In our minds, the precise explanation as to why we didn’t really get on with the original Pokémon Ranger and yet love its sequel, Pokémon Ranger: Shadows Of Almia, is likely to go down as one of the greatest mysteries of our time. Well, probably. The reason for the confusion lies with our general preconceptions with how Pokémon games and their sequels work: one game sets the benchmark (Ranger, Mystery Dungeon, Red/Blue) and then The Pokémon Company reuses that game over and over with a few subtle tweaks until the end of time. With that being the case then, we should be as nonplussed with Shadows Of Almia as we were with the last game… and yet, we’re not. Weird.

Is it that The Pokémon Company has finally broken the mold with Shadows Of Almia and actually done something new? Sadly not. As usual, people familiar with the previous game will know exactly what to expect and, indeed, might be overly frustrated with the way this one makes you go through the rigmarole of Ranger School for the first few hours. Yes, hours, not minutes. That it takes absolutely ages for the game to really get rolling is perhaps one of the few problems we’ve got with Shadows Of Almia, because it purely comes down to how much patience you’ve got. Two hours to clear Ranger School was bad enough, but not earning the ability to move quickly around the landscape or break out of the incredibly linear mission thread until hour ten really tested our limits

Home On The Ranger
Not that this stopped us playing though. In fact, the steady build to where we earned promotion, were finally (finally!) allowed to fly between locations instead of running and had rather more flexibility to the mission structure actually kept us hooked, despite our occasional exasperation at how long it was all taking.

Part of all this was undoubtedly less about the actual story - which is as twee and predictable as you might expect - and more to do with how much more polished Shadows Of Almia feels to its predecessor. It’s almost as though The Pokémon Company saw the first Ranger as a dry run and has ironed out all the kinks. Given how minimalist the refinements were in Diamond/Pearl (even though they were definitely plentiful) or Mystery Dungeon (were there even any?), it’s certainly the biggest leap in improvement we’ve seen in a Pokémon game for a while.

Although most of this is purely presentation, the most important tweak lies with the way that capturing Pokémon with the Capture Styler (read: stylus) works, a change that makes the game infinitely more accessible and infinitely less aggravating. Before, you had to draw a set number of circles around the target Pokémon without lifting your stylus or having the line broken by an attack, which became horribly frustrating in places. Now though, the idea - and we’re not kidding - is to ‘transfer enough feelings of friendship’ to the Pokémon and convince them to give up. That essentially breaks down as hit points and while you still need to circle the Pokémon enough times, lifting the stylus doesn’t reset the counter; instead, you’ve got a brief period to continue before the bar starts decreasing. To counter this, attacks are more frequent and you have to be more nimble in your stylus control but in truth, that actually makes the action all the more interesting.

Circle Of Life
And while it’s virtually no different to the last Ranger, the exploration side of Shadow Of Almia has really grown on us mainly because it’s as puzzle-like as it is adventuring. Put simply, exploring requires negotiating obstacles which requires the use of Pokémon field abilities; find the right Pokémon, capture it, use it on the obstacle and move on. Granted, the early stages are incredibly simple but once you get to the Top Ranger missions, there’s far more running around trying to remember where you captured that Electabuzz or finding something with Lv.3 Tackle. Again though, it’s a matter of patience and while we enjoyed such activities, some might see such to-ing and fro-ing as dragging out the inevitable.

Of course, being a Pokémon game it’s ultimately about more than just the main quest. Thankfully, the metagame of six Ranger Net missions, 60 sub-quests and 270 different Pokémon to capture in your browser adds plenty of replay value, even if it does fall seriously short of Diamond/Pearl’s almost limitless appeal. But then, considering that Pokémon Platinum is less than six months away over here, it’s not like you want a stop-gap game like Shadows Of Almia to last forever, do you?

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