Not all games age the same. Pokemon Blue Version was the first original Game Boy game I have played, and it's certainly a product of its hardware. The fundamental limitations of the Game Boy are apparent. The lack of color, the limited control scheme, and the relative monotony of the environments stand out to someone playing it decades after its release. That said, it laid the foundation for one of gaming's largest franchises and its remarkable how well the game nailed some of the core tenants of what Pokemon still is known for today. Let's get on to the scales. Since this is my first time rating a JRPG on my scale, I'll explain a bit behind each metric as well.
World Building (Lore): JRPGs are generally pretty long. One of the advantages of this is that they are able to build more interesting and fleshed out worlds. My number one thing when playing a JRPG is to slowly unravel the customs and histories contained within these worlds. Pokemon Blue really tripped up on this. While shorter than most JRPGs, it still floundered on developing a cohesive world. NPCs, signs, and books were rarely more than just vessels to convey game mechanics. On the few occasions that something referenced something relating to the broader world, I loved it. The lore books on Mew in the Pokemon Mansion is an example that comes to mind. But cases like that were few and far between.
I really wanted some commentary on how Pokemon fitted into the world, or how our society would be impacted by the introduction of Pokemon. I wish that everyone wasn't so singularly focused on Pokemon. There was just so little "flavor" text within the game. No sense of community or history. In this regard, Pokemon Blue is the most bare-bones JRPG I have played. Rating: 2/10
Characters/Story: I decided to lump characters and story together for a few reasons. Plots (as opposed to world building) are nearly always told through character interactions. This is particularly true in JRPGs, as they tend to have a huge cast of characters. If a game were to have bad characters (or no characters at all), it would be hard to pull off a good story. Pokemon Blue has few important characters and essentially no plot. The goals of the game are to catch every Pokemon and to become the champion of the Elite Four. Within this though, there is no real story. There is no plot that adheres itself to your goal. The game is little more that a linear line of battles to overcome. The only NPCs with more than a single encounter were Professor Oak, your rival, Giovanni, and I suppose the gym guide. Even those NPCs were pretty vapid. I hope future Pokemon games do a better job with having actual characters. Rating: 1/10
Art Direction: Art direction is important to video games as a medium, and will likely be one of the criteria I look at for every genre. Pokemon Blue did better in this category than the others so far. It is held back by the hardware it was produced for, and for the sake of creating fair comparisons I will not be buffing its score due to that fact. Being in black and white sucks, though it is amusing that they tried to make up for this by describing each city with a different color. The environments have little variety to them, and the cities have nothing graphically to distinguish them from each other. What really shines is the combat encounters. I'm happy that all 150 Pokemon have their own unique portraits, and I believe every move in the game had a unique animation. There was a decent variety in trainer portraits too, especially with gym leaders. I wouldn't be surprised if this is one of the more graphically impressive Game Boy games. Rating: 3/10
Music: Pokemon Blue has pretty good music. It was a bit repetitive at times, but overall there were a lot of catchy tunes considering its age. The gym battle music stands out, as well as Lavender Town/Pokemon Tower. Rating: 5/10
Sense of Progression: This one is a bit different and will likely only be used for JRPGs. More so than any other genre, JRPG combat is heavily focused on stats. For most games, there is no mechanical skill needed. Combat is turned based and the player has all the time they need to choose which command to pick. Since it is so stat focused, it is really easy to tell that you are getting better. Attacks do more damage, damage is reduced, health goes up, ect. Progression can also be outside of just combat. Many JRPGs lock of parts of the world at the beginning of the game, and only through progressing in the story do you unlock these new areas. I believe that a good JRPG will make it clear that your character is getting stronger and that they can better navigate the world around them. Pokemon is a mixed bag on this front. On one hand, Pokemon do obviously get stronger as they level up. They learn new moves, they evolve, and their stats go up. The game made good use of roadblocks that required items to get past. I've always like the HM system. It's meaningful to discover a new move that allows you to interact with your world in a new way. And some, like Surf and Fly, fundamentally change the way you navigate the world.
On the other hand, there are a few thing related to combat that disrupt a sense of progression. The most egregious is the difficultly. Pokémon Blue is pathetically easy. Crafting a team is pointless when one Pokémon can carry you through the whole game. Within the first few hours, my starter was leaps and bounds ahead of any other Pokémon I had. Why is there no shared exp for the whole team? That would have prevented my starter from being overpowered and would have helped keep my whole team viable. I can’t think of any other JRPG where the entire party doesn’t get experience points. Some even give exp to team members not in your party!
I know that my Pokémon were getting stronger, but what’s the point when no new challenges arise? I also don’t like that some of the stats are hidden during battles. You can’t see numerically how much damage a move does or how much HP an enemy has. This leads to a lot of guesswork on what moves are stronger, as even in the menus there’s no record of the stats for each move. By the end of the game, I just was throwing away every TM I found. I was tired of looking up move stats online, and my current attacks one-shot enemies most of the time anyway. Rating: 5/10
Final Thoughts and Score: Pokémon Blue is not a bad game, but I’d imagine that there’s little reason to play it today. If it’s not the worst Pokémon game, then that would be a surprise to me. As a historical piece, it’s worthwhile. It truly was fascinating to see just how much Pokémon has stayed the same over the years. And of course there are a ridiculous amount of classic Pokémon that were introduced in Gen I. Helped fill my mental Pokédex out nicely. Final Rating: 16/50 or 32%
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