Pocket Mortys
Pocket Mortys is in a third-person view, overhead perspective and consists of three basic screens: an overworld, in which the player navigates the main character; a side-view battle screen; and a menu interface, in which the player configures their Mortys, items, or gameplay settings.
The player can use their Mortys to battle other Mortys. Supposedly the strongest Morty so far is The One True Morty later revealed in the game. Wild Mortys are visible on the overworld and can be captured using a “Morty Manipulation Chip”. “Trainer” fights are also visible and entail fighting against their party of up to five Mortys. When the player encounters a Morty or a trainer, the screen switches to a turn-based battle screen that displays the engaged Mortys. During battle, the player may select a maneuver for their Morty to use in the fight, use an item, switch their active Morty, or (against the wild Mortys) attempt to flee. Mortys have hit points (HP); when a Morty’s HP is reduced to zero, it gets dazed and can no longer battle until it is revived. Once an enemy Morty faints, the player’s Morty involved in the battle receive a certain number of experience points (EXP). After accumulating enough EXP, a Morty will level up. A Morty’s level controls its physical properties, such as the battle statistics acquired, and the moves learned. The player may combine two Mortys of the same type to evolve them; these evolutions affect the statistics and which moves are learned. Catching Mortys is another essential element of the gameplay. During battle with a wild Morty, the player may throw a Manipulation Chip at it. If the Morty is successfully caught, it will come under the ownership of the player.
The ultimate goal of the game is to collect and level-up a team of Mortys to battle against the Council of Ricks, who have taken Rick’s portal gun until he proves himself to be worthy of getting it back.
Pocket Mortys Review
First thing you’ll notice while booting up the quick-loading Pocket Mortys app is how it instantly feels like Pokemon. No, not the new 3D whizz-bang ones, but the old ones (especially the GBA classics). Top-down JRPG exploration, complete with chibi-forms of famed Rick and Morty characters, is half the game, while the other half is turn-based combat initiated by approaching fellow Morty trainers. The battle system is classic Pokemon, with each Morty being a rock-type, a paper-type, or a scissors-type. Rock beats scissors, paper beats rock, and scissors beats paper; the only exception is your original-universe Morty, which is free of types, and can be beefed up to act as your primary slugger.
As in Pokemon, defeating enemies without being KO’ed during the match will grant your Mortys’ experience points. Leveling up through experience points boosts the Mortys’ stats, and you can also fuse Mortys of the same type to create ultra-powerful new Mortys that are much rarer to encounter in the wild.
The repetition grows as you progress further in the game. You quickly start to run into not only the same Mortys, but also the same trainers, giving you the exact same dialogue they gave you the last time they appeared. The game’s difficulty is on par with Pokemon‘s campaign, meaning that it’s surprising when one of your Mortys falls in battle and most confrontations are exercises in patience rather than exciting conflicts. The game truly lost me as the combat lost its luster, as everything Pocket Mortys includes is built around grinding through these tedious battles over and over.