To be released September 16, Pokemon Go Plus is the wristwatch add-on to Pokemon Go . It looks like the Pokeball version of a Google Maps pin and you can clip it anywhere – your wrist, coat, or belt. The Plus is connected to your game at all times via Bluetooth and will let you know when you’re near a PokeStop and Pokemon themselves. It will even let you catch Pokemon without needing to use your phone, but only if you’ve caught the Pokemon before. When a Pokemon is close, the Plus will light up and you press its button in order to catch the pocket monster. If you succeed, the Plus will vibrate. And that’s it! I was definitely hoping for more, that this over $30 gimmick would somehow revive Pokemon Go . Nope. Pokemon Go is dead to me until future notice; the game is just too broken to be worth playing anymore.
One of the main reasons that I dropped the game was how much money I had to spend to advance it. I live the suburbs, nowhere near downtown, so PokeStops are few and far between. I very quickly ran out of Pokeballs and found very little incentive to go out of my way to maybe get three more Pokeballs at the next PokeStop. Levelling was impossible without Pokeballs, gyms were in the most awkward places, and I refused to travel the hour it took to get downtown. If I lived downtown, I’d probably still be playing the game, but it turns out there are a lot of other problems with Pokemon Go in addition to the faux paywall. The Pokemon Go Plus will not fix this problem of less dense locations of the games main activity points: Pokemon, PokeStops, and gyms. Sure, it will notify you when you’re near them, but it can’t change where you live and what areas you are reasonably able to travel to.
Let’s also talk about that levelling problem. First, the level cap is 40. Second, around level 20 the game becomes ridiculously frustrating. Not only are there simply fewer Pokemon for you to catch, they are also becoming far more difficult. At level 20, it takes at least three Pokeballs to catch even super common Pokemon, like Zubat or Drowzee. And here I thought I just suddenly had terrible aim. Though the game does give you Razz Berries and better Pokeballs at level 20, they are very few and far between. As such, you end up saving them for Pokemon you haven’t caught yet. Levelling gets significantly slower as the pool of uncaught Pokemon grows smaller and smaller. There is definitely nothing the Pokemon Go Plus can do here; again, this about which locations in your city have more PokeStops and which don’t.
If that isn’t frustrating enough, the battle system is plain boring. The screen flashes, you swipe left or right, then tap to counter-attack, or hold to use a special attack. I never thought I’d say this, but even Pokemon battles in the 90s were better than that. You don’t even get to battle in random encounters either, something sorely missing from Pokemon Go . Battling your friends or battling a wild Pokemon before you catch it are both incentives to keep playing because they’re fun and give you experience points. There is no way the Pokemon Go Plus can make these lackluster battles more interesting, even if you could use it for them.
Simply put, Pokemon Go Plus cannot address these issues because Pokémon Go is a broken game. The distribution of PokeStops and gyms are not fair without any incentives between them, levelling just doesn’t make sense when focused solely on catching Pokemon and not battles, and the battles are as dry as they come. There is no reviving Pokemon Go , not without making an entirely new game. So don’t buy Pokemon Go Plus if you’re bored of the game like me. It won’t help.