Finally, New Pokemon Snap dropped on the Nintendo Switch on April 30, 2021. It is a sequel to Pokemon Snap, which released on the Nintendo 64 in 1999. This time around though, the first-person simulator video game was developed by Bandi Namco Studios (and published by Nintendo and The Pokemon Company, of course).
Like in the original game, players ride around in a vehicle that takes them through various environments where Pokemon roam free. They take photographs of them and their pictures get scored. While New Pokemon Snap is certainly Pokemon Snap but bigger and better, there are still some fixes the game could use to become even bigger, and even better.
6 Where Are The Rest Of The Pokemon
There are 898 Pokemon. You heard that right. 898. The number of different kinds of Pokemon currently available across all the games in the series almost surpassed 1,000. In the original Pokemon Snap on the Nintendo 64, which came out in 1999, there were only 63 Pokemon included. (Which is kind of annoying, since just one more Pokemon would have made it a perfect 64.) At the time, only 151 Pokemon existed in the Kanto region for Generation I.
This means about 42 percent of the Pokemon were available in the game. In New Pokemon Snap, 214 Pokemon of the 898 currently available across all regions (Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, Sinnoh, Unova, Kalos, Alola, and Galar) were included in the game. This comes out to about 24 percent. So, only a quarter of the Pokemon are available.
5 What About More Online Play
Unlike its predecessor, New Pokemon Snap does have Online Play. It says so on the official website. What this means actually is that players with a membership to Nintendo Switch Online may share the photographs they took with other users via the Internet. This sharing covers friends and family as well as other people throughout the world.
There's even a ranking system. The highest-ranked pictures will be what the casual player sees when first glancing at the online part of the game. However, these points do not get the player that uploaded them anything beyond bragging rights for that sweet score. Aside from the image and score sharing, New Pokemon Snap does offer save data cloud functionality through Nintendo Switch Onine.
4 But I Already Fulfilled These Requests
Eventually, in New Pokemon Snap, the player unlocks Requests. Various characters in the game, such as Professor Mirror, Rita, Phil, Todd Snap, and Captain Vince can ask you to help them out. These tasks typically consist of having the player take a picture of a specific Pokemon posing in a specific way.
The thing is, the player will get Requests for photographs they have already taken. They will go out on Research, snap a photograph of a Pokemon doing something awesome or adorable, and then return to the Lab to see a Request for the same exact picture. The player has to do it again. On top of that, some Requests are ridiculous. They will think they fulfilled them while out on Research, getting the perfect shot, just to find out back at the Lab it was somehow off slightly. There is typically not enough explanation or any at all.
3 Enough Repetition And Monotony
While playing New Pokemon Snap, the player will need to revisit islands and go take more photographs to raise their Research Level. They will need to repeat this process fairly often throughout the game. Sometimes new Pokemon will appear. And other times the same Pokemon will do different things not seen before. But it is the same environment each time, regardless of whether the Research takes place in the day or at night, or if they take another route.
For some reason, the player needs to do the same exact kind of Research several times before leveling up. This is pure grinding too. It does not feel organic, they understand the game is making them do it over (and over) in order to unlock the next zone.
2 More Maps Please And Thank You
There are six islands available for exploring in New Pokemon Snap. There is Florio Island, Belusylva Island, Voluca Island, Maricopia Island, Durice Island, and Aurus Island. That is all. That’s not to say that players don’t have much to explore. New Pokemon Snap has plenty of amazing landscapes for players to discover, like Florio Island’s Illumina Spot and Voluca Island’s Sweltering Sands.
It seems like there are plenty of maps to journey throughout. But each adventure is still short, and players will go through each and every route sooner than later. There is no DLC announced at the moment for the game too.
1 Suffering From Joy-Con Drift
While Joy-Con drift is a problem that pertains to the Nintendo Switch itself, New Pokemon Snap suffers immensely from this issue (which has plagued almost all games since the console came out years ago).
The game uses the joystick on the controller more than the other buttons. Players need to be constantly moving around the cursor on the screen and snapping photographs of Pokemon at just the right moment. This is difficult when their Joy-Con experiences drift because suddenly the picture comes out different as the Pokemon is no longer in the center of the shot but rather a little to the left, or the right, or up, or down.