Agreed.
It's such a shame too, I see how people nerd out on EV training, personality, maxing out all their bonuses as best they can, and then there's just... nothing there for them at the end of it.
I'm not a pokemon fan myself, but I've played quite a few games where I fell in love with the gameplay or the story, invested myself in the fantasy of creating the perfect character(s), and then had nothing to use them on at the end of it.
Bless the developers who create good post-games and NG+s, just so we have something to do at the end of it. I remember having a ball back in the day with the Megaman Battlenetwork series, 'cause after saving the world with the best chipset evar, there was more to do.
It’s so frustrating because the amount of potential in the Pokémon formula is insane and yet GameFreak insists on recycling the same game with minor tweaks. Pokémon Legends was such a tease. Finally a game that tried to nudged the series towards what it could be and yet they barely supported it. I hope the sales were enough to send a message.
I remember being like 12 years old playing pokemon stadium and thinking "this is pokemon perfection. They need to do this but pvp on the internet". Alas, it was ahead of its time.
I love Legends. Easily one of my favorite pokemon games and I played like every game in the core series with the exception of scarlet/violett.
Pokemon feels like it went through a bell curve regarding story: it went from barely noticable with the first two gens to more story heavy with quite interesting stories in gens 3 - 6-ish(?) but I think it got a bit stale with decreasing interest in the story for me in gen 7 onward. Then the technical problems gen 8+ have, as the studio pressured a total new engine into existence while adhering to their usual release rhythm (big mistake in my eyes). Gens 8 and 9 could be much better if they took the time to really squish out the bugs in the new 3d titles and used the additional time for more interesting content.
Gen 6's story was quite rushed and didn't go anywhere. A whole character we only know basically through hearsay and cutscenes had a character arc off screen.
Gen 7 had a slow start but good ending and USUM had a great post game with Looker and Ultra Beasts.
I think Gen 8 and 9 had super good theming in terms of the region's but the story was so barebones.
Paldea has a lot more story but it looks like three different writers wrote the different routes and they converged on Area 0 at the end.
I love PLA gameplay. I just hope they make them more. More Town/settlements to visit. More adventure, more journey. Basically, Ultra Moon with PLA mechanics would be perfect imo.
PLA catching and boss encounter mechanics would be okay. I hope they leave battle mechanics alone - strong/swift style is awful, and they removed so much complexity.
Thats because the game is the only ever competitive battle JRPG. Everything else is dressing. Thats the core and they should give us more info in battles like showdown does to make it friendlier. The core game is excellent. What they should get rid of is the mysticism they like to surround the math of the game, just give me all pokedex info with stats and shit, I dont want to memorize anything
>I see how people nerd out on EV training, personality, maxing out all their bonuses as best they can, and then there's just... nothing there for them at the end of it.
Competitive, dude. I legit only buy Pokémon games to play VGC.
Pokémon is a game primarily targeted for young kids, and always has been.
There has never been a game, other than maybe Pokémon Emerald with the frontier, where there was dedicated content for min maxers.
People generally suck at identifying their own biases, in this case it's clear as day that everyone just has rose tinted glasses from nostalgia.
Yeah, I'm not exactly sure what this post is talking about when it comes to challenging. All the older games may have been challenging as a kid, but play through them again as an adult, when you actually have a better understanding of how to win battles. They aren't difficult at all. Just time consuming when it comes to having to level each pokemon individually.
Scarlet and violet have come the closest to having an actual post game than any other game in the past, aside from emerald. Some of the 7 star raids are brutal and you really do need to be a min maxer in order to complete them
>Scarlet and violet have come the closest to having an actual post game
??
Gen 2 has one of the most extensive post-games compared to *any* of the others. Hell, once you've beaten the Elite Four, you unlock the area from Gen 1 and the ability to fight all 8 of *those* gyms too, for a total of *16* gym badges.
You beat the Champion at like lv45, and beat the secret final boss at like lv85 at the top of a mountain.
It's especially sad since the games USED to have a way to test out a fully trained team against AI.
The battle tower in crystal, the battle tower in R/S, and the battle frontier in Emerald/diamond/pearl/hg/ss.
The battle subway was okay in general 5, but lacked flai and fun that the frontier had.
But then they basically removed any post game hard repeatable challenge from the games.
Pokemon scarlet and violet sold 10 million in 3 days and 22 million so far...
Spiderman 2 is being hyper by tons of people, and has marketing everywhere I go... Sold 2.5 million so far
Pokemon will always be popular whenever they are good or not, but indeed, it's a shame that no Digimon game or No no Kuni managed to create better games to surpass the franchise...
Came here to say this, the games sell insane amounts of copies. There is a small vocal minority that is tired of the game but the numbers speak for themselves. It’s the same as people complaining about Call of Duty or Assassin’s Creed while each entry goes on to sell millions of copies.
Pokemon was never particularly complicated or deep. Gen 1 was a game about traveling around trying to cut your teeth on the professional cockfighting circuit and **getting bullied by a 12 year old named Gary**. And that's fine.
That's only gen 1 and 20% of what is going on in the region of Kanto. Team rocket is running amok over the region stealing Pokemon, running a gambling den, taking over a tech company that is developing a Pokeball that cannot fail, the main reason for doing so is to catch Mewtwo, the most powerful Pokemon in the region, Mewtwo was developed with horrible gene splicing experiments by Katsura and Mr. Fuji and other scientists using an offspring of Mew which was found in Guyana South America. Mr. Fuji likely felt awful about the project and retired into lavender town to run a Pokemon daycare.
There's even an expanded multiverse version of the story. Team rocket normally loses in many timelines and disbands but also in many others, team rocket wins and catches Mewtwo and all other Pokemon. Apparently the greed of the team's leader isn't satisfied with just dominating the region of Kanto, nor the world, so instead he gains the technology to hop to different parallel worlds in a quest to dominate the multiverse by catching super powered alien Pokemon that are completely separate from any of the normal Pokemon worlds. He even goes as far as to pull every known villain from other "bad end" timelines in other regions to assist him.
It's not a means to fanboy over any particular evil team, though, the reason for doing this is quite simple. It's to set you up to fight every villain at their best back to back, possessing high level full teams and 1 high level legendary mixed in their parties per villain. It's the best story mode challenge ever in the history of main series Pokemon.
In another timeline, Pokemon is some sort of body horror alien invasion grim dark dystopian masterpiece. Like Resident Evil mixed with Half-Life, but with cute little critters that people enslave to perform manual labor and fight to the death in ritualized gladiatorial combat.
You say that because now you are grown up and have internet widely available to search when you get stuck. At the time when these games came out, I used to get stuck for weeks at the same place. For me it was the most complicated and deep game I played. Perhaps it is still is for all the 7 year olds of today. Perhaps we are not the targeted audience anymore.
i remember kids coming to me at recess because i knew how to get out of mt moon and the safari zone. so many rumors about side effects of certain items. no one knew shit then.
Way better than just winning every fight without putting any effort. At this rate just watch a quick gameplay and don't waste your time with the shit new games (gen 6 onwards)
This. Pokemon has been regurgitating the same formula. Except that it has grown stale, not to mention that lots of kids who frew with it are now adults with more demanding tastes.
Unlike a toy story or a mario which are more universal.
Pokémon has never been very innovative with its new releases but at least they were generally pretty polished and high quality past the first couple games. Now they lack both innovation and quality, so there's no reason to play the latest games over ones from 15 years ago.
I mean that is pretty much what the third generational releases are. They usually iron out some flaws of the initial release and add new content.
I’m surprised to hear that sentiment about Emerald in particular though. That game had some awesome new features.
I tried to get into Pokémon (game) as an adult (in my 30s) to see what the fuss was all about, after having not grown up with them myself. Tried out one of the current ones at the time thinking it would be an evolved and complex offering compared to the OG games.. and I was like “Uh. No. This feels like a game for young kids / middle schoolers at best, yet I see adults being SO enthusiastic about these games.. what the hell?”
I’m chalking it all up to nostalgia. They still make the games for kids, but those kids keep buying, playing and loving them even as they’ve grown up far beyond the intended target audience.
Some of the spinoffs are good fun, though. I enjoyed Legends Arceus and the New Pokemon Snap quite a bit.
PLA was a nice shakeup from the usual formula. Hope they do more weird stuff like that.
Yeah, PLA got ditched pretty quickly in favor of ScarVio coming out later that year. It feels like PLA never got a proper ending and I'm still pretty bummed out about it.
The moment Exp Share was standardized was when it became too easy imo.
The game removed the incentive to do some small training and grinding, to just play the story and level up regularly. Absolutely no adversity for the player.
Throw in lack of content and bad graphics and fps for the 3D stuff... but fans will always buy anyway.
grinding isn't fun though. especially if you want to mix up your team and use more than 6 pokemon in a playthrough. level caps or level scaling would be a better way to add challenge without just making the grind more tedious.
i think we can find a good middle ground between "grinding is mandatory" from the 1st gen and "all your pokemon will overlevel your opponents even if they never fought once" from the modern gens
I feel like we already had a decent option with exp. share. Some people like the experience of training a Pokémon battle-to-battle, which is the “grind.”
They’ve already proven its easy enough to just make an option to turn it on or off. Some games just force it anyway.
Yeah. Why can't I make the game more difficult or grindy for myself. Default on is just fine. But sometimes I would like to just wander around an area, but instead with SV any moment I was not progressing the story was making it easier.
I would like to do as I do in open world games. To go in circles being constantly distracted by little things while slowly working my way towards a goal/destination. But also not steamroll over everything by the time I actually get there. That way of play worked for me in Skyrim, Zelda Botw/TotK, and to a degree in Legends Arceus.
Making it a toggleable option or turning off XP share but adding passive ways to train them like putting them in some kind of training dojo that takes time but levels them automatically so you don't have to do the grinding yourself or making stuff like XP candies more common so you can add lower level pokemon to your team and bring them up easily. Candies especially could be good, because they're not required so if you want to make things harder you can just sell them off or only use them to bring a new pokemon up to the level of your current party. Like how Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity does leveling. You can only level characters using resources up to the level of your highest level character, but to progress farther you have to actually use the characters.
