'Pokémon Go' update gives you unhelpful advice on the strength of your Pokémon
One of the (many, many) questions Pokémon Go players face in their adventures is: How powerful is this or that Pokémon?
There are online tools to find this out, but unless you're a seasoned gamer, the game so far hasn't been very helpful with this regard. This changed with the latest update to the game, but only slightly, as you can now get an appraisal of the Pokémon you've caught -- in somewhat ambiguous terms.
To get appraisals, you must join a team, and then tap on the right side menu in the "Pokémon" portion of your main menu and choose "appraise." You'll get different appraisals depending on your team, but all are equally vague: "Overall, your Pokémon is above average," and "I am certainly impressed by its stats, I must say" being some of the examples. Check out a full list of appraisals and what they mean here (that's right, you'll need an online tool to figure this out -- again).
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Appraisals are the sole important feature in the update, with the only other improvement being "minor bot fixes." In the release notes for the update, however, Niantic promises it is working hard on "several new and exciting features to come in the future."
The immensely popular game hasn't exactly been holding the players' hands -- figuring out how powerful an individual Pokémon is, or how that "Sightings" tab really works is not easy and requires frequenting game-related forums and reading a ton of online articles. The latest update alleviates the problem somewhat, but all but the most casual players probably won't find appraisals very useful in their current state.
Reports that the game is fast dropping in popularity have lately been cropping up, but it's still topping some of the app charts -- and causing people to do dangerous things.
Stan is a Senior Editor at Mashable, where he has worked since 2007. He's got more battery-powered gadgets and band t-shirts than you. He writes about the next groundbreaking thing. Typically, this is a phone, a coin, or a car. His ultimate goal is to know something about everything.
