The Great Regional FRIENDLY Debate: Alola vs. Paldea

Shadowshocker

It's hard to talk about Alola and Paldea without going over how many similarities they have. They're both the second generation of games released on a Nintendo system, following the trends set by their predecessor. They're set in regions that focus heavily on the integration of settlements into nature. You're a newcomer to a region and introduced to the local coming-of-age ritual, going along for the ride to be the inevitable saviour and champion. There's a technically villainous team who turn out to be harmless at best, mildly annoying at worst, and are an allegory for how growing up can be full of regret and disappointment and a stark reminder of social inequality. There's even the inclusion of otherworldly creatures who, for their time, fans had to grapple with calling them worthwhile entries into the franchise.

When it comes to which plot is the more interesting, I personally think Paldea has the most interesting premise. Not simply because of the non-linear approach you can take to the plot, but also because Nemona, Arven, and Penny's stories are given equal weightage. I mean, it was inevitable that you probably had to complete all three storylines, but this time the arcs of a significant rival and villainous team get their time in the spotlight from the very beginning. This was in comparison to Alola's plot, which is still very much a by-the-numbers Gym tour around the world in the guise of Island Trials, where Lillie is an Arven stand-in with poor combat skills and plenty of family trauma. Look, Alola's plot was fun for its time, but I'd played enough of the Mystery Dungeon series to recognise a villain twist when I see one, not that SM was subtle about it with Aether Paradise being aggressive goons at the start of the game and Lusamine having a that's-not-suspicious-at-all grin on her face when Nihilego first shows up.

But the same equal focus on all three storylines at the start, plus the non-linear format, also led to the plot feeling unfocused. In practice, Arven's storyline plays out a lot like Legends Arceus did (globetrotting to fight bosses in the wild). But it felt underwhelming, yet at the same time necessary, because it was the only way to upgrade your living motorcycle. Sure, Arven cares for a very good boy in his Mabosstiff, but as far as the other characters go, he might as well have not existed except to go into incredible spoiler territory by the end of the game. Which brings me to the other point: Paldea's overall plot has basically no buildup. The research of Arven's parents drive the biggest conflict or drama in the game, but you interact with them so infrequently, there's barely any sense of urgency despite the implications—compared to Lillie, whose entire journey is defined by trying to both uncover the secrets behind Nebby and walk out of her mother's shadow, and is counting entirely on your Island Trial being an excuse to escort her all over Alola. You feel far more invested in Lillie's journey and her character. Even the Ultra Beasts feel like more of a threat (the one thing that Ultra Sun/Moon did well, by dropping more Ultra Beasts over Alola), compared to Paradox Pokémon randomly hanging around just like any other overworld spawn. I could say more, but a lot of the complaints I have about Paldea's story heavily overlap with what I think about the characters, so I'll hold off here. Suffice to say I think that Alola had the better execution when it comes to its storyline.

That leaves one other factor about the storylines: which felt like it had the most impact with its payoff? This is the point where shifting the major conflict resolution after the Elite Four and Champion battle, I feel, worked out in Paldea's favor. With the way core game storylines have been going, the Elite Four arc seems to have become more of a formality than a serious endgame boss rush. Ultra Deep Space was interesting in Sun/Moon for the implications it brought of other dimensions. Area Zero wasn't an immediate visual spectacle, but it set the mood of something being seriously wrong, with a dissonant soundtrack and haunting choir casting an ominous backdrop behind a pristine paradise. Like Sun/Moon, you face off against a tragic villain who is compelled to fight you due to external influence, and while Lusamine was insane, the AI Professor is terrifying. Even spoiled going in, having your screen look like it's glitching out as the Professor clone tries its best to protect the working time machine carries on the feeling of dread that the final chapter tried to instill. Sure, I'm disappointed that the game didn't feel just as equally epic throughout. I wish that there was more leadup to the main characters' stories instead of doing the infodump on a slowly scrolling chat while descending Area Zero. I'm honestly pretty peeved that Arven's trauma doesn't get the attention or closure I feel it deserves. But I'm happy to say that Paldea's storyline went out with a bang instead of a whimper.

Shadowshocker

Not unlike Pokémon themselves, major core series characters seem to overlap across generations when it comes to their traits. Villains will be villains, rivals will be rivals, Gym Leaders will be Gym Leaders. Alola and Paldea seem to take the parallels to an even greater extent—Arven and Lillie both have parents obsessed with research who you have to fight, Nemona is a nicer rival who stands up for herself a lot, and Penny is Guzma if you replaced "edgy angry white boy" with "Tumblr fanfiction writer." Where Paldea separates itself from Alola is the additional effort that SV takes to get you invested in the characters more, even down to your teachers at school and the individual leaders of Team Star. You can always drop by the school hub for a lesson or chat and catch up with every member of staff to learn about their backstory or personal quirks. Operation Starfall goes into sufficient flashbacks to remind you that Team Star aren't all that villainous, which is honestly a saving grace because my initial reaction of them was "Team Skull, but somehow even more underwhelming than Team Yell."