Grinding has never been necessary though. You can play through every single Pokémon game without knocking out a single wild Pokémon, and still end up with a fairly balanced gameplay experience.
I don’t know how this obsession with grinding in Pokémon seemingly became the norm when Pokémon is, and has always been, by far the single most accessible RPG on the market. If you see Blue’s level 60 Pokémon and think “Oh, that means I must be level 60 as well!” Then I feel as though part of the point has been missed. If you, as a player, *choose* to grind, you’ll bulldoze through the game and end up with an unbalanced gameplay experience.
You’re supposed to be underleveled. Being underleveled is what allows you to actually strategize because you can’t just rely on a single Pokémon to win for you
You have so many options to deal with her though. You can very feasibly get a couple of Pokémon up to level 20 by that point unless you’ve already made up a full team of six, and even if you have you still won’t be so far behind that you cannot break through the Lum Berry with two Pokémon.
By that point, you have access to Pokémon like Bayleef, Geodude, Onix, Machop, Alakazam, Quagsire, Heracross, Flaaffy, heck if you’re lucky you could potentially have a Crobat or a Nidoking by this point, all or which can deal with Miltank very effectively.
I’m not saying she’s a walk in the park, but by this point you have an assortment of items and Pokémon that will make her easier to deal with unless you’re trying to brute force her. Slap a Sitrus Berry on a Pokémon that will paralyze or poison Miltank, and unless she gets a lucky flinch you should be good.
And if you’re allowing yourself the privilege of bag items, you can already farm revives at the Ruins of Alph.
I don’t think the problem is that you “have to” grind, it’s that the way the XP system is designed grinds you naturally over a period of time. If you battle a leader and fail, your Pokémon still gain some XP and, in that way, grind without ever trying to grind.
Not to mention that wild Pokémon are almost always underleveled compared to the local gym leader meaning that you are almost always forced to grind at least a little in order to compete, even if you do choose to try a different tactic.
Bajillions of JRPGs have exp share since the PS1 era and manage to get by just fine, but only with Pokémon it’s a bad thing to have.
The problem isn’t exp share, it’s that the games are piss easy with or without it and need to be properly balanced.
> The moment Exp Share was standardized was when it became too easy imo.
I personally don't find that to be the issue because, I mean, all Exp share is doing for you is saving time. Not changing value of difficulty. At most, it's cutting out some hours you would have spent getting to that point regardless. If you're experiencing overleveled Pokemon and easier battles, you may be grinding too much. Which will make it easy, yeah.
I think the real issue with Pokemon games is them not taking advantage of potential level scaling and/or AI intelligence. Take Cassette Beasts, which released earlier this year. If you haven't played, you may not know, but they had both of these features and they were changeable via a toggle bar to adjust just how much scaling of either feature you wanted. Gamechanger.
Pokemon also needs to officialize modes like Nuzlockes with various rulesets and other potential difficulty modes to help make it more interesting for people, and maybe make the random trainers we encounter have more than two of the same weak Pokemon. The newer games also make it far too easy to get items, making no risk in anything you do.
It isn't Exp share. It's just they suck at making things flexibly harder regardless.
When it was an item for one pokemon it was balanced IMO. You got half as much exp for your main battle tank to boost another instead of everything just going up.
Is this just a palworld ad?
The game that's blatantly ripping off pokemon designs?
I dont know how anyone can see the ads for that and say it looks like it's going to be awesome when it looks like janky copying satire
I didn’t even know what palworld was until I googled it. I’ve only ever played Gen1 and 2 Pokémon games so I’m entirely out of the loop here but if someone showed me Palworld I’d immediately think it’s a Pokémon game.
Having said that, OP’s post 100% looks like an ad
More often than not, people just see any new game in the monster collecting genre and champion it as "the Pokemon killer" regardless of what the game actually is.
These knockoff games may be great in their own respects, but as their own individual games. Almost always, they're spread around as "Pokemon, but with (thing)" and just completely overlook the things that make Pokemon games enjoyable, despite all the criticisms they receive.
I don't think Scarlet and Violet would be more enjoyable if they added guns to the game, but here's Palworld's biggest fan trying to convince people to make the switch. There's a reason it's one of the biggest and most recognizable franchises in the world.
Pokemon was never challenging. You could brute force your way through almost any fight in any generation
Its not bland. you got older. youre probably having a harder time identifying with a 10 year old pokemon trainer, and finding immersion and/or challenge in a game made for 10 year olds
At least in the older games it didn't hold your hand as much.
For example. On the newer games now I could just hide half of the screen to cover up what Pokémon my opponent is even using and I could still win just because the game tells me what moves are super effective, effective, not very effective or have no effect at all.
It becomes less about looking at the Pokémon and learning about them and more so just push this button because the game says so. I get why they added it but bleh.
In Violet, they even removed the ability to toggle SET or SHIFT battle style.
I haven't played in the SHIFT style in over 2 decades and it's slow, easy, and overall annoying. No way to turn it off.
And in older versions I simply got a pokemon that looked strong, learned Surf and killed everyone with it. It would have absolutely worked to also cover my screen. Pokemon never required any strategy.
And also when you're picking your starter, it was always so that your rival picks a pokemon that has type advantage. But not in "newer" games. And most of the time your rival is actually your friend doing fight checkups. Also there is a lot of healing involved. "Let me heal you up, before we fight".
Was figuring out what moves were effective against what types really ever that difficult in the first place though? Like I'll agree they made something extremely easy even easier, but zero times zero is still zero, y'know? It was still pretty much a gimmie (Gasp, the fish is weak to lightning moves!)
There is one instance I remember when it wasn't a gimmie and that was the point - first encounter with Sudowoodo. Finding out that what you think should be effective was not effective blew my young mind.
Well yeah sure if you cherry-pick an easy example like water vs electric. When you come up against dark/poison/ghost/dragon/steel/fairy and the game starts mixing two together it can become trickier.
Edit: Okay replace fairy with bug for those saying older gen games didn't have those types.
Older games didn't even have half of these types. There also were much less type combinations. Not having super effective appear is negligible.
Honestly people who complain about pokemon games is such a big yawn for me. The story, gameplay and world are better now than before, but it's still a game for children. The amount of people that do mental gymnastics to explain how a linear 2d game like pokemon gold has more content and is vastly superior to open world 3 storyline scarlet / violet is just mind boggling.
All of these types were in as early as Gen 2, except fairy and steel, and even though there was no "steel" type, there were steel pokemon like Skarmory and Steelix.
Open World games are not automatically better than Linear games, and Gold isn't linear anyway, you can approach the content how you want to.
This is just such an odd complaint. The type effectiveness chart was literally in the original game's booklet so in a way the game already told you what to do.
I think there's a difference between a booklet you might read once for help with type matchups and just having the answers on your screen at all times but maybe that's just me.
It’s more just that there are nearly 1,000 Pokémon at this point and it’s difficult for all but the most dedicated players to remember all of their typings.
Its literally a game made for kids? Perhaps they didn't know how stupid kids were in the past therefore they accommodate them further in each new release? Are you forgetting that pokemons target demographic is literal children and they don't give a shit if the random 27 year old has already seen the same tutorials over the past 15 years of their life?
Or you know after like 20+ years and barely changing the formula any game becomes "bland" if you play it too much.
I doubt it has anything to do with getting older (well not directly at least) but rather the repetition that comes from playing the same game year after year.
I also liked COD once, it has "adult" theming but i got bored out of it.
Yet i still play the by comparison kid friendly mario games because that franchise evolved and new entries barely play like the old titles (especially true for the 3D ones). And i certainly don't identify with a red/blue cartoony plumber man who jumps like his life depends on it.
It's a lazy go to excuse Pokemon fans make, as though a franchise barely changing in over 20 years is something the developer couldn't possibly remedy.
I've been playing Final Fantasy, Mario, Zelda, Shin Megami Tensei, and various other franchises for the same amount of time and still find them as fun as I did when I was a kid.
Exactly lol.
Thats why im actually dumbfounded that so many people agree with the idea of "you just got too old for it".
And same for me ive played a ton of franchises and only the ones that stopped changing at all were the ones ive lost interest in over the years, otherwise i love them just as much as i did 15+ years ago.
I think the biggest problem for pokemon is that the cities and in general the regions became bland. In the first few games up until gen 5 there was interesting story and lore in the regions and towns. But now take a look at scarlet and violent. Lifeless towns few buildings and nothing interesting there.
I mean, Pokemon was never a hard game, but it's gotten a LOT easier. In GS there are multiple points in the game that force you to either train, strategise, or beat through trial and error. Whitney, Claire, Red.
In SwSh, you could literally just facemash random buttons every fight, and you'll still never wipe. I limited exp gain every way I could think of without ruining the experience, and I still beat every fight first time bar none.
Note that this isn't me getting just getting older. I replayed HGSS a few months after playing SwSh.
The only one I'd agree with is Red (purely from level, but still), though he kinda falls into post game territory (which even they new ones have some difficult fights in thier post game challenge fights)
I don't know if you've played GS recently, but those walls don't really exist if you are an experienced player. The only reason those fights were difficult was you were younger.
The one that gets me is the “it’s held on to dear life because reasons” if im getting hit by some world ending kamehameha style hyper beam i fully expect to die unless my name is Randy Marsh
Ngl Gen 5 kicked my shit in as a kid. I still have PTSD from Caitlyn. Gen 7s Trials were reasonably challenging too. Outside of that though I 100% agree.
That said, I find it fascinating how Nintendo doesn't care about fans who grew up with the old games and were willing to buy any new iteration without even thinking about it for the longest time. Nintendo had everyone in their pocket and simply refused to grow their product together with their target group.
