Pokémon Ranger - Game Review
Time: 14:40am
Date: 31st March, 2007

Pokémon Ranger Art

Pokémon Ranger, the road to Diamond and Pearl. This game has sure changed how I viewed the idea of Pokémon Rangers. I wasn't that keen on them at first, but after playing the game you get a deep look into what it's like to be a Ranger and what the job involves, it's not just temporarily catching the Pokémon to get it to do whatever you want, they capture them and use their skills for the good of both humans and Pokémon, plus if a Pokémon is confused and rampaging capturing it helps calm it down. The Rangers are respectful to the Pokémon, never keep them for longer than needed and always tell them thank you after the job is done.

The game obviously follows the story of your character, you can choose either the girl or boy Ranger and your partner Pokémon depends on who you choose (*You get Plusle if you're the girl, Minun for the boy*) and of course your friendly rival at the Ranger base in Ringtown will be that of the opposite gender of what you chose.
The story starts out with your character receiving a letter from Spenser, the Ranger Leader of Ringtown. Your character has been exchanging letter with him for a while wishing to become a Ranger, so he gives you a Ranger Uniform and tells you to meet him in Fall City. This pathes the way for you to become a member of the Rangers in Ringtown.

Basically, as a Ranger, you have to do missions, set by the Ranger Leaders, to rise up in rank. There are 10 ranks in all. The missions can be simple from finding someone's lost Pokémon, to doing civilian requests in Fall City, though a lot of your missions later on involve the storyline revolving around the Go-Rock squad, a group of music loving bad guys (*Miror B should of totally been in this group, it's right up his street XD*)

Pokémon Rangers, Lunick and Solana with Minun and Plusle

So game play wise, what you do is to use the stylus on the touch screen to draw circles around the Pokémon that you wish to capture. The Pokémon don't make it easy though, most run around and if they touch your circle, it breaks and you have to start drawing the circle again. Also, most Pokémon try and attack the circle, if a Pokémon attack hits it, your capture styler will lose power, if it loses all it's power, it breaks and you have to start the mission from where you last saved. The trick to capturing them is to basically watch the Pokémon's behavior, usually there will always be an opening which gives you a chance to catch it.
As for the circles, all Pokémon have different amounts of circles you have to draw around them before they are captured. Some small Pokémon like Ratatta and Pikachu only need a few circles and are easy to catch, but some larger Pokémon will need a lot more. For most, some quick circle drawing action is all you need, for some you might need to draw circles slower if they move around a lot on screen. There are ways to help obstruct a Pokémon's movements to help in capturing and these are called Poké Assists.

Poké Assists are where the captured Pokémon you have help you in capturing another Pokémon. Your partner, Plusle or Minun, for example, can shock a Pokémon and temporarily paralyze it, although they don't always have the power to do this. They have a power gauge on your capture styler which fills up as you try and capture Pokémon, once at least one section is full, you can use their Poké Assist.
Other Pokémon can use the Assists too and have different Assists depending on their type. Water Pokémon can use their power to make bubbles with your styler which you can flick towards the Pokémon you want to capture and temporarily catch them in a bubble, grass Poké Assists make grass grow that obstructs the Pokémon's path. You only have a limited time to use these Assists though, so make the most of them, once you use the assists, the Pokémon is set free.

I found that trying to capture the Pokémon was the most fun part of the game. Even the harder to get Pokémon are fun, as you really have to watch their movements. The game itself only really took me about 2 or so weeks to finish, but this was between real life stuffs like work and such.

Also once you finish the game, you open up RangerNet, which holds some special missions. Although one special mission you need to get a code for from pokemon.com and that, or course, is the Manaphy egg mission. Once you finish that you are able to transfer the egg over to your Diamond or Pearl game to hatch it, you DO need 2 DS consoles to do that though, as you have to be in close range. Unless I get a chance to before hand, I'll most likely be taking Pokémon Ranger and my DS to Amecon 2007 in the hopes a friend will bring their DS which I can borrow :D
There's probably loads I forgot to mention, I'm not very good at reviews, but I rambled on about what I wanted XD

Ringtown Ranger Leader, Spenser, with his Fearow

Mood: Happy
Listening too: BOWL - "Teardrop"