I’ll believe it when I see it. The last time I personally believe they last put any effort into their games was X/Y. And only because they went from pixel to polys.
The story has been crap for a while. Even gen 1 has a more compelling story. The bad guys have been laughably stupid, and your rival… Your rival is an overly clingy person who desperately wants to be your best friend. The mechanics haven’t budged in forever. So much so a goldfish can accidentally win. Every game is more about that games mechanic then building the franchise or gameplay. And a gimmicks are half baked, propped up just to sell but never follow through on. How many pokémon actually got mega evolutions? Or Z-moves, or Dynamaxing and Gigantamaxing. I mean, I quit shield like maybe a few weeks after it came out and I have most of them because… It was just a temporary gimmick to slap on the box to try to sell it.
But beyond just a bare bones mechanics that is the game…
Scarlett and violet run terribly. And I know a lot of people kept trying to blame the switch hardware because god forbid you blame pokémon. But it’s not like it was just Scarlet and violet, sword and shield also ran pretty terribly not as bad but still bad. And they look like upscaled PS1 games. Mainstream pokémon games are just an example of putting in minimum effort while riding nostalgia and cartoon tie-in.
I hope when the next game gets announced, no one pre-orders. I know that won’t happen because people are afraid that somehow they’re going to run out of digital copies… But I can dream. I hope everyone waits until reviews come out. Because I want to remind you Nintendo doesn’t do returns.
I was about to point that out! I’ve yet to finish TotK but everytime I play it, I still get amazed at what they achieved. Yeah, there are some compromises, but that shit runs like butter.
Actual Nintendo is the best at bringing the most out of their hardware. I’m surprised Nintendo hasn’t stepped in quality wise but Pokemon is the money maker.
Honestly, I’d say Monolith Soft is the best, IMO. They brought us Xenoblade and they also worked on TotK, they actually do support development for a lot of the big titles for Nintendo.
Thank you for putting my feelings to words. I haven’t even actually played a Pokémon game for more than 5 minutes since sun and moon as they were just so boring, the tutorials were so long, and the z move mechanic basically didn’t impact the game at all as the game isn’t ever hard enough where you have to use a Z move.
I still play the older games but it’s because I find the experience more balanced and enjoyable.
I skipped sword and shield. Pokemon scarlet and violet ran terribly. Yet even though I went into it expecting to have a bad time, I still enjoyed the gameplay loop?
I’m extremely conflicted because I know that if it wasn’t for it being pokemon I would have likely dropped S&V like a hot potato. And with the lie about reduced pokemon in each game due to having to recreate the models from scratch (and then people finding out Sw&Sh models were just 3ds models) it just rubbed me the wrong way.
All in all I can’t help but think of what the games could be if they took the time to do it right.
when the S&V devs decided that for some reason the game has to render a skybox for outer space that’s ~1400 times the size of the world-skybox that you already use for sky daylight and it’s already ~80 times too large for that
Huh, you really make it discouraging to keep on the series for me, I’m currently playing them in cannon order and I’m playing Omega Ruby (I’m gonna skip 4th gen because I have already played it).
For sure, you’ll be set to black and white 2. But to me there really is an inverse correlation between how popular the game’s got and the quality of the game itself. I will say if you somehow can fit pokémon Arceus into your gameplay if you haven’t already you should. I know it’s not mainline but it was a lot of fun.
I feel it in my gut that some day Pokemon is going to have his “BotW”-like game that will make it revolutionary and relevant again, but until then we’re gonna get a lot of stinkers.
The money they make is always from new fans. Which is why they went that path for multiple generations. I think this latest release caused a dip in profits, so only now are they like… “Let’s give them a bone.”
I’ve never heard such complaints, but it doesn’t surprise me. And I kinda get it, even though I find them ridiculous (with all due respect), some people doesn’t like change or consider some specific elements to be the “soul” of a game and it should never be touched. But as a hard Zelda fan myself, I welcomed the direction BotW took, and I’m already looking forward to see how Zelda reinvents itself again.
That was Legends: Arceus. But it still didn’t sell nearly as well as Sword+Shield or Scarlet+Violet did.
tbh the Pokemon Company could probably not change a thing and keep churning out the same slop for fifty more years and still be the largest franchise on the planet.
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
Palworld is set to officially release at the start of next year. It’s clearly very Pokémon inspired, but looks much more impressive than any existing Pokémon game. I wonder if Palworld will help shake the Pokémon Company into upping their game.
For most people the Pokémon IP is a much bigger draw than a potentially better game though. Game Freak are in a position where due to the Pokémon IP they can release a game riddled with issues and still sell well.
Normally I give a side eye to any game that looks like they specifically hired a lawyer to make sure their bootleg is legal, but the legit franchise is practically bootleg at this point so if this can out-Pokemon Nintendo then I’m all for it.
If I wanted that I’d just play Digimon. Not that the idea is bad, it just… feels to me more like an attempt at a replacement for Digimon than for Pokémon. Equipping everyone with machineguns and joining in into the slaughter feels like it absurdily misses the point of Pokémon for me.
(That said, I’m not con adapting some of the Palcreatures minus machineguns as fakémon if I find out I do like them)
What happened to temtem? I thought that game would shake the pokemon company?
No game is ever going to replace Pokemon because you can see how many people complain about the state of the games, but they are still there consuming the franchise, so even when in their opinions the games are horrible, they are still there sucking the companys dick off. Pokemon has too many loyal fans.
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.
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.
One would think the rational response from a development perspective is to make fewer releases but just as regular (ie.: change the release freq from “one per year” to “one per three years”).
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.
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?
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.
Drop Game Freak, hand the reins to a decent reputable developer.
Gen 9 so far is complete ass. Despite Scarlet/Violet having some good things going for it (Nemona is the best rival since Blue from RBY, Arven’s backstory is great, Toby Fox making parts of the soundtrack, Ash Ketchum finally dropped from the anime), its flaws heavily outweigh the good parts. Game is dull and full of performance issues, Paldea feels lifeless, the Pokemon League can only be attempted once, Geeta is a joke of a champion, the Team Star questline is awful, and the Academy Ace Tournament is far too easy to be considered endgame content.
Should Gen 10 end up like this, Nintendo and the Pokemon Company will end up in trouble.
How does scarlet/violet compare to legends arceus?
I read a lot of criticism of PLA at launch as well, and I don’t know if patches fixed the game or if the criticism was overblown, but I’m currently playing PLA and I really love it.
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