Exploring The World Of Pokémon Quest: A Unique Spin-off By Game Freak

While normally Game Freak is most notably known for working on the mainline Pokémon titles and leaving spin-offs to a variety of other developers, they’ve worked on one spin-off that came out just a few years ago for both Switch and mobile platforms. Pokémon Quest was their first, and as of right now only, spin-off they ever developed entirely in-house. Although it garnered just a relatively small following, it was an endearing title that had tons of opportunities for it to be expanded upon, which unfortunately it has yet to ever see in most countries.

Pokémon Quest is not a deep or challenging game by any means, relying on a lot of luck and chance to not only get Pokémon but level them up and complete each stage and challenges. It’s hard to describe why it became so addicting but after putting over 90 hours into it, it’s easy to say the time spent was at the least enjoyable. For the most part, the game plays itself, with the player merely having control of special attacks the Pokémon use. The real appeal comes from trying to complete the Pokédex and having chances at getting shiny Pokémon as well.

Unfortunately, the release almost everywhere exclusively features Pokémon from the first generation. The only exception is China, where the title has continued to see various updates from new features to just quality of life changes. The most notable update to the Chinese version, known as Pokémon Adventure, is the upcoming addition of some Johto Pokémon. At the time of its debut, many fans thought seeing as this was a free-to-play title, things like this would be a no-brainer. Start off with Pokémon from Kanto and slowly add in other regions as time went on.

Unfortunately, this game launched in 2018, and since then, no significant updates have really enticed players to bother coming back at all. Despite the game having been abandoned almost everywhere, it has continued to see various merchandise releases over the years but continues to disappoint the fans that did put tons of time into it and were hoping they’d eventually manage to get even more along the way.

It’s not an over-exaggeration to say that the lack of updates for Pokémon Quest is a missed opportunity, as this title did have potential for a free-to-play setup. There were a variety of different stages to play through, and it would have been exciting for them to add even more with new challenges and difficult bosses to take on. Pokémon Adventure even saw tie-in events with the Mewtwo Strikes Back Evolution movie, in addition to features like PvP, to allow players to enjoy their time with it together.

There are a lot of mobile titles that also tend to end up feeling scummy as far as microtransactions go, but Pokémon Quest really didn’t have that as the "gacha" element of befriending Pokémon wasn’t entirely random, and it exclusively pulled from existing Pokémon that never went away after a period of time. It almost didn’t feel like a free-to-play title in a lot of ways, but rather a simplistic twist on collecting all the Pokémon.

The weirdest thing of all is that Pokémon Quest was made by Game Freak and failed to see support almost immediately after launch. It’s not just disappointing because it had potential, but also because it feels like there’s so little care for these spin-offs that aren’t the mainline titles themselves. Sure, the spin-offs of Pokémon have always sold less, but it’s hard for most games to sell ten million units in the blink of an eye like mainline Pokémon does.

At this point, it’s hard to say we’ll ever see updates for it; it’s unlikely anything