I agree but then we would be saying that black and white are "classic" and personally they don't have that same vibe as the games before it. I'd say black and white + xy was the transitional period.
good point, but I think what alot of people are really referring to with XY being transitional is it being the 3d models while holding true to alot of key staples that just got axed after that generation. Black and white is generally what I hear as being the "peak" of the classic feel due to its events/locations with its visuals being stunning still. While either XY or ORAS are seen as the peak in the 3d era of pokemon due to alot of those same things, with a few new things....but it started removing things they never should've touched.
@@GothAtheist😂 complete revision of history because like he said in the video xy was the resurgence of Pokémon after it hit an all time low with gen 5 Literally proven by sells as well
9:09* i think i actually prefer smaller towns where each building has a purpose, even if it's just cozy or weird dialogue. Walking past a row of houses with totally opaque windows and no interior just feels like the worst kind of game design that many open world maps fall victim to. Space for the sake of space tends to only engender subtle annoyance and can slowly grind down your appreciation of a town or city Edited to add better context to timestamp
I mean, we should have balance. Maybe before we had too many meaningless buildings that were empty or had a pointless NPC, but now the games are way too linear (although scarlet violet show huge potential for the future). I miss the days when I’d have to actually explore a bit to find a required HM. That satisfaction of finally not being lost is something that is totally missing nowadays. It’s impossible to get truly lost in a pokemon game now. But in gen 4, mt cornet could actually stump ppl, it did to me although I was a kid.
@Pwjdjskw I wonder if younger players today get a similar experience and we just have nostalgia goggles on regarding our experience with earlier games? It still seems likely that we had more fun due to the satisfaction of figuring things out mostly for ourselves and having exploration rewarded in more meaningful ways. Although i harbor no ill will to them, such thoughts have been a part of why I haven't played some of the newer games, it has to be said
For me one of the worst things about the modern games, from gen 7 onwards, is the incessant hand holding and constant interruptions. They won’t let you just play and find your own way. I know the games are primarily aimed at children, but so were the old games and yet they have far less hand holding and interruptions.
No argument there. It's like GameFreak's certain staff got the boot and new members gave the developers the idea of always guiding the children to where they should go.
Well that is treating kids as if they were dumb, and not capable of exploring and learning by themselves. As a teacher, I see that as detrimental for critical thinking development.
100% agree!! Gen 6 was the last gen with interesting routes imo Gen 8 looked nice but the routes themselves were just a line and didn't allow for any sort of exploration. Gen 7 had rubbish route design and I hate the gen 9 open world tbh
I understand the Gen 8 complaints, but personally I love the open world. It makes the Pokémon world seem more fun and interact active. I do hate the lack of trainers in Legend Arceus and Scarlet and Violet though.
@@SchmidKids-o6ri hate how the open world leaves much of it looking blank or crappy with mountains looking horrible and textures loading in right in front of your face. I don’t care for it without polish.
The second SV dlc was filled with double battles with actual competitive movesets, including held items, weather abuse, and double battle strategies (like explosion/protect and earthquake/levitate). That section was legitimately challenging Before that, the only other Pokemon games that came close were Colosseum and Gale of Darkness, which was similarly filled with double battles, and trainers who employed double battle tactics.
@ HMs were the worst possibly thing for curating perfect movesets. They were a chore to remove and often lacked power accuracy status or all. What do you mean😭
@ i do agree that it’s so much more convenient without them and I do prefer ride Pokémon & whatever, but I still liked having to find the right Pokémon to do each task and I enjoyed having to think of my Pokémon outside of a battling perspective iykwim 😭
I wish the new games didnt heal you so much. The long caves where you needed revives and potions and the rival battles out of nowhere to catch you off guard made the games more challenging. Now you can go a whole playthrough without needing a single potion.
I never found that I needed too many healing items. I found that move PP was a far larger issue in these longer dungeons than healing as ethers are not that common to come across
Yeah but I mean it's just like when people complain about about your rival healing you after the battle or right before a gym battle like your ass ain't just going to go to the Pokemon Center anyway they're just cutting you out from having to walk all the way back to the Pokemon Center
Hidden abilities were (mostly) locked behind dream world, which you can't access anymore and didn't even really work great when it was around, so I'd say you have to take the good with the bad on calling that innovative.
The big dungeon type areas like Mount Coronet and victory road are sorely missed. Also, I miss things like strength puzzles. Sure, the puzzles were never very hard, but I feel like kids playing modern Pokemon games are missing out on them.
By Gen 5 they had changing seasons, animated sprites, and music beats that play with every step you take. I would rather have this than the 3D games. Pokemon should've went with HD-2D graphics like Octopath Travelers.
I somewhat agree but just because they haven’t made the best looking 3D games doesn’t mean Pokémon should have never been 3D. I wouldn’t mind if we got another 2D game but I think 3D is just being done dirty. I’ve seen some 3D animations people have made on TH-cam and they look so good. If they do make another 2D game it should be like Octopath travelers.
I agree I think a Pokemon game in 3d could work but game freak is going to need more employees and time for that. And honestly as even as someone who started in the switch era I still think they should just go back to 2d. Although just as a side Let’s Go in my opinion did look very good
For me the last time the main games felt at their core like old pokemon games was USUM. Pokemon sword, shield and onward to me felt very hollow, kinda like "youre here to play a barebones pokemon game, no side quests, no grinding, just gyms and elite 4."
They were the last games to have deliberately designed optional routes (though still a downgrade from the route design that came before imo) Pokemon Scarlet and Violet might not have the route design aspect, but it has plenty of charm in both its three main storylines (which converge into one central one in the postgame) and its characters, that make it feel more than a "barebones pokemon game"
@@kryzethx I agree it has charm with its story and characters, but it feels like the switch games had to cut back on loads of extra little things in and around the main games story and gameplay in exchange for the juiced up surface level core experience. To me the games just arnt as well rounded
What I really really hate about the newer games is the shiny locking thing they started doing. If I want to start my adventure with a shiny starter as my buddy then let me do so instead of having it be my loyal partner until I can breed it for its shiny offspring and have mom/dad retire to the box forever 🤔
My problem with modern Pokemon games is that Heart Gold and Soul Silver were so amazing that those set the bar way too high for any other game that came after.
Absolutely agree! HeartGold and SoulSilver took everything gen 2 did and amped it up and fixed the handful of issues gen 2 had. It's never gotten better.
Yes I mean it's incredible to see how much detail they put into the games when you look at something like Heart Gold Soul Silver... 2 regions, 16 badges, battle against Red, 16 gym leader events, many special and secret events/legendaries, the list goes on
I liked sword and shield to some degree, but i dont like how the majority of the story doesnt happen until 7/8th gym, and they fade to black with text boxes describing whats happening instead of just having a cutscene.
@@Whitepawprint Fun fact: the Sword and Shield beta has an unfinished Gigantamax Toxtricity model next to the bridge where you completely miss the Dmax Perrserker. That would also explain why the camera changes to focus on the mountainside despite there being nothing there.
Ghost and Dark NEVER made sense being the category they were. Ghost is SPECTRAL Energy. So all Ghost-type moves SHOULD have been Special. Meaning Dark SHOULD have been Physical, almost all dark-type moves became physical anyways.
i mean the decision "Ghost = Physical" makes sense in the context of generation 1 with lick as the only damaging move. However, they could have switched this for gen 2.
Ghost type being physical made theoretical sense in gen 1 because Psychic types had huge special stats but low defense stats. If Ghost was special it wouldn't be able to harm Psychic as effectively. Of course practically Ghost was useless against Psychic anyway cause of the bug that made Psychic immune to Ghost as well as Lick being the only Ghost damaging move. Dark type moves were later made Special in gen 2 cause making them Physical would render the already present Ghost type offensively useless. It makes absolute sense from a game-design perspective even if in actual practice they didn't think things through as well as they should have
@nihildwo4874 Gen 2 could use the time machine to interact with Gen 1. It'd likely be a bit of a suffering point for fans if their ghost types suddenly behaved differently after trading as a result of an underlying mechanics change. Since Gen 3 couldn't trade to Gen 2 or Gen 1 that should have been the switch over point IMO since then there's no arguing any prior pokemon were negatively affected.
@@scragar They already did behave radically differently anyway. Special defense didn't exist as a stat in gen 1. Gengar's 130 Special was changed to 130 sp.atk and 75 sp.def. Additionally, Gengar's 65 attack was untouched. I feel like people are also forgetting that they literally only made one line of ghost types in gen 1 and they were part poison, meaning they were weak to psychic anyway, so saying ghost being physical was a balance decision to make them better against psychic feels counter intuitive to the fact they did everything else in their power to make ghost a bad type, including (again) making gengar's base attack 65.
Generations 5 and 3 are my favorite hands down and I like five when it first came out because I loved the fact that I had to build a whole new teams with brand new Pokemon instead of relying on the same ones from every other game
I think the most fun I've had playing a pokemon game (aside from, you know, the originals, which were groundbreaking at the time) was Emerald but with gen 6-onward mechanics/moves. A lot of ROM hacks are made to be more difficult, but the ones that just update the old games' mechanics to ones that have made the game much more fun to play are just amazing.
I started playing Pokémon on the GB Pocket. I think the series got better with each generation up 5 probably. After that, it felt like it was over a hump and on the way down. Pokémon design, core features, environment, combat capabilities, difficulty, all felt worse as the new games came out.
Yes, completely! Modern pokemon begins with Generation 7, and classic ends with 5. Generation 6 is a transitional game. They ruined Pokemon depressingly bad. Worldbuilding? gone completely, with absolutely no fleshing out of towns and cities. Remember how Hoenn had places like the market square, the Devon corp, the weather institute, and the trickster house? Or how Johto had some amazing folklore and mythology in Ecruteak with the Tin Tower and Burned Tower, or fun locations like the dance theater, radio tower, ruisn of alph and sprout tower? Sinnoh had a lot alonside Unova too, and even Kalos (I'm a gen 6 enjoyer). I don't think the new generations are good with exploration, and they lack in worldbuilding, storytelling, and its awful since exploration makes for a good region with lotso f stuff to do. The new games lack that therefore ruining them + the technical issues and characters that are lacking.
I don't think ALL modern Pokemon is bad, rather I think the Switch gen of Pokemon is bad. I could go on for hours about all the bad things in Scarlet & Violet. It's so bad that people now talk about Legends Arceus as if it's one of the best games ever by comparison. That's not to say PLA is bad, but it's got plenty of its own issues that now get glossed over because the game is preferable to the other junk we got.
Are any of those bad things *not* related to framerate performance or graphical fidelity? Legitimately curious, because I found Scarlet and Violet's storyline and characters to be some of the best in the series (mainly by virtue of being unique, which is a similar thing that PLA has going for it), and the open-world design makes team planning the best it's ever been.
@@kryzethxArea Zero was a pretty good story sequence but the rest of the story content is completely barebones with quantitatively less content and little qualitative improvement to compensate. All that happening in a dead world, vast swaths of essentially random geography, completely empty, creating arbitrary space between towns that have just as little going on as the wilderness. Virtually zero side content; other than sandwiches and raids there is basically no content other than the main quest lines. The typical problem with open world games is that they give you too much to do and it becomes overwhelming and competitive; Game Freak avoids this pitfall by just giving you outright ZERO activities to do. I genuinely cannot think of another game I’ve played with as little content as SV. Genuinely, I paused writing this comment to look through the games on my shelf and every single one-both open world and otherwise-has a wider variety of content than SV and many of them have more to do in their side content than SV has in their main content. Literally the only way I can understand someone thinking SV’s only problems are visual is if that person has genuinely never played a non-Pokémon game, not a single one, in their entire life.
@@Mike-di1og For Scarlet and Violet, it's true that I'm mostly only comparing it to the previous Pokemon games; not exactly comparing it to all other games in existence. From a Pokemon game specifically, it's basically everything I would have wanted. A fun and interesting storyline and characters to interact with for a first playthrough, and varying replayability for subsequent playthroughs. Only thing it's really missing, is a Battle Frontier, but there was enough postgame dlc to keep me hooked after completing the main game. Having little side content is not inherently a bad thing. Both Luigi's Mansion and Pikmin 1 are considered 2 of the best games in their respective series, but they can both be completed in a single evening. They're still amazing games despite their lack of side content.
I split at gen 6, when it transitioned to 3D. That's when early game exp share was introduced as well as generational gimmicks. I don't mind the exp share because it allows for more experimentation with party without having to grind to bring newer members up to level, or even think of a full party since i don't have to spend time grinding individual pokemon
I agree. People who hate the xp share must have forgotten how much of a pain it is to grind levels post gen 6. I'm currently doing a playthrough of black 2 and yeah, I miss the newer xp share. Maybe they should add back the option to make it optional in newer games so others don't feel it's forced but I like how it is now.
an argument could be made about gimmicks being introduced as early as Gen II with held items and breeding, Gen III with Double Battles and abilities, Gen IV with the Physical/Special split, or Gen V with Triple and Rotation battles and all that stuff with the Entralink.
