Player Reviews

It's by far the most AMAZING pokemon game I've ever played, you should start too!

Whenever I turn on my laptop I am instantly drawn to PokeFarm to check my eggs! PokeFarm is what has pushed away boredom for me and is amazing! I just love that everyone is friendly and those who aren't are reprimanded, it gives off a comforting vibe. :3

I've been playing Pokefarm since the original in around 2011. While I've slowly grown more and more distant from the forums over the years, it's been amazing to watch this site grow. This has been a lot of feelings and a review roughly 6 years in the makin; as a result, this will be //very// long, sorry. ^^ - Pros - *Clicking has never been faster and easier, from the fields to the party to the mobile support. Boy, do I remember the days of SuperLite and journals for mass-clicking. What an /upgrade/ since. *Good lord, has the event system /improved/ so much. During PF1, to give a sense of scale, I only actively participated (and won) one event Pokemon from an actual event from a combination of a feeling of unrewarding (too much effort for something I felt wasn't that valuable, since a lot of them were breedable or custom sprites that I wasn't huge on at the time), inefficiency (see clicking), and time constraints. In comparison, one of the big reasons I keep popping back in is the different styles of events, especially the recent Halloween one! It's actually REALLY FUN! And it's so nice to see it having come so far! *And to build on that, the tournament-system is, again, very fun and rewarding. I feel like I don't have to push myself to extremes just to get a prize; I can play when I have time and energy and still get a decent prize out of it, and a feeling of accomplishment. *CONTESTS. Okay, so sue me, maybe not the most engaging feature of the site. But I put easily 150+ hours into contests between R/S/E, D/P/PT, and ORAS so seeing the Pokeblock machine and contests made me about cry. <3 *Passive egg gain. Seriously, what a nice QoL feature for when I can't click like a madman for shiny hunts. Pop on, click a bit (usually around 200-300 interactions at best), pop off, check in later. *Albinos/Melanistics. Great ideas, good execution, and I'm always a sucker for something that encourages me to shiny hunt more - it was always my favorite feature. *Site layout. Initially, I greatly disliked the beta PFQ layout, but I've grown to appreciate the taskbar so much, especially that the newsfeed isn't constantly clogging main page and is just a clickable icon with a notification light. Small thing, but especially for when I'm on mobile, it means a lot :p *Site staff. REALLY has come a long ways. While initially I was very active on the forums on PF1, over the years during the site's lifespan I found myself increasingly nervous of the forums due to the state of the site staff. I still feel that same nervousness, admittedly, but it's so much better; boosted moreso by the fact all staff I've interacted with have been extremely polite and nice to talk to, and a pleasure to interact with, generally. I feel less terrified of absentmindedly making a mistake somewhere, because truthfully I feel the mods nowadays are very kind and fair over these things. While I do think I'll forever be once bitten, twice shy about the forums, it means SO much beyond words at how much this has improved. *Can I say the spritework is a pro? xD; The custom spritework is really adorable, and honestly, I kinda want it to count as a point, so. It does now! *The shelter overhaul is massively appreciated. The one thing that had me on other sites then PFQ, especially a competitor, was shelter filtering. And then PFQ got shelter filtering and I've never looked back. SUCH a QoL change and SO necessary. Plus, it's way less laggy and nausea inducing for me in motion, so that's a nice plus. *Mass-Click weekends / Fabbu Friday are really fun and I adore them so much ;w; *THE MOBILE SUPPOOOOOOORT. SO GOOD. If you EVER tried to play PF1 on your phone or tablet before, you probably understand why I was SO stoked to see PFQ with a functional mobile site. *I really enjoy the fishing minigame and the new berry garden! Little things, but enjoyable. *The UI has genuinely come so far; I addressed this a little earlier, but as a whole everything is much easier to organize and look through fast. It's a lot cleaner and less laggy then the original. *USER FEEDBACK. Even this very review system still feels GROUNDBREAKING to me. One of my BIGGEST complaints originally during the PF1 era was how LITTLE communication and user feedback seemed to be taken, ever; it felt very dismissed and made fun of, and I honestly grew from recommending Pokefarm to telling people that it wasn't worth getting into as a new user, due to the unfriendly atmosphere from staff and the lack of listening to user feedback. Boy, am I SO glad to say that's pretty much done a 180; between this very review system, the absolute constant