Pokemon being so underbaked must be why the community is so damn good at making their own games like Pokemon Tabletop and the plethora of fangames. Pokemon fans do what Pokemon won't.
The reason why those fan games exist is because fans have grown up and want something a bit more complicated out of their favorite franchise that GameFreak, TPCI and Nintendo (to some extent) don't wanna do. They make games primarily for the younger audience to enjoy, not adults. It's still no excuse to ignore us, but that's what it is. It's why Challenge Mode never made it back and why EXP All is permanently on. That's just one of things I think is why, feel free to tell me I'm wrong (because it's the internet, I'm always wrong on here) or add on to it.
@@MLPIcebergI think you're on the money as to "why" easy-game mechanics exist. However, I think the answer as to why harder/more complex mechanics "don't" exist is a bit harder to answer. Hypothetically, creating an on-off toggle for the exp share, or even doing something as simple as keeping Set mode, should be easy enough to code. It's the fact they removed these elements that leads these decisions towards being design choices rather than limitations. At best, this decision reflects confidence in the dev's designs to the deafening of fan outcry. At worst, this is blatant designer stubbornness; the mentality that "the ideal way to play pokemon" is "this way", and any other way risks alienating those who don't realize they can alter the exp share, or turn off set mode, etc.. Even for non-challenging mechanics, like switching the music and sound on/off, that took them EIGHT games to finally add, as a SECRET mechanic; that more than anything implies their desire for the player to experience Pokemon in a very specific, dev-approved way. They intend to make the gameplay very streamlined to a singular form of battle (singles, very few double battles, all with switch enabled, items allowed, and teams of 6 vs teams of 3 or less until late late late game.), and for that to continue until the heat death of the universe occurs. It bottlenecks the game design, which can work for a first time playthrough, but kills replayability, and neuters any hope of challenge once you've acclimated yourself to how the game functions to even the slightest degree. That's my issue; if they wanna design the games for kid's lovely and good; pokemon is a kid's game first and foremost, and making it blisteringly hard is what romhacks can/should do (if designed as such). However, I think they could certainly take a step back and allow more freedom in "how" the game is played, even if they specifically design it to be played one way.
@@gregorycarter1940 There were plenty of games created like this. Tons of simulations and learning games every system. The Nintendo DS had a ton of them.
On having Pokémon interact with each other, I was stoked to see Zangoose and Seviper together in the terrarium because I thought they were going to actually attack each other. Nah. They just nonchalantly walk around their sworn enemies.
@@rileyackison4495 In Gen 6 and 7, Zangoose and Seviper could spawn together in Horde Encounters and SOS calls, and they have a high chance to attack each other, which makes it very tricky to shiny hunt Seviper in Gen 6 with that method because unless you stop the Zangoose, they'll kill the Seviper x,d
I remember in the sun/moon games that there was a cave where you could encounter both sableye and carbinks. Sometimes in double battles the sableye will attack its carbink partners since they're known to eat gems. I wish future games had more interactions like this.
Nah, that was annoying af. When you're trying to hunt certain pokemon and you have to knock out a different just to get the one you want, it sucked. The same thing happened with Zangoose and Serviper in X and Y. It would literally be a 4 v 1 because the pokemon wouldn't target the player until their enemy was dead
@@AaelmfaoBDplays nature is annoying , seems to fit. But sure, you can probably do some sort of link encounter system now that pokemon are all in the overworld. So you can control if a pokemon is in a single or double battle. Or just have it be a toggle or passive ability. Plenty of ways to add options. 😊
I’m personally convinced HG/SS and Black & White had by far the most to do. Trying my best to put nostalgia aside, HG/SS had the most to do in SP, and Black & White had like a whole dream realm and mini game system you could see and interact with friends live in game. Hands down best games IMO
I think platinum and ORAS (XY to a lesser extent) also have a very good amount of content, but even since gen 7 the games have been completely empty with nothing to do outside of the main quest
DPP paved the way for those games. Let’s respect those first. Personally I didn’t like BW, but I still acknowledge the effort and love that was put in it
@@SwaxMain4u The changes are so small that in the end it comes down to 3D chibi style vs 2D pixel art style. I'm a fan of pixel art so for me the original games are better. If compare the remakes to Platinum then BDSP have actually less content. I know these aren't remakes for Platinum but they coud've gone for a Platinum remake instead of Diamond and Pearl.
The reason you’re noticing so many big differences between PLA and S/V is because both games were being developed around the same time S/V started dev before legends finished and that’s something GF has been doing for a long time now
That and PLA is a carbdon copy of the story of pkmn park 2 and done the desgn so much worse. S/V with attacking pkmn just doesnt even get close to what pokemon colosseum or the ranger series touched upon.
Hit the nail on the head with every issue I've had with Pokemon lately! I'm so sick of the open world stuff with very little variation other than "this is the snow area" or "this is the beach area" with no explorable houses or anything. I just miss the unique explorable areas that the older games had. I was there when RBY came out, and while it wasn't perfect, I loved the little things like finding out on my own where each Legendary bird was. I played GSC to the bone as a kid because there was so much to do, and it's one of my favorite games to this day. Then RSE came out and it was just as fun and explorable! Same with DPPt and BW/2. 100+ hours clocked on 'em. The pixel games had so much personality despite their limitations. I just wanna be able to find little secrets, and not play open world Skyrim/BOTW but with Pokemon in it unless each area felt unique. SV was such a downer when I found out you couldn't even go into regular buildings! I was trying so hard to be optimistic when playing SwSh but it again, the areas felt bland and samey. The caves were boring, having players in the overworld/open areas made things feel less personal too. Not to mention being spoiled on what clothes and stuff you could get. There were no more fun little surprises. I remember liking Legends Arceus but when I found out Jubilife City (?) was the only city you could explore, while all NPCs just served as shops or QoL systems or quest givers, with very little flavor text or lore, I was bummed out again. I miss being able to play little mini-games, or find funny text in random houses. There's none of that anymore. SV doesn't even let you into places unless it's a gym or something. I mean, the Pokemon Centers are now outdoor QoL systems. The newer games just feel like really bland sandboxes. Because of this, I've basically lost all interest in Pokemon over the years. I still like the older games and I love picking them up and playing them every now and then, but it's made me not want to buy any more games. At least we'll always have the older games, the fan games, and the memories. Overall, great video! Thank you so much for making this :)
Apart from it's really dodgy programming, Red & Blue were near-perfect. It certainly had the best game play... it was an actual dungeon-crawler JRPG and you can feel that philosophy surging through its veins
I just want Mega Evolution back, man. I think everyone agrees it was the coolest gimmick ever. There's not even really an excuse to not have multiple gimmicks per game (other than time constraints, and I don't mind waiting). :(
Paldea just doesn’t seem like an actual country that you could live in. Mesagoza (If I’m spelling that right) is the only location in the entire region where it feels like people actually live there. And even then there’s not really that many houses so I’m just left wondering where the heck did the Paldean people live? Because it seems that there’s too many NPCs scattered across the region and not enough houses for them to live in.
It's more like the illusion of interiors being inaccessible and the game being a 3D environment that's causing this impression. There has never been many more buildings (and floors) in a Pokemon game than SV, but the cities and towns just feel empty because the players can't interact with them. Also, the NPCs do not discuss interesting things with you most of the time. It feels like no one in Paldea is actually living in its borders. They behave more like tourists who keeps talking about how delicious their food is, and other unsubstantial stuff.
And? most of the towns and cities in pokemon games have less than 10 buildings. The only exceptions to this are the black and white cities and lumiose city.
@@thelastpringleinthecan8040 Well yes that is true but the difference is that Scarlet And Violet is open world and those other games aren’t so there could be hidden offscreen houses that we don’t see and that’s where the people live.
@@BuizelCream Maybe you’re right. Heck even the player character (In their default appearance) looks like a tourist and they live there so maybe almost no one we see in Paldea actually lives there and Paldea is just a really popular tourist destination. That would also explain how weird the dialogue is from the NPCs as their dialogue implies that they’re doing a lot of things that they’re doing for the first time which would make sense if they were tourists.
@@BuizelCreamngl i wish we just had the one city in the middle, fully fleshed out, and the gyms all took place in that stadium but you did the gym challenges in other locations cuz you had to retrieve the gym leader prior to fighting them. like i dont need all these extra towns if they arent well fleshed out, you can do one single, well functioning city and just have a shared stadium that changes decor depending on the gym active
I totally agree. Pokemon felt like a mystical adventure where you are the hero. SwSh and SV felt like a slice of life adventure, it felt like the danger of an actual evil team was non existent. I really hope Gamefreak learns from this and lets the team who worked on Legends Arceus do more!
There hasn't been an evil team since gen 6. Gen 7 is random wannabe gangster and aether foundation who might be evilish. Gen 8 team yell isn't and evil team just rowdy fan's so unless you classify the league official that work for chairman rose as the evil team no evil team there either. Gen 9 doesn't even have an evil team, unless you trying to imply that a group of bullied kids banding together to stop bullying is evil. Gen 6 obviously has an evil team since they are literally attempting to wipeout all life on the planet. Legends has a minor evil group, some misunderstandings, and then a single evil character.
I feel like those heroric quests just interrupt the pace of the game - it was annoying having to do the Team Aqua stuff when I just wanted to get on with the last badge. PLA is different because quelling the Nobles was the single main goal of the game.
I don't think having a very evil antagonist team is necessary, and I'm glad they're subverting expectations instead of trying to create an evil team with an evil leader each time out. That said, if they're going to go that route, we don't need Team _Anything_ anymore. We nixed Gym Leaders once (Alola). We nixed an Elite Four once (Galar). We even nixed beating the main champion being the credits end of the game (Paldea). PLA did a good job of just...not doing anything. Just isekai'd us to the past with Volo and a train conductor and said "Oh, yeah, Pokémon are not your friends here."
@@Black2overlord The bad person attempting to use legendary for evil is the only part thats actually stuck around. Lusimine gets possed by nilehego, rose attempts to us eternatus for somethings. The paradise protocol attempts to kill you using gen 9 box legendary, volo also attempts to kill you using giratina.
@luissuazo3684 The pokedex entries state that it flies at supersonic speeds and faster than a jet. It may not learn the move fly because maybe it can't fly with a trainer on it, but you could not get to those speeds without any propulsion.
That was one of the cooler moments because I didn't expect to find anything when I first climbed the crater rim. Then a magnezone kept hovering just high enough that I couldn't interact with it, and I went back to being annoyed.
Honestly agree I think Pokémon should do away with being open world and work on creating smaller, more condensed, detailed and interesting environments that are broken up by the cities. Bring the routes back ❤
I am so tored of every good franchise I love getting the open world treatment. I just want a fun and cohesive play, I don't want to wander aimlessly through empty areas for hours on end or completing a checklist on a map. The exceptions would be Zelda and Elden ring tho, those are great.
I just want sequel games. I wanna see Kanto in the modern day with a COMPLETELY different story and protagonist. Imagine what kind of experiences we could have if we actually got NEW games in Johto or Unova instead of just remaking the same games over and over.
Just give up. Game-Freak doesnt care. If the company did. Why would the company rehash pokemon park 2 story and ideas into a poorly thought out switch game. Or rather than porting good games like pkmn ranger which would work crazy good on the switch as a touch game. The company would rather you pirate pokemon colosseum rather than port the series which has so much potential. But, the main creator would rather die before those games get ported :/ Im not joking about that you can look up the interview. Johto and unova would be ruined . Just mod the games and use emulators to enhance the games with fan servers.
World game would be great! We already can have 3 entire maps. I think it’s possible to add around 9. Heck some are so small you can combine them with other regions like they did with kanto and johto
TPC desperately needs to outsource Pokémon to a developer that is actually competent. Imagine a Pokémon game developed by Monolith Soft and the Zelda team. I don’t even mind having Game Freak as consultants, maybe involved in character design, story and competitive scene. But please Nintendo/TPC, let someone that actually understands modern 3D game development make the actual game.
