Pokémon Quest - Switch/Mobile

[RedShell]

3 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

The credits rolled earlier today. Man, there are some tough stages towards the end. There's a fight with 3 Dodrio that took me ages to get past. 

There are a surprising amount of options and tactics to get your head around, especially late game. I had to level up, swap moves about and farm a few specific materials in order to beat the game.

 

Nice.

I take it you picked up some of the paid content then?

I’m still stuck at area 9. Got a team of 3 psychic types going on, but even so they just can’t beat the latest stage in that set.   

[Hero-of-Time]

3 minutes ago, RedShell said:

Nice.

I take it you picked up some of the paid content then?

I’m still stuck at area 9. Got a team of 3 psychic types going on, but even so they just can’t beat the latest stage in that set.   

Aye, I splashed the cash on it.

A big help in any battle is to get a Pokemon with the Harden ability and then attach the power stone to it that makes it effect all of your team. It's insane how much more damage you can take with that enabled.

[RedShell]

3 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

A big help in any battle is to get a Pokemon with the Harden ability and then attach the power stone to it that makes it effect all of your team. It's insane how much more damage you can take with that enabled.

Yeah, have been doing that since getting hold of the share stones.

Will be interesting to see how long it takes me to beat the game without any purchases, or if I even manage to do it.  

Did you make any of the legendary Pokémon BTW? Oh- and what about shiny Pokémon, how many of those did you end up with?  

[Hero-of-Time]

7 minutes ago, RedShell said:

Yeah, have been doing that since getting hold of the share stones.

Will be interesting to see how long it takes me to beat the game without any purchases, or if I even manage to do it.  

Did you make any of the legendary Pokémon BTW? Oh- and what about shiny Pokémon, how many of those did you end up with?  

I think the legendary Pokemon show up post game but some of the levels will require some insane grinding. They go up to 35,000! Needless to say I haven't tackled them.

I only got 1 more shiny and that was a brown rhyhorn.

[RedShell]

I'm so sorry Pikachu...

Please forgive me...

Eww.

And man, that was so not worth it. Still can't beat the damn stage.

[Hero-of-Time]

Having finished the game, as well as putting a fair bit of time into the post game island, I figured I would post my thoughts.

 

Last week was a big week for Pokemon fans. There was the announcement of the next big games in the Pokemon franchise in Pokemon Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee, both of which will release this November. But what about Pokemon fans who are wanting something to play on their Switch right now? Sure, Pokken Tournament is out but it's pretty old hat at this point. Luckily the Pokemon Company showed another game at this press event. Pokemon Quest was announced for the Switch and mobile devices and while mobile users will have to wait until June to play the game, Switch owners were treated to a shadow drop, with the game becoming available immediately on the eShop. So, is this free to start game enough to scratch that Pokemon itch or are people best off playing something else?

NOTE: Full disclosure here. While the game is free to start, I did pay the full amount (around £28) on the game.  Like other FTS Nintendo/Pokemon games, this game has a maximum amount that can be spent on the game. After that you are no longer able to spend any more.

The game starts off with you setting sail on a little boat towards a place named Tumblestone Island. It's here where your Pokemon quest will start. Your first order of business is to give your Pokemon trainer a name, followed by picking a starter Pokemon for you to use. Seeing as this game only features the original 151, the starters on offer here include Charmander, Bulbasaur, Squirtle, Eevee and Pikachu. The addition of Eevee and Pikachu are probably in order to help promote the newly announced games. For my play through of the game I chose Pikachu. The little mascot has always been a favourite of mine and I was happy to have him fighting by my side again. 

After selecting your Pokemon, the game then throws you straight into action and sets your Pokemon away on its journey. Your Pokemon moves through the map on it's own accord. It will always target the nearest Pokemon and then head towards it. While the player has no control over the movement of his Pokemon, he or she is in charge of what special attacks the Pokemon can do. Your Pokemon will have at least 1 special move that it can use. You do this by either using the control stick to hover the cursor over it and pressing the A button or you can simply press the touch screen to select it, which is my preferred method of playing the game. After using a special move it will take some time to recharge it. While your Pokemon is recharging these moves it will still do normal attacks, which, like its movement, it will do automatically. You can select an auto option which takes care of everything for you but it can be a bit hit or miss at times and I only recommend using it if you are confident your team can take on a stage without your supervision or if you simply want to do some grinding.

Poor Beedrill didn't have a chance

While fighting your way around the stage you will notice that Pokemon attack you in waves. The amount of waves on each stage is represented by boxes and these can been seen in the top right of the screen. Defeating Pokemon will fill up each of these boxes and once all of the smaller ones have been filled a large Pokemon will appear. This is the boss of the stage you are exploring and it hits a lot harder than standard Pokemon. If you defeat the boss you will clear the map and be able to move on to the next one. 

