So if you have somehow lived under a rock for the last 3 decades roughly, the Pokemon series is a game about exploring a new area, catching the magical elemental creatures that fill the area, and using them to battle other people in the world. There are also multiplayer features such as trading and battling with your friends, with some Pokemon only evolving via trade to promote the multiplayer element as back in generation one some of those Pokemon were the best you could get as well as get some exclusives that are only available in 1 of the games. We have gone through many regions through out the main line and spin off games and 1025 different Pokemon with more to be released. So now lets talk about the games.

Generation 1- Every series has a start and for Pokemon it was back on the Game Boy and the Game Boy Color with Pokemon Red, Green (japan only), Blue, and the Special Yellow edition that let you have a Pikachu as your first partner Pokemon. Pokemon Yellow also followed a story closer to the anime rather then the games. The generation 1 games have you travel through the Kanto region. The plot of almost every Pokemon main games follow is you are a new trainer just in the 10-16 year old range, depending on the region, you get your first Pokemon from that region's professor, then leave home to beat the 8 gyms of the region deal with the evil team of the area, then challenge the Elite 4 and their champion to take the title of best trainer for yourself. Then the post game tends to be just catching them all or training a team to play against your friends, with the post game changing from game to game. Generation 1 didn't have anything to do outside of catch them all and raise a team. Many people look at gen 1 and think its the best in the franchise but I disagree. We have gone back to Kanto so many times and I have had many chances to evaluate the region and I gotta say its one of my least favorite when I look back on it. Guards that will only let you into a town if you bribe them with team, glitchy game play, nearly nothing to do after you catch them all, poor level spread for wild Pokemon leading you to having to do a ridiculous amount of grinding between the final trainers and the Elite 4. Wild Pokemon even give less experience then their trained counterparts which feels so taxing to run around the final cave, Victory Road, and running back to the Pokemon center to heal up to repeat over and over until you team is strong enough to survive the final challenge 5 trainers in a row with the highest level Pokemon in the game with only the items you can carry as the way to heal. The evil team of Kanto is iconic, Team Rocket, which are basically the Mafia who catch Pokemon to use for extortion and stealing from others. You fight many of their grunts throughout the area and stop them from stealing from people and taking things that they will just use for their nefarious purposes. When all is said and done with the evil team in Kanto feels like a threat when they take over a town and keep you from being able to go to the gym as you storm a large office building to defeat the mafia who infects in. But otherwise their goals aren't clear unless you read the Pokemon Adventures manga. All the Pokemon manga follow the story of the games rather than the anime that is the story of Ash. Turns out Team Rocket created the strongest legendary Pokemon in the region Mewtwo, a human Pokemon hybrid with incredible psychic powers. In the games you get a bit of lore on Mewtwo in the burned mansion, a old destroyed lab that was created and funded by Team Rocket to make the most powerful Pokemon. When you defeat the leader of Team Rocket the final time he disbands the team. You get the opportunity to catch Mewtwo once you have beaten the Elite 4 but that is your last challenge. But with the end of generation 1 we move to the next games. 

