A game that has barely changed in over 30 years, except to expand the color palette occasionally? What can they possibly be quality controlling? Its not even like you have to spell check stuff when half your proper nouns are gobbley-removed.
I guess it would have been nice if PokemonGO had released in anything resembling a playable state. But people still threw endless amounts of cash at it. So how important can quality control even be?
Under capitalism, a petty company with money can do anything.
On the question of “should it be able”? No. Even if reusing the “”“assets”“” such as the graphics of the mons, they are postprocessed and converted for usage in a project like pixelmon to adjust for the visual style (“cubemon” style), which any pregraduate lawyer can identify as a Transformative Work.
Most of Nintendo’s high-end franchises have been able to “evolve” except for Pokemon. Even the proven -to-always-work ones have taken great steps forward. For a franchise based on an RPG that honestly has plenty to pull from it’s resistant to make itself better. The progression of a pokemon game becomes to expected and bland and to some extent it stops making sense in its own world. People have been making suggestions for years now and it’s pathetic they refuse to listen to it’s base. Scarlett and Violet should have been it’s death but people still bought into it so again, it works for sales so why would they need to add in extra resources? Once I picked up on the gimmicks (z-power and gigantamax) I knew it was getting ridiculous. The game just straight up relies on predictable concepts of grinding and higher levels encounters through progression yet it tries to pass itself off as openworld and non linear when you have orher games who clearly do it better. If a pokemon game held it’s same concepts and was called somethings else like Master Catcher or Battle Critters it wouldn’t even be considered as “great” as it is. You can’t say the same for the other franchises.
It's why all the side games made by other groups are often so much better than the mainline games, despite having a far smaller budget to work with. Because they actually try to do new and innovating things with the franchise.
God mega evolutions we’re such a great addition in X/Y. Z moves were lame and I haven’t played a new Pokemon game since alpha Sapphire. Like yeah it’s Pokemon but it just feels like a product at this point. I know the point is to make money but maybe they should take a break. Pokemon games almost died in black and white because they haven’t changed.
You’re right that mega evolutions were great in that it gave certain Pokemon a second chance to be useful however even that took a wrong turn when they mainly focused all mega evolutions to to all the popular Pokemon who were already great to begin with. On top of that, it did continue forward which I feel would have been another opportunity to give those not-so-great pokemon that chance.
In a vacuum Megas were fun, but I think they were a net negative to the games as a whole.
In the single-player game, it’s basically an instant-win button. I don’t think pokemon needs to be difficult- I find most rom hacks and nuzlocke runs tedious and annoying. But having one button that just wins felt bad. The whole concept of temporary transformation felt like something that didn’t belong in pokemon, probably because its absence was something that separated Pokemon from competitors like Digimon and Yu-Gi-Oh.
Before Megas, new mechanics were usually things that made sense. Things that fit neatly into the world, may have been in the anime early, and were pretty logical conclusions that were only not in earlier games due to technical limitations. Splitting Special into SpAtk and SpDef, splitting moves within types by Phys/Spec, adding Steel type, Held Items, abilities, double and triple battles, breeding. To me, Megas felt drastically different, as do Z moves, Dynamaxing, and Terastillizing.
I would argue Pokemon has “evolved” too much, to the point where the game is bloated with way too many mechanics and is trying to be too many things.
You mentioned Z-mkves and Gigantamax. I would add in Mega Evolution, the Fairy type, Dynamax, Raid Battles, open areas. There’s a ridiculous amount of unique and dumb evolutions. There’s about 3x as many items as there should be. They keep on writing epic “kid saves the world” stories instead of “kid pushes back against the inconveniences imposed by small-time criminal” stories.
A lot of Nintendo’s franchises have had BOTH transformative new games AND new games in the older styles. Mario has consistently had both 3D and 2D releases, on top of all of the sports games and other spin-offs. Metroid had the Prime series and then Dread. Donkey Kong had 64 and then went back to 2D. Zelda has had 3D games for sure, but they have also had 2D games like Link’s Awakening on the Switch and previous handheld games.
I think GameFreak needs to grow and split into 2 teams: one to focus on 3D open-world Pokemon (like the Legends series) and one to focus on more traditional, 2.5D. Each team could take 2 years/game and they alternate releases. The 2D studio could add in re-makes as well: I am hopeful we get a Gen 5 re-make soon, but we are also getting to the point whete slme of the first re-makes are starting to need re-makes, like FRLG and HGSS.
yeah i have enjoyed the new games but none of them have really been able to capture the magic of the old ones. dexit also didnt help.
somehow collecting all the pokemon felt more fun in the old games? i mean it was always a chore to do, but i remember being much more excited finding a rare pokemon in the older games than the new ones haha
The biggest thing Arceus needed was voice acting. It is ridiculous that the biggest franchise in the world doesn’t have voice acting in a game that has such animated discussions.
imo that’s far for the game’s biggest fault. it’s an eyesore, the plot wasn’t that good, and while they nailed a lot of things regarding gameplay, other things felt undercooked.
and frankly, there’s a bunch of big franchises (mario and zelda come to mind) where voice acting, while present, is nearly non-existant, so i never got the complaints about the lack of voice acting in pokemon.