@@Sailor-Khione you don’t need to grind levels if you actually fight trainers, even if you’re raising an underleveled mon just switch train them while doing battles it also encourages you to use all your pokemon instead of relying on 1 or 2 and letting the rest sit in the back
@@Sailor-Khione It's not that people hate the Exp. Share. It's that people hate that the Exp. Share forced onto the player. In Gen 6 and 7 it was optional mechanic. How are people still not getting that?
I'm a 30 year old man, and I love Pokemon. That said, over time I started to realized the newer generations were being geared to mostly appeal to children. I stopped buying new games entirely after playing Sun/Moon on release. Altogether, I don't think this is a bad thing. We had our childhood games were grew up with, now it's their turn. I'm happy that today's kids are able to enjoy the magical experience I got to over 20 years ago.
I kinda hate how the “evil teams” ended up. Because gens 1-6 there was always an evil team whose motives were to take over the world or destroy it and whatnot. Then Gen 7 came along and turned the evil team into some edgy teenagers. (Okay aether foundation I GUESS) Then Gen 8 you just have a bunch of fanboys and girls, then Gen 9 you have bully victims.
Really? I much prefer the smaller scale of the localized evil teams. They’re more realistic and have varied motivations (Skull wanted to make something of themselves as trial challenge dropouts, Star wanted to fend against bullies together). And it explains in-universe why the grunts are all comically incompetent. To me, the world-ender evil teams seemed too formulaic after a while - always a visionary dude at the top who goes “this world needs change”, while the good guys go “no it doesn’t!!”, and kick his ass. I’m not happy with other things in the modern games, but the writing I feel is mostly improved…although Chairman Rose is a rushed mess.
@@SillyLittleMan55 I mean, you're not wrong, I hate Sword and Shield lmao. However, since you included gen 6 in your initial comment, I'm gonna argue that the fanboys with trumpets are cooler than the weirdos wearing orange suits (or the man with big orange hair).
Emerald is my favorite pokemon game, and probably always will be, but x/y is a close second for me. I remember when it came out, a fully 3d pokemon game, looked amazing, cool new mechanics, really cool region, fun gym designs, and the multiple "rivals" made it feel like a fun adventure with friends. On the downsides, the exp share was busted, but I never really liked endlessly grinding levels anyway, for me, what made it too easy was all the super high power iconic pokemon you were just given. By the end of my first runthrough, I barely had any new pokemon in my party because It was full between the three starters you get, the game legendary, and lucario. The other issue I had was that mega evolution felt like something you were supposed to use every fight, my party was almost always lead by lucario, charizard (a pokemon I don't even really like), or mewtwo. It made the game feel kind of samey
I really think the most frustrating thing about newer generations of pokemon is that they keep introducing innovations that they seemingly have no confidence in. Every time a new entry in the franchise does something praise worthy, the next generations either no longer have that feature or have a worse version of it (the way that friends and friend power worked in gen 6 is somehow still the most functional online system the series has ever had.) I'll put it in these terms, if held items were introduced in gen 6, we wouldn't have seen them in gen 7 and 8 and they'd just be that generation's gimmick. If assets and mechanics are liked by your playerbase, you should reuse them with no hesitation, but its felt like ever since gen 5 they just never want to do that.
Reminder that it's not the "modern" games that are bad, it's not the 3D games, it's the games released post Pokemon GO for the Nintendo Switch. The 3DS games have a lot more structurally in common with the DS games than they do with anything on the Switch. X and Y may be easy but USUM are the hardest games in the franchise!
"Reminder that it's not the "modern" games that are bad, it's not the 3D games, it's the games released post Pokemon GO for the Nintendo Switch." Those are the modern games.
@@SuperWiggler X, Y, Omega Ruby, and Alpha Sapphire are also modern games, but you see where she said that “its the games post Pokemon GO,” which would be Sun, Moon, etc.
@@twm1100returns We know you think so, you’ve made 4 other comments about the same thing. We don’t care if you think they’re too easy or that they don’t give you that nostalgic dopamine boost that the previous games give you.
...he forgot to mention that XY introduced WONDER TRADE. It's a staple that most players use to this day, even if its name has changed to Surprise Trade.
What kills modern Pokémon games for me is the amount of unskippable cutscenes. There’s so many, literally after every route. Gen 7 was the absolute biggest offender. It’s whatever, though. In my eyes, rom hackers have been hard carrying the non-competitive Pokémon scene for years now. Stuff like Infinite Fusions and Radical Red will always be there for fans who want the challenge or changes that we’ll never get from official games.
@ So true. It’s literally “new route -> 5 min. cutscene -> new route -> 5 min. cutscene -> new route -> 5 min. cutscene.” And don’t get me wrong, the older games had “cutscenes” as well, but those could be blown through by mashing A/B, so they didn’t feel as intrusive.
Scarlet and Violet didn't have any of those, outside of the first 10 minutes, where you get the ride pokemon and officially begin your pokemon adventure from the either the east or west Academy gate. After that point, the only "unskippable cutscenes" are those that directly involve a story objective, like a titan pokemon or an evil team base
I actually have a different way I categorize Pokemon myself. I categorize it by Retro (Gen 1-2), Old/classic (Gen 3-5), Modern (gen 6-7) and Modern (gen 8-9). I do this with just how each game runs, such as mechanics. But overall, I agree with your assessment, though I would argue Gen 6 is the transitional period rather than 5. And its due to the new type, and type match ups, and since it was the first generation to have all pokemon obtainable throughout the games (since gen 3).
Just throwing it out there, the sprites they're using are still based on X and Y, in 2013 where the older games always had different sprites, and made completing the Pokedex a lot more fun. It's a big reason I still (mostly) stick to older games, some sprites are wonderful
3D games don’t use sprites outside of the pokemon storage. Those are all 3D models and even then they aren’t using all of the same models. Plenty have been updated although there are a ton of them. Pokémon has far more 3D models that need to be animated than your average game so that is a factor
I'd say it's mainly lack of polished content and lack of content in general that is ruining the switch games, for example I beat sword's main story in about 12-13 hours where for example in pokemon black I could easily take 18 hours to beat the main story and the 2d games had way more content in the post game even ignoring battle frontiers. To be fair 3d pokemon games aren't inherently doomed to fail for example I still liked the 3ds era even if the quality did still decrease compared to the ds era and I still liked let's go and legends arceus even if they weren't perfect. Also 2d pokemon supremacists often forget how much of a dumpster fire og diamond and pearl were
@@comfycat9 I disagree, platinum had the battle area and other post game areas like the new route in victory road as well as gym leader rematches, black 1 had eastern unova, other areas opening up like the dream yard and elite 4 rematches, and do I even have to explain bw2. Even frlg and emerald had new areas post game even excluding battle frontiers
@@comfycat9 Very little might be somewhat hyperbolic. In terms of actual content, no postgame adds as much content as the main game, not even Johto's entire Kanto region (mainly due to lacking storyline and streamlined routes), but they all add *something* substantial, like the Sevii Isles in FRLG, Battle Area in DPPt, and entire half of the map in Unova.
The most long lasting new core mechanic added is Fairy type and how it shook up the strengths and weaknesses type chart, then regional variants. And at least Mega Evolution lasted 2 generations before they dropped it.
Gen 4 finished the base formula, gen 5 tried a reset and made a great story. Gen 6 is when they started adding special mechanics to the formula perfected in Gen 4
Personally, when I complain about modern pokémon, I'm refering to the switch gens. I remember gen 7 as the best 3D one, although I haven't replayed it in a long time. Gen 6 is fine, and I did sink a lot of hours into it back in the day, which I can't say about the newer ones (I have like 45 hours in Violet)
Heres my opinion coming from a 30+ year old who has played Pokémon since red and blue. I liked gen1-6. Pokemon fell off during sun and moon, there was so much conversations and those games dragged on. Scarlet and Violet were horrible as well. The graphics as well are terrible, we arent on handhelds anymore, so there is no excuse why the games look terrible compared to other switch games which look amazing such as Zelda. Also the overall vibe of Pokémon and magic is gone. The old games had more mystery, and the music was way better, the new games are too childish
I really think modern Pokémon just have to figure out how to pace the game better. With so much liberty and exploration everything becomes a blob e nothing stands out as memorable. The old Pokémon limitations were actually blessings in desguise that made you spend more time in each area/town/city.
I think for me, the issues in been 6 onwards are that is when you really start to feel the lack of development time the games have, combined with gamefreak being so focused or self conscious of the original series. The move to 3d means that things can't be left to the imagination the way 2d games can. Two houses in a town looks mad, one person standing in a house looks bizarre. Every pokemon needs a bunch of animations, but they're made as generically as possible. They scale up the fidelity massively, but don't have the time or resources to scale up the experience with it, so the world feels emptier and uncanny. The games start feeling generally unfinished, the xy power plant, stories that cut short quickly, areas that feel they should have a purpose but don't. Again, not enough dev time for their scale. And everything feels haunted by the first series. XY were very explicit with new viridian forest, gen 1 starters and mewtwo. Everything has charizard. Even SM breaking the formula feels a little self conscious to me, even though I think it's a good thing. The thing that frustrates me is we're 10 years into 3d and they still haven't learnt to scale their ambition with their resources. SV have so much great in them, but it's also trying to do so much at once.
7:06 This was my big problem with BDSP as a concept, and with any future generations of remakes. The game is just not that different that a remake feels necessary or worthwhile
it means nothing, know I used trash talk games without even played them but once tried them find them to be quite fun , lol hopefully they grow out of it like I did
Pokémon is getting a similarity to Fallout The best experiences usually come from a fan who made something cool I had more fun with Unbound than any actual Pokémon game outside of colosseum
I know I sound like most people, but I prefer the older games to the recent ones. I’m just slowly coming to terms that they’re just not aiming for my demographic anymore
I think a big problem with modern Pokemon is that the post game feels like it is getting worse with each game. In my opinion, Scarlet and Violet have the worst post game since the original Red and Blue, and I have had very little reason to go back and play Scarlet and Violet....
Gen 6 did introduce a new battle mechanic that went underused and ultimately forgotten by later generations, inverse battles. Flipping the type match ups is a simple idea that’s easy to code and doesn’t require any extra screen assets (looking at you triple a rotation battles), but they never come up in the story and are limited where they can be done despite their potential. Gym leader and Elite Four rematches in the post game, a randomly activated battle condition, the fact it was underused is symptomatic of how the games would look less to ambition in development.
I think it's pretty binary to be honest. Even after people were critical of Sun and Moon and subsequent games the sales didn't go down very much compared to game people actually like. BDSP was shit, but it sold well. Nintendo is a company they are not capable of having a single person make a moral choice when the company's responsibility as a whole is to make money. It's no individual person's fault, it's the consumer who is buying garbage
My opinion is that the cutoff for "modern" is the switch from 2D to 3D, so X/Y are the first of the modern era. Conveniently that's also the split for the games I like and games I don't, I've never liked 3D Pokemon 😅
I'm a diehard gen 2 / gen 2 remake enjoyer. Still don't think it's ever gotten better since HG/SS. But I actually did like gen 7, ngl. The non-traditional format was refreshing, and the obvious nods to the Orange Island League were great (didn't care for the ultra beast nonsense though, lol).
I'm a gen 3 baby, Sapphire was my first, and I very much enjoyed gen 4 as well. I think for me it's a combo of aging out of the target audience and the games feeling simpler/easier? I remember not enjoying Black as much in high school and not playing for a couple years through college. Then my brothers gifted me a switch and have gotten me a game from each gen since so I've played Sword/Shield and Scarlet. They just don't grab me the way the old ones do. I play through them so quickly and then once I've beaten them I never touch the game again. I literally entirely forgot that I even played Scarlet. I was chatting with my brother and said something like I need to play the new pokemon and his response was, wait you haven't played it? It was my Christmas gift to you. I then found my switch, dusted it off, realized I did have the game, and when I turned it on I saw that I had completed the main story with a full team of trained pokemon. I had absolutely zero memory of any of this, it still baffles me that I somehow completed an entire pokemon game and don't remember a minute of it. And me turning it on to make this realization was the last time I touched it, rediscovering I had it didn't tempt me to play any more of it. But I've replayed my Black version since my first round in high school and enjoyed the replay much more, not sure if the game grew on me or if it just was more enjoyable than the recent releases. Maybe the games really aren't as polished as the old versions or maybe I'm just not the ten year old kid they're making the games for anymore. Either way I'll still probably do a casual run of each new series that comes out for the nostalgia and keep watching folks on here do fun challenges of my dear gens 3 and 4.
One thing that's holding modern pokemon back is that they're trying to simultaneously get new players (so they have to keep things simple) while also wanting to keep current fans around (so they reuse old ideas/pokemon in hopes of sparking nostalgia). There's not much they can add to the games in terms of core mechanics if they want to keep it simple for beginners so they use a different gimmick every generation. Legends was the result of them trying to appeal to older fans & while the adult players absolutely loved it, it did worse financially than BDSP (that my friends all disliked but the kids we know absolutely loved)
Pokémon sword changed my life and I played it way more than I like to admit and as a result is my favourite game of all time (I’m not afraid to say that)
Hmmm I'm not sure how to feel about those games. The story isn't great until the dlc, crown tundra. And I mainly play it only to shiny hunt. Same for scarlet and violet. It could have been great if it wasn't rushed.