Legends was the best breath of fresh air for the series since Black 2/White 2. It recreated that wonder of entering a world with real danger and beauty. The alpha Pokémon were big and menacing, and wild Pokémon actually felt like wild mystical creatures. I seriously miss the shiny sounds and sparkles and the fact that you can throw balls to catch overworld Pokémon without having to fight or enter random encounters. It was the closest experience to what a real adventure in their world might feel like. Legends didn't sell too well though, and I'm really anxious about another Legends game. I would love another, but I know it might not happen and that really sucks.
People only use the "you just hate the new games because you got older" argument when it comes to Pokemon. No other game franchise uses that excuse to defend newer games. The Mortal Kombat game I have the most nostalgia for is MK3 from 1997. Do I think it's a better game than the newer games? Absolutely not. Do I think Super Mario World is better than the modern games? Absolutely, I prefered the art styles and 2D experience more than any of the modern games. There are legitimate reasons, but only in Pokémon do we put our fingers in our ears and chalk every criticism up as nostalgia bias. This will not be good for the franchise heading into the future.
I agree with your sentiment, but I would like to point out that that argument does show up in the Zelda fandom as well, except it gets glossed over because those games are allowed to cook in the oven.
It's because there's no other big franchise like this that declined this hard, it causes insane amounts of copium not seen in any other fanbase. You might think something like Sonic is close, but no, not even remotely close, most Sonic fans agree the new games are terrible, they make fun of them together. Pokemon fans are a special kind of crazy.
The older games were still passion products. Those days are long gone at this point, although there are still elements of passion... the whole thing isn't pushed by it anymore.
I want a game with actual battles 😢 it was fun but got boring real quick catching the same thing over and over again... Gen 5 was my favorite and I wish Pokemon would show that much love again for the world and characters.
Legends is just a worse version of PMD1 lmao, both games have you get isekai’d into a new world. At least PMD1 wasn’t a overhyped Pokémon catching tech demo that’s devoid of post game and has a horrible plot.
@@ChadVigilanteAgreed, I just end up rolling my eyes whenever someone keeps bootlicking PLA, like my brother in christ Legends was a 4/10 at best, Pokémon fans only like it because they never played other games in their life.
That won't happen, since the latest generation was the most selling one out of all. And it's packed with problems, in my opinion not worth the price. It's still bought since it's Pokemon. People need to stop buying lazy developed games that don't even offer what Gamefreak advertises, since you can't obtain every pokemon ("gotta catch them all") and the try and sell "dlcs" that don't even add that much content, rather they just bring back old stuff. I saw video once where it was shown that the developers are pretty tired of the short development time and the pressure, maybe if they quit Gamefreak will start to improve
This is something I've noticed too. I'd say it started in Alola but locations and parts of the region that SHOULD be memorable just aren't anymore. I can rattle locations and lore off for Gens I-VI but around VII everything started feeling half done and Gen VIII cemented it. Legends was the first time I felt connected again
I think a lot of the step backs from Legends Arceus make more sense when you realize these games were developed at about the same time instead of one after another.
I really wish they'd bring factions or challenge quests into the game... Like imagine if those region victory guys at the pokestops would pull you aside and ask if you feel lucky enough to blitz 10 trainers in 2 minutes and it just resets everyone for 2 mins, or we get a pokemon "catching contest" that makes marks easier to find within it. Also, groups like Team rocket who steal pokemon where we get missions to stop or retrieve pokemon.
@@zikeibradley3472 I actually was talking about generation 9... By "factions" I meant villains who are not on the same team but have different types of goals, while we also have opposing "good guy factions"
@@sleepi866 not interested, and honestly those teams sounded almost worse than any team in the games... I just don't like all the team's in gen 9 being completely "good" or understandable... You could have Team Rocket roll up on Paldea and nothing in the game makes it seem like they would be stopped.
I honestly hope they don’t touch anything Gen 5 at all yet. For me, Gamefreak hasn’t proven that they can truly deliver on a potential remake/reimagining of what I consider to be the best Pokemon has ever been.
One thing i say is black and white started the event pokemon are only available online and not actual events where you fight them and they all having a story
Pokemon and Sonic are both in the same camp for me where theres so much fun and potential in the games yet they feel anywhere from 5 to 10 years behind other video games at times
I feel like a big issue is how much you can move and see at a time, in 2d games everything felt like a detail but in these games everything feels a lot less important so it feels bland. I feel like caves feeling straightforward is because of how limited their ability is to limit your movement since you have omnidirectional movement at all times. Its a lot harder for them to make puzzles, especially without the player being able to see them first. I feel like puzzles just arent cool when you can see a full zone of just puzzles. Its just a lot harder for them to make things seem cool when you can always see so much
This is why I’ll always say that the mainline pokemon games were never meant to move into an open world direction. Open world popularity has been the death of an aesthetic in many series
The pokemon games the correct minimap's to have actual limited traversal caves in 3d. I hated the cave thing we had to get through in the calyrex quest line in sword and sheild. Theres no defining features and unlike in the 2d games you dont actually move between the floors so you just have to walk around aimlessly trying to figure out how to get out of the cave.
Literally any other game franchise doesn't have a problem achieving that, so I'm not sure what you're even talking about. Being able to see a lot is an actual strength, that's what made game worlds, from the Elder Scrolls, Zelda, Witcher, Mario Odissey, etc. so exciting to explore. Same goes for puzzles and challenges, 3D allows for a much greater variety of puzzles and challenges, it even allows for depth and perspective puzzles/tricks to be used, something that is impossible in 2D. Seriously, what are you talking about?
@@SchrollShepard Simply an opinion. In Zelda it feels more like a really good crossover, and less like what made Zelda, Zelda. And 3D Mario was always able to remain interesting because it is a platformer. Pokemon is the furthest possible thing from platforming. The issue with open world is when it takes away from the defining elements that defined a franchise. Open world doesn’t subtract value from Elder Scrolls or Witcher the way it does for Pokemon or Zelda. In a similar way, Animal Crossing feels less like animal crossing now that terraforming was added, as it takes away from the key element of random seeding that defined the series.
The main issue is that gamefreak refuses to expand because 'they like to keep the team small' and absolutely making fools of themselves (go check employee count vs different studios) and all while this is happening the talent that crafted for example emerald is retiring and the company is letting fresh gamedesigners do what they wanna try, swsh's open area was their little experiment; the games won't ever see new heights with this studio all I'm saying
True, gamefreak is a failure now. Pokemon company either gotta make them hire more ppl, make longer deadlines or find a new studio to pass that gauntlet to.
The thing that bothers me most about Sca/Vio is 100% the fact that you cannot just bike on your dragon to your heart's content. You will inevitably run into a Pokemon that just spawned and start a battle. It makes it seem like your dragon has 0 stopping power. We should be able to just keep on going and only get into a battle when throwing a ball. This would also stop the dumb teleporting issue. I mean, I love using it to reach places I shouldn't, but seriously. I have legitimately been teleported in such a way that as soon as I run from a battle I can't be bothered to fight, I realize my avatar was dropped right on top of another Pokemon, thus starting another battle. Sometimes this actually puts you in a loop if Pokemon are perfectly spaced and you can't move.
I just hope that pokemon takes everything that worked with PLA and SV and just do more of it with the next game. One thing that I want to see, personally, would be for pokemon to acknowledge that a very large portion of their playerbase are adults and allow us to play as a character that is not a 10 year old child. Also, hitting me in the nostalgia with all of the maplestory bgms.
On the topic of "Pokemon games need more time, but the rest of the franchise is forcing it into a release cycle", I think a good solution already existed in the past, being: Allow the other aspects of the franchise to tease and reveal new additions before the games come out. They used to do so well at promoting upcoming generations, I really don't know why they stopped.
But... they _have_ a lot of time and money. _Especially_ money. It's The frickin Pokemon Company we're talking about here, they make Capcom look like _paupers!_
@@lenarianmelon4634 The keyword there being "want." It's not that they don't _have_ time, it's that they seriously need to improve at _allotting_ it XP
Gane freak has all the time and money it needs to make a proper game, but why should they? Why should they put extra effort, try something new for a change, when they can simply press a 'make a pokemon game button' and churn out the same repetitive garbage that sells millions of copies the first day. People buy shit, company keeps serving them more shit. 😢 I don't think the pokemon situation will ever improve. Digimon or Yokai seem to do better...
The first few minutes of this vid summed up my thoughts perfectly. I've said to my friends, Legends brought back that same excitement to explore that came with hiding under my blanket with a cheap flashlight and my gameboy had. It was, in fact, what we all imagined. And then not only did they take that away from us in the main line, but it was the buggy shrinkwrap. Arceus had a few bugs but not anything awful, a few giggles. But somehow it even seems more visually finished than Scarlet. Sure, Scarlet has more technical big cities but we can't actually interact with it, it's basically a Big Stupid Object on a map we go to for three plot checkpoints and move on. If you look at Scarlet's "Great Wonders" of nature and the like they're embarrassing compared to even Arceus casual environment. So the "WHAT'S GOING ON???" I mean HAVE YOU WATCHED HISUIAN SNOW ON THE POKEMON CHANNEL? WHERE DID THIS STUDIO GHIBLI ASS THING COME FROM???? I don't know. Sure, Arceus only has one city but you build that city and watch it grow to understand how it weaves into the original games in locations and events, and you kind of put your touch on it with adding pokemon you catch and choose, and every house is openable even if a few of them never become relevant, most have at least one reason to visit once. I don't know. Legends had heart, I still see it. I can see good ideas under Scarlet. There's. A good game in there somewhere. Under it. Like there's Fun in there. But I dunno. I think Scarlet truly murdered my interest in main game titles at this point. I need more things like Legends or it's bust for me. Like it's christmas 2023 and my friends just bought me a new arceus cartridge since I lost my old one in my move and I rescued my game file and I'm still playing that while Scarlet rots on the shelf. My hope is for the series to dovetail the legends elements into main while going into the 3D. If they insist on open worldy, continue on the multiplayer. If gen 10 main ended up some giant World Map multiplayer of old regions and gimmicks but in Legends gameplay style, that's probably the only thing I could see saving the main series for me in its current direction unless there's an ENORMOUS overhaul.
@@ExperimenturalVideos Straight up took words from my mouth. Legends arceus gets a lot of hate for the visuals, which i dont understand myself. The visuals may not be realistic and look more like a brush painting and such, but for me it looks perfect and finished because it perfectly fits the game's style and the visuals are consistent in every aspect of the game. Unlike scarlet/violet which have some great additions like textures, idle animations and such, but sucks ass not only cause of performance issues, but because its all inconsistent as hell. The area tries to be somewhat realistic but its pixelated as fuck, the shadows make completely no sense (the cloud shadows that for some reason appear when sun is shining directly onto the area) and the quality drastically drops just meters away from the view, same for fps. And these are just some of the many things i could list. Oh yea, and most obvious thing legends arceus has that scarlet/violet doesnt. A heart and soul put into it. All that talk about SV "being first open-world game" yet it feels dead compared to legends arceus. That game may not have many areas, but every single location feels alive, more interactive, and not to mention so many side quests that put all these locations into use. Every house can be entered and theres always SOMETHING to explore. Meanwhile SV is literally just textures pasted on 3d models of a city, equivalent to cardboard walls ya use in studio to simulate a "building". And the npcs literally just look dead. Most of them cant even be talked to, while in legends arceus you can literally SEND OUT A POKEMON TO TALK WITH IT! Oh ye, pokemon textures are good and all, but WHY DO ALL THE POKEMON LOOK WAY SMALLER THAN THEY SHOULD? Hell, even characters. In legends arceus, despite "visible size diversity" not being a thing yet, models looked big, you could admire pokemon in all their glory. Also the gameplay itself. Sometimes, from time to time i pick up legends arceus after playing violet so much and it just hits me like breath of fresh air. The gameplay is so smooth in comparison and the gameplay is way more dynamic. Their excuse for making signature moves look trash in SV is to make it work in freecam open-world setting and making it fast paced, so why the hell did legends arceus pull it off while still keeping it fast-paced? Lets compare Roar of Time for example. In legends arceus, origin dialga gets a whole halo around it when its about to fire a majestic beam that fits the name. In SV meanwhile its just glorified beam attack. Like wow... blue beam... awesome. And why the hell did pokemon stop making contact on physical moves? Theres just so many things id wanna say but this comment already long enough. In conclusion, Legends arceus was a huge step forward for pokemon franchise, just for SV to do a backflip jump backwards and roll down the staircase. The story and concept is the only thing saving it from being absolute trash embodied.
