I like raiding more than hunting legendaries, even if it could stand to raise the difficulty of the encounter a tad, and increase the capture ratio or give you an option to “chase” them once if they escape.
Pokemon Sword and Shield - Galexit Edition
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I never stick around for long after I beat the game. Completing the dex would give me the motivation to keep playing, but since I have to pay extra for online services this time - and I gave up on that - it would be impossible anyways so I don't feel like even finishing collecting what is in the game.
And since I know I won't play for too long anyway, I didn't felt any guilt in using the date exploit to get the two Gigantamax (Kingler and Orbeetle) I wanted.
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The second half of the game is lazy as fuck.
There's seriously no way to defend the laziness and lack of effort put into this game.
Look I like Pokemon as much as the next guy but this? This release was an insult if you've been following the series.
Power to the people who enjoyed the online and raid even though it's the same thing but flashier!! and mindless grinding through a shit online system.But for an IP like Pokemon , no wait cut that, even without the Pokemon name?
In this time and age this was a terribly designed cutting corners game at that staggering price.
When you have Dragon quest, fire emblem, the likes of Zelda, even fucking digimon improving on their previous versions, this game was designed in a retarded way.
It is so lazy.
The plot is written by a grade school kid.
The graphics is sloppy(so many animations were skipped, low res, reskinned, repasted).
The new mechanics were rightfully hated to oblivion and it is the epitome of style over substance.
Why does the music exist if it's so underwhelming.
Half the towns have so much potential but exist as pointlessly glorified 3d models.
Fucking can't even put in effort to make a decent post game or elite 4.
I don't know why people say this new batch of Pokemon is well designed, it's not.
Fix the damn online system.The wild area, breeding and raid candies are good for online.
I have nothing much to object to that because it encourages meta.
Except that the scene is going to be diluted and a cesspool for modded mons or perfect IVs abuse team where there's literally no point.
So yeah I'll give the game props for supporting the meta.But Christ is this the worst fucking single player campaign ever.
"B-but online raids and its easier to train online teams!"
Why the hell is anyone obligated to have to consider that into their rating of the game bewilders me.
I did not pay a full price for a game so that I have to pay for its online functions because it's otherwise standalone offline experience is shit.Whoever still think that Game Freak has the same passion they once did is over their heads, this is a shadow of what once made the series great.
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I don't know why people say this new batch of Pokemon is well designed, it's not.
Hey, hey! Leave the new pokémon alone, they are great. Once the dust is settled, Orbeetle will probably remain on my top20, maybe 10. And there are a lot of other great ones.
But Christ is this the worst fucking single player campaign ever.
But yes. There were times I was legit amazed in front of the TV thinking how much they could shamelessly lower the bar to test how much we can take. And we'll take anything. Because we legitimately think "it's pokémon" is reason enough to buy the game regardless of anything. If has a new batch of creatures, so fuck the rest.
It's weird, Pokémon is the highest grossing franchise in the world (not even just "game franchise". any media franchise), "it's pokémon" should be something we use to demand the highest possible standards, but somehow it became an excuse for things to be half-assed. "Oh, you know, it's pokémon…" meaning "it's a poor quality product, no reason to expect something different, but let's have fun because we like it".It's no surprise GF kept so much of the new dex in secrecy, they probably knew the new pokémon were all the game had so they didn't want to exhaust all the things that could elicit a good reaction before the game was out. The fact they are arguing the leakers caused "irreparable injury" to Pokémon by revealing the game contents and that leading to "reduced fan interest and engagement" is pretty much an admission of knowing their game was shit and that they were trying to hide it (I mean, obviously TPCi is right on their lawsuit against breaches of contract, but I find their logic and wording very revealing).
When you think about it, the fact they revealed so much in Gen VII and the fact they revealed so little now was not a matter of different marketing strategies, it was a matter of confidence in their games. They knew Alola was appealing and the more they showed the more interest would be generated. And they knew Galar was the opposite. -
I think it's fine to express negative opinions, but it's really well past the point where it's not so much that as just toxic fumes on repeat, and that really needs to stop.
This thing where we pretend the story in this game is more shit that the story in other Pokemon games is asinine. Pokemon games aren't about the story, they're about you making your team and becoming the best in your region. That's why the games end when you beat the champion, not when you foil the evil master plan of some mid-life crisis dude to destroy the world for questionably stupid reasons.
Even gen 5 where the story was more at the forefront took a huge tumble down to shit when the story took a turn from being morally ambiguous to "cartoonish villain tries to take over the world, summons castle from underground."Then the comparison to Zelda and Fire Emblem. I don't know about DQ and Digimon, but both Zelda and Fire Emblem took fantastic risks in reducing the regular scope of the series to focus on something else.
BotW has only four fucking wannabe dungeons, compared to most of the previous titles having roundabouts 7 and 8. This is more actual cutting content than dexit ever was, but almost no one gave a shit because the focus on the overworld won people over. I personally cared and found BotW to be fun for like 4 hours and then become exceedingly boring and inconsistent… but that's fine, I just stopped playing it and went on to play something else.
Same with Fire Emblem... significantly less maps and story chapters than previous Fire Emblem games... Fire Emblem 7 was around 30 chapters I think, with side chapters in there, different nuanced objectives, and still having brilliantly written characters and story. The new one dramatically reduced the amount of original content, turned recycled content up to 11... and it worked! Why? Because the mechanics of experiencing different stories through different perspectives and understanding the different characters through different playthroughs was so compelling that all that other shit didn't matter. It was still just fun, and it did well because of it.As much as people insist on writing essays and rants about it endlessly, the fact is that a lot of the complaints feel like people who wanted to hate this game since before it released still intent on hating it. That may not be the case here, but we can't ignore the fact that there's a ton of people having fun and SO MANY PEOPLE buying this game and enjoying it because, as was foretold, all this shit like dexit and "trees look bad" doesn't actually matter to the fun most people will have from this game.
As much as people insist on shitting on Gamefreak for being "lazy", the reality you have to live with is that regardless of any choices you and I feel are stupid, they know exactly what their audience want, because that's the only way you continuously do so well release after release. If their games were actually bad, people would just stop playing, because unlike all the complainers all over the internet, what normally happens when a game is bad is that people just stop playing it and go play something else.What you have to realize at some point is that maybe pokemon just isn't for you? Like, you CAN enjoy the pokemon franchise without spending $60 to play a new game you know you're going to hate. And if you do buy it and hate it as expected, you also just have the power to stop playing it. Instead of being toxic to the devs just accept that this game is for someone else and respectfully let those people enjoy their game. If you're not having fun, the solution isn't to insist to the world that something YOU didn't like is objectively not fun. Like, just stop playing the game and have fun somewhere else.
Like, have you guys played Ni no Kuni? That has collecting, team building and has significantly better story, music and art direction compared to the pokemon series. It's also on Switch right now. I would much rather you guys go play that and have a great time than feel compelled to constantly dump on the game on loop while other people here want to just enjoy it, talk about it, trade, share stories, etc. At the end of the day that's the fucking point of games, to have FUN. -
I actually enjoy the stories in Pokemon games (including Sword and Shield). Adventure and story are the main reasons I play games in general. Yesterday I spent 2 hours typing up a post (which I deleted 10 minutes after posting) talking about my Sword and Shield experience and outlined different sections, the section for adventure where I talked about what I enjoyed and what I thought could've been better for the Galar region and its areas was a few paragraphs whereas stuff like new Pokemon and battle mechanics only got single small paragraphs saying basic things like "I liked a lot of the new Pokemon designs" and "I'm grateful for EXP Candies making leveling up more convenient".
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I just don't understand why the game has the exact same text box explanation interface for every single last thing exactly the same as it was on the gameboy 20 years ago.
You begin a round of combat by selecting your desired move.
If your monster is fast enough to take the first action, you are immediately re-told in plain text which move you just selected.
Then the move’s corresponding animation plays.
If the move inflicts damage multiple times, each hit gets an individual animation, then a text box summarizes how many times the move just hit.
If the move has a type advantage or disadvantage against its target, this is communicated first with a sound cue, then with a discrete text box.
Critical hits, if they occur, get their own text box as well.
If your move inflicts a status condition, this is demonstrated first with an animation, then with a text box, every time the effect is triggered — usually once per round.
The entire process then repeats for your opponent’s move, over and over again until the battle is over, for every battle in the game.Yeah, you can cut the battle time in half by disabling the animations. But that is the opposite of the ideal solution. The text should not play the central role in combat: There is no reason that “It’s super effective!” indicator still needs to halt the flow of combat with a text box — the phrase could simply pop up on screen simultaneously when an attack connects. Status ailments no longer need to be re-introduced every time they trigger; their associated particle effects could just persist on the character models. Weather effects don’t need to be announced every single turn that they’re active; they’re already communicated by visual changes to the battlefield. In strategically complex battles, where multiple weather conditions and status effects are resolving every turn, single exchanges can take several minutes to complete.
