Pokemon GO

Releasing in the summer of 2016 to an explosion of excitement, Pokemon GO brought to life the enticing world of Pokemon by allowing users to walk around their neighborhoods capturing the elusive little monsters. Once caught, these could then be brought to gyms where you could battle the Pokemon of others that had been there before you.

Pokemon GO, though inventive, is an incredibly heavy app due to its need to not only render 3D animation but a 3D map of your location. On this map, you are shown where gyms are should you want to battle, where PokéStops are so you can earn items used to help you on your quest and where you can locate Pokemon to catch. Along the bottom is a list of nearby monsters, helping you hunt down rare finds that are missing from your arsenal as well as repeats that help you level your individual catches.

Released as a free app, Pokemon GO has since slowly increased its pay-to-win policies, causing it to fall out of favor. Eggs became harder to find and yielded less rare creatures. Potions and PokéBalls dropped from PokéStops less frequently. Niantic, Inc., the developer, even dropped the map hunting feature that had made the game so titillating in the first place. Even so, it’s a fun game perfect for keeping children and adults busy during boring times. Just remember that such a graphically pleasing game is taxing on a phone’s battery.

Pros

• Incredibly addicting callback to a very nostalgic game
• Free-to-play more so than pay-to-win
• AR feature lets you see Pokémon juxtaposed onto the real world

Cons

• Too big and clunky on older phone models
• Drains phone batteries extremely quickly

In this update, we’re excited to announce more changes focusing on Trainer Battles!

Over the next couple of weeks, you’ll see some changes in Pokémon GO’s various combat systems.

We’re excited to see the teams you build with these changes, Trainers. Stay tuned, as we’ll be sharing more updates like these in the future. Good luck on the battlefield!