Let’s talk RPGs. There are a lot of things to like about them, including the stories, the gameplay, and more. But one thing that most people truly enjoy about them is that it takes a while to beat them. Meaning, you are going to be invested in the game for some time. The core Pokemon games have definitely been that, as you need to raise your Pokemon, battle trainers, beat bad guys and more, but for some the Pokemon Let’s Go games were a bit too short in terms of “play time”.
Granted, Nintendo and Game Freak made it perfectly clear that this was a more casual take on the core titles, so a shorter play time was actually pretty fair. However, in an interview in the game’s official strategy game, Junichi Masuda noted that for him and the team, they wanted to make sure that Pokemon Let’s Go DIDN’T dominate people’s lives.
When you consider how people live in this day and age, I think it’s safe to say everyone’s pretty busy. The way we spend our team is different now from how it was 20 years ago. Thanks to smartphones, you’re constantly bombarded with new information, and it’s natural that you end up thinking you want to play some other games, too. So I felt like perhaps the time you spend on your adventures in these games didn’t need to dominate all your free time.
That’s a very fair thing to do, and it again shows the more casual nature of the game, as they wanted people to truly be able to come in, play however long they wanted, and leave without feeling they were doing something “wrong”.
The results speak for themselves, Pokemon Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee sold millions of copies over its initial week, and was the best-selling game on Black Friday. So I say that’s time well spent.
