Pokemon Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Let’s Go, Eevee! are out now, and in spite of early misgivings, it looks like the final games are the freshest, most refreshing Pokemon games we have received in years. Nonetheless, they do end up making a lot of choices that are daring and alienating—they remove wild Pokemon battles, for example, opting for a Pokemon GO style catching minigame, while they limit themselves only to the original 151 Pokemon, eschewing anything that came after.
A lot of Pokemon fans are unhappy at this, and therefore at the game. So unhappy, in fact, that they have taken to review bombing the game. On Metacritic, for example, where the game enjoys a healthy 81 review average, the current user score is 5.1, with a bulk of the reviews being negative. How do we know these aren’t legitimate reviews? Most of them were posted on Friday and Saturday, as in, the day the game launched and the one right after, hardly enough time to get through a 30 hour campaign and review it fairly (the game itself is only three days old right now).
Amazon Japan has completely halted review submissions for Pokemon Let’s Go, citing “unusual review activity” (you can see a screenshot below).
It would be different if these people had played the game and disliked it, and of course, you are allowed to express legitimate grievances. But review bombing something en masse because it’s not aimed at you is pretty pathetic. At least it seems like all of this hasn’t affected the game’s success.
Pokemon Let’s Go is out now on Nintendo Switch.