responsiveness and quick judgements on the suggestions forum, the constantly implemented user suggestions, feedback actually changing the site and adding QoL issues, and listening to the playerbase with both ears, I don't really think I've seen very many sites that have this level of communication and listening to the users. What an absolute change from how I used to feel, and I'm SO glad about that! - Cons - *Scour system. Fundamentally, I do understand the changes, but I can't help but feel annoyed at the extreme limitations of only three Pokemon max - and that's /with scour boosts/. I understand it's most likely to limit the flood of boxes into the economy, but I don't have to be happy about it. :P *Deltas. This one's a little more complex for me to explain, but it comes down to it feeling vaguely worthless overall; it's just an added type, no visual changes, nada, nothin. Howeverrrr I wouldn't dock a point off for this it's a personal preference. But I would prefer maybe even just a recolor, or for deltas to be a bit more limited with more visual changes - that said, it's a lot of work on the art team, so I understand why it isn't. *Summoning. This is one feature that I feel got much more broken compared to the original, and it feels heavily like artificial difficulty. I really am not a fan of the new unlock system, mostly because it just feels... tedious and artificial. I really do wish it was more like the old - get 300/400 dex entries, 50/60 eggdex, and find a summon item yourself to unlock - or at least just... a bit less tedious then all the seperate unlock requirements. Hell, I'd even take a hybrid - keep chain unlocks, but make the base summons unlock similar to the original system, just... it really does feel like artificial difficulty, and I can't get into it, which is a shame. *CURRENCY. Oh, man, if one thing got WORSE since PF1, it's the currency, and AGAIN it's a shame. Credits (the free, basic currency) are fine, as always - no longer am I flooded with them like on PF1, but it's not hard to come by either. Gold Poke, admittedly, much easier then it was on earlier days of PFQ to come by, but you either have way too much of it or way too little of it with little inbetween - I have it usually rotting on my account, which is amazing to me. I remember when it used to be so precious I practically spent it as soon as I got it. The MAIN issue I have is with Zophan, the currency replacing the previous black market currency from PF1 / GP as the paid, real-money currency. Listen, I have little issue with paid currency, but only if it has a genuine alternative or an easier way to get your hands on some without paying. Zophan has neither of these; trading on the forums for it is a nightmare and a half, and there's no conversion or buy-with-gp option, even at inflated prices. It's a bit of a letdown, really, and I would like to see something that provides a somewhat-reliable, if low, source of it. Remember when GP was THE premium currency on PF1, but you could get a somewhat-reliable supply of it from treasure boxes? That was good, although at the time was still flooding the market and needed some retuning. Something a lot less farmable would be nice. Even something as simple as, say, you meet a certain goal (idk. 9,000-10,000 interactions in two weeks??) and get, say, 50 Zophan per month or bimonthly. That's 100 Zophan in a month, assuming you work for it, and honestly would be more then enough for a f2per like me (and obviously this just is me spitballing ideas; I'm sure there's better ways to impliment it, even lower amounts or something.) *The new market. Admittedly, I like the fact it sells everything, but it feels really messy in the UI department. Also, I've never been a fan of basic items not having a permanent set price, so. *PokeRadar. Oh, boy, this is a difficult one. I'm Glad you can buy it and power it as a f2p user; I'm less glad that Hypermode basically means it's pointless to do so because what would you rather have? A 595% boost or a /3,996% boost/? I know it's supposed to have a draw since it's the premium account type, but. Yeesh. When it's THAT drastic, it is super discouraging and makes me less inclined to care as much about the site, since as a college student I don't really have the extra money to drop on premium for any site. *Hypermode in general. While I have no problems with a premium account type and the special draws it has, hypermode feels very... untuned? Overbalanced?? 