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Gale of Darkness revolves around a bunch of Shadow Pokémon that have had “their hearts closed” and are being controlled by an evil syndicate to accomplish some dark plan and it falls to you to open their hearts by “purifying” them. If the setup reminds you of the Carebears, this should immediately alert you to the kind of saccharine, ultra kid-friendly situations and plot lines. And I played all 20 sweet hours of Gale of Darkness to come to that conclusion.

As mentioned, you play a talented Pokémon trainer who’s tasked with snagging the Shadow Pokémon and putting them through an excruciating “purification” process, which – besides the ubiquitous Pokémon battles – is the nub of Gale of Darkness. The story itself is so straightforward – the hand-holding practically eliminates any chance of getting lost – that you’ll start to yearn for the free-roaming sensibility of the GBA versions. Yes, the GBA games have goals and there are missions to complete but you could always play full version games free or just wander off into the undergrowth looking for wild Pokémon. There are only three – a whole three! – areas that can be explored to any extent. Gale of Darkness seems to have pushed the free roam options to the side in order to make room for some extremely long Pokémon battles that sometimes verge on boredom producing.

What I really like about Pokémon games is that you have to be on the ball in order to achieve victory since one or two mistakes almost guaranteed a loss. In some of Gale of Darkness’s later battles against high level Pokémon I never felt the same kind of pressure – I could make a few mistakes and still feel confident of a win.