Pokemon White Version 2 Review

September 30, 2012 8:00PM PDT

Despite being plenty of fun and sporting a few new tweaks, Pokemon White 2 fails to outshine its predecessors.

The Good

Training and battling are as enjoyable as always
Fun optional activities
Plenty of in-game Pokemon to catch spanning all gens.

The Bad

An incredibly weak plot, even for Pokemon
Some of the layout changes are for the worse
You've played better versions of this before
An overabundance of low-level Pokemon make the game too easy.

The core Pokemon games are notorious for sticking to a tried, tested, and very familiar formula. After all, it's a formula that works, and that people enjoy, and one thing you can never accuse the main entry Pokemon games of is forgetting their roots. White 2 is pretty much exactly what you'd expect, then. Given that it's the first numbered sequel in the series, it's even less of a version shift than seen in previous games. It's not exactly the same as its predecessor; there have been a number of tweaks, functionally and aesthetically, and the plot's (sort of) new too. The problem is that, despite the additions, a weak plot, poor pacing, and an overabundance of easily-defeated Pokemon mean it's just not as good as the games that came before it.

Pokemon White Version 2 is the same Pokemon you’ve come to know, year in, year out.

Most of the initial changes you notice are far from revolutionary. You start in a large city, rather than a small town. You're given a Pokemon by Black/White's Bianca, rather than by a professor. You're given 10 Pokeballs instead of five. For the Pokemon fan, there are plenty of neat little variations to the tried-and-tested formula, and it's pretty clear that for the most part this is who White 2 is aimed at: Pokemon fans who want another Gen 5 game really quickly.

Other changes include new areas that weren't accessible in the game's predecessors, including a few new towns and cities, as well as redesigned routes, and a few all-new dungeons. The gyms have all been changed, with a few past gym leaders making way for new challengers (including previous pal Cheren). Unfortunately, with the gym redesign the excellent room-spanning puzzles found in Black/White have been scaled back and replaced with unchallenging puzzles that can be solved with minimal effort. Even the most challenging of the gyms are still incredibly simple compared to their previous counterparts, which is disappointing.

The difficulty curve is off too, and it takes a long time before you reach an area where you can catch any decent Pokemon. It's entirely possible to blitz the first few gyms using just Oshawott, Snivy, or Tepig, something the previous games didn't allow, which encouraged better team building. Then, toward the end of the story, there's a vast section spanning a couple of gyms and a couple of plot-related dungeons in which the levels of your opponents' Pokemon barely increase at all. Unless you're training up loads of Pokemon at once, this means that by the time you face your most fearsome foes, you're almost guaranteed to have a few team members that can wipe the floor with them without breaking a sweat.

Oh, the guilt!

It's hard to shake the feeling that White 2 is simply going through the motions. The plot's a direct continuation of the Team Plasma/N storyline, although rather than expanding on any of the concepts, it retreads them. Team Plasma blathers on about liberating Pokemon again, only this time there's no moral debate whatsoever; you and everyone else know they're plain evil, and it feels like they're simply shouting into the wind. At no point does the plot reach the heights it did in Black/White, and it often feels like a postgame quest strung out over an entire adventure. For those who charged through the originals, there's an odd sense of inconsistency as the characters wonder about the existence of legendary dragon Kyurem, a Pokemon that you very likely already caught in the previous game. You can transfer or trade your Black/White team directly into White 2 from very early on too, so it's entirely possible to defeat Kyurem with Kyurem, which is amusing in the context of the narrative.

By Ashton Raze

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steeltongued 5 pts

Sorry, but this is just a bad review.

The reviewer wastes too much time on non-essential stuff (the epilogue is practically two paragraphs, and an item tweak -repel- takes as much as half a paragraph).

Also, mr Raze mysteriously fails to mention at all Pokemon Dream Radar, a 3DS spinoff game, which is deeply intertwined to White2/Black2, and, actually, could be considered an add-on (as many pokemon must be obtained through this app in order for pokedex to be completed).

Elsewhere, while the low difficulty is mentioned, the reviewer chooses not to mention the ability to change the difficulty later in the game, which is a first in the franchise. Unova Link as a feature is generally not mentioned (which is really weird, as it contains the biggest change since BW), and Memory Link, which is also a first, is also missing.

Don't get me wrong, I don't care about the score, the pluses or the minuses, this is just a badly written review.

This may seem too much of a rant, especially considering the type of the game reviewed, but I typed gamespot on my browser expecting a high quality text, and this is worse than a kid typing in a blog.

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