Or, whenever you want to heal your party. Restoring your team’s health requires
opening the menu
opening the item sub-menu
selecting a potion
selecting a mon to use it on from the sub-sub-menu depicting all your mon
then confirming that you want to use the potion.
But from there, the menu cannot be closed all at once — there is no way to go from the sub-sub-menu straight back to playing the game. You must reverse out of every thing one at a time by hammering the B button, after every major battle, for the entire duration of the gameEven things like getting your team healed at a Pokémon Center requires two text boxes, the insertion of all six of your Poké Balls into a device one at a time, a music cue, then another two text boxes. Battles begin with a swooping camera to introduce your opponent and the dramatic deployment of your first critter. This creates a thrilling atmosphere the first few times, but man does it add up.
I'm not saying they need to switch to active real time battles, the alternating turns are the core mechanic and they have spinoffs for active combat, but… they could really, REALLY trim that nonsense down a little, legacy or not. These things don't bother me so much on the old games where the graphics are tiny or 8-bit still frames, or when the controller only had two buttons, so you actually DO need the text to tell whats happening and submenus, but now? I've been replaying Black and White lately and it doesn't bother me at all there, but somehow the same thing on the big screen and real controller just feels SO dated and poorly designed.
They got rid of HMs being mandatory, and gave you a hotkey button to throw a pokeball, running shoes at the very start, broke your bag into compartments (some games better than others) lots of other quality of life stuff... (Including exp share love it or hate it, rivals that warn you before you fight them, and people that heal you every five steps) but they can't tweak the main focus of the game a little?
How is this still okay? Even Dragon Quest which is famous for not changing hasn't stagnated THAT much.
Graphics, story, whatever, those aren't what you play the game for. Dexit bothers me because literally none of my favorites made it in, but whatever, they can't reuse old assetts they can't reuse old assets. But the core gameplay is just... argh.
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I think it's fine to express negative opinions, but it's really well past the point where it's not so much that as just toxic fumes on repeat, and that really needs to stop.
This thing where we pretend the story in this game is more shit that the story in other Pokemon games is asinine.
You really to nail down what toxic means. You refer people criticizing the game here as toxic (maybe because you simply don't want negative opinions being voiced about something you like and calling it "toxic" makes it look like the problem is not that, despite your introductory term) and then immediately goes to call people critiques "asinine". Didn't even bother reading past that point, it wasn't worth anymore.
If you really think people criticizing a product (a product they payed for and fully consumed before voicing their opinions) can be toxic but is fine with downright calling them stupid on the same breath for disagreeing with you, you need to set your priorities straight. -
Just to add. Having recently played through gens 5 and 6, and also putting hundreds of hours into gen 7, I don't think Sw/Sh is on average inferior in terms of story or towns.
The story is lacking in all these games by RPG standards, often with a nonsensical or anticlimactic final act. And that's taking games where the story even exists; forget gen 1 etc. I'll give Sun/Moon the credit for developing cool characters. Lily, Gladion, and Guzma were well done, and so was Lusamine honestly. In that sense I've defended the plot in the past, but that doesn't mean the actual "story" potion of it wasn't short and predictable with no real satisfying conclusion. At least outside of the pretty much background-level "plot" in Sw/Sh there are some cool themes running such as legacy and inheritance. There are cool characters as well like Marnie but they don't get fleshed out as much.
I don't even know what to say about towns… they've always been pretty small or empty, with no more than a few houses/buildings of interest and sometimes a set piece. Sure, the ONE big city in gen 5 and 6 (Castelia and Lumiose) outscales the counterpart in Sw/Sh (Wyndon), but TBH those cities are annoying as fuck with the scrolling isometric view, segmented areas, and a bunch of buildings you could explore with literally nothing of interest in them. I'll take Wyndon any day.
Nobody cared before, but suddenly now it's appalling. I was gonna make a different post instead, about my experience in the battle tower, but I guess I'll do that later.
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@.access:
You really to nail down what toxic means. You refer people criticizing the game here as toxic (maybe because you simply don't want negative opinions being voiced about something you like and calling it "toxic" makes it look like the problem is not that, despite your introductory term) and then immediately goes to call people critiques "asinine". Didn't even bother reading past that point, it wasn't worth anymore.
Toxic is constant shitting on the devs as indefensible, lazy, careless, lacking in passion, lacking in attention, among others.
Critiquing an opinion as asinine because it lacks foundation is just that. If I were compounding that with statements like "this opinion is stupid because you are all idiots", then it moves into the realm of toxicity.
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This thing where we pretend the story in this game is more shit that the story in other Pokemon games is asinine. Pokemon games aren't about the story, they're about you making your team and becoming the best in your region.
I mean that's a pretty generalizing statement and while true, there's more than just a talented team being the end goal.
It's like people forget the entire process.
Pokemon is not a genre on its own, its built on the genre of RPG.
The sense of exploration and adventure of a young kid discovering unknown lands, meeting interesting characters and a feeling of world-building from deserts to ice mountains to parallel worlds.
Which by the way in this entry is extremely weak in that aspect.
Since when have the community lowered their standard to this end that it doesn't matter if elements of what makes up a RPG are weak as long as we managed to build a great team?
What's the point of having all this other aspects for years if it weren't improved on?
Obviously Pokemon isn't a full fledged rpg nor does it pretend to be but god at the very least put some effort into it.That's why the games end when you beat the champion, not when you foil the evil master plan of some mid-life crisis dude to destroy the world for questionably stupid reasons.
Even gen 5 where the story was more at the forefront took a huge tumble down to shit when the story took a turn from being morally ambiguous to "cartoonish villain tries to take over the world, summons castle from underground."Except in Gen 5 the themes were radically different People liked gen 5's plot because it is different from what the games have been about and the series seems to be going somewhere with it.
A deeper exploration of the very concepts the series introduced. A villain that challenges the players point of view.
A NEW POKEDEX THAT DOESN'T HALF ASS dropping the entire dex during the campaign run.There is a lot more characterization of the characters in Gen 5 as compared to SwSh.
Gym leaders actually do their thing and help stop Team Plasma, moving with their intentions in mind. No one could stop N because no one could and you had to.Please don't tell me you actually understand what the fuck was the villain's motivation and purpose in SwSh.
And even if you do understand, please at least acknowledge that it is terribly done.Locations like Black city White forest, the dragonspiral tower, N's castle were all designed and created to support the plot and narrative.
What the heck does Swsh do? Leave you out of the entire villain arc and design a half-ass basement expecting you to actually be impressed.
Shoving a "villain and legendaries" segment for no fucking reason because it kind of forget that it needs to do that.
Am I seriously suppose to be happy that I got a forest with a mist overlay and be wowed by their effort?Your point would have made sense if this game drastically improved on its previous iterations but the vast majority thinks its average at best.
Out of this discussion, your outlook on zelda and fire emblem would have garnered my full support. However, it's not a really good comparison to the pokemon franchise.BotW has only four fucking wannabe dungeons, compared to most of the previous titles having roundabouts 7 and 8. This is more actual cutting content than dexit ever was, but almost no one gave a shit because the focus on the overworld won people over. I personally cared and found BotW to be fun for like 4 hours and then become exceedingly boring and inconsistent… but that's fine, I just stopped playing it and went on to play something else.
Because the developers took risks and it paid off. Pokemon took almost zero risks in SwSh.
While the core is still dungeons and puzzle solving, BoTw approached it differently by spreading those mechanics out.
Overworld won the people over not because wow hurr durr overworld but because fuck does it look beautiful to the last strand of grass and does it feel alive as compared to the puppet towns in pokemon.
It also focuses on fluidity of movement, an arsenal of gadgets and interesting interactions with the environment while utilizing the graphical prowess of Switch.
No…wait. Yeah, it doesn't just focus, it upgrades on existing elements despite the cut in the depth of the dungeons, there was a compensation for it.What did we get from the dexit?
Okaaay maybe if we don't count the dexit as a variable why is the graphic so shitty and the towns so dead and the music so uninspiring and why can't i see myself in a lift moving or ANY effort put into the animationsAlso the new dyna-giga max is not a groundbreaking "new" makeover.
The series does this crap with every release.Same with Fire Emblem… significantly less maps and story chapters than previous Fire Emblem games... Fire Emblem 7 was around 30 chapters I think, with side chapters in there, different nuanced objectives, and still having brilliantly written characters and story. The new one dramatically reduced the amount of original content, turned recycled content up to 11... and it worked! Why? Because the mechanics of experiencing different stories through different perspectives and understanding the different characters through different playthroughs was so compelling that all that other shit didn't matter. It was still just fun, and it did well because of it.
I felt this playing Three Houses.
While not a complete makeover of the franchise, once again the series took risks.
Turning it into more Persona like and a "visual novel" ish experience expanded their audience.
However, I don't think there's a dramatic reduction in overall content. In terms of writing, I'll go and say that the content in terms of writing might have been more than previous games.
The old aspects were there but presented in different ways (aux maps, characters maps replacing grinding/side events maps). I feel like instead of removing anything, adding the school and persona-esque aspects actually made it a lot more fun.