But it's here where I continue the complaint that I started talking about Paldea's story, which I feel are rooted in the open world structure and premise of Gen 9. The interesting characters that were set up were frankly the teachers, because Paldea's entire gimmick is school life. You're invested in going back to visit your teachers and see how their storylines develop. But realistically that's not what you're going to do at the start of the game; what you want to do is start your Treasure Hunt, not go back into the Academy and sit through literal game mechanic tutorials after an hour of relearning how to play Pokémon. It's like the developers can't decide what Mesagoza and the Academy should be—a hub of activity given its prominence and total surface area, or the tutorial town that can't make up its mind whether it should shoo the player into the wilderness or stay for more cutscenes? And because so much lore is concentrated within Mesagoza, it means nothing else interesting happens across the world. I think I made it to the sixth Gym before someone decided to mention the shadier, problematic parts of the Academy's past. The rest of the character comparison can be more explicitly compartmentalized, so let's do just that.

Team Skull versus Team Star: Team Star was the more enjoyable team, but Team Skull was the better executed team. Between the two teams, I liked Team Star for their relevance to a school-based story. I liked that Team Star picked up where Team Skull left off and was willing to point out that not everyone enjoys their schooling days. I understand why the members of Team Star were written to have done nothing overtly illegal, but then get ostracized again for something they weren't responsible for. It's a good narrative. But the gameplay felt lackluster as a result. At least Team Skull gets in your way enough times for their tragic backstory at Po Town to feel like a payoff. Team Star does literally nothing. Team Star did literally nothing. All they do is run Gym equivalents with a cookie-cutter Auto Battle-based gimmick that took me longer to get used to than it should have. Guys, I think you CAN afford to be a little darker with your "bullying sucks" storyline; you've had delinquents and punks running your villain teams for three generations straight. I've had basically no time to learn anything about these interesting characters between showing up, nearly getting run over by their custom cars just to watch ONE flashback per character. We're already doing the "single major boss fight" thing with Arven's Titan quest, and that part already felt plenty underwhelming. You CAN involve more of the villainous team in the story, because the way Team Star was handled doesn't make me feel like they deserved their redemption arc.

Hau versus Nemona: Rivals have not been all that interesting to me across the series aside from functioning as gatekeepers, and between Hau and Nemona, it becomes a question of who's the least boring. They're both standard nicer rival we've come to expect throughout the later series, and for the most part incredibly vanilla. I think I might be one of the few who aren't all that interested in Nemona. A Champion rank doesn't mean all that much because Nemona's specifically gone out of her way to nerf herself just so she can remind us how invested she is in our journey. She battles exactly like how Hau and Hop did, except that there's really nothing more to her character because she's already treated as the best battler in the land. Nemona doesn't develop beyond being a source of obsessive yandere jokes. Look, the thirst for Hex Maniac was three generations ago, having it on the same rival template doesn't make it a new coat of paint. Nemona's not Hau, but the bar set by Hau is so low that the original SM didn't even bother to make him the final battle.

Guzma versus Penny: This one's a little tougher to decide. I feel for Penny as a stronger character compared to Nemona. We've never really had a manipulator like her in the series, and she's not altogether that villainous to start with. It kinda reminds me how I wanted the Team Star storyline to be more fleshed out, but it is funny that the fight before her felt a lot harder because Penny insists on being such an Eeveelution fangirl. On the other hand, Guzma's story was the original trendsetter for core game villains having tragic, relatable backstories. Never being able to shake off the regrets of your childhood is something I think we can all relate to, even if we aren't always comfortable to admit it or wear a chip on our shoulder. I don't really feel a need to say who's better of the two here; maybe it helps that Giacomo already feels like such a Guzma equivalent, I can see Team Skull and Team Star hanging out together at a Po Town-STC convention.

Lillie versus Arven: Lillie was the original NPC you felt the most invested in as you progressed your story, possibly more than your standard rival. Sun/Moon was as much her story as it was yours. So how could they improve on that? Arven's a solid replacement on that front, with his embittered worldview and morality pet in the form of a very good boy, which I can see tugging on people's heartstrings even though I'm not huge on IRL dogs, personally. Arven's no slouch when it comes to actually being a Trainer either, despite openly admitting that he's not a great battler, which is great because the level jump between the Medali Gym and Great Tusk/Iron Treads had no business being that high. You come to feel for his story more strongly even though some might argue that Lusamine put her daughter through an even harsher wringer. And on that note...

