((I had one of the Mystery Dungeon games and loved it. Loving the first Ranger game but am stuck at this one point. And am semi-addicted to Shuffle because I’m a sucker for those kinds of games.))

(Of the spin-offs, the Mystery Dungeon games have been my favourite, though the newest one wasn’t quite as good as it’s predecessors… Still good on it’s own, but I have some issues against it because I played the first two generations of the series. All the Ranger games are great, if a bit challenging to actually get every Pokemon available. (But then, what Pokemon game makes that easy?) Pokepark isn’t as accessible, since it’s a Wii thing, but they were nice, especially the second where you could switch between Pikachu and the Unova starters. My brother got the first Rumble game downloaded, but I was the one who played it more, and then got the others aside from Rumble U. I think my reason for enjoying them is pure collection purposes, because it really is my favourite part of Pokemon as a whole. Getting all the Pokemon. The puzzle games are good ways of wasting away time, and I don’t hate them, but I don’t get addicted to them either.

I think I like most of the spin-off because they don’t focus as much on battle. The main games are still fun, but a lot more pressure has been put on people to really train their Pokemon in specific ways if they hope to have any fun outside of the story. Not completely, it’s easy to ignore, but I remember when it really was just ‘train your Pokemon to a high level, teach them good attacks, make a balanced team’. It was simpler, and I could actually fight decently then. I don’t really want to do all the things people tend to to battle each other now, so focus goes to getting the Pokemon, and the more adventure and  collection focused spin-offs catch my interest so much.

…Also not having to worry too much about levels and grinding to continue, that helped too. With the spin-offs, if you have good enough skill, even if you were weaker than you should be, you can still win. Mystery Dungeon might be the only exception, but even then, they have all sort of items to help with a huge level difference. Know how to use them, and you can win anything… Especially in the second gen of them.)