500 gp a month (meh) and the above issue are the biggest issues I have with it, though; extra exp, a free summon, shorter release times, doubled shelter adopts & a GP discount sounds fine for a premium on it's own, although I would REALLY lower a bit of the exp gain or the shelter adopts, but the addition of all the GP you could ever need and basically sit as deadweight half the time and /the Pokeradar issue/ starts to make it feel like unless you have low investment, only care about the complete dex or somehow manage to trade for Hypermode, it's pointless to play as a f2per. Which... really sucks, considering I mainly play Pokemon and Pokefarm for shiny hunting and event collecting, and always have. Maybe this one is just me, so don't take this as the be-all-end-all, but it is a major issue for me; it's definitely killed my drive to play quite a bit. *Lack of things to do. Weirdly, this is not a point I thought I'd have to make, but here I am. The main draw for me is shiny-hunting, and the main draw overall is collection and shiny hunting - well and good, except shinyhunting as a f2per feels tedious and unrewarding, and there's only so much collecting you can do. Add to that the main goal is repetition (clicking, always) with little payoff (I do not even know how long I clicked for during the Halloween event with little reward), and there's basically /nothing/ to do but click and check scours/berries, and I find myself treating PFQ as a mobile game - check in once or twice a day, click my party, do some dailies, and don't touch it. I suppose the forums are the other big draw, but as a player a bit bitten by the forums from years of playing the original and as someone with severe social anxiety, that's sort of out of my league, leaving little for me to invest in. There is the training dojo, if that's your thing, but it doesn't really have enough for me to care about doing outside of quests. - Neutral - *Staff... kind of. As I mentioned above, I really do think staffing has come a long ways, and for the most part I'm very happy to say that the staff generally feels friendly, fair, and polite. However, there is still work to be done; I do still feel that the staff comes off as rather rude on occasions in replies on the forums, more with the higher-power staff. I'm much more willing to forgive this then I used to be, especially concerning PF1, because I know that they have a lot of work on their plate as well as having to deal with rude users and repeated questions 24/7. So this is more of a minor issue, but considering this is aiming to be a full review, I figured it best to list. *Pokewalker. Minor issue, not enough for me to be like boohoo this sucks, just sad it's a mobile-only app - I don't have the space on my phone, so I won't really be able to check in every now and then. I miss the inefficient, laggy desktop app that made me click 24/7 so I could hang with my Pokemon and crashed constantly, call me nostalgic :P *Not sure how to phrase it, but all the buyables for account-upgrades bothers me a tiny bit. Remember when you got more scour slots with exp, not buying boosters? Or that lab-reloaders and egg passes (to not break shiny chains) were the only big buyables besides shelter passes, and batteries/Gigarimos. It's not... /bad/, per say, but. Sort of feeds into the currency issue; pretty sure once I hit the shelter pass cap, I will have absolutely nothing to spend GP on, and for what?? It was hard for me to manage initially; now it's just sharply dropping off. There's at least 6 buyables for the daycare alone! I dunno, this seems more to fit into the scour issue, but I couldn't figure out where to put it since it's not so much of a complaint. *The focus on everything being a challenge to accomplish is generally fine, just... it's a little disheartening to see a lot of it supposed to be needlessly artificially difficult (looking at you, summon unlocks). Not even because I'm 'lazy'; I have rl issues that limits my energy that I can spend on pretty much everything, including games like this. Frankly, I just don't have the spoons to play at the level that seems to be needed to unlock and perfect everything. I don't want to be spoonfed every unlock, but I feel a bit of a balance rework would be nice. *The fact I can't rate in half stars! [/joke] In the end, this site has come SO far since the original. I'm very happy and proud of how much has changed for the better, and I'm glad I've spent six years and counting on this site. I'll keep checking in and participating in events, definitely. While it's not perfect by far, it's definitely improving at a constant rate, and it delights me to be able to say with all honesty in the last year I've been able to warmly recommend this game, that's genuinely shaped a lot of my life and introduced me to many long-time friends, to friends again! AND THANKS FOR READING THIS IT GOT WAY LONGER THEN I EXPECTED AHHFGFH- TL;DR: Come a long ways. Has it's flaws, far from perfect, but genuinely enjoyable to play. User feedback is listened to with great care, staffing is generally very polite and fair, and there's a lot of QoL things that make the game fun to play. Better suited to checking in maybe once or twice a day at the current stage. Looking fowards to seeing how things change in the future. Would actually rate a 3.5 stars if I could, but it's just not quite to the 4-star era just yet. (Sorry Niet For The Essay Of A Review I'll Give You A Cookie In Apology ;_;)