Lusamine versus Professor Sada/Turo: Lusamine certainly set a standard for interesting characters in the core series, being absolutely twisted and willing to take her ideas to the extremes. Sure, she wasn't exactly the most subtle of plot twists, but merging with an Ultra Beast to become an absolutely nightmarish otherworldly boss was a climactic escalation that made her encounter and backstory memorable as one of Gen 7's highlights. Sada/Turo essentially took that and turned it up to eleven, with the fact that the original Sada/Turo doesn't even appear in the game proper and you don't find out the tragic truth until most of the game is over, at which point you feel the knife twist in your gut when you learn of the professor's passing before Arven does. Couple that with a thoroughly intimidating soundtrack and actively pulling out Pokémon out from across the timeline to fight you with, and it's no surprise that Gen 9 has held up in the story department for those who've got over the game stretching the limits of their Switch's hardware. I can't say the handling of Sada/Turo was perfect, though, with most interaction you have with them being incredibly sparse status updates throughout the game, and the same can be said for how Paldea handled a lot of its story. Nothing ever feels like there's a wider conflict at stake up until the very end. But the payoff that the AI Sada/Turo gave was undeniably enough to blow Lusamine out of the water.

So all in all, who came out on top? Paldea certainly had more characters to care about and more reason to do so, but the focus on having a non-linear approach to them—coupled with a world that has so much more empty space to get lost in—made them feel wanting as a result. Scarlet/Violet has the more interesting characters, but the margin it has over Sun/Moon feels like it's more razor thin than it should have been.

Shadowshocker

I tend to default to Alola as one of my favorite generations for Pokémon, simply because I happen to like a lot of them—with Rowlet, Palossand and Golisopod numbering among some of my top picks. Visually, I'm not sure I can say the same for Paldea. The idea of past/future Pokémon was good, and using it as a focus for the bulk of version exclusives was an excellent idea, but I think it overshadowed a lot of the regional forme potential that Alola and Galar gave us, including the "convergent evolution" gimmick that was basically regional formes with puns. And the naming conventions is something I really can't get over for the Paradoxes. It's not like we continued referring to Ultra Beast by their codenames, and the Aether Foundation at least put in the effort to talk about what the Ultra Beasts could do besides give them incredibly lazy origin stories. Also... why did Paldea feel the need to have three dogs? It's things like these that make me seriously consider if the series is running out of ideas. Or maybe I'm just not that into "good boys" as most of the Internet is.

I will say though that SV seems to be where the devs somewhat nailed the idea of signature moves and gimmicks for newer Pokémon—a good number of them as of writing seem to be carrying hard in OverUsed. It's nice to see a pretty healthy portion of newer additions to the franchise not immediately be horrifically outclassed by previous generations.

Shadowshocker

Realistically, the Island Challenge of Alola was Gyms under another name, and where I think it shares a lot of overlap with Paldea's Gym challenge. The Gyms of recent generations don't seem to be puzzles so much as they're minigames, used as mechanisms to give their Leaders a little more insight into their personality, or just mess with Nintendo's hardware limits. Paldea's storylines were certainly a refreshing take on the series' formula, but as I've spoken at length about the story, having to make sure each storyline could run independently of each other wasn't quite a good fit for the stories each quest was trying to tell, and the boundless wilderness of Paldea was a novelty that slowly but surely wore out its welcome, with most of the initial landscape being repeated grasslands mountains that had the occasional settlement shoved in. Something like Galar or Unova's geography could still make the region feel "lived in" while keeping the open world formula, but thankfully it doesn't stop Paldea from feeling like a region that truly "lives" with Pokémon, with Titans and Team Star providing what I thought was a good balance between difficulty and fun. I've tended to think that Sun/Moon was the follow-up on the barebones Pokémon experience of XY, but Paldea actually feels refreshing on top of Sword and Shield. I'll leave it to the reader to decide for themselves how high Galar had set the bar, though, because it admittedly wasn't much.

On the topic of mixing things up, I feel it apropos to talk about the generational gimmicks of Z-Moves versus Terastallization. Gameplay-wise, Z-Moves were essentially nukes with cutscenes that got repetitive but were fun if you wanted to use them. Terastallization has a lot more potential to be strategically interesting, and it absolutely amuses me with how it's driving the competitive community on Smogon nuts on whether it should go the way that Dynamaxing did. Z-Moves, though, feel a lot more centralized as the focus of Alola. While both gimmicks are limited to major NPCs and the player in usage, it doesn't make much sense to me to lock players to one Terastallization per Pokémon Center visit. It's not like Terastallization is itself an "I win" button in the same way you could argue Dynamaxing was. It's not immediately gamebreaking like Mega Evolution was. If you're going to get me to use your generation-exclusive gimmick, the least you could do is not limit me on how often it can be used, because I sure as hell was not doing it during the Elite Four matches purely because I thought you had to save it for Geeta.