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Unpopular opinions

I guess my unpopular opinion is that I dont enjoy explorers of sky that much. I didn't really care or enjoy most of the characters or find the plot engaging. Especially because most of it is team skull and guild related which tbh are pretty weak characters for me. grovyle is fun though i wish some of that side episode stuff was in the main game, i think it was a wasted opportunity.

i played the post game which, while i get the plot reasons for, annoyed me a lot with forcing me to be a baby stage for waaaay too long. I hit late 40s and 50s and a lot of the starters just dont have good moves beyond their 20s, which made it very annoying to fight. I was lucky i found a giga drain tm for my treecko so one of us had a decent bp move, but my mudkip was detritus LOL. I think rescuers had a better idea in letting you evolve on lv 20s-30s so that you could follow a progress closer to what the moveset of these mons were designed for. also the darkrai reveal was whatever

i dont think its a bad game. i see why people like it. it just didnt really connect to me
 
Bakugames said:
I guess my unpopular opinion is that I dont enjoy explorers of sky that much. I didn't really care or enjoy most of the characters or find the plot engaging. Especially because most of it is team skull and guild related which tbh are pretty weak characters for me. grovyle is fun though i wish some of that side episode stuff was in the main game, i think it was a wasted opportunity.

i played the post game which, while i get the plot reasons for, annoyed me a lot with forcing me to be a baby stage for waaaay too long. I hit late 40s and 50s and a lot of the starters just dont have good moves beyond their 20s, which made it very annoying to fight. I was lucky i found a giga drain tm for my treecko so one of us had a decent bp move, but my mudkip was detritus LOL. I think rescuers had a better idea in letting you evolve on lv 20s-30s so that you could follow a progress closer to what the moveset of these mons were designed for. also the darkrai reveal was whatever

i dont think its a bad game. i see why people like it. it just didnt really connect to me
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Chaw-haw-haw

Heh-heh-heh

Whoa-ho-ho
 
RT and Explorers suffer from dungeon missions being used to pad out filler, and no way to just simply sleep to pass time. There are no side char quests like a typical RPG, so one can feel too dragged into just repeat dungeon plays. The Dojo is the only side content that point, and there's no real story there

It seems they were aware of that in Sky, so maingame there are 2 (ish) events unrelated added, but the former Cafe is just a cafe, the latter Shaymin peak is explicitly post Dialga (ironically requiring the cafe), as nice as it is. The Special episodes thankfully add focus to other chars, though Sunflora's is straight ASS. I'm still mad Team Skull got nothing, missed opportunity. Croagunk and Corphish are super undeveloped as well

Sadly despite later MD games having a more impressionable cast, they didn't keep the idea of side episodes. Would've been nice
 
RB Golbat is the best depiction of Golbat in any form of Pokemon media, ever.
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This sprite is often the go-to when people talk about Gen 1's sprites, for better or for worse. The tongue is off-model with how its depicted in any other part of the franchise, it's a lot longer than it usually is, and the eyes are completely off. It's the perfect exemplar of how Pokemon hadn't quite found its visual identity yet, and the series wasn't strictly focused on maintaining a positive brand image. The differences are pretty glaring when you look at it side-by-side with its official art:

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But here's the thing: I love these differences. The Golbat of the RB sprite has so much more personality and energy to it than I've ever seen in any other depiction of the Pokemon. The long, salivating tongue and its narrow eyes make it look hungry, in a way that's never really been conveyed elsewhere. Let's take a brief look at its Pokedex entries:

Screen Shot 2024-03-14 at 3.47.49 PM.png
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It gorges, it gulps, it drinks blood until it literally cannot fly anymore. Golbat is gluttonous to an extreme, and nothing conveys that better than this sprite. Is the anatomy incorrect? Yes, of course it is - but its Red and Blue sprite tells me so much more about its personality because of the creative liberties it takes with its design. If I'm being frank, I think Golbat is a really bland and dull Pokemon after Generation 1 - a sentiment that's not helped by the existence of Crobat - and a large part of it is that its personality has simply vanished. The open mouth is still the central design element, but that hunger you see in its RB sprite has seemingly dissipated.