You're right that parts were recycled but it was so compelling it didn't mattered and it only worked because of the new aspects mentioned. Take those away and the people who would replay the same game 4 times drastically decrease.Now let's see what SwSh has added that has made the experience so much more compelling and interesting!!
…
huh?Oh and while we are at it, FE developers actually gives a shit about their fanbase. A lot more than gamefreak.
As much as people insist on writing essays and rants about it endlessly, the fact is that a lot of the complaints feel like people who wanted to hate this game since before it released still intent on hating it.
I had this same impression of people when i started the game, I thought people were overly toxic in their hate.
At the end of this game? I think it is very justified.That may not be the case here, but we can't ignore the fact that there's a ton of people having fun and SO MANY PEOPLE buying this game and enjoying it because, as was foretold, all this shit like dexit and "trees look bad" doesn't actually matter to the fun most people will have from this game.
You need to realize that Pokemon's fanbase is no longer the same fanbase it has when XY releases.
The people who are having fun have no relative experience with what a good rpg could really be or what Pokemon was like when it was at it's peak.
It's like people going to new Star wars movie and calling it the same kind of masterpiece compared to the older ones.
Or people who watch Transformers and call it Oscar worthy.
It doesn't matter to the casuals or the people who come in just because wow so cute! or hey when is this coming to pokemon go! or any variations of shallow praise.Why the fuck do I, as a long time fan who has been supporting this series consistently have to look pass at this behemoth of a company pandering to the masses so blatantly and ignoring their long time fans?
It's lazy because it is what it is, a cash grab that works because it builds on the momentum of its popularity.As a 70$ game designed for switch, this is unacceptable and mediocre. This is not a subjective statement.
Why can't they pander to both new comers and long time fans? Why must the backlash be that harsh from their long time fans?
Is it really that hard for a multi-million company to do?If their games were actually bad, people would just stop playing, because unlike all the complainers all over the internet, what normally happens when a game is bad is that people just stop playing it and go play something else.
Surely because something is popular and sell well it is of substance and of high quality.
There's no exceptions aren't they.
Nope, not in the movie industry
Or the manga industry
I mean naruto sells well must be consistently gold
oh i mean that new gacha game makes shit ton of money, props to their writing and uh beautiful assets.
I could go on and on about economics, marketing and how when something is popular doesn't mean that it's good but it's too long and I'm too gamefreak level lazy to do so.What you have to realize at some point is that maybe pokemon just isn't for you? Like, you CAN enjoy the pokemon franchise without spending $60 to play a new game you know you're going to hate. And if you do buy it and hate it as expected, you also just have the power to stop playing it. Instead of being toxic to the devs just accept that this game is for someone else and respectfully let those people enjoy their game. If you're not having fun, the solution isn't to insist to the world that something YOU didn't like is objectively not fun. Like, just stop playing the game and have fun somewhere else.
But not before I express my opinion and bitch about it because I feel like I kind of deserve to be able to do that after spending time and money on it.
Are people being toxic to the developers or are people actually calling out on their shit?
Because all I've been seeing is gamefreak trying to smoke their consumers and it seems to have worked.This is exactly the reason why Gamefreak shits over their core fans because the majority of their fanbase doesn't care about quality.
But you're right.
I should stop playing it because obviously the Pokemon games are not targeted for their core game fans anymore.Sure, the point of games is to have fun and it shouldn't be anyone's else business when someone is genuinely having fun.
However, it is equally unfair to just look at the good stuff and try to silence the opinions of those who point out the flaws.
Especially when the flaws are so glaring and while it might not affect them, have the damn decency to at least acknowledge it affects others and in this case, a majority of them.
Let the snowball of consumer fake bullshit positivism roll long enough and it'll turn big into a heap pile of trash.Like, have you guys played Ni no Kuni? That has collecting, team building and has significantly better story, music and art direction compared to the pokemon series. It's also on Switch right now. I would much rather you guys go play that and have a great time than feel compelled to constantly dump on the game on loop while other people here want to just enjoy it, talk about it, trade, share stories, etc. At the end of the day that's the fucking point of games, to have FUN.
I lost my save data but I felt the love that went into the game.
–- Update From New Post Merge ---
@.access:
Hey, hey! Leave the new pokémon alone, they are great. Once the dust is settled, Orbeetle will probably remain on my top20, maybe 10. And there are a lot of other great ones.
Hey we share the same Pokemon.
Cool.
Okay it's a really subjective thing but I really really don't like the starters final evol and the giant centipede..purplish..thing.It's no surprise GF kept so much of the new dex in secrecy, they probably knew the new pokémon were all the game had so they didn't want to exhaust all the things that could elicit a good reaction before the game was out. The fact they are arguing the leakers caused "irreparable injury" to Pokémon by revealing the game contents and that leading to "reduced fan interest and engagement" is pretty much an admission of knowing their game was shit and that they were trying to hide it (I mean, obviously TPCi is right on their lawsuit against breaches of contract, but I find their logic and wording very revealing).
When you think about it, the fact they revealed so much in Gen VII and the fact they revealed so little now was not a matter of different marketing strategies, it was a matter of confidence in their games. They knew Alola was appealing and the more they showed the more interest would be generated. And they knew Galar was the opposite.Never thought of it that way but now I know why they did that.
GF doesn't even have confidence that their game would fall apart once their fans know where to look so they decided to smoke it through.
Heh, this company really did grow up to become a multi-million traditionalist evil king-pin style group. -
I mean that's a pretty generalizing statement and while true, there's more than just a talented team being the end goal.
It's like people forget the entire process.
Pokemon is not a genre on its own, its built on the genre of RPG.
The sense of exploration and adventure of a young kid discovering unknown lands, meeting interesting characters and a feeling of world-building from deserts to ice mountains to parallel worlds.
Which by the way in this entry is extremely weak in that aspect.
Since when have the community lowered their standard to this end that it doesn't matter if elements of what makes up a RPG are weak as long as we managed to build a great team?
What's the point of having all this other aspects for years if it weren't improved on?
Obviously Pokemon isn't a full fledged rpg nor does it pretend to be but god at the very least put some effort into it.This is still subjective though. Even without good story pokemon games to me have always been enjoyable experiences. X and Y, for example, are particularly strong cases of a really weak story but a world so well-built and immersive that it still made the game fun.
It's not that people are lowering their standards, it's that what you think is weak is something other people don't think is weak. Several reviews, for example, have pointed out how hype the new gyms are and how much excitement this brings to the experience.Except in Gen 5 the themes were radically different People liked gen 5's plot because it is different from what the games have been about and the series seems to be going somewhere with it.
A deeper exploration of the very concepts the series introduced. A villain that challenges the players point of view.
A NEW POKEDEX THAT DOESN'T HALF ASS dropping the entire dex during the campaign run.There is a lot more characterization of the characters in Gen 5 as compared to SwSh.
Gym leaders actually do their thing and help stop Team Plasma, moving with their intentions in mind. No one could stop N because no one could and you had to.Please don't tell me you actually understand what the fuck was the villain's motivation and purpose in SwSh.
And even if you do understand, please at least acknowledge that it is terribly done.Locations like Black city White forest, the dragonspiral tower, N's castle were all designed and created to support the plot and narrative.
What the heck does Swsh do? Leave you out of the entire villain arc and design a half-ass basement expecting you to actually be impressed.
Shoving a "villain and legendaries" segment for no fucking reason because it kind of forget that it needs to do that.
Am I seriously suppose to be happy that I got a forest with a mist overlay and be wowed by their effort?There's points here where I agree with you, but you're still tossing so much highly subjective stuff that it's hard to really have a nuanced conversation on this.
Gen 5 did begin with a cool idea for a concept, but completely dropped it in favor of making Ghetsis OBJECTIVELY evil. The nuance of whether it was right to catch pokemon or not was removed completely in favor of just solving the story at the end.
Character development I'll admit is much more fleshed out in 5. Hop, Marnie and Bede had cool concepts go into them, but they went unexplored a lot of the times. The concept of legacy and progress was done fairly half-assedly and not really conveyed as well as it could have, compared to how well Bianca and Cheren go during the story.
But likewise, I'll toss out that there's things this game does better. The champion was significantly more interesting and worth defeating than Alder ever was. Also, in black and white completing the league made absolutely no sense… if you have a legendary dragon that reshaped the region in ages past, it makes no sense you would need to become champion for people to listen to you, and the idea that you had to race N to be champion was an artificial way to reconcile story with classic pokemon progression. And then also, despite being cool, the elite four are still mostly some assholes that are just sitting in a room waiting to exist for the player.The ultimate point is that we could sit here and talk all day about how each pokemon game succeeds and fails in its narrative, and this game doesn't fall drastically below or above others in its series. If anything, the core difference is that this is the one pokemon game where most fans went in ready to criticize, and I think that's fair to consider when looking at response from "the community"
Your point would have made sense if this game drastically improved on its previous iterations but the vast majority thinks its average at best.