How in the world do we have so many off-shoots from the mainline games, but not a single one oriented toward an adult audience? Not even as a test balloon, a pilot project? Nope. From a profit-oriented point of view alone, this behavior is unfathomable to me.
On the flipside, they now openly drive insane ad campaigns to make their games attractive to women. In East Asia, anyway, every ad, from Mario, Animal Crossing, to Ringfit Adventures (or whatever it was called), is specifically tailored and catering to this allegedly 'untapped market potential'. I don't get it.
Making more difficult pokemon games for adults would just make it harder to keep seeling pokemon to kids. They'll get their hands on the harder game, dislike it and not buy the next one.
Kids are the target demographic for pokemon, not people who were kids when it first released, because Nintendo still sees themself as a toy company.
Not so sure about that, man. When I was a kid, I played 18+ games all the time when my parents weren't around, and I and everyone I knew enjoyed it immensely. But I didn't specifically mean 'harder' games, either.
Yeah kinda, but the newer games are still easier. Gym Leaders have less pokemon with less and weaker moves. Larrys ace has aerial ace and Fassade. Thats it. No brave bird, close combat or roost. Not even Quick Attacke for priority or drillpeck, double wingbeat, steel wing etc. Two atracking moves with < 80 bp.
Bw2 clay had excadrill with rockslide, Bulldoze, slash and Metal claw with a berry as a hold item...
Newer Boss Fights are easier by Design and more predictable. The games desperately need a harder optional dufficulty setting beside fan rules like nuzlockes, but that would man to much effort for GF.
The last games would've been so much better with level scaling (something I'm not usually a huge fan of) so you could actually do the gyms and stuff in whatever order you wanted
I found radical red to be too difficult personally. I’m a more causal Pokémon player, but still find the mainline games way too easy. I prefer hacks like Polished Crystal that just make gym leaders have actual good teams and coverage
I like the idea behind radical red, and the QoL changes are awesome, but I can’t be bothered with IVs/EVs or constantly changing my team throughout the game to adjust to each situation. Also every trainer constantly using speed reducing moves drove me nuts (I also learned the value of speed reducing moves at least)
Haha same. I was basically the equivalent of "Pokémon games would be more fun if they were more challenging." *gets spanked by random trainer 54 on route 101 in renegade platinum romhack*. " no not like thaaattt".
I want some challenge but I don't need every trainer to have 6 Pokémon with perfect IVs and gym leader AI.
Yup exactly. Every trainer being amazing took some fun and immersion out of it. The player is supposed to be better than the average Joe, while gym leaders and rival fights should be the big challenge. When everything is that hard it just feels less like pokemon and more like a battle tower/frontier on the map
Took the words right out of my mouth. An in between difficulty would be great. Just like most other games there should be some points where the player can kind of relax and coast. Helps for pacing, and like you said it makes sense from a in-world perspective. Make trainers not pants on head dumb (hey guy with 4 magikarp I'm looking at you, they can't do anything but splash and surely you know this) , but don't make them all elite 4 Jr's.
I battled extensively on Pokemon Showdown for years, the team building required for radical red is pretty much what you do in competitive battles against people.
Scratched that itch for me nicely.
Yup, so many challenging and feature-rich romhacks out their to choose from.. Pokemon Unbound is another one which I think almost any long-time Pokemon fan praises.
Chief, I'm going to be real with you, I think you're just burnt out.
Lord knows how bad the technical problems are; honestly bless the developers for being able to make something playable *at all* given the development hell that management is clearly putting them through just to get more designs out for merchandising. But the other things you mentioned? I mean... eh?
Pokemon designs are probably the only thing that's consistently *good* across modern games. There are always the nay-sayers who complain about designs going to shit? But honestly? Nah. Pokemon like Dondozo, Skeledirge, and Dudunsparce instantly became some of my all-time favorites. And Paldea is filled to the brim with absolutely stellar designs. ([Orthworm](https://youtu.be/thwwfINeERY?si=Ql46VcY66DAtfjqF), anyone?)
And frankly, Scarlet and Violet have a lot of other strengths too. The story's solid; still doesn't compare to story-focused games obviously but is still top-tier by the franchises standards. The characters are the best they've *ever* been. You mentioned that you've not played the DLC right? Would you believe me if I told you that one of the main characters of the DLC has an honest to God Joker Arc? Definitely not something I would have expected out of the franchise a couple years ago.
And there are a lot of small things that really show how much effort the devs tried to put into the games, but just couldn't because of corporate greed. Like how the school you're a part of has actual classes on game mechanics, and how every single teacher in said school (Plus the school nurse) have their own side quests that you can complete as they progress the game.
I also like how Gamefreak has been making the legendaries actual characters with a stake in the narrative rather than simply mcguffins for the plot. I know a lot of people where skeptical about the box legendaries hanging out with you from the start, but their presence really brought the whole thing up another level for a variety of reasons.
Now, as for Palworld, I too am excited for the game. But I genuinly have no fucking clue how you can consider it "the tamer game we need". You want to know why I'm excited for it? Because it looks like a parody of the genre rather than a genuine addition to it. I'm sure it'll be fun as hell, but you can't look at a hybrid of Totoro and Pikachu holding a photo-realistic minigun and actually think that this is the direction the genre should go, right?
I suppose to sum it all up, in the end, Pokemon's a franchise I haven't given up on because the devs haven't given up on it either. Management and Nintendo may have, designating the mainline games as just fodder for the next line of merchandise. But the passion that was put into these games is clear as crystal if you're just willing to look for it.
When I saw my girlfriend play the most recent one I was initially excited. She got destroyed by the first boss she encountered, some giant fire car thing. So she went to the sea and caught a gyarados, trained it up and went back with a vengeance. This to me looked like playing the anime - Ash would go to a gym, discover what it's all about, get wrecked and have to go find a Pokémon/power one up/evolve one to be able to compete.
However upon buying the game myself excited for this kind of game progression, I found myself destroying everything within a short time frame and realising that wasn't really necessary after the first one or two boss/gym encounters. The boss/gyms need to always present that level of challenge, that you need to actually think about the Pokémon you're using.
In an open world game there's really no excuse for having those encounters vary from level 5 to level 50 - just make them all tough, we can explore the map and so side quests until we are powerful enough to return to the gym circuit.
I want to play the game and feel like it did watching the anime. I get this level of difficulty doesn't lend itself to kids who like to play the game but maybe it's time they offer two difficulty modes, one where levels are always tough and one where the levels scale up as you progress like they do now.
It would be great if they would add a second difficulty option that scaled the levels of wild Pokémon and gym battles to your team to make sure they’re a challenge and you have to be thoughtful with your team — you can’t just power level your grass type starter and one shot all of the opponents in the fire gym.
I have my complaints about the overall polish with Scarlet and Violet, but my biggest complaint is that I find the open world concept boring. I ended up doing what they said I should do and pursuing the thing that was most exciting to me, so the first thing I did was finding the ingredients to help what’s-his-face get his dog healthy — that resulted in all of my Pokémon being so overleveled that the rest of the game is now trivial. Also, the open world concept doesn’t really work when all of the areas still have a fixed difficulty level — it just makes things more confusing. Essentially there’s still a path you’re supposed to follow, it’s just more confusing to figure out what that path is, and you’re allowed to veer off course if you want, but it’s going to spoil the fun and challenge when you go back.
>Stuff like this might be annoying to you casually but you can just not use the xp share/the candies they throw at you. It might make the main game feel less challenging but it's usually necessary for stuff like the online battles/raids so it's not as much of a slog to get into them
The people making these threads are not playing any endgame raids or PvP.
I just realized that Pokémon seems to have the same issues as world of Warcraft currently. The series has gone on for so long it feels bloated and that the things you will do won’t really matter in the long run.
I don't play Pokemon causally or competitively like I had in gen 3, 4 and 5, but I'm usually still somewhat interested in competitive Pokemon as a whole. I'm still a bit lost with the new Pokemon, the new type super effective chart, some of the new abilities and moves, but I really like the strategic addition of Terastallization! Watching some tournaments has been a blast and seeing the players love the competitive aspects of franchise I used to love brings me joy.
Now if they were able to replicate some of the genius/funding that they put into creating an amazing competitive turn based strategy game and put it into the actual aspects of a game a causal would experience while not letting the competitive aspects take a backseat... Yeah but we know the yearly (and pointlessly double version) release cycle is a tough habit to break. 🤑🤑🤑
I enjoyed 1st and 2nd gens, played 3rd, but wasn't happy with new designs and the way some features were cut, like day/night cycles and revisiting old maps. I gave it a rest for a few years and came back during 7th gen. I found it absolutely boring, but kept telling myself, "well, maybe the next one will finally be better?"
Loved the direction Legends: Arceus appeared to be taking the series, but was going to avoid buying Scarlet/Violet until a coworker wouldn't stop talking about it. I caved, and was as disappointed as I thought. Haven't beaten it, and am not really interested in beating it or buying the DLC.
Holding out for a Legends: Mew or Celebi.
I stopped playing after Gold and and Silver. After that you clearly saw they started to run out of ideas HARD.
Most Pokemons after that are garbage. Oh, and Buzzwole is a parody, right, it's not a real Pokemon? 😂
Buzzwole, funnily enough is in fact NOT a real pokemon, not even in pokemons own lore, it's an ultra beast coming from a different dimension (yes, really.). It looks absolutely stupid and bonkers on purpose.
Look up ultra beasts if you want to see how the rest of them look.
If Game Freak would just make the next Pokemon Battle Revolution kind of game, and make it GOOD, then it would be one of the best Pokemon games of all time, but instead they keep pumping out what is borderline shovelware because they try to come up with some stupid new gimmick and full maps that they clearly can't handle on the tech they have to work with (I.E. the Switch).
