Things That Annoy Me About The Buddy System in Pokemon GO

I like the buddy system in Pokemon GO. It’s very simple and basic, but it’s nice to have a companion Pokemon that follows you around and gives you certain gifts and buffs as you level your buddy up. But the system is certainly not perfect, and there are definitely some things that annoy me.

My first pet peeve is feeding buddies with berries. You need three berries initially to get started and have your buddy wander around, and feeding it additional berries will keep your buddy out in the real world. To earn hearts, you have to feed your buddy until they’re full, but you can’t just feed your buddy 3 times and that’s it. At least an hour needs to have passed in order to earn a new heart with your buddy. Unless you have a timer though, it’s easy to go over an hour and have to feed two berries to your Pokemon to get it to full. There is a small bit of leniency, but, annoyingly, it’s still hard to tell. And, worse, if your buddy is excited, the excited hearts around your buddy’s excitement level cover up the hunger meter, making it even harder to judge.

One other thing that can be annoying is switching between buddies. If you are on the Buddy History screen, you can slowly swipe through all your Pokemon that you’ve had as a buddy before. Weirdly though, the option to switch buddies doesn’t give you a prompt to confirm, the same way it does on the Buddy screen. So you can end up wasting a buddy swap or two if you’re not careful.

Speaking of the Buddy History screen, another thing that bothers me is that you can’t delete buddies. Every single Pokemon you’ve had as a buddy remains on the Buddy History screen. This includes Pokemon you either traded away or transferred to the professor. There is no way you can remove them from the Buddy History screen, they’re stuck there forever. It’s particularly annoying because I’ve got a bunch of Eeveelutions on my Buddy History that I’d like to get rid of. Other annoying Pokemon that I don’t want as a buddy include those with evolutions that require adventuring, like Pancham and Galarian Slowpoke.

And then there’s active buddies. I wish you had more control of where they floated around. Pokemon like Rayquaza float in the air and can’t be seen unless you completely zoom out. Some other Pokemon, like Kyogre, take up a lot of space on ground level.

The last thing that annoys me is waiting for a Pokemon to get on-screen so I can feed it berries. Depending on the Pokemon, this can take ages. Make a Gigalith your buddy and wait for a good ten seconds as it lumbers on screen, one rocky foot at a time. Using a Quick Treat only helps a little bit, and that only works when your buddy isn’t on the map. Why the hell can’t I use Quick Treat while they’re out in the world? It’s so damn annoying. So much time is wasted between getting your buddy on screen and feeding it berries, and using Quick Treat does almost nothing to actually help!

Thing is, these problems aren’t massive ones, I’m sure it’d be pretty easy to implement changes. But in the mean time, these things are just going to have to annoy me. Especially Quick Treats.