Pokemon Go’s latest update has arrived and adds a potentially handy feature to the smash hit smartphone game.
It probably won’t be of huge interest to the casual Pidgey-chaser, but for those who continue to plough hours into their Pokemon pursuit, the new “appraisal” feature could help take your strategic approach to the next level.
So what does it do? Appraisal calls upon the team leader avatars to offer feedback on each Pokemon you catch. Pressing the appraisal button next to a highlighted Pokemon in the menu will show you its strengths, weaknesses and how it stacks up against other Pokemon in its species. That should help with deciding what monsters to battle, evolve or trade.
If nothing else, the new feature has paved the way for some fantastically immature memes already.
Alright, no need to be rude about it! #PokemonGo #appraisal pic.twitter.com/Uw8CGKXm2B
— Rob Cureton (@OrfulComics) August 24, 2016
https://twitter.com/misskatimus/status/768378131967123456
So this new appraisal system in Pokemon GO is well….just yeah! #PokemonGO pic.twitter.com/LLXKELAxbw
— The8BitMonkey  (@The8BitMonkey) August 24, 2016
https://twitter.com/Atsuroz/status/768409736207360000
But it’s not the clearest system, and some users have pointed out that at first glance the team leaders seem a bit vague with their advice.
Luckily, there are now numerous Pokemon Go fansites that really go the extra mile to uncover all of the game’s intricacies. Both the Pokemon Go GamePress site and the Pokemon Go Database provide a description of what each trainer actually means by their various phrases. Once you learn the lingo they become much more useful.
It feels like the next few months could be pivotal for the future success of Niantic Labs’ game. At its peak Pokemon Go was being played by 45 million people worldwide on a daily basis. That figure has dropped off to a still whopping, but noticeably lower 30 million.
A steady decline is natural for an app of this nature and Pokemon Go still sits in the top three free apps on Apple’s App Store at the time of writing. But users have become irritated by recent updates that have reportedly made it more difficult to catch Pokemon, and the developers need to get future enhancements right to ensure virtual Pokemon trainers don’t decide to take an early retirement.
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