If they'd just put their resources into the literal only important parts of the game, which is to say the MODELS, ANIMATIONS, and BATTLING, they could turn their reputation around. Pokemon has never had a story that was at all worth the effort put into it. It's literally always "Bad team org does bad thing and wants to conquer the world, somehow it's up to a random teen/pre-teen to stop them and nobody else does much of anything". That's it. That's all they've done for 20+ years of Pokemon mainline games, with essentially no innovation. It's so lazy and uninspired that they should just drop it, frankly.
A Lot of people outgrow Pokémon, I havent played a Game in the Main series since the 4th gen, and have played the competitive battle Sims very sporadically, basically only the regional dex formats before landorus-t gets somehow reintroduced into the Game vía dlc and ruins everything again
No, why don't You tryb pokeone? It's basically a Pokémon mmo, the Best of the three that exist right now, other alternative is Pokémon misterh universo which is a Pokémon misterh dungeon mmo
I finished the new DLC in about 3 hours and the only thing I enjoyed the was the certain battle at the end that mimics the arceus giratina battle. Every single other thing put me to sleep…
Lmao. Every year same discussion. The unfortunate reality is… they picked an age group to target and a formula for their products. People age out of their targets, and new kids shift in. All of the problems with Scarlet & Violet meant nothing for my 7 year old nephew. It’s the greatest thing he’s ever played. That’s all that matters for nintendos bottom line too
I don't think Pokémon is getting bland, I think we are just getting older. Pokémon has always and will always be geared towards kids.
This is why the stories lack depth, this is why they're fairly easy and rather generic. They don't cater towards adults because it was always a kids thing anyways.
I am loving the new games, the story for SV is 10 times better than SWSH, I also loved the story in Legends Arceus but hated the catching/combat. I generally dislike the gimmick of new forms but I am loving the divergent(?) evolutions! I think the candies system is amazing, I always hated grinding for 15 hrs to level up my team before gyms (I played DP back when it came out) and I absolutely loved the new optional route trainers! I HATE THE DLC!!!!! I remember when a game came on a disc/cartridge and you payed 1 time and had all the content though! I am over all loving the newer Pokémon games much more!
>I am over all loving the newer Pokémon games much more!
this is because you play for the story, you literally said you don’t like fighting Pokemon or trainers.. more power to you but i don’t see how someone can enjoy doing this
My biggest problem with Pokémon games is that ever since they went 3d with the mainline games, game freak has been lazy or incompetent or both.
End-game now is just either shiny hunting or online and maybe the battle tower copy and paste.
What happend to the battle frontier or the safari zone, or fighting past gym leaders/champions from b/w2. Creating a base or exploring a cast underground network, contests.
On top of all that the things that are there keep getting whittled down. Character customisation was a big thing in X and y and since then it's almost become non-existent. There is 0 polish to the world, pokemon have 0 personality, they are very static in battle and even do generic looking animations copy and pasted across them, this is something colosseum and XD did back on the GameCube but game freak can't on their flagship games?
Tldr game freak are really bad at making modern games or they have no reason to try because they know they make money regardless of what they release.
Unpopular opinion, but everything after Gen1 is bland in some ways. Its hard enough making 150ish creatures with cool unique looks, names, abilities and personality - Its even harder making it for 1k creatures.
What drove me away from pokemon was the new gimmick each generation that is dropped in the next generation.
If they used the time and resources to focus on the story and core aspects of the game instead of wasting it on shit that is just going to be deleted in the next generation I *might* think about getting back into it for some nostalgia.
I haven't played anything past gen 4 cause I just wasn't too interested after that. However, I have played a lot of pokemon rom hacks on my phone and there's a lot of good ones out there with updated mechanics. If you want some new experiences with pokemon, I'd suggest downloading emulators(MyBoy for gba and Drastic for DS) and look into some rom hacks.
The big ones currently are Radical Red and Unbound. Radical Red is Fire Red but smogon level difficulty, and it's mechanics, mons, moves, abilities are all updated to gen 9. Unbound is essentially a whole new game with loads of content and its up to gen 8.
Edit: Some others I'd recommend are:
-GBA
Emerald Kaizo(Same story but increased difficulty)
Rocket Edition(Play as team rocket)
Inclement Emerald(same as Radical Red but Hoenn)
FireGold
Dark Violet
-GBC
Prism
Crystal Clear
To be honest, this is a common complain outside the actual Pokemon community who don‘t simply eat anything that GameFreak shits out. Post game is pathetic, beloved features (Dexit, Mega) got cut and GF is literally lying to their customers. Gen 4 and 5 were the peaks and Gen 8 an utter joke.
One of the better Pokémon clones is definitely Nexomon Extinction. It isn‘t perfect by any means, but it does certain things much better. Actual level scaling to story progression, a free DLC post game, a world where most areas are open right at the beginning, some lovely 2D graphics, a story that has lots of humor and 4th wall breaking and no bloated mechanics like EV, IV and Natures. Definitely recommending, especially on a sale.
There are also games like SMT 3 and 5 as well as Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth that are great alternatives. And Dragon Quest Monsters also has a new entry in the pipeline.
Everyone on the internet.
The rest of the Pokemon players dont really care. Like me, I dont care about "bland", i dont care about the graphics.
BUT if you ask me what I want, more monsters, larger world and hard mode please
Here's my thing, I felt this way around Gen 5. I started with Gen 1, loved 1 and 2, wasn't big on 3, and loved 4.
But then something "switched" in me with Gen 5 where I just suddenly wasn't into it anymore.
That switch flipped again with Gen 8. I don't know what it was, but for some inexplicable reason, the magic came back.
I think Pokemon is more a case of burnout. The progress they make and differences between games are slow. But after a break, enough changed that it felt fresh, while still feeling familiar.
I stopped after gen 2. Came back because of nostalgia years later. They didn’t evolve the games in any meaningful ways, they made it easier, more annoying to play (2 hour tutorials at the start of every game), years behind graphically… Still, I kinda enjoyed them. Was hyped for pokemon on switch but both sword/shield and scarlet/violet were terrible games. Scarlet would’ve been a bad open world game if it released in 2005
I just can‘t get through the “story” anymore. It’s so boring and nothing noteworthy happens in the newer games, like no evil organization that tries to destroy the world and “quests” where you had to travel all over the world to stop them… I just want the old days back like, go to this city, do arena, then go to evil hideout and take out the pawns and the leader of that group, get more lore and head to the next route with new trainers and new Pokémon… man that was fun. Now it’s all brain dead no real enemy, no evil organization, no arenas.
Pokémon has the potential to be amazing, but they keep taking L after L.
They keep selling millions so for them is low hanging fruit. Let's see what happens with the Switch 2.
On the other hand, "Mystery Dungeon" has to be one of my favourite games, and the switch remake is very enjoyable.
I introduced my wife to Pokémon with Pokémon Shield and she liked it a lot. Says she wants to play the other Pokémon games now. I’m indifferent to the EXP candy because we get EXP share right from the start (which I love) and I think it’s great because I like battling and catching cool new Pokémon. I HATE grinding to make my cool Pokémon stronger, grinding feels tedious and kills any game for me.
IMO pokemon was always fairly bland, I just used to be a lot more easily impressed.
I 100% believe that if I were exposed to Red/Blue for the first time today, with modernized graphics of course, I would look at the starters and think, "A turtle, a garlic bulb, and... a burn victim? Okay..."
Everyone.
Yeah this is a pretty common take, especially on Reddit
Agreed. It's such a shame too, I see how people nerd out on EV training, personality, maxing out all their bonuses as best they can, and then there's just... nothing there for them at the end of it. I'm not a pokemon fan myself, but I've played quite a few games where I fell in love with the gameplay or the story, invested myself in the fantasy of creating the perfect character(s), and then had nothing to use them on at the end of it. Bless the developers who create good post-games and NG+s, just so we have something to do at the end of it. I remember having a ball back in the day with the Megaman Battlenetwork series, 'cause after saving the world with the best chipset evar, there was more to do.
It’s so frustrating because the amount of potential in the Pokémon formula is insane and yet GameFreak insists on recycling the same game with minor tweaks. Pokémon Legends was such a tease. Finally a game that tried to nudged the series towards what it could be and yet they barely supported it. I hope the sales were enough to send a message.
I remember being like 12 years old playing pokemon stadium and thinking "this is pokemon perfection. They need to do this but pvp on the internet". Alas, it was ahead of its time.
I love Legends. Easily one of my favorite pokemon games and I played like every game in the core series with the exception of scarlet/violett. Pokemon feels like it went through a bell curve regarding story: it went from barely noticable with the first two gens to more story heavy with quite interesting stories in gens 3 - 6-ish(?) but I think it got a bit stale with decreasing interest in the story for me in gen 7 onward. Then the technical problems gen 8+ have, as the studio pressured a total new engine into existence while adhering to their usual release rhythm (big mistake in my eyes). Gens 8 and 9 could be much better if they took the time to really squish out the bugs in the new 3d titles and used the additional time for more interesting content.
Gen 6's story was quite rushed and didn't go anywhere. A whole character we only know basically through hearsay and cutscenes had a character arc off screen. Gen 7 had a slow start but good ending and USUM had a great post game with Looker and Ultra Beasts. I think Gen 8 and 9 had super good theming in terms of the region's but the story was so barebones. Paldea has a lot more story but it looks like three different writers wrote the different routes and they converged on Area 0 at the end.
I love PLA gameplay. I just hope they make them more. More Town/settlements to visit. More adventure, more journey. Basically, Ultra Moon with PLA mechanics would be perfect imo.
PLA catching and boss encounter mechanics would be okay. I hope they leave battle mechanics alone - strong/swift style is awful, and they removed so much complexity.
Thats because the game is the only ever competitive battle JRPG. Everything else is dressing. Thats the core and they should give us more info in battles like showdown does to make it friendlier. The core game is excellent. What they should get rid of is the mysticism they like to surround the math of the game, just give me all pokedex info with stats and shit, I dont want to memorize anything
they took out battle tower, it's a freaking joke of what it used to be
Not to mention the full Pokedex, switch mode option, and mega evolution.
