Pokemon Black 2 and White 2 Reviews with Spoilers

     Very few other things compare to the feeling of satisfaction when a person finally wrecks the Champion in any Pokemon game.  Pokemon Black 2 and Pokemon White 2 make it all the more satisfying because of the context of the journey to get to that point.
     While the game may continue two years after the events of Pokemon Black and Pokemon White, there are immediate and noticeable changes.  You start off in a new city in a portion of the Unova region that was previously a forest.  Cheren, your rival from the first game, is the first gym leader while Bianca, your other rival from the first game, is an assistant to the resident Pokemon expert for the region, Professor Juniper.  Alder, the previous game's champion, makes a return appearance early.
     After playing through for a while, you get the opportunity to return to old locales.  There are differences in the appearance and subtle changes in the layout but majorly, they have new areas to explore.  The game progresses linearly, get to town, fight Team Plasma, fight gym leader, rinse and repeat which helps to ensure that players stay on track with the game.  It should also be noted that the role of the HM has been minimized more by removing badge requirements to use them.
     After beating the eighth gym, you confront Team Plasma.  The final scene makes excellent use of the processing power that the DS possesses in terms of usage of the 3D graphics and leaves the game open with the cliffhanger.  You then go on to fight the champion and beat the game.
     You may be wondering to yourself, where are the spoilers?  Here they are.  This game features many references back to Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald.  One includes the Colress Machine which moves Pokemon that are blocking routes.  This functions similarly to the Devon Scope to remove Kecleon from in front of the Fortree gym.  Also, unlike in past games, one of the gym leaders is very important in terms of plot development.  In R/S/E Wallace was important to stop Groudon/Kyogre while here Drayden has the DNA Splicers to fuse Kyurem with Reshiram/Zekrom.  The eighth gym is water, sharing this trait only with R/S/E and the town where the eighth gym is located is designed similarly to Pacifidlog Town where the wood houses floated on the water.  Finally, the eighth gym leader from the previous game becomes the champion with the previous game's champion still able to be battled.
     I give this game a 9.5/10 and I am looking forward to the R/S/E remakes.

Final Rating: 9.5/10