I'm late to the Pokémon game. Other than a brief stint of Pokémon GO, I never understood the appeal of the game.
I'm also a late bloomer when it comes to video games. I didn't start really playing anything until college (I don't count Pac Man at the pizza place back home) so I'm still getting into things well after they were popular.
Recently, I hung out with my nephew and watched him play Pokémon Sword on my Switch and it piqued my interest. Partially because he skipped over a lot of random battles and catching wild Pokémon so he could get to the gym battles. When I got home, I started a new game and got hooked.
Each gym battle is set up so you are fighting a different type of Pokémon and need to tool your party to be effective against it. That means I can't just take my starter and level him to the heavens in the hopes of powering through each stage, but he slays when I'm out in the wild catching tons of Pokémon to update my Pokédex.
Sometimes too much. Some mid-level Pokémon need a bit of a hit before they will go into the ball, but my starter will one shot them.
I didn't realize how much strategy was involved in this game. I figured once you got a strong Pokémon, you would just breeze through. Obviously not the case because I lost my gym battle against the rock-type gym leader. I'm now in the wilds frantically leveling my party and trying to find a few good Pokémon to defeat him.
It's safe to say I'm now a Pokémon fan and am seriously thinking about redownloading Pokémon Go onto my phone. When Scarlet and Violet come out next month, you can bet I'll be getting one of them.
What game did you sleep on when it first came out only to find out how good it was later?