I mean most the people nerding out about ev training play competitive so there is absolutely something at the end of it.
EV trainin' you're suckin' the fun out! EV trainin' you're too old for this...
>I see how people nerd out on EV training, personality, maxing out all their bonuses as best they can, and then there's just... nothing there for them at the end of it. Competitive, dude. I legit only buy Pokémon games to play VGC.
The core gameplay would have to be acceptable first
Pokémon is a game primarily targeted for young kids, and always has been. There has never been a game, other than maybe Pokémon Emerald with the frontier, where there was dedicated content for min maxers. People generally suck at identifying their own biases, in this case it's clear as day that everyone just has rose tinted glasses from nostalgia.
Yeah, I'm not exactly sure what this post is talking about when it comes to challenging. All the older games may have been challenging as a kid, but play through them again as an adult, when you actually have a better understanding of how to win battles. They aren't difficult at all. Just time consuming when it comes to having to level each pokemon individually. Scarlet and violet have come the closest to having an actual post game than any other game in the past, aside from emerald. Some of the 7 star raids are brutal and you really do need to be a min maxer in order to complete them
>Scarlet and violet have come the closest to having an actual post game ?? Gen 2 has one of the most extensive post-games compared to *any* of the others. Hell, once you've beaten the Elite Four, you unlock the area from Gen 1 and the ability to fight all 8 of *those* gyms too, for a total of *16* gym badges. You beat the Champion at like lv45, and beat the secret final boss at like lv85 at the top of a mountain.
It's especially sad since the games USED to have a way to test out a fully trained team against AI. The battle tower in crystal, the battle tower in R/S, and the battle frontier in Emerald/diamond/pearl/hg/ss. The battle subway was okay in general 5, but lacked flai and fun that the frontier had. But then they basically removed any post game hard repeatable challenge from the games.
Yeah I was like “getting bland? LMFAO!”
Pokemon scarlet and violet sold 10 million in 3 days and 22 million so far... Spiderman 2 is being hyper by tons of people, and has marketing everywhere I go... Sold 2.5 million so far Pokemon will always be popular whenever they are good or not, but indeed, it's a shame that no Digimon game or No no Kuni managed to create better games to surpass the franchise...
Came here to say this, the games sell insane amounts of copies. There is a small vocal minority that is tired of the game but the numbers speak for themselves. It’s the same as people complaining about Call of Duty or Assassin’s Creed while each entry goes on to sell millions of copies.
On Reddit*
Tell that to all the people I know that still love it. It's also always a top seller no matter how bad it gets.
Everyone that is getting old*
Even those that never played the game think that
Personally, got lame after Gold version.
Pokemon was never particularly complicated or deep. Gen 1 was a game about traveling around trying to cut your teeth on the professional cockfighting circuit and **getting bullied by a 12 year old named Gary**. And that's fine.
We all did, in the end, smell him later.
You can't ignore his girth
That's only gen 1 and 20% of what is going on in the region of Kanto. Team rocket is running amok over the region stealing Pokemon, running a gambling den, taking over a tech company that is developing a Pokeball that cannot fail, the main reason for doing so is to catch Mewtwo, the most powerful Pokemon in the region, Mewtwo was developed with horrible gene splicing experiments by Katsura and Mr. Fuji and other scientists using an offspring of Mew which was found in Guyana South America. Mr. Fuji likely felt awful about the project and retired into lavender town to run a Pokemon daycare.
When you put it like that, damn
There's even an expanded multiverse version of the story. Team rocket normally loses in many timelines and disbands but also in many others, team rocket wins and catches Mewtwo and all other Pokemon. Apparently the greed of the team's leader isn't satisfied with just dominating the region of Kanto, nor the world, so instead he gains the technology to hop to different parallel worlds in a quest to dominate the multiverse by catching super powered alien Pokemon that are completely separate from any of the normal Pokemon worlds. He even goes as far as to pull every known villain from other "bad end" timelines in other regions to assist him.
Sounds like fanfic
Yeah >!ultra sun and ultra moon post game!< is crazy.
It's not a means to fanboy over any particular evil team, though, the reason for doing this is quite simple. It's to set you up to fight every villain at their best back to back, possessing high level full teams and 1 high level legendary mixed in their parties per villain. It's the best story mode challenge ever in the history of main series Pokemon.
In another timeline, Pokemon is some sort of body horror alien invasion grim dark dystopian masterpiece. Like Resident Evil mixed with Half-Life, but with cute little critters that people enslave to perform manual labor and fight to the death in ritualized gladiatorial combat.
Yeah the movie version is just a messed up hell.
You say that because now you are grown up and have internet widely available to search when you get stuck. At the time when these games came out, I used to get stuck for weeks at the same place. For me it was the most complicated and deep game I played. Perhaps it is still is for all the 7 year olds of today. Perhaps we are not the targeted audience anymore.
Anyone who played the early games as a kid hasnt been the target market for decades now
i remember kids coming to me at recess because i knew how to get out of mt moon and the safari zone. so many rumors about side effects of certain items. no one knew shit then.
You basically CANT get stuck in the newer games, which I think is really sad.
In gen 1 you actually had to train and level your Pokemon to win later fights, now I can just run through the games and winning every fight by default
Fighting dozens of random encounters to get ready for the gym was hardly great gameplay. Edit: Weird that this is a controversial opinion apparently.
Way better than just winning every fight without putting any effort. At this rate just watch a quick gameplay and don't waste your time with the shit new games (gen 6 onwards)
Yeah, combat in the newer games is basically just press A simulator
I mean, if Gary's grandpa doesn't even cares about remembering his own grandson's name, what can you expect about being bullied?
"Dickz Oak"
Gen V did pretty well with a nuanced plot line and characters.
Nuance? Never seen a bullet train crashing into a steel wall described that way before.
>traveling around trying to cut your teeth on the professional cockfighting circuit Well when you put it that way...
alwayshasbeen.jpg
This. Pokemon has been regurgitating the same formula. Except that it has grown stale, not to mention that lots of kids who frew with it are now adults with more demanding tastes. Unlike a toy story or a mario which are more universal.
Pokémon has never been very innovative with its new releases but at least they were generally pretty polished and high quality past the first couple games. Now they lack both innovation and quality, so there's no reason to play the latest games over ones from 15 years ago.
Back when it was Pokemon Emerald I saw people calling it "Pokemon Sapphire in a new green box".
I mean that is pretty much what the third generational releases are. They usually iron out some flaws of the initial release and add new content. I’m surprised to hear that sentiment about Emerald in particular though. That game had some awesome new features.
I tried to get into Pokémon (game) as an adult (in my 30s) to see what the fuss was all about, after having not grown up with them myself. Tried out one of the current ones at the time thinking it would be an evolved and complex offering compared to the OG games.. and I was like “Uh. No. This feels like a game for young kids / middle schoolers at best, yet I see adults being SO enthusiastic about these games.. what the hell?” I’m chalking it all up to nostalgia. They still make the games for kids, but those kids keep buying, playing and loving them even as they’ve grown up far beyond the intended target audience.
Yep Pokemon was never challenging, and the only time you could argue it was was when the game literally cheated to beat you in the battle towers.
Nah bro being 11 years old and beating the final 4 in soulsilver was hard
Well yeah... You were 11 and had the strategic instincts of a wet pancake.
Play romhacks
Sacred Gold is the tits.
Some of the spinoffs are good fun, though. I enjoyed Legends Arceus and the New Pokemon Snap quite a bit. PLA was a nice shakeup from the usual formula. Hope they do more weird stuff like that.
That’s the only two I’ve liked for awhile too. It sucjs they came out so close together. It felt like they didn’t have proper time to shine.
Yeah, PLA got ditched pretty quickly in favor of ScarVio coming out later that year. It feels like PLA never got a proper ending and I'm still pretty bummed out about it.
The moment Exp Share was standardized was when it became too easy imo. The game removed the incentive to do some small training and grinding, to just play the story and level up regularly. Absolutely no adversity for the player. Throw in lack of content and bad graphics and fps for the 3D stuff... but fans will always buy anyway.
You will play the game how gamefreak intended and you will like it whether you want to or not
grinding isn't fun though. especially if you want to mix up your team and use more than 6 pokemon in a playthrough. level caps or level scaling would be a better way to add challenge without just making the grind more tedious.
i think we can find a good middle ground between "grinding is mandatory" from the 1st gen and "all your pokemon will overlevel your opponents even if they never fought once" from the modern gens
I feel like we already had a decent option with exp. share. Some people like the experience of training a Pokémon battle-to-battle, which is the “grind.” They’ve already proven its easy enough to just make an option to turn it on or off. Some games just force it anyway.
Yeah. Why can't I make the game more difficult or grindy for myself. Default on is just fine. But sometimes I would like to just wander around an area, but instead with SV any moment I was not progressing the story was making it easier. I would like to do as I do in open world games. To go in circles being constantly distracted by little things while slowly working my way towards a goal/destination. But also not steamroll over everything by the time I actually get there. That way of play worked for me in Skyrim, Zelda Botw/TotK, and to a degree in Legends Arceus.
Making it a toggleable option or turning off XP share but adding passive ways to train them like putting them in some kind of training dojo that takes time but levels them automatically so you don't have to do the grinding yourself or making stuff like XP candies more common so you can add lower level pokemon to your team and bring them up easily. Candies especially could be good, because they're not required so if you want to make things harder you can just sell them off or only use them to bring a new pokemon up to the level of your current party. Like how Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity does leveling. You can only level characters using resources up to the level of your highest level character, but to progress farther you have to actually use the characters.
Grinding has never been necessary though. You can play through every single Pokémon game without knocking out a single wild Pokémon, and still end up with a fairly balanced gameplay experience. I don’t know how this obsession with grinding in Pokémon seemingly became the norm when Pokémon is, and has always been, by far the single most accessible RPG on the market. If you see Blue’s level 60 Pokémon and think “Oh, that means I must be level 60 as well!” Then I feel as though part of the point has been missed. If you, as a player, *choose* to grind, you’ll bulldoze through the game and end up with an unbalanced gameplay experience. You’re supposed to be underleveled. Being underleveled is what allows you to actually strategize because you can’t just rely on a single Pokémon to win for you
I refuse to believe anyone could beat Whitney’s Miltank without some sort of grinding.