Out of this discussion, your outlook on zelda and fire emblem would have garnered my full support. However, it's not a really good comparison to the pokemon franchise.Because the developers took risks and it paid off. Pokemon took almost zero risks in SwSh.
While the core is still dungeons and puzzle solving, BoTw approached it differently by spreading those mechanics out.
Overworld won the people over not because wow hurr durr overworld but because fuck does it look beautiful to the last strand of grass and does it feel alive as compared to the puppet towns in pokemon.
It also focuses on fluidity of movement, an arsenal of gadgets and interesting interactions with the environment while utilizing the graphical prowess of Switch.
No…wait. Yeah, it doesn't just focus, it upgrades on existing elements despite the cut in the depth of the dungeons, there was a compensation for it.What did we get from the dexit?
Okaaay maybe if we don't count the dexit as a variable why is the graphic so shitty and the towns so dead and the music so uninspiring and why can't i see myself in a lift moving or ANY effort put into the animationsAlso the new dyna-giga max is not a groundbreaking "new" makeover.
The series does this crap with every release.I felt this playing Three Houses.
While not a complete makeover of the franchise, once again the series took risks.
Turning it into more Persona like and a "visual novel" ish experience expanded their audience.
However, I don't think there's a dramatic reduction in overall content. In terms of writing, I'll go and say that the content in terms of writing might have been more than previous games.
The old aspects were there but presented in different ways (aux maps, characters maps replacing grinding/side events maps). I feel like instead of removing anything, adding the school and persona-esque aspects actually made it a lot more fun.
You're right that parts were recycled but it was so compelling it didn't mattered and it only worked because of the new aspects mentioned. Take those away and the people who would replay the same game 4 times drastically decrease.Now let's see what SwSh has added that has made the experience so much more compelling and interesting!!
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huh?Oh and while we are at it, FE developers actually gives a shit about their fanbase. A lot more than gamefreak.
This, once more, just comes off as completely subjective. You applaud risks and decisions from devs of games you like, while continuously shitting at gamefreak.
And yea, this game is definitely more safe than others in this list, but you can tell that focus went on mechanics in the wild area and gyms. And I'm definitely in approval of their decision to sacrifice some stuff like adding every single mon if it means there's a robust overworld where just exploring, catching and doing raids consumes a ton of my playtime.
Just because it's shit to you and you don't enjoy it doesn't make it objectively shit, and that's something YOU need to realize. Games are not made just for you.
I had this same impression of people when i started the game, I thought people were overly toxic in their hate.
At the end of this game? I think it is very justified.Toxicity is never justified. There are ways to express opinions and criticize products. Attacking the people behind those products is never the right way to go about it, and likewise continuously spouting hate without context is also not the way.
There's are tons of things to criticize about this game, but it's at the point where it's impossible to talk about them because any nuance cannot exist since people cannot seem to tolerate nuance and want to just full hate or leave.
You need to realize that Pokemon's fanbase is no longer the same fanbase it has when XY releases.
The people who are having fun have no relative experience with what a good rpg could really be or what Pokemon was like when it was at it's peak.
It's like people going to new Star wars movie and calling it the same kind of masterpiece compared to the older ones.
Or people who watch Transformers and call it Oscar worthy.
It doesn't matter to the casuals or the people who come in just because wow so cute! or hey when is this coming to pokemon go! or any variations of shallow praise.Why the fuck do I, as a long time fan who has been supporting this series consistently have to look pass at this behemoth of a company pandering to the masses so blatantly and ignoring their long time fans?
It's lazy because it is what it is, a cash grab that works because it builds on the momentum of its popularity.As a 70$ game designed for switch, this is unacceptable and mediocre. This is not a subjective statement.
Why can't they pander to both new comers and long time fans? Why must the backlash be that harsh from their long time fans?
Is it really that hard for a multi-million company to do?There's a lot of growing up that needs to happen here.
The Pokemon franchise appeals to millions of people of different ages. And in that sense, it's exactly the same as the fanbase that has existed since X/Y: new players, kids, and anyone in general who has that disposition to like pokemon.
There's tons of people enjoying this game with different backgrounds in gaming. I've played tons of RPGs, games of different genres, and the like, and would consider myself expert-level in most games, having done speedruns and tournaments for different games. And I'm having a TON OF FUN.
That's just one sample, and I know I'm not the only one. There's tons of youtube videos of people excited about the competitive changes, tons of people playing raids together, tons of people who know each and every pokemon by heart who are just enjoying their time.This thing of "casuals are ruining my games" is the same gatekeeping that existed for nerds years ago, where you couldn't be a REAL nerd unless x or y. This property, this game, doesn't belong to you and you don't get to decide who gets to rightfully enjoy it and who doesn't, or who should be the people getting to enjoy it at the expense of others.
If you are a longtime fan and the company isn't catering to you specifically, you are not obligated to keep on being a fan and the company is not obligated to do everything you want. The mature grown-up thing to do at that point is to go enjoy something else.Everything you said in this area is literally a subjective statement.
Also, game companies can't pander to everything because it's impossible. The same fans who shit at companies for releasing a game half-baked are the same people who shit at the same company for pushing back the release of a game, and those are the same fans who want ALL of the content to return in every sequel, but ALSO new content and also you can't have devs partake in crunch because it's inhuman, but still, release everything as soon as possible.
It's impossible to pander to fans, and I think this year in gaming will be an example in years to come of how the interaction between fans and the properties they consume is reaching new levels of toxic behavior and shit practices.Surely because something is popular and sell well it is of substance and of high quality.
There's no exceptions aren't they.
Nope, not in the movie industry
Or the manga industry
I mean naruto sells well must be consistently gold
oh i mean that new gacha game makes shit ton of money, props to their writing and uh beautiful assets.
I could go on and on about economics, marketing and how when something is popular doesn't mean that it's good but it's too long and I'm too gamefreak level lazy to do so.It's more mental gymnastics to have the perspective that the game is shit and the only reason so many people like it, it makes so much money, and it's so popular is just because of "the casuals".
There's probably enough success in this game to keep the property afloat, the companies afloat, and their multiple employees keeping their jobs and livelihoods. That's success.
There's tons of kids who will grow up to be pokemon fans because they had fun with this game. That's success.You can shit at gamefreak all day for being "lazy", but at least they're accomplishing something at a level of impact you don't seem capable of comprehending.
But not before I express my opinion and bitch about it because I feel like I kind of deserve to be able to do that after spending time and money on it.
Are people being toxic to the developers or are people actually calling out on their shit?
Because all I've been seeing is gamefreak trying to smoke their consumers and it seems to have worked.This is exactly the reason why Gamefreak shits over their core fans because the majority of their fanbase doesn't care about quality.
But you're right.
I should stop playing it because obviously the Pokemon games are not targeted for their core game fans anymore.Sure, the point of games is to have fun and it shouldn't be anyone's else business when someone is genuinely having fun.
However, it is equally unfair to just look at the good stuff and try to silence the opinions of those who point out the flaws.
Especially when the flaws are so glaring and while it might not affect them, have the damn decency to at least acknowledge it affects others and in this case, a majority of them.
Let the snowball of consumer fake bullshit positivism roll long enough and it'll turn big into a heap pile of trash.You aren't being silenced, CLEARLY, since your posts are still around for everyone to read. What is appreciated is if you at least respect everyone else enough to let them have their opinions instead of just jumping in and claim gamefreak is indefensible, everything is shit, and you're clearly right forever and ever and anyone who disagrees is wrong and silencing you.
Can YOU have the "damn decency" to acknowledge that other people are actually enjoying this game? So far you seem to just be dismissing all positive stuff as casual trash and "fake bullshit positivism."
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Main thumbnail is clickbaitey but this guy is generally a very thoughtful and balanced reviewer, and he brings up a lot of solid points.
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Just to add. Having recently played through gens 5 and 6, and also putting hundreds of hours into gen 7, I don't think Sw/Sh is on average inferior in terms of story or towns.
The story is lacking in all these games by RPG standards, often with a nonsensical or anticlimactic final act. And that's taking games where the story even exists; forget gen 1 etc. I'll give Sun/Moon the credit for developing cool characters. Lily, Gladion, and Guzma were well done, and so was Lusamine honestly. In that sense I've defended the plot in the past, but that doesn't mean the actual "story" potion of it wasn't short and predictable with no real satisfying conclusion. At least outside of the pretty much background-level "plot" in Sw/Sh there are some cool themes running such as legacy and inheritance. There are cool characters as well like Marnie but they don't get fleshed out as much.
I don't even know what to say about towns… they've always been pretty small or empty, with no more than a few houses/buildings of interest and sometimes a set piece. Sure, the ONE big city in gen 5 and 6 (Castelia and Lumiose) outscales the counterpart in Sw/Sh (Wyndon), but TBH those cities are annoying as fuck with the scrolling isometric view, segmented areas, and a bunch of buildings you could explore with literally nothing of interest in them. I'll take Wyndon any day.
Nobody cared before, but suddenly now it's appalling. I was gonna make a different post instead, about my experience in the battle tower, but I guess I'll do that later.