Gonna heavily disagree there. Some franchises feel really ruined by their attempt to remove the player-videogame interface barrier. MonHun with its grunts for language back in 4th gen felt great and was even fun (reminded me of The Sims in a way) but when they added voice acting, the result honestly was a lot of cringe partly because of trying to also push face expressions into it (The Handler) or just because of adding corny, stupid attempts at voice acting (like most in-hunt shouts in Rise).
Honestly, adding voice acting for Pokémon feels even dangerous: most dialogue in the Pokémon games is already heavily corny, useless or flat-out redundant, but you’d also have to add Pokémon sounds and cries that somehow feel like they “match” as in coming from the same “universe” and have some variation across individual specimens. Because “klefki.midi” just doesn’t cut it anylonger.
Well Im not buying any pokemon games until they take more than a year to develop, sounds like Im not gonna be buying any new ones anytime soon if keeping the short development times is where they're starting from for their development strategy.
I know, but I have to dream they’ll pull it out of the tailspin. It’s clear Niantic is ran by crypto frat boys with zero business experience, so they’d just wait for the game to burn out before they fix anything.
After the TOTK release, all the amazing mechanics, graphics, and creativity? While I think maybe TOTK is setting new bars, it really shows how much they’ve just churned out the Pokémon games without any thought.
I think I read on some Wikipedia page that Pokémon makes a majority of their money off merchandise. I think they can wait 7 years for a new game because someone born last year, may not get a Pokémon game until their 9 and they would miss out on 7 years of merchandising and potentially not capture the audience at all.
I know 9 is pretty young already so let’s say it’s a 7 year old and now they are 14 or whatever.
I haven’t played Pikmin 4, but may experience with Pikmin 3 was, that game is interresting to play with a friend, but i try the single player mode a lot later. I don’t know, didn’t feel fun with it anymore. I feel the tutorial was terrible childish, because i have already played the game so it was horrible. I didn’t like the camera view anymore (don’t know why that wasn’t a problem with the wii U). I don’t feel the game with it’s characters and world. Maybe it was just the wrong time for the game for me. I could try Pikmin 4 if i ever get it cheaper. But i don’t think it’s difficult
Thankfully, in the Pikmin 4 demo you can skip all cutscenes which include cutscene tutorials. The tutorial section is still pretty long, but skipping the cutscenes makes it much more bearable.
I feel like it’s a lot like the weapon breaking in Breath of the Wild - one of those systems that imposes heavy limits on players to enforce their creativity and flexibility in their approach.
I know a lot of people approach every game in a completionist, meticulous way where they do every quest, never use any consumable items, etc; and it often ruins the fun. It’s also why Ubisoft had the somewhat crazy idea in Far Cry 5 of actually forcing you to do story missions after game progress, trying to use designer mechanics to push some variety into people’s game sessions.
In Pikmin’s case, and I think Dead Rising / Persona too, the time limit is meant to get you to prioritize path planning so you get as much as you can done in a certain span. The core gameplay of Pikmin just isn’t all that interactive when you have all the time in the world for it - it’s built around the benefits of delegation and synchronization.
I haven't played Pikmin but when it comes to BotW/TotK I still would prefer if weapons didn't break. Seems to me that it creates grind and it takes away flexibility, because more situational options take the same slots as raw power, and get spent just as quickly. Comes to mind also how XCom 2 insisted on turn limits, and one of the first mods it got was to remove the turn limits.
Sometimes designers insist on certain limits to prevent that players "optimize the fun away" but they don't realize that some players legitimately do have more fun without those limits.
There’s certainly been tons of moments through gaming history when designers attempted to force a playstyle and it didn’t work out. It’s still hard to say for me where XCOM would lie on that, because there’s at least one other tactics game, Steamworld Heist, that I think worked out much better with a semi-turn-limit; I felt much more accomplished when I managed to escape those levels within a certain turn limit.
There’s mods out there for emulated Breath of the Wild to turn off weapon degradation, and I’m actually curious how the reviews go for mods like that. You lose out on moments where you actually enjoy finding a 90-attack weapon, because you’d find it and go “Meh…I already have a 100-damage weapon.” And because the game isn’t promoting constant power progression, it doesn’t have a ton of different things to reward you with for quests and exploration if you’re never losing things from your inventory - so you’d pretty quickly be ending quests with “Man I don’t even want this”.
