Pokémon Ranger – RIP My Touchscreen:

The first Nintendo game that I ever played, was, like many kids, a Pokémon game. However, I wasn’t playing a ten-year-old child out traveling the world and making creatures fight one another. I was a Ranger, out protecting the people and Pokémon of the world I lived in. For those of you who haven’t heard of the Pokémon Ranger series, first off, you are missing out. This game series is great fun and really puts the focus on getting to know the world around you and helping the people in it.

Instead of training Pokémon, you “capture” them which is essentially a minigame in which you draw circles around the creature in question to calm it down. Once calm, it’ll happily help you with a task before heading back out into the wild, unharmed and happy. Different Pokémon can help you with different tasks such as helping you up cliffs, cutting down trees and powering various electrical switches.

As you start the game, you proceed through the usual menus of picking your name, gender, and appearance, etc. However, the only Pokémon you will have by your side throughout the entire game is either a Minun or a Plusle, aka the cutest little beings ever and if anyone ever hurts them, I’ll destroy the entire universe. After a quick tutorial on how to “capture” Pokémon, your character is made a fully-fledged Ranger and you fly off to the base to receive your first mission. The game’s story is split up into a series of missions that have you traveling around the region helping citizens and rescuing as many Pokémon as you can.

I know this will sound cheesy, but the Ranger series is really all about the power of friendship. It strips back everything you know about the Pokémon franchise, taking away all the TM’s and advanced tactics that seem so common in the main series, leaving you with a single tool at your disposal. Most of your missions involve an injured, panicked or scared Pokemon putting themselves or others in danger. With the help of those around you, you can bring peace and resolve the situation. The more missions you complete, the more missions open to you and the more challenging Pokemon you can tame. The “enemies” in the game are the goofiest possible, the Go-Rock Squad. They are basically a group of evil musicians that wander around angering the Pokemon with their… unique methods.

The Ranger series is a trilogy of games, mostly sticking to the tried and trusted formulae. The stories all follow a Ranger trying to protect the people and Pokemon of their homeland and immerse you in the world. You don’t feel like a passing stranger in the Ranger games, wherever you go people recognize your character like a Ranger and will happily chat with you, even asking you to help with their own problems in later games through side quests. By removing the battling system completely, the game’s focus on its story and character really flourishes and I highly recommend the series, alongside the Mystery Dungeon games which have some twists in there that shocked little Caitlin to their core.

There is an element of “catching them all” for the completionist like myself but instead of having 200 Pokemon in a computer, you have a “Fiore Browser”, which lists acts like the Pokedex from the main series but instead of listing statistics and natures, it tells you how the Pokemon can assist you during captures e.g. slowing down the target, making your capture more effective, etc, and what their “Field Move” is – such as cutting down a tree.

In the first game alone, there are 213 different Pokemon to encounter and capture, with enough variety in the process for you not to get bored. You can have a few Pokemon in your party at once and utilize their abilities to help you on your missions, never willingly putting any Pokemon or person in harm’s way, in comparison to the ridiculously violent 10-year olds. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE.

Although you can only have one “partner” Pokemon at a time in the games, you do get a Pichu playing the Ukulele as your partner in the third game so… best game series of all time, everyone goes home and stop trying, you can’t beat perfection.

Anyways, that’s all I really had to say about the Pokemon Ranger games. My good friend (spacelady who made our fantastic logo), reminded me of how much I love this series so here we are. Apologies that it’s shorter than usual, it’s the last week of my placement so everything is a little bit all over the place.

As always, like, comment and follow the site both here and on Twitter – @OurMindGames. I recently got accepted for a press pass to EGX in October so I can’t wait to bring you all amazing content from the convention!

Thanks,

CaitlinRC.

Tags: adorable, generation, handheld games, mind games, nintendo, nintendo ds, pichu, pokemon, pokemon ranger, ranger, the mind game