My Pokemon Go Experience A Month And A Half In

I have been playing Pokemon Go since the game launched in early July. The game has had numerous ups and downs, as can be easily read about on other sites. I am not here to give a review of the game or tell you about all that. What I want to do is document my experience playing this game.

When I say play, I mean that in the loosest meaning possible. There is little play to this game. You toss pokeballs at the mons, tap furiously at the screen in gym battles, spin pokestops, and select options from menus. Not much else. But that is not what makes the game interesting. It is finding the pokemon in your daily lives in real locations. That doesn’t work out for everyone though.

In my experience, I have not seen a lot of pokemon. That is all relative though. There are people who have it worse than me. I have played the game for a month and a half and as of today I have seen, meaning entered an encounter, with 1640 pokemon. Of those, I have caught 1431 of them. That is an 87.26% capture rate. Not too bad, but when it boils down to individual pokemon it can get really frustrating.

The most common pokemon in my area are Pidgey (310 seen), Rattata (235), Weedle (105), Eevee (103), and Venonat (91). In the first few weeks, I saw a lot of Doduos, but they have dried up in the last few weeks.

Of the total pokedex, I have identified 86. One Slobro got away from me so it is my only one that has been seen but not caught. Of the 70 basic pokemon (either first in the evolution chain or ones without an evolution that are available to my region) I have caught 55. That actually surprised me when I tallied it up, as I thought there would be a larger split. A number of them came from eggs, but I have caught a fair number of them. At this point, I am left with the sad realization that I will have to leave my town to get the rest. There are some notable pokemon that I am missing, including Electabuzz, Lapras, Drowzee, Mankey, Hitmonlee and Hitmonchan.

There are some things that really frustrate me. The big one is just how long it takes to evolve some of these pokemon. You have to catch pokemon in an evolution chain to get the candies needed to evolve them. Some evolutions are dirt cheap, such as Pidgeys, Rattatas, Eevees. Others take a whole lot, i.e. the starters, Oddish, Bellsprout, Magicarp. For the amazing Gyarados, you need to catch 101 Magicarp. I have only caught 43. I have only caught 4 Dratini, so I am a long way from getting my Dragonite.

Next, there are times when I will get to a point where I only have to catch one more pokemon to be able to make my evolution on that one for the first time and then the game will go days without spawning one. For example, I need one more Slowpoke to be able to evolve into a Slowbro, but I have not seen a Slowpoke in 3 days now. It happens a lot.

The other big frustration is the rate pokemon break free of the pokeballs and escape. I honestly think that Pidgeys and Rattatas are designed specifically to force players to waste their pokeballs. It seems that regardless of CP, these things break out of an estimated average of 2-3 pokeballs each before being caught, if you do catch them. That is a lot of wasted pokeballs. It is such a big problem that I have basically given up on catching them. I have also stopped catching Caterpies and Weedles. Eevees are still worth catching because Vaporeons, even after being nerfed, are still one of the best Gym pokemon.

I am not sure at all how much longer I will play the game. I may stop playing except for once or twice a week when I can travel to a park or out of town for a few hours. But I would love to complete my pokedex at some point.