I get that it’s important for designers to hear out their players, but there have been many times gamers were wrong about what exactly it was they thought they wanted. Nintendo in general has to be really careful about making sure they don’t betray expectations on certain series. Pikmin in particular had a winning formula in their first game. Even if they make changes/additions, if they damage that initial element, it can hurt the enjoyability of the experience, even if it adds freedom.
It's hard to say where the balance lies for every game, so I can't say for sure what's best for Pikmin without having played but more options never hurt anyone.
But as far as Zelda goes, I have heard all the arguments and maybe they might fit perfectly with a chunk of that audience, but that's definitely not the experience that I had. So much so I bounced off of BotW twice until I finally started to enjoy it.
You lose out on moments where you actually enjoy finding a 90-attack weapon, because you’d find it and go “Meh…I already have a 100-damage weapon.” And because the game isn’t promoting constant power progression, it doesn’t have a ton of different things to reward you with for quests and exploration if you’re never losing things from your inventory - so you’d pretty quickly be ending quests with “Man I don’t even want this”.
But it's because that I had a 100 attack weapon that the 90 one feels like routine upkeep rather than a reward, and anything less might as well be a stick. A lot of quests in those games gave me that “Man I don’t even want this” feeling. Every chest with middling weapons. Every quest that rewards me with food or a pittance of rupees. If not for shrines and their permanent upgrades, I wouldn't feel that motivated to explore. The cycle of finding expendable things to spend on more expendable things wears me out.
I feel the same way. My current BoTW save has a bunch of semi-unique or rare weapons in my inventory and I don't have any more slots. Whenever I want to fight something now I have to ask myself "which thing should I break and never get back?"
Oh some basic mobs to clear? Oh well, all I have are these super high damage weapons. It discourages me from getting into fights because I feel like my weapons aren't balanced for the enemies at hand, I gotta save them for tougher fights.
It really feels like a waste to take rare and strong weapons to go against regular bokoblins. Breaking the unique champion weapons just feels bad. No wonder so many people just put them on a wall.
Comes to mind also how XCom 2 insisted on turn limits,
I mean I would argue sure they were a bit too tight and I'm 100% down for increasing them but Xcom (2013) did have a problem with overwatch creep. Where people were legitimately optimizing the fun out of the game. Time limits force you to make less than optimal decisions where it works very well with the setting of Xcom 2 where you are a rebellion force, you don't have the luxury of taking things at your pace. You need to strike and get out before a larger response force come in to take you out. The only negative to the turn limits is you being forced to trigger pods early and pods waking up give them a free move action.
I get the reasoning in theory, but... it doesn't work for everyone.
Speaking for myself, I don't appreciate the anxiety. I only played XCom EU but the timed missions were the ones I hated the most. I just didn't want to play a game that was just that every time. It doesn't make me thrilled, it makes me stressed. I do actually want to inch my way through every mission, so I can stay prepared for danger, since the game will pop out a bunch of enemies with free actions at any moment. I felt like the commander of an elite team whenever I managed to badly damage any enemy even before they got the chance to attack.
When they "fixed" me "optimizing the fun out of the game", they just took me out of the game entirely. What they see as fun or not fun is not universal.
Some might say that if this is how I think maybe that's not the game for me. But if having both possibilities is an alternative, why shouldn't I be able to play the way I actually like it?
I don't know if difficult is the word I'd use, but I couldn't stand Pikmin 3, and I imagine I couldn't stand Pikmin 1 either, because of the time limits. I want to be able to take my time, strategize, and explore at my own pace. It ruins the fun to know that I only have 30 days, or that I'll lose if I don't collect X amount of fruit per day.
Pikmin 2 is so far the best game in the series, in my opinion. If I want to spend three days building up my Pikmin army and stockpiling the sprays, I can do it without worry that I'm running behind now. I don't need to rush through the game, and can take it at my own pace.
If only there were a mod for Pikmin 3 that removes the juice mechanic, or gives unlimited juice from the start.
Never played pikmin 3, but I had a funny experience with the day limit in pikmin 1. You have way more than enough time to complete the game in the day limit, even if you play very suboptimally.
Despite that, in my initial playthrough I still hated it for all the reasons you listed. Theoretically, I could see how a day-limit could be good for the game. Adding tension and the like. But on that first playthrough when I had no idea how much time is worth, I always felt the need to rush. As it turned out, I could have easily taken a few days to just explore or strategize. But there's no way to know that at the start. Maybe it could work better if the game could communicate somehow if you're ahead of schedule or something.
Eh, other developers are already basically making Zelda games minus the name, and you can play them without giving nintendo money. Unsighted, Death’s Door, and Crosscode are all great and take strong inspiration from Zelda, just to name a few.
Keep your eyes open for Mina the Hollower hopefully later this year, it wears its Link’s Awakening inspiration on its sleeve. Adorable mouse character and healthy dose of Castlevania mashup from the developers of Shovel Knight, I’ll be surprised if it turns out anything other than a slam dunk.
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