Generation 2 - This was a big jump for Pokemon we get to go to a new region with a whole slew of new Pokemon to find and a whole new world we live in. This generation was made up by Gold, Silver, and Crystal version. Crystal being similar to Pokemon yellow with being a game released after the initial 2 and it adding new stuff to the story and cleaning up the games just a bit. Now gen 2 was a fantastic sequel but feels like it lingered too much in the leftovers of gen 1. So in this game you are now in the Jhoto region a new land that shares a border with Kanto. This region has all the same story beats as Kanto, new trainer, go battle the gyms, deal with the evil team and then go challenge the Elite 4. But this game takes place a few years after generation 1 story wise. You find that the remnants of Team Rocket are still active here in Jhoto. You beat the remaining admins of Team Rocket and get them to fully disband. You also have a different Legendary Pokemon to catch in each region Ho-oh for Gold, Lugia for Silver, and a whole new side story for one of the legendary trio Suicune in Crystal. The end game of Jhoto though is miles above Kanto. Once you have beaten the new Elite 4 and their champion you now get the chance to go back to Kanto see how its changed and fight all their gym leaders in their prime. Then once you do that you can climb Mount Silver the most dangerous area on the map, and at the peak you can find the main character from Generation 1 with an iconic team, sporting all the starters and some other powerful members for one of the harder battles throughout the whole series this game also has its issues of a poor leveling spread that feels like it stagnates a bit mid story as you get the chance to take on 3 gyms in any order you want which means they had to keep them all around the same level range so you don't feel like you go against any of them too early. You also had access to transferring Pokemon between Gen 1 and 2 via a time machine that lets you send Gen 1 Pokemon between both games but you can't send any new new Pokemon back to Kanto. Jhoto also added a feature that becomes a staple in the franchise and one of my favorite things Shiny Pokemon. Shiny Pokemon are just a color palate swap but its incredibly rare to run into with a 1 in 8192. So any shiny Pokemon you find is sure to be a status symbol. Is gen 2 perfect, still no but the series is gaining momentum and it feels like a definite step up that sadly lingers a bit too much in the story and success of generation 1 with the whole post game revolving around exploring Kanto again and finding and beating the player character from Gen 1. Next is one of the most controversial jumps in the series Gen 3. 

Generation 3 - These games are where I feel Pokemon starts to hit its stride and reach the pinnacle of its s game play to me, its not quite there yet but its close to that peak. These games are Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald. We also get 2 remake games where they took Red and Green and made Fire Red and Leaf Green, where we go back to generation 1 with generation 3 mechanics and graphics. Generation 3 is where Pokemon moved from the Game Boy to the Game Boy advance and with a big change in the coding and mechanics game one of the more controversial things in Pokemon, the break in transferring Pokemon up the generations. You could move your Pokemon from Generation 1 to Generation 2 with the time machine which means you can play with your favorite partners from your first story. Due to coding changes and huge overhauls in design change in the games Pokemon from Gen 2 couldn't get transferred into Gen 3. Which many people couldn't get past and caused Gen 3 to be many people's dropping point in the Pokemon series. So lets get into the new games. Ruby and Sapphire got released at the same time with the differences being the version exclusives and the evil teams being different in each game. Team Magma for Ruby and Team Aqua in Sapphire. The story is ultimately the same with the Pokemon used by the evil team being different and this is the start of the legendary Pokemon on the box being the goal of the evil team you fight. But this generation also had Emerald the first in what can be considered the combined or true story of the region, we get a few of these from the generations here on out. Emerald has both Evil Teams at different parts of the story and it is up to you to defeat both evil teams. Now lets talk about them since they are the biggest difference in the games and the only games to have 2 different evil teams, Team Magma are wanting to expand the land and Team Aqua the Sea, both are looking for the Legendary Pokemon that expanded the land and sea to complete their goals. Team Magma is themed by like devils while Team Aqua pirates. In Emerald you run into both in different parts each trying to complete their goals of Eco-terrorism with Emerald adding story for Rayquaza the large green dragon who lives a top a giant pillar and who embodies clear skies. Ruby and Sapphire added the end game of the battle facility of the Battle Tower which was a single battle arena where you climb a tower of elite trainers who's Pokemon are built for competitive battle. You have to keep battling till you beat 7 or you are defeated. This gets fully fleshed out in Emerald with the Battle Frontier which hosts 7 unique battle facilities to test your teams against. Now you can just go at them with your existing Pokemon but you are likely not to go far. But if you E.V. train and breed up a team then you have a chance at winning. Each facility has a different gimmick some you use your own Pokemon, one you use rental Pokemon, another you just chose your Pokemon and based on their nature they will battle on their own. You have to win 7 in a row 3 times on both the level 50 run and the level 100 run in order for you to complete and beat all the frontier brains. Its a very rewarding experience and probably a bit too difficult for some kids but going back and replaying Emerald and prepping for the battle frontier was a delight. This generation also added what becomes a staple in the rest of the games, Double Battles. Where you use 2 Pokemon on the field at one time, so some moves can get both targets or even damage your partner if you aren't careful. Finally this generation added secret bases where you could make your own little room and if you mixed records via the link cable with a friend they get your based in their world and you get theirs. Their trainer avatar will be there and you can battle them with whatever team they had equipped when you guys mixed records. Otherwise Ruby Sapphire and Emerald hit the same story beats that all the main line games do. 8 gyms yada yada I have said it twice before. Now to address the remakes, Fire Red and Leaf Green, they are faithful adaptions to Red and Green from generation 1 but with graphics and mechanics updated. I am going to sound like a bit of a broken record but this is now the 3rd time we have gone back to Kanto. Its nice to remember your roots but never leaving them and dragging everyone back to the old story over and over again can get a bit waning. But there is a new addition to these games via the Sevii Islands which you get to go to the first 3 after you beat the 7th gym and the rest as part of the post game. Finally gen 3 added one more final kinda questionable gimmick to the mix which we never see again. The E-Card Reader. This was a special expansion to the GBA that let you swipe cards to get special events unlocked in your game. Stuff like event legendaries in R/S/E and new islands to go to in FR/LG. The issue is is some cards you could only scan at participating locations which there is a chance that you were no where near one and you had to have the e-card reader to be able to even swipe the event card. Meaning if you don't emulate the games or use an action replay or game shark you are locked out of so much content for the game. We also see this issue in a few other games in the franchise where local events are a timed part of the game but the E-Cards just feel bad to me. Gen 3 to this day is my 2nd favorite generation despite all it does wrong though. Anyway it time to leave the tropic region of Hoenn and head to generation 4 in the cold mountains of Shinnoh. 