It's a straw that broke the camel's back thing. Yes, the stories in every Pokemon game (except for Mystery Dungeon 2) are at best cliche and below average, with gen 6 being the low point.
Every game brings some sort of change, refinement or advancement, but ever since Black and White we lose at least as much as we gain with every new game.That gets really frustrating after a while, and it really doesn't help that since gen 3 the initial release of each game has been noticeably unfinished.
Sword and Shield are no different in that regard, but the quadruple punch of having the game built up as the ultimate Pokemon game on a home console made specifically for hardcore fans, then learning that a large number (more than half as it turned out) of Pokemon were being cut from the game, combined with the years of silent resentment fans have had for Gamefreak at having to put up with this cycle, further combined with the fact that all the other big Nintendo games have shown amazing innovation on the same console have caused a lot of people to complain very loudly about some old problems that should have been solved on the GBA and DS. -
How the heck is it that subjective when I say that Wild area and dynamax is not any way a makeover or a whole new innovation as compared to what Zelda and FE3H has done
I mean I know the term subjective has its use but wow are you pushing it.
I would reply because I thought we could have a civil discussion and I was in no way targeting you but I don't really feel that this conversation is going anywhere.
Maybe I'll do it later when I'm not outside and on a phoneJust to get things right I understand WHY it sells I just don't AGREE with where this series is going and really dislike the game design.
How the fuck do you even define toxicity.
Masuda DID try to smoke the fans and lie through his fucking teeth.
The frame rate is bad online. The online is terrible unless you have a discord and even then it suffers.
GTS was removed blatantly for Home to be capitalized.
There are glitches and graphical fails.
The plot is bad even for kids.
Am I toxic if I point this out after finishing the game because I'm not nitpicking and it's so apparent.
So what am I supposed to do now praise the new Butterfree that I can't even catch because it's such a hassle nor can I even raise it in the first place can't I.
Here that's your decency you want?Who exactly is pushing their subjective opinion on who?
Why do u need to caps that you have ton of fun like it's some kind of fact to fall back on and trumps everything else
Holy crap this is reaching new levels.This is as if one piece goes to shit and we become cult level of acceptance no matter what happens just because it still sells well.
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Unrelated to anything else: I found out that Pokemon Centers wish you happy birthday if you enter one in the day. Curries made also have a birthday candle. I think it's based on an NPC you give your birthday to for a horoscope.
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I think that at least since gen 6 they have been doing that.
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I haven't played a Pokemon game since Gen 4, so it's new to me either way.
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Oh, cool. Is it your birthday? There is no gift but there is a cake.
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Oh, cool. Is it your birthday? There is no gift but there is a cake.
It was until about fifteen minutes ago. Thanks all the same, though. :)
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I disagree with one thing or two (I don't see the problem in having strong pokémon in the WA you can't catch until you raise your proficiency level to that point. It helps world building to know the strong ones are there as well instead of wild things just magically becoming stronger as you do), and the title is too click-baity, but in general it got things nailed down. Particularly the part about "the target audience" being used to deflect criticism - you would think after Go being the most profitable product, it should go beyond saying small children alone being the target audience of TPCi is something left in the past.
It also nails the part about "if you are having fun, no problem with it, have fun". If people really think others disliking the game and voicing their criticism is hurting their enjoyment, then I don't know, maybe try to actually post positive things about your experience instead of only engaging to reply people who disliked it and trying to convince them they are wrong for that?
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Pokemon Sword and Shield and Gamefreak is similar to Fallout 76 and Bethesda (though not as bad). When you start stripping away the main thing that brought people to the game then people are going to have problems particularly with the ones that has always been there.
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@.access:
It also nails the part about "if you are having fun, no problem with it, have fun". If people really think others disliking the game and voicing their criticism is hurting their enjoyment, then I don't know, maybe try to actually post positive things about your experience instead of only engaging to reply people who disliked it and trying to convince them they are wrong for that?
I usually just ignore anyone that's being excessively negative. I don't mind criticism in and if itself, but if all I ever see or hear from someone is negativity about something I like, I feel neither desire nor obligation to pay any attention to what they have to say.
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On a more positive (?) note…
the starter evolutions are here!!!
:D
Well, I'm in for the official artwork. And Gigantamax Snorlax is also officially revealed and it will become available starting next Wednesday. Gigantamax Lapras appear in the end, but nothing about it has made to the official website.
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I'm six badges in now and while the cities since Turffield have gotten better and the later routes are more large and sprawling, relatively speaking, I'm definitely starting to see why people are saying that the game's pacing starts falling off a cliff in the latter half of the game. Returning to Hammerlocke after getting the Fairy Badge and hearing that there's a problem with the power plant that might cause Dynamax Pokemon to go crazy like some kind of kaiju movie stands out to me especially since that could've easily led to a dungeon the equivalent of the Team Rocket Mahogany Town hideout or the Plasma Frigate but here we're just told to move along.
I've still been trying to rotate party members in and out and trying to keep them roughly on-par with each Gym Leader and so far it's helped keep battle more balanced without me running roughshod over them, though the only times I've felt truly pressured were against Nessa and Gordie. In the former I underestimated Drednaw's speed and accidentally let it set up rain with Max Geyser, then in the latter I couldn't finish off Barbaracle before it popped off Shell Smash and it probably would've swept my team with Razor Shell if I hadn't remembered that I had a Gyarados to switch in to. The battle with Hop outside of Hammerlocke on the way to Circhester was actually the closest I've come to outright wiping so far, partially because I was using a slightly under-leveled and unbalanced team, but still. Between Confuse Ray and Shadow Claw crit hax that Trevenant wiped out half my team before I could take it down and I only had one Pokémon left at the end.
Lastly, seeing Falinks in action has made it the best new Pokémon of the crop. I love the little guy(s).
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Many of the new designs are dumb in picture but beautiful in action, like my boys Falinks.
The only trainer that managed to KO me was the stupid coffee owner of the dragon city. He’s leveled for the trip back, not the starting trip, and my over reliance on bugs meant that the slurpuf with flamethrower just took down half my party effortlessly
I had close calls in gyms and even with one of the later Hop fights, but the game had given me a ton of revives and well..
–- Update From New Post Merge ---
About comparing Pokémon vs persona 5 or dq11 in the gameplay plane:
In persona 5 each party member has 8 slots for magic powers or passives, two weapons and the standard options, and social link options, plus your MC has like 8-10 slots for each equiped persona.
Dragon quest 11 had like for physical characters just over 2 pages of 8 items each, with the magical ones going well into 5 or 6 pages, with a ton of those options becoming useless but being for sure more than six beyond the standard attack/defense, and the pep system.
Those RPG are balanced against enemies with way more health than yourself, so damaging and healing options are more plentiful in character actions and item management.
And Pokémon has 6 bodies, 4 moves, a passive and an item to play, and up to 2 battle slots for those bodies.
It’s not like the complexity of those games exploded recently either, they made things more convenient and streamlined, and allowed to change party members in battle (no one wants to get to use the PC in battle I hope) but no matter how beautiful and entertaining those systems are, it is product of polish, not overhauling. The biggest change I guess is in dq that we went it o a more ATB style where you pick your actions during your turn according to your speed instead of all actions at the start of the turn -!
And in persona one of the features was the ability to control your whole party.The other point is the disparity of power between your team and the enemy, one imp is easy for one character, but they can be from 1 to 6, at most the time that you have been the most outnumbered is 5 wild mons against one yours and your party.
1v1, 2v2, some other no longer supported formats. We had experiments with partner trainers in gen 4, and a couple of 2v2 with hop at your side.
What is the actual problem?
The lack of polish (meaning animations, streamlining, information, feedback)?
Lack of options (4 moves or switch is just not enough)?
Lack of challenges who are resistant to regular strategy of “bring super effective” ?
The restrictive aspect of the required symmetry (you can use almost the same as the opponent, so they can’t have an unfair advantage to be truly able to mess you up without just bigger numbers)? -
I think with Persona and DQ while it is not an overhaul, they did incorporate new elements and improve on existing ones significantly
They also have consistency despite their length. No matter which point you are in the game, the next segment has a little surprise .
What Pokemon does is not listen to their fans or improve on what works but introduce something new and then take it away again.
The blatant simplicity of the last few dungeons(if you can even call it that) feels like an insult to the genre's previous trying caves and mountains.
The new Wild area has no complexity and no real sense of engagement besides online features.
Every release is a rinse and repeat in terms of UI and battle mechanics.It has worked so far and people loved for certain aspects to remain the same but not to the extent of being almost stagnant.
This of course putting aside the lack of effort in the animations and graphical expectations it was supposed to meet. -
“General improvement” “expectations that were supposed to meet” “listen to their fans” are arguments as useful as “common sense”, as I have heard fans argue that it should be real time and have raids since forever.
Those are points that aren’t conductive to a discussion besides “elaborate” but the tone of certainty says “I don’t want to reach a conclusion, I like mine enough”
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Hmmmm….
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What is the actual problem?
The lack of polish (meaning animations, streamlining, information, feedback)?
