in Pokémon Black/White?