Vigilantes follows 3 people Koichi, Kazuho, and Iwao. Who take on the vigilante mantles of The Crawler, Pop ⚝ Step, and Knuckle Duster. Though Pop ⚝ Step isn't so much of a vigilante and more of a street performer. Koichi didn't start off as a vigilante either he just wore an All Might hoodie and a mask to clean up trash around his neighborhood and be the friendly neighborhood Nice Guy which was his name before The Crawler. He gets around with his quirk called Slide N Glide which lets him create friction-less fields he can use to slide long surfaces not just forward, backwards, and side to side but up and down walls too, but only as fast as a bike. Pop ⚝ Step's quirk is called Leap, she can super jump and land safely as long as she had a steady jump point. Finally Knuckle Duster, he is investigating into a drug problem in the area that has a side effect of turning people's tongues purple after using it. He is quirkless just a buff boxing brawler who uses brass knuckles as a weapon and he drags Koichi and Kazuho into his technically illegal hero work. As Japan has strict licensing laws on what heroes can use their quirks to fight villains and wear those costumes. As of right now the manga has been finished for a few years and the anime just got its season 2. So I am not going to say much here other than this series is something I am excited to see in action and to the people watching the anime and not wanting spoilers you have a great story to look forward to. This series is a prequel to MHA some fan favorite heroes make cameos through out the series but since this is prequel you know that they will be fine. I will say this series is going to be much shorter than MHA with Vigilantes only have 126 chapters so I can only see this series having 3ish seasons. But this story is much darker and much grittier with the story following a college kid and a very much adult man dealing with drugs and some implied sexual violence. Don't worry its all implied nothing shown or anything actually happens more of just threats. Nothing like Goblin Slayer. All I can say is buckle up anime watchers and get ready for a superhero ride that I only wish still existed in the American comics industry. 

