Learn with Pokémon: Typing Adventure review by Akwan

Pokémon Typing for the DS comes with a blue-tooth keyboard. It also comes with a stand for the DS so that you can stand your DS up for better view during play; the stand fits any version of the DS (including my DSiXL). Both the keyboard and the stand are of quite good quality.

At first glance, the game looks like just a Typing of the Dead with Pokémon instead of zombies. But there is an important difference. In a typical typing game, the word or phrase to be typed is first displayed on the screen, and then you type it in. In Pokémon Typing, the Pokémon first appears, and then only after a couple of seconds is its name displayed on the screen. Thus, the Pokémon sage can get a flying start and begin typing as soon as the Pokémon appears, while the Pokémon illiterate has to wait for the name to be displayed before he can type. It is not difficult to get the bronze medals for most of the stages, and clear the game and see the ending, as long as one can type reasonably fast and accurately. But in order to get gold medals and high scores, and gain access to certain locked stages, one must not only be able to touch-type (i.e. type without peeking at the keyboard), but also one needs to be able to identify most of the Pokémon from their appearance. In many stages, no matter how fast you can type, if you don’t recognize the Pokémon, you are effectively limited to the silver medal until you learn the Pokémon.

The game features a very rich variety of stages. Sometimes the Pokémon is blurred (by mist or such) or partially concealed (behind a tree or bush). Sometimes you hear the Pokémon’s voice a second or two before you see it, so you can begin typing if you can recognize its voice! There is even a stage in which you have to type the Unknown, so you have to learn their alphabet. There are rare Pokémon which only appear when you perform very well, and boss Pokémon whose attacks you have to counter before you can type its name.

The game actually uses the keyboard as the world map, and that is very cool. The voice of your colleague, Key, is also very sweet (ORIKASA Naomi). The difficulty level is very well-refined: the bronze medals are reasonably easy to get, the silver medals may pose some challenge, and the gold medals are sometimes really pushing the limits of the lightning-speed typist and Pokémon encyclopedia-in-the-flesh. Thus the game suits anyone from the small child learning to type (there are typing tutorials too), to the adult Pokémon fan who won’t believe that such a typing game can be any challenge for them until they actually try for the gold medals.

Unfortunately for English-speakers, the game is about typing in Japanese names using the romaji transliteration scheme, and may be awkward to play for someone who is all-too-used to the official English names. The 10/10 rating is an objective rating for the game’s intended target, a Japanese Pokémon fan who wants to play a typing game (or a Japanese child whose parents try to motivate him to learn typing through this game); for such people this game is incredibly fun. Subjectively for me the game is 9/10, because I got bored with the Pokémon RPG’s after one or two games and have not played for ages, so I really lack Pokémon knowledge and hit a brick wall when aiming for the higher medals. Yet, I am having fun with this game. But for the non-Japanese speaker who doesn’t feel any reason to learn to type Japanese (or learn the Japanese Pokémon names), I won’t recommend this game until an English version is released.