Pokémon Go has just celebrated its one-year anniversary, and it’s still going strong. It may be missing some critical features that the core Pokémon games have in droves, but it’s slowly been evolving into something much meatier. It hasn’t yet reached its final form, but its current state is far more feature-rich than the game has ever been before.
If you put the augmented reality game down in the past out of frustration or thought there wasn’t enough content to keep you going, you might want to check back now. Pokémon Go has changed, and it looks like Niantic is finally committed to making things even better in the future. Here are five reasons you should consider jumping back into the game once more.
1. There’s a Wealth of New Pokémon
The latest Pokémon Go update brought over 80 new Pokémon with it from Generation 2, including some of your favorites from Pokémon Gold and Silver and plenty more to chase after. People are making it their business to start using these monsters in gyms now, and their addition has been changing things up in a massive way.
If you got sick of seeing the same Pokémon over and over and that was a contribution to your deciding to quit the game, rest assured it’s not like that anymore, at least if you’re traveling often enough to make actually playing Pokémon Go worth your while. It’s fun to see the new monsters, especially if they’re part of the games you grew up with in addition to the original 151.
2. Raids Have Added Significant Challenge
If you play MMORPGs or anything like that, you’re no doubt familiar with the concept of a raid, which has you playing with other people to take down one enormous target. In the case of Pokémon Go, you’re working together to defeat an extremely powerful Pokémon. When you finally manage to take it out, you and everyone involved get a whole bunch of goodies in the form of items and a chance to catch the Pokémon you fought, albeit a smaller version.
If you play the game socially or want to do so to meet new people like you might have done when you first started paying, Pokémon Go raids are a great way to do it again. It’s even more rewarding this time around and makes up a bit for the game not having one-on-one battles the way the handheld games did, which is still a glaring oversight. But hey, this is still very exciting, just in a different way.
3. There’s More Loot to Collect and Use
When the game first launched, there wasn’t much reason to play beyond capturing some of the few monsters that were available for you to pick up in and around town. You had a few items, sure, but they weren’t very useful. The game has since added things like Rare Candy, TMs, Golden Razz Berries, and several other augments that offer an additional challenge beyond luring Pokémon to you and watching the monsters run to you. Not only did these items appear in the original Pokémon games and they offer a nostalgic buzz, but they let you do so much more. You weren’t able to teach your Pokémon any new moves before, that’s for sure.
4. You Can Collect Gym Badges
Previously, you could visit gyms and battle for supremacy, but there wasn’t really any draw to keep them under your control. Now, you can collect gym badges to show everyone your conquests. You can even upgrade them and get special items from them if you keep up with your battles. You can do this by attacking and defending various gyms to keep your rank, which you’ll no doubt want to do as you collect additional monsters and best your opponents. Now you can show everyone what you’ve done throughout the game, which is a lot cooler than just hoping the gym you claimed for Team Valor stays that way for a while.
5. There’s Even More Content Planned
This is hardly the end for Pokémon Go, as new content and additional events are happening almost every week, it seems. There’s so much more coming to the game that it’s difficult to fathom how Niantic has time to put it all together. Hopefully the additional features in the works include ways more similar to the core Pokémon games to collect and train your monsters, but we’ll take legendaries, new items, and other fun versions of Pokémon like Pikachus with Ash’s hat and more. It’s a Pokémon world, after all.