I was just thinking about this the other day! I was wondering why the Pokemon worlds feel so empty despite 'open world gameplay' being something fans have requested. I think you hit the nail on the head when you mentioned how the different cities flow into each other from the wild areas. That was something I believe was lost when the games transitioned into open world. The reason we remembered certain games so fondly was because certain events triggered when we entered into those towns and NPCS would give us hints on where to go next. Seeing some locations in Scarlet & Violet, I thought - wouldn't that be cool if there was magician or juggler character you could battle or play a mini game with in that amphitheater? What if the circus came to town but you could battle the different performers or do Pokemon Contests via Synchro Machine (or a similar feature)? What if the evil team highjacked the circus? I got off track there, but you're right! There's so much potential to do more or at least something cohesive
On the topic of SV backtracking on things that were in LA, it's important to remember these games are made by different teams at overlapping times. If the improvements are to come back, they're far more likely to appear in the next game or the one after. (But if they don't show up 3 games down the line, then they clearly have no intention or care to do such a thing.) (EDIT: This may come off as "too forgiving" but it doesn't mean I'm not disappointed as well. I want to mass-release pokemon so bad in Scarlet 😭)
Pretty interesting if you do a deep dive to what the work culture is like at Game Freak, the Pokemon Company, and Creatures Inc. Saw this video of just that and it was employees complaining on glassdoor about poor management and poor working conditions. Bet there are other creature collector games out there made by indie devs that made them in response to Game Freak's half baked games...
You know its bad when the fans start making better content than the official biggest media franchise in the world, while having absolutely no budget and are only fueled by their free time and love for pokemon
This is a such a well thought out video and I agree with 100% of it. I put down Violet for a long time and only recently picked it up again to finish it, but the glaring issues sap so much enjoyment out of it for me. Meanwhile, this year, I’ve gone and revisited older generations. My biggest takeaway is the inconsistency of quality features across the whole series. They do something that works, introduce a cool feature, and then throw it all out in the next game, and that just doesn’t make any sense to me… I want to like modern Pokémon so badly, but they’re making it very difficult!
100% agree on them needing more towers .caves, general dungeons. the lack of them in sword/shield and scarlet/violet was very disheartening, Or atleast add some more puzzle elements to the places we did have.
I think the biggest issue with modern pokemon world design is that Pokemon has been going in a more "realistic" style ever since Sword and Shield, though at least in that one it was only somewhat present and no fully present like in Scarlet/Violet. Pokemon was always an anime game. But so many people want "realism" in their Pokemon games. So now I'm sure GameFreak is just like "Ok, we'll make the pokemon higher quality on a system that can't handle it with a more realistic look and feel. When we populate this terrain though we have to keep it looking like a real world and not like some fantasy world. Keep it plain and simple, otherwise it'll throw off immersion." I grew up with Generation 1 and 3. Sapphire is my favorite game of all time. But I do think Gen 5 was absolutely peak Pokemon in terms of story, world building, making the pokemon feel alive, and even designs. They went all out on that game. It felt like an adventure and like I was transported to a wonderful new world. Scarlet/Violet on the other hand, and even Sworld/Shield to a degree, don't make me feel like that at all. Everything is so safe. Pokemon feel lifeless with the 3D models, the characters honestly have a more uncanny valley feel to them than I'd like to admit, and as you said before there's just no interesting locations that really stand out in S/V or Legends.
legends arceus could have let us photograph pokemon like pokemon snap in order to get pokedex data. the gameplay would have been insane! i think we need something like that in the main series
Regarding the uniqueness of areas, even gen 6 did this decently well, and gen 7 had its moments. So it wasn't just "Pokemon was good until it went 3D", there was a gradual shift away from having unique locations all with their own flair to "just slap some gray textures on it and call it a cave". Plus, Gen 3 had a pair of 3D games with some VERY memorable locations. Phenac City being an artificial oasis in the middle of the desert, Pyrite Town being this run-down, rough-and-tumble "has been" city where you'd expect to run into shady company, Gateon Port being a more industrialized port city rather than the cruise ports we normally see, Dr. Kaminko's Lab being this textbook mad scientist mansion, etc. It's a shame those games were so short, Orre would be one of the best regions in Pokemon if it was expanded on.
To be fair, Scarlet and Violet didn't really go back on the improvements that Legends had. It's mostly that both games were developped concurrently, both improved on the previous game on their own independent way. If Game Freak slowed down their releases they'd actually have the time to add the improvements of side-games to their main games.
And Digimon managed to make good 2D games and good 3D games without investing in either completely. They chose whichever one was right for the console.
As someone who has playes these games i know exactly what it is you want. You want mandatory events in the cities that force you to interact with their landmarks. You do. You might say you don't, but you do. Most of what you list are things that Gen 8 and 9 do have. Landmarks, locations, characters, unique settings. But you want more mandatory interaction. You list off several things that gen 9 ALSO has that gen 3 has. But it's also not forced on the player like in gen 2. The sprout tower is mandatory in gen 2 where something like the windmills or the olive fields in gen 9 could be entirely ignored. It sticks with you because you are given no other choice.
Sprout tower was completely optional in the original gen2 games, the only thing it gave was some exp and flash, which is pretty useless in the original releases
The Sprout Tower is not mandatory within Gen 2 Although it is mandatory in Gen 4 The big difference between Sprout Tower and the windmills or the olive fields is that the Sprout Tower has gameplay, story/lore, and characterisation
@@comedian94 well last time i played johto was in hgss so forgive me if i really don't see the difference since you have to go there for flash. It wasn't the only time progress was halted til you finished a location in a town. Beyond that the olive fields and windmills were just examples of regional landmarks that have battles with pokemon and trainers in them. The have lore in the sense that Smoliv lives in the Olive fields. Granted it's not "we built a tower around a bellsprout" but it's still something. The local gym is all about the olive roll too. It's not AS interesting, but it's not nothing. It's just a location. It's memorable in the way that other regions don't have them. Same with other landmarks and story events in other parts of the region. I was having too much of a fun time catching and exploring to really notice if there was less of an in your face loredump about them.
The big issue I have with Gen 9's "landmarks" is that they just fade into the background. The olive fields are a great example of this. The background changes, there's a slight difference in encounters. And? Other than these two things they just feel like the rest of the map. S&V really suffer from how samey everything is. There's so little to do in most towns that they just meld together. Landmarks fail to provide unique things to do as well. What the fuck is there to even do in these games?
If I remember correctly they said that they intend to extend the development cycle in the future after the backlash from scarvi. So hey, maybe things are looking up!
Wont get my hopes up, but since gen 10 is supposed to represent the entire pokemon franchise up until now, being an important milestone they better make it a magnum opus and actually work on quality this time. We are nearing 30 year anniversary, which is probably when gen 10 is gonna be released, making it all the more important. If they mess this up, all hope is lost for any future mainline games.
PLA was a GIANT step forward for the franchise and then they just fucked it all up with S/V. Obviously PLA isn’t a main series game but I’d have loved for the main mechanics to be introduced into the main series (other than agile and strong style moves)
I really appreciate the use of Snowboard Kids music. They really need to bring that game back... Also I recall Game Freak mentioning that they put new game modes or gimmicks in each game by design. That's why we have the beauty contest in one game and then gone in the next.
A pokemon game should be a little like the Xenoblade Chronicles games. Those were some of the best in terms of the world itself bc whatever you saw you could get to and the areas were insanely massive but they would use different ways to make different sections feel a lot smaller or cut the view down. That way going through a route would actually feel like traveling from 1 city to another rather than just going down the block lol. The open world in Pokemon is literally like opening a flat world in Minecraft. It's basically 1 level for the most part and there isn't anything breaking up the world. Like in Xenoblade each area was larger than the new pkmn region and has multiple levels and everything connects back to itself.
Scarlet and Violet didn’t back track from Arceus. The games were being made at the same time. Arceus wasn’t out yet by the time most of these design choices were made for Scarlet and Violet. They literally could not learn from that game’s success. That’s how quickly these games are being pumped out. And because it’s working for them financially, shareholders would think that you’re crazy for wanting to change that. In their eyes, everything is going perfectly.
as an rpg for kids and to sell merchandise, they're scared shitless of making something that could remotely challenge a child. Even though most kids are more tenacious than we give credit.
I think all these problems could be fixed by having each game have its own large team dedicated to it. If there were 300 people working on each game, not only would that give a lot more people to help polish it, but it would also mean that the games would have time to breathe, because they aren’t working on making two or three games per generation, and each team can just focus on their one game
For years I've always known there are people who enjoyed sonic 06 despite its flaws (and how the game can be snapped in half or something). But ever since getting violet end of this year, yes i DIDN'T get it on launch as i kinda learned my lesson from sword, i have a better understanding of why people enjoy sonic 06. Kinda sad how Area Zero is the most interesting area in the game (even with the dlc).
I think the problem with Towns in Cities in the last main 2 games is that. They may all be bigger than cities in the handhelds, but the buildings really decentivze exploration. Like Sword and Shield recycles the same house interior in most cases. And Scarlet and Violet doesn't even let you venture inside certain shops they're just menu screens.
Been playing Pokemon since the beginning, love the world and the concept and the lore and everything, but it's like you said, they drop features too fast or dont fully actualize others and it's depressing. Id say hands down my 2 favorite gens were 5 and 3. 5 was a big change in a darker and more serious direction and the complete forced use of all new Pokemon until postgame, was beautiful and fun imo. The story and characters were interesting, the region felt very alive and all the "fateful encounter" events that were in the game were awesome as well. Hoenn's story and region felt like the Pokemon company was excited with the success of the first 2 gens and finally leapt into the game. The story was great, the legends were great, the different maps and cities and places as well as the ability to fuckin DIVE and explore further, god yes, it was beautiful. ORAS was great as well and a nice way to see the region fleshed out in 3D but the difficulty curve dropped due to exp share and fairy types and megas and all that, also we lost the battle frontier, bigsad. It feels like for the Pokemon company, it's a job, and where occasional love is thrown in, it seems like they lack in passion and dont hire those who are passionate and crazy about the world of Pokemon. They also seem to try to keep regions as disconnected as possible which is sad because of the level of excitement and greatness Kanto-Johto brought so many of us, all those years ago. Paldea is huge, and beyond the 2fps and washed-out textures due to Switch being ancient, it's actually beautiful and has an amazingly huge and diverse map, but lack of major features or points of interest, limit it. Also why wasnt Dive in this region? It would have been beautiful to be able to dive and explore under water in a very watery big 3D environment like this. I dont know, Id happily wait for a game that encompasses all we want and love about Pokemon into one game. Gamefreak should hire more people to breakup the work load and make their golden child. Legends Arceus was great, though incomplete, but great nonetheless. Imagine more games like that, entirely polished, on a bigger scale. It would be beautiful.
I really missed when we could go into every NPC's houses and the shops, the museums, libraries etc. It was so fun exploring them. Sometimes the characters gives you evolutions items or trade pokemons, they told you cute details about their families. It made the wolrd more real and fun. Now there's boring menus for every shops, that's dissapointing 😐The games are still too easy. I never had troubles with any champions in Violet and the first DLC. Not as easy as X and Y but still not challenging. I remember when i had to defeat Red in Soulsilver. It took me, no joke, 9 times to beat him. It was difficult but so satisfying when i win. My efforts were rewarded! Even in White, it took me 8 times to beat N and Guetis. The battles were hard but fun! Can't say the same for Violet.