You provided an essay, and so with an essay I shall respond ;) It's great to hear you've been with us for so long! It's actually hard to believe how long PF has been around. To think we're nearing the 8th anniversary of PF1's opening... it's crazy. Thank you for all of your positive feedback. I'm pleased to see all of the small updates being appreciated. Interactions, of course, being the major one. Since they are the very core of the game, they need to be as streamlined as possible. I think we're getting there, but if any more ideas come up I'll be sure to add them. We almost went back to the original event system from PF1. That's how Seasonal Turtwig was given out. But it was quickly realised to be a bad idea, and so we started running events that relied more on individual activity rather than requiring competitive play. This way, even casual players would have a good chance of getting the prize. We're also experimenting with different prize types to make each one worthwhile. Tournaments would indeed be a good example of that, combining both the more "casual" gaining of Tokens and the "competitive" top-100 placements. I'm personally quite pleased with the Tournaments. I'm glad you enjoy the Contests. They were a real challenge to "translate" from the single-player experience of R/S/E into the multiplayer PFQ, but I feel it's been done quite well. Passive Egg Gain is again an improvement intended to allow people to play at a more relaxed pace and still make progress. So it doesn't matter if you can't be online, your Eggs will progress just fine. Albinos and Melanistics are another point of pride, and as the art team continues to "revamp" them to be better than whatever could be thrown together in order to get the feature running, I hope you'll enjoy them even more. Getting the layout to work on mobile actually helped drive a lot of design choices that improved the usability of the site as a whole. Things like making sure buttons are big enough to hit with your finger helped make it easier for mouse users too. So it all works out! Thank you for your kind words regarding staff. We are constantly trying to improve, and while mistakes may still be made, I like to think they are learned from. Again, thanks for the feedback regarding sprite work. A lot of effort goes into them :) I personally preferred it when the Pokémon moved, because it made the Shelter feel more alive. But it was a nightmare from a usability perspective, and so aesthetics were sacrificed for ease of use. It works, though, so that's good. More events :D Regular events are of course important to help keep things interesting even when there's nothing specifically major going on. Glad you like them! As mentioned above, mobile support is extremely important. Especially now with many people owning phones and even using them as their primary device. One thing you may not see directly is that PFQ is heavily optimised to reduce download sizes to a minimum. This is good not only for faster download times, but also reduced cost when using mobile data. Ah, Fishing! That was a fun one to implement. Everything you love and hate about Fishing, rolled into one place :D And the Berry Garden is simple, but effective :) It's become an overall trend for designs to be "flatter" and simpler, so I've followed with that by reducing the number of gradients and shadows to a minimum. This conveniently improves render speeds on weaker devices like older phones. And yes, feedback is important :) Thank you for yours. --- Unfortunately I think you were a bit spoiled when it came to PF1's Scours. Having collected a ton of data, I can say with confidence that 3 is just right, especially with the 1-hour length being made standard. After all, that's about equivalent to 36 missions in a 12-hour period, whereas on PF1 you could only have 27 12-hour missions for the best stuff ;) Deltas are mostly intended to encourage sharing of Display Codes on other sites, although it does also act as a "shiny sink". While I understand your feeling with regard to their appearance not changing... well, that's just how Deltas work in the official series TCG. I know other fan-games have used Deltas to completely change the Pokémon's appearance, but that's just not true to the core. Summon Items are intended to provide a system of progression, but one thing that tends to go unnoticed is that you have a boosted chance of finding each Summon Item in Boxes after unlocking them, until you find one. This is something that we just wouldn't be able to do without the progression/unlock system, so there's benefits to that :) The problem with currency in general is that, in the world of PFQ, everyone is printing money all the time. Make an interaction? That's 2-4 Credits that appeared out of nowhere. We get about 15 million interactions, that's 30-60 million Credits magicked into existence every single day. Frankly it's remarkable that they still hold value! GP is similar, but obviously with far fewer sources to get it from. As for ZC, I would agree with you that there needed to be a way to "earn" it, but you can: via trading. Yes, trading is hard, but some of our top players are actually f2p players like yourself, who found themselves a nice system of selling things for ZC to get Hypermode to get more things to sell. I much prefer this system as it feels more like a player economy rather than the game just drip-feeding you handouts. That's the kind of thing that "bad" f2p games do ;) The Market is very much a double-edged sword. On the plus side, you can buy anything there. On the negative side, the sellers are players and they set the prices. This does allow supply and demand to take effect, so if an item is expensive it's probably in high demand or low supply. That makes it all the more worthwhile if you manage to get one yourself through gameplay. Win a Z-Crystal? Great! Now do you use it... or sell it for a profit? The Radar's boost does indeed grow exponentially, but I don't think Hypermode's boost is that unreasonable. As mentioned previously, some f2p players worked their way with that "regular" boost into getting enough to sell for the ZC to buy Hypermode, making it easier to maintain afterwards. It's a challenge of sorts. Again I'd agree, but... trading ;) But if you have any specific suggestions, please feel free to hit up the Suggestions Forum. We're working on that :) There are features being worked on to give more things to do, but currently I'm working on getting the game to work on multiple servers. Without that, the system just would not be able to support a growing player-base, which is needed to keep things running. One thing in particular that we want to work on is improving rewards for clickbacks, which should allow your activity to be rewarded further. For the Pokéwalker, I'd just like to point out that there is no download necessary. It's just a 16Kb "interactive" image file. You can visit it from the website, or use the "Add to Home Screen" to set a bookmark for easier access. It takes up no space on your phone. In fact, your review was almost as big (14Kb) as the entire Pokéwalker ;) So please do give it a try. It's quite fun to wander around and earn points on it. Account Upgrades are intended to be a way to progress in the game. Earn currency, spend it to unlock more things. It could maybe do with some tweaking, but that's the idea. GP can always be spent on DayCare Passes, among other things, so there's always *something* you can buy. The trouble with balancing anything is that you have to try and find a way to make the game enjoyable both for those who are on here 16+ hours a day every day, and for those who only have 15 minutes. I feel like recent updates, especially the Egg Timer, are helping towards that, but there's still progress to be made to give the "less intense" players something to achieve. A TL;DR for you: Thank you for your feedback, we're working on it :)

