Pokemon Ranger: Shadows of Almia

Review

Return with more of the same

November 16th, 2008 by Professor Layton

reviewed on NDS

Left in the dust

During the holiday season of 2006, gamers focused on the release of the Wii and Playstation 3, the latest consoles from Nintendo and Sony. As a result, quite a few gems for the Nintendo DS got lost in the marketing onslaught, most notably Elite Beat Agents and Pok�mon Ranger. The former is often cited as one of the best rhythm games to ever grace any platform and one of the best DS games while the latter took the Pok�mon franchise into new territory.

The follow-up to the original, Pok�mon Ranger: Shadows of Almia, recently hit store shelves across North America. Since the release of the original game, the fourth generation of Pok�mon have been introduced to the world allowing the developers to include even more Pok�mon in the sequel. Only a little more than half of the four hundred plus Pok�mon managed to snag a spot in the final version though.

Gotta help'em all

It should be noted that Shadows of Almia isn't your typical "gotta catch'em all" Pok�mon game. It puts a unique, action-oriented spin on the franchise. If you have played the original, you are probably aware that the game put a large amount of emphasis on an item called a Capture Styler, a device that allows rangers to befriend Pok�mon and use their field moves to overcome environmental problems. To do to this, players draw circles rapidly around a Pok�mon using the DS stylus. Each of the many creatures desire a set number of rings drawn around them and when players finally meet that number, they lift up on the stylus, and voil�, they have befriended it.

Creatures, the developer of the Shadows of Almia, obviously thought that was -too- hard and has toned down the difficulty by quite a measure. The game now allows players to lift up their stylus� before the required number of loops are drawn while still being able to befriend the Pok�mon. Players fill up a capture meter with every circle created. The meter, however, will go down if not continuously filled, but it does allow players to dodge attacks from their targets.

At the beginning of the game, players have the opportunity of selecting a partner from seventeen different Pok�mon, each with their own special abilities. Before you acquire a partner though, you have to hunt them down in order to graduate from Ranger School which serves as the in-game tutorial.

Team Dim Sun invades Almia

Shadows of Almia takes place in the Almia region where players investigate mysterious machines being placed by the evil Team Dim Sun who are hypnotizing wild Pok�mon. The main objective is to destroy the machines by using their Pok�mon�s skills. The game does a somewhat decent job of telling the story but is unfortunately very linear. The missions are very repetitive too as almost all of your missions involve destroying machines placed by the Dim Sun. There are a few side quests that are worth completing but they don't offer enough of a distraction to have a positive impact on the whole. Unfortunately most side quests are little more than a rehash from the main missions.

The game allows players to connect to their Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection to acquire downloadable missions. In the previous Pok�mon Ranger players were able to transport an egg -which contains the rare Manaphy- to two other games -Pok�mon Diamond or Pearl- to hatch. Shadows of Almia also enables players to obtain Manaphy, but they also get the opportunity to acquire Riolu, which really isn�t anything to write home about as it�s easy to obtain in Diamond and Pearl.

Pok�mon Ranger 1.5

Above all, Pok�mon Ranger: Shadows of Almia feels more like Pok�mon Ranger 1.5 rather than Pok�mon Ranger 2.0. The lack of improvements severely hurts the game, as does the rehash in additional missions. There is little to no improvement or variation in sound and graphics either. If you liked the original, you will probably love this, but if it wasn�t enough to win you over, Shadows of Almia probably won�t either. If you are new to the series, give the game a try and see if you like it. It is definitely not a bad game.

7.0

fun score

No Pros and Cons at this time