On the topic of Pokemon interactions, they could have done something similar to Don't Starve, where wild animals actually interact with each other, fight all on their own, have very complex behaviours, the world feels alive. And all that with less than 1% of Pokemon's resources
Yeah I noticed recently that SV has maybe five enterable buildings. The Pokemon League, your school, your house, area zero labs, and Larry's gym. It's sad
Literally every reason listed is one of the contributing factors to why I stopped playing Pokemon, and I was obsessed my entire life. I played nearly every pokemon game worth playing from Pokemon Stadium, Colosseum, Mystery Dungeon, to every main series game at least once if not more than once. I've played rom hacks, fanmade games, nuzlockes, all sorts of things to stay interested. I collected cards, watched the anime, and it felt like every year they'd get lazier and lazier with the content pumped out. Once sun and moon rolled out, I was fully checked out by then, focused more on playing rom hacks in my spare time. I would gladly go back to buying Pokemon games if they were half as good as BW2/HGSS/etc. And NGL I'm tempted to buy Legends Arceus if it's really as good as this video suggests. Until Pokemon fixes these problems though, I'll continue to just play remade versions of the classics and battle on old formats of Pokemon Showdown I guess 💀
I want to see a Pokemon game done by MonolithSoft, I feel after the way they handled Zelda and their own Xenoblade series would be exactly what pokemon needs at this point to feel fresh again. A game like that would also make perfect sense as maybe the opener game for the next console after the switch, so we could hopefully see less performance issues like we have with recent switch games (and especially pokemon)
There was confirmation during an interview that they are NOT restricted by deadline. I was trying to quick-find it for this post, but I believe it was in an interview when they were asking why Pokemon Z didnt happen. It came up in that discussion if I am not mistaken. This is why Zygarde ended up in Sun and Moon rather than getting its own game. They just bumped it to the next installment rather than pushing something out they didnt want or didnt have time for.
Find a Sword and Shield interview where the interviewer asked about yearly releases and if they are required to do it, but Masuda and Ohmori said they don't, but they want to introduce the franchise to as much people as possible (i.e. oversaturation, where you gain a lot even if you lose a lot, IMO).
An issue that ive noticed with my game and when it becomes laggy. ALL WILD pokemon seem to lock onto and not lose interest. I'll have about 5 pokemom at any given time chasing me and not giving up while there is another 20 in the background watching my every step.
we’ve reached a point where it seems like basically everyone has these same opinions on modern pokemon. I think the next pokemon generation is going to be a defining moment for the series where gamefreak/nintendo are able to demonstrate whether they can or even want to respond to such unanimous criticism or not. I know I’m not the only one who’s just one more sloppy mainline game away from leaving this series behind. I don’t want pokemon’s legacy to forever be “wasted potential”
Between Legends Arceus, and Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, you should probably research their release cycles, when they started developing those games, and which teams internally did those games. That information basically shows why certain changes didn't make it into Scarlet and Violet.
I feel like Game Freak have always been so ashamed of their graphics for some reason and that they always feel like they need to improve every time. They want to reach that goal of that dream open world Pokémon adventure but they fail to realise that it doesn’t work with their timeframe and how short time they have to develop an open world game such as this. Due to this they end up creating buggy and arguably bad looking games. It sucks to be honest because this isn’t just some indie developer, this is Pokémon. Nethertheless, I still enjoy scarlet and violet and they are my second favourite generation.
The funny thing is you could argue XY is a time they were "proud" of it as they had a photo mode to show off the locales of Kalos that time and to show off the 3D graphics jump for Pokemon.
Honestly I wish for the actual battle system to get an overhaul since we haven’t had any changes since Gen 6. I’d like to see rotation battles return, but much more improved and strategic.
The problem with SV is the open world. People skip the most memorable parts fo that game because of it. For example, you could go through a ridge then a cave to reach Alfornada (one of my favorite parts of the game) or you could just climb a mountain. You could be going on an epic hike through Glaseado Mountain to the 6th and 8th gyms, or you could just climb it. You could be going through a beautiful field full of olive trees, or you could go the other way towards some ugly canyons. You could have had a balanced challenge against Team Star, but it always gets left out or done early.
Really accurate video on the current situation about the pokemon series. You have proposed consistent solutions and have analyzed the right weak points of the recent games. The only thing is "inaccurate" is the part about "giving GF more time to develop cool games". I think it's true in part. The major problems are lack of skills and the complexity and size of the team. There's a really well made documentary made by Cydonia where he reads reviews of GF made by eployees and they're tragic! (I really suggest you to see it, it's in Italian but there should have been english subtitles). I'm in a hurry so I'm very sorry if i would have done grammar mistakes, but I hope we could talk more about the Pokemon situation. P.S. Subscribed and Liked the video!! ❤👍🏻👍🏻
It makes me so happy when in the video you say you're at nearly 500 subs, and then when I look at the sub count now, less than a week after posting, you're up to 1.5k. I love seeing small creators blow up, and I love getting these videos in my recommended. I can't wait to see where you go from here!
For me I haven’t played any of the switch games but I hated how streamlined the region got starting in gen 5. The original black and white was essentially a straight line with a circle on the end. For me I enjoy Pokémon more when you revisit an area or when you are allowed to get lost a little. None of the locations in gen 5+ really stayed with me cause you go through them and you are done with the only significant location being the main city with all the big shops. I personally think the best example of Pokémon region design is honestly one of the side games. Pokémon ranger shadows of almia had the PERFECT map progression where the story would let you wander ahead to new locations but keep you coming back to old locations giving a certain sense of “home” that makes the entire region incredibly nostalgic for me. And just when the next area starts to get a little too far away the game reassigns you to a new base that’s closer to the action. Another issue I have is when the games say it’s “your adventure” but railroad you through the story through NPC “friends”. Again I’ll say Pokémon ranger did it better. If you are going to railroad me through the story at least let me play as someone who is supposed to be following an NPC character’s direction. Don’t tell me it’s my journey and have me do the exact same thing every other player has to do.
@@patrickcarter2829 the final straw for me (aside from not owning a switch) was sun and moon. That game wouldn’t let you get even a little off track. The next objective was practically always on screen.
When it comes to Pokémon interacting with its environment and other Pokémon, Monster Hunter World is a great example of what is possible. Also it’s all fun and games until a Fearow picks up a Golden Caterpie.
RSE was my first Pokemon game and the only thing missing is a snow route. And maybe sun should have been more common in some beach/sea areas during daytime coz Hoenn got some pretty rainy routes.
It's important to remember something for game design - As time goes on, "Uniqueness" becomes more and more rare, as something has probably already been done before. Making something unique means taking a risk, and taking a risk could have IP breaking consequences. Also, all of us are going to be biased in some fashion. For me, I'm absurdly biased in favor of Platinum being the best game - but overall in terms of what there is to do, story, it's not really THAT special. The Pokemon in the region are cool, Dialga and Giratina are awesome, Cynthia is still a goddess murdering trainers dreams left right and center... but overall, the game didn't have much more than what B/W did, what S/V does... they're just different takes. My favorite Pokemon is still Infernape, being my FIRST Pokemon as a kid when I first got the games... Point is, we will ALWAYS be biased and miss what we had as kids, even if something is either really good or just equal to what we've had in this past. We'll always have a lower opinion of it, especially since we've seen the universe before, its harder to get a "wonder" feeling out of something that follows the same formula as previous games.
Could I ask what BW did more than Platinum, as I genuinely think while BW did brush up some technical issues from Gen 4, Platinum had a lot that's in the game that you can't find in BW (and also SV). P.S. You seemingly forgot to say the Battle Frontier of Platinum, or you just don't do much of Pokemon post-game (IMO the most time you actually play there)?
The thing is Pokemon is supposed to be an infinite series with new gens coming out every 3 to 4 years infinitely. So they can't make the perfect game. Because if they do, we will start expecting that and more. And if they have to come out with a new game in three years and they don't have a new exciting feature to show off, they will not sell too many games. So they keep you hooked by giving you enough but not too much. So that you can keep hoping that in the next game they will fix that one problem that the game has.
The Pokemon in the Indigo Disk do interact logically at times. For example, when Zigzagoon and Seviper are together they fight each other. It's just visually, not a real "Pokemon will faint" battle but seeing that was cool.
Going from Legends: Arceus to Scarlet/Violet was so jarring. Like you had almost everything you needed, why would you go backwards? Edit to say, this is a great video. You pretty much hit the nail on the head on how I feel about the franchise right now.
RDR2 has an interactive environment with a full index of animalia with unique interactions for each species. armadillos will curl up when you come close, squirrels will run across ur path, etc. Rockstar has put more passion into their product in a game where animals aren't even the main focus, accomplishing more than modern Pokemon games when it comes to creature interaction in an open world
Wait what !!! I was listening to your video while washing the dishes and excepted you to say we are heading close to 500K subscribers not 500!! Man that video was amazing great quality big surprises ! Well let me be part of the early 500 🤩 And I agree The Pokémon Company need to get back to its roots while keeping the quality of life features they have given us 👏🏻
I agree completely. I love Pokémon and enjoy the games, but they feel like they could be so much more. I long for a Pokémon game that feels fully realized, but we’ll have to see how things go. I would love to see a game that fully realizes the concept of Pokémon and fully unlocks the potential.
Pokemon being so underbaked must be why the community is so damn good at making their own games like Pokemon Tabletop and the plethora of fangames. Pokemon fans do what Pokemon won't.
The reason why those fan games exist is because fans have grown up and want something a bit more complicated out of their favorite franchise that GameFreak, TPCI and Nintendo (to some extent) don't wanna do. They make games primarily for the younger audience to enjoy, not adults. It's still no excuse to ignore us, but that's what it is. It's why Challenge Mode never made it back and why EXP All is permanently on. That's just one of things I think is why, feel free to tell me I'm wrong (because it's the internet, I'm always wrong on here) or add on to it.
Or because, these people want to start their own passion projects?
@MLPIceberg They made a school simulator who's kid was that for?
@@MLPIcebergI think you're on the money as to "why" easy-game mechanics exist. However, I think the answer as to why harder/more complex mechanics "don't" exist is a bit harder to answer. Hypothetically, creating an on-off toggle for the exp share, or even doing something as simple as keeping Set mode, should be easy enough to code. It's the fact they removed these elements that leads these decisions towards being design choices rather than limitations. At best, this decision reflects confidence in the dev's designs to the deafening of fan outcry. At worst, this is blatant designer stubbornness; the mentality that "the ideal way to play pokemon" is "this way", and any other way risks alienating those who don't realize they can alter the exp share, or turn off set mode, etc.. Even for non-challenging mechanics, like switching the music and sound on/off, that took them EIGHT games to finally add, as a SECRET mechanic; that more than anything implies their desire for the player to experience Pokemon in a very specific, dev-approved way. They intend to make the gameplay very streamlined to a singular form of battle (singles, very few double battles, all with switch enabled, items allowed, and teams of 6 vs teams of 3 or less until late late late game.), and for that to continue until the heat death of the universe occurs. It bottlenecks the game design, which can work for a first time playthrough, but kills replayability, and neuters any hope of challenge once you've acclimated yourself to how the game functions to even the slightest degree. That's my issue; if they wanna design the games for kid's lovely and good; pokemon is a kid's game first and foremost, and making it blisteringly hard is what romhacks can/should do (if designed as such). However, I think they could certainly take a step back and allow more freedom in "how" the game is played, even if they specifically design it to be played one way.
@@gregorycarter1940
There were plenty of games created like this. Tons of simulations and learning games every system. The Nintendo DS had a ton of them.
On having Pokémon interact with each other, I was stoked to see Zangoose and Seviper together in the terrarium because I thought they were going to actually attack each other. Nah. They just nonchalantly walk around their sworn enemies.
Exactly why I ain't buying no DLCs
I’m 98% sure those mons are in the base game and they will attack each other sometimes.
@@rileyackison4495 That's true. I have video evidence of that saved to my Switch.
@@rileyackison4495 In Gen 6 and 7, Zangoose and Seviper could spawn together in Horde Encounters and SOS calls, and they have a high chance to attack each other, which makes it very tricky to shiny hunt Seviper in Gen 6 with that method because unless you stop the Zangoose, they'll kill the Seviper x,d
In the main paldea they do
I remember in the sun/moon games that there was a cave where you could encounter both sableye and carbinks. Sometimes in double battles the sableye will attack its carbink partners since they're known to eat gems. I wish future games had more interactions like this.
Nah, that was annoying af. When you're trying to hunt certain pokemon and you have to knock out a different just to get the one you want, it sucked. The same thing happened with Zangoose and Serviper in X and Y. It would literally be a 4 v 1 because the pokemon wouldn't target the player until their enemy was dead
This was a thing with a lot of different Pokémon on the 3DS games that did that.
