Forum - View topicGAME: Pokémon FireRed Game Review
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Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
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FireChick
 Subscriber Posts: 2764 Location: United States |
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While I can agree with this, the Switch ports do have some changes that are a marked improvement over the GBA releases: 1. They fixed the infamous Roar glitch where if Raikou and Entei use Roar, they disappear from the game entirely. 2. After beating the Elite Four, you get access to the once event exclusive Aurora and Mystic Tickets, allowing you chances to catch Lugia, Ho-Oh, and Deoxys. 3. They implemented one new change in that if you accidentally defeat a legendary Pokemon or run away from them, they don't disappear forever, and can instead respawn when you reload the area, allowing you to try and catch them again. |
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Top Gun
 Posts: 5293 |
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It's kind of amusing seeing this in-depth breakdown of the game's strategic elements when I think the method used by the majority of kids playing the original Red/Blue was "over-level the hell out of your starter by always having it in your party and use it to one-shot everything."
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LinkTSwordmaster
 Posts: 816 Location: PA / USA |
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I was not aware of that, given that stuff like MewTwo are deep in dungeon maps, it doesn't feel like it's breaking that rarity by adding this QoL. Very cool, though most sane individuals might just use a save before fighting them anyways. It's really unfortunate - on the one hand, I'm dying to play one of these again, especially now with the knowledge I can send the Pokemon over to Champions (which is actually a ton of fun - it has all of the positive qualities of the combat mentioned in the review and more), but this would have been a better sale if BOTH games with all languages were supported in a SINGLE $20 package. That you have to split a $40 buy and for each language is pretty greedy for games that could have been on the NSO and came with multiplayer. There's no online multiplay, you cant re-use the TMs, HMs cant be activated from a menu & require an "HM Slave" in your party, and the functions of later games that made collecting held-items and Pokemon stat breeding a lot more transparent are missing wholesale here. Really the only reason to dare play this is for the Dragon Quest-like RPG experience, something I think the review illustrates fairly well. And it's exactly that factor that I've felt has been missing ever since the release of Sun & Moon - I'd love to go on another Kanto adventure, but $20 is steep when I'm otherwise doing it ONLY just to experience those older JRPG sorts of turbulences again. You can use Repel and Escape Ropes, avoid trainer sight lines, and generally just have a "Quick Dispatch" Pokemon on your team to take care of encounter annoyances. On these older titles, it's suggested you take less than 6 Pokemon on your team to focus your EXP gains on a core team. The annoyances can be mitigated fairly well, the part where I have trouble recommending a sale is that you cant really raise a legitimate Pokemon VGC combatant on this game, you're either just playing it for the nostalgia, or to quick-catch something and send it to Pokemon Home, and Home is going to incur more fees. And it's a shame because if they had not released this in the most greediest way possible, it'd be a no-brainer to recommend such a classically-amazing JRPG with some bite to it. If the HGSS nDS games show up and hopefully do not cost more than these do, it might be a better package for the value just because a lot of what is in those two games fixes a ton of the issues brought up in the review. As for me? I'm still on the fence. I would like to buy at least one of these and take some time to have fun with something I have not played in 10+ years, but it may be at too steep a cost to my wallet in 2026 unfortunately. |
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FireChick
Subscriber Posts: 2764 Location: United States |
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In regards to the prices, $20 per game isn't exactly ideal, but considering how much the original GBA games go for nowadays, it's still better than what the scalpers are asking for.
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Giolon
 SubscriberPosts: 68 |
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Maybe it makes me part of the problem, but I don’t see the toll charge of $20 for the privilege of playing Pokemon Lead Green on my Switch for as long as the device/eshop/future backwards compatibility lasts to be that high of a cost. I still have my GBA and LG that could dig out to play the game if I wanted. But I don’t want to. I want to play it on my Switch, on my TV or on the go on the same system where I have so many of my other games these days. If $20 is the price of that convenience and opportunity, take my money.
I find it much better than the alternative of being locked behind a $60/year subscription in perpetuity to access via NSO. Last edited by Giolon on Fri Apr 10, 2026 9:22 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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FireballDragon
 Posts: 741 |
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I had way more fun playing these twenty-year-old remakes of Gen 1 for the GBA on the Switch than I did playing the more recent LGPE. Mainly because you can battle wild Pokémon here and play it docked in a more convenient way.
Granted, a lot of these elements haven't aged terribly well; the Exp. Share isn't automatic or party-wide and you don't get EXP from catching Pokémon, thus making leveling up a lot slower. Random encounters can bog down exploration, especially in caves, there aren't any items like Nature Mints or Ability Capsules, things like Rare Candies and Nuggets are much harder to come by, and yes, this is when you still had to use HMs for navigation, like Cut, Fly and Surf. But the thing is, those elements have been mainstays of the series for decades, so veteran fans like me can forgive them. LGPE gets all sorts of crazy praise from fans, but most of it is almost always directed towards its aesthetic (Graphics, music, ride Pokémon, being able to play with your partner Pokémon, etc.), and not the gameplay itself. https://www.reddit.com/r/pokememes/comments/1rztn3w/you_know_im_right/ If Let's Go had the same wild encounter mechanics as FRLG and a similar control scheme, maybe I would've actually finished it. Is it wrong that I'd prefer a game to just handle better even at the cost of not being able to ride on a Snorlax's belly? Now gimme the HGSS ports, for Arceus's sake! |
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 7196 |
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Most people playing this game are going to be playing the games in the language that was specific to the region the games were released in. No way were they going to do that especially for games that are dense with text even with said text people already translating.