Once a boss is defeated you will be rewarded with a bunch of items that will help you out on your adventure. These come in the form of various ingredients and power stones. The ingredients can be used to lure Pokemon to your camp ( more on that later ) and the power stones are used to power up your Pokemon. The stones themselves offer various abilities, such as increasing your health and attack power or powering up the special moves you can do. Each of the Pokemon have a number of slots that these stones can be attached to. The ones that increase your health and attack power are tied to the level of your Pokemon. The higher level your Pokemon the more stones can be attached to it. Once one reaches level 100 you will be able to attach the full amount.

The other stones can be attached to your Pokemon's special moves but this depends on the move itself. For example, a move that can increase the stats of your Pokemon can be attached with a stone that will enable this move to effect all Pokemon in your party. Another stone can be used to let you do a double attack but with the caveat that your move will take longer to recharge. These stones can be stacked on your Pokemon and can offer a great advantage in battle. One of my go to strategies was to use a move like Harden but by having a stone that lets it effect my whole team, as well as another that increases the amount time the effect of Harden stays on my Pokemon, meant I got the very best out of a single turn. The strategy on offer here gets incredibly complex as the game goes on but by looking out for these things early on can really give your team the edge.

 These stones are vital in giving your team the edge

After tackling your first map you will be sent back to camp. As I mentioned earlier, you will get ingredients from the battles that you win. These ingredients can be used to expand your team. This is done by throwing them all in the mixing pot and then completing a number of quests. You see, to catch Pokemon in this game you need to lure them into your camp. Pokemon will smell the goodies you are cooking in your pot and after a number of quests have been completed they will pop in and join your team. What Pokemon and the level they are will depend on what pot and recipes you use.

You start off with a normal cooking pot that will only attract low level Pokemon. Later in the game you will unlock new pots that will eventually attract Pokemon as high as level 100. The ingredients you use will dictate what Pokemon will visit your camp. There are a bunch of recipes to learn ( or you could look them up online ) and each of them will help you bolster your ranks. This comes in really handy if you are in need of a certain type of Pokemon for the up and coming stages. Need a fire type? Then use the recipe that attracts red Pokemon or fire types. Once the ingredients are in the pot then a number will appear above it. This is how many expeditions needing to be completed before the pot will finish cooking. You can actually fail the expedition and this will still count towards the counter.

Also at the camp is the ability to set decorations around the area. These decorations offer a variety of bonuses for the player. Things like increasing the drop rates of ingredients, increasing your experience points from battles or attracting more Pokemon from a single session of your cooking pot. Some of these are earned by finishing the final stage in an area. These usually offer exp bonuses for Pokemon up to a certain level. Once obtained you can then place these decorations in your camp area. You don't actually have to place them ( once you have them in your inventory the effects will kick in ) but it's nice to see them placed around the area. You can also buy decorations but this requires the use of Pokemon Tickets. So, how do you earn these?

Hopefully your camp will look much more ordered than mine

Pokemon Tickets are the currency of the game. These can be earned by signing in on a daily basis. Every 22 hours the game will dish out a handful of new tickets and a new Pokemon will come visit your camp. There are also a bunch of quests that the game offers which also dish out the tickets. These quests come in 2 different styles. The first is Main quests. These are one time only challenges which usually comprise of beating a stage or cooking a certain amount of times. The other quests are Challenges. These are repeating quests that require players to defeat a certain type of Pokemon or getting a certain Pokemon type on your team. Completing these quests will add to your tickets tally, as well as give you more ingredients.

Sticking with the camp area, there is another thing to play around with outside of the battling and this is the Edit Team option. The obvious thing to this is the ability to switch your Pokemon team about but there is something else on offer here. You can train your Pokemon to either learn a different move or level it up some more. Both of these are done by sacrificing a Pokemon for the greater good.

First up is the Move Learning section. Lets say that I have a Pikachu that I would like to learn a different move. I could select a Pokemon to teach Pikachu a move but in doing so it would leave my team. If it's the same type as the Pokemon you are using then the move will be learned 100% of the time with a single Pokemon. However, if you use a different type then you may have to use several Pokemon to get the percentage up to an acceptable level. The downside to learning a move is that it is random which one is given to your Pokemon. I found it best to use low level Pokemon in this process, so nothing of value is really lost.

The Level Up section works in a similar fashion. If you use a Pokemon of the same type then it will gain a substantial boost in experience. Use a different type and the amount you get is pretty rough and usually not worth the effort. The good thing about levelling up this way is that it is a lot faster than what it takes to level up by doing expeditions, especially if you use a Pokemon that is a higher level than the one you are wanting to level up. 