Note from Niet: ethanol has been in contact and requested that their rating be changed to 3/5, and additional text added to their review. Please see below for the updated content. ----- I've been playing this game for a little while and, while the game was initially a very fun way to kill time, I find myself starting to lose interest. This is what's prompted me to make this review in the first place. First, the pros. The game works well. Interacting is easy, the layout works well on both mobile and computer, and it's very easy to get the hang of how the game plays. Additionally, you do have the opportunity to trade for premium currency, which is always a welcome addition in games such as these. The site is constantly updating and there's always at least one event going on to keep players interested. That being said, I do have some issues with the gameplay as well. First, it can get very repetitive. I'm one of the players more interested in dex building than anything else, but more often than not I find trying to build my dex a very unrewarding task. It doesn't seem to matter how many clicks I send out, hardly anyone seems to click me back. Passive EXP gain is only available for eggs, so it makes trying to evolve Pokemon a pain in the butt. The additional events are nice, though I don't bother participating in the dress-up contests, and most of the tournaments and challenges just involve more interacting. It would be nice to have a little more variety, although admittedly I don't know what this would be. More stuff like the fishing area would be cool, maybe a Safari Zone or something? Just as a thought. Second, while you CAN trade for premium currency and earn regular currency through a number of means, it seems very difficult to earn a significant amount of currency without spending money. I know it's not impossible, but as someone who doesn't like spending money on web games, it is a bit of a turn off. Thirdly, I fail to understand why there is no block feature. I get that you'd rather people report people harassing others, but what if I was feeling uncomfortable about an individual for a reason that doesn't warrant reporting for instance? To give an example, I have an ex who likes to stalk me and will often join sites I'm on. Either to try contact me or monitor my activity. Technically she's not doing anything wrong by joining an online game that I also play, but that doesn't mean I want to hear from her. You know? I hope it puts my stance into context at least. No she doesn't play the game, but I needed some sort of example. Finally, and I know this has been addressed in numerous other reviews, but I feel the staff's conduct can be rather rude at times. Don't get me wrong, I'm a Kiwi and I do to an extent understand British humour (since I've seen it brought up as a defence numerous times), but some of the responses I've seen to players from staff members have been downright rude. Niet especially seems to come off as rather snappy sometimes when he comments, and it puts me off participating in the forums as a result. Overall, it's a fun and functional clicking game with a fun Pokemon twist to it. There are just some things I would want to see fixed before I improve my score. I hope this finds you well, I apologise for how long this ended up being. Thank you for reading. ----- Added 10/Feb/2018 ----- After some consideration, I have decided that my previous response was too harsh. I have learned now that the EXP Share item exists to allow Pokemon in the party to gain passive EXP through interactions, and there are plenty of ways to earn currency without having to utilise pay-to-win elements. It is slower than paying for Zophan Canisters, sure, but that's kind of the point of premium currency to begin with. Additionally, I was wrong about the staff. They're clearly very devoted to this site and constantly adding more features to make the site fun. Contests, now that I've actually tried them, are fun; sort of like a dress-up game for your Pokemon. The tournaments have a different theme every single week to keep players wanting to come back to them. And, now that I'm looking at the game from a more positive angle, it's more fun to play.

