I’ve been doing a replay of the Pokémon franchise over the past year or so (very casually, mostly while riding my exercise bike or for a few scattered minutes here or there) and I started Gen 5 a month ago with Pokémon X. Now, I’ve never actually finished Pokémon X before. I’m not sure I’ve even gotten to the point where I’d fight or capture the titular legendary Pokémon in either of my past play-throughs. I honestly can’t remember how far I got in any of my previous runs because they were all fairly focused play-throughs that happened with multiple years between them. I think I did my last attempt at beating the game in the months before Pokémon Sword and Shield came out, and the one before that was in the year or two after the game originally released. Long enough ago that I don’t remember exactly when it happened.
The only clue I have about how far I’ve gotten is the Pokémon I’ve preserved from one run-through to the next. I’ve always stored my Pokémon in Pokémon Bank before restarting the game, which has been somewhat beneficial for replays since it lets me fill the Pokédex much more quickly, or at least it did until I wound up dumping all my Pokémon from Pokémon Bank into Pokémon Home. Now, all that exists in Pokémon bank is the lingering ghosts after I temporarily stored Pokémon there while restarting X a month ago. Now it’s empty and my game’s PC boxes are nearly full (but not full enough to give me more boxes, I guess), but it’s still not clear where I stopped playing. It is clear that I stopped being thorough in catching Pokémon at some point after gaining access to all of Lumiose City, but I’ve got a scattering of Pokémon that are only available after that area.
As I play this game now, I feel like I’m treading familiar ground until something happens and I realize I’ve got no recollection of it. At this point, I either never played as far as I have, forgot it all because I was playing as I feel asleep, or I’m right at the point where I stopped playing in the past and that’s why it feels both familiar and unfamiliar. There’s genuinely no way of knowing. Which also isn’t that big of a deal, either way, since I can keep playing or give up now if I’m really tired of it. It’s just a little annoying to constantly feel like I should be able to remember what is going to happen next but ultimately be unable to recall anything.
That said, I’m still enjoying myself. At least, you know, as much as I’d hope to with a Pokémon game. This one never really struck me as being that memorable, despite being the generation that introduced a lot of cool critters. After all, I was familiar with most of the Pokémon from other games by the time I played this one, so I don’t really think of Kalos, Gen 5, and all of these great Pokémon as being connected. There’s no association there for me, despite knowing that this is the generation that introduced the Fairy type to the game (and has spent every generation since then trying to figure out how to balance things again once they knocked Dragon types off the top of the power charts). All I really associated with Gen 5 is the battle chateau and being able to use the Amulet Coin to become unreasonably wealthy by endless grinding battles there. My entire current team is in the upper 70s, thanks to the EXP Share and no relative shift in EXP earned based on the level of the Pokémon being defeated and the level of the Pokémon getting the EXP.
Other than that, the only really noteworthy things I’ve encountered so far are more frustrating than anything else. There’s too many Pokémon to catch from one route to the next, many of which come in only evolved forms that will require effort to produce base forms at the Pokémon Day Care. It will take a lot of riding around and patience to get those eggs hatched, but that’s probably fine because the Berry Fields and the particular way berries grow (needing to be watered, weeded, and watched for invasive Pokémon) means it is difficult to do anything else if you’re trying to produce a good berry crop during your short periods of play time every day. Sure, I could just skip the berry growing process because the battle chateau makes sure I’ve got enough healing items that I don’t need to rely on renewable resources, but it still feels jarring to completely ignore berries when I’m playing.
After I finally finish it, I don’t know if I’m ever going to return to Pokémon X again. Since pretty much all of the Pokémon are available through other games now, I have very little interest in returning to catch those Pokémon. Other games are much more enjoyable experiences, as far as I’m concerned. And, if I finally beat beat the game this time through, I can just leave it as-is so I can dip in for anything I might need in the future, should I ever actually attempt to catch every Pokémon ever made. Dunno if that’ll ever happen, though my recent play-throughs of the games, combined with bringing over Pokémon from Pokémon Go to Pokémon Home, means I’ve actually got most of it already done. There’s just bit of gap-filling to do, thanks to some ultra rare legendaries and my scattershot approach to completing the Pokédex in most of the games, but it gets me pretty close.