Pokemon X and Y Review: First Impressions

Editor's Note: Due to when we received our Pokémon review code, we're waiting until early next week to publish our full review and additional articles. This is to give us ample time to play the game.

In the meantime, here's our initial impressions.

I’m nearly 10 hours into Pokemon Y. In that relatively brief time I’ve chosen my starter Pokémon – Chespin, duh – taken down my first gym leader and explored a few towns. This isn’t a full review, but there’s still a fair amount of stuff to talk about.

It’s a beautiful world, despite some frame rate issues that occur during battle. The game runs without a hitch outside of combat, but the problems are noticeable enough within it that you might find yourself forgoing 3D entirely. Also disappointing is the lack of 3D when exploring the world, where everything is strictly 2D. Still gorgeously presented, mind, but it's definitely a shame.

Pokemon Y starts swiftly; you’re not long off the loading screen and you’ve chosen your starter ‘Mon and been sent on your way. At this stage I’ve met over 50 different types and battled a huge variety of Trainer variants, visited a handful of different locations and only covered a fairly small portion of the map. It’s definitely a big game, and the speedy beginning inspires confidence: it's as if the devs can't wait to get you out among it.

There’s little challenge at this stage – I died once, because I forgot to heal my squad of little beasties before heading into a gym battle – but other than that I’m trudging along without much trouble. This should change soon if other Pokémon games are anything to go by, and I hope the difficulty steps up a notch, if only to give me reason to start experimenting with my different Pokémon buddies.

It’s hard to judge how much new content there really is, but I’m being teased with the intriguing prospect of mega evolutions. Standard evolution is enough to get excited about in the meantime, at least until I’m a couple of gyms in.

So far, so Pokémon, then, but a promising beginning.