Now, I'm assuming that most of us here love the Pokemon series, and it is a great series. But this is not a troll thread - rather I feel that I am probably not the only one that feels that Pokemon, as a series, has flaws that are worth thinking about. It's very possible to recognise the flaws and still love the series for what it is: heck, there are plenty of films, games (and even people!) that I love, even with full awareness of their shortcomings. So I'm just going to briefly suggest some areas where I think the series potentially has issues and I'd be interested to hear other opinions.
Too easy: let's be honest, you've never struggled to complete a Pokemon game. Is this a bad thing? Maybe not - for most players it's not whether you complete it but how you complete it (ie what Pokemon you use etc) that counts, which can make the game somewhat open-ended and allow you to do your own thing while still sticking you to a storyline and a sense of game progression. In addition, while completing the main storyline is somewhat trivial, doing absolutely everything isn't (and this is the mark of a good game - Super Mario Galaxy 2 is my favourite game ever and a big part of that is that to this day, having had several hundred attempts at it, I haven't cracked the final level). In the early games, completing the Pokedex was a real pain; while Wi-fi has made this easier from Gen IV onwards, the challenge of doing everything is now made harder by the sheer number of things to do. If anybody reading this has got every BW2 achievement medal, message me. I'll be highly impressed.
Too linear: it's not easy for game designers. Especially with the later generations where GameFreak are actually trying to tell a story. You try telling a coherent and engaging story when the individual story elements can be jumbled up in random orders at the whim of the player. And yet, you can make a game too linear, and while for some people this isn't a problem, for me there is a big problem with linearity in games, particularly an RPG. An RPG is meant to immerse me, to make me feel like I am embarking on my own personal adventure, where, although ultimately I must save the world, how I go about doing that is my choice. I do at least still get choice in the Pokemon I use, but still, by imposing linearity, particularly when it is so thrust in the player's face, that immersive experience is ruined, because playing the game now feels like jumping through a series of hoops carefully laid out for me by the game designers. As for those idiots blocking my way in BW who are "dancing for no reason", just to prevent me accessing an area out of sequence, they make my blood boil.
Boring/nonexistent storylines: A counterpart to the "too linear" complaint, in that is really very difficult to create a game that doesn't fall into one of these traps. For me, the early games in the series are more at fault here, whereas the later games have more issues regarding overly restricting the player's choices. While RBY was my childhood, even through nostalgia-tinted spectacles I realise that the plot was: "get badges, beat up Team Rocket along the way, go to the Elite Four", and nothing really changed about that in subsequent games besides the name of the evil organisation. In later games, still having the gym leader/E4 formula feels a little bit anticlimactic (with the exception of how they weave Ghetsis into the climax of BW, that rocks) - saving the world should, ultimately, be more important than becoming a champion. Still, I give credit to BW and XY for at least having stories, even if I did often find myself mashing A to get through the text without really reading it.
Poor Pokemon designs: yes, stuff like Vanilluxe looks stupid. In fairness to GameFreak though, with over 700 species it would be remarkable if every design was both interesting and unique. This one doesn't really bother me, but other people like to complain about it so I thought I'd include it in the poll for the sake of completeness.
Too formulaic: I've touched on it elsewhere, and it really gets me. For me I think this is the biggest problem, and in a way it is an inherent flaw of the franchise. For me GameFreak's task is impossible: I dearly wish they would make a main-series Pokemon game which was quite different (though I'll confess I've never played the spin-off games, which serve a similar purpose); at the same time, I don't see how such a game would be compatible with the series in terms of bringing Pokemon across, in terms of maintaining the principles underlying the competitive battling metagame, etc. And, of course, they would risk alienating a loyal fanbase that has made them the second most popular video game franchise of all time. I'm just a little tired of doing the same thing over and over again except with different Pokemon. And this generation, there weren't even that many of those. Only 69! I just want something different, but I feel that the spin-off games like XD and Colosseum didn't really garner enough praise for GameFreak to feel like making more of them.