For what it's worth, I think the RG sprite and especially the Yellow sprite are bad about this too. In general, I think the Yellow sprites represent a rough transition period between the weirdness of Gen 1 and the "standardization" we'd see for the rest of the series, but Golbat gets the worst of it. These sprites are also boring to me, despite liking Gen 1 sprites on the whole.

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I don't think we'll ever see anything quite like the Red and Blue sprites again, and while that makes sense as gaming hardware and the Pokemon franchise continues to grow and evolve, I look back on them with fondness, and think they deserve a better rep than what they get. Their sheer contrast from the rest of the series' design philosophy is what makes them so compelling to me, and the Game Boy's hardware meant that these sprites had to be creative in how they presented the personality of these creatures to make them stand out as living, breathing entities.
 
Just A Seaking said:
RB Golbat is the best depiction of Golbat in any form of Pokemon media, ever.
View attachment 615081

This sprite is often the go-to when people talk about Gen 1's sprites, for better or for worse. The tongue is off-model with how its depicted in any other part of the franchise, it's a lot longer than it usually is, and the eyes are completely off. It's the perfect exemplar of how Pokemon hadn't quite found its visual identity yet, and the series wasn't strictly focused on maintaining a positive brand image. The differences are pretty glaring when you look at it side-by-side with its official art:

View attachment 615082

But here's the thing: I love these differences. The Golbat of the RB sprite has so much more personality and energy to it than I've ever seen in any other depiction of the Pokemon. The long, salivating tongue and its narrow eyes make it look hungry, in a way that's never really been conveyed elsewhere. Let's take a brief look at its Pokedex entries:

View attachment 615084View attachment 615085View attachment 615086

It gorges, it gulps, it drinks blood until it literally cannot fly anymore. Golbat is gluttonous to an extreme, and nothing conveys that better than this sprite. Is the anatomy incorrect? Yes, of course it is - but its Red and Blue sprite tells me so much more about its personality because of the creative liberties it takes with its design. If I'm being frank, I think Golbat is a really bland and dull Pokemon after Generation 1 - a sentiment that's not helped by the existence of Crobat - and a large part of it is that its personality has simply vanished. The open mouth is still the central design element, but that hunger you see in its RB sprite has seemingly dissipated.

For what it's worth, I think the RG sprite and especially the Yellow sprite are bad about this too. In general, I think the Yellow sprites represent a rough transition period between the weirdness of Gen 1 and the "standardization" we'd see for the rest of the series, but Golbat gets the worst of it. These sprites are also boring to me, despite liking Gen 1 sprites on the whole.

View attachment 615089View attachment 615090

I don't think we'll ever see anything quite like the Red and Blue sprites again, and while that makes sense as gaming hardware and the Pokemon franchise continues to grow and evolve, I look back on them with fondness, and think they deserve a better rep than what they get. Their sheer contrast from the rest of the series' design philosophy is what makes them so compelling to me, and the Game Boy's hardware meant that these sprites had to be creative in how they presented the personality of these creatures to make them stand out as living, breathing entities.
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The opinion of "Gen 1 sprites were good" is slowly but surely creeping its way out of unpopularity and I am so happy that it is. Give Golbat its tongue back.
 
Mew’s Gen 1 sprite has often been criticized for being ugly or creepy:
Spr_1g_151.png


But I’ve always really liked that about it. The lumpy, fetal, vaguely eerie look of it always felt like a good match for the concept of a Pokémon that’s supposed to be a rediscovered universal ancestor. It feels underdeveloped and moldable, like a prototype of a lifeform. Cute Mew is nice and all, but this depiction was always more intriguing and evocative to me.
 
Esserise said:
Mew’s Gen 1 sprite has often been criticized for being ugly or creepy:
Spr_1g_151.png


But I’ve always really liked that about it. The lumpy, fetal, vaguely eerie look of it always felt like a good match for the concept of a Pokémon that’s supposed to be a rediscovered universal ancestor. It feels underdeveloped and moldable, like a prototype of a lifeform. Cute Mew is nice and all, but this depiction was always more intriguing and evocative to me.
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I absolutely love this direction with Mew's design. I get why they didn't keep it that way, as it certainly would have been less marketable and it would have lost some of its visual contrast with Mewtwo, but I do miss embryonic Mew. It's another one of those Gen 1 sprites that may not be strictly accurate, at least compared to what came after, but gives the gen a lot of character and charm. I do prefer the Mew we ended up with, but RG Mew gets unfairly maligned when it's a great design in its own right.

