I'm having a hard time deciding if this is worth preordering or not. On one hand, it seems the Pokemon series will be making another major graphical shift, and when that happened with the DS, I ended up really liking Pearl. I put around 200 hours into that game, which is pretty unheard of for me. The only other game I may have spent about that much time on would be the collective time of all of my play throughs of Tales of Symphonia on the good 'ol Gamecube. I may have put around 100 hours total in Sapphire as well (that reminds me that it needs a battery replacement - still saves, just like, the single time determined event no longer works). I haven't been able to get into any Pokemon games since Pearl though. I tried Heart Gold and Soul Silver, and they did nothing for me. I tried out Black and White and only made it about halfway through. I tried Black 2 and White 2 and made it about an hour in.
I need the Pokemon series to do something so different, or change enough visually that I'm yanked back in. I'm thinking X and Y might just do it for me. Another problem I'm considering that I may have had is that Pearl is the latest Pokemon game that I physically own. Perhaps owning a physical Pokemon game once more will immerse me as deeply as the series used to. Holding a tangible item really does make a huge difference for me, versus some data I found online. The final problem I have is when I should pre-order it if I choose to buy it. We just know October 2013, but I won't have a job that I'm aware of from about May 9th to September. If the game comes out prior to October 15th, I have to decide to pre-order it off of one of my next two paychecks.
Well, in a more general sense, it does look like it makes enough changes to warrant a purchase. There aren't a ton of new Pokemon, so I won't be turned off quite so much by an overwhelming number of new Pokemon, nor the annoyance of having to play an entire game before I can use older Pokemon that I actually like. The actual 3D environment and not kind of 2D with some 3D angles like Black/White (2) should be pretty interesting as well.
I just have to hope that within the next 30 days, more important information comes to light.
Oh, and new Mewtwo looks like they put his tail on his head. Originality at an all time low there.