Another plus for Gen 6 is the introduction of trainer customisation into the main series. You can choose hair, skin and eye colour, as well as other hair styles and clothes during the game. ORAS didn’t do this, but Sword and Shield did, then Scarlet and Violet to much more limited degree.
pokemon anymore is just a nostalgia trip, i end up playing through and doing the main stuff and a good chunk of the after game, but after that it collects dust. sadly i dont think pokemon will ever have my attention like it did between gen1 and 3
I’ll tell u why they’re bad: they’re bad bc there’s no feel of exploitation. The closest thing we got to a “cave” is a tunnel after you beat one of the giant Pokemon. Just trash
Unpopular opinion: outside of the needed physical special split, nothing about Gen 4 felt different from Gen 3 and that's when I really started to feel the series get repetitive. Wanderer who is the Champion? Check. End of the world with the evil team after a box art legendary? Check. HMs making for a miserable Victory Road? Check. I've never played Diamond/Pearl but if Platinum didn't do it for me, I'd hate those. Plus, Gen 4 is responsible for the abomination that is Probopass.
I know Sun/Moon tried to shake up the series by not having a world-ending evil team, and having it's Trials. Were things really feeling that repetitive at the time? I feel like the sentiment of trying something new with the formula still persists today.
@miimiiandco I liked the Gen 7 shake up attempt. I mean that Gen 4 copied too much from Gen 3 so I don't enjoy Sinnoh (minus LA) when it's, "We just did this in Hoenn!" I played Colosseum as a kid before Platinum so between that and Hoenn and Kanto remakes, Sinnoh just didn't impress me and still doesn't. B/W were too hard of a soft reset for me, which B2/W2 fixed but I stopped before those came out. Played Gens 7 and 6 years later and had fun with them
Before i start, i dont think the newer games are "worse" than the older ones, but i do prefer the game design of the older games. There are many reasons i think this perception is going around so much. 1: Game development time. All these newer games have been buggy as heck because TPC has been rushing to push games out. Yes we want more games, but we want games that work. 2. Psudo-linearity vs Open World. If you have an open world, it is really hard to tell a story without somehow gating/restricting player access 'till plot relevance. The older games might have seemed cumbersome with HMs, but it made exploring more fun and artificial restriction a little more sensible in universe. Ride pokemon werent necessarily bad but it took the immersion out somewhat. Like im flying on a charizard i dont own, or flying on a braviary that i have never owned (didnt fit the team). 3. Exploration vs Story. Some could simply call this handholdiness and it would be exactly the same. It also ties into the last point. To have an open world, they need to drag you from place to place. Its a bit more intrusive than that. In the old games you had maybe a couple minutes of required story dialogue, now its a couple minutes every couple of minutes xd. I could probably think of a few more like pokemon selection in regions/overused mons, but i think ill just leave it there. Edit: Btw my favorite game is Emerald. OFC its for the Battle Frontier! The best postgame of any of the games so far.
one thing I'll say about the let's go games is i don't think I've ever been so impressed by the care the dev team did with the follow mechanic. I like to point to Sandshrew as my main example because it's a Pokemon i never use much but when i caught it and wanted to see how they followed, I assumed it would roll around in a ball, but the goofy looking walk/run cycle absolutely made me fall in love with that creature.
You know what I think it is? All a matter of perspective. How old you are, when you started playing, and how old the game you're talking about is all factor into this. Keep in mind that, while they do make these games for everyone, they are primarily intended for children. And while there is nothing wrong with adults enjoying them too (I'm 29 and love the series still, why would I say it's wrong for adults to enjoy the games?), that doesn't change the fact they are designed for kids. Those of us that grew up with gen 1-4 were kids when we played them, but we aren't now. Of course we see the games differently than we used to. But as I know from having younger cousins that like Pokemon, many younger and newer fans see the newer games the same way we saw the older games. And they'll look back on them the same way. As this video put it, we see them through rose-coloured glasses. That's not to say some of these points aren't right. Obviously the older games were still establishing core features, but there really isn't much equivalent they could establish now. I mean, even adding Fairy isn't seen the same as when they added Dark or Steel, so even fan demands like adding a Sound type wouldn't register the same. While they've been adding temporary mechanics, I don't think that's been the intent. I think they've been trying to find something more permanent and their attempts just haven't stuck as well as they wanted. But even if they were always intended to be temporary, it's because they need to do something to make them stand out from each other. But that isn't inherently a bad thing. Other game series do the same thing, or else they get criticized for being too similar. Early Mario games set the formula for the series, and then they started with one-off mechanics. Older Zelda games did the same. Meanwhile, games like Call Of Duty barely change anything between releases and get criticized for the games all being so similar, with any game that does add something new or different being a big deal. Overall, it's not so much a change in how they are doing things. We're just older. And as older fans, we're always going to prefer what we grew up with over what came later. Because of nostalgia. You can say stuff like "the new routes are so linear", but so are the older routes. I didn't see as much difference between the examples shown in this video as suggested. In fact, the only real difference came from 2D vs 3D. The 2D games were more zoomed out, with smaller sprites, and as such we saw more of the map all at once, so they had bigger maps. But the newer games being 3D are more zoomed in. We see less of the map at once, so they're smaller looking. Especially since we see less out of bounds stuff. Now our view is blocked by one layer of trees instead of being able to see four layers of trees acting as walls. People say Scarlet and Violet are a mess, but so were Red, Blue, Green, and Yellow. Graphically there were fewer things that could go wrong because it was 2D sprites, things were either there or they weren't, no worries about characters turning heads or falling through maps. But they had other glitches instead, and they were full of them. People just ignored them, didn't notice them... Or mistook them for being part of the game. Meanwhile, Scarlet and Violet have no mechanical glitches. Their glitches are purely things that are not a factor for top-down 2D games like graphical bugs and clipping through the floor. But that doesn't inherently make the glitches worse, just more noticeable. You can try arguing that they're worse, but they really aren't. Game crashes compared to softlocks, characters with messed up faces compared to attacks randomly missing when they shouldn't. Different, but not inherently worse. Even changes to difficulty are debatable. Everyone says the Exp Share changes made the games easy, but all they did was cut down the grind. Seriously, these are games with free healing available in every town and the worst punishment for failing is the time loss. All the Exp Share change did was make it so you don't need to run back and heal as often and don't need to switch train your really weak stuff. It saves time, it doesn't actually make the games easier. They were always really easy. Things that made the newer games easier include... Well, those of us that grew up with the older games being older and smarter, and the UI changes that are really just convenient like showing type effectiveness in the battle menu, which wasn't even possible before. I'm not trying to say people need to enjoy the newer games or can't prefer the older ones. We just need to stop pretending it's anything but us older fans growing up.
Would reusable TMs count as something new Gen 5 added? I know newer games seem to have done anyway with it, but for awhile that was a feature that stuck around.
I feel like something often overlooked is how braindead it was to grind for xp without some form of xp share. You effectively just grind through a loop of start with training pokemon, switch to stronger (unless unnecessary), use move that OHKOs. Worse yet, the fact that wild pokemon lvls stop increasing eventually means you have to do this rinse and repeat process on underleveled opponents that practically don't grant enough xp to be worth the time. We should not act like it's a mark of pride to grind xp in the most brainless form of pokemon gameplay while criticizing newer games for "having brainless difficulty"
I took a 10 year break after X and Y. Now I'm replaying the older games and catching up (as well as Shiny hunting!) Currently I'm playing through US for the first time. I have to say, however, I still just do not like Gen 4, even Platinum. Not trying to argue, but I just don't see why people love it. It feels so slow. The designs are so boring. Between Gen 3 and 5 it feels like more of the same, rather than an evolution. That being said, I feel like the Switch games are probably not THAT bad, fandoms have a bad habit of becoming echo chambers. It'll be interesting to see how they are for myself, not blinded by nostalgia. Fun Shiny story: I once woke up from a dream where I found a Shiny Trapinch in Ruby. I took it as a sign. I then turned on my Ruby and my OR and sat down expecting to never find it. 10 minutes in, I found it in OR. I am now using it in my UM playthrough!
I don’t think I’ll ever like Scarlet and Violet. Even performance issues aside, it was such a step down from Legends Arceus gameplay wise in so many ways. All I’ll say is I no longer have have Scarlet and Violet but I do go back to Legends Arceus pretty regularly lolol
I guess to each their own. Legends, while visually fascinating, was a miss for me because catching isn’t my favorite thing, and the catching and research bordered on grinding for me. That and the battles, I didn’t like the styles and felt they pushed things to revenge-KOs. Whereas SV hit the right notes for me in battling, as I love the traditional system. So like for me, I’d much rather play SV than Legends, despite my issues with it as well, because of the things it did do that I enjoy more than Legends. There isn’t much drawing me back to Legends…except maybe dabbling in shiny hunting?
The sweet spot for me is around gen 3-5, gen 1 is a bit too stale for me to like as much and gen 2 I do love the graphics but I'd much rather play HGSS instead. Crystal not having Mareep was a mindboggling decision. I *love* ORAS, BDSP is just kinda disappointing in comparison and I would rather play Platinum or the Luminescent Platinum hack. They didn't do so little as add Sylveon and the regional forms and that was just kinda sad. Reminded me of playing Let's Go like 'God I wish I could evolve this thing'. I think Scarlet and Violet would have been a *great* return to form and really enjoyed playing them, the big issue is that they perform rather poorly. I can't in good faith say they are some of my favourite games, but they had that potential to be. The story had some effort put into it we didn't really get except in Gen 5 and 7 (then Game Freak ruined the latter with USUM's story change anyway), I love some of the new mons and the human characters were cool. It's just a shame in modern Pokemon, we have performance issues and I can't just use any Pokemon I want. It does mess up themed teams a bit. All the games just have those little flaws that stop them being pure amazement. Then gen 7 and 8 have those irritating cutscenes (some being 'walk three steps then stop again) that without I would replay more often. .I love Galar's characters but the story is pure stupidity. At least gen 8 made things easier for two of my favourite Pokemon, Leafeon and Glaceon. Gen 4 setting the standard for location-based evolutions is just... It's a bit crap, innit?
I just don’t think mainline Pokemon games should be in 3D, though I know that’s unrealistic of me. I at least hope GF would make a new retro style game on modern consoles similar to how Mega Man 9/10 worked.
In before the *"Gamefreak would do good if they had more time"* comments... ITS THEIR OWN GAME. THEY DECIDE THEIR OWN TIME. NOT NINTENDO. Nintendo has Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Animal Crossing, and a bunch more. So their dont need to speed uo anything. Gamefreak speeds up and their games end up shit 100% because of their fault.
Yes and no. There's pressure for merch like the trading cards, plushies*, shows, etc that bring in money I'm pretty sure nintendo wants. Have I liked the switch games? Nah. They are rushed. But it's not just game freaks fault they've been a mess. I love pokemon and I hope someday the make a game I'm willing to buy day 1. Sw/Sh was the last straw for me.
To clarify I mean merch and hype tied to new mons that require a gen to stand with. Personally I'd be ok if they didn't add so many every gen, but that's very likely a hot take.
Maybe its the nostalgia talking but I find the 2d graphics more appealing. The Pokemon looked more colorful than the washed out colors in the 3d games. As for the 3d games the ones I enjoyed the most were Stadium, Colloseum and Legends Arceus. I will never touch Sun/Moon again. X,Y, Sword and Shield were passable. Scarlet and Violet made me stop and go back to the older games.
Honestly you can blame Gen 6 on how poorly received Gen 5 was. I feel like people forget how much Black and White were panned by the fanbase. It's part of why Gen 6 is so easy and so focused on Kanto pandering
@oyeh8908 cool, completely redoing the Pokedex and adding that many new mons reference to Gen 1 regardless. Masuda also said this 🤷♀️ the "Kanto pandering" complaint is dumb and that's the point, especially when every game in the series has referenced Gen 1 in some way
My issue is since Gen 3, they started to do this huge world-ending JRPG villain plot that got more and more ridiculous with each generation. By Gen 6, the evil team was either very stupid or comically evil which doesn't fit Pokemon too well. The newer games also keep adding things that slow down the game, whether that's someone like Hau on every single screen or whatever else. They also haven't improved the Gym formula once. Having another water or fire gym is so boring and lazy when they could have themed gyms around a core concept, like statuses, being defensive, or just having cool move combinations. The general gameplay has just gotten oh so stale, and the new stuff they add is a temporary gimmick (Z-Moves, Dynamaxing, etc) that never stick around which is a shame. Also with Gen 8, they started LYING to people, which is never a good sign ("high quality animations", remember that time period?). Also since the leap to home consoles w/ Switch, the games are more and more scrutinized because of how *awful* they look, Gens 8 and 9 most notably. I was in full Pokemania Fever with Gen 1 and 2. I slowed down when 5 came out, and I've honestly just been a hater since Gen 8 (though I also despise Gen 7). I'm just so sad that one of my favorite franchises ever has become this hollow husk of what it used to be, and I wish someone more competent than Game Freak could take the reigns instead.
or someone who understands how to let games develop, instead of rushing their subsidiary company, like TPC does. seriously, someone needs to invade the company, who knows how to let people TAKE THIER TIME with making games, and spread THAT culture around.