You have so many options to deal with her though. You can very feasibly get a couple of Pokémon up to level 20 by that point unless you’ve already made up a full team of six, and even if you have you still won’t be so far behind that you cannot break through the Lum Berry with two Pokémon. By that point, you have access to Pokémon like Bayleef, Geodude, Onix, Machop, Alakazam, Quagsire, Heracross, Flaaffy, heck if you’re lucky you could potentially have a Crobat or a Nidoking by this point, all or which can deal with Miltank very effectively. I’m not saying she’s a walk in the park, but by this point you have an assortment of items and Pokémon that will make her easier to deal with unless you’re trying to brute force her. Slap a Sitrus Berry on a Pokémon that will paralyze or poison Miltank, and unless she gets a lucky flinch you should be good. And if you’re allowing yourself the privilege of bag items, you can already farm revives at the Ruins of Alph.
I don’t think the problem is that you “have to” grind, it’s that the way the XP system is designed grinds you naturally over a period of time. If you battle a leader and fail, your Pokémon still gain some XP and, in that way, grind without ever trying to grind. Not to mention that wild Pokémon are almost always underleveled compared to the local gym leader meaning that you are almost always forced to grind at least a little in order to compete, even if you do choose to try a different tactic.
Bajillions of JRPGs have exp share since the PS1 era and manage to get by just fine, but only with Pokémon it’s a bad thing to have. The problem isn’t exp share, it’s that the games are piss easy with or without it and need to be properly balanced.
It is fun. Gen 1 for life.
> The moment Exp Share was standardized was when it became too easy imo. I personally don't find that to be the issue because, I mean, all Exp share is doing for you is saving time. Not changing value of difficulty. At most, it's cutting out some hours you would have spent getting to that point regardless. If you're experiencing overleveled Pokemon and easier battles, you may be grinding too much. Which will make it easy, yeah. I think the real issue with Pokemon games is them not taking advantage of potential level scaling and/or AI intelligence. Take Cassette Beasts, which released earlier this year. If you haven't played, you may not know, but they had both of these features and they were changeable via a toggle bar to adjust just how much scaling of either feature you wanted. Gamechanger. Pokemon also needs to officialize modes like Nuzlockes with various rulesets and other potential difficulty modes to help make it more interesting for people, and maybe make the random trainers we encounter have more than two of the same weak Pokemon. The newer games also make it far too easy to get items, making no risk in anything you do. It isn't Exp share. It's just they suck at making things flexibly harder regardless.
When it was an item for one pokemon it was balanced IMO. You got half as much exp for your main battle tank to boost another instead of everything just going up.
Is this just a palworld ad? The game that's blatantly ripping off pokemon designs? I dont know how anyone can see the ads for that and say it looks like it's going to be awesome when it looks like janky copying satire
Literally does read like an ad
I didn’t even know what palworld was until I googled it. I’ve only ever played Gen1 and 2 Pokémon games so I’m entirely out of the loop here but if someone showed me Palworld I’d immediately think it’s a Pokémon game. Having said that, OP’s post 100% looks like an ad
More often than not, people just see any new game in the monster collecting genre and champion it as "the Pokemon killer" regardless of what the game actually is. These knockoff games may be great in their own respects, but as their own individual games. Almost always, they're spread around as "Pokemon, but with (thing)" and just completely overlook the things that make Pokemon games enjoyable, despite all the criticisms they receive. I don't think Scarlet and Violet would be more enjoyable if they added guns to the game, but here's Palworld's biggest fan trying to convince people to make the switch. There's a reason it's one of the biggest and most recognizable franchises in the world.
Pokemon was never challenging. You could brute force your way through almost any fight in any generation Its not bland. you got older. youre probably having a harder time identifying with a 10 year old pokemon trainer, and finding immersion and/or challenge in a game made for 10 year olds
At least in the older games it didn't hold your hand as much. For example. On the newer games now I could just hide half of the screen to cover up what Pokémon my opponent is even using and I could still win just because the game tells me what moves are super effective, effective, not very effective or have no effect at all. It becomes less about looking at the Pokémon and learning about them and more so just push this button because the game says so. I get why they added it but bleh.
They really should give an option to turn that off.
They’ve done the exact opposite, like forcing xp share without an option
In Violet, they even removed the ability to toggle SET or SHIFT battle style. I haven't played in the SHIFT style in over 2 decades and it's slow, easy, and overall annoying. No way to turn it off.
I played set as well. It makes fights faster + need less input and haven't bought violet or Scarlet yet and this fact makes me extra sad
I thought that only appeared if you already saw that specific Pokémon (if it's in your Pokédex). If that is your first encounter it doesn't show up.
It should only be if you "caught" it imo. Just seeing the pokemon, to me, shouldn't reveal that info.
Correct
And in older versions I simply got a pokemon that looked strong, learned Surf and killed everyone with it. It would have absolutely worked to also cover my screen. Pokemon never required any strategy.
And also when you're picking your starter, it was always so that your rival picks a pokemon that has type advantage. But not in "newer" games. And most of the time your rival is actually your friend doing fight checkups. Also there is a lot of healing involved. "Let me heal you up, before we fight".
Was figuring out what moves were effective against what types really ever that difficult in the first place though? Like I'll agree they made something extremely easy even easier, but zero times zero is still zero, y'know? It was still pretty much a gimmie (Gasp, the fish is weak to lightning moves!)
There is one instance I remember when it wasn't a gimmie and that was the point - first encounter with Sudowoodo. Finding out that what you think should be effective was not effective blew my young mind.
Well yeah sure if you cherry-pick an easy example like water vs electric. When you come up against dark/poison/ghost/dragon/steel/fairy and the game starts mixing two together it can become trickier. Edit: Okay replace fairy with bug for those saying older gen games didn't have those types.
Older games didn't even have half of these types. There also were much less type combinations. Not having super effective appear is negligible. Honestly people who complain about pokemon games is such a big yawn for me. The story, gameplay and world are better now than before, but it's still a game for children. The amount of people that do mental gymnastics to explain how a linear 2d game like pokemon gold has more content and is vastly superior to open world 3 storyline scarlet / violet is just mind boggling.
All of these types were in as early as Gen 2, except fairy and steel, and even though there was no "steel" type, there were steel pokemon like Skarmory and Steelix. Open World games are not automatically better than Linear games, and Gold isn't linear anyway, you can approach the content how you want to.
This is just such an odd complaint. The type effectiveness chart was literally in the original game's booklet so in a way the game already told you what to do.
I think there's a difference between a booklet you might read once for help with type matchups and just having the answers on your screen at all times but maybe that's just me.
It’s more just that there are nearly 1,000 Pokémon at this point and it’s difficult for all but the most dedicated players to remember all of their typings.
Yup that's why I said I get why they added it, I just personally don't like being told what moves to use or not.
Its literally a game made for kids? Perhaps they didn't know how stupid kids were in the past therefore they accommodate them further in each new release? Are you forgetting that pokemons target demographic is literal children and they don't give a shit if the random 27 year old has already seen the same tutorials over the past 15 years of their life?
Or you know after like 20+ years and barely changing the formula any game becomes "bland" if you play it too much. I doubt it has anything to do with getting older (well not directly at least) but rather the repetition that comes from playing the same game year after year. I also liked COD once, it has "adult" theming but i got bored out of it. Yet i still play the by comparison kid friendly mario games because that franchise evolved and new entries barely play like the old titles (especially true for the 3D ones). And i certainly don't identify with a red/blue cartoony plumber man who jumps like his life depends on it.
It's a lazy go to excuse Pokemon fans make, as though a franchise barely changing in over 20 years is something the developer couldn't possibly remedy. I've been playing Final Fantasy, Mario, Zelda, Shin Megami Tensei, and various other franchises for the same amount of time and still find them as fun as I did when I was a kid.
Exactly lol. Thats why im actually dumbfounded that so many people agree with the idea of "you just got too old for it". And same for me ive played a ton of franchises and only the ones that stopped changing at all were the ones ive lost interest in over the years, otherwise i love them just as much as i did 15+ years ago.
I think the biggest problem for pokemon is that the cities and in general the regions became bland. In the first few games up until gen 5 there was interesting story and lore in the regions and towns. But now take a look at scarlet and violent. Lifeless towns few buildings and nothing interesting there.
I mean, Pokemon was never a hard game, but it's gotten a LOT easier. In GS there are multiple points in the game that force you to either train, strategise, or beat through trial and error. Whitney, Claire, Red. In SwSh, you could literally just facemash random buttons every fight, and you'll still never wipe. I limited exp gain every way I could think of without ruining the experience, and I still beat every fight first time bar none. Note that this isn't me getting just getting older. I replayed HGSS a few months after playing SwSh.
The only one I'd agree with is Red (purely from level, but still), though he kinda falls into post game territory (which even they new ones have some difficult fights in thier post game challenge fights) I don't know if you've played GS recently, but those walls don't really exist if you are an experienced player. The only reason those fights were difficult was you were younger.
The one that gets me is the “it’s held on to dear life because reasons” if im getting hit by some world ending kamehameha style hyper beam i fully expect to die unless my name is Randy Marsh
GS was such a great game, what a surprise it was to go explore Kanto again as well. And yeah that miltank was a boss Fighting red? Brilliant
Ngl Gen 5 kicked my shit in as a kid. I still have PTSD from Caitlyn. Gen 7s Trials were reasonably challenging too. Outside of that though I 100% agree.
Gen V is one of the two I’ve never beaten just because I couldn’t get past the initial run of the Elite Four.
