3. It Also Has No Concrete Aim
One thing you might be asking yourself when you switch on Pokémon Red or Blue is a very serious one that no game should ever leave you asking. You begin your quest, receive your first Pokémon and learn the battle system. Suddenly you're pointed to the route out of Pallet Town, a Pokedex in hand and you find yourself asking What am I doing? That isn't a 'oh my god, what am I doing this for?', it's a ' what is my real objective?' and it really is a problem with Pokémon. You get the Pokedex so that you can record information about Pokémon but are also told about training and winning gym badges so you can become Pokémon champion. So what's the goal? Should I be battling? Should I be collecting them? Of course, it's easy to say the strength in the game is that it means you can do both, but consider the fact that you can only carry six Pokémon at one time. These are obviously going to be your strongest ones, so you either train some of the others you come across and this becomes a boring grind, or you simply turn the entire Pokémon race into a check-list. I don't have a Rhyhorn. Now I caught one. I don't want to fight with it so what is its use? I suppose the game credits role and there is something of a narrative conclusion once you defeat the Elite Four of the Pokémon League, but at the start Professor Oak asks you to collect Pokémon. What happens after you collect them all? You get an in-game diploma. You know what that screams? That the twenty or so hours you put into the core element of the game was totally worth it. And speaking of 'Gotta catch 'em all'...