Sixfortyfive said:
If you can't handle RB at its Chansey, then you don't deserve it at its Golbat.

EDIT: Looking back, I'm pretty sure their Gen I sprites were the specific reason why I've always thought that the evolution from Haunter to Gengar was a step down in cool.

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I really do believe that Gastly lost something by gaining a solid body at all. Makes more sense to me why you'd be unable to see it without a Silph Scope if it literally doesn't have a solid form, after all, and it made the growing body from Haunter and Gengar much more interesting to me. This also isn't a liberty that RB took ala Golbat's tongue, it's what the RG sprite did as well:

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That said, I again sympathize with why it would be changed. I can't imagine animating a floating ball of gas with a face for the anime would be very fun, after all, and you could argue the design space of a gaseous Pokemon was already occupied by Koffing. Still, just a personal grumbling of mine!

(For what it's worth, I don't think that Pokemon fell as a series after Gen 1 or anything. I just find Gen 1 and Gen 2's design philosophies, and how they evolved into the rest of the series, really fascinating!)
 
Just A Seaking said:
I really do believe that Gastly lost something by gaining a solid body at all. Makes more sense to me why you'd be unable to see it without a Silph Scope if it literally doesn't have a solid form, after all, and it made the growing body from Haunter and Gengar much more interesting to me. This also isn't a liberty that RB took ala Golbat's tongue, it's what the RG sprite did as well:

View attachment 615183
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Gen 1 Haunter is like that perfect middle ground where it still comes off at least a little bit ephemeral but also has enough of a form and presence to be imposing.

Gen 1 Gengar looks like, idk, a plush doll or something.
 
Yung Dramps said:
After replaying (what I think is) a considerable chunk of PMD Gates to Infinity I can say that not since my first return to SM have I been so utterly baffled by the general consensus on a game.

Is this a step down from Explorers? In at least a few aspects, the answer ranges from "probably" to "definitely" (the latter descriptor is mainly in reference to the admittedly dismal Pokemon variety, more proof that the Unova era hyperfixating on its original roster at the expense of oldies was a mistake). But here's the thing: I didn't replay this after Explorers. I replayed it after Blue Rescue Team. With that in mind, I cannot take the idea of THIS being the black sheep of the series remotely seriously. The story and character writing actually has time to breathe! You properly help out and bond with a party of loveable Pokemon pals! This growth is reflected in the helpful light city-builder elements of your Paradise! Your benched Pokemon getting EXP when you're in the field alongside the Gift system makes recruiting new teammates and experimenting with composition easy, intuitive and actually worthwhile! Like damn man, now I'm mad that I didn't get Super MD (assuming it keeps all these changes or similar stuff).

Of course, there's the aforementioned caveat that I'm not done yet. For context, my last session ended right after the player character has the third Munna dream, the one after we see it looking at Post Town through bushes. If there's any disastrously bad gameplay/story decisions coming up, now's the time to warn me.

No this is NOT a little things you like repost I did NOT post this there accidentally SHUT UP
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PMD handling an obligatory always-on exp share better than mainline ever did :totodiLUL: (except Legends Arceus ofc)

But yeah, ima say Gates starts well, characters like Gurdurr and Virizion being the standouts imo, some dungeons use a bit of overworld exploration and there's some puzzles like Inflora. However, the game suffers from "mucho texto" syndrome. Like for example, when you fall from the sky at the start of the game, the partner mentions that you fell from the sky like 3-5 times. Infamously during the Great Glacier expedition everyone stops to repeat over and over how the place is covered with ice. This 'people die when they are killed' dialogue, coupled with the slow text speed really hampered the experience for me...
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pokemon4eva said:
PMD handling an obligatory always-on exp share better than mainline ever did :totodiLUL: (except Legends Arceus ofc)