Going forward, you're constantly surprised at which of your old friends you run into as you revisit the remixed Unova region and its areas. Right off the bat at Floccesy Ranch, you can catch some fan favorite Pokemon like Riolu and Mareep, giving the player lots of options for how they want to build their team. Additionally, it was a chance to see the classic Pokemon in the new gen 5 sprite style, otherwise it would have been a shame to make these hundreds of animated sprites and not be able to see any of them in the campaign for a gen 5 title. A big part of the novelty of BW was the focus entirely on new Pokemon, so BW2 doing this allows it to stand on its own. The region isn't the only thing BW2 expanded on, though.Īlthough bringing back old Pokemon was kind of a "no brainer" after Platinum, it was still a very smart move. I clocked 30 hours by the time I reached the Hall Of Fame, a time length only matched by Platinum, and you still can easily spend another 10+ hours exploring every nook and cranny in the postgame. While some of the pacing is a bit wonky (the gaps between gym 4/5 and gym 7/8 are very short compared to the previous game), I've said before that I could live with "linear" regions going forward if they were all as a dense as BW2's Unova, and I stand by that. Essentially every "gym path" has at least one optional area to explore that helps you feel like you have places to discover, trainers to battle, Pokemon to catch. Even if it's not as interconnected as a region like Sinnoh, it's just as dense with places to go, things to do. Although the railroading and linear map design is still a problem, I absolutely love how much BW2 packs into the region. Replaying the games now, I definitely feel they represent many of the things I loved Pokemon for that don't quite show up in newer games the way I would like.
However, as certain elements of the 3D Pokemon games felt dissatisfactory to me, gen 5 seemed more and more alluring. At the time, I lamented the focus on linear and railroaded map design (especially in BW) and the overall lack of major gameplay additions compared to previous gens. It was only after multiple 3DS Pokemon games that I revisited gen 5 from a different perspective. I didn't replay a gen 5 game until five years after Black/White 2 released, which is unusual for me. Although I definitely really enjoyed the games upon release, at the time, it felt a bit like they came and went since it was only two and a half years after Black and White came out that XY were released, and so started the 3D era of Pokemon, so it was easy to feel like gen 5 was over in a blink and we had already moved in. It's a shame GameFreak never brought it back, but that can be said for a lot of the rest of the game. This is definitely the ideal way to experience the games if you're a veteran Pokemon player, it still won't be very difficult, but it will require you to strategize and plan a bit more than usual.
The buff up in enemy levels helps somewhat (they provide more EXP so the gap closes over time), but the main thing is the Gym Leaders and Elite Four have proper lineups now, and for the first time in a while, I felt surprisingly challenged at times. It was my first time doing it on Challenge Mode (after figuring out how the hell transferring keys works), and it definitely enhanced my experience. This was my third playthrough of BW2, and my sixth playthrough of gen 5 in general (with three playthroughs of BW as well). In my quest to replay damn near every Pokemon game this last year ( check my RTTP for Pokemon Platinum), I decided before the new decade was upon us to revisit White 2.
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