The last time I played a Pokémon game was the original Pokémon Red on my giant brick of a GameBoy. The year was 1999. I can still recite most of the details of the game from memory. I have a pretty good memory for games to begin with, and the amount of time I put into that one game was enough to get it to stick. The year is now 2019. Over the winter holidays, we purchased a Nintendo Switch for the whole family. My daughter Janis, who just turned 8, was familiar with the Pokémon IP but had never played any of the games. I felt it was time, so I purchased Pokémon Let’s Go Eevee. I chose Eevee over Pikachu for gameplay reasons. In the original game, Eevee could evolve three different ways, including into the rare and powerful Ice type, while Pikachu was stuck in electric type, making Eevee more versatile. While
my daughter initially was more excited about Pikachu (Pikachu is the famous Pokémon, she said), I hoped my daughter would eventually come to value her Eevee and forgive me. In time I was vindicated; after nearly finishing the game, she agrees that Eevee is cuter than Pikachu, and would not give up her Eevee for anything. (Ironically, your starter Eevee in Let’s Go can’t evolve, thus nullifying my rationale, but I did not know that at the time.) I have not played Let’s Go. Janis has played it incessantly for the last couple of months. But we talked about the game frequently when she wasn’t in the middle of playing, and to my surprise, I was able to understand what she was talking about and even give her gameplay advice. While Let’s Go isn’t an exact replica of Red/Blue, it returns close enough to its roots that we were able to relate to each other’s experience, despite that experience being separated by a score of years. What follows are her observations on the game, and my observations on her observations.
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