Story followed the main dude who wants to be a Marine biologist and study abroad in Mexico. He has 2 friends he works with a dude and a chick. He is going to college and working multiple jobs. The main girl Josee is paralyzed from the waist down and while out with her Grand Ma she goes down a steep hill out of control and the guy catches her saving her from injury. Josee is a bitch to him and Grand Ma offers him a meal and then a job as Josee's caretaker while Grand Ma is busy doing other things. During this time Josee is a major bitch and bratt to him but we find out while. Grand Ma has kept Josee in basically a gilded cage of spoiling and infantizing her. Shes not allowed out on her own even though shes an adult. Ever since Josee's parents died. Shes never had friends, and Grand Ma doesn't let her even get a job. So it becomes apparent Josee's bad behavior is a result of being coddled and sheltered away. Josee runs off to try and go to the beach because she wanted to know how ocean water tasted after she remembered one of the last converstations she had with her dad before he died. Grand Ma panics not knowing where Josee went and main dude finds her struggling to figure out how to get a ticket. He takes her to the beach and she has this child like wonder of never seeing a plane on being on a train before. Dude decides to take her to different places she has never gone before sneaking behind the Grand Ma's back. Which gets Josee to start opening up and gaining confidence and main dude finds out Josee is a decent artist and she loves the sea like him. During this the female friend gets jealous because she likes the main dude. Josee's Grand Ma dies and Josee has to fire the main dude but he keeps showing up cause he cares for her. Not love yet but as a friend. Female friend basically tells Josee to not hold the main guy from his dream of going to Mexico and he only takes care of her out of pity. Josee freaks out gets in a mood and tries to roll away to the beach without him. Dude tracks her down but while in the same mood she tries to roll off and he chases after her and gets hit by a careening car in the rain giving him a bad shin fracture and he loses his chance to go to Mexico since he is on the mend. He kinda takes it out on Josee and gets all mopey since he cant walk for a while (even tho all this stems to the female friend trying to crash the budding relationship between main dude and Josee) Josee draws up a story that is a thin analogy of her relationship with the main dude and how she knows he will be able to recover and "fly" again even if that means leaving Josee. He feels better and does his best in rehab and Josee rolls off again and goes missing, he chases after her in crushes and saves her from a snow hill crash and confesses. They start dating he finishes  healing up and they date long distance in the end her getting a real job and doing her art on the side as he studies abroad. That's where it ends.

So the story shows that people can grow and change and help each other. The girl was a brat but its because of her sheltered up bringing and paralyzed state where she couldn't really escape the cage her Grand Ma kept her in. He helps her grow up and gain confidence and find friends.
While he gets injured because of her and the female friend. When hes at his lowest she does her best to help cheer him up and cheer him on to the best of her limited abilities. Was it the best love story? No, but it was sweet and showed their imperfections rather well. I don't think the movie or the characters deserve the hate they got. Though if any characters deserve hate it's the female friend of the main character telling a cripple girl her first friend only cares for her out of pitty and the Grand Ma for basically keeping Josee under lock and key. For the guy the start it was just a job but he grew to care for the girl behind the layers of sheltered brat her Grand Ma kinda forced on her. He didn't take advantage of her or anything he was just the first one to let her be herself. But that's my opinion you guys will argue anything in the comments. Let me know if you want me to review anything else.

-PhoenixQuill

So you are now free to explore the land of Pharloom. Standard Metroidvania stuff of side scrolling platformer with enemies to face and hazards to avoid. Bosses were charming and fit the areas they were found in. Some enemies are passive but only deal damage on contact while others dive bomb you like missiles or stay out of needle range and taking well timed dive attacks or pot shots from the air. I loved learning how to deal with all the creatures I encountered in my journey, some bosses were definitely more difficult then others to learn and finally beating them was such a relief. But some normal chump enemies deal 2 damage out of no where, which is a problem when you only get a max of 9 masks in acts 1 and 2 and 10 max in act 3. This is balanced out by Hornet's heals doing 3 HP compared to the Knight's 1 HP. With bosses always having a standard of 2 damage. So in bosses or in areas with the 2 damage enemies or hazards cuts your HP total in half. It was frustrating but not anything that kept me from moving forward. But I would be lying if there wasn't a few bosses that walled me so hard my first play through that I had to get up and take a walk to my local game store to calm back down. Then I would sit down throw myself at the boss a few more times until I stopped being bad at it and finally started feeling like the demi-goddess batman that Hornet is supposed to play like. Which her tool belt is massive and the many ways to swing her needle change with the various crests you pick up along the way. 