I’d prefer if LGFR had a day night system and better sounding music. |
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lufia2rocks
Posts: 63 |
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Yeah, this strategy works in every single game. At best you'll need 1 or 2 HM slave mons to switch to to use a full revive or something if your starter dies during the Elite Four gauntlet. This is part of the reason I really enjoy romhacks that employ a level cap based on badges. I wish there'd be an official mechanic for that ine official game. They do have the 'high level pokemon wont obey you' thing already but it only affects traded Pokemon and the cap is pretty generous to make it negligible even with in-game trade Pokemon and only really comes into play if you bring over a level 100 Pokemon from another game to just steamroll the game. |
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FinalVentCard
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 924 |
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My understanding behind why this isn't done is because all of the language variants for those old GBA games are effectively completely different SKU's, since the languages weren't a simple toggle in-game but effectively new scripts. Hence why they have three versions each of games like Golden Sun in the NSO+ service. They did implement some script changes in the ROM files for FRLG but incorporating a whole extra language toggle might've been too much work for something that wanted to keep a $20 MSRP. (My understanding is that the game has new code that automatically changes any profanity input as a character name to one of several pre-set names in the files.) |
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 7196 |
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No surprise there 
They’re never going to implement something so clunky in the newer games. Hell that could’ve been in the original games and it would’ve eventually been jettisoned just like not being able to relearn normal moves or not being able to delete HM moves. Eventhough the primary audience is kids much of the adult audience that plays these games would probably not like that kind of restriction. |
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LinkTSwordmaster
Posts: 816 Location: PA / USA |
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The more lingering part of the issue is that it's not a conundrum of "should I buy the game or buy food for my family instead?" - it's the price versus the possibility of emulating it. Most people that know how to set that sort of thing up these days can do everything from run it on their phone to loading up a custom OS on their OG Switch (and at this point, it's not too hard to do). Several devices can play it competently on a TV and with various tweaks and hacks, it would probably wind up looking and running a lot smoother than the official one since there were still a few things I'd heard had not gotten a fix on FR|LG. The largest hurdle with making those enjoyable is always going to be "how hard is it to do multiplayer?" If we're talking purely about paying dollars per convenience, if I have the NSO anyways just to even play multiplayer games on the console at all, then a version of FR|LG included in that package with rewind and netplay would have been infinitely preferred to what's been offered. As for moving things to Pokemon Home now, there's probably a larger likelihood that shinies you could potentially get from FR|LG might be easier to farm on something like Pokemon GO or Let's Go Eevee/Pikachu. $20 for FR|LG on a Switch is largely for the novelty of experiencing the rough edges of the original rather than the streamlined changes of the more modern one that would be much more functionally convenient to buy into. As for longevity, it's impossible to make a legit purchase of the GBC Pokemon games that were on the 3DS and transfer those to Home unless you nabbed them before the eShop services closed. It would require custom OS stuff again to make it work, and at that point, you're a skip & a jump from emulation anyways - it's highly likely that at some point, when Nintendo gets sick of stamping out hacks for the OG Switch, the same situation is going to happen.... so I don't particularly agree with the idea that having them on the NSO would be any more of a waste of paying for non-physical copies of them for Switch since they'll eventually be just as hard to use as their 3DS counterparts have become. To the casual folks that might have cleared them once on the GBA and moved on with their life, dropping $20 into the slot to play probably isn't too steep a hill, but that $20 (or $40 if you want them all) could be going towards one of the newer Pokemon games weighed against having played/finished multiple Blue/Red/Leaf Green copies several times across various platforms over the years. For me, it's more a hunt for keeping an archive of "the most feature-complete version ever", and I still don't know if it will ever come. The closest thing to that in Pokemon's history was HG|SS on the nDS with everything they'd packed in. |
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Top Gun
Posts: 5293 |
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It's funny, because Let's Go Pikachu is the only Pokemon game I've played for any length of time and actually beaten, and that's largely because its mechanics were so different from a standard entry. As much as I enjoy the overall premise and world of Pokemon, I've never had any love for its basic gameplay model, so I appreciate that the franchise is (finally) starting to experiment with some substantial tweaks to said model. Now I just keep hoping that someday someone will make 3D exploration/platformer spinoff game, because I'd be all over that in an instant.
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Philville
 Posts: 186 |
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Thanks for the great, detailed review. This was a tip down memory lane, because I remember playing the original Pokémon Red, my first in the series, when it came out. It still has a special place in my heart (as do Pokémon Gold and Silver). I haven't kep up much with recent releases sadly but I recall the 2D-era fondly.
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