“Pokemon Go is dead. People still play that?”
I hear this a lot. And honestly, I get it. When Niantic released Pokemon Go in 2016, it seemed like a groundbreaking augmented reality mobile game featuring one of the most popular video game franchises ever created. Unfortunately, the game wasn’t very robust when it first came out. It launched with the original 151 Pokemon (minus Mew and Mewtwo), had a confusing and unforgiving gym system, and well… that’s about it. While the marketing material promised exciting interactions with cool Pokemon like Gyarados, the reality was that you just caught the same three Pokemon over and over and over, grinding away for XP.
If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you abandoned the game at some point in the last 12 months (or maybe you gave up on it even sooner). I’m happy to report that while the initial craze has definitely died down, Pokemon Go still has millions of daily players (and still rakes in millions of dollars in microtransactions). So it’s probably not going anywhere.
This article will highlight many of the changes and additions in the game, which now finally feels like what Pokemon Go should have been all along. The game isn’t perfect (there still is no sign of trading or peer-to-peer battling, plus a distinct lack of an in-game communication tool), but it’s A LOT better than release day. Here are 12 reasons you should consider reinstalling Pokemon Go on your phone.
12. More Pokemon!
We’ll start with the obvious. Since the game’s release, almost all of the Pokemon from the Johto and Hoenn regions have been released into the game. In layman’s terms, that’s Generations II and III from the original games. In practical terms, that’s an extra 200 pocket monsters for you to catch, evolve, and raid for. Whether you’re a hardcore Pokemon fan and know all of these new species, or you’re just discovering many of these creatures for the first time, nothing beats the thrill of adding a new Pokemon to your pokedex.
Some of the new Pokemon are still only available in certain parts of the world (more on that in a minute), and some still require beating raids. But the wider variety of creatures to catch adds more diversity into the game. And Niantic will surly add Generation IV before too long, along with the recently released Alolan variants.
Via Pokemon Go