The Pokémon franchise is a lot of things. A worldwide phenomenon, a merchandise empire, an incredible money-spinner for Nintendo. What is the mainline Pokémon series not? Particularly difficult, that’s what. The Dark Souls of RPGs, this is not.
This isn’t to say there’s no challenge in the games. Just try taking on the hax-ridden Battle Tower or other such optional content. It can be utterly brutal. For the most part, though, a straight run through the main story itself won’t be the most difficult ride. Because a lot of younger players enjoy Pokémon, the series has to be accessible, which is certain Key Items were introduced to help players along. Here are some Key Items, past and present, that make the games almost too easy.
10 Escape Rope
If you’ve been playing since the good old days of Pokémon Red and Blue, you probably have traumatic memories of being caught in a dark cave without Repels. It’s an easy mistake to make, but a devastating one. You’ll be beset by Zubat every three steps you take until you just wish that random encounters could be outlawed from absolutely every video game ever.
Your saving grace in this sort of situation? Your trusty Escape Rope. With a simple tap of the button, you can deploy the item and teleport yourself back to the entrance. Invaluable as this is, it also means that you’re never truly in trouble if your party gets into a tight spot while adventuring in the depths.
9 Pokémon Box Link
In Pokémon: Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee and Pokémon Sword and Shield, the series implemented another new feature that made things a great deal more user-friendly: your boxes are accessible right there from the menu.
Again, seasoned Pokémon players will appreciate just what a boon this is. Back in our day, we had to venture all the way back to a Pokémon Center whenever we wanted to fiddle with our party, but all of that seems to be a thing of the past now.
8 Red Orb And Blue Orb
With Pokémon X and Y, the series introduced one of its most dramatic and overpowered gimmicks ever: Mega Evolution. Once per battle, certain critters could transform into much more powerful versions of themselves, often boasting inflated stats, new abilities and such.
We all know how much impact this mechanic had, but Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire went a step beyond with the concept of Primal Reversion. This transformation was exclusive to just two Pokémon, Groudon, and Kyogre, requiring them to hold the Red Orb and Blue Orb respectively. With these powerhouses on your team, you could scorch or wash away just about every trainer who opposed you.
7 Ride Pager
Here’s another common bugbear of Pokémon fans: HMs. In Metroidvania-esque fashion, Game Freak had to lock players out of certain areas that they weren’t ready for yet. To do this, they implemented HMs: moves like Cut, Surf and the like, which had to be acquired before progress past a certain point could be made.
The issue was, most of these moves were pretty darn bad, and you had to use up moveslots to accommodate them. Thankfully, Pokémon Sun and Moon replaced this system with the Ride Pager, which allowed the player to summon particular Pokémon to ride past these obstacles. Very, very convenient indeed.
6 TM Case
Lately, TMs have also undergone a huge overhaul, with one simple change making a world of difference: they’re no longer single-use items. It was a real chore to keep acquiring copies of the most valuable TMs, such as Ice Beam and Earthquake (they’re TRs in Sword and Shield, but are easier to gather copies of), so the chance to reuse them infinitely was just wonderful.
With this in mind, it’s strange to think just how valuable the humble TM Case (or simply the TM pocket of your bag) really is. In the main game, after all, simply acquiring a super-strong STAB or coverage move can make a Pokémon utterly overpowered.
5 Bike Voucher
With all the fancy doohickeys and gadgets that characters in the Pokémon series get their hands on, it’s odd to think that a humble bicycle could be such a big deal. It absolutely is, though. Can you imagine what a chore it would be to play through the entirety of Red and Blue without a bike? You and that super slow default walking speed can forget it.
On that note, you could even say that the Bike Voucher is even more valuable than the bike itself. Why’s that? Because Cerulean City’s bike store charges 1,000,000 for a bicycle! The maximum the player can hold is 999,999. While this is obviously to ensure that the player can’t get a bike before they’re ‘supposed’ to, traversing those repetitive routes becomes a breeze once you do have it.
4 Camping Gear
As players will know, Sword and Shield’s Wild Area is the closest we’ve gotten so far to an open-world experience in a mainline Pokémon title. While it is indeed a sizable place stocked with secrets and things to discover, it still has its limitations.
It’s not exactly an open-world explore-athon, but there are certain survival elements at work here. You can camp and cook with your Pokémon, but Game Freak were perhaps a little too generous with the benefits of this feature. Your whole team can heal up and gain a surprising amount of experience but cooking curries well, and it’s easy to find yourself becoming inadvertently over-leveled.
3 Dowsing Machine
As is the case with most RPGs, there are a lot of special items squirreled away in the Pokémon titles. A lot of the time, you’ll be given one simply for speaking to NPCs you come across, while others are just lying around in out-of-the-way places (look out for that telltale Poké Ball on the ground).
Most sneakily, though, some bonus items can’t be seen at all. They’re invisible on the overworld, collected only when the player presses the button over the exact area they’re hidden in. How are we supposed to find them? Well, depending on the game you’re playing, the Dowsing Machine will be available. With this odd little divining rod of a contraption, you can detect these invisible treasures. It saves a lot of guesswork, but it almost feels like cheating.
2 Dynamax Band
Fans often daydream about just how wondrous it would be if Pokémon were real. We’d be as happy as Homer Simpson cavorting through the Land of Chocolate. For one thing, who wouldn’t want to be able to summon a monstrous 100-foot Charizard to do our bidding whenever we fancied? It’d make the school bully think twice, that’s for darn sure.
The Dynamax/Gigantamax feature is one of the most brilliantly over the top in series history. The fact that any Pokémon can do it at any time (in-game location dependant) and gain a huge temporary boost in strength is just amazing. With Gym Battles being dedicated to one specific type, for the most part, the right Dynamax on the player’s end can devastate their team in one fell swoop.
1 EXP. Share
Did you think we’d forgotten about the Exp. Share? We’d hardly finish off this list without giving one of the most controversial items around a shoutout, could we?
The Exp. Share’s functionality has changed a little over the years, but the basics remain the same: it gives Pokémon that never switched into battle some experience too. Later, it was changed to distribute said experience to the whole party. As of Sword and Shield, it’s mandatory and switched on at all times. As a result, you can easily find yourself becoming over-leveled for the stage in the game you’ve reached, making your journey even easier.