@@TheShiningEnergy It's definitely more than the limited time they have cuz GF has ALWAYS been incompetent since Gen 1, but yes, that doesn't help either. Or, GF could also GROW BIGGER instead of trying to be smol indee dev for the BIGGEST franchise in human history.
my two main problems with the modern pokemon games are: 1) the performance. how come your games lag so much on their native console???? 2) figure out 3d open world gameplay already... ask the makers of zelda if you can't figure it out on your own. the stuff you deliver is absolute trash, gamefreak otherwise go back to 2d - all I want is the old gens on switch, I will even pay you money man. I just can't deal with the poor quality games you push out...
About point 1. Not the first games I’ve seen with performance issues. The 5th gen and 7th gen consoles were pretty notorious for poorly performing games. Also pretty much only PLA and S&V are the only games with performance issues. SwSh and Lets go tend to have decent game performance. The makers of Zelda didn’t figure out the open world. Nintendo used their ownership of Monolith software to help them build the world of Breath of the Wild just so they could specifically get that right. I think Pokemon should have similar help too
I feel like what the common counterpoint I see to "new Pokemon bad" is "no you're just older now and can *insert thing either an adult or experienced Pokemon player can do now that a child probably couldn't"* and I both agree and disagree with that statement. For example, say I took a child, made them play Platinum, then erased that experience and then gave them X. They would probably have problems in both but (especially since X is known for being "easy even by Pokemon standards") they would still have a harder time with Platinum. That basically goes with any 3D Pokemon game (except USUM, don't know what they were on with that game). Granted some (though I wouldn't say all) that challenge comes from if you grinded or not and grinding is a dumb pace breaker especially if the game doesn't have a Vs Seeker. Another thing is that the older games can be more interesting at times. I think Sinnoh (albeit, specifically Platinum due to DP being slow as hell) and Unova are much more interesting locals than Galar and actually feel like they had time to finish unlike Paldea. I feel like there are many reasons older Pokemon fans turn more of blind eye to "modern Pokemon". Is every reason good? Hell no and anyone who defends grinding is weird but I don't think it just comes down to "You're an adult now" all the time.
I feel like it's easier to raise a team in the newer entries than the older ones, probably thanks to the EXP Share? I often found myself under-leveled in Platinum because I didn't know that I needed to use a smaller team, since I'd need to split the EXP between every member. On my first playthrough of Violet, I found that having a rotating roster of like 13 Pokemon was not only easy, but also a great way to do as much of the game's content as possible without overlevelling for the Gyms/Titans/Team Star. Though a team of six was pretty much perfectly levelled in the Alola games, especially USUM. I wouldn't say this is a positive or negative thing, just an interesting difference between how the games are designed. Though, ORAS gives WAY too much EXP with the EXP Share on.
Grinding is literally why we played Pokemon. The problem is normies. Pokemon us for autistic people, always has veen, and we NEED minial tasks, such as grinding. Normies started swamping the franchise with XY and the games got progressively worse as they started pandering to those normies, which is also why Kanto pandering is through the roof these days.
@@twm1100returns*Normies Kids these days have jnsane attention spans, they can basically quote the entire internet to you without looking at it, this whole thing about kids not having attention spans is something Masuda came up with because he didn't realize they weren't kids, but trend hopping normies.
tbh from gen 1-4 it was adventure, gen 5 ok story but problem for me is linear ,gen 6 mega pkmn cool but short game,gen7 to much cutscenees,gen 8 linear ,gen 9 is ok but wish it had customozation from gen 8
It's not a hard game I'm literally on a playthrough now, even as a kid it wasn't hard. There were challenging aspects but a game SHOULD have challenging moments @@AGZhark
@cottoncandiez8872 the mons you can use are 2nd gen and the weaker ones. Unless you go optimal with quagsire/croconaw, the first admin battle is difficult.
Fun fact from Nintendo and Pokémon themselves the box are Pokémon on Pokémon ultra sun and moon and regular sun and moon are ultra beast not legendary Pokémon since technically you can get multiple of them in the same game
Personally I think pokemon has always been a flawed series since red and blue, and that's okay. Are pokemon games easier now? Honestly, I think the difficulty only felt like it shifted because there's so much more options for movesets and Pokemon, and people just know everything about Pokemon now. It isn't a bad thing that pokemon is "easy" now. I thought SV was pretty easy but I had a blast playing it. Going back to older generations made me realize that the games were only somewhat difficult because there wasn't a clear understanding of Pokemon and a lack of modern features. It's just more noticeable with the newer generations since the ones complaining about the easier difficulty have been playing Pokemon for a good while. It's okay to think older games are better or harder or whatever! But viewing the franchise in such an overly nostalgic manner isn't the best way to look at it.
Older games allowed you to shiny hunt legendaries by soft resetting. Newer games require you to pay in Pokemon Go if you want to shiny hunt a specific legendary Pokemon. This is why the older games are better.
Exactly. I refuse to buy the mainline switch pokemon games because of bull crap removals of players choice such as dexit, the forced exp share and shiny locks
No Pokemon game has been hard for me and I have played every mainstream Pokemon game. Apart from that Whitney miltank fight(I was 10 years old at that time) not even Cynthia was a challenge
Legends Arceus absolutely is my favorite Pokémon game. And "didn't change much"? Are you kidding? It completely overhauled the battle system. (for the better) With the agile/strong mechanic. Also the focus is a lot more on catching / training Pokémon than battles. And it's fun just to go to an area and run around for hours and collect everything you see. Also the final battles (Volo, Arceus) are really hard. Also it's not a pre-quel or a remake. It's a full sequel to Diamond / Pearl since you play as Dawn/Lucas from the main games but you are sent back in time. Scarlet and Violet are okay too, but can get confusing and the performance is bad. (I do hope they'll update it for the Switch 2)
honestly idk if the older games are strictly better - and I say that as someone whose favourite gen is gen 3! the older games all tend to have very limited pokemon options, especially since many pokemon have horrible level up movesets, making them really frustrating to use, especially if you're a newer player who doesn't know what they're doing, while in new games, anyone can find a diverse team of six just based on what they like, and still beat the game without too much trouble. and you can even replay the game with an entirely different team of six, and then another entirely different team of six! in the earlier gens you often have to wait for really late encounters or have a lot of overlap if you replay the story, because the early routes don't have that many pokemon, especially not that many good pokemon also, some frustrations with the earlier games - HMs!!! single use TMs. lots of boring grinding. no running in gens 1&2. gen 4 ran at a snail's pace. having to grind money for game corner TMs. gens 1-3 lacking various core mechanics. caves that suck to navigate without flash. the fog mechanic in gen 4. having to talk to specific npcs to progress. no ingame explanations of game mechanics like EVs and IVs. breeding competitive pokemon used to be sooooooooo tedious. I do also think a lot of the 'modern pokemon is so much easier' narrative is just you're not underlevelled as much if you don't grind, and also you know what you're doing now. gen 7 is honestly probably the most difficult set of games they ever made in terms of boss battles. there's a reason frlg are recommended first nuzlocke games, and it's because they're so easy to beat. I still struggled with them when I was 8 because I definitely didn't know physical and special moves were a thing until gen 4, and kids these days are struggling with scarlet and violet because they keep running into boss battles they're way underlevelled for on accident, and none of that makes a game difficult or easy, it just means kids are kids. a lot of people probably play the old gens on emulator which definitely helps ease out some of the flaws - speed up and easily added rare candies alone do a lot to make the experience a lot better, especially for challenge runs. I do think it's a shame they retired the only truly difficult thing they ever had, the battle frontier, and confined them to old games. like sure they're fun if you make yourself a team of good pokemon to beat them with and hack those in, but actually breeding and levelling a set of competitive pokemon for multiple facilities in gens 3 and 4? nope. no thanks. not my idea of fun. and in gen 3 you don't even have the physical and special split yet! truly I do understand the frustration of people that they haven't returned, because in a modern game even regular old me might attempt the challenge seriously, just because it's not that hard to get started with a team of competitively viable pokemon in a new game.
old gens feel way more like small bite sized RPG's with things like 1 use TM's and HM'S (those games biggest issue is that.), not big games that you play after you beat them (excluding Gen 5 and HGSS.)
I think some of the biggest factor for modern pokemon games feeling lesser is that they handhold you a lot, the pokemon teams for trainers feels very lacking with moveset and amount of pokemon they use, and also Just going to 3d really making it difficult for gamefreak to adjust to with their production value. I do think that gen 7 largely avoided a lot of that issue minus the tutorials. USUM especially made every single trainer way tougher. Visually, the games looks great for the 3ds and actually pushed the system to its limits. Gen 7 is still my favorite of the 3d gens with really the tutorial island being its biggest downside. It would have been great if Pokemon Stars did exist and it was that Switch port instead of moving to gen 8 so soon.
I love the older games, but I’m also 34 and don’t have a ton of interest in picnics and terrestrializing. The open world mechanics are SUPER fun in the new games though
Dragon Quest 11 didn’t have it. The 2D mode came from the Japanese only 3DS version of DQ11. That mode was added into DQ11s as it came from that 3DS version
Part of it is just the fact that there's no real challenge anymore, and therefore the payoff and reward is much less. I also think that the games back then maximize their potential for the console that they were developed for, whereas the games today push the boundaries a little too far and you end up with a Less than stellar end result that isn't as smooth. I feel that generation four had the best balance of everything, and it's just hard to get excited for a game now that feels half finished, that's missing a lot of features that previously were enjoyed, and a game that just feels way too water down.
I always saw X and Y as that transitional period between classic and modern, rather than Black and White.
Because it was.
I agree but then we would be saying that black and white are "classic" and personally they don't have that same vibe as the games before it. I'd say black and white + xy was the transitional period.
Same
good point, but I think what alot of people are really referring to with XY being transitional is it being the 3d models while holding true to alot of key staples that just got axed after that generation. Black and white is generally what I hear as being the "peak" of the classic feel due to its events/locations with its visuals being stunning still. While either XY or ORAS are seen as the peak in the 3d era of pokemon due to alot of those same things, with a few new things....but it started removing things they never should've touched.
@@GothAtheist😂 complete revision of history because like he said in the video xy was the resurgence of Pokémon after it hit an all time low with gen 5
Literally proven by sells as well
9:09* i think i actually prefer smaller towns where each building has a purpose, even if it's just cozy or weird dialogue. Walking past a row of houses with totally opaque windows and no interior just feels like the worst kind of game design that many open world maps fall victim to. Space for the sake of space tends to only engender subtle annoyance and can slowly grind down your appreciation of a town or city
Edited to add better context to timestamp
I mean, we should have balance. Maybe before we had too many meaningless buildings that were empty or had a pointless NPC, but now the games are way too linear (although scarlet violet show huge potential for the future). I miss the days when I’d have to actually explore a bit to find a required HM. That satisfaction of finally not being lost is something that is totally missing nowadays. It’s impossible to get truly lost in a pokemon game now. But in gen 4, mt cornet could actually stump ppl, it did to me although I was a kid.
@Pwjdjskw I wonder if younger players today get a similar experience and we just have nostalgia goggles on regarding our experience with earlier games? It still seems likely that we had more fun due to the satisfaction of figuring things out mostly for ourselves and having exploration rewarded in more meaningful ways. Although i harbor no ill will to them, such thoughts have been a part of why I haven't played some of the newer games, it has to be said
I prefer the immersion of size, a town with three houses just doesn't make any sense.
@maxxximum_productions it is ok
For me one of the worst things about the modern games, from gen 7 onwards, is the incessant hand holding and constant interruptions. They won’t let you just play and find your own way. I know the games are primarily aimed at children, but so were the old games and yet they have far less hand holding and interruptions.
Truth
@@dan4845 gen 7 was the worst
No argument there. It's like GameFreak's certain staff got the boot and new members gave the developers the idea of always guiding the children to where they should go.
Well that is treating kids as if they were dumb, and not capable of exploring and learning by themselves. As a teacher, I see that as detrimental for critical thinking development.
Ever since gen 7 the rival picks the weaker starter
The champion of sun/moon and sword/shield use the starter strong against you though
Personally I do miss the rival being an actual rival. In SV the rival was pretty good in the end but I would not mind a tougher one going forward
lmao
And before then, May chooses a starter strong against yours. In OR/AS
@ exactly, so more of a challenge
My main complaint about the newer games is 100% the route design.
Omg and NO TRAINERS 😭
100% agree!! Gen 6 was the last gen with interesting routes imo
Gen 8 looked nice but the routes themselves were just a line and didn't allow for any sort of exploration. Gen 7 had rubbish route design and I hate the gen 9 open world tbh
I understand the Gen 8 complaints, but personally I love the open world. It makes the Pokémon world seem more fun and interact active. I do hate the lack of trainers in Legend Arceus and Scarlet and Violet though.
@@SchmidKids-o6ri hate how the open world leaves much of it looking blank or crappy with mountains looking horrible and textures loading in right in front of your face. I don’t care for it without polish.
