Well, I come today to speak of an annoyance that I originally thought may possibly have some potential: the pokéwalker.

This tool, which I originally thought was a potentially useful item has turned out to be nothing more than a hassle.  Here is the premise that it was sold to me on (granted, I didn’t do full research at any point): that this device would be useful in power-leveling pokémon due to the fact that the counter could be tricked (I will get back on that).   Now, here is the reality: this device should never be used for leveling pokémon, ever.  Not unless you don’t plan on using them.   For starters, you can only level a pokémon a single level per walk.  Second, if the said pokémon does level, it does not queue you on the additional abilities that you should have access to.  Instead, you lose the chance to learn those abilities all together.  So, this is the worst way to level an effective pokémon.

Now, this device can be easily tricked.  I’ve been able to trick it into thinking that hundreds to thousands of steps have been taken by some rather simple tricks.  First: simply wave your hand up and down.  This will get the device to think you are taking steps.  Thus, you can get it to gain watts just by sitting at your desk or on your couch.  Next, I’ve had the thing clipped to my bag and then simply drove on shaky road.  That alone gave the device enough jults that it awarded me 30 watts.  Quick math here, but that is 750 “steps” for a 10 minute drive.  Hence, I can see very few people taking the cue to walk around as this device is supposed to convince a person to do.

Now, there is one useful thing that this device does provide.  There is a mini-game in which a person can catch wild pokémon.  This single mini-game alone makes up for the pathetically limiting leveling scheme that is implemented (though in retrospective, given that the device has a person miss out on evolution and move choices, I suppose that the one level limit is good).  In general, catching a wild pokémon on this device is rather simple: get ten watts, pick the mini-game, click on the bushes with !s, weaken the pokémon, then catch it.  Of course, each path only has about 6 choices of wild encounters, so it is rather limiting there as well.

All I can say is that I am glad that I didn’t have to pay extra money for this peripheral.  It simply would not be worth it if it did not come packaged with the game.  Now, I can provide thoughts on the game; however, for fairness, I should wait until I’ve messed around enough to unlock all the game-play choices.

Reference: Pokémon Heart Gold & Soul Silver – PokéWalker.