Lack of options (4 moves or switch is just not enough)?
Lack of challenges who are resistant to regular strategy of “bring super effective” ?
The restrictive aspect of the required symmetry (you can use almost the same as the opponent, so they can’t have an unfair advantage to be truly able to mess you up without just bigger numbers)?Those are all wrapped up in the same thing. The actual problem is ALL of those things are present as problems. To different degrees but yeah, they can all be improved on.
I had a long post just above about how the combat giving you 87 messages per turn is stupid at this point. Put an explamation mark on super effective attacks, announce the weather/status once and let the ailment just be visual, things like that go a long way.
Just streamlining the existing experience would go a long way to freshening it up and making it feel more current. That wouldn't make the challenge or difficulty any better, but that would be a good start, and maybe that alone would freshen it up enough for the staple gameplay to still feel fine.
For actually changing the rest, they've experimented with 2 on 2 battles, 3 on 3, rotation, sky, hoard, totem, megas, super moves, and now gigamax. They keep trying out a system, then they throw it away instead of polishing it and refining it. I have no clue what would be the actual best thing for the gameplay because it hasn't changed at all in 20 years aside from adding a few more types and some more moves. (But now they've removed 100 of those.) Except I think the game that had 3 on 3 battles and rotations only had two or three instances of it in the entire game except for an optional end game stuff, and sky battles popped up maybe 5 times. THere was no time or reason to build around those or experiment with them or see if they were even any good. I don't know if those would be a good direction, there was no chance to really test them out.
Some of the spinoffs have been real time move around the battlefield affairs and those have been fun.
I think encouraging more 2 on 2 as a standard is probably the way to go.. because then you're thinking more about synergy between your critters, and every wild combination and trainer is suddenly vastly more interesting and loaded with possibilities. (They'd need to refine only being able to catch them after whittling down tho.) Its hard to say because the one game where it seemed like they were really going to push that, they made every 2 on 2 area a seperate patch of wild grass so it was always avoidable. And because the game wasn't actually designed or balanced around the 2 on 2, it was better just to dodge them because… it meant twice as many menus coming up and less chance to just one shot everything, and made it harder to do captures, so it was an extra chore rather than more engaging.
More moves at once would also go a long way. Trimmming it down to just four makes you pick and choose, but then its ALWAYS 1 super effective type move, maybe two if theres enough versatility (like grass you'll take a heal move and a heavy damage move, electric you might keep paralysis and a strong move, etc.) two coverage moves, and one thing to sustain if you can get it. And it also means when you're in the wild, every single encounter you have with something at that level is going to do the exact same four things. Six moves would give you a little more versatility, and if combined with regular 2 on 2s, more reason to keep an assist move or something that isn't just for yourself.
Or, go the Nino kuni route and weaker critters get more moves, so they have versatility over raw power.
That's just going from what they have. Other things could work too but its hard to judge without seeing things tried and experimented with. Maybe go into an an actual active time system where your speed actually matters, and you can get off two hits before the other guy does one instead of always being alternating turns. They'd have to rebalance it some to accommodate a change like that, but isn't that the entire reason they cut the roster in half?
I'd also say the type chart needs a SERIOUS revisit and rebalancing where certain types stop having 6 strengths and 5 weaknesses... or how super effective moves, on a pokemon of that type, do such extreme overkill damage to somethign thats weak to it there's literally no other strategy worth considering. The whole rock/paper/scissors dynamic is core to the gameplay, but now that moves are actually just straight up labelled as to whats effective or not after you fight something once (which was a good change last game given the sheer ammount of things) also kind of just drives home how iffy that system actually is. But that, along with havign 6 critters in your party is so grandfathered in thats probably never going to change, even if being able to swap literally your entire team at any time now outside of battles makes it more redundant than ever. There's very little reason to truly optimize or make any hard choices. Just throw in literally anything in back you feel like passively leveling now.
Here;s a post I wrote about Nino Kuni nearly 7 years and two pokemon generations ago.
[hide]The only problem with this game is it's going to make it harder to go back to pokemon after this. It does so many thins right that pokemon should have implemented years ago. In a lot of ways, Ni No Kuni is the 3D console Pokémon game we’ve been requesting from Nintendo for years. Pokes have way more strategy and elemental weakness coordination in their battles, but…[hide]-player character being able to fight. The Poke world is less oriented towards it, but when the team runs out of PP, it would be nice to have an option beyond using an item or running away. Even a trainer with Magikarp-level stats would be better than a trainer that can do nothing at all.
-the pokedex/wizard's manual How does one become a Pokémon Professor with an empty Pokédex anyway? Nearly every monster in the game (and details about the world) are in the book from the start. You won' see some of them for many many hours, but you're not going to pour over the entries until you have something in mind to look at anyway. I know the appeal is "catch em all to get the data" but… it'd be nice to have at least SOMETHING to start with. it even lists the moves they can learn!
-different monsters have different numbers of attacks. Hey, even that weak thing can be useful if it has six slots instead of everything else's four. Kuni also encourages keeping the same thing rather than catching it wild since its becoming friendly with it and evolving it are what give it the extra move slots. Even if you don't care about the first form moves, that's useful!
-monsters appear in the overworld instead of random generation. So you can hunt or dodge specifics! And dual and triple battles mean you can still be surprised. The random pop up goes back to the NINTENDO era of RPGS, and its been fixed since Chrono Trigger. There's really no call for it anymore.
-evolution path. Every damn thing works the same way, and EVERYTHING gets a divergant split at the end so you can better customize to your needs. Some Pokémon have been treated to branching evolutionary paths, but most of the time these alternate forms are only obtainable through the obscurest of means. Eevee is an example of this, as it can evolve into one of 6 different types. Some of these evolutions make sense: Give Eevee a Fire Stone, Water Stone or Thunder Stone and she becomes Flareon, Vaporeon or Jolteon, respectively. But if you want an Umbreon or an Espeon, be prepared to grind out “happiness levels,” a stat that can only be checked by visiting a random person in a random house in a random town. Even after gaining the requisite happiness levels, you’ll need to make sure your Eevee levels up at the correct time of day. Frankly, if something needs to be explained by GameFAQs before I can understand it, then something is missing from the game. Give more Pokémon branching evolutions, but make sure the way to obtain them is clear to the player. Better yet, just let us decide which ones we want.
-Experience Share. Everything in the active party levels up. Pure and simple. Most RPGs do this, regardless of who does any fighting.
-multiple trainers. Pokemon throws this at you ocassionally with an ally who has random stuff you can't do anything about. But Kuni you get three guys wach with their own team of three, plus a spot for reserves. It'd be great to do the same in Pokemon. Obviously the teams of six are super ingrained so no changing that, but... the handful of access reserves or the second trainer with things you give them are great. It'd be nice to actually be able to make a water trainer or something while the main character develops a balanced team.
-story I already care more about Oliver than I do any of the pokemon kid trainers of the last 15 years. I know pokes are based around the combat and not the plot, but is it REALLY so much to ask for both? [/hide]
[/hide]They've got overworld mons now, at least! And interesting to note that there I actually wanted permanent group experience share, and thats the one thing Pokemon actually has done, and I don't like it. So you can't really tell if something is going to work in a game or not, but I'd guess that boils down to the difference in difficulty curve and overall game pacing. The pokemon exp share overlevels you, the ninikuni one got you to exactly the right spot I guess? Or maybe just the fact it had actual dedicated multiple trainers and teams made it feel better. Plus the battles were active and your critters were on a time limit so you'd be forced to swap critters in battle instead of just keeping one super effective guy in front at all times, so you still got to see the ones in back regularly and juggle them on the fly. While pokemon tings just leech exp and you're not paying any attention to some of them and don't even know what their move sets are because you haven't had to use or get comfortable or think about them.
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The Wild Area, what it could have been. I will put the complaints under tags so I don't feel bad for spreading negativity.
! Add some high level trainers there for the post game, unique NPCs for you to interact (the digging duo were a good example, shouldn't be the only one), some old ruins, a temple you can explore, puzzles you need to solve in order to gain access to new areas… the possibilities are endless to actually make the maps unique so the different sub-areas don't look all exactly the same. Nothing of what I mentioned would be new to the franchise, nothing beyond what they have done before and therefore beyond their skills, and that just makes the more underwhelming we ended up with that vast wasteland.
That's particularly appalling when you consider the Wild Area is Galar/SwSh poster feature, if they didn't walked the extra mile there and settled for "it is there, enjoy, it's pokémon", how could you expect the extra effort on anything else? I don't know who and what to blame, I agree calling GF lazy is irresponsible when we don't know how things went, maybe they actually did their best within the annual schedule, maybe this is something far beyond their power within TPCi and Nintendo, but regardless of blame the reality is that the resulting product is what it is. -
Man I really shouldnt have sold my PS3 before I finished Ni no Kuni.
Wonder if there's a save file mod somewhere. -
Ni no kuni will be on digital sale on switch.
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Man I really shouldnt have sold my PS3 before I finished Ni no Kuni.