Neither Pokemon look thrilled to be part of the levelling up process

Phew! I imagine that was a lot to take in but things certainly become very clear once you starting using these systems. With those out of the way, lets take a look at how the game progresses, shall we?

The game has 11 areas to conquer, with another few more sets opening up in the post game. The areas start off by having only 3 or 4 stages but eventually these go up to 5 or 6. Each of the final stages has a battle with a harder boss fight than what you've previously fought in a stage. Defeat the boss and more areas will open up. Sometimes there are multiple areas that will open up at a single time. This helps players out because if you happen to get stuck on a certain stage then you can hop to another area and try one of those stages out. I had to do this a few times during my time with the game and it certainly helped me to stop being stuck in a single area for a long period of time.

Each of the stages will show the player a recommended power level. This number is what your teams full power should at least be at. This number is calculated by how many of the power stones they are holding. So, the higher the level of the Pokemon, the more stones the Pokemon can hold, which the means the higher their power level will be, which in turn means that the harder stages will be able to be tackled. The harder the stage then the better the rewards. This is the gameplay loop that the game offers and I found it to be quite a fun one. But it doesn't end there. At the area select screen the game will let you know that there is a Type Bonus. This tells you that if you use a certain element type then you will gain a significant power boost for your team. This comes in super handy because you can compensate a lower power level by adding in a type advantage to your team. Have a team that is full of Pokemon with a type advantage and you should be able to tackle it at a level that is a lot lower than is recommended.

Here's a small selection of the quests that the game offers

Like most type of mobile games, Pokemon Quest hinders the way players can make progress in the game. At the top right of the screen you can see an energy/battery bar. This shows how many times you can play before needing to wait around half an hour for a single bar to fill back up. You can increase the bar with decorations so that you can get more turns before the gauge runs dry. If you don't want to wait that long then you can use 25 of your Pokemon Tickets to fill the meter back up, of course this means you will be using tickets that could be better saved for something else. If you buy the full package then you will gain a bunch of decorations from the start than upgrades the gauge and gives you around 190 tickets a day. This doesn't get rid of the limit altogether but it certainly does increase your play time substantially.

Even if you have a bunch of tickets at your disposal it will still take a fair bit of time to get through the game. You will have to take advantage of the type advantages, switch your team up for in order to use certain moves, grind for ingredients to lure in more Pokemon and all of that is before you even start looking at filling in the Pokedex. There is a great amount of content on offer here and I imagine it's going to take a while to see all of what's on offer in the post game area.

Conclusion

Pokemon is an IP that is very diverse and that once again is shown with this title. If you choose to pay for the game then your experience will be a faster one than those who opt to show more patience. Whether you choose to take the faster route or not, what you will get here is a surprisingly deep game that requires players to think about team composition, base building and time management. I often have more fun with Pokemon spin-offs than I do with the main games and Pokemon Quest is no exception. This is one of the best Pokemon themed games I have played for a while and while I have completed the story mode, i'm still dipping in and out of the game in order to tackle the post game island. The game is free and I encourage everyone to at least give it a try. What have you got to lose?

 

 

 

[Hero-of-Time]

I managed to take on some of the post game islands last night and finally found and defeated a couple of the legendary birds. A lot of the stuff i've read about those special ingredients states that in order to get them you need to defeat a legendary and hope they drop but that certainly wasn't the case for me. I received 2 of them by defeating normal enemies in the stage. 

It looks like the game may be receiving updates at some point as data miners have found files for every Pokemon across all generations hidden in the game code. There also appears to be a few extra ones in there.

 

[Iun]

I must be about 2/3 of the way through now, still haven't spent any real money. Loving it.

[bob]

I was humming a song in my head last night, and couldn't work out where I had heard it from.

Realised it was from this - its got surprisingly catchy music for what is essentially a freetoplay mobile game.

Quite enjoying it so far, although it's becoming quite hard to justify the use of my starter with only three Pokémon in my team and high level 'Mon joining all the time. Poor Pikachu is about 10 levels behind my strongest team, despite me using him since the beginning and giving him all the best power stones.

It's also really hard to keep a core team going at all. It's worked best so far to just use the strongest Pokémon that turn up at my base because they get the type bonus, then drop them when i change areas and newer, better Pokémon turn up.

[Hero-of-Time]

1 minute ago, bob said:

I was humming a song in my head last night, and couldn't work out where I had heard it from.

Realised it was from this - its got surprisingly catchy music for what is essentially a freetoplay mobile game.

Quite enjoying it so far, although it's becoming quite hard to justify the use of my starter with only three Pokémon in my team and high level 'Mon joining all the time. Poor Pikachu is about 10 levels behind my strongest team, despite me using him since the beginning and giving him all the best power stones.