@ I think this is why I liked swsh so much more than sv, there was an open world area but there were still more traditional routes
I want a pokemon game that tests my knowledge and forces me to train my pokemon or use varied teams.
The second SV dlc was filled with double battles with actual competitive movesets, including held items, weather abuse, and double battle strategies (like explosion/protect and earthquake/levitate). That section was legitimately challenging
Before that, the only other Pokemon games that came close were Colosseum and Gale of Darkness, which was similarly filled with double battles, and trainers who employed double battle tactics.
@@KenRyuguji-rg3ft this is why I liked HMs… I love building the perfect move set for each Pokémon 😭
@ HMs were the worst possibly thing for curating perfect movesets. They were a chore to remove and often lacked power accuracy status or all. What do you mean😭
@ i do agree that it’s so much more convenient without them and I do prefer ride Pokémon & whatever, but I still liked having to find the right Pokémon to do each task and I enjoyed having to think of my Pokémon outside of a battling perspective iykwim 😭
I wish the new games didnt heal you so much. The long caves where you needed revives and potions and the rival battles out of nowhere to catch you off guard made the games more challenging. Now you can go a whole playthrough without needing a single potion.
Not me. I still need potions. But that's for the post game and I'm a shiny hunter sooo
I never found that I needed too many healing items. I found that move PP was a far larger issue in these longer dungeons than healing as ethers are not that common to come across
Maybe wrong opinions do exist
Yeah but I mean it's just like when people complain about about your rival healing you after the battle or right before a gym battle like your ass ain't just going to go to the Pokemon Center anyway they're just cutting you out from having to walk all the way back to the Pokemon Center
That wasn't challenging, it was tedious
5:13 I'd say hidden abilities are pretty important, which were added in gen 5
Agreed and it introduced reusable TMs.
Hidden abilities were (mostly) locked behind dream world, which you can't access anymore and didn't even really work great when it was around, so I'd say you have to take the good with the bad on calling that innovative.
The big dungeon type areas like Mount Coronet and victory road are sorely missed. Also, I miss things like strength puzzles. Sure, the puzzles were never very hard, but I feel like kids playing modern Pokemon games are missing out on them.
By Gen 5 they had changing seasons, animated sprites, and music beats that play with every step you take. I would rather have this than the 3D games. Pokemon should've went with HD-2D graphics like Octopath Travelers.
I somewhat agree but just because they haven’t made the best looking 3D games doesn’t mean Pokémon should have never been 3D.
I wouldn’t mind if we got another 2D game but I think 3D is just being done dirty. I’ve seen some 3D animations people have made on TH-cam and they look so good. If they do make another 2D game it should be like Octopath travelers.
I agree I think a Pokemon game in 3d could work but game freak is going to need more employees and time for that. And honestly as even as someone who started in the switch era I still think they should just go back to 2d. Although just as a side Let’s Go in my opinion did look very good
They were industry experts in 2D pixel art games and amateurs at 3D. Never made much sense to me why they went 3D at all.
Nostalgiaaaa
@@THGMR-ox7sdNo, there are many reasons Pokemon should've never gon 3D, that's just ine of em.
For me the last time the main games felt at their core like old pokemon games was USUM.
Pokemon sword, shield and onward to me felt very hollow, kinda like "youre here to play a barebones pokemon game, no side quests, no grinding, just gyms and elite 4."
They were the last games to have deliberately designed optional routes (though still a downgrade from the route design that came before imo)
Pokemon Scarlet and Violet might not have the route design aspect, but it has plenty of charm in both its three main storylines (which converge into one central one in the postgame) and its characters, that make it feel more than a "barebones pokemon game"
@@kryzethx I agree it has charm with its story and characters, but it feels like the switch games had to cut back on loads of extra little things in and around the main games story and gameplay in exchange for the juiced up surface level core experience.
To me the games just arnt as well rounded
Agreed
??? Sun and Moon had nothing to do with old pokemon! original ones didn't even have gyms
Agreed
What I really really hate about the newer games is the shiny locking thing they started doing. If I want to start my adventure with a shiny starter as my buddy then let me do so instead of having it be my loyal partner until I can breed it for its shiny offspring and have mom/dad retire to the box forever 🤔
My problem with modern Pokemon games is that Heart Gold and Soul Silver were so amazing that those set the bar way too high for any other game that came after.
HeartGold and SoulSilver will forever be the greatest Pokémon game
No they won’t black and white 2 are objectively the best and the level curve is genuinely good💯
Absolutely agree! HeartGold and SoulSilver took everything gen 2 did and amped it up and fixed the handful of issues gen 2 had. It's never gotten better.
nope ORAS
Yes I mean it's incredible to see how much detail they put into the games when you look at something like Heart Gold Soul Silver... 2 regions, 16 badges, battle against Red, 16 gym leader events, many special and secret events/legendaries, the list goes on
I liked sword and shield to some degree, but i dont like how the majority of the story doesnt happen until 7/8th gym, and they fade to black with text boxes describing whats happening instead of just having a cutscene.
That absolutely killed me. So many "LOOK OVER THERE! Ahh, you just missed it..." moments
@@Whitepawprint Fun fact: the Sword and Shield beta has an unfinished Gigantamax Toxtricity model next to the bridge where you completely miss the Dmax Perrserker. That would also explain why the camera changes to focus on the mountainside despite there being nothing there.
Ghost and Dark NEVER made sense being the category they were. Ghost is SPECTRAL Energy. So all Ghost-type moves SHOULD have been Special. Meaning Dark SHOULD have been Physical, almost all dark-type moves became physical anyways.
Didn't like EVERY Dark Type move from Gen 2 and 3 become Physical?
Also, the most iconic Ghost type move, Shadow Ball, became Special
i mean the decision "Ghost = Physical" makes sense in the context of generation 1 with lick as the only damaging move. However, they could have switched this for gen 2.
Ghost type being physical made theoretical sense in gen 1 because Psychic types had huge special stats but low defense stats. If Ghost was special it wouldn't be able to harm Psychic as effectively. Of course practically Ghost was useless against Psychic anyway cause of the bug that made Psychic immune to Ghost as well as Lick being the only Ghost damaging move. Dark type moves were later made Special in gen 2 cause making them Physical would render the already present Ghost type offensively useless. It makes absolute sense from a game-design perspective even if in actual practice they didn't think things through as well as they should have
@nihildwo4874
Gen 2 could use the time machine to interact with Gen 1.
It'd likely be a bit of a suffering point for fans if their ghost types suddenly behaved differently after trading as a result of an underlying mechanics change.
Since Gen 3 couldn't trade to Gen 2 or Gen 1 that should have been the switch over point IMO since then there's no arguing any prior pokemon were negatively affected.
@@scragar They already did behave radically differently anyway. Special defense didn't exist as a stat in gen 1. Gengar's 130 Special was changed to 130 sp.atk and 75 sp.def. Additionally, Gengar's 65 attack was untouched.
I feel like people are also forgetting that they literally only made one line of ghost types in gen 1 and they were part poison, meaning they were weak to psychic anyway, so saying ghost being physical was a balance decision to make them better against psychic feels counter intuitive to the fact they did everything else in their power to make ghost a bad type, including (again) making gengar's base attack 65.
Generations 5 and 3 are my favorite hands down and I like five when it first came out because I loved the fact that I had to build a whole new teams with brand new Pokemon instead of relying on the same ones from every other game
I think the most fun I've had playing a pokemon game (aside from, you know, the originals, which were groundbreaking at the time) was Emerald but with gen 6-onward mechanics/moves. A lot of ROM hacks are made to be more difficult, but the ones that just update the old games' mechanics to ones that have made the game much more fun to play are just amazing.
I started playing Pokémon on the GB Pocket. I think the series got better with each generation up 5 probably. After that, it felt like it was over a hump and on the way down. Pokémon design, core features, environment, combat capabilities, difficulty, all felt worse as the new games came out.
Yes, completely! Modern pokemon begins with Generation 7, and classic ends with 5. Generation 6 is a transitional game. They ruined Pokemon depressingly bad. Worldbuilding? gone completely, with absolutely no fleshing out of towns and cities. Remember how Hoenn had places like the market square, the Devon corp, the weather institute, and the trickster house? Or how Johto had some amazing folklore and mythology in Ecruteak with the Tin Tower and Burned Tower, or fun locations like the dance theater, radio tower, ruisn of alph and sprout tower? Sinnoh had a lot alonside Unova too, and even Kalos (I'm a gen 6 enjoyer). I don't think the new generations are good with exploration, and they lack in worldbuilding, storytelling, and its awful since exploration makes for a good region with lotso f stuff to do. The new games lack that therefore ruining them + the technical issues and characters that are lacking.
I don't think ALL modern Pokemon is bad, rather I think the Switch gen of Pokemon is bad.
I could go on for hours about all the bad things in Scarlet & Violet. It's so bad that people now talk about Legends Arceus as if it's one of the best games ever by comparison.
That's not to say PLA is bad, but it's got plenty of its own issues that now get glossed over because the game is preferable to the other junk we got.
Are any of those bad things *not* related to framerate performance or graphical fidelity? Legitimately curious, because I found Scarlet and Violet's storyline and characters to be some of the best in the series (mainly by virtue of being unique, which is a similar thing that PLA has going for it), and the open-world design makes team planning the best it's ever been.
@@kryzethxArea Zero was a pretty good story sequence but the rest of the story content is completely barebones with quantitatively less content and little qualitative improvement to compensate. All that happening in a dead world, vast swaths of essentially random geography, completely empty, creating arbitrary space between towns that have just as little going on as the wilderness. Virtually zero side content; other than sandwiches and raids there is basically no content other than the main quest lines. The typical problem with open world games is that they give you too much to do and it becomes overwhelming and competitive; Game Freak avoids this pitfall by just giving you outright ZERO activities to do. I genuinely cannot think of another game I’ve played with as little content as SV. Genuinely, I paused writing this comment to look through the games on my shelf and every single one-both open world and otherwise-has a wider variety of content than SV and many of them have more to do in their side content than SV has in their main content.
Literally the only way I can understand someone thinking SV’s only problems are visual is if that person has genuinely never played a non-Pokémon game, not a single one, in their entire life.
@@Mike-di1og For Scarlet and Violet, it's true that I'm mostly only comparing it to the previous Pokemon games; not exactly comparing it to all other games in existence.
From a Pokemon game specifically, it's basically everything I would have wanted. A fun and interesting storyline and characters to interact with for a first playthrough, and varying replayability for subsequent playthroughs. Only thing it's really missing, is a Battle Frontier, but there was enough postgame dlc to keep me hooked after completing the main game.
Having little side content is not inherently a bad thing. Both Luigi's Mansion and Pikmin 1 are considered 2 of the best games in their respective series, but they can both be completed in a single evening. They're still amazing games despite their lack of side content.
Guess I'm just old and the first 5 gens as kid and 14/15 year old were very different experiences so I'd say the first gens over the new gens for me.
Really pokemon was always lagging behind other titles. It just became more apparent now.
I split at gen 6, when it transitioned to 3D. That's when early game exp share was introduced as well as generational gimmicks. I don't mind the exp share because it allows for more experimentation with party without having to grind to bring newer members up to level, or even think of a full party since i don't have to spend time grinding individual pokemon
I agree. People who hate the xp share must have forgotten how much of a pain it is to grind levels post gen 6. I'm currently doing a playthrough of black 2 and yeah, I miss the newer xp share. Maybe they should add back the option to make it optional in newer games so others don't feel it's forced but I like how it is now.
an argument could be made about gimmicks being introduced as early as Gen II with held items and breeding, Gen III with Double Battles and abilities, Gen IV with the Physical/Special split, or Gen V with Triple and Rotation battles and all that stuff with the Entralink.
@@Sailor-Khione you don’t need to grind levels if you actually fight trainers, even if you’re raising an underleveled mon just switch train them while doing battles
it also encourages you to use all your pokemon instead of relying on 1 or 2 and letting the rest sit in the back
@@Sailor-Khione It's not that people hate the Exp. Share. It's that people hate that the Exp. Share forced onto the player. In Gen 6 and 7 it was optional mechanic. How are people still not getting that?
I really like the exp share, but I hate how it's no longer an option.
I'm a 30 year old man, and I love Pokemon. That said, over time I started to realized the newer generations were being geared to mostly appeal to children. I stopped buying new games entirely after playing Sun/Moon on release.
Altogether, I don't think this is a bad thing. We had our childhood games were grew up with, now it's their turn. I'm happy that today's kids are able to enjoy the magical experience I got to over 20 years ago.
I kinda hate how the “evil teams” ended up. Because gens 1-6 there was always an evil team whose motives were to take over the world or destroy it and whatnot. Then Gen 7 came along and turned the evil team into some edgy teenagers. (Okay aether foundation I GUESS) Then Gen 8 you just have a bunch of fanboys and girls, then Gen 9 you have bully victims.
Really? I much prefer the smaller scale of the localized evil teams. They’re more realistic and have varied motivations (Skull wanted to make something of themselves as trial challenge dropouts, Star wanted to fend against bullies together). And it explains in-universe why the grunts are all comically incompetent.