Wonder if there's a save file mod somewhere.Its on both PS4 and Switch.
Its a game I enjoyed right up until the end, because I went for the platinum on it there was a tooooon of end game grind and that soured my experience, but it was pretty solid up until that point.
Ninokuni 2 of course completely dropped the pokemon system for a pikmin one instead, which is a shame because they had a lot of good stuff for their first time out.
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I suppose I might as well add my opinions about the game. It's gonna be random musings because that is just my style.
I went into Sword and Shield as blind as I could manage. I knew the starters and I stumbled upon 3 or 4 random other Pokemon by being on the internet. Other than that, I knew that lots of people were unhappy because of a smaller Pokedex and a forced ExpShare, but that's it.
I'm not a big graphics person. As long as they reach a certain threshold, I don't even notice or care. So that wasn't an issue at all.
Protagonist me being the most silent and passive person imaginable was unfortunate. Hop was fine but too loud which goes hand in hand with me being a bystander. I enjoyed Bede and actually thought his little story arc was fun and unexpected. Until he randomly challenged me in the end and everybody was fine with it. That whole final tournament was such a tease. Just let me fight the champ already, I don't want random challengers interrupting a scheduled tournament, I don't want Rose to randomly interrupt his own (?) scheduled tournament! I just wanna become the champion…also, it seems super unfair that my pokemon had to fight Bede and immediately afterwards participate in the tournament. But anway…
The whole thing about Rose trying to fight gobal warming or whatever he was doing was super sloppy and yeah, only hearing about more important people fighting Dynamax pokemon throughout the story was very frustrating. There wasn't really any payoff to that either. We eventually go down to the basement to confront Rose and fight him because why exactly? Weren't we trying to stop Eternatus? Which wasn't in the basement. So we go out of our way to battle Rose who wasn't doing anything and afterwards confront the legendary Pokemon. I was looking forward to an interesting fight in which I would try to catch Eternatus with a Premier Ball because I just like to do that with my legendaries. So I stocked up on them by getting about 50 just in case. Turns out there's no chance of not catching this one. And I don't even have to weaken it, I just kill it off. That was disappointing. Post-game was pretty forgettable (lol at the random betrayal by newly introduced assistant), except I quite enjoyed hanging out with Piers. I did not enjoy the first three or four gym leaders letting me know that they would be around should I ever need their help. What about right now when we are currently fighting off Dynamax pokemon throughout the land?! No? Okay, we'll deal with it, I guess.
That was a lot of story talk and ultimately that doesn't really matter in a Pokemon game. So let's move on to other things.
I hated the ExpShare until I realized that the game was balanced around it and I actually still had to grind every now and then. Now I thoroughly enjoy having it. Although it being optional seems like a no-brainer.
I was not a fan of Dynamax pokemon and I think I still don't really like the concept. But I got used to stalling for three turns and then proceeding with the battle.
The Gym Challenges started out great. Until suddenly the last two challenges consisted of…fighting a bunch of trainers. Yeah, I hear players like doing that. I wish we could have gotten another one like the Ghost challenge instead.
The limited Pokedex doesn't really faze me at all. All I care about is the ability of finishing the dex and a smaller list makes that easier. What doesn't make it easier is the very limited way of trading at least when compared to Sun and Moon. Plus the fact that the online service requires you to pay more money. I actually didn't know this until after I had beaten the game and I was trying to figure out how to get exclusives. That was a sucky realization. My biggest gripe with this game, possibly the only actual one.I suppose I could talk about the Pokemon, huh? I liked the new additions for the most part. My team consisted of nothing but new pokemon that I liked visually, so I used (time to look up all the English names…):
Rillaboom (now looking at the other starters' final evolutions, I got real lucky…)
Sandaconda (I wasn't sure about Silicobra, but good lord, Sandaconda is glorious)
Greedent (probably my favourite design and it packed a punch, too)
Corviknight (I encountered Rookidee's final form in the Wild Area and knew I had to get one)
Drednaw (I was close to kicking Chewtle off the team but I liked the type coverage, Drednaw looks great though)
Coalossal (what do you mean, my team can't handle Fighting types…?)Thievul and Dubwool both made it far thanks to their designs but were eventually left behind. I also really liked Centiskorch but I never got around to using it.
All in all, I spend a good week playing the game and had a very hard time putting it down. I have now started breeding and creating perfect competitive pokemon that I will then never ever use because it's more fun for me to make them than use them. Except maybe in the battle tower a little bit. So that should let me get a lot more hours of enjoyment out of the game. So it was definitely worth getting. But it could have been a much better game.
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Its on both PS4 and Switch.
Its a game I enjoyed right up until the end, because I went for the platinum on it there was a tooooon of end game grind and that soured my experience, but it was pretty solid up until that point.
Ninokuni 2 of course completely dropped the pokemon system for a pikmin one instead, which is a shame because they had a lot of good stuff for their first time out.
I still haven't played Ni No Kuni 2 because of how disappointed I was in them dropping the combat system. I thought 1's was excellent and with refinement, could have been a definitive type of experience.
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Sword and Shield are no different in that regard, but the quadruple punch of having the game built up as the ultimate Pokemon game on a home console made specifically for hardcore fans, then learning that a large number (more than half as it turned out) of Pokemon were being cut from the game, combined with the years of silent resentment fans have had for Gamefreak at having to put up with this cycle, further combined with the fact that all the other big Nintendo games have shown amazing innovation on the same console have caused a lot of people to complain very loudly about some old problems that should have been solved on the GBA and DS.
Honestly I think the only thing different this time around is people having their expectations blown way out of proportion. Nobody promised the ultimate revolutionary console game for hardcore fans. They simply assured people that a mainline Switch game was in fact coming, after fans questioned 1) Ultra S/M being on 3DS instead of Switch and 2) Let's Go seeming like a dumbed-down casual experience. Expecting this entry to suddenly magically be perfect is totally unreasonable.
I get being upset about the Dex but that's its own issue and trying to dismantle every other little issue and justifying it as "the straw that broke the camel's back" is a bit warped. If just about every aspect has been bad and lazy and boring for multiple generations, maybe people should have been making themselves heard that whole time, maybe with their wallet by moving on to fully-fleshed RPGs that fit their preferences. For current times, Ni no Kuni is a fantastic suggestion. I also think it's always, just always, a lose-lose situation with a lot of these people. The Wild Area is a vast expanse with free-roam camera, mons showing in the overworld as well as in grass, dangerous over-leveled wild encounters, and co-op raid battles. This is a massive, drastic change for the series and a huge step in a good direction IMO. But it doesn't matter because people point to anything they can as still being stagnant, complain that the area isn't big enough or diverse enough or that they can't catch the big overpowered stuff or that the trees are ugly. These people are going to be pissed no matter what so it feels pointless.
The only way we'll ever get a Pokémon game with the type of overhauls people are discussing (if you can even call it Pokémon by then) is if they shift to a much slower development cycle, with years between releases. Only then would it be fair to begin comparing Sw/Sh to some of these other massive titles that do this or that better. I think that would be great, but that's not the world we live in. Best to move on from the series instead if that's your bar. That said I'm also guessing the shift from handheld to console was rough for Gamefreak. I would expect things to go more smoothly in that regard moving forward.
But I mean, I do understand the complaints. And Robby has a lot of sensible points about QoL improvements. There are several things I think they could have done better and Switch Online is still terrible, but I feel I can't really have constructive conversations about any of it because of how overwhelmingly negative and toxic a very vocal subset of people has been for months. But…
Except maybe in the battle tower a little bit.
I do still want to talk about the Battle Tower! And I don't have that many good things to say about it so lol. (BTW Huschel your text bolding was… interesting :P )
The main issue with the Battle Tower is the rewards suck. Once you clear Master tier, streaks mean nothing because you still get 2BP every battle. You don't even get anything for making it through all 10 battles and beating Leon again; literally nothing. You continue to get periodic rewards for total number of wins, but there's no way it's worth it unless you just absolutely need the BP for a specific mint. If you need bottle caps just farm Watts for the digging duo instead.
The other issue is most of the enemy teams are annoying and gimmicky. Tons of stall, which I guess is understandable since you can Dynamax but the NPCs can't, but it makes it largely unfun when you're just constantly playing around protection moves and status ailments. Sure, use Yawn and then Effect Spore my next mon and then get a double Protect and then Draining Kiss. Thrilling. The Battle Tree in S/M was way better.
Honestly though I just ended up beating everything with the "Skill" rental team. The best way I found to break through that was to No Retreat with Falinks then Dynamax and sweep. That team is really weak to Fairy but Falinks can usually still break through. On the rare occasion that Falinks got taken out, I was always able to sweep with Gyarados afterward (sometimes without even needing Dragon Dance). I think Duraladon might be there to deal with Fairies but I mostly went with Grimmsnarl because it can stall Leon's Charizard surprisingly well and lower its Special Attack to pathetic levels.
