Early thoughts on Pokémon Unbound

I downloaded Pokémon: Unbound the other day to play alongside my partner. We are both big Pokémon fans — like buy the new games every year fans — though my interest has waned over the last few years (I loved Legends Arceus and generally felt that Scarlet/Violet were slaps in the face¹). I have fond memories of the classic games, and I’ve read a lot of positive buzz about Unbound.

I’m fairly certain that this is the first proper ROM hack I’ve played, not counting a few randomizers that I’ve cooked up for fun (and, for the most part, played for an afternoon or two and abandoned). Unbound is incredibly feature-rich and ambitious; it adds a great deal of quality of life options as well as formidable challenge options for the hardcore². I fall into the category of a more casual fan, so I was pleased to see things like effectiveness and STAB indicators hacked into the Fire Red/Leaf Green engine. Unbound also introduces a mission log and proper side quests; what I saw did not innovate much beyond fetch quests and “do this thing x amount of times then come back,” but some had short but charming stories to follow (like the Sandslash stealing food from a local family).

Unbound also has an original story that consumes a considerable amount of the player’s time. There’s a (for a Pokémon game) lengthy introduction cutscene that tells of the history of the region, and the player is introduced to a rogue organization that is aiming to capture the legendary birds to activate some doomsday device that will engulf the region in darkness. For Pokémon, the broad strokes aren’t far off from something like X/Y’s story — evil guy wants to destroy the world for some reason and you must stop them. I found the story mostly beneath notice, unfortunately; the game introduced a bunch of characters early on, and it is hard to care much about them when you have so many. In the opening hours of the game, for example, you meet your rival and Professor Log. Your rival is pretty standard Pokémon faire: brash and driven and uninterested in listening to the Professor’s advice, unlike the silent protagonist. Professor Log sends you off on various errands, one of which is to check in with his friend Arthur in the next town over, an expert on the history of the region; Arthur then introduces you to Jax, yet another young and ambitious trainer; and that’s not counting all of the villains and various gangs you meet in the introductory hours. I have some faith that Unbound has unique plans for these characters in the narrative, but the balance between clicking through story and actually engaging in the exploring and battling feels skewed: Unbound is dragged down by the weight of its ambition to be a Pokémon game with a story.

Feeling therefore disengaged by the story, what was left for me was the rote Pokémon experience: build and train a team to take on the gyms and various Team Rocket-like factions. I was pleased by the variety of Pokémon available to the player: Unbound includes all Pokémon from Gens 1-7. I have a big blind spot for Gens 4 and 5³, and the modern games have done little to introduce me to those Pokémon, opting instead to mostly focus on a new set of creatures for their respective regions.⁴ The Pokémon available to me in Unbound therefore felt fresh, and the game encouraged me to try out Pokémon that I ordinarily probably wouldn’t consider for my team. Each route and area also boasts a considerable number of Pokémon available to the player: it’s far from the usual experience in Pokémon, where you’re offered mostly Pidgey- and Rattata-likes in the early routes that you battle dozens of times. There are diverse options that feel like deep cuts turned viable team members. As someone who likes to sweep a route and catch (or at least see) all of the available Pokémon, it was a little overwhelming to have ten to twenty different ones in a relatively small area, but variety is good! I also appreciated that the trainers in each area seemed to mostly have Pokémon that were available to catch in that area. It felt authentic: of course the teams of those folks would have mostly been caught and assembled from the local fauna.

Despite this, my interest in continuing with Unbound has waned. I don’t think it’s solely a fault of the game, however: it does a lot of interesting things, and I admire the work and ambition of the team behind it. I’m just not sure how much energy I personally have for the Pokémon formula. Unbound adds its own seasoning into the mix, but it doesn’t innovate — and that’s my frustration with GameFreak’s Pokémon releases too. Every game feels like going through the same motions again and again, and I think I’ve just lost my enthusiasm for that.⁵ Every now and then I’m in the right mood for it (and that mood at best lasts a few days) or something feels fresh and clicks, but Unbound — and really any recent mainline Pokémon game — so rarely fulfills that. I don’t know how much further I’ll continue on with Unbound — I only made it a little ways beyond the first gym, which doesn’t feel quite like giving the game its fair shake, but I also am trying to release myself from the sense of obligation to soldier on with something that isn’t grabbing me. There’s a line there of not always expecting immediate gratification and showing some patience, but if after a few hours I don’t feel the magic, it is increasingly hard to dedicate my limited time for gaming to something that isn’t clicking when there’s so much more out there.⁶

