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ABACUSA new game called Let’s Go Pokémon Mobile has Pokémon fans buzzing with excitement online. There’s only one problem: It has nothing to do with Nintendo.
Though this knockoff game was developed in China and has been available to download since last December, it wasn’t widely known in its country of origin. Chinese gamers only took note when Western Pokémon fans
recently discovered it.
Commenters online have been quick to praise the knockoff for
having lush animations in its fight scenes. This appears to be a sore point with Pokémon fans right now, as they’ve been highly critical of the upcoming official Pokémon Sword and Shield games. Previews of the next official games in the franchise have been criticized over
their animation and
missing features like the Pokédex, a database of available Pokémon.
The games also reduce the number of Pokémon available, which developer Game Freak said was so it could focus on delivering “
much higher fidelity with higher quality animations” in Pokémon battles. In addition to flying in the face of the classic Pokémon mantra “gotta catch ‘em all,” fans apparently didn’t think that plan worked out well for the animation, either.
It’s rare for knockoffs to be praised for their quality, but it looks like the Chinese game developers were able to find their inspiration in something not so widely criticized as Sword and Shield. Some eagle-eyed gamers quickly realized that the fancy animations in Let’s Go Pokémon Mobile appear to be copied from the official Pokémon game Pokkén Tournament, which was released in 2015.
This didn’t stop gamers from using Let’s Go Pokémon Mobile to shame Sword and Shield, though.