There's a similar thing with Mareanie and Corsola - in fact I think that's the only way to catch Mareanie in those games.
@@miimiiandco.8721Literally have to make corsola call for help only for a Mareanie to show up and finish it off in its moment of weakness.
@@AaelmfaoBDplays nature is annoying , seems to fit.
But sure, you can probably do some sort of link encounter system now that pokemon are all in the overworld. So you can control if a pokemon is in a single or double battle. Or just have it be a toggle or passive ability. Plenty of ways to add options. 😊
at this point my expectations are so low that I just want the pokemon to make contact when they perform a... contact based move like in legends...
Why can't do they do that, just move the model forward you capitalists!
I’m personally convinced HG/SS and Black & White had by far the most to do. Trying my best to put nostalgia aside, HG/SS had the most to do in SP, and Black & White had like a whole dream realm and mini game system you could see and interact with friends live in game. Hands down best games IMO
Whats SP?
@@adrianhebrerosSingle player I think
B&W is my fave gen
I think platinum and ORAS (XY to a lesser extent) also have a very good amount of content, but even since gen 7 the games have been completely empty with nothing to do outside of the main quest
DPP paved the way for those games. Let’s respect those first. Personally I didn’t like BW, but I still acknowledge the effort and love that was put in it
I want the pokemon world tournament back soooo bad dude it has to be one of the coolest post game options in the series
Agreed, Stormy!
As long as pokemon masters is a thing,pwt will never return,thats the truth
It will never comeback
and the unova remakes will be the worst thing ever created (just like the sinnoh remakes)
@@unclephillymya they werent even bad, they were just better versions of diamond and pearl
@@SwaxMain4u The changes are so small that in the end it comes down to 3D chibi style vs 2D pixel art style.
I'm a fan of pixel art so for me the original games are better.
If compare the remakes to Platinum then BDSP have actually less content. I know these aren't remakes for Platinum but they coud've gone for a Platinum remake instead of Diamond and Pearl.
The reason you’re noticing so many big differences between PLA and S/V is because both games were being developed around the same time
S/V started dev before legends finished and that’s something GF has been doing for a long time now
That and PLA is a carbdon copy of the story of pkmn park 2 and done the desgn so much worse. S/V with attacking pkmn just doesnt even get close to what pokemon colosseum or the ranger series touched upon.
@@sujimatsubackupaccount194 kind of like how the story arc for area zero was lifted wholesale from sun and moon.
hopefully they take more aspects from Legends Arceus into the next one
Hit the nail on the head with every issue I've had with Pokemon lately! I'm so sick of the open world stuff with very little variation other than "this is the snow area" or "this is the beach area" with no explorable houses or anything. I just miss the unique explorable areas that the older games had. I was there when RBY came out, and while it wasn't perfect, I loved the little things like finding out on my own where each Legendary bird was. I played GSC to the bone as a kid because there was so much to do, and it's one of my favorite games to this day. Then RSE came out and it was just as fun and explorable! Same with DPPt and BW/2. 100+ hours clocked on 'em. The pixel games had so much personality despite their limitations.
I just wanna be able to find little secrets, and not play open world Skyrim/BOTW but with Pokemon in it unless each area felt unique. SV was such a downer when I found out you couldn't even go into regular buildings! I was trying so hard to be optimistic when playing SwSh but it again, the areas felt bland and samey. The caves were boring, having players in the overworld/open areas made things feel less personal too. Not to mention being spoiled on what clothes and stuff you could get. There were no more fun little surprises.
I remember liking Legends Arceus but when I found out Jubilife City (?) was the only city you could explore, while all NPCs just served as shops or QoL systems or quest givers, with very little flavor text or lore, I was bummed out again. I miss being able to play little mini-games, or find funny text in random houses. There's none of that anymore. SV doesn't even let you into places unless it's a gym or something. I mean, the Pokemon Centers are now outdoor QoL systems. The newer games just feel like really bland sandboxes.
Because of this, I've basically lost all interest in Pokemon over the years. I still like the older games and I love picking them up and playing them every now and then, but it's made me not want to buy any more games. At least we'll always have the older games, the fan games, and the memories.
Overall, great video! Thank you so much for making this :)
Exactly my thoughts. That's why I just play the card game now
Apart from it's really dodgy programming, Red & Blue were near-perfect.
It certainly had the best game play... it was an actual dungeon-crawler JRPG and you can feel that philosophy surging through its veins
I just want Mega Evolution back, man. I think everyone agrees it was the coolest gimmick ever. There's not even really an excuse to not have multiple gimmicks per game (other than time constraints, and I don't mind waiting). :(
Paldea just doesn’t seem like an actual country that you could live in. Mesagoza (If I’m spelling that right) is the only location in the entire region where it feels like people actually live there. And even then there’s not really that many houses so I’m just left wondering where the heck did the Paldean people live? Because it seems that there’s too many NPCs scattered across the region and not enough houses for them to live in.
It's more like the illusion of interiors being inaccessible and the game being a 3D environment that's causing this impression. There has never been many more buildings (and floors) in a Pokemon game than SV, but the cities and towns just feel empty because the players can't interact with them. Also, the NPCs do not discuss interesting things with you most of the time. It feels like no one in Paldea is actually living in its borders. They behave more like tourists who keeps talking about how delicious their food is, and other unsubstantial stuff.
And? most of the towns and cities in pokemon games have less than 10 buildings. The only exceptions to this are the black and white cities and lumiose city.
@@thelastpringleinthecan8040 Well yes that is true but the difference is that Scarlet And Violet is open world and those other games aren’t so there could be hidden offscreen houses that we don’t see and that’s where the people live.
@@BuizelCream Maybe you’re right. Heck even the player character (In their default appearance) looks like a tourist and they live there so maybe almost no one we see in Paldea actually lives there and Paldea is just a really popular tourist destination. That would also explain how weird the dialogue is from the NPCs as their dialogue implies that they’re doing a lot of things that they’re doing for the first time which would make sense if they were tourists.
@@BuizelCreamngl i wish we just had the one city in the middle, fully fleshed out, and the gyms all took place in that stadium but you did the gym challenges in other locations cuz you had to retrieve the gym leader prior to fighting them. like i dont need all these extra towns if they arent well fleshed out, you can do one single, well functioning city and just have a shared stadium that changes decor depending on the gym active
I totally agree. Pokemon felt like a mystical adventure where you are the hero. SwSh and SV felt like a slice of life adventure, it felt like the danger of an actual evil team was non existent. I really hope Gamefreak learns from this and lets the team who worked on Legends Arceus do more!
There hasn't been an evil team since gen 6. Gen 7 is random wannabe gangster and aether foundation who might be evilish.
Gen 8 team yell isn't and evil team just rowdy fan's so unless you classify the league official that work for chairman rose as the evil team no evil team there either.
Gen 9 doesn't even have an evil team, unless you trying to imply that a group of bullied kids banding together to stop bullying is evil.
Gen 6 obviously has an evil team since they are literally attempting to wipeout all life on the planet.
Legends has a minor evil group, some misunderstandings, and then a single evil character.
I feel like those heroric quests just interrupt the pace of the game - it was annoying having to do the Team Aqua stuff when I just wanted to get on with the last badge. PLA is different because quelling the Nobles was the single main goal of the game.
I don't think having a very evil antagonist team is necessary, and I'm glad they're subverting expectations instead of trying to create an evil team with an evil leader each time out.
That said, if they're going to go that route, we don't need Team _Anything_ anymore. We nixed Gym Leaders once (Alola). We nixed an Elite Four once (Galar). We even nixed beating the main champion being the credits end of the game (Paldea).
PLA did a good job of just...not doing anything. Just isekai'd us to the past with Volo and a train conductor and said "Oh, yeah, Pokémon are not your friends here."
@@XenithShadowThat’s fine. Because “evil team using legendary for world destination” trope gets boring after awhile. Ngl.
@@Black2overlord The bad person attempting to use legendary for evil is the only part thats actually stuck around.
Lusimine gets possed by nilehego, rose attempts to us eternatus for somethings.
The paradise protocol attempts to kill you using gen 9 box legendary, volo also attempts to kill you using giratina.
Scarlet and Violet did one thing right: It showed me a flying Garchomp which I wanted to see for the longest ever since learning it could fly. 🤣
They did fixed blastoise as well
But seeing garchomp fly is kinda a blessing too
@@luissuazo3684 You're correction is WRONG! Go back and read some Pokedex entries. One you can start with is Sword's entry.
@luissuazo3684 The pokedex entries state that it flies at supersonic speeds and faster than a jet. It may not learn the move fly because maybe it can't fly with a trainer on it, but you could not get to those speeds without any propulsion.
@@justjay4586watch a garchomp fly around with Ash in the Sun and Moon anime. Also, it is the Mach-Pokemon, so it is basically a Jet by DNA.
That was one of the cooler moments because I didn't expect to find anything when I first climbed the crater rim. Then a magnezone kept hovering just high enough that I couldn't interact with it, and I went back to being annoyed.
Honestly agree I think Pokémon should do away with being open world and work on creating smaller, more condensed, detailed and interesting environments that are broken up by the cities. Bring the routes back ❤
I am so tored of every good franchise I love getting the open world treatment. I just want a fun and cohesive play, I don't want to wander aimlessly through empty areas for hours on end or completing a checklist on a map. The exceptions would be Zelda and Elden ring tho, those are great.
Agreed, I just want bigger more complex routes with optional areas.
I just want sequel games. I wanna see Kanto in the modern day with a COMPLETELY different story and protagonist. Imagine what kind of experiences we could have if we actually got NEW games in Johto or Unova instead of just remaking the same games over and over.
So we want more of what Black and White 2 did, but for every region.
I want a world game, or at least 4-5 regions in one,
Just give up. Game-Freak doesnt care. If the company did. Why would the company rehash pokemon park 2 story and ideas into a poorly thought out switch game. Or rather than porting good games like pkmn ranger which would work crazy good on the switch as a touch game. The company would rather you pirate pokemon colosseum rather than port the series which has so much potential. But, the main creator would rather die before those games get ported :/ Im not joking about that you can look up the interview. Johto and unova would be ruined . Just mod the games and use emulators to enhance the games with fan servers.
World game would be great! We already can have 3 entire maps. I think it’s possible to add around 9. Heck some are so small you can combine them with other regions like they did with kanto and johto
That's what made Legends so appealing to me.
Since it's a sequel to diamond and pearl where we see Sinnoh in a different time period
TPC desperately needs to outsource Pokémon to a developer that is actually competent.
Imagine a Pokémon game developed by Monolith Soft and the Zelda team.
I don’t even mind having Game Freak as consultants, maybe involved in character design, story and competitive scene.
But please Nintendo/TPC, let someone that actually understands modern 3D game development make the actual game.
I want to see what they do in one single year
Yes, it's clear that Game Freak don't know how to make an open world game
@@boisbois2947And probably not even ILCA... I have more faith in Genius Sonority. I'd love to see them back.
Legends was the best breath of fresh air for the series since Black 2/White 2. It recreated that wonder of entering a world with real danger and beauty. The alpha Pokémon were big and menacing, and wild Pokémon actually felt like wild mystical creatures. I seriously miss the shiny sounds and sparkles and the fact that you can throw balls to catch overworld Pokémon without having to fight or enter random encounters. It was the closest experience to what a real adventure in their world might feel like. Legends didn't sell too well though, and I'm really anxious about another Legends game. I would love another, but I know it might not happen and that really sucks.
People only use the "you just hate the new games because you got older" argument when it comes to Pokemon. No other game franchise uses that excuse to defend newer games. The Mortal Kombat game I have the most nostalgia for is MK3 from 1997. Do I think it's a better game than the newer games? Absolutely not. Do I think Super Mario World is better than the modern games? Absolutely, I prefered the art styles and 2D experience more than any of the modern games. There are legitimate reasons, but only in Pokémon do we put our fingers in our ears and chalk every criticism up as nostalgia bias. This will not be good for the franchise heading into the future.