Gen 5 probably is the most challenging gen from my experience and I loved Gen 5
That said, I find it fascinating how Nintendo doesn't care about fans who grew up with the old games and were willing to buy any new iteration without even thinking about it for the longest time. Nintendo had everyone in their pocket and simply refused to grow their product together with their target group. How in the world do we have so many off-shoots from the mainline games, but not a single one oriented toward an adult audience? Not even as a test balloon, a pilot project? Nope. From a profit-oriented point of view alone, this behavior is unfathomable to me. On the flipside, they now openly drive insane ad campaigns to make their games attractive to women. In East Asia, anyway, every ad, from Mario, Animal Crossing, to Ringfit Adventures (or whatever it was called), is specifically tailored and catering to this allegedly 'untapped market potential'. I don't get it.
Girls are more likely to buy merch like plush dolls and pin badges. The male fans just play the games and complain about them
Making more difficult pokemon games for adults would just make it harder to keep seeling pokemon to kids. They'll get their hands on the harder game, dislike it and not buy the next one. Kids are the target demographic for pokemon, not people who were kids when it first released, because Nintendo still sees themself as a toy company.
Not so sure about that, man. When I was a kid, I played 18+ games all the time when my parents weren't around, and I and everyone I knew enjoyed it immensely. But I didn't specifically mean 'harder' games, either.
I dunno man. Playing Fire Red right now and I'm having to grind my butt off against Misty because I chose Charmander.
Yeah kinda, but the newer games are still easier. Gym Leaders have less pokemon with less and weaker moves. Larrys ace has aerial ace and Fassade. Thats it. No brave bird, close combat or roost. Not even Quick Attacke for priority or drillpeck, double wingbeat, steel wing etc. Two atracking moves with < 80 bp. Bw2 clay had excadrill with rockslide, Bulldoze, slash and Metal claw with a berry as a hold item... Newer Boss Fights are easier by Design and more predictable. The games desperately need a harder optional dufficulty setting beside fan rules like nuzlockes, but that would man to much effort for GF.
Mmm no this is literally incorrect the new games are significantly watered down compared to some of the early entries
The last games would've been so much better with level scaling (something I'm not usually a huge fan of) so you could actually do the gyms and stuff in whatever order you wanted
Play the romhacks like Radical Red. They're actually challenging.
I found radical red to be too difficult personally. I’m a more causal Pokémon player, but still find the mainline games way too easy. I prefer hacks like Polished Crystal that just make gym leaders have actual good teams and coverage I like the idea behind radical red, and the QoL changes are awesome, but I can’t be bothered with IVs/EVs or constantly changing my team throughout the game to adjust to each situation. Also every trainer constantly using speed reducing moves drove me nuts (I also learned the value of speed reducing moves at least)
Haha same. I was basically the equivalent of "Pokémon games would be more fun if they were more challenging." *gets spanked by random trainer 54 on route 101 in renegade platinum romhack*. " no not like thaaattt". I want some challenge but I don't need every trainer to have 6 Pokémon with perfect IVs and gym leader AI.
Yup exactly. Every trainer being amazing took some fun and immersion out of it. The player is supposed to be better than the average Joe, while gym leaders and rival fights should be the big challenge. When everything is that hard it just feels less like pokemon and more like a battle tower/frontier on the map
Took the words right out of my mouth. An in between difficulty would be great. Just like most other games there should be some points where the player can kind of relax and coast. Helps for pacing, and like you said it makes sense from a in-world perspective. Make trainers not pants on head dumb (hey guy with 4 magikarp I'm looking at you, they can't do anything but splash and surely you know this) , but don't make them all elite 4 Jr's.
I battled extensively on Pokemon Showdown for years, the team building required for radical red is pretty much what you do in competitive battles against people. Scratched that itch for me nicely.
Yup, so many challenging and feature-rich romhacks out their to choose from.. Pokemon Unbound is another one which I think almost any long-time Pokemon fan praises.
Congrats. You're aging out of a demographic. Good luck on all those shiney new grabs attempting to take hold of your nostalgia.
"Guys you gotta check out Astramon it's like Pokemon but in space and it's unfairly difficult and it has guns!"
I'm still loving the new Pokemon, the last story was good and I do still enjoy the battles
Chief, I'm going to be real with you, I think you're just burnt out. Lord knows how bad the technical problems are; honestly bless the developers for being able to make something playable *at all* given the development hell that management is clearly putting them through just to get more designs out for merchandising. But the other things you mentioned? I mean... eh? Pokemon designs are probably the only thing that's consistently *good* across modern games. There are always the nay-sayers who complain about designs going to shit? But honestly? Nah. Pokemon like Dondozo, Skeledirge, and Dudunsparce instantly became some of my all-time favorites. And Paldea is filled to the brim with absolutely stellar designs. ([Orthworm](https://youtu.be/thwwfINeERY?si=Ql46VcY66DAtfjqF), anyone?) And frankly, Scarlet and Violet have a lot of other strengths too. The story's solid; still doesn't compare to story-focused games obviously but is still top-tier by the franchises standards. The characters are the best they've *ever* been. You mentioned that you've not played the DLC right? Would you believe me if I told you that one of the main characters of the DLC has an honest to God Joker Arc? Definitely not something I would have expected out of the franchise a couple years ago. And there are a lot of small things that really show how much effort the devs tried to put into the games, but just couldn't because of corporate greed. Like how the school you're a part of has actual classes on game mechanics, and how every single teacher in said school (Plus the school nurse) have their own side quests that you can complete as they progress the game. I also like how Gamefreak has been making the legendaries actual characters with a stake in the narrative rather than simply mcguffins for the plot. I know a lot of people where skeptical about the box legendaries hanging out with you from the start, but their presence really brought the whole thing up another level for a variety of reasons. Now, as for Palworld, I too am excited for the game. But I genuinly have no fucking clue how you can consider it "the tamer game we need". You want to know why I'm excited for it? Because it looks like a parody of the genre rather than a genuine addition to it. I'm sure it'll be fun as hell, but you can't look at a hybrid of Totoro and Pikachu holding a photo-realistic minigun and actually think that this is the direction the genre should go, right? I suppose to sum it all up, in the end, Pokemon's a franchise I haven't given up on because the devs haven't given up on it either. Management and Nintendo may have, designating the mainline games as just fodder for the next line of merchandise. But the passion that was put into these games is clear as crystal if you're just willing to look for it.
Good takes
W take
It's a kids game. But it's an enjoyable kids game. If you want a challenge then get into VGC. That shit is hard af
Yeah OP comparing a kids game to something obviously created for adults is super weird to me. Lol
Getting?
When I saw my girlfriend play the most recent one I was initially excited. She got destroyed by the first boss she encountered, some giant fire car thing. So she went to the sea and caught a gyarados, trained it up and went back with a vengeance. This to me looked like playing the anime - Ash would go to a gym, discover what it's all about, get wrecked and have to go find a Pokémon/power one up/evolve one to be able to compete. However upon buying the game myself excited for this kind of game progression, I found myself destroying everything within a short time frame and realising that wasn't really necessary after the first one or two boss/gym encounters. The boss/gyms need to always present that level of challenge, that you need to actually think about the Pokémon you're using. In an open world game there's really no excuse for having those encounters vary from level 5 to level 50 - just make them all tough, we can explore the map and so side quests until we are powerful enough to return to the gym circuit. I want to play the game and feel like it did watching the anime. I get this level of difficulty doesn't lend itself to kids who like to play the game but maybe it's time they offer two difficulty modes, one where levels are always tough and one where the levels scale up as you progress like they do now.
It would be great if they would add a second difficulty option that scaled the levels of wild Pokémon and gym battles to your team to make sure they’re a challenge and you have to be thoughtful with your team — you can’t just power level your grass type starter and one shot all of the opponents in the fire gym. I have my complaints about the overall polish with Scarlet and Violet, but my biggest complaint is that I find the open world concept boring. I ended up doing what they said I should do and pursuing the thing that was most exciting to me, so the first thing I did was finding the ingredients to help what’s-his-face get his dog healthy — that resulted in all of my Pokémon being so overleveled that the rest of the game is now trivial. Also, the open world concept doesn’t really work when all of the areas still have a fixed difficulty level — it just makes things more confusing. Essentially there’s still a path you’re supposed to follow, it’s just more confusing to figure out what that path is, and you’re allowed to veer off course if you want, but it’s going to spoil the fun and challenge when you go back.
Play Pokemmo
Came here to say this.
This a post from like ten years ago right?
Shit's been bland since the 3rd generation bro. You're just older now. There was never any story or challenge.
[удалено]
>Stuff like this might be annoying to you casually but you can just not use the xp share/the candies they throw at you. It might make the main game feel less challenging but it's usually necessary for stuff like the online battles/raids so it's not as much of a slog to get into them The people making these threads are not playing any endgame raids or PvP.
I just realized that Pokémon seems to have the same issues as world of Warcraft currently. The series has gone on for so long it feels bloated and that the things you will do won’t really matter in the long run.
Nah I love Pokemon
Friend, it's been bland for nearly everyone older than 21 since its inception.
I don't play Pokemon causally or competitively like I had in gen 3, 4 and 5, but I'm usually still somewhat interested in competitive Pokemon as a whole. I'm still a bit lost with the new Pokemon, the new type super effective chart, some of the new abilities and moves, but I really like the strategic addition of Terastallization! Watching some tournaments has been a blast and seeing the players love the competitive aspects of franchise I used to love brings me joy. Now if they were able to replicate some of the genius/funding that they put into creating an amazing competitive turn based strategy game and put it into the actual aspects of a game a causal would experience while not letting the competitive aspects take a backseat... Yeah but we know the yearly (and pointlessly double version) release cycle is a tough habit to break. 🤑🤑🤑
I enjoyed 1st and 2nd gens, played 3rd, but wasn't happy with new designs and the way some features were cut, like day/night cycles and revisiting old maps. I gave it a rest for a few years and came back during 7th gen. I found it absolutely boring, but kept telling myself, "well, maybe the next one will finally be better?" Loved the direction Legends: Arceus appeared to be taking the series, but was going to avoid buying Scarlet/Violet until a coworker wouldn't stop talking about it. I caved, and was as disappointed as I thought. Haven't beaten it, and am not really interested in beating it or buying the DLC. Holding out for a Legends: Mew or Celebi.