I only lost a single time due to getting screwed massively by RNG. Got frozen at one point and didn't thaw for 5 turns in a row, then another mon with a Quick Claw triggered it every turn and never let me attack. Otherwise it was a breeze. I tried the "Rain" team for a period as well. I won every match with it, but rounds felt much slower because it doesn't break through stall-y teams as quickly. When the opponent stalls out the rain or gets up a Tailwind it just takes a while.
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The online really needs to be made better. It's too difficult to find someone to join you and too difficult to join another person. It's been very frustrating.
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I went into Sword and Shield as blind as I could manage. I knew the starters and I stumbled upon 3 or 4 random other Pokemon by being on the internet. Other than that, I knew that lots of people were unhappy because of a smaller Pokedex and a forced ExpShare, but that's it.
Same here! I saw a bunch of Galarian forms from thumbnails on Youtube videos but other than that, I was incredibly blind going in. The forced ExpShare caught me off guard but I suppose if the Champion still outlevels you at the end, it was there for a reason.
I also just finished Sword recently. Hop had quite a bit of dialogue, didn't he? Geez. Much of the story was revolved around his development. I couldn't help but imagine someone who was powering through the game having to see Hop 10+ times a play session. At least Hau was amusing and left an impression on me. Hop can go in the pile with all the Gen 6 rivals that I barely remember.
All of the wacky moments were great and made up for the weaker than usual story. Opal got the most laughs out of me. I didn't expect more questions during the battle with her. And the brainwashing of Bede was perfect. Cramorant shenanigans, the rejected Fisher Price toy fossils, Piers' silent introduction, and Flapple's existance just showed that GameFreak is starting to lose their marbles, and I love it.
! Sordward and Shielbert can do no wrong in my eyes. Just fucking hysterical. It's really hard to pay attention to the text boxes when that hair takes up half the screen. Opal was my fav for a while but right at the end, she got supplanted.
Gen 7's designs weren't bad at all but I think Gen 8 is way better and probably up there with Gen 6 for me. Going down the list, I can't really find a new mon I don't like besides 3 of the fossils and maybe Impadimp and Inteleon. I always pick the water starter and finally got the objectively worst looking one lol. But it's awesome signature move gives it a pass. In the inevitable sequel I'm definitely picking Scorbunny. So I didn't talk to the Day Care person that gives out Toxel and found out way later lol. I probably would've had it on my team. But I happened to get Arctozolt from the Fossils which covers Electric. It also happens to be the only Fossil mon that doesn't look like a mistake.
My team ended up being
Inteleon
Centiskorch
Flapple
Grapploct
Grimmsnarl
ArctozoltCentiskorch was the MVP for being pretty damn bulky and hit like a truck. Falinks was hard to move on from but Grapploct is just the better gimmick Fighting type. Flapple was the only one that couldn't pull its weight late game but I had to keep it because it's so ridiculous. I kept trying to lead with it and use Dragon Dance but always got quickly beaten anyways. I had to break my No Revive rule just so it wouldn't fall too behind in experience. So I don't do anything as intense as a Nuzlocke but I try to go through the game with no grinding, Set instead of Switch, no revives during battle, and as little healing as possible. I wiped once against the cafe guy and again at Leon because Aegislash took out a couple of my Pokemon and his Charizard was surprisingly fast.(assuming it doesn't have EVs.) I probably spammed potions during a couple fights as well but I don't recall exactly which ones. Dynamax/Gigantamax was way easier to combat than the broken totems in Gen 7, but I want to know the math behind them in raids(which I haven't done much of.) The HP and/or defensive boosts seem like they're massive.
I'm not sure if I'll try to finish the dex since I haven't since Omega Ruby but–trigger warning--it's not as daunting now is it?
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I do still want to talk about the Battle Tower! And I don't have that many good things to say about it so lol. (BTW Huschel your text bolding was… interesting :P )
I appreciate the feedback. And you're right, I should have bolded Battle Tower. :(
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! Sordward and Shielbert can do no wrong in my eyes. Just fucking hysterical. It's really hard to pay attention to the text boxes when that hair takes up half the screen. Opal was my fav for a while but right at the end, she got supplanted.
Oh, yes. Those two should be part of the main plot, their antics were the best thing in the entire game story. The part about giving it "1 star" had me legit laughing for a good while
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! Am I the only one who found it even funnier (probably not in an intentional way) that every time Sordward and Shielbert stole something the regular happy "got an item" theme played?
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Honestly I think the only thing different this time around is people having their expectations blown way out of proportion. Nobody promised the ultimate revolutionary console game for hardcore fans. They simply assured people that a mainline Switch game was in fact coming, after fans questioned 1) Ultra S/M being on 3DS instead of Switch and 2) Let's Go seeming like a dumbed-down casual experience. Expecting this entry to suddenly magically be perfect is totally unreasonable.
The bare minimum we should reasonably have expected was a significantly larger than average game with all of the older models and animations for all 314 returning Pokemon redone from scratch. If the game was big enough and polished enough (and they followed through on their promise to make all-new models and animations for all the old Pokemon, making everything look way better on the Switch) I think most people would be a lot happier.
I get being upset about the Dex but that's its own issue and trying to dismantle every other little issue and justifying it as "the straw that broke the camel's back" is a bit warped. If just about every aspect has been bad and lazy and boring for multiple generations, maybe people should have been making themselves heard that whole time, maybe with their wallet by moving on to fully-fleshed RPGs that fit their preferences.
I agree, and that did happen a fair amount, but the games always sold like crazy regardless.
I distinctly remember joining an online Pokemon community for trading in 2007 and immediately being confronted by a lot of hate and bitterness for Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, Diamond and Pearl, but people kept playing because the games consumed a large amount of time for a relatively small amount of money and it was fun to catch em all.For current times, Ni no Kuni is a fantastic suggestion. I also think it's always, just always, a lose-lose situation with a lot of these people. The Wild Area is a vast expanse with free-roam camera, mons showing in the overworld as well as in grass, dangerous over-leveled wild encounters, and co-op raid battles. This is a massive, drastic change for the series and a huge step in a good direction IMO. But it doesn't matter because people point to anything they can as still being stagnant, complain that the area isn't big enough or diverse enough or that they can't catch the big overpowered stuff or that the trees are ugly. These people are going to be pissed no matter what so it feels pointless.
I bought Sword almost exclusively because of the innovations, so I wouldn't say it doesn't matter.
However… calling the Wild Area "a huge step in a good direction" is problematic because we have no good reason to believe it won't be removed for the next game. Gamefreak's innovations are a lot like Sonic Team's, with each new game having promising new features that never end up fully realized.The stagnation complaints largely come from the fact that many of the returning features were also never fully realized because for whatever reason no one at Gamefreak was allowed to put any significant time, effort, or thought into properly refining them. Obtaining and hatching eggs is my favorite example of a horribly implemented hand-me-down feature that doesn't respect the player's time in any way.
The only way we'll ever get a Pokémon game with the type of overhauls people are discussing (if you can even call it Pokémon by then) is if they shift to a much slower development cycle, with years between releases. Only then would it be fair to begin comparing Sw/Sh to some of these other massive titles that do this or that better. I think that would be great, but that's not the world we live in. Best to move on from the series instead if that's your bar. That said I'm also guessing the shift from handheld to console was rough for Gamefreak. I would expect things to go more smoothly in that regard moving forward.
Every single person I have ever spoken to on this subject in the thousands of discussions I've had with people over the last ten years agrees that Gamefreak needs to switch to a much slower development cycle.
A lot of those people buy the games anyway and just complain. That is the world we live in.But I mean, I do understand the complaints. And Robby has a lot of sensible points about QoL improvements. There are several things I think they could have done better and Switch Online is still terrible, but I feel I can't really have constructive conversations about any of it because of how overwhelmingly negative and toxic a very vocal subset of people has been for months. But…
I don't want to put this in an antagonistic way, but you really have to recognize that there's an equally toxic subset of Sword and Shield defenders who continually harass people critical of the games. The problem boils down to Twitter and 4chan assholes with no shame and no filter.
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Alrighty, I need one more Fossilized Dino and I will have a Living Dex of everything I can get by myself in Shield. Plus 4 Sword exlusives. I suppose once that is done, I can get to shiny hunting or breeding. Although what's the point of it all when Umbreon can't learn Toxic anymore? Why would you force me out of my comfort zone like that? It's plain rude is what it is.
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Ever since I beat the fifth gym the game keeps crashing every time I put my Switch on standby mode.
I haven't lost any data yet but I can't believe they haven't patched this.
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I'll repeat myself. Falinks is one of those designs who are shit in the leak, but they take so much life and personality on movement.
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Yeah I love my Falinks. Dude is fun to camp around with. Love his cheer when we win.
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Oh my god, I hate the trading system in this game. Why did they get rid of the drop-off/request system? It was basically perfect!
Anyway, getting close to the end now. Finished the semi-finals and beat what's-her-name from Rose Tower.
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I'm also a big fan of Falinks. It's just a freaking wonderful design, through and through. I think if they ever bring back baby pokemon, it'd be a prime candidate for a prevo.