For anyone unfamiliar, Pokemon is an easy series to underestimate. On the surface, it’s bright, cute, and basically the opposite of what a lot of people think when they hear “competitive multiplayer” or “deep RPG.” But as any experienced player will tell you, the core Pokemon series is full of elements like breeding, hidden abilities, and a ton of other factors that require meticulous stat tracking and battle strategies.

Pokemon Let's Go Pikachu and Eevee Screenshots 7 IMAGES

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“ We really wanted to, at least for this first game, make the visuals as well as the audio just feel kind and inviting, not intimidating at all.

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“ That was kind of the underlying philosophy, but really, we tried to make it a game that's just like a Pokemon experience for everyone.

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For that reason, Pokemon: Let’s Go is designed as an entry point for kids and new players. Normally, those people might pick up a traditional Pokemon game expecting something simple and find themselves intimidated by the many facets of battling and training. But after playing a bit of Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee, it’s clear that Game Freak has succeeded in making a much simpler, more friendly Pokemon experience.In a demo last week, we had the chance to try out an hour or so from early in the game, moving through Mt. Moon on our way to Cerulean City. Venturing through the caves of Mt. Moon, we fought a few trainers and Team Rocket grunts before finally taking on Jessie and James themselves. But the stress I felt during this section back when I originally played Pokemon Yellow was mostly gone here. Despite a long gap between Pokemon Centers to heal, there was much less danger of my entire party fainting.In Let’s Go, rather than randomly encountering Pokemon, they appeared on-screen moving throughout the world around me, making them easy to avoid. Even if I decided to jump into an encounter, there were no longer battles with wild Pokemon like in the traditional games, but simply a catch sequence instead, which meant I was never in danger of losing additional HP.In other words, only trainer battles can offer any harm to your party, which made it much easier to get through the area without any casualties or even the need for many healing items.On top of that, an additional player can join you at any time with the shake of a Joy-Con, adding a co-op element to battles. This often means outnumbering opponents two-against-one, making battles even easier than they might be already and basically guaranteeing a victory. Experience point sharing is also easily toggled on, meaning your whole party can level up quickly and easily, especially in these early sections.Following the demo, I spoke with Let’s Go director Junichi Masuda and lead game environment designer Kensaku Nabana, who told me the relaxing feeling is intentional, and partially due to the idea of Switch as a home console rather than only a handheld.“We imagined it would be in more of a home setting, where there's kids and parents and siblings,” Masuda told IGN about playing on Switch in docked mode. “We really wanted to, at least for this first game, make the visuals as well as the audio just feel kind and inviting, not intimidating at all. So even for the music side, we've used more aggressive rock or techno styles in the previous games. We purposefully avoided those in this game just to make it really a warm and inviting experience.”“Really happy to hear you comment saying it's a soothing experience. That's exactly what we were trying to hear,” Nabana added. “Usually, when you would have much more power with the Switch and taking it into HD, I think the natural tendency is to go for a more photorealistic approach. In the earliest days of development, we actually explored that direction quite a bit."But we got the direction from Masuda, just like he just mentioned a moment ago, to go for this more kind and soothing and inviting experience with the visuals. After some experimentation, we just realized the more realistic, more photorealistic direction just wasn't really working for what we were trying to do.”“Personally, I had a desire to have the current generation of kids experience something similar to what kids 20 years ago also played,” Masuda said. “You know, they started out with 151 Pokemon, then 100 more got added, now we have over 800. I don't know, maybe throwing 800 or more Pokemon at them right away might be overwhelming. So I kind of wanted to use this as a way to give younger kids right now a chance to experience what people did a long time ago, the original fans did.”But despite serving as an entry point for kids and new players, Masuda doesn’t see Let’s Go as anything that will exclude hardcore fans. In fact, he sees it as a potential way for players from 20 years ago to revisit the franchise from a new perspective.“Really, the goal of this is just to kind of expand the Pokemon playing audience. Probably 20 years ago, a lot of people who played Pokemon as kids then, we want the current generation of kids to have that same experience,” he reiterated. “At the same time, we also want the people who maybe played Pokemon as kids, maybe who are in their 30s and 40s now, to sort of welcome this new audience of players. Maybe also play alongside with them with some of the support features.”When I asked where Let’s Go fits in on the spectrum between Pokemon Go and the core games, Masuda said he hopes it can satisfy fans of both. “It's hard to kind of say which side, or where on the spectrum it lands. It did start out as a game we wanted to have kids who couldn't play Pokemon Go start. That was kind of the underlying philosophy, but really, we tried to make it a game that's just like a Pokemon experience for everyone.”

Editor's Note: Travel and accommodation for this event were provided by Nintendo of America.Andrew is IGN’s executive editor of news and, after much deliberation, has decided to go with Team Pikachu. Maybe. Unless he changes his mind again. You can find him rambling about Persona and cute animals on Twitter