Early thoughts on Pokemon Ranch
June 9, 2008
Steve asked me to post a few of my thoughts on the New WiiWare title Pokemon Ranch.
Read on for a quick tour around the newest WiiWare tile and the answer to all our overstuffed boxes!
After an initial step by step setup of the game you are sent to the Farm. When the game starts Hayley, the owner of the ranch brings 5 Pokémon with her to “get the farm started” and shows you around the farm and the game controls. Hayley indicates she will bring one more Pokémon every day but encourages you to bring as many of your Pokemon as you can to fill up her farm.
Naturally, I immediately fired up the transfer program. The rumors about a Pokémon per day limit are correct. There is a 20 Pokémon/Day limit, but it is actually a lot tighter than that. The initial batch of Pokemon that Haley brought also count against the limit. I was able to transfer 15 more from my game. so I’m guessing in the future I’ll be able to send 19 a day.
I have a lot of legends sitting around not doing anything, so they were among the first that I sent over. I ended up with something like this:
In a very nice touch, my shiny Goldeen retained her shiny colors when she appeared in the Ranch.
After that, I’m afraid there wasn’t much active to do. This is not entirely unsurprising as the game was billed as a storage system first and foremost. Haley hinted that there were more toys and features to come as her farm grew (read: as you deposit more Pokémon)
Still, my wife and I had a great time watching the goings on:
The Pokémon that I deposited wandered around the farmyard interacting with my Mii, my Wife’s Mii, Haley, and each other.
Pikachu gave piggyback rides, various Pokémon fell asleep, scooted around, and every few minutes everyone got together to do a trick:
Perhaps unsurprisingly, my MewTwo was a bit of a Jerk. He kept going around shooting confuse rays at the other Pokémon until my Marrowak Casey had enough and hit him (and my Mii, and several other Pokémon) with an Earthquake.
Darkrai particularly loved snatching me up and carrying my around:
All in all, this was very cute. The camera controls were limited but the instructions described a “free camera” mode I couldn’t access. I’m guessing that is probably one of the upgrades that will become available after I deposit a few dozen more Pokémon. There were also instructions on how to use the toys, which I didn’t’ start with. I’m therefore guessing that there will be more and more content as time goes on.
As a storage system, the Pokémon per Day limit kind of hurts, but as a little gadget to spend 10 min with every time you fire up you Wii Pokefarm is Brilliant. I suspect I’ll be leaving it on in the background while I’m working on something else. My wife described it as “like watching a Fish tank, but with Lighting Bolts”
And here are a few more screen shots. For those wondering how to get these out of the game, the player can take pictures with a “camera” in the game. If you go into the album within the game it give you the option to save it to a SD card. From there I just popped the SD card into my laptop and uploaded the images to my image sharing app.
(I was having a Pokémon Parade, in case you are wondering about the confetti):
- Editor’s Notes
- The Pokémon per day limit increases as your ranch increases in size.
- You only have one ranch even though up to eight Diamond/Pearl games can connect with it.
- When you bring Pokémon into the ranch you assign a Mii to take care of them.
- You can only withdraw Pokémon back onto the cartridge that deposited them.
- Free Mode opens up on the second day.
- You can use the “Time Travel” trick to unlock everything in one day.
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Overall it is a very nice article, but you spelled Hayley’s name wrong. :) Also, the limit depends on the level. The first day it is 20, the second day 40, third day 80, and then it jumps to 200 and 400 on the next two respective days (assuming that you put the max number of pokemon in the ranch on each day).
I would say that this is characteristic of my first experiences today also. It is quite entertaining for the first few minutes at least watching Pokemon mingle with the ‘farmers’
funny i transferred almost the same set of legendaries you did.
My MewTwo was also causing problems, complaining he wanted to run free.
That is awesome but they should of made it like that harvest moon farming game just with pokemon
How do you get Wii Points? I like breeding for fun and can’t seem to get rid of what I breed, so sticking them in Ranch would be a handy solution for my problems.
You can buy them with a credit card through the wii store or you can buy them at stores that sell wii products, like Best Buy and Gamestop. I think Toys R Us had some wii points too.
This looks sweet!! I need to get a wii!! *is angry*
I’ve got a question, how do you get the images from the SD card to the net? I’ve saved pictures onto, about 12 so far and don’t know how to put them here or get them on here.
Because I’ve read that you have to pay for the web thing now on the Wii.
You just need a way to read the SD card on your computer. You can then take the images onto your computer and do with them what you wish.
If your computer doesn’t have a card reader, you can find a USB Card Reader for about 10 bucks at tigerdirect.com (link on the ads in the forums) to help out the site!
This game is going to be awesome i’m getting it this weekend
I already have it. It is pretty boring if you ask me. I just wondering how the trade with Haley would work. She would just give you one of her pokemon.
i got this yesterday, my birthday, and i thought that the game was quite boring, but very helpful and cute. Hayley’s turtwig kept riding on other pokemon and i noticed that her starapter also liked to pick everyone up…and then drop them, and make them flat (which was very funny, because i saw my bro get flattened :D) I didn’t like how you could only put a few pokemon in, and the fact that you couldn’t actually take any of Hayley’s pokemon…*sigh* i really wanted to take her pokemon…but i guess that you can’t…oh well.I guess i’ll stop rambling on and on, so for my final word or two, i found it to be a cute little way to waste a few minutes of my life. :D
Do you have a totodile I need one my fc 4553 9342 5329
living here on earth is the most wonderful yet difficult process of our life..but enjoying the Pokemon is another mean of having a colorful life..
um you sound like an aliean are you?
Sweet but I just used my wii points on kirby64. Shoot! *runs to store in search of wii points*
sex is fun
SEX SEX SEX
ok, i got the game (now i wish i didnt) and i dont now how to trade with hayley coz i got the pokemon she wants but dont now how to give them to her?
help plz
i wanna trade my friendcode is 1934-6929-5622