To me, the world-ender evil teams seemed too formulaic after a while - always a visionary dude at the top who goes “this world needs change”, while the good guys go “no it doesn’t!!”, and kick his ass.
I’m not happy with other things in the modern games, but the writing I feel is mostly improved…although Chairman Rose is a rushed mess.
Are you saying you just want to play the same game in a different trench coat and hat over and over again?
@ No, the evil teams that wanna destroy the world are just cooler than a bunch of fanboys with trumpets
@@SillyLittleMan55 I mean, you're not wrong, I hate Sword and Shield lmao.
However, since you included gen 6 in your initial comment, I'm gonna argue that the fanboys with trumpets are cooler than the weirdos wearing orange suits (or the man with big orange hair).
So true! I hadn’t even thought about this.
Emerald is my favorite pokemon game, and probably always will be, but x/y is a close second for me.
I remember when it came out, a fully 3d pokemon game, looked amazing, cool new mechanics, really cool region, fun gym designs, and the multiple "rivals" made it feel like a fun adventure with friends.
On the downsides, the exp share was busted, but I never really liked endlessly grinding levels anyway, for me, what made it too easy was all the super high power iconic pokemon you were just given.
By the end of my first runthrough, I barely had any new pokemon in my party because It was full between the three starters you get, the game legendary, and lucario.
The other issue I had was that mega evolution felt like something you were supposed to use every fight, my party was almost always lead by lucario, charizard (a pokemon I don't even really like), or mewtwo. It made the game feel kind of samey
I really think the most frustrating thing about newer generations of pokemon is that they keep introducing innovations that they seemingly have no confidence in. Every time a new entry in the franchise does something praise worthy, the next generations either no longer have that feature or have a worse version of it (the way that friends and friend power worked in gen 6 is somehow still the most functional online system the series has ever had.)
I'll put it in these terms, if held items were introduced in gen 6, we wouldn't have seen them in gen 7 and 8 and they'd just be that generation's gimmick. If assets and mechanics are liked by your playerbase, you should reuse them with no hesitation, but its felt like ever since gen 5 they just never want to do that.
Reminder that it's not the "modern" games that are bad, it's not the 3D games, it's the games released post Pokemon GO for the Nintendo Switch. The 3DS games have a lot more structurally in common with the DS games than they do with anything on the Switch. X and Y may be easy but USUM are the hardest games in the franchise!
The elitists aren’t ready for that conversation
"Reminder that it's not the "modern" games that are bad, it's not the 3D games, it's the games released post Pokemon GO for the Nintendo Switch." Those are the modern games.
@@SuperWiggler X, Y, Omega Ruby, and Alpha Sapphire are also modern games, but you see where she said that “its the games post Pokemon GO,” which would be Sun, Moon, etc.
XY and ORAS were atrociously awful
@@twm1100returns We know you think so, you’ve made 4 other comments about the same thing. We don’t care if you think they’re too easy or that they don’t give you that nostalgic dopamine boost that the previous games give you.
...he forgot to mention that XY introduced WONDER TRADE. It's a staple that most players use to this day, even if its name has changed to Surprise Trade.
What kills modern Pokémon games for me is the amount of unskippable cutscenes. There’s so many, literally after every route. Gen 7 was the absolute biggest offender.
It’s whatever, though. In my eyes, rom hackers have been hard carrying the non-competitive Pokémon scene for years now. Stuff like Infinite Fusions and Radical Red will always be there for fans who want the challenge or changes that we’ll never get from official games.
i'll never replay sun and moon solely for this reason. I tried it once and gave up because it doesn't let you actually play the game for like 3 hours
@ So true. It’s literally “new route -> 5 min. cutscene -> new route -> 5 min. cutscene -> new route -> 5 min. cutscene.”
And don’t get me wrong, the older games had “cutscenes” as well, but those could be blown through by mashing A/B, so they didn’t feel as intrusive.
@@scottgillis7369 yeah i replayed xy more than 6 times probably but gen 7 probably still stuck at 2.5
Scarlet and Violet didn't have any of those, outside of the first 10 minutes, where you get the ride pokemon and officially begin your pokemon adventure from the either the east or west Academy gate. After that point, the only "unskippable cutscenes" are those that directly involve a story objective, like a titan pokemon or an evil team base
@@kryzethx That is NOT true lol, the game takes almost an hour to open up you're misremembering.
I actually have a different way I categorize Pokemon myself. I categorize it by Retro (Gen 1-2), Old/classic (Gen 3-5), Modern (gen 6-7) and Modern (gen 8-9). I do this with just how each game runs, such as mechanics. But overall, I agree with your assessment, though I would argue Gen 6 is the transitional period rather than 5. And its due to the new type, and type match ups, and since it was the first generation to have all pokemon obtainable throughout the games (since gen 3).
Just throwing it out there, the sprites they're using are still based on X and Y, in 2013 where the older games always had different sprites, and made completing the Pokedex a lot more fun. It's a big reason I still (mostly) stick to older games, some sprites are wonderful
Gen 5 sprites are peak. I truly believe nothing will top them, unless Pokémon starts using the Octopath Traveller art style
Sprites are images, 3D games use models.
3D games don’t use sprites outside of the pokemon storage. Those are all 3D models and even then they aren’t using all of the same models. Plenty have been updated although there are a ton of them. Pokémon has far more 3D models that need to be animated than your average game so that is a factor
I agree, every game looks so different with a completely different art style and console sometimes
Yeah I appreciated PLA going for more vibrant colors and new animations
I'd say it's mainly lack of polished content and lack of content in general that is ruining the switch games, for example I beat sword's main story in about 12-13 hours where for example in pokemon black I could easily take 18 hours to beat the main story and the 2d games had way more content in the post game even ignoring battle frontiers.
To be fair 3d pokemon games aren't inherently doomed to fail for example I still liked the 3ds era even if the quality did still decrease compared to the ds era and I still liked let's go and legends arceus even if they weren't perfect. Also 2d pokemon supremacists often forget how much of a dumpster fire og diamond and pearl were
Other than Silver/Gold/Crystal, which had Kanto post game, there was very little post game content in the 2D games.
@@comfycat9 I disagree, platinum had the battle area and other post game areas like the new route in victory road as well as gym leader rematches, black 1 had eastern unova, other areas opening up like the dream yard and elite 4 rematches, and do I even have to explain bw2. Even frlg and emerald had new areas post game even excluding battle frontiers
@@comfycat9Even then... Kanto kinda sucks in Gen 2.
@@comfycat9does B2W2 not exist lmao?
@@comfycat9 Very little might be somewhat hyperbolic. In terms of actual content, no postgame adds as much content as the main game, not even Johto's entire Kanto region (mainly due to lacking storyline and streamlined routes), but they all add *something* substantial, like the Sevii Isles in FRLG, Battle Area in DPPt, and entire half of the map in Unova.
"They tried their best"
Nah. If they tried their actual best then Scarlet n Violet wouldn't have come out the way they did
The most long lasting new core mechanic added is Fairy type and how it shook up the strengths and weaknesses type chart, then regional variants.
And at least Mega Evolution lasted 2 generations before they dropped it.
Gen 4 finished the base formula, gen 5 tried a reset and made a great story. Gen 6 is when they started adding special mechanics to the formula perfected in Gen 4
Personally, when I complain about modern pokémon, I'm refering to the switch gens. I remember gen 7 as the best 3D one, although I haven't replayed it in a long time. Gen 6 is fine, and I did sink a lot of hours into it back in the day, which I can't say about the newer ones (I have like 45 hours in Violet)
I believe HeartGold & SoulSilver is a height that may never be reached again by the series.
There's been some good additions here and there, but everything mostly went downhill after gen 5.
I'd say it was gen 8 or maybe 7 cause after gen 7 they stopped innovating alot.
The fact that gamefreak actually makes such amazing 3D animations...The problem is they don't bother to actually animate ☹️
Heres my opinion coming from a 30+ year old who has played Pokémon since red and blue. I liked gen1-6. Pokemon fell off during sun and moon, there was so much conversations and those games dragged on. Scarlet and Violet were horrible as well. The graphics as well are terrible, we arent on handhelds anymore, so there is no excuse why the games look terrible compared to other switch games which look amazing such as Zelda. Also the overall vibe of Pokémon and magic is gone. The old games had more mystery, and the music was way better, the new games are too childish
W Comment
I miss when buying a Pokémon game meant you got the whole thing and didn’t need to buy non-free dlc lmao
I really think modern Pokémon just have to figure out how to pace the game better. With so much liberty and exploration everything becomes a blob e nothing stands out as memorable. The old Pokémon limitations were actually blessings in desguise that made you spend more time in each area/town/city.
I think for me, the issues in been 6 onwards are that is when you really start to feel the lack of development time the games have, combined with gamefreak being so focused or self conscious of the original series.
The move to 3d means that things can't be left to the imagination the way 2d games can. Two houses in a town looks mad, one person standing in a house looks bizarre. Every pokemon needs a bunch of animations, but they're made as generically as possible. They scale up the fidelity massively, but don't have the time or resources to scale up the experience with it, so the world feels emptier and uncanny.
The games start feeling generally unfinished, the xy power plant, stories that cut short quickly, areas that feel they should have a purpose but don't. Again, not enough dev time for their scale.
And everything feels haunted by the first series. XY were very explicit with new viridian forest, gen 1 starters and mewtwo. Everything has charizard. Even SM breaking the formula feels a little self conscious to me, even though I think it's a good thing.
The thing that frustrates me is we're 10 years into 3d and they still haven't learnt to scale their ambition with their resources. SV have so much great in them, but it's also trying to do so much at once.
for me, the classic/modern split is right on gen 7, because that's when i joined the community (which i know is kind of late for someone born in 2006)
7:06 This was my big problem with BDSP as a concept, and with any future generations of remakes. The game is just not that different that a remake feels necessary or worthwhile
it means nothing, know I used trash talk games without even played them but once tried them find them to be quite fun , lol hopefully they grow out of it like I did
Pokémon is getting a similarity to Fallout
The best experiences usually come from a fan who made something cool
I had more fun with Unbound than any actual Pokémon game outside of colosseum
I know I sound like most people, but I prefer the older games to the recent ones. I’m just slowly coming to terms that they’re just not aiming for my demographic anymore
I think a big problem with modern Pokemon is that the post game feels like it is getting worse with each game. In my opinion, Scarlet and Violet have the worst post game since the original Red and Blue, and I have had very little reason to go back and play Scarlet and Violet....
Yes. The map design, difficulty, hand holding, and level of polish are all objectively worse in the newer games.
Gen 6 did introduce a new battle mechanic that went underused and ultimately forgotten by later generations, inverse battles. Flipping the type match ups is a simple idea that’s easy to code and doesn’t require any extra screen assets (looking at you triple a rotation battles), but they never come up in the story and are limited where they can be done despite their potential. Gym leader and Elite Four rematches in the post game, a randomly activated battle condition, the fact it was underused is symptomatic of how the games would look less to ambition in development.
I think it's pretty binary to be honest. Even after people were critical of Sun and Moon and subsequent games the sales didn't go down very much compared to game people actually like. BDSP was shit, but it sold well. Nintendo is a company they are not capable of having a single person make a moral choice when the company's responsibility as a whole is to make money. It's no individual person's fault, it's the consumer who is buying garbage
Gamefreak makes the games. And nintendo actually makes good games like odyssey.
Yes they dumbed them down soooo much they're not even fun anymore
My opinion is that the cutoff for "modern" is the switch from 2D to 3D, so X/Y are the first of the modern era. Conveniently that's also the split for the games I like and games I don't, I've never liked 3D Pokemon 😅
LA is actually a squeal to BDSP since you need to read a book in the canalave library to complete a quest in LA
I'm a diehard gen 2 / gen 2 remake enjoyer. Still don't think it's ever gotten better since HG/SS. But I actually did like gen 7, ngl. The non-traditional format was refreshing, and the obvious nods to the Orange Island League were great (didn't care for the ultra beast nonsense though, lol).
I'm a gen 3 baby, Sapphire was my first, and I very much enjoyed gen 4 as well. I think for me it's a combo of aging out of the target audience and the games feeling simpler/easier? I remember not enjoying Black as much in high school and not playing for a couple years through college. Then my brothers gifted me a switch and have gotten me a game from each gen since so I've played Sword/Shield and Scarlet. They just don't grab me the way the old ones do. I play through them so quickly and then once I've beaten them I never touch the game again. I literally entirely forgot that I even played Scarlet. I was chatting with my brother and said something like I need to play the new pokemon and his response was, wait you haven't played it? It was my Christmas gift to you. I then found my switch, dusted it off, realized I did have the game, and when I turned it on I saw that I had completed the main story with a full team of trained pokemon. I had absolutely zero memory of any of this, it still baffles me that I somehow completed an entire pokemon game and don't remember a minute of it. And me turning it on to make this realization was the last time I touched it, rediscovering I had it didn't tempt me to play any more of it. But I've replayed my Black version since my first round in high school and enjoyed the replay much more, not sure if the game grew on me or if it just was more enjoyable than the recent releases. Maybe the games really aren't as polished as the old versions or maybe I'm just not the ten year old kid they're making the games for anymore. Either way I'll still probably do a casual run of each new series that comes out for the nostalgia and keep watching folks on here do fun challenges of my dear gens 3 and 4.
