My Pokemon Ranch Review (Wii)
I view Pokemon Ranch as wildly misunderstood by the general public. Whether this was due to bad publicity or lack of transparency I don’t know. (But lets face it the developer to user pipeline is infinitely flawed!)
Upon release the web waves were awash with the cries of foul – there is no real game, the graphics are crap, this is not the game we paid for, and so on.
Ultimately what was understated (or overlooked) is that this is not a standalone game. Most Pokemon games tend to be interconnected, but this game took it even farther. Pokemon Ranch became the game that linked all previous Pokemon games into one gigantic quest to capture Mew!
My Impressions
Anything Pokemon is greeted with excitement in our household. We have spent hours battling, collecting, trading, and exploring in the various Pokemon games. Thus the procuring of Pokemon Ranch was assumed.
Really we had no clue what we were getting into once we finally ventured forth into The Ranch. It seemed at first glance to be a glorified Pokemon storage facility. As we dug further into this mystery, it became apparent that there was so much more.
Mew finally available is rather exciting. This Pokemon has hitherto only been available in Japan or at events. But to get to Mew, one thousand Pokemon must be safely delivered to the ranch (or else!)
It’s a slow process, but this is where the brilliance of the game comes in (or most annoying depending on your friend/family help status), if you pool all of your Pokemon games with friends and family, getting to one thousand can be quite a fabulously streamlined and speedy team effort.
Time for those closet Pokemon fans to come out and share the wealth!
Review
Release date: Jun 9 2008
Website: My Pokemon Ranch
Developer: Ambrella
Platform I played on: Wii (WiiWare, online store)
Game Summery
Store up to one thousand Pokemon on your Wii, then watch their Mii like cuteness wander around and play with each other and different toys.
Game play
Download Pokemon from you Nintendo DS to The Ranch, where they can visit with other Pokemon, play, and have parades. The regular version limit is one thousand and with an upgrade this can be boosted to 1,500 Pokemon.
Get up to eight different friends (or game cartridges) and download up to six Pokemon per cartridge per day. With each capacity milestone, The Ranch expands and new features are unlocked.
If you don’t have any other Pokemon games to trade with, that’s no problem. Hayley the Ranch’s custodian gives you six starting Pokemon and every day a new one.
Hayley also trades her Pokemon if you can find the one she wants. She puts up Wanted posters to let everyone know which Pokemon she is looking for. If you do end up trading with her, make sure to check its held item. Sometimes traded Pokemon have little surprises that they bring with them.
Miis can also come meet the Pokemon and invite them to participate in all the activities that the Pokemon enjoy. Most of this is automated, which turns it almost into the Pokemon Ranch Channel.
There is some Wii specific functionality – shaking the WiiMote creates an earthquake or move the drop the gift wrapped boxes to reveal what toy is inside for the Pokemon to play with.
Overall this is a fabulous tool to finish up that 500+ pokedex, to finally capture Mew, and to bug Hayley for all of her rare Pokemon.
Graphics
The graphics are very well suited to the Wii, since the Pokemon look like Mii versions of themselves. Its pretty obvious that this was intentional as inviting your Miis to come play in the ranch is key game feature available.
Replay ability
Like most Pokemon products this one isn’t big on replay ability, but its very possible, with a few sly tricks, to get multiple Mews.
Multiplayer
While there isn’t any traditional multiplayer available, it is a fabulous game for getting help from other people. Downloading 1000 Pokemon at a rate of six per game cartridge a day is super slow. But if you get the whole family involved it should be relatively breezy.
Things that bothered me
-There could be more of a game here.
I will not dispute that there could be more here, but then that seems to be a very common request regarding almost all games.
If you really play the game as intended there is a massive amount of time commitment involved. So while there could be more I think there is plenty for the price!
-What a fabulous breeding farm this could have been!
This is what I envisioned the game would be, a way for all the Pokemon across all games to get together and have breeding parties. =D
No nothing dirty, breeding is a huge part of building the most powerful Pokemon team, and this seemed like the perfect venue. Alas it was not to be.
