4 Pokémon Spin-Off Games Worth Playing (And 4 To AVOID)

Pokemon Red, Blue & Yellow were the games that launched the franchise into the stratosphere, but after twenty years of improvements to the core formula they don’t exactly hold up today. Much like all manner of classic games, we love them for the sake of nostalgia rather than the timelessness of their gameplay.

Pokemon: Let’s Go Pikachu & Eevee sound like excellent concepts on paper – remakes of the trio made on a modern console with updated graphics and features. Their marketing relied heavily on both this and the nostalgia factor, contributing to impressive sales to date of over 10 million units.

There is no doubting that they are enjoyable, but they are largely superfluous and skippable given that they bring nothing new to the table.

When assessed against the core series, the main criticism of the games is that they have been ridiculously oversimplified.

For starters, Pokemon are no longer battled, but caught using the same motion mechanics as Pokemon Go, acceptable and ergonomic on a phone but unnecessary on a Switch controller. Other features copied from Go include Combat Power and Candies, making battling and raising Pokemon much less strategic than usual.

All in all, Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee serve little purpose other than demonstrating the Switch hardware and whetting appetites for Sword & Shield. Waiting for them is a much better option than dropping £100 on games that aren’t even the best remakes of Red and Blue (FireRed and LeafGreen being much more engaging).