Pokemon FireRed

The Eternal Champion's Return to Kanto

Some games age like fine wine, and Pokémon FireRed is the entire vineyard. With its latest release on the Switch 2, I found myself doing what I do roughly once a year or every other year — playing straight through to become Champion. And you know what? It still absolutely slaps. There's something almost meditative about running through Kanto again, and the fact that this game can still pull me in after all these years says everything you need to know about its quality.

What's keeping this particular run fresh is a self-imposed challenge: building a team of six Pokémon I've never used before. And honestly, this is where FireRed reveals just how brilliantly designed it is. When you're not laser-focused on your usual squad, every route becomes a surprise party. Oh yeah, Koffing lives here! Or suddenly you're face to face with an Exeggcute and thinking, wait, those guys are actually kind of sick. It's like rediscovering a game you've played dozens of times, and that kind of replayability is borderline miraculous.

Now, the Switch 2 release does come with one notable change — a profanity filter on naming your character and Pokémon. Look, I get it. Online trading is seamless now, and Nintendo wants to keep things family-friendly. Fair enough. But it does feel like a slightly lazy solution. A smarter approach would have been to let players name things whatever they want but flag those Pokémon as untradeable. Let me have my fun in my own save file, you know? It's a minor gripe, but it's the kind of thing that feels like a blanket policy rather than a thoughtful one. They also apparently patched a bug involving legendary Pokémon encounters. Never hit that one myself, but good on them for the fix.

At the end of the day, Pokémon FireRed might genuinely be the perfect game. That's not hyperbole — it's a statement earned over years and years of replays that somehow never feel stale. The Switch 2 release is just another excuse to fall in love with Kanto all over again, and I'll gladly take it. See you all again in 2027, probably.