One thing that's holding modern pokemon back is that they're trying to simultaneously get new players (so they have to keep things simple) while also wanting to keep current fans around (so they reuse old ideas/pokemon in hopes of sparking nostalgia). There's not much they can add to the games in terms of core mechanics if they want to keep it simple for beginners so they use a different gimmick every generation. Legends was the result of them trying to appeal to older fans & while the adult players absolutely loved it, it did worse financially than BDSP (that my friends all disliked but the kids we know absolutely loved)
Pokémon sword changed my life and I played it way more than I like to admit and as a result is my favourite game of all time (I’m not afraid to say that)
I'm glad you are having fun playing Pokemon.
Hmmm I'm not sure how to feel about those games. The story isn't great until the dlc, crown tundra. And I mainly play it only to shiny hunt. Same for scarlet and violet. It could have been great if it wasn't rushed.
lol “changed your life” ?😂
@j4m3sii What? They just really liked the game, whats your problem?
@@Sailor-Khione I agree. Still pissed swsh had a badly executed story because I like the lore of the region.
Another plus for Gen 6 is the introduction of trainer customisation into the main series. You can choose hair, skin and eye colour, as well as other hair styles and clothes during the game. ORAS didn’t do this, but Sword and Shield did, then Scarlet and Violet to much more limited degree.
pokemon anymore is just a nostalgia trip, i end up playing through and doing the main stuff and a good chunk of the after game, but after that it collects dust. sadly i dont think pokemon will ever have my attention like it did between gen1 and 3
I’ll tell u why they’re bad: they’re bad bc there’s no feel of exploitation. The closest thing we got to a “cave” is a tunnel after you beat one of the giant Pokemon. Just trash
Unpopular opinion: outside of the needed physical special split, nothing about Gen 4 felt different from Gen 3 and that's when I really started to feel the series get repetitive. Wanderer who is the Champion? Check. End of the world with the evil team after a box art legendary? Check. HMs making for a miserable Victory Road? Check. I've never played Diamond/Pearl but if Platinum didn't do it for me, I'd hate those. Plus, Gen 4 is responsible for the abomination that is Probopass.
I know Sun/Moon tried to shake up the series by not having a world-ending evil team, and having it's Trials. Were things really feeling that repetitive at the time? I feel like the sentiment of trying something new with the formula still persists today.
@miimiiandco I liked the Gen 7 shake up attempt. I mean that Gen 4 copied too much from Gen 3 so I don't enjoy Sinnoh (minus LA) when it's, "We just did this in Hoenn!" I played Colosseum as a kid before Platinum so between that and Hoenn and Kanto remakes, Sinnoh just didn't impress me and still doesn't.
B/W were too hard of a soft reset for me, which B2/W2 fixed but I stopped before those came out. Played Gens 7 and 6 years later and had fun with them
Before i start, i dont think the newer games are "worse" than the older ones, but i do prefer the game design of the older games. There are many reasons i think this perception is going around so much.
1: Game development time. All these newer games have been buggy as heck because TPC has been rushing to push games out. Yes we want more games, but we want games that work.
2. Psudo-linearity vs Open World. If you have an open world, it is really hard to tell a story without somehow gating/restricting player access 'till plot relevance. The older games might have seemed cumbersome with HMs, but it made exploring more fun and artificial restriction a little more sensible in universe. Ride pokemon werent necessarily bad but it took the immersion out somewhat. Like im flying on a charizard i dont own, or flying on a braviary that i have never owned (didnt fit the team).
3. Exploration vs Story. Some could simply call this handholdiness and it would be exactly the same. It also ties into the last point. To have an open world, they need to drag you from place to place. Its a bit more intrusive than that. In the old games you had maybe a couple minutes of required story dialogue, now its a couple minutes every couple of minutes xd.
I could probably think of a few more like pokemon selection in regions/overused mons, but i think ill just leave it there.
Edit: Btw my favorite game is Emerald. OFC its for the Battle Frontier! The best postgame of any of the games so far.
one thing I'll say about the let's go games is i don't think I've ever been so impressed by the care the dev team did with the follow mechanic. I like to point to Sandshrew as my main example because it's a Pokemon i never use much but when i caught it and wanted to see how they followed, I assumed it would roll around in a ball, but the goofy looking walk/run cycle absolutely made me fall in love with that creature.
You know what I think it is?
All a matter of perspective. How old you are, when you started playing, and how old the game you're talking about is all factor into this.
Keep in mind that, while they do make these games for everyone, they are primarily intended for children. And while there is nothing wrong with adults enjoying them too (I'm 29 and love the series still, why would I say it's wrong for adults to enjoy the games?), that doesn't change the fact they are designed for kids. Those of us that grew up with gen 1-4 were kids when we played them, but we aren't now. Of course we see the games differently than we used to. But as I know from having younger cousins that like Pokemon, many younger and newer fans see the newer games the same way we saw the older games. And they'll look back on them the same way. As this video put it, we see them through rose-coloured glasses.
That's not to say some of these points aren't right. Obviously the older games were still establishing core features, but there really isn't much equivalent they could establish now. I mean, even adding Fairy isn't seen the same as when they added Dark or Steel, so even fan demands like adding a Sound type wouldn't register the same. While they've been adding temporary mechanics, I don't think that's been the intent. I think they've been trying to find something more permanent and their attempts just haven't stuck as well as they wanted. But even if they were always intended to be temporary, it's because they need to do something to make them stand out from each other.
But that isn't inherently a bad thing. Other game series do the same thing, or else they get criticized for being too similar. Early Mario games set the formula for the series, and then they started with one-off mechanics. Older Zelda games did the same. Meanwhile, games like Call Of Duty barely change anything between releases and get criticized for the games all being so similar, with any game that does add something new or different being a big deal.
Overall, it's not so much a change in how they are doing things. We're just older. And as older fans, we're always going to prefer what we grew up with over what came later. Because of nostalgia.
You can say stuff like "the new routes are so linear", but so are the older routes. I didn't see as much difference between the examples shown in this video as suggested. In fact, the only real difference came from 2D vs 3D. The 2D games were more zoomed out, with smaller sprites, and as such we saw more of the map all at once, so they had bigger maps. But the newer games being 3D are more zoomed in. We see less of the map at once, so they're smaller looking. Especially since we see less out of bounds stuff. Now our view is blocked by one layer of trees instead of being able to see four layers of trees acting as walls.
People say Scarlet and Violet are a mess, but so were Red, Blue, Green, and Yellow. Graphically there were fewer things that could go wrong because it was 2D sprites, things were either there or they weren't, no worries about characters turning heads or falling through maps. But they had other glitches instead, and they were full of them. People just ignored them, didn't notice them... Or mistook them for being part of the game. Meanwhile, Scarlet and Violet have no mechanical glitches. Their glitches are purely things that are not a factor for top-down 2D games like graphical bugs and clipping through the floor. But that doesn't inherently make the glitches worse, just more noticeable. You can try arguing that they're worse, but they really aren't. Game crashes compared to softlocks, characters with messed up faces compared to attacks randomly missing when they shouldn't. Different, but not inherently worse.
Even changes to difficulty are debatable. Everyone says the Exp Share changes made the games easy, but all they did was cut down the grind. Seriously, these are games with free healing available in every town and the worst punishment for failing is the time loss. All the Exp Share change did was make it so you don't need to run back and heal as often and don't need to switch train your really weak stuff. It saves time, it doesn't actually make the games easier. They were always really easy. Things that made the newer games easier include... Well, those of us that grew up with the older games being older and smarter, and the UI changes that are really just convenient like showing type effectiveness in the battle menu, which wasn't even possible before.
I'm not trying to say people need to enjoy the newer games or can't prefer the older ones. We just need to stop pretending it's anything but us older fans growing up.
Genuinely the best comment I've ever seen on this topic and the most accurate thing I've ever read.
Would reusable TMs count as something new Gen 5 added? I know newer games seem to have done anyway with it, but for awhile that was a feature that stuck around.
Yes
I feel like something often overlooked is how braindead it was to grind for xp without some form of xp share.
You effectively just grind through a loop of start with training pokemon, switch to stronger (unless unnecessary), use move that OHKOs.
Worse yet, the fact that wild pokemon lvls stop increasing eventually means you have to do this rinse and repeat process on underleveled opponents that practically don't grant enough xp to be worth the time.
We should not act like it's a mark of pride to grind xp in the most brainless form of pokemon gameplay while criticizing newer games for "having brainless difficulty"
I took a 10 year break after X and Y. Now I'm replaying the older games and catching up (as well as Shiny hunting!) Currently I'm playing through US for the first time. I have to say, however, I still just do not like Gen 4, even Platinum. Not trying to argue, but I just don't see why people love it. It feels so slow. The designs are so boring. Between Gen 3 and 5 it feels like more of the same, rather than an evolution.
That being said, I feel like the Switch games are probably not THAT bad, fandoms have a bad habit of becoming echo chambers. It'll be interesting to see how they are for myself, not blinded by nostalgia.
Fun Shiny story: I once woke up from a dream where I found a Shiny Trapinch in Ruby. I took it as a sign. I then turned on my Ruby and my OR and sat down expecting to never find it. 10 minutes in, I found it in OR. I am now using it in my UM playthrough!
....i mean...its time to play some other game. That's really it. Simply go to SMT games to get your rock paper scissors fix, even Persona.
Yeah, people just need to branch out to other RPGs in general.
I don’t think I’ll ever like Scarlet and Violet. Even performance issues aside, it was such a step down from Legends Arceus gameplay wise in so many ways.
All I’ll say is I no longer have have Scarlet and Violet but I do go back to Legends Arceus pretty regularly lolol
Scatlet and Vomit are trash
no way around it, straight up
I guess to each their own. Legends, while visually fascinating, was a miss for me because catching isn’t my favorite thing, and the catching and research bordered on grinding for me. That and the battles, I didn’t like the styles and felt they pushed things to revenge-KOs. Whereas SV hit the right notes for me in battling, as I love the traditional system. So like for me, I’d much rather play SV than Legends, despite my issues with it as well, because of the things it did do that I enjoy more than Legends. There isn’t much drawing me back to Legends…except maybe dabbling in shiny hunting?
The sweet spot for me is around gen 3-5, gen 1 is a bit too stale for me to like as much and gen 2 I do love the graphics but I'd much rather play HGSS instead. Crystal not having Mareep was a mindboggling decision.
I *love* ORAS, BDSP is just kinda disappointing in comparison and I would rather play Platinum or the Luminescent Platinum hack. They didn't do so little as add Sylveon and the regional forms and that was just kinda sad. Reminded me of playing Let's Go like 'God I wish I could evolve this thing'.
I think Scarlet and Violet would have been a *great* return to form and really enjoyed playing them, the big issue is that they perform rather poorly. I can't in good faith say they are some of my favourite games, but they had that potential to be. The story had some effort put into it we didn't really get except in Gen 5 and 7 (then Game Freak ruined the latter with USUM's story change anyway), I love some of the new mons and the human characters were cool. It's just a shame in modern Pokemon, we have performance issues and I can't just use any Pokemon I want. It does mess up themed teams a bit.
All the games just have those little flaws that stop them being pure amazement.
Then gen 7 and 8 have those irritating cutscenes (some being 'walk three steps then stop again) that without I would replay more often. .I love Galar's characters but the story is pure stupidity. At least gen 8 made things easier for two of my favourite Pokemon, Leafeon and Glaceon.
Gen 4 setting the standard for location-based evolutions is just... It's a bit crap, innit?
I just don’t think mainline Pokemon games should be in 3D, though I know that’s unrealistic of me.
I at least hope GF would make a new retro style game on modern consoles similar to how Mega Man 9/10 worked.
In before the *"Gamefreak would do good if they had more time"* comments...
ITS THEIR OWN GAME. THEY DECIDE THEIR OWN TIME. NOT NINTENDO.
Nintendo has Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Animal Crossing, and a bunch more. So their dont need to speed uo anything. Gamefreak speeds up and their games end up shit 100% because of their fault.
Yeah, Nintendo is just the distributor
Yes and no. There's pressure for merch like the trading cards, plushies*, shows, etc that bring in money I'm pretty sure nintendo wants. Have I liked the switch games? Nah. They are rushed. But it's not just game freaks fault they've been a mess. I love pokemon and I hope someday the make a game I'm willing to buy day 1. Sw/Sh was the last straw for me.
To clarify I mean merch and hype tied to new mons that require a gen to stand with. Personally I'd be ok if they didn't add so many every gen, but that's very likely a hot take.
Maybe its the nostalgia talking but I find the 2d graphics more appealing. The Pokemon looked more colorful than the washed out colors in the 3d games. As for the 3d games the ones I enjoyed the most were Stadium, Colloseum and Legends Arceus. I will never touch Sun/Moon again. X,Y, Sword and Shield were passable. Scarlet and Violet made me stop and go back to the older games.
