Pokemon was one of the defining games of my childhood. I will never forget the day I first got my hands on a Gameboy and a copy of Pokemon Yellow. Over the years it was something that I, and many others, became so familiar with; we knew the Pokemon, the types, the moves, the counters, the secrets and how to acquire the elusive legendary Pokemon. It’s strange to come to Pokemon Black and White 2 and for it to feel so familiar, yet be so different.

Veteran Pokemon players will recognize a few differences right from the word go: your rival is a nice person, even if he is a little intense at times; there is the ability to capture Pokemon from other regions at a much earlier stage than in any other Pokemon game to date and the environments makes use of three dimensional effects to give them both a figurative, and literal depth not seen before in the series.

Pokemon Black and White 2 is a huge surprise to a veteran player: the game follows the same basic skeleton we have come to expect from Pokémon games. However, so much has been modernized and changed that it’s quite a different experience at times.

All the changes and modernizations are for the better: level grinding has been made much easier and faster through the addition of special encounters that occur relatively infrequently, but give your Pokemon a massive experience point boost that is on par with a gym leader’s best Pokemon. It is often worth farming these encounters as you will complete half an hours’ worth of leveling progress inside fifteen minutes.

When double battling was introduced almost a decade ago, it was novel. The strategic depth and number of potential combinations or partnerships is astounding. It seemed inevitable that we would get triple battles, and triple battles are present in Black and White 2, but the real star of the battle types is the rotation battle.

In a rotation battle, your first three Pokemon are sent out at once, but only one is actively participating in the battle on any given turn. You can rotate the active Pokemon and then launch an attack in the same turn, rather than having to weather a free attack from your opponent. The depth comes from trying to predict which of your opponents three Pokemon is going to be active when the next round of attacks land. This allows you to increase or negate damage through clever use of type strengths and weaknesses.

The mini-games have not been neglected, either. Between the returning ‘make a musical’ mini-game and the brand new ‘make a movie’ as well as the very clever ‘Join Avenue’, there is plenty to do. Make a musical and make a movie are exactly what it sounds like: you and your Pokemon can participate in producing musicals and movies.

Making a musical focusses on using various props to dress up one of your Pokemon, whilst the movie has a script with several set objectives, each being a scene, that you must complete using different Pokemon and their abilities. There is a large amount of variety contained within each of these two mini-games and new elements become available even into the end-game.

Join Avenue is a separate area that allows you to build a promenade of shops and then level up those shops to attract more visitors and hold better stock. The shops on offer range from raffle shops to restaurants and each has bonuses that are otherwise hard to find. For instance you have a chance to win a masterball once per day from each raffle stand you own.

Each generation, the Pokemon games are rebalanced slightly and Black and White 2 is no different. Whilst types have always been important, they are now utterly vital: much to my dismay, it is no longer possible to level your starter Pokemon a lot and then bludgeon your way through every battle, even if the hostile Pokemon happen to have a type advantage. Critical hits seem to be an exception, though: I have yet to have a Pokemon, not possessing the ‘sturdy’ passive ability survive a critical hit, regardless of type and level. In fact, the tendency for critical hits (to one-hit KO almost any Pokemon), is my one complaint about Black 2. But critical hits occur somewhat infrequently so it’s not something to worry too much about. As always, save often!

The narrative of Black and White 2 is similar to previous Pokemon games in that you are a young trainer embarking upon your journey to Victory Road, and there’s an evil group out to conquer the world. The actual narrative departs significantly from the usual formula just a few hours in, and your quest to reach the Champion starts to feel as if it were an almost incidental side-quest. In its place there is much more emphasis on the story of coming together with the gym leaders to defeat the evil group. Unusually, this time you will battle quite literally alongside the gym leaders to defeat the nefarious poke-schemes of the poke-villains.

A mix of new and familiar, that’s not to be missed. Pokemon Black and White 2 is the strongest argument that iteration, spiced up with a dose of innovation, can produce excellent experiences and games that will keep you enthralled from start to finish. “It’s two in the morning already!? Just one more battle…”