-Pokemon are cartridge specific.
This bugs me the most. I understand why they did it, but it still bugs me.
There is a limit that only six Pokemon can be downloaded per cartridge per day. But once you have them downloaded the Pokemon remain cartridge specific, meaning no other game besides the one that the Pokemon came from can take it back out of the ranch. So don’t loose those cartridges, otherwise your Pokemon will be stuck there FOREVER!
Game finished
Well, we have not filled up the ranch yet. But that is still the goal. Also we are working on a few of the Wanted Pokemon.
Time played
Family time on The Ranch: around 10 hours. That doesn’t include the hours of trying to find specific Pokemon in other Pokemon games.
Mood Progression
Last Thoughts
Gotta catch them all! Mew is finally here!!
Tags: cooperative, nintendo, pokemon, roleplaying, Wii
March 15th, 2009 at 6:40 am
I feel like I had a mew when I was playing Red. Maybe I game genied it though.
March 15th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
Mewtwo was available to catch, but Mew never was, unless of course you cheated!!
Mew on Wiki
March 16th, 2009 at 10:20 am
If you haven’t yet, you should download and try Flower (on PSN). Sounds similar to Ranch in some ways.
March 16th, 2009 at 11:34 am
Flower does sound interesting.
Thanks for the suggestion!! =D
March 16th, 2009 at 5:55 pm
I thought I did.. but after checking my pokedex on red and silver apparently I never cheated to get a Mew. I did at one point stumble on a store that was getting rid of a whole bunch of mew cards.. the ones from the first movie. So I had like 8 of those.
March 16th, 2009 at 7:12 pm
Nice! Not sure how well that card scales with the current state of the Pokemon card game.
Quick check on eBay sees those going for one to five dolla! Big Bucks!! =D
March 17th, 2009 at 7:28 pm
I might have given them off to a few friends. I’m scared to actually sell any of my pokemon cards. I promised you when you unloaded a bunch on me that I’d only ever give them away not sell them and I don’t remember which ones were in that batch.
Couldn’t tell you how well it plays as I haven’t looked at the current state of the game since before Wizards of the Coast stopped making the cards. Mew’s powers would seem to make it good for late game attacks, doing damage based on amount of opponents energy and being able to de-evolve cards. Even back then however, it wasn’t doing much against the popular wigglytuff/scyther deck.
March 17th, 2009 at 10:40 pm
Ah sell them!! Although it is probably not worth the effort.
To tell you the truth I was never really good at making solid Pokemon decks. I always had to include my favorites (I had Squirtle in the computer game and just woudn’t live without him!) or I picked the ones that had cute pictures.
Makes for very poor game play strategy. I can’t say I won much, but I did like looking at my decks. =D
March 18th, 2009 at 2:34 am
Probably not worth the effort as you said.
My problem was that I never wanted to use the winning strategies and instead focused on some rather convoluted ones. My favorite involved Dark Dragonair and Eevee. It probably doesn’t help that Espeon is my absolute favorite pokemon… to the point where I told someone before Espeon existed that if there were a Psychic evolution of Eevee that that would be my favorite.
March 21st, 2009 at 8:41 am
Clearly Nintendo read your mind! Or your skill at hypnosis is getting really good. =)
March 22nd, 2009 at 5:02 am
I’m painfully out of practice these days… other than the occassional piece of fiction ;-) But back then.. perhaps.
Sadly, can’t find any version of Espeon that has hypnosis on the card.
March 22nd, 2009 at 11:46 am
What?!!? But isn’t that Espeons schtick?
Ah according to the Wiki Espeon can’t learn Hypnosis.
Bah!
March 23rd, 2009 at 2:48 am
Naw.. I think that Espeon’s schtick is actually similar to that of Cassandra Cain/Batgirl III. That would make the power of choice Future Sight.. but that’s mostly just based off the ESP in the name.