I agree with your sentiment, but I would like to point out that that argument does show up in the Zelda fandom as well, except it gets glossed over because those games are allowed to cook in the oven.
Shows up in Sonic fandom too
It's because there's no other big franchise like this that declined this hard, it causes insane amounts of copium not seen in any other fanbase.
You might think something like Sonic is close, but no, not even remotely close, most Sonic fans agree the new games are terrible, they make fun of them together. Pokemon fans are a special kind of crazy.
The older games were still passion products.
Those days are long gone at this point, although there are still elements of passion... the whole thing isn't pushed by it anymore.
because they are not for you and have not been for years
I really want them to keep going with the pokemon legends series
Just go play pokemon park 2. Pokemon arceus is litterally a worse copy of that wii game. From the main start up story and gameplay.
I want a game with actual battles 😢 it was fun but got boring real quick catching the same thing over and over again... Gen 5 was my favorite and I wish Pokemon would show that much love again for the world and characters.
Legends is just a worse version of PMD1 lmao, both games have you get isekai’d into a new world.
At least PMD1 wasn’t a overhyped Pokémon catching tech demo that’s devoid of post game and has a horrible plot.
@@ChadVigilanteAgreed, I just end up rolling my eyes whenever someone keeps bootlicking PLA, like my brother in christ Legends was a 4/10 at best, Pokémon fans only like it because they never played other games in their life.
@piranhalettuce I guarantee ive played more games than you, and I loved legends arceus
This was PERFECT! Explained my thoughts exactly and soo well!
yo its the radical red guy
I hope they start taking more development time. The Pokémon Company is not short on money.
They can't do that because they're Japanese 🤓
That won't happen, since the latest generation was the most selling one out of all. And it's packed with problems, in my opinion not worth the price. It's still bought since it's Pokemon. People need to stop buying lazy developed games that don't even offer what Gamefreak advertises, since you can't obtain every pokemon ("gotta catch them all") and the try and sell "dlcs" that don't even add that much content, rather they just bring back old stuff. I saw video once where it was shown that the developers are pretty tired of the short development time and the pressure, maybe if they quit Gamefreak will start to improve
This is something I've noticed too. I'd say it started in Alola but locations and parts of the region that SHOULD be memorable just aren't anymore. I can rattle locations and lore off for Gens I-VI but around VII everything started feeling half done and Gen VIII cemented it. Legends was the first time I felt connected again
Man the maplestory music throughout the video hit me with the hardest nostalgia rush
I think a lot of the step backs from Legends Arceus make more sense when you realize these games were developed at about the same time instead of one after another.
I really wish they'd bring factions or challenge quests into the game... Like imagine if those region victory guys at the pokestops would pull you aside and ask if you feel lucky enough to blitz 10 trainers in 2 minutes and it just resets everyone for 2 mins, or we get a pokemon "catching contest" that makes marks easier to find within it.
Also, groups like Team rocket who steal pokemon where we get missions to stop or retrieve pokemon.
It took me too long to realize you were talking about pokemon go
@@zikeibradley3472 I actually was talking about generation 9... By "factions" I meant villains who are not on the same team but have different types of goals, while we also have opposing "good guy factions"
sounds like you need to play b2w2
@@sleepi866 not interested, and honestly those teams sounded almost worse than any team in the games... I just don't like all the team's in gen 9 being completely "good" or understandable... You could have Team Rocket roll up on Paldea and nothing in the game makes it seem like they would be stopped.
@@michaellane5381 Bw2 has great factions
Gen 5 is still peak and the fact we’ve gotten so much love for Unova has me so excited. Hopefully we get BW3 and Legends Kyruem or Victini.
I honestly hope they don’t touch anything Gen 5 at all yet. For me, Gamefreak hasn’t proven that they can truly deliver on a potential remake/reimagining of what I consider to be the best Pokemon has ever been.
One thing i say is black and white started the event pokemon are only available online and not actual events where you fight them and they all having a story
@@sephirotten2413 Yeah, that really turned them from a cool extra side quest and bit of lore to a dump straight in the box
i dont remember any of the towns in pokemon scarlet and violet, but can remember every location gens 4-6
Pokemon and Sonic are both in the same camp for me where theres so much fun and potential in the games yet they feel anywhere from 5 to 10 years behind other video games at times
I feel like a big issue is how much you can move and see at a time, in 2d games everything felt like a detail but in these games everything feels a lot less important so it feels bland. I feel like caves feeling straightforward is because of how limited their ability is to limit your movement since you have omnidirectional movement at all times. Its a lot harder for them to make puzzles, especially without the player being able to see them first. I feel like puzzles just arent cool when you can see a full zone of just puzzles. Its just a lot harder for them to make things seem cool when you can always see so much
This is why I’ll always say that the mainline pokemon games were never meant to move into an open world direction. Open world popularity has been the death of an aesthetic in many series
The pokemon games the correct minimap's to have actual limited traversal caves in 3d. I hated the cave thing we had to get through in the calyrex quest line in sword and sheild. Theres no defining features and unlike in the 2d games you dont actually move between the floors so you just have to walk around aimlessly trying to figure out how to get out of the cave.
2d graphics are just cool.
Literally any other game franchise doesn't have a problem achieving that, so I'm not sure what you're even talking about.
Being able to see a lot is an actual strength, that's what made game worlds, from the Elder Scrolls, Zelda, Witcher, Mario Odissey, etc. so exciting to explore. Same goes for puzzles and challenges, 3D allows for a much greater variety of puzzles and challenges, it even allows for depth and perspective puzzles/tricks to be used, something that is impossible in 2D.
Seriously, what are you talking about?
@@SchrollShepard Simply an opinion. In Zelda it feels more like a really good crossover, and less like what made Zelda, Zelda. And 3D Mario was always able to remain interesting because it is a platformer. Pokemon is the furthest possible thing from platforming. The issue with open world is when it takes away from the defining elements that defined a franchise. Open world doesn’t subtract value from Elder Scrolls or Witcher the way it does for Pokemon or Zelda. In a similar way, Animal Crossing feels less like animal crossing now that terraforming was added, as it takes away from the key element of random seeding that defined the series.
Snowboard kids big snowman 🔥🔥🔥
The main issue is that gamefreak refuses to expand because 'they like to keep the team small' and absolutely making fools of themselves (go check employee count vs different studios) and all while this is happening the talent that crafted for example emerald is retiring and the company is letting fresh gamedesigners do what they wanna try, swsh's open area was their little experiment; the games won't ever see new heights with this studio all I'm saying
True, gamefreak is a failure now. Pokemon company either gotta make them hire more ppl, make longer deadlines or find a new studio to pass that gauntlet to.
The thing that bothers me most about Sca/Vio is 100% the fact that you cannot just bike on your dragon to your heart's content. You will inevitably run into a Pokemon that just spawned and start a battle. It makes it seem like your dragon has 0 stopping power. We should be able to just keep on going and only get into a battle when throwing a ball. This would also stop the dumb teleporting issue. I mean, I love using it to reach places I shouldn't, but seriously. I have legitimately been teleported in such a way that as soon as I run from a battle I can't be bothered to fight, I realize my avatar was dropped right on top of another Pokemon, thus starting another battle. Sometimes this actually puts you in a loop if Pokemon are perfectly spaced and you can't move.
Pokémon also needs to experiment with pixel art again, as a spin-off.
Your editing is very good. Can't believe you just have 1.4K subs.
I just hope that pokemon takes everything that worked with PLA and SV and just do more of it with the next game. One thing that I want to see, personally, would be for pokemon to acknowledge that a very large portion of their playerbase are adults and allow us to play as a character that is not a 10 year old child.
Also, hitting me in the nostalgia with all of the maplestory bgms.
And if they are not gonna do that, then they should at least have the protagonists be older but still technically a kid like around 15 or 16.
"everything that worked with PLA and SV"
So just the Link Cable item, the on-the-fly Move Reminder and being able to buy competitive items with money.
I also was hit with the Maple Story bgm nostalgia. lol
5:40 its just a Port Town
Me, an F-Zero fan: 😃
Bro this video was so well done i didnt even realize this is a small channel until you said "almost at 500 subs" you deserve so many more dude
On the topic of "Pokemon games need more time, but the rest of the franchise is forcing it into a release cycle", I think a good solution already existed in the past, being:
Allow the other aspects of the franchise to tease and reveal new additions before the games come out. They used to do so well at promoting upcoming generations, I really don't know why they stopped.
New stoney video right at the perfect time just sat down to eat
Basically gamefreak needs to do a monster hunter world kinda move, but they just will not do that because it requires time and a lot of money ☠️
But... they _have_ a lot of time and money. _Especially_ money. It's The frickin Pokemon Company we're talking about here, they make Capcom look like _paupers!_
@@Mordecai02they only have money they don't have jack for time when you realize how often they want to release their games lmao.
@@lenarianmelon4634 The keyword there being "want." It's not that they don't _have_ time, it's that they seriously need to improve at _allotting_ it XP
Gane freak has all the time and money it needs to make a proper game, but why should they? Why should they put extra effort, try something new for a change, when they can simply press a 'make a pokemon game button' and churn out the same repetitive garbage that sells millions of copies the first day.
People buy shit, company keeps serving them more shit.
😢 I don't think the pokemon situation will ever improve. Digimon or Yokai seem to do better...
@@abcdefg-hv2ks
> Why should they?
Iunno, for the hell of it? Bragging rights & clout, maybe? Or maybe just to show off? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The first few minutes of this vid summed up my thoughts perfectly. I've said to my friends, Legends brought back that same excitement to explore that came with hiding under my blanket with a cheap flashlight and my gameboy had. It was, in fact, what we all imagined. And then not only did they take that away from us in the main line, but it was the buggy shrinkwrap. Arceus had a few bugs but not anything awful, a few giggles. But somehow it even seems more visually finished than Scarlet. Sure, Scarlet has more technical big cities but we can't actually interact with it, it's basically a Big Stupid Object on a map we go to for three plot checkpoints and move on. If you look at Scarlet's "Great Wonders" of nature and the like they're embarrassing compared to even Arceus casual environment. So the "WHAT'S GOING ON???" I mean HAVE YOU WATCHED HISUIAN SNOW ON THE POKEMON CHANNEL? WHERE DID THIS STUDIO GHIBLI ASS THING COME FROM???? I don't know. Sure, Arceus only has one city but you build that city and watch it grow to understand how it weaves into the original games in locations and events, and you kind of put your touch on it with adding pokemon you catch and choose, and every house is openable even if a few of them never become relevant, most have at least one reason to visit once. I don't know. Legends had heart, I still see it. I can see good ideas under Scarlet. There's. A good game in there somewhere. Under it. Like there's Fun in there. But I dunno. I think Scarlet truly murdered my interest in main game titles at this point. I need more things like Legends or it's bust for me. Like it's christmas 2023 and my friends just bought me a new arceus cartridge since I lost my old one in my move and I rescued my game file and I'm still playing that while Scarlet rots on the shelf.
My hope is for the series to dovetail the legends elements into main while going into the 3D. If they insist on open worldy, continue on the multiplayer. If gen 10 main ended up some giant World Map multiplayer of old regions and gimmicks but in Legends gameplay style, that's probably the only thing I could see saving the main series for me in its current direction unless there's an ENORMOUS overhaul.
Average comment talking about bugs:
@@user-AADZthere was like 1 or 2 sentences about bugs, and one of them was about it not being a big deal. read the whole comment at least
bro arceus was just as bad as the rest of the shart they flung at us.
Ok Big Musk.@@BigMuskachini
@@ExperimenturalVideos Straight up took words from my mouth. Legends arceus gets a lot of hate for the visuals, which i dont understand myself. The visuals may not be realistic and look more like a brush painting and such, but for me it looks perfect and finished because it perfectly fits the game's style and the visuals are consistent in every aspect of the game. Unlike scarlet/violet which have some great additions like textures, idle animations and such, but sucks ass not only cause of performance issues, but because its all inconsistent as hell. The area tries to be somewhat realistic but its pixelated as fuck, the shadows make completely no sense (the cloud shadows that for some reason appear when sun is shining directly onto the area) and the quality drastically drops just meters away from the view, same for fps. And these are just some of the many things i could list. Oh yea, and most obvious thing legends arceus has that scarlet/violet doesnt. A heart and soul put into it. All that talk about SV "being first open-world game" yet it feels dead compared to legends arceus. That game may not have many areas, but every single location feels alive, more interactive, and not to mention so many side quests that put all these locations into use. Every house can be entered and theres always SOMETHING to explore. Meanwhile SV is literally just textures pasted on 3d models of a city, equivalent to cardboard walls ya use in studio to simulate a "building". And the npcs literally just look dead. Most of them cant even be talked to, while in legends arceus you can literally SEND OUT A POKEMON TO TALK WITH IT!