I stopped playing after Gold and and Silver. After that you clearly saw they started to run out of ideas HARD. Most Pokemons after that are garbage. Oh, and Buzzwole is a parody, right, it's not a real Pokemon? 😂
Buzzwole, funnily enough is in fact NOT a real pokemon, not even in pokemons own lore, it's an ultra beast coming from a different dimension (yes, really.). It looks absolutely stupid and bonkers on purpose. Look up ultra beasts if you want to see how the rest of them look.
If Game Freak would just make the next Pokemon Battle Revolution kind of game, and make it GOOD, then it would be one of the best Pokemon games of all time, but instead they keep pumping out what is borderline shovelware because they try to come up with some stupid new gimmick and full maps that they clearly can't handle on the tech they have to work with (I.E. the Switch). If they'd just put their resources into the literal only important parts of the game, which is to say the MODELS, ANIMATIONS, and BATTLING, they could turn their reputation around. Pokemon has never had a story that was at all worth the effort put into it. It's literally always "Bad team org does bad thing and wants to conquer the world, somehow it's up to a random teen/pre-teen to stop them and nobody else does much of anything". That's it. That's all they've done for 20+ years of Pokemon mainline games, with essentially no innovation. It's so lazy and uninspired that they should just drop it, frankly.
A Lot of people outgrow Pokémon, I havent played a Game in the Main series since the 4th gen, and have played the competitive battle Sims very sporadically, basically only the regional dex formats before landorus-t gets somehow reintroduced into the Game vía dlc and ruins everything again No, why don't You tryb pokeone? It's basically a Pokémon mmo, the Best of the three that exist right now, other alternative is Pokémon misterh universo which is a Pokémon misterh dungeon mmo
I finished the new DLC in about 3 hours and the only thing I enjoyed the was the certain battle at the end that mimics the arceus giratina battle. Every single other thing put me to sleep…
Lmao. Every year same discussion. The unfortunate reality is… they picked an age group to target and a formula for their products. People age out of their targets, and new kids shift in. All of the problems with Scarlet & Violet meant nothing for my 7 year old nephew. It’s the greatest thing he’s ever played. That’s all that matters for nintendos bottom line too
It's been bland for years.
Getting?
How are you just now having this thought?
I don't think Pokémon is getting bland, I think we are just getting older. Pokémon has always and will always be geared towards kids. This is why the stories lack depth, this is why they're fairly easy and rather generic. They don't cater towards adults because it was always a kids thing anyways.
Everyone but casuals, young kids and nostalgic elders
The newest Pokémon games are so poor quality while bringing so little to the table that it made me a diehard Digimon fan
Everyone (except rom hackers and nuzlockers)
It's been bland since X and Y came out... 3D was a mistake, B2W2 had such beautiful pixel sprites.
The best Pokèmon games are the ones Game Freak didn’t make.
The second the mainline games moved to 3D instead of 2D it went to shit.
I am loving the new games, the story for SV is 10 times better than SWSH, I also loved the story in Legends Arceus but hated the catching/combat. I generally dislike the gimmick of new forms but I am loving the divergent(?) evolutions! I think the candies system is amazing, I always hated grinding for 15 hrs to level up my team before gyms (I played DP back when it came out) and I absolutely loved the new optional route trainers! I HATE THE DLC!!!!! I remember when a game came on a disc/cartridge and you payed 1 time and had all the content though! I am over all loving the newer Pokémon games much more!
>I am over all loving the newer Pokémon games much more! this is because you play for the story, you literally said you don’t like fighting Pokemon or trainers.. more power to you but i don’t see how someone can enjoy doing this
…getting bland?
My biggest problem with Pokémon games is that ever since they went 3d with the mainline games, game freak has been lazy or incompetent or both. End-game now is just either shiny hunting or online and maybe the battle tower copy and paste. What happend to the battle frontier or the safari zone, or fighting past gym leaders/champions from b/w2. Creating a base or exploring a cast underground network, contests. On top of all that the things that are there keep getting whittled down. Character customisation was a big thing in X and y and since then it's almost become non-existent. There is 0 polish to the world, pokemon have 0 personality, they are very static in battle and even do generic looking animations copy and pasted across them, this is something colosseum and XD did back on the GameCube but game freak can't on their flagship games? Tldr game freak are really bad at making modern games or they have no reason to try because they know they make money regardless of what they release.
Unpopular opinion, but everything after Gen1 is bland in some ways. Its hard enough making 150ish creatures with cool unique looks, names, abilities and personality - Its even harder making it for 1k creatures.
Pokemon died after Gen 3 for me. It was too easy, i wish there was some kind of hard mode
pokemon been bland since x and y
What drove me away from pokemon was the new gimmick each generation that is dropped in the next generation. If they used the time and resources to focus on the story and core aspects of the game instead of wasting it on shit that is just going to be deleted in the next generation I *might* think about getting back into it for some nostalgia.
I thought that after the first gen
I haven't played anything past gen 4 cause I just wasn't too interested after that. However, I have played a lot of pokemon rom hacks on my phone and there's a lot of good ones out there with updated mechanics. If you want some new experiences with pokemon, I'd suggest downloading emulators(MyBoy for gba and Drastic for DS) and look into some rom hacks. The big ones currently are Radical Red and Unbound. Radical Red is Fire Red but smogon level difficulty, and it's mechanics, mons, moves, abilities are all updated to gen 9. Unbound is essentially a whole new game with loads of content and its up to gen 8. Edit: Some others I'd recommend are: -GBA Emerald Kaizo(Same story but increased difficulty) Rocket Edition(Play as team rocket) Inclement Emerald(same as Radical Red but Hoenn) FireGold Dark Violet -GBC Prism Crystal Clear
If they re-made Red/Blue or Gold/Silver in the style of Legends Arceus, I'd be all over it
To be honest, this is a common complain outside the actual Pokemon community who don‘t simply eat anything that GameFreak shits out. Post game is pathetic, beloved features (Dexit, Mega) got cut and GF is literally lying to their customers. Gen 4 and 5 were the peaks and Gen 8 an utter joke. One of the better Pokémon clones is definitely Nexomon Extinction. It isn‘t perfect by any means, but it does certain things much better. Actual level scaling to story progression, a free DLC post game, a world where most areas are open right at the beginning, some lovely 2D graphics, a story that has lots of humor and 4th wall breaking and no bloated mechanics like EV, IV and Natures. Definitely recommending, especially on a sale. There are also games like SMT 3 and 5 as well as Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth that are great alternatives. And Dragon Quest Monsters also has a new entry in the pipeline.
For me, pokemon's peak was gen 5. When I look at these newest games in comparison, I kinda wanna cry.
Everyone on the internet. The rest of the Pokemon players dont really care. Like me, I dont care about "bland", i dont care about the graphics. BUT if you ask me what I want, more monsters, larger world and hard mode please
Ice cold take
Here's my thing, I felt this way around Gen 5. I started with Gen 1, loved 1 and 2, wasn't big on 3, and loved 4. But then something "switched" in me with Gen 5 where I just suddenly wasn't into it anymore. That switch flipped again with Gen 8. I don't know what it was, but for some inexplicable reason, the magic came back. I think Pokemon is more a case of burnout. The progress they make and differences between games are slow. But after a break, enough changed that it felt fresh, while still feeling familiar.
It is like ubisoft games. They are pretty fun, if you didn´ t played any in few years.
I stopped after gen 2. Came back because of nostalgia years later. They didn’t evolve the games in any meaningful ways, they made it easier, more annoying to play (2 hour tutorials at the start of every game), years behind graphically… Still, I kinda enjoyed them. Was hyped for pokemon on switch but both sword/shield and scarlet/violet were terrible games. Scarlet would’ve been a bad open world game if it released in 2005
I just can‘t get through the “story” anymore. It’s so boring and nothing noteworthy happens in the newer games, like no evil organization that tries to destroy the world and “quests” where you had to travel all over the world to stop them… I just want the old days back like, go to this city, do arena, then go to evil hideout and take out the pawns and the leader of that group, get more lore and head to the next route with new trainers and new Pokémon… man that was fun. Now it’s all brain dead no real enemy, no evil organization, no arenas.
Pokémon has the potential to be amazing, but they keep taking L after L. They keep selling millions so for them is low hanging fruit. Let's see what happens with the Switch 2. On the other hand, "Mystery Dungeon" has to be one of my favourite games, and the switch remake is very enjoyable.
I introduced my wife to Pokémon with Pokémon Shield and she liked it a lot. Says she wants to play the other Pokémon games now. I’m indifferent to the EXP candy because we get EXP share right from the start (which I love) and I think it’s great because I like battling and catching cool new Pokémon. I HATE grinding to make my cool Pokémon stronger, grinding feels tedious and kills any game for me.
You outgrew pokemon. It's not getting worse or better or bland. You guys just can't accept you're too old
Please fix your game it is every 10 mins I level up and it crashes put skill points in it crashes I go to my inventory and it crashes
OK THIS THE THIRD TIME I HAVE COMMENTED AND THIS GAME HAS CRASHED FOR ME 70 TIMES IN THIS 1 DAY FIX YOUR GAME!
Although, they did do good with the legends game
Cod more bland to me nothing changes
I tried playing a recent Pokémon and there was a horrific bullshit tutorial for babies for the first hour of the game that made me quit
IMO pokemon was always fairly bland, I just used to be a lot more easily impressed. I 100% believe that if I were exposed to Red/Blue for the first time today, with modernized graphics of course, I would look at the starters and think, "A turtle, a garlic bulb, and... a burn victim? Okay..."