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As ever there are multiple ways to do this; by finding and catching them in the wild, trading them with friends or evolving certain cute baby creatures into hulking great muscle-bound horrors of fire or electricity.
Rather than choosing a starter pokemon at the beginning, you're joined by a special Pikachu or Eevee (depending on which game you have) who acts as your companion for the whole adventure.
Your partner Pokemon sits on your shoulder or head the whole time, and will pipe up when it wants attention.
From there you're free to make your party of six from any caught pokemon you like, and in a cute twist on an idea from Yellow you can even choose a special monster to accompany you on foot. It's adorable to see a little Sandshrew scurrying along behind you, but a more pragmatic pick might be one of the several species you can actually ride across land, air or sea.
The biggest departure from past games is that you are no longer surprised by pokemon in long grass and forced to beat them into submission if you want to pass by or catch them. Instead you plainly see wild monsters walking around the world, and if you make contact you'll need to feed it berries to calm it, take aim and then physically mime throwing with your controller to loose a pokeball and make a catch attempt.
Pokemon appear in the field, and don't need to be fought to be caught.
Something is definitely lost with the removal of wild battles, but in return it's a lot less stressful to explore, and much more fun to collect.
The laid-back catching makes a nice contrast with the full-blooded turn-based battle system — with all its elemental types and status effects — which is used when you frequently challenge other characters in the game, from wandering fishermen, picnickers and nerds (all with their typically bizarre non-sequitur speech text) to the gym leaders you need to defeat if you hope to eventually take on the Pokemon League and become the very best.
Battles against trainers are the same as ever: pick moves that counter your opponent pokemon's type for a super effective attack.
This is where Let's Go feels most like a standard Pokemon adventure, and it's as easy as ever to fall down the rabbit hole of raising and shaping your favourite 'mon to become perfect battling machines (you can just catch them at a high level, but they won't always have the moves you want). The pokemon in your party will all get experience points when you catch wild creatures, so it's easier than ever to grow them quickly.
There have also been a number of much appreciated quality of life improvements here compared to Yellow. You can move pokemon between your party and storage direct from the pause menu without needing to go back to a town, for example, and I hope this becomes standard in Pokemon games. You also no longer need to teach HMs (special moves that can help you progress by removing trees or lighting caves) to Pokemon as your partner learns those as you go, and TMs (a way of teaching a move to a pokemon that wouldn't learn it naturally) can be re-used as much as you like.
Returning to the Kanto region lets the game dispense with the nonsensical stories and increasingly absurd monsters of more recent adventures, and as an old-school fan it's a warm feeling to go back to catching Growlithes instead of Litleos, fighting Team Rocket instead of some dimension-hoping police force, and being blocked from progressing because a fat Snorlax is asleep on the path.
Plenty of stuff has made its way into the games from newer entries — like Alolan form pokemon and fairy types — but it's all for the better. I was also shocked to find myself remembering the layouts of certain areas, or where to find certain characters, despite the obvious and massive differences between the Game Boy and Nintendo Switch.
Old-school players will recognise bits of Kanto, but it's all been given a stunning overhaul.
And speaking of Switch this is the first time a traditional-style Pokemon game — usually locked to dedicated handheld devices — has been rendered in HD and designed to be played on a television. There's been a tremendous amount of love and care put in to make sure that the monsters and world all keep their established charm despite the leap, with the colourful, pencil-shaded Pokemon brilliantly animated and looking a lot like their official illustrated versions from back in the day.
Most still make their chirpy, low-fi cries; a decision I full endorse, for nostalgia's sake.
The story is straightforward, but interacting with other characters makes for some fun moments.
If you never played the old games, it's all the better. Part of the joy of Pokemon is discovering its secrets, from encountering a trainer with a monster you've never seen before and setting out to catch one and learn all about it, to wondering when and how your own monsters will evolve. Then of course there's all the intricacies of different types of pokemon and their strengths and weaknesses to uncover, as well as puzzling over unique hidden creatures, assuming you can resist just Googling it. We didn't have easy access to that in 1998.
When you're not wandering the fields releasing lures to try and attract rare monsters to catch, or putting your mettle to the test in battle, there's a lot of fun little things to see and do in Let's Go. You can always stroke and play with your partner pokemon, give it a new hairdo or pick new outfits for it and yourself to wear. You can also pick up a second controller at any time to add a second "helper" player, which is great for little people or non-gamers that just want to tag along and throw pokeballs.
A second player can drop in at any time.
Then there's the usual connectivity options that let you battle or trade with friends near and far. This time you can also connect to your Pokemon GO app to move monsters back and forth.
Ironically for the first game in the series to be designed for the big screen, it works just as well in handheld mode and many will prefer it that way. The controls are full and two-handed, and battling is done with a button press rather than gestures. You do have to tilt the screen to move the camera around when catching Pokemon, which resulted in a few misthrows given my tendency to play in handheld mode while walking around or standing on a train, but it works.
Excited though I am for next year's fully-fledged Gen 8 Pokemon games, which will surely return wild battles and bring a slew of new monsters, Let's Go is a worthwhile adventure in its own right, and in fact I hope the main games benefit from some of innovations in this simpler but more modern experience. The original genius at the core of Pokemon — replacing the spreadsheets and stat charts of the standard RPG with cute creatures you nurture and grow — still shines through here, it's just in a form that anyone will be comfortable playing in 2018.
Pokemon Let's Go Pikachu and Pokemon Let's Go Eevee are out on November 16 for Switch.
Tim is the editor of Fairfax's technology sections.