I’m fairly certain that this is the first proper ROM hack I’ve played, not counting a few randomizers that I’ve cooked up for fun (and, for the most part, played for an afternoon or two and abandoned). Unbound is incredibly feature-rich and ambitious; it adds a great deal of quality of life options as well as formidable challenge options for the hardcore². I fall into the category of a more casual fan, so I was pleased to see things like effectiveness and STAB indicators hacked into the Fire Red/Leaf Green engine. Unbound also introduces a mission log and proper side quests; what I saw did not innovate much beyond fetch quests and “do this thing x amount of times then come back,” but some had short but charming stories to follow (like the Sandslash stealing food from a local family).

Unbound also has an original story that consumes a considerable amount of the player’s time. There’s a (for a Pokémon game) lengthy introduction cutscene that tells of the history of the region, and the player is introduced to a rogue organization that is aiming to capture the legendary birds to activate some doomsday device that will engulf the region in darkness. For Pokémon, the broad strokes aren’t far off from something like X/Y’s story — evil guy wants to destroy the world for some reason and you must stop them. I found the story mostly beneath notice, unfortunately; the game introduced a bunch of characters early on, and it is hard to care much about them when you have so many. In the opening hours of the game, for example, you meet your rival and Professor Log. Your rival is pretty standard Pokémon faire: brash and driven and uninterested in listening to the Professor’s advice, unlike the silent protagonist. Professor Log sends you off on various errands, one of which is to check in with his friend Arthur in the next town over, an expert on the history of the region; Arthur then introduces you to Jax, yet another young and ambitious trainer; and that’s not counting all of the villains and various gangs you meet in the introductory hours. I have some faith that Unbound has unique plans for these characters in the narrative, but the balance between clicking through story and actually engaging in the exploring and battling feels skewed: Unbound is dragged down by the weight of its ambition to be a Pokémon game with a story.

Feeling therefore disengaged by the story, what was left for me was the rote Pokémon experience: build and train a team to take on the gyms and various Team Rocket-like factions. I was pleased by the variety of Pokémon available to the player: Unbound includes all Pokémon from Gens 1-7. I have a big blind spot for Gens 4 and 5³, and the modern games have done little to introduce me to those Pokémon, opting instead to mostly focus on a new set of creatures for their respective regions.⁴ The Pokémon available to me in Unbound therefore felt fresh, and the game encouraged me to try out Pokémon that I ordinarily probably wouldn’t consider for my team. Each route and area also boasts a considerable number of Pokémon available to the player: it’s far from the usual experience in Pokémon, where you’re offered mostly Pidgey- and Rattata-likes in the early routes that you battle dozens of times. There are diverse options that feel like deep cuts turned viable team members. As someone who likes to sweep a route and catch (or at least see) all of the available Pokémon, it was a little overwhelming to have ten to twenty different ones in a relatively small area, but variety is good! I also appreciated that the trainers in each area seemed to mostly have Pokémon that were available to catch in that area. It felt authentic: of course the teams of those folks would have mostly been caught and assembled from the local fauna.

Despite this, my interest in continuing with Unbound has waned. I don’t think it’s solely a fault of the game, however: it does a lot of interesting things, and I admire the work and ambition of the team behind it. I’m just not sure how much energy I personally have for the Pokémon formula. Unbound adds its own seasoning into the mix, but it doesn’t innovate — and that’s my frustration with GameFreak’s Pokémon releases too. Every game feels like going through the same motions again and again, and I think I’ve just lost my enthusiasm for that.⁵ Every now and then I’m in the right mood for it (and that mood at best lasts a few days) or something feels fresh and clicks, but Unbound — and really any recent mainline Pokémon game — so rarely fulfills that. I don’t know how much further I’ll continue on with Unbound — I only made it a little ways beyond the first gym, which doesn’t feel quite like giving the game its fair shake, but I also am trying to release myself from the sense of obligation to soldier on with something that isn’t grabbing me. There’s a line there of not always expecting immediate gratification and showing some patience, but if after a few hours I don’t feel the magic, it is increasingly hard to dedicate my limited time for gaming to something that isn’t clicking when there’s so much more out there.⁶