After an unfortunate last-minute rescheduling, the events of the Pokémon GO Safari Zone are finally back in vogue in their respective cities of reference. The dance was opened this week by Safari Zone in Liverpool, but with an important novelty: all those who bought the ticket were able to participate in the event from all over the world. For the occasion, we at Tech Princess took part in the Liverpool Safari Zone 2021 on Pokémon GO, and we are here to bring you our impressions.
Pokémon GO: our impressions of the Liverpool Safari Zone
Let’s start immediately by saying that the idea of making the Safari Zones open to the whole world, after purchasing a ticket, seemed effective to us and goes well with the health safety regulations currently in force. Despite this, we are also convinced that an operation such as the one implemented by Niantic puts in the spotlight some defects that this formula, by its very nature, presents.
Let’s start from the basics: what is a Safari Zone? Even if you are an active user of Pokémon GO, you may never have given too much weight to this type of event; which is understandable given that until now they have been limited to cities very far from Italy. In fact, these Safari Zones want to recreate the same atmosphere as their namesake from the main games, proposing extremely rare and sometimes regional pocket creatures, that is, available only in certain parts of the globe.
In the case of Liverpool 2021, the main Pokémon were almost all of the water type, with an increased percentage of obtaining chromatic specimens, that is extremely difficult to obtain creatures of a different color than their “normal” counterparts. Besides them we had two special guests: Relicanth, the regional Pokémon of New Zealand, and Unown, present in the letters forming the name of Liverpool.
It is clear that the real attraction of the event derives from these last creatures, practically impossible to find with other methods, unless you take a trip to New Zealand or are incredibly lucky with the random spawn of Unown (possibility that in 5 years of game happened to us a single time).
A satisfying event but …
As our complimentary ticket was only valid for Sunday 17 October we had less time than a normal user, who would have been able to enjoy the Safari Zone from the 14th. Despite this the event still proved satisfying, ever since we started our city tour in the late morning. In fact, a series of field researches immediately put us in a good mood, which rewarded us with a series of useful objects and Chromatic Chinchou, which we quickly evolved into Lanturn.
Activating an aroma to attract more creatures, we then walked from Pokéstop to Pokéstop, noting that the percentage of chromatics had really increased. Only in this event we have in fact recovered the shiny version of Dwebble, Wailmer and Mudkip, definitely a noteworthy loot and that could have been much richer, if only we had had more time.
Of course also Relicanth, the regional Pokémon, was not long in coming, and we managed to grab it in decent numbers, enough to evaluate the swap en masse to try and get a lucky specimen. But the real challenge of this Safari Zone was finding all forms of Unown available.
These Pokémon were in fact quite common during the event, but some forms, specifically the I, the E and the P, continued to elude us or to appear in remote places to say the least. Eventually we had to try our hand at a decent urban shot to add to the Pokédex even the last missing letter.
In short, the Safari Zone certainly amused us, but there is no doubt that something was missing. We are obviously talking about everything that revolves around this event, thought not by chance as an opportunity to be experienced alive.
The purpose of the Safari Zone
The GO Safari Zones were born as an opportunity to “make community” and over the years Niantic has practically set up real theme parks in the cities where they took place. It goes without saying that then reducing everything to a simple in-game event greatly distort the original intent of the initiative and makes us think about how much the ticket price is worth paying.
In fact, the way we lived this Safari Zone was not so dissimilar from a normal event, like the many that take place continuously in the game, with just those two exclusive Pokémon that justify participation. For future editions it would be ideal if Niantic decided to put a little more meat on the fire, such as exclusive raids and more field research with interesting rewards.
Once these small corrections have been implemented, then yes that we would find ourselves in front of a real Safari Zone completely usable all over the world, until then, these events will always be half lived by those who are not in the organizing city.