Your concerns are appreciated. We are working on improving the game overall, and have some features lined up that should definitely help keep things interesting. However our current focus is getting things ready to make the game work on multiple back-end servers. It's all very boring stuff, but without it the game simply cannot grow enough. With regards to blocking, in the specific example you gave, that's harassment and we can and will remove the offending user for it if they overstep the boundaries that have been set. But so long as they behave appropriately, there's no reason they should be prevented from playing our game just because you're here, if that makes sense. But trust me, we do resolve problems and reporting is by no means an absolute. We hope to see you around in future, especially as more content keeps coming to PFQ!

Free Sign Up ✔️ Friendly Users✔️ Fun✔️ Pokemon✔️ Best Game Ever✔️

The community, by far, is one of the friendliest I've seen. The gameplay is quite satisfying, from starter to a shiny, albino, even the elusive melanistic, Pokefarm Q always leaves you feeling satisfied with completing goals of the site or your own personal goal. The mods, are also very friendly, and it is quite evident that they have a lot of passion for what they do. I respect each dearly. If you happen to enjoy pokemon, strive to collect them all, chat with such a wonderful community, or even write and draw for the community to your hearts content, this is the game for you. Bravo Staff, Bravo System Salamence. This is truly, a wonderful game.

Albino Pokemon Take Forever To Hatch

That's kind of the point; they're rare! :D

I've been playing Pokefarm on and off for about a year and a half. Something about this game just keeps dragging me back! It's simple and addictive as well as a very fun way to pass the time! I love the new changes to the site! One of my favourites is the events which are much more fun than the old "click this many times for x reward". Though there is still an aspect of that it's mixed in there are also other goals to get, breaking up a monotonous challange of clicking. The rewards and pokemon for each of the newer events are also brilliant! One of the other changes that I love is the egg timer! It makes playing pokefarm on a busy schedule much better than it was, so don't let that stop you from joining! While there are a few things stopping me from adding that 5th star they are quite minor and have ways around them. Hypermode for example can be brought without having to spend money on the site (something I unfortunatly can't do) and other little things that I won't go into detail on are being worked on and improved all the time. Overall pokefarm is a great site which is fun to play. Constant updates to existing content and a new feature now and then keep it interesting. So I'd say to just give it a try at the least, you might just find yourself staying!

The staff years ago have treated people poorly, if they didn't have similar interests. SEVERE superiority complex, not uncommon in these games. Besides from the poor maagement, during the conversion of updates, information was LOST. Meaning, egg dex entries and time and money spent was wasted. Don't waste your time or money here, unless you plan on brown nosing these people.

I'm sorry, are you referring to the Big Reset, which happened in May of 2014 - that is, three and a half YEARS ago? The one that happened because massive, core changes were being made to bring the game out of Limited Beta and into Open Beta. ... OK. "The staff years ago," don't work here any more. Perhaps because of the issues you mentioned? I'm not saying we're flawless now - nobody is - but you know... Frankly it is clear that you are highly prejudiced against us. Your feedback is begrudgingly appreciated, and we wish you the best in future.