Thoughts on Pokemon Black 2

I've been with Pokemon since the beginning,and I'll be there always,checking the main series and occasionally picking up some of the spin offs.Pokemon Sapphire was the game that I constantly had with me as a kid,I don't have it now,but I probably spent around 150 hours on it.After this phase of "being too old for Pokemon",I picked up Pokemon Platinum and that's when I REALLY got into the series.I learned about the physical/special split,competitive bettling,EVs and other crap and while very recently,I'm not into it as much,I still know of it.

This game is not really a "Must Play" but worth checking out at some point during a game drought.
This is the most polished Pokemon game yet and I'm writing this to gush about it.

Here comes Black 2,a year after I played Black 1,a game that I really enjoyed because it did some different things from the norm.Not major changes but enough that it's noticible.
Black 2 continues that by starting you in a new place and resuming the story of N and Team Plasma.
The story is concluded ok,there's still some unresolved stuff but this is Pokemon,characters from the series tend to appear in random games for a random cameo,so whatever.I loved the rival Hugh,he might seem like a typical jerk character in Pokemon,but he soon opens up and becomes more developed than you might think.


Visually,this is the best looking entry in the main series yet,the attack animations received an upgrade from Black 1.Outrage looks more powerful,Aerial Ace cuts once then cuts again,Water Pulse has more detail,and so on.
The overworld basiclly looks the same but the game is set 2 years after Black 1,so there's some new stuff in old locations but not enough to feel different enough.

BW1

BW2

BW2's Aerial Ace



Aerial Ace in BW1



BW2's Water Pulse



Water Pulse in BW1









BW2 Outrage



BW1 Outrage

The music is mixed,the wild battle theme got worse,and the towns in Black 1 that reappear here have the same music.I like the music for all the towns,they just sound good.

The Gyms have their own specific remix according to the Gym Leader,so the Normal Gym will have the theme from Black 1 while the Water Gym will be a more soothing take on it.This is unexpected,and a welcome surprise for people that don't generally like the gym music,like me.

The Gym Battle track has been remixed,and I love it,Team Plasma has a remix that I enjoyed(unpopular opinion apparantly),Ghetsis feels more menacing with his and the Champion music hands down beats the Black 1 champion music.





The moment I saw this,Nintendo had my money.This is all they needed to convince me.

There's this Pokemon World Tournament,where you can fight Gym Leaders from Brock to Volkner.
The Kanto Gym Battle is pretty good,more of a throwback to Red in terms of intruments used than FireRed ever was.
Johto's Gym Battle is pretty good,I prefer this one than the one in SoulSilver as well.
Hoenn's Gym Battle is even better here as well.It's actually my favorite Gym Battle music in the game.
Sinnoh's Gym Battle is actually tied with the original Diamond one surprisingly.

Anyway,after 10 victories (Which is very hard,even with Ev trained Pokemon),you get to fight the champions from all the games.Fucking.Hard.To.Win.
I should mention that winning in this tournament is hard because it's going to come down to luck,there's so much type variety with these battles,that you'll end up being at a disadvantage sooner or later.

Blue/Green/Gary's theme is good,I guess,I never thought too much of it except in Pokemon Stadium.I should mention his theme is better remixed when you're fighting downloaded trainers from the Nintendo Wi-Fi.
Red/Lance's theme feels lacking in this game,past games sounded better.
Steven/Wallace's theme is my favorite Champion theme in the series.This remix is just so good!
Cynthia's theme keeps getting better and better,a very close condenser for my favorite champion theme.

As you can tell,this part of the game,while often frustrating,has some amazing music and worth losing so you can hear these again.Game Freak knew that this section of the game would be amazingly nostalgic for fans like me,and I could do is thank them for doing this.

You also have quite a selection of Legendary Pokemon to catch after the Elite Four and that's always appreciated.Trying to catch them all is actually fun,due to the new Habitat feature in the Pokedex.I never cared about trying to catch all the Pokemon prior to Black 2,but I really enjoyed searching for them.I didn't suceed,but I had fun catching what I caught.

Another cool thing is that you're able to link your old Black 1 file to Black 2 through the Unova Link feature.This gives some extra backstory on what happened during the 2 year gap,gives you the chance to capture N's released Pokemon and fight with Cheren and Bianca using their same team from Black 1.

In online battles,as long as you don't disconnect,you get 1 Battle Point for each battle that you participated in.This makes it easier to get some useful Tms and discourages the little kids from throwing a tandrum whenever they lose.
There's also Medals,basically Achievements for Pokemon.I didn't worry too much about them,but there are some funny ones in there like using Splash with Magikarp continously.

There's other new features like a Shiny charm that makes it slightly easier to find Shiny Pokemon and a Shiny Haxorus if you catch enough Pokemon but I don't care about those enough to get them myself.
As you can tell,I really enjoyed this game.I think we're almost done with 5th Gen now,only 2 years and they already gave away all the Event Pokemon and the anime is already in the Pokemon League,so 6th Gen is close,real close.

Pokemon on the 3DS is worthy of another post in the near future.So that's that.

Took me a week to clear the main story,32 hours and 32 minutes to be exact.