One of the most interesting things about the new Pokémon games is, I think, the online “Festival Plaza” component that allows you to indirectly communicate with other players, earn rewards and participate in communal challenges. It’s also the main hub from which you can challenge other players to battles, participate in tournaments, trade with friends or random people, list Pokémon for trade or seek out specific Pokémon that you’re after and a bunch of other things besides.
In typical Nintendo fashion, all the technical side of connecting to the Internet and communicating with other people is made as painless as possible — so much so that were it not for the lengthy connection process and the message on screen that says when you’re connected to the Internet, you’d think you were just playing another part of the main game. But you’re not; you’re in an area where every character you meet represents someone else who is playing the game somewhere in the world, and the things they say reflect things they have done and choices they have made.
One particularly interesting aspect of the Festival Plaza is the fact that you can host “missions”. These are simple minigames that usually involve running around the plaza and either talking to the correct people based on their greetings to you, or answering their questions correctly. The more points you score with correct actions, the more Festival Coins you earn, which can subsequently be used on Festival Plaza’s attractions.
What’s interesting about these missions is that it’s not just you playing them. Host one while you’re playing online and you may well notice your “total score” increasing faster than you’re contributing to it, and the number of participants rising. This is because when someone hosts a mission, other people connected to Festival Plaza at the same time receive a message and have the option to take part. Everyone who takes part gets rewards, and the higher the overall total score at the end — which can usually be inflated considerably by just a few more participants — the bigger the rewards everyone gets. It offers a nice balance of simple gameplay, light competitiveness — there’s a leaderboard at the end of the mission to show who contributed the most points — and jolly cooperation. And with Nintendo’s typical lack of direct communication facilities — something which I’m increasingly thankful for with the growing unpleasantness of many online playerbases — the whole thing just feels like a nice bit of fun.
The other interesting thing about these missions is that you can learn something from them. Some of them challenge you to name the correct types of Pokémon that would be strong against another particular type, for example, while some of them challenge you to pick out people who are naming specific types of Pokémon. But these missions aren’t all about the game itself; some of them are straight-up educational and seemingly developed in the interests of making people from all over the world feel a bit closer together. Of particular note are the “Language Lesson” missions in which all you have to do is find the people who are saying “hello”, “goodbye” or “thank you” in a given language. You’re given the set phrases to look out for in the mission information, then after that it’s up to you to remember them. By the end of the couple of minutes the mission takes, you’ll feel confident at saying those three phrases in another language, which is pretty neat.
Since Pokémon is primarily aimed at kids, despite a considerable adult-age enthusiast community of competitive players, I’m not anticipating any of these missions will get into anything too deep or complicated, but they’ve been a nice diversion from the main game, they feel in keeping with the overall tone of the whole thing and I’ve learned a thing or two from them, both about Pokémon in general and a couple of foreign languages to boot.