Anyway, I've prattled on far longer than I was expecting too. Hopefully having one huge post here will stop me registering my complaints little by little in various other Orange Islands threads. And one last thing - I don't actually hate the games, far from it. They just aren't always exactly what I want them to be.
Too easy: let's be honest, you've never struggled to complete a Pokemon game. Is this a bad thing? Maybe not - for most players it's not whether you complete it but how you complete it (ie what Pokemon you use etc) that counts, which can make the game somewhat open-ended and allow you to do your own thing while still sticking you to a storyline and a sense of game progression. In addition, while completing the main storyline is somewhat trivial, doing absolutely everything isn't (and this is the mark of a good game - Super Mario Galaxy 2 is my favourite game ever and a big part of that is that to this day, having had several hundred attempts at it, I haven't cracked the final level). In the early games, completing the Pokedex was a real pain; while Wi-fi has made this easier from Gen IV onwards, the challenge of doing everything is now made harder by the sheer number of things to do. If anybody reading this has got every BW2 achievement medal, message me. I'll be highly impressed.
Too linear: it's not easy for game designers. Especially with the later generations where GameFreak are actually trying to tell a story. You try telling a coherent and engaging story when the individual story elements can be jumbled up in random orders at the whim of the player. And yet, you can make a game too linear, and while for some people this isn't a problem, for me there is a big problem with linearity in games, particularly an RPG. An RPG is meant to immerse me, to make me feel like I am embarking on my own personal adventure, where, although ultimately I must save the world, how I go about doing that is my choice. I do at least still get choice in the Pokemon I use, but still, by imposing linearity, particularly when it is so thrust in the player's face, that immersive experience is ruined, because playing the game now feels like jumping through a series of hoops carefully laid out for me by the game designers. As for those idiots blocking my way in BW who are "dancing for no reason", just to prevent me accessing an area out of sequence, they make my blood boil.
Boring/nonexistent storylines: A counterpart to the "too linear" complaint, in that is really very difficult to create a game that doesn't fall into one of these traps. For me, the early games in the series are more at fault here, whereas the later games have more issues regarding overly restricting the player's choices. While RBY was my childhood, even through nostalgia-tinted spectacles I realise that the plot was: "get badges, beat up Team Rocket along the way, go to the Elite Four", and nothing really changed about that in subsequent games besides the name of the evil organisation. In later games, still having the gym leader/E4 formula feels a little bit anticlimactic (with the exception of how they weave Ghetsis into the climax of BW, that rocks) - saving the world should, ultimately, be more important than becoming a champion. Still, I give credit to BW and XY for at least having stories, even if I did often find myself mashing A to get through the text without really reading it.
Poor Pokemon designs: yes, stuff like Vanilluxe looks stupid. In fairness to GameFreak though, with over 700 species it would be remarkable if every design was both interesting and unique. This one doesn't really bother me, but other people like to complain about it so I thought I'd include it in the poll for the sake of completeness.
Too formulaic: I've touched on it elsewhere, and it really gets me. For me I think this is the biggest problem, and in a way it is an inherent flaw of the franchise. For me GameFreak's task is impossible: I dearly wish they would make a main-series Pokemon game which was quite different (though I'll confess I've never played the spin-off games, which serve a similar purpose); at the same time, I don't see how such a game would be compatible with the series in terms of bringing Pokemon across, in terms of maintaining the principles underlying the competitive battling metagame, etc. And, of course, they would risk alienating a loyal fanbase that has made them the second most popular video game franchise of all time. I'm just a little tired of doing the same thing over and over again except with different Pokemon. And this generation, there weren't even that many of those. Only 69! I just want something different, but I feel that the spin-off games like XD and Colosseum didn't really garner enough praise for GameFreak to feel like making more of them.
Anyway, I've prattled on far longer than I was expecting too. Hopefully having one huge post here will stop me registering my complaints little by little in various other Orange Islands threads. And one last thing - I don't actually hate the games, far from it. They just aren't always exactly what I want them to be.
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