It's also really hard to keep a core team going at all. It's worked best so far to just use the strongest Pokémon that turn up at my base because they get the type bonus, then drop them when i change areas and newer, better Pokémon turn up.

Don't try to do this. What you're doing by using the strongest Pokemon is the best way to move forward in the game. 

[bob]

But how am I supposed to build up a strong loving bond with my Pokémon?

[Glen-i]

38 minutes ago, bob said:

But how am I supposed to build up a strong loving bond with my Pokémon?

Don't ever play Pokémon Ranger.

[S.C.G]

Pokémon Quest

Review written by @Hero-of-Time

Thank you on behalf of N-Europe.

Edited June 6, 2018 by S.C.G

[bob]

Got my first ever (in any game) shiny Pokémon, which is cool. Weird little green Oddish.

Also encountered my first ever (in any game) tiny Pokémon, which is cool. Some sort of glitch meant that instead of fighting a giant Clefairy on one of the expeditions, it spawned as a teeny weeny version. I got a screenshot. It's adorable.

[Hero-of-Time]

I haven't had much time for gaming lately but I've still been able to get a quick go of this here and there. I have a load of Pokemon at level 100 now and i'm trying to get together a decent team in order to make my way through the post game levels as I've still only beaten the first one. 

[RedShell]

54 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

I haven't had much time for gaming lately but I've still been able to get a quick go of this here and there. I have a load of Pokemon at level 100 now and i'm trying to get together a decent team in order to make my way through the post game levels as I've still only beaten the first one. 

I've not been playing this at all recently (Splatoon 2 DLC is just too good ) so yeah, still stuck on that same damn stage that my crappy electric Pokémon can't beat.
Not sure if I can be bothered with the grind to get better Pokémon/stones now really... Perhaps I'll get back to it at some point, after playing through Mario Tennis.

[Dufniall]

I think I'm going to switch and play this game on mobile instead of on my Switch. I don't like playing touchscreen games on the Switch and button controls are horrible. 

Only question is if the in-game rewards/purchases are equal. With Pokémon Shuffle for example the in-game exchanges are more expensive on mobile than on 3DS.

[Hero-of-Time]

1 hour ago, RedShell said:

I've not been playing this at all recently (Splatoon 2 DLC is just too good ) so yeah, still stuck on that same damn stage that my crappy electric Pokémon can't beat.
Not sure if I can be bothered with the grind to get better Pokémon/stones now really... Perhaps I'll get back to it at some point, after playing through Mario Tennis.

Its the perfect World Cup game. It's an easy grind if you set your team on auto while watching the footy.  

[bob]

Tiny Clefable!

[Ugh first aid]

I...Might have been playing this a little much... i've had this team carry me through for the game. I've honestly been really enjoying this game. Much more then expected! 

[Dufniall]

I downloaded the mobile version yesterday, and already prefer that over the Switch version. A smaller screen plus a lighter device for touch controls. Picked Pikachu instead of Eevee as a starter this time.

I read a review online from a non-tech/games site burning it, saying: "It looks like Minecraft but does not give you the freedom of Minecraft, so it is a bad game". Great piece of journalism there haha. 

[bob]

The starter you choose is kind of pointless in this game, I doubt it makes any difference at all. I wish you could swap your progress between systems though. I'd love to continue playing on my phone, and then Switch back when I get home.

I've reached a plateau in the last two areas (the psychic and electric ones). Just been levelling up and evolving Pokémon to fill out my Pokédex instead. Up to 80 now. I really want to find a squirtle, but they just aren't interested in my watery stew!

[EEVILMURRAY]

I've been watching the missus playing this and it pisses me off just how the team just wander around like idiots and walk into damage like a special needs person after being told not to do something. 

I watched her Dragonite walk several times into a Fire Blast on the ground. There was ample room to go around, but no. Just go into it. Too frustrating.

 

Any tips on how to beat Snorlax though? Dude just keeps falling asleep and apart from using a squad member with Disable it seems most difficult to do enough damage to it.

[Hero-of-Time]

2 hours ago, EEVILMURRAY said:

Any tips on how to beat Snorlax though? Dude just keeps falling asleep and apart from using a squad member with Disable it seems most difficult to do enough damage to it.

A lot of road blocks in the game can be overcome by having Pokemon that have buffs or inflict status effects. The Machop line is great because it has a load of HP and can learn Bulk Up. Nabbing a Pokemon that can inflict the confusion status can butcher bosses.

[EEVILMURRAY]

Missus finally managed to get 20 Mystic Shells to plow into a gold pot for da Ambrosia. Both Mew and Mewtwo turned up.