10 years on - Pokémon BW2 review

Lightwreather · January 8, 2022

So, all of the following is my own opinion.

So, I recently got into pokémon (Sw/Sh was my first, and it will always be special to me no matter how bad you say it is) and I decided to try and playthrough the older ones starting with Diamond. So, here's my review of the Unova region - Pokémon White and its sequel Pokémon Black 2 (Yes, I know I'm supposed to get White 2 if I wanted the true experience with pokémon white but I really wanted to see Black city).

Gameplay

Well, this part is pretty standard for a pokémon game, you start in a town, you travel across the region to get 8 gym badges from various towns and defeat the evil team trying to use pokémon for some nefarious scheme and then become champion of the region. Yea, as I said, pretty standard. The Change of TMs to being multi-use was a wonderful change from DPP and HGSS.Triple and rotation battles were for me really neat. Suffice to say, I try these battles a lot more.

Being limited to only unovan pokémon in the first game was a bit annoying but the sequel fixed that (yes, B2W2 is a proper sequel).

Story

Now, this is where BW2 really shines in comparision to the other games. In the games, the story has generally been lackluster to say the least. BUt woah, I was awed by the story in this game, adn ofc, It does address the fact that "No, pokémon are not enslaved by pokéballs. WE are their friends, yada yada yada". N's character arc was something special to me and is by and far one of my favourite rivals. Ghestisis is also by far, the most malicious villian in the games that I've played (and in the Manga I've read, I mean Have you read it?, the madman crucifies the Unovan gym leaders in Pokémon adventures). And well, I really liked it and the character development.

Animations and music

So, compared to the other DS pokémon games, BW2 has really nice battle animations and others as well. The opening (ie. N's crowning) was something that I really didn't expect to happen in a pokémon game. An opening animation that actually adds to the story andd one that isn't well, trash. I rarely found myself skipping past it when opening the game and the music was wow. Then there's the animation when N awakens Zekrom/Reshiram, for me it was Reshiram and it is was beautiful and you could see some kind of emotion in her (yes, I'm identifyng reshiram as female) eyes. And then when the player reawakens Reshiram/Zekrom, same feelings. Maybe I'm fanboy but that doesn't really change this. Also, when N flys away after the final battle, that was heartbreaking. I've never really connected with an antagonist-turned-ally in this way...

Conclusion

So, what I'm getting at here, is that Pokémon BW2 was really, imho, one of the best Pokémon game (at least on the DS) and it's setting a really high bar that I'm gonna have to see if Pokémon XY and USUM will have to pass. This game will probably stay in my memory for a really long while.

Disclaimers

1. So, I've read the pokémon manga before and so that might colour quite a lot of the impressions as a lot of the games don't really seem to live upto the story that Hidenori Kusaka has set up (tho sometimes, it's the reverse).
2.(and this is a big one) I've not played any other DS/3DS game yet. I've only recently gotten into console gaming and gaming as a whole, so yea.

So, now I'm interested what are your thoughts on this game.