Oh ye, pokemon textures are good and all, but WHY DO ALL THE POKEMON LOOK WAY SMALLER THAN THEY SHOULD? Hell, even characters. In legends arceus, despite "visible size diversity" not being a thing yet, models looked big, you could admire pokemon in all their glory. Also the gameplay itself. Sometimes, from time to time i pick up legends arceus after playing violet so much and it just hits me like breath of fresh air. The gameplay is so smooth in comparison and the gameplay is way more dynamic. Their excuse for making signature moves look trash in SV is to make it work in freecam open-world setting and making it fast paced, so why the hell did legends arceus pull it off while still keeping it fast-paced? Lets compare Roar of Time for example. In legends arceus, origin dialga gets a whole halo around it when its about to fire a majestic beam that fits the name. In SV meanwhile its just glorified beam attack. Like wow... blue beam... awesome. And why the hell did pokemon stop making contact on physical moves?
Theres just so many things id wanna say but this comment already long enough. In conclusion, Legends arceus was a huge step forward for pokemon franchise, just for SV to do a backflip jump backwards and roll down the staircase. The story and concept is the only thing saving it from being absolute trash embodied.
I was just thinking about this the other day! I was wondering why the Pokemon worlds feel so empty despite 'open world gameplay' being something fans have requested. I think you hit the nail on the head when you mentioned how the different cities flow into each other from the wild areas. That was something I believe was lost when the games transitioned into open world. The reason we remembered certain games so fondly was because certain events triggered when we entered into those towns and NPCS would give us hints on where to go next. Seeing some locations in Scarlet & Violet, I thought - wouldn't that be cool if there was magician or juggler character you could battle or play a mini game with in that amphitheater? What if the circus came to town but you could battle the different performers or do Pokemon Contests via Synchro Machine (or a similar feature)? What if the evil team highjacked the circus? I got off track there, but you're right! There's so much potential to do more or at least something cohesive
On the topic of SV backtracking on things that were in LA, it's important to remember these games are made by different teams at overlapping times. If the improvements are to come back, they're far more likely to appear in the next game or the one after. (But if they don't show up 3 games down the line, then they clearly have no intention or care to do such a thing.)
(EDIT: This may come off as "too forgiving" but it doesn't mean I'm not disappointed as well. I want to mass-release pokemon so bad in Scarlet 😭)
Pretty interesting if you do a deep dive to what the work culture is like at Game Freak, the Pokemon Company, and Creatures Inc. Saw this video of just that and it was employees complaining on glassdoor about poor management and poor working conditions.
Bet there are other creature collector games out there made by indie devs that made them in response to Game Freak's half baked games...
You know its bad when the fans start making better content than the official biggest media franchise in the world, while having absolutely no budget and are only fueled by their free time and love for pokemon
This is a such a well thought out video and I agree with 100% of it. I put down Violet for a long time and only recently picked it up again to finish it, but the glaring issues sap so much enjoyment out of it for me. Meanwhile, this year, I’ve gone and revisited older generations. My biggest takeaway is the inconsistency of quality features across the whole series. They do something that works, introduce a cool feature, and then throw it all out in the next game, and that just doesn’t make any sense to me… I want to like modern Pokémon so badly, but they’re making it very difficult!
100% agree on them needing more towers .caves, general dungeons. the lack of them in sword/shield and scarlet/violet was very disheartening, Or atleast add some more puzzle elements to the places we did have.
I think the biggest issue with modern pokemon world design is that Pokemon has been going in a more "realistic" style ever since Sword and Shield, though at least in that one it was only somewhat present and no fully present like in Scarlet/Violet. Pokemon was always an anime game. But so many people want "realism" in their Pokemon games. So now I'm sure GameFreak is just like "Ok, we'll make the pokemon higher quality on a system that can't handle it with a more realistic look and feel. When we populate this terrain though we have to keep it looking like a real world and not like some fantasy world. Keep it plain and simple, otherwise it'll throw off immersion."
I grew up with Generation 1 and 3. Sapphire is my favorite game of all time. But I do think Gen 5 was absolutely peak Pokemon in terms of story, world building, making the pokemon feel alive, and even designs. They went all out on that game. It felt like an adventure and like I was transported to a wonderful new world.
Scarlet/Violet on the other hand, and even Sworld/Shield to a degree, don't make me feel like that at all. Everything is so safe. Pokemon feel lifeless with the 3D models, the characters honestly have a more uncanny valley feel to them than I'd like to admit, and as you said before there's just no interesting locations that really stand out in S/V or Legends.
legends arceus could have let us photograph pokemon like pokemon snap in order to get pokedex data. the gameplay would have been insane! i think we need something like that in the main series
the bit about pokemon interacting in the wild made me imagine finding a shiny weedle just for a bird to swoop in and take it from you
Regarding the uniqueness of areas, even gen 6 did this decently well, and gen 7 had its moments. So it wasn't just "Pokemon was good until it went 3D", there was a gradual shift away from having unique locations all with their own flair to "just slap some gray textures on it and call it a cave".
Plus, Gen 3 had a pair of 3D games with some VERY memorable locations. Phenac City being an artificial oasis in the middle of the desert, Pyrite Town being this run-down, rough-and-tumble "has been" city where you'd expect to run into shady company, Gateon Port being a more industrialized port city rather than the cruise ports we normally see, Dr. Kaminko's Lab being this textbook mad scientist mansion, etc. It's a shame those games were so short, Orre would be one of the best regions in Pokemon if it was expanded on.
Having the intro be similar to the anime intro is so creative. What a wonderful idea!
To be fair, Scarlet and Violet didn't really go back on the improvements that Legends had. It's mostly that both games were developped concurrently, both improved on the previous game on their own independent way. If Game Freak slowed down their releases they'd actually have the time to add the improvements of side-games to their main games.
making 3D games on a 2D timescale is something Digimon learned not to do d e c a d e s ago
And Digimon managed to make good 2D games and good 3D games without investing in either completely. They chose whichever one was right for the console.
As someone who has playes these games i know exactly what it is you want. You want mandatory events in the cities that force you to interact with their landmarks. You do. You might say you don't, but you do. Most of what you list are things that Gen 8 and 9 do have. Landmarks, locations, characters, unique settings. But you want more mandatory interaction. You list off several things that gen 9 ALSO has that gen 3 has. But it's also not forced on the player like in gen 2. The sprout tower is mandatory in gen 2 where something like the windmills or the olive fields in gen 9 could be entirely ignored. It sticks with you because you are given no other choice.
Sprout tower was completely optional in the original gen2 games, the only thing it gave was some exp and flash, which is pretty useless in the original releases
The Sprout Tower is not mandatory within Gen 2
Although it is mandatory in Gen 4
The big difference between Sprout Tower and the windmills or the olive fields is that the Sprout Tower has gameplay, story/lore, and characterisation
@@comedian94 well last time i played johto was in hgss so forgive me if i really don't see the difference since you have to go there for flash. It wasn't the only time progress was halted til you finished a location in a town.
Beyond that the olive fields and windmills were just examples of regional landmarks that have battles with pokemon and trainers in them. The have lore in the sense that Smoliv lives in the Olive fields. Granted it's not "we built a tower around a bellsprout" but it's still something. The local gym is all about the olive roll too. It's not AS interesting, but it's not nothing. It's just a location. It's memorable in the way that other regions don't have them. Same with other landmarks and story events in other parts of the region. I was having too much of a fun time catching and exploring to really notice if there was less of an in your face loredump about them.
The big issue I have with Gen 9's "landmarks" is that they just fade into the background. The olive fields are a great example of this. The background changes, there's a slight difference in encounters. And? Other than these two things they just feel like the rest of the map. S&V really suffer from how samey everything is. There's so little to do in most towns that they just meld together. Landmarks fail to provide unique things to do as well. What the fuck is there to even do in these games?
If I remember correctly they said that they intend to extend the development cycle in the future after the backlash from scarvi.
So hey, maybe things are looking up!
i’ll believe it when i see it
Wont get my hopes up, but since gen 10 is supposed to represent the entire pokemon franchise up until now, being an important milestone they better make it a magnum opus and actually work on quality this time. We are nearing 30 year anniversary, which is probably when gen 10 is gonna be released, making it all the more important. If they mess this up, all hope is lost for any future mainline games.
PLA was a GIANT step forward for the franchise and then they just fucked it all up with S/V. Obviously PLA isn’t a main series game but I’d have loved for the main mechanics to be introduced into the main series (other than agile and strong style moves)
PLA is main series, Gamefreak themselves stated that it is
I really appreciate the use of Snowboard Kids music. They really need to bring that game back...
Also I recall Game Freak mentioning that they put new game modes or gimmicks in each game by design. That's why we have the beauty contest in one game and then gone in the next.
A pokemon game should be a little like the Xenoblade Chronicles games. Those were some of the best in terms of the world itself bc whatever you saw you could get to and the areas were insanely massive but they would use different ways to make different sections feel a lot smaller or cut the view down. That way going through a route would actually feel like traveling from 1 city to another rather than just going down the block lol.
The open world in Pokemon is literally like opening a flat world in Minecraft. It's basically 1 level for the most part and there isn't anything breaking up the world. Like in Xenoblade each area was larger than the new pkmn region and has multiple levels and everything connects back to itself.
Scarlet and Violet didn’t back track from Arceus. The games were being made at the same time. Arceus wasn’t out yet by the time most of these design choices were made for Scarlet and Violet. They literally could not learn from that game’s success. That’s how quickly these games are being pumped out. And because it’s working for them financially, shareholders would think that you’re crazy for wanting to change that. In their eyes, everything is going perfectly.
All kids see is more mons which means more parents money smh
this dude is underrated as hell but seriously, i like game companys that actually listen to their fanbase and make the best possible game they could
as an rpg for kids and to sell merchandise, they're scared shitless of making something that could remotely challenge a child. Even though most kids are more tenacious than we give credit.
That intro 🔥
He held back no punches
I think all these problems could be fixed by having each game have its own large team dedicated to it. If there were 300 people working on each game, not only would that give a lot more people to help polish it, but it would also mean that the games would have time to breathe, because they aren’t working on making two or three games per generation, and each team can just focus on their one game
For years I've always known there are people who enjoyed sonic 06 despite its flaws (and how the game can be snapped in half or something). But ever since getting violet end of this year, yes i DIDN'T get it on launch as i kinda learned my lesson from sword, i have a better understanding of why people enjoy sonic 06.
Kinda sad how Area Zero is the most interesting area in the game (even with the dlc).
I think the problem with Towns in Cities in the last main 2 games is that. They may all be bigger than cities in the handhelds, but the buildings really decentivze exploration. Like Sword and Shield recycles the same house interior in most cases. And Scarlet and Violet doesn't even let you venture inside certain shops they're just menu screens.
this is a fantastic video! you said everything perfectly
Been playing Pokemon since the beginning, love the world and the concept and the lore and everything, but it's like you said, they drop features too fast or dont fully actualize others and it's depressing.
Id say hands down my 2 favorite gens were 5 and 3. 5 was a big change in a darker and more serious direction and the complete forced use of all new Pokemon until postgame, was beautiful and fun imo. The story and characters were interesting, the region felt very alive and all the "fateful encounter" events that were in the game were awesome as well. Hoenn's story and region felt like the Pokemon company was excited with the success of the first 2 gens and finally leapt into the game. The story was great, the legends were great, the different maps and cities and places as well as the ability to fuckin DIVE and explore further, god yes, it was beautiful. ORAS was great as well and a nice way to see the region fleshed out in 3D but the difficulty curve dropped due to exp share and fairy types and megas and all that, also we lost the battle frontier, bigsad.
