It’s been 10 years since your entire city was filled with people walking around, heads in their phones, catching critters in Pokémon GO. To the day, actually. The hit mobile game from Niantic was released on July 6, 2016. Incomprehensibly, a mobile app remains exceptionally popular after a whole decade. Perhaps it’s because it’s the best game this series has.

Pokémon GO Remains The Best Game in the Whole Franchise

What are some of the things we all love about the Pokémon franchise? In almost every single way, Pokémon GO is the best at each one. Whatever you happen to like about this series, the mobile game pretty much offers the peak version of it.

Like catching shinies? Well, Pokémon GO has dedicated shiny events (community days), specific hours for shiny hunting one creature (spotlight hours), and the best odds of catching a random shiny of any game. The odds of a shiny in GO are about 1 in 512. In mainline games, it’s 1 in 4096.

What about exploring a new region? Well, in GO, you’re literally exploring the region. It’s not a virtual region that an avatar wanders around in search of things; it’s your local world. And, if you happen to find a new area, so to speak, that you’ve never seen before, then exploring it as if it’s a new Pokémon region is highly rewarding and usually has different creatures to catch.

Maybe your favorite thing is battling. There are plenty of battling options in Pokémon GO. You can pretty much instantly battle people everywhere in the GO Battle League, giving you a chance to fight under different rules and with different Pokémon. The turn-based aspect is missing here, so if that’s what really drives your interest up, then GO will not quite satisfy the itch. There’s still strategy in tap-based battling, though.

Maybe you like evolving Pokémon, as most do. Evolving is fun because it usually involves a few different things, and it’s rarely ever as convoluted and nonsensical as some evolutions are in mainline games. You catch, explore, battle, and transfer to evolve, or some combination of those things.

Catching is better, too, because it doesn’t involve entering a meaningless battle, taking off some but not all health, applying a status effect, and then throwing a ball. It’s much simpler and more streamlined. Few Pokémon games (shoutout to Legends Arceus) have nearly as good catch mechanics.

There are some downsides, but those downsides are pretty limited. They’re also not absent from the mainline games. Not having a specific, dedicated set of Pokémon that can spawn is sometimes disappointing. When you need a Charmander for candies but they’re not part of the current spawn, it can be frustrating.

That said, where else can you possibly catch Pikachu, Treecko, Meowth, Litten, Kyurem, Oricorio, Salandit, Axew, Dedenne, and Shroodle? This is the only game where such a combination is possible, and where, in theory, it’s possible to eventually have every single Pokémon that’s ever existed. There’s a lag, certainly, but still. The combinations are only possible in this game.

Eggs are better in Pokémon GO, as are raids. In most instances, the mobile game just does it better, serving as an excellent mix of all the games that streamlines some of the worst gameplay and provides a central option for all generations (though not complete just yet). It doesn’t get much better than that.

After 10 years, the staying power is real, and the quality is obvious. It is restrictive if walking around or leaving your area is not doable, but otherwise, it’s the best option this franchise has had since it began thirty years ago.