Gym Battles
Now we’ve come to the aspect that is the closest to our original Pokémon: gym battles. Your Pokémon only know 2 two moves, which is 2 moves less than the original games. The moves vary and depend on the Pokémon, and seem to occur randomly in evolutions. The first attack is the basic one that you use to power up your secondary attack. From my experiences, gym battles aren’t turn-based, but more of a quick tap attack sequence. For the longest time, gym battles were pointless because there was a 1HP glitch that would never let you finish off the other Pokémon. You would have to force restart and know better than to try again. Now you can actually knock out opponents with only a 20% chance that the game will freeze right before you start your battle.
The entire gym aspect is ill-explained. Being the savvy gamer that I am, I used my tried and true approach of button mashing to try and figure it out, only to realize I knew how to win, but still didn’t understand the mechanics. Like how do you level up a gym and add your Pokémon to a gym already owned by your team. It wasn’t until recently that I learned that in order to put your Pokémon in your team-controlled gym, you needed to battle it and fill a little bar to level it up. It’s the same problem with the Pokéstops and the Lures. You click on a stop and somehow you’re supposed to figure out that to activate it and get the items, you needs to make it spin by sliding your finger horizontally across it. Or that the little white oval above is in fact not just a part of the design but where you can activate any lures you own. It’s unexplained components like these that stare you in the face and hinder you from fully enjoying the Pokémon Go experience.
Advertisement
Advertisement
