@PogueSquadron

It's still a small hassle, but there's certainly a safety net. A buddy of mine lost his 3DS at a gas station, and he was able to recover his lost games by calling Nintendo's Customer Service and they were able to re-assign his account to his new 3DS. Got all his games back, but not the save files.

@deathly_hallows

There's no official safety net, but as you said, there have been people that have been able to recover their digital games via Customer Service and Club Nintendo. It's better than nothing, which was Nintendo's (strict) policy before.

Played for a couple of hours, fun stuff! I like the graphics in the battles, though it is still shameful that the overworld doesn't support 3D. The online connectivity in this game is really something else. Anyone who will be playing regularly, add me via my 3DS code in my profile, and I'll add you back.

Got around to getting my Torchic today, but decided to just box him for now. 2 starters in my party is enough, heh.

Honestly I thought forming a gen 6 only party (aside from Bulbasaur) was going to be hard, but I've already had to make cuts to my team and I'm not even at the 3rd gym yet.

Current team now is:

Frogadier, Venusaur, Meowstic, Talonflame, Amaura, and Sylveon

So, where can you breed in Pokemon X?

Getting the game digital I tempting because of the convenience, but man, Pokemon games usually have a pretty high resell value. You could easily get like $20 back for one of these games a couple years down the line when you're not playing it anymore.

@anon_mastermind
I love this game, but I am miffed about the no 3-DD, the game looks good, but not amazing, it certainly could have supported 3-D, Nintendo is preemptively reacting to some kind of "3-D is bad for kids" backlash, bah!!!

@deathly_hallows
3D apparently made the overworld lag so was cut.

I actually really enjoy getting random trade requests and battle requests.

@sirmastersephiroth
The daycare shows up pretty early in the game. You can get to it before earning your second gym badge.

@Pokefreak911
The online implementation and streamlining of trades is SO GOOD. I get the "TBun shyness" though and don't stay online for long.

@ploot Cool. Now, all I need is a Ditto.

My favorite trade so far has to be getting a Japanese Eevee for a Solosis from a random Japanese dude.

Pokefreak911 said:

@deathly_hallows
3D apparently made the overworld lag so was cut.

"Apparently" is the key word there, and I don't buy it, Pokemon is far from the best looking game on the system, the art-style is great but from a technical perspective it's not very impressive, if Nintendo is trying to convince me that it was impossible for them to make this game 3-D I don't buy it. It's pretty obvious that it was explicitly designed to not be 3-D, even when the 3-D is active it's so shallow and downplayed that it's barely noticeable. As someone who paid $250 for a launch day 3-D system that was advertised to have mindblowing 3-D I don't have any respect for PR speak and lies when it comes to this issue, they should have come right out and said they didn't want parents to worry about the 3-D hurting their kids eyes and/or they didn't want to discourage Pokemon fans from buying the 2DS, whatever the real reasons were that's what they should have said. Nintendo is disrespecting me as a human being and a customer by lying to my face and I never appreciate that.

This is a great game, I'm really enjoying it, but the fact that this is the only game so far that I've played on the 3DS with 3-D intentionally disabled mars the experience.

@deathly_hallows
I said apparently because I cannot 100% remember what the PAX impressions were.
3D was a gimmick that has seen a massive decline, as it always does.

@Pokefreak911
Well with other 3DS games, such as Luigi's Mansion and Kid Icarus and the upcoming Link Between Worlds (all of which are much more impressive graphically), players were given the choice to disable the 3-D if they thought it was a gimmick. That system worked pretty well I think. This is the first game that took the choice away, and I truly understand why, I just wish Nintendo would have been forthcoming about it.

I personally think this game looks amazing. Pokemon NEVER needs or should have super duper amazing graphics and the more they try to make it look good and stress the system, the more we end up with a game with the graphical quality of PKMN Black and White.

When I view the battles in 3D they lag a bit, so I think it was all just time constraints. Perhaps if a Pokemon Z releases, they'll have that ironed out.

@Pokefreak911
Why shouldn't Pokemon have amazing graphics? I don't get it.

^^You know what they should just do? Pokemon U. Does that make too much sense?
\
@Pokefreak911 I thought Black and White looked pretty good for the DS. My problem comes in where Nintendo says "We wanted the overworld to look as beautiful as it could," and then the overworld looks pretty awful.

The real truf: Pokemon would be AWESOME if it had super duper amazing graphics. From what I've seen, they've tried to tout X and Y as being the first fully 3D Pokemon, when really the game kind of just looks like a better DS game with a low camera angle. I think unfortunately, Nintendo views Pokemon as a series where they can make a LOT of money on a game that doesn't really take as much money to develop.

The other truf: Nintendo has to just be pre-emptively preventing kids whose eyes aren't fully developed from using the 3D.

I'm really enjoying this game so far. I'm about 13 hours in and still only have one badge! My current team is Braixen, Clauncher, and Honedge, and I'll be adding Tyrunt shortly. For my last two slots, I'd like to fill them with Bergmite and Noibat, but it doesn't look like I get those until much later in the game. Is anyone far enough to be able to catch those yet? Or maybe got one via Wondertrade? I'd love it if someone could hook me up!

The graphics in this game reminds me a lot of Dragon Quest IX, which is a good thing, but DQIX was on the DS and this game is on the 3DS and barely looks any better. Not a big deal, Pokemon doesn't need cutting edge graphics to be fun. What I'm taking issue with is that Nintendo has said that this game looks so "beautiful" that it can't support 3-D, that's a blatant and obvious lie.

Again, this is a wonderful game, I'm really enjoying it, and I think the art style is beautiful and charming, I'm just bummed that they intentionally gimped/disabled the 3-D and I'm in a very intolerant mood towards obvious lies and excuses about this game being such a graphical marvel it inhibited 3-D.

You know, I'm definitely enjoying this game a lot, but as someone who hasn't played Pokemon since G/S, I think I was still expecting a little more.

It seems that the progression is really linear so far, to the point where you can't divulge from the main path at all without some NPC suggesting you go visit such-and-such first. The focus is definitely on the Pokemon themselves and the combat system, and to that end it's quite a success. Battling has never looked better, and it's great to finally get fully animated 3D Pokemon models duking it out. I'm still not really sure why they have that "circle" of grass or whatever to stand on though...kinda makes them feel more static somehow.

My other main complaint is with the dialogue. It comes across as pretty bland, barely a step up from the original games' text, and nowhere near the ballpark as the usual Treehouse games like Paper Mario and Fire Emblem. Did a different translation team do this? I was really hoping for an Animal Crossing-esque level of wit, or at least flowery dialogue in that sense, but it's still pretty stilted and worded strangely. A couple of the plot elements so far have felt like a cheesy anime.

What I do love is the visual style. The world has a great consistent look to it, very fresh and very French. The music is quite fitting in that way as well (although I'd argue that this series never really had a great soundtrack). But considering the pedigree, I was hoping the long-overdue visual upgrade was just the tip of the iceberg for this renovation of Pokemon, rather than the main hook.

It's still early, of course, and I'm still absolutely enjoying it. I was just hoping we'd have a GOTY contender on our hands.

...And yeah, the lack of 3D is a bummer! It doesn't even play in 2v2 battles!

I played for about 4 hours yesterday. I got both games, but I'm playing X and my girlfriend is playing Y. Neither of us have played Pokemon before, so it's been interesting. So far, I made it past the battle with Professor Sycamore. It's been fun.