It feels like for the Pokemon company, it's a job, and where occasional love is thrown in, it seems like they lack in passion and dont hire those who are passionate and crazy about the world of Pokemon. They also seem to try to keep regions as disconnected as possible which is sad because of the level of excitement and greatness Kanto-Johto brought so many of us, all those years ago. Paldea is huge, and beyond the 2fps and washed-out textures due to Switch being ancient, it's actually beautiful and has an amazingly huge and diverse map, but lack of major features or points of interest, limit it. Also why wasnt Dive in this region? It would have been beautiful to be able to dive and explore under water in a very watery big 3D environment like this. I dont know, Id happily wait for a game that encompasses all we want and love about Pokemon into one game. Gamefreak should hire more people to breakup the work load and make their golden child. Legends Arceus was great, though incomplete, but great nonetheless. Imagine more games like that, entirely polished, on a bigger scale. It would be beautiful.
I really missed when we could go into every NPC's houses and the shops, the museums, libraries etc. It was so fun exploring them. Sometimes the characters gives you evolutions items or trade pokemons, they told you cute details about their families. It made the wolrd more real and fun. Now there's boring menus for every shops, that's dissapointing 😐The games are still too easy. I never had troubles with any champions in Violet and the first DLC. Not as easy as X and Y but still not challenging.
I remember when i had to defeat Red in Soulsilver. It took me, no joke, 9 times to beat him. It was difficult but so satisfying when i win. My efforts were rewarded! Even in White, it took me 8 times to beat N and Guetis. The battles were hard but fun! Can't say the same for Violet.
On the topic of Pokemon interactions, they could have done something similar to Don't Starve, where wild animals actually interact with each other, fight all on their own, have very complex behaviours, the world feels alive. And all that with less than 1% of Pokemon's resources
Yeah I noticed recently that SV has maybe five enterable buildings. The Pokemon League, your school, your house, area zero labs, and Larry's gym. It's sad
Literally every reason listed is one of the contributing factors to why I stopped playing Pokemon, and I was obsessed my entire life. I played nearly every pokemon game worth playing from Pokemon Stadium, Colosseum, Mystery Dungeon, to every main series game at least once if not more than once. I've played rom hacks, fanmade games, nuzlockes, all sorts of things to stay interested. I collected cards, watched the anime, and it felt like every year they'd get lazier and lazier with the content pumped out. Once sun and moon rolled out, I was fully checked out by then, focused more on playing rom hacks in my spare time. I would gladly go back to buying Pokemon games if they were half as good as BW2/HGSS/etc. And NGL I'm tempted to buy Legends Arceus if it's really as good as this video suggests. Until Pokemon fixes these problems though, I'll continue to just play remade versions of the classics and battle on old formats of Pokemon Showdown I guess 💀
I want to see a Pokemon game done by MonolithSoft, I feel after the way they handled Zelda and their own Xenoblade series would be exactly what pokemon needs at this point to feel fresh again. A game like that would also make perfect sense as maybe the opener game for the next console after the switch, so we could hopefully see less performance issues like we have with recent switch games (and especially pokemon)
There was confirmation during an interview that they are NOT restricted by deadline. I was trying to quick-find it for this post, but I believe it was in an interview when they were asking why Pokemon Z didnt happen. It came up in that discussion if I am not mistaken. This is why Zygarde ended up in Sun and Moon rather than getting its own game. They just bumped it to the next installment rather than pushing something out they didnt want or didnt have time for.
Find a Sword and Shield interview where the interviewer asked about yearly releases and if they are required to do it, but Masuda and Ohmori said they don't, but they want to introduce the franchise to as much people as possible (i.e. oversaturation, where you gain a lot even if you lose a lot, IMO).
After the first minute I was baffled to find you have less than 1000 subs. Gotta say this is quality work. Subbed.
An issue that ive noticed with my game and when it becomes laggy.
ALL WILD pokemon seem to lock onto and not lose interest. I'll have about 5 pokemom at any given time chasing me and not giving up while there is another 20 in the background watching my every step.
Lag? *Yawns*
@@user-AADZ the hell Is this supposed to mean?
we’ve reached a point where it seems like basically everyone has these same opinions on modern pokemon. I think the next pokemon generation is going to be a defining moment for the series where gamefreak/nintendo are able to demonstrate whether they can or even want to respond to such unanimous criticism or not. I know I’m not the only one who’s just one more sloppy mainline game away from leaving this series behind. I don’t want pokemon’s legacy to forever be “wasted potential”
Between Legends Arceus, and Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, you should probably research their release cycles, when they started developing those games, and which teams internally did those games. That information basically shows why certain changes didn't make it into Scarlet and Violet.
This man is spittin rn
Couldn't have summed it up better myself
Gained my subscription 👍
I feel like Game Freak have always been so ashamed of their graphics for some reason and that they always feel like they need to improve every time. They want to reach that goal of that dream open world Pokémon adventure but they fail to realise that it doesn’t work with their timeframe and how short time they have to develop an open world game such as this. Due to this they end up creating buggy and arguably bad looking games. It sucks to be honest because this isn’t just some indie developer, this is Pokémon. Nethertheless, I still enjoy scarlet and violet and they are my second favourite generation.
The funny thing is you could argue XY is a time they were "proud" of it as they had a photo mode to show off the locales of Kalos that time and to show off the 3D graphics jump for Pokemon.
This is a great video man, looking forward to your growth
Honestly I wish for the actual battle system to get an overhaul since we haven’t had any changes since Gen 6. I’d like to see rotation battles return, but much more improved and strategic.
The problem with SV is the open world. People skip the most memorable parts fo that game because of it. For example, you could go through a ridge then a cave to reach Alfornada (one of my favorite parts of the game) or you could just climb a mountain. You could be going on an epic hike through Glaseado Mountain to the 6th and 8th gyms, or you could just climb it. You could be going through a beautiful field full of olive trees, or you could go the other way towards some ugly canyons. You could have had a balanced challenge against Team Star, but it always gets left out or done early.
So surprised you didn’t have tens of thousands of subscribers. Well made video!
My brother, this is literally his most viewed video that has been blessed by the algorithm
Really accurate video on the current situation about the pokemon series. You have proposed consistent solutions and have analyzed the right weak points of the recent games.
The only thing is "inaccurate" is the part about "giving GF more time to develop cool games". I think it's true in part. The major problems are lack of skills and the complexity and size of the team.
There's a really well made documentary made by Cydonia where he reads reviews of GF made by eployees and they're tragic! (I really suggest you to see it, it's in Italian but there should have been english subtitles).
I'm in a hurry so I'm very sorry if i would have done grammar mistakes, but I hope we could talk more about the Pokemon situation.
P.S. Subscribed and Liked the video!! ❤👍🏻👍🏻
It makes me so happy when in the video you say you're at nearly 500 subs, and then when I look at the sub count now, less than a week after posting, you're up to 1.5k. I love seeing small creators blow up, and I love getting these videos in my recommended. I can't wait to see where you go from here!
For me I haven’t played any of the switch games but I hated how streamlined the region got starting in gen 5. The original black and white was essentially a straight line with a circle on the end. For me I enjoy Pokémon more when you revisit an area or when you are allowed to get lost a little. None of the locations in gen 5+ really stayed with me cause you go through them and you are done with the only significant location being the main city with all the big shops.
I personally think the best example of Pokémon region design is honestly one of the side games. Pokémon ranger shadows of almia had the PERFECT map progression where the story would let you wander ahead to new locations but keep you coming back to old locations giving a certain sense of “home” that makes the entire region incredibly nostalgic for me. And just when the next area starts to get a little too far away the game reassigns you to a new base that’s closer to the action.
Another issue I have is when the games say it’s “your adventure” but railroad you through the story through NPC “friends”. Again I’ll say Pokémon ranger did it better. If you are going to railroad me through the story at least let me play as someone who is supposed to be following an NPC character’s direction. Don’t tell me it’s my journey and have me do the exact same thing every other player has to do.
True. Honestly, I'd even accept story-locked areas; places you can go to but have to complete the story in that area to access it.
@@patrickcarter2829 the final straw for me (aside from not owning a switch) was sun and moon. That game wouldn’t let you get even a little off track. The next objective was practically always on screen.
Your saying all the words i wished to say, but in a more put together format.
Unpopular opinion, but I liked Scarlet better than Legends Arceus.
pla felt like a big step in the right direction, i just hope they go off of that and get more time to expand on and polish it :,)
When it comes to Pokémon interacting with its environment and other Pokémon, Monster Hunter World is a great example of what is possible. Also it’s all fun and games until a Fearow picks up a Golden Caterpie.
I just wish they could make the new games not look and run like dog lmao
RSE was my first Pokemon game and the only thing missing is a snow route. And maybe sun should have been more common in some beach/sea areas during daytime coz Hoenn got some pretty rainy routes.
It's important to remember something for game design - As time goes on, "Uniqueness" becomes more and more rare, as something has probably already been done before. Making something unique means taking a risk, and taking a risk could have IP breaking consequences.
Also, all of us are going to be biased in some fashion. For me, I'm absurdly biased in favor of Platinum being the best game - but overall in terms of what there is to do, story, it's not really THAT special. The Pokemon in the region are cool, Dialga and Giratina are awesome, Cynthia is still a goddess murdering trainers dreams left right and center... but overall, the game didn't have much more than what B/W did, what S/V does... they're just different takes. My favorite Pokemon is still Infernape, being my FIRST Pokemon as a kid when I first got the games...
Point is, we will ALWAYS be biased and miss what we had as kids, even if something is either really good or just equal to what we've had in this past. We'll always have a lower opinion of it, especially since we've seen the universe before, its harder to get a "wonder" feeling out of something that follows the same formula as previous games.
Could I ask what BW did more than Platinum, as I genuinely think while BW did brush up some technical issues from Gen 4, Platinum had a lot that's in the game that you can't find in BW (and also SV).
P.S. You seemingly forgot to say the Battle Frontier of Platinum, or you just don't do much of Pokemon post-game (IMO the most time you actually play there)?
Ah, someone who appreciates the music from MapleStory 😊
The thing is Pokemon is supposed to be an infinite series with new gens coming out every 3 to 4 years infinitely. So they can't make the perfect game. Because if they do, we will start expecting that and more. And if they have to come out with a new game in three years and they don't have a new exciting feature to show off, they will not sell too many games. So they keep you hooked by giving you enough but not too much. So that you can keep hoping that in the next game they will fix that one problem that the game has.
The Pokemon in the Indigo Disk do interact logically at times. For example, when Zigzagoon and Seviper are together they fight each other. It's just visually, not a real "Pokemon will faint" battle but seeing that was cool.
They already did that in the base game. Also it’s Zangoose
Poor Zigzagoon got eaten
Do you even know the difference between zigzagoon and Zangoose?
Wow, sorry I made a naming mistake. Let me go sew my finger together so that I never touch a keyboard again.
Going from Legends: Arceus to Scarlet/Violet was so jarring. Like you had almost everything you needed, why would you go backwards?
Edit to say, this is a great video. You pretty much hit the nail on the head on how I feel about the franchise right now.
14:58 ZR Button in ScarVo That Can Be Used to Throw Your Pokemon's Ball at a Wild Pokemon to Start a Battle: "Guess I'll die"
RDR2 has an interactive environment with a full index of animalia with unique interactions for each species. armadillos will curl up when you come close, squirrels will run across ur path, etc. Rockstar has put more passion into their product in a game where animals aren't even the main focus, accomplishing more than modern Pokemon games when it comes to creature interaction in an open world
Wait what !!! I was listening to your video while washing the dishes and excepted you to say we are heading close to 500K subscribers not 500!!
Man that video was amazing great quality big surprises !
Well let me be part of the early 500 🤩
And I agree The Pokémon Company need to get back to its roots while keeping the quality of life features they have given us 👏🏻
How is your channel not bigger! Dude this was great.
I agree completely. I love Pokémon and enjoy the games, but they feel like they could be so much more. I long for a Pokémon game that feels fully realized, but we’ll have to see how things go. I would love to see a game that fully realizes the concept of Pokémon and fully unlocks the potential.