It's begins again.
I played through the import Black back in September and I'm really excited about playing the US version (just picked up my pre-order this morning!). They certainly did a fair bit of streamlining for these games. Here are a few of the improvements, along with some things I noticed that aren't talked about much elsewhere:
The pace of the main story is much quicker than the previous games; within the first few minutes or so, you get your starter and Pokedex and are just thrust out into the world. Every city you visit after the second town has a gym, and there's almost no backtracking. Moreover, apart from one bush during the game's first hour, you don't need HMs to advance in the story; they grant you access to hidden items, lots of optional areas and generally make getting around easier, but they're no longer absolutely necessary.
The battles in these games are faster (and smoother!) than their predecessors. Among other things, battle animations are shorter, life bars deplete much more quickly, and weather animations only play once (they just have a weather indicator on the touch screen now). Compared to DP and GSDS, I'd say they last about half as long. It makes quite a difference. One small thing that bugged me about the DS games 'till now was that the battles ran at 30 fps compared to the GBA games' 60, but BW's battles run at 60 just fine, so all is good times.
Speaking of things taking a long time, there's a new exp. system where Pokemon get more experience when they beat an opponent with a level advantage. Not only that, but the exp. cap was raised considerably. I managed to bring latecomers up to speed very rapidly with the Exp. Share and a few trainer battles, and in the post game it's easy to get 5000-7000 or more exp. per battle. Conversely, though, if you fight lower-level Pokemon you don't get much out of it. Still, it minimizes the grind considerably (and it doesn't hurt that you get a Lucky Egg midway through the game as part of the story).
One thing I really like is how the Y button now serves as shortcut menu. You can register not only items, but specific screens like a certain Pokemon's Pokedex entry, or one of your teammates' summary screens. I've got like six or seven things registered in my import Black, and you can register up to 25. It's a huge time-saver. And speaking of items, they went back to the list display for the bag instead of GSDS's system, but now there's a scroll bar so looking through your inventory is even quicker. There's also an auto-sort button to clean up everything in case you forget where anything is.
I'm really keen on the little musical touches they added to the game. When you walk around on the routes, a marching drum track is added to the BGM, and there are musicians in many of the towns that add their own bits to the BGM. It's a tiny thing, but I love little musical touches like that.
There's a whole bunch more stuff, but time's a-waistin'. I'm gonna go get me some private otter time.
Have fun!
EDIT: Almost forgot: for some reason, there are vending machines EVERYWHERE.
I played through the import Black back in September and I'm really excited about playing the US version (just picked up my pre-order this morning!). They certainly did a fair bit of streamlining for these games. Here are a few of the improvements, along with some things I noticed that aren't talked about much elsewhere:
The pace of the main story is much quicker than the previous games; within the first few minutes or so, you get your starter and Pokedex and are just thrust out into the world. Every city you visit after the second town has a gym, and there's almost no backtracking. Moreover, apart from one bush during the game's first hour, you don't need HMs to advance in the story; they grant you access to hidden items, lots of optional areas and generally make getting around easier, but they're no longer absolutely necessary.
The battles in these games are faster (and smoother!) than their predecessors. Among other things, battle animations are shorter, life bars deplete much more quickly, and weather animations only play once (they just have a weather indicator on the touch screen now). Compared to DP and GSDS, I'd say they last about half as long. It makes quite a difference. One small thing that bugged me about the DS games 'till now was that the battles ran at 30 fps compared to the GBA games' 60, but BW's battles run at 60 just fine, so all is good times.
Speaking of things taking a long time, there's a new exp. system where Pokemon get more experience when they beat an opponent with a level advantage. Not only that, but the exp. cap was raised considerably. I managed to bring latecomers up to speed very rapidly with the Exp. Share and a few trainer battles, and in the post game it's easy to get 5000-7000 or more exp. per battle. Conversely, though, if you fight lower-level Pokemon you don't get much out of it. Still, it minimizes the grind considerably (and it doesn't hurt that you get a Lucky Egg midway through the game as part of the story).
One thing I really like is how the Y button now serves as shortcut menu. You can register not only items, but specific screens like a certain Pokemon's Pokedex entry, or one of your teammates' summary screens. I've got like six or seven things registered in my import Black, and you can register up to 25. It's a huge time-saver. And speaking of items, they went back to the list display for the bag instead of GSDS's system, but now there's a scroll bar so looking through your inventory is even quicker. There's also an auto-sort button to clean up everything in case you forget where anything is.
I'm really keen on the little musical touches they added to the game. When you walk around on the routes, a marching drum track is added to the BGM, and there are musicians in many of the towns that add their own bits to the BGM. It's a tiny thing, but I love little musical touches like that.
There's a whole bunch more stuff, but time's a-waistin'. I'm gonna go get me some private otter time.
Have fun!
EDIT: Almost forgot: for some reason, there are vending machines EVERYWHERE.
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