[Feature] Realising the Untapped Potential of Pokémon: Let’s Go

There’s still time for it to be a Real Go-Getter.

When Pokémon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Pokémon: Let’s Go, Eevee!, were first announced in 2018, let’s be honest, they weren’t exactly the Pokémon games fans were expecting.

Instead of being like any other remake and remaster of old Pokémon games, it took a lot of the old game mechanics fans know and love, and turned them on their head, especially thanks to new capture mechanics that are more in line with Pokémon GO and Pokémon appearing in the real world.

They might not have been the Pokémon games everyone expected them to be and not everyone was pleased with them, but Let’s Go still surpassed 10 million sales in no time at all and secured itself a place as one of Nintendo’s best-selling Nintendo Switch games, from the time it realized to the present.

Yet, despite how Let’s Go divided the fan base, it didn’t do it anywhere near as much as Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield did. The Gen 8 games were something die-hard fans wanted, but many couldn’t help but pick it apart.

They weren’t the ultimate Pokémon games fans wanted them to be, but the released product was enough to please most, reach high acclaim and now they’re set to get even better thanks to the recently released Pokémon HOME service and the two-fold Expansion Pass DLC that is set to release across this year.

Personally, I love the Expansion Pass direction. Instead of a third release, as we’ve seen with previous gens, GAME FREAK and The Pokémon Game are instead looking to expand the original adventure with 2 all-new areas and adding plenty of more Pokémon to catch, but here’s the rub, as much as I enjoy Sword and Shield, I straight up prefer Let’s Go and no, it’s not because of nostalgia.

It’s because I loved many aspects of the game. The way you could interact with your partner, have one of your Pokémon follow you around, how lively animated each Pokémon was and the challenge of mastering each Pokémon if you truly wished to prove yourself as a true Pokémon Master and not just the Champion.

Let’s Go is by no means perfect and is something that can be improved with new installments, but as much as I would love to see it become a series of its own with sequels, that’s not necessarily a direction Let’s Go needs to go in, not when various Expansion Passes would do the trick.

Instead of releasing a new Let’s Go adventure every couple of years, what if new adventures were released as part of DLC? What if there was a Johto expansion? Players could leave Kanto behind them and embark on a Gym Challenging quest in another region?

You won’t get a new starter every time you go to somewhere new like Hoenn, but you can take your starter of Eevee or Pikachu with you and use them however you wish, whereas the likes of your other Pokémon are subjected to Level restrictions, due to players needing certain badges to control Pokémon up to certain levels.

With something like this in play and the option of being able to explore new horizons, players can be afforded to work on completing the National Dex in a single game and actually embark on a quest that is more in line with the anime series that fans have been watching for years.

Suddenly, it’s not Ash and Pikachu any more, but YOU and Pikachu, or YOU and Eevee and it’s your epic adventure that can span a lifetime. By all means, new Gens can still be released, but in the years between releases, Let’s Go could easily get a new expansion pass to give players something else to sink their teeth into while they wait.

You could even have the new adventures added in such a way to the base game, it’s similar to the full version of Xenoblade Chronicles 2, which has a home screen that players can use to access the main game, or access Torna – The Golden Country.

If something like that is implemented, players could even embark on an entirely new quest in the likes of Kalos, with a reduced level Pikachu or Eevee, but feature improved gameplay mechanics. 

The fact of the matter is, the World of Pokémon is always evolving but unlike most titles we’ve seen and played, Pokémon: Let’s Go is the one with the most potential. In the eyes of Pokémon, it’s just the starter and if given the chance, it could still evolve into something truly great, just like a Magikarp into a Gyarados. Isn’t that a dream worth pursuing?