Nah, a *LOT* of people feel this way
when you're early but you don't know what to say
I hope they get rid of the sandwich system for breeding!
Honestly you can blame Gen 6 on how poorly received Gen 5 was. I feel like people forget how much Black and White were panned by the fanbase. It's part of why Gen 6 is so easy and so focused on Kanto pandering
Gen 5 also had "Kanto pandering" the OG B/W added 151 new Pokemon for example...wanna know what the number 151 is referencing? Lol
@@chooongusbug724 BW added 156 new Pokemon, not 151.
@oyeh8908 cool, completely redoing the Pokedex and adding that many new mons reference to Gen 1 regardless. Masuda also said this 🤷♀️ the "Kanto pandering" complaint is dumb and that's the point, especially when every game in the series has referenced Gen 1 in some way
My issue is since Gen 3, they started to do this huge world-ending JRPG villain plot that got more and more ridiculous with each generation. By Gen 6, the evil team was either very stupid or comically evil which doesn't fit Pokemon too well. The newer games also keep adding things that slow down the game, whether that's someone like Hau on every single screen or whatever else.
They also haven't improved the Gym formula once. Having another water or fire gym is so boring and lazy when they could have themed gyms around a core concept, like statuses, being defensive, or just having cool move combinations. The general gameplay has just gotten oh so stale, and the new stuff they add is a temporary gimmick (Z-Moves, Dynamaxing, etc) that never stick around which is a shame.
Also with Gen 8, they started LYING to people, which is never a good sign ("high quality animations", remember that time period?). Also since the leap to home consoles w/ Switch, the games are more and more scrutinized because of how *awful* they look, Gens 8 and 9 most notably.
I was in full Pokemania Fever with Gen 1 and 2. I slowed down when 5 came out, and I've honestly just been a hater since Gen 8 (though I also despise Gen 7). I'm just so sad that one of my favorite franchises ever has become this hollow husk of what it used to be, and I wish someone more competent than Game Freak could take the reigns instead.
or someone who understands how to let games develop, instead of rushing their subsidiary company, like TPC does. seriously, someone needs to invade the company, who knows how to let people TAKE THIER TIME with making games, and spread THAT culture around.
@@TheShiningEnergy It's definitely more than the limited time they have cuz GF has ALWAYS been incompetent since Gen 1, but yes, that doesn't help either.
Or, GF could also GROW BIGGER instead of trying to be smol indee dev for the BIGGEST franchise in human history.
"we haven't removed pokemon to sell them back to you later"
Outside of Arceus and ORAS? Yes, moving on
my two main problems with the modern pokemon games are:
1) the performance. how come your games lag so much on their native console????
2) figure out 3d open world gameplay already... ask the makers of zelda if you can't figure it out on your own. the stuff you deliver is absolute trash, gamefreak
otherwise go back to 2d - all I want is the old gens on switch, I will even pay you money man. I just can't deal with the poor quality games you push out...
About point 1. Not the first games I’ve seen with performance issues. The 5th gen and 7th gen consoles were pretty notorious for poorly performing games.
Also pretty much only PLA and S&V are the only games with performance issues. SwSh and Lets go tend to have decent game performance.
The makers of Zelda didn’t figure out the open world. Nintendo used their ownership of Monolith software to help them build the world of Breath of the Wild just so they could specifically get that right. I think Pokemon should have similar help too
I'll be honest, after a year of people recommending Platinum over BDSP, SV's performance issues didn't seem like a big deal.
I feel like what the common counterpoint I see to "new Pokemon bad" is "no you're just older now and can *insert thing either an adult or experienced Pokemon player can do now that a child probably couldn't"* and I both agree and disagree with that statement. For example, say I took a child, made them play Platinum, then erased that experience and then gave them X. They would probably have problems in both but (especially since X is known for being "easy even by Pokemon standards") they would still have a harder time with Platinum. That basically goes with any 3D Pokemon game (except USUM, don't know what they were on with that game). Granted some (though I wouldn't say all) that challenge comes from if you grinded or not and grinding is a dumb pace breaker especially if the game doesn't have a Vs Seeker. Another thing is that the older games can be more interesting at times. I think Sinnoh (albeit, specifically Platinum due to DP being slow as hell) and Unova are much more interesting locals than Galar and actually feel like they had time to finish unlike Paldea. I feel like there are many reasons older Pokemon fans turn more of blind eye to "modern Pokemon". Is every reason good? Hell no and anyone who defends grinding is weird but I don't think it just comes down to "You're an adult now" all the time.
I feel like it's easier to raise a team in the newer entries than the older ones, probably thanks to the EXP Share? I often found myself under-leveled in Platinum because I didn't know that I needed to use a smaller team, since I'd need to split the EXP between every member. On my first playthrough of Violet, I found that having a rotating roster of like 13 Pokemon was not only easy, but also a great way to do as much of the game's content as possible without overlevelling for the Gyms/Titans/Team Star. Though a team of six was pretty much perfectly levelled in the Alola games, especially USUM.
I wouldn't say this is a positive or negative thing, just an interesting difference between how the games are designed. Though, ORAS gives WAY too much EXP with the EXP Share on.
Kids nowadays have 0 attention span so the new games are made to pander to them
Grinding is literally why we played Pokemon. The problem is normies. Pokemon us for autistic people, always has veen, and we NEED minial tasks, such as grinding. Normies started swamping the franchise with XY and the games got progressively worse as they started pandering to those normies, which is also why Kanto pandering is through the roof these days.
@@twm1100returns*Normies
Kids these days have jnsane attention spans, they can basically quote the entire internet to you without looking at it, this whole thing about kids not having attention spans is something Masuda came up with because he didn't realize they weren't kids, but trend hopping normies.
tbh from gen 1-4 it was adventure, gen 5 ok story but problem for me is linear ,gen 6 mega pkmn cool but short game,gen7 to much cutscenees,gen 8 linear ,gen 9 is ok but wish it had customozation from gen 8
Colloseum and XD were peak because:
1)All double battles
2)dont get free heals as much
3)had difficult battles
So hard = good?
It's not a hard game I'm literally on a playthrough now, even as a kid it wasn't hard. There were challenging aspects but a game SHOULD have challenging moments @@AGZhark
@cottoncandiez8872 the mons you can use are 2nd gen and the weaker ones. Unless you go optimal with quagsire/croconaw, the first admin battle is difficult.
@@Bunsense_Gaming The speedrun is Typhlosion/Espeon. That's probably the optimal team.
@King_Kong_Song unless you use the 4 aforementioned pokemon, then yeah, the game is harder and requires some grinding at Mt battle
Fun fact from Nintendo and Pokémon themselves the box are Pokémon on Pokémon ultra sun and moon and regular sun and moon are ultra beast not legendary Pokémon since technically you can get multiple of them in the same game
Personally I think pokemon has always been a flawed series since red and blue, and that's okay. Are pokemon games easier now? Honestly, I think the difficulty only felt like it shifted because there's so much more options for movesets and Pokemon, and people just know everything about Pokemon now. It isn't a bad thing that pokemon is "easy" now. I thought SV was pretty easy but I had a blast playing it.
Going back to older generations made me realize that the games were only somewhat difficult because there wasn't a clear understanding of Pokemon and a lack of modern features. It's just more noticeable with the newer generations since the ones complaining about the easier difficulty have been playing Pokemon for a good while. It's okay to think older games are better or harder or whatever! But viewing the franchise in such an overly nostalgic manner isn't the best way to look at it.
Older games allowed you to shiny hunt legendaries by soft resetting. Newer games require you to pay in Pokemon Go if you want to shiny hunt a specific legendary Pokemon. This is why the older games are better.
Exactly. I refuse to buy the mainline switch pokemon games because of bull crap removals of players choice such as dexit, the forced exp share and shiny locks
The Let's Go Games, they did return the Megas for Gen I pokemon only
No Pokemon game has been hard for me and I have played every mainstream Pokemon game. Apart from that Whitney miltank fight(I was 10 years old at that time) not even Cynthia was a challenge
Something I really like about modern pokemon is that they got rid of hm's because those always frustrate me so much when playing older games
Legends Arceus absolutely is my favorite Pokémon game. And "didn't change much"? Are you kidding? It completely overhauled the battle system. (for the better) With the agile/strong mechanic. Also the focus is a lot more on catching / training Pokémon than battles. And it's fun just to go to an area and run around for hours and collect everything you see. Also the final battles (Volo, Arceus) are really hard.
Also it's not a pre-quel or a remake. It's a full sequel to Diamond / Pearl since you play as Dawn/Lucas from the main games but you are sent back in time.
Scarlet and Violet are okay too, but can get confusing and the performance is bad. (I do hope they'll update it for the Switch 2)
honestly idk if the older games are strictly better - and I say that as someone whose favourite gen is gen 3!
the older games all tend to have very limited pokemon options, especially since many pokemon have horrible level up movesets, making them really frustrating to use, especially if you're a newer player who doesn't know what they're doing, while in new games, anyone can find a diverse team of six just based on what they like, and still beat the game without too much trouble. and you can even replay the game with an entirely different team of six, and then another entirely different team of six! in the earlier gens you often have to wait for really late encounters or have a lot of overlap if you replay the story, because the early routes don't have that many pokemon, especially not that many good pokemon
also, some frustrations with the earlier games - HMs!!! single use TMs. lots of boring grinding. no running in gens 1&2. gen 4 ran at a snail's pace. having to grind money for game corner TMs. gens 1-3 lacking various core mechanics. caves that suck to navigate without flash. the fog mechanic in gen 4. having to talk to specific npcs to progress. no ingame explanations of game mechanics like EVs and IVs. breeding competitive pokemon used to be sooooooooo tedious.
I do also think a lot of the 'modern pokemon is so much easier' narrative is just you're not underlevelled as much if you don't grind, and also you know what you're doing now. gen 7 is honestly probably the most difficult set of games they ever made in terms of boss battles. there's a reason frlg are recommended first nuzlocke games, and it's because they're so easy to beat. I still struggled with them when I was 8 because I definitely didn't know physical and special moves were a thing until gen 4, and kids these days are struggling with scarlet and violet because they keep running into boss battles they're way underlevelled for on accident, and none of that makes a game difficult or easy, it just means kids are kids.
a lot of people probably play the old gens on emulator which definitely helps ease out some of the flaws - speed up and easily added rare candies alone do a lot to make the experience a lot better, especially for challenge runs.
I do think it's a shame they retired the only truly difficult thing they ever had, the battle frontier, and confined them to old games. like sure they're fun if you make yourself a team of good pokemon to beat them with and hack those in, but actually breeding and levelling a set of competitive pokemon for multiple facilities in gens 3 and 4? nope. no thanks. not my idea of fun. and in gen 3 you don't even have the physical and special split yet! truly I do understand the frustration of people that they haven't returned, because in a modern game even regular old me might attempt the challenge seriously, just because it's not that hard to get started with a team of competitively viable pokemon in a new game.
old gens feel way more like small bite sized RPG's with things like 1 use TM's and HM'S (those games biggest issue is that.), not big games that you play after you beat them (excluding Gen 5 and HGSS.)
I think some of the biggest factor for modern pokemon games feeling lesser is that they handhold you a lot, the pokemon teams for trainers feels very lacking with moveset and amount of pokemon they use, and also Just going to 3d really making it difficult for gamefreak to adjust to with their production value. I do think that gen 7 largely avoided a lot of that issue minus the tutorials. USUM especially made every single trainer way tougher. Visually, the games looks great for the 3ds and actually pushed the system to its limits. Gen 7 is still my favorite of the 3d gens with really the tutorial island being its biggest downside. It would have been great if Pokemon Stars did exist and it was that Switch port instead of moving to gen 8 so soon.
If you looked at sun/moon as if it was Orange Islands(I know it’s not) it wasn’t that bad if it was just a 1 off thing.
Gen 9 burned me out bad, I went back to the original gens with the help of ROMs. The original first 3 gens are truly remarkable
I have to say I love the exp. share, I'm not the biggest fan of grinding sooo, that was grat
I love the older games, but I’m also 34 and don’t have a ton of interest in picnics and terrestrializing. The open world mechanics are SUPER fun in the new games though
I wish there was a 2D setting like in Dragon Quest IX… I think the community deserves it
Dragon Quest 11 didn’t have it. The 2D mode came from the Japanese only 3DS version of DQ11. That mode was added into DQ11s as it came from that 3DS version
@@crestofhonor2349 They're talking about Dragon Quest 9. 11 is XI; 9 is IX
@@justjoannak I mixed up the positions. Also Dragon Quest 9 wasn't even 2D, it was 3D
gamefreak still hasnt made anything better than the emerald battle frontier. that's the only time i've EVER felt accomplished in a pokemon game.
Part of it is just the fact that there's no real challenge anymore, and therefore the payoff and reward is much less.
I also think that the games back then maximize their potential for the console that they were developed for, whereas the games today push the boundaries a little too far and you end up with a Less than stellar end result that isn't as smooth.
I feel that generation four had the best balance of everything, and it's just hard to get excited for a game now that feels half finished, that's missing a lot of features that previously were enjoyed, and a game that just feels way too water down.