The entire game revolves around you interacting in various ways with Pikachu and its environment. You do this by pressing the Z-button to activate the microphone attached to the controller. Pikachu only recognizes certain words and phrases, so to get his attention you might try saying his name or greeting him. Once you have his attention you can tell him what to do. For example, if he's holding a ball you might tell him to throw it, and if he understood you he will probably comply. The more you play and interact with Pikachu, the more he will like you. This is illustrated with a small heart meter in the lower left of the screen. Every day you will go on another adventure where you will hopefully learn new words to say (shown in red on the screen). These adventures are all varying in nature, but usually involve saying a few key words to Pikachu to complete the task at hand.

One of the first places you will go in the game is to Bulbasaur's picnic. He will give you a list of ingredients needed to make his stew. It's up to you and Pikachu to go out in the forest and find the necessary items. Once Pikachu finds a potential ingredient you will be able to give instructions on whether to send the item to Bulbasaur or whether to throw it out. Once all of the items are found, you will then be able to sit down and have a nice picnic with several of the Pokemon characters. On a different day you will have to help Pikachu watch over baby Caterpies. When one of them becomes hungry you must find some food by using Pikachu's Thunderbolt. Sometimes Pikachu will just like to play in the field and run around looking at items. In one of these scenarios I kept on hearing Charmander's voice off in the distance somewhere. So I got Pikachu's attention and said "Find Charmander" into the microphone. Pikachu looked around for a few seconds and then looked up and pointed at Charmander who was residing on top of a cliff. You'll even get to go fishing with Pikachu and decide whether to reel in the fish or let it go.

While there is a great deal of variety in each of the adventures, the game becomes redundant very quickly. Most of the time Pikachu just seems to run around and doesn't pay much attention to what is said. Each of the days seems very short. I went fishing for maybe 2 minutes and then the day was over. This happened on other days as well. It seems like the game is always being interrupted because it's time to go to bed. This hurts the continuity of the game and hinders exploration and experimentation with the surroundings.

The graphics are pretty bad. I understand that this game came out two years ago in Japan, but the textures are extremely muddy and the entire game has that N64 trademarked blurry look to it. After seeing other Pokemon games on the system, I think even younger kids will notice that the graphics just aren't as good as they should be. To make matters worse, the entire game is played in first person mode. This normally wouldn't be a problem, except most of the time it's as if your character isn't even there, but rather you're just controlling the camera. You can move up, down, left, and right, but it's so slow that it's difficult to keep up with the on-screen action. In addition, there will be many times where the entire screen becomes erratic as it tries to center on Pikachu. This can become frustrating after awhile and I even gave up a few times and just let the camera go where it wanted.

Aurally, the game offers up all of the usual Pokemon "voices". If you ever watch the cartoon and find yourself getting sick of hearing "Pika Pika!", then for sure you will want to avoid this game. That's almost all you hear during the entire game. I considered myself lucky when I heard "Char!" or some other Pokemon voices. The music isn't much better. I think I've heard some catchier elevator tunes. If you've heard the music in Pilotwings 64 you will begin to understand the type of music in this game.

I had a difficult time even playing this game for more than half an hour. It's simply so boring and mundane that I can't see anyone over the age of 10 enjoying this game. Having said that, it should be noted that if you have a child between the ages of 6 and 10 who wants this game, it might be a worthy investment. It does promote speaking and reading skills and it reinforces friendship values. The unfortunate aspect is that you may have to help your kids play due to the reading involved and some of the control problems may cause them to get upset. Another hurdle to overcome is the $79 price tag. You could buy two $40 N64 games for the price of this one. If you or your kids must have a new Pokemon game, I suggest buying any of the other games in the franchise before this one. If you already own all of them, then proceed with caution when buying this one. It's definitely not for everyone, and even those people who think they may enjoy it may be in for a surprise. At least the voice recognition does a good job and I didn't have any problems with it. The premise of the game is original, and that's always a good thing. It's just too bad that the execution wasn't better.