Pharloom is full of characters Hornet can interact with and get the stories of and some stories are harder to get to the end then others. Some are part of the main story and the NPCs just do their thing as you do yours while others require Hornet's involvement for the story to go forward. You even get someone who feels like a rival named Lace, who ends up being the silk made daughter of Grandma silk, the final boss. The art style is just as charming if not better than Hollow Knight and the world is massive and expansive but not being too big to feel overwhelming. I do think that SilkSong is missing a lot of the normal back tracking that Metroidvanias are supposed to have but it still exists mostly to find hidden tools, mask shards (which are this games health), or spools (which are this games mana). But every time I got a new movement ability I would turn around find the nearest Bell Beast Station and call over my trusty steed so I could run the map all over again just checking to see where else I can go now. This game is very much about exploration and persistence. No matter how walled I would get I would know it was my fault for not being good enough and not the game being too hard. So I would just keep working to "get good" and finally see this game to the end. The first wall I hit was The last judge but I eventually made it through. The next wall embarrassingly was the dancers and they telegraph their attacks so obviously and it was my fault for being greedy on damage and not dodging, my final wall was the high halls gauntlet. Which was honestly harder then the "final" boss. Grandmother Silk. Once you beat her you get the credits and the first ending. But if you are awesome, saved all the fleas, did all the quests, bought yourself a house, and seen your local map mommy to find her master, then you can get a final quest that unlocks act 3. Getting here is where the real challenge begins. Grandma silk is trying to pull herself and her daughter out of the abyss you cast her into as part of the quest to get into act 3. Hornet now needs to find a way to survive the abyss and kill Grand mother silk to save all of Pharloom from her Abyss soaked threads. You go track down old leaders of the areas around Pharloom, enter dreams and fight dream variants of them at their peaks to get their hearts for a spell. You need 3 hearts but there are 4 bosses. So 1 gets to be a trophy in your house. Which ever 3 you choose to kill gives you their hearts and the ingredients to the spell to get the item you need to survive the abyss, 1 Boss is much easier than the others and in my personal opinion easiest to hardest was Nyleth > Green Prince > Khann > Karmelita. Though my first play though I killed Khann last because he has a big multi level gauntlet before you get to him. My issue is the long drawn out fights where my resources run thin. But as far as the actual boss fight he was a chump and Karmelita is a dancing singing badass. Finally you have your true descent into the abyss. Where you fight corrupted Lace and Grandmother silk is trying to maintain a protective cocoon in the abyss, you best Lace in her 3rd fight Grandma silk gives you the last of her strength so you can escape with her youngest daughter. With an ended that was so hype I was genuinely excited.

Over all this is my game of the decade not just my game of the year. Was it the perfect sequel to Hollow Knight? No but it was pretty damn close. As I said the random hazards and random fodder enemies that can deal 2 masks of damage are far too common but hey just teaches you those areas are supposed to be the toughest, but the way Hornet moves feels so much better than the Knight that going back to Hollow Knight honestly feels like a downgrade and I was missing the freedom of movement that Hornet has to her sibling. The 7 crests give such a unique way to play for her though one of them gets you back to playing like an upgraded version of the knight. All the various tools and upgrades just feel marvelous.

I would give this game a 9.5/10 and I have played through it on my Switch 1 so many times. If you have $15 to spare team cherry has made a game that is well worth the price and blows all current triple A game devs out of the water and shows them what gamers want and the experience they deserve with free DLCs already announced and the first one being claimed to release 2026. The 7 year wait was well worth it. Good Job Team Cherry and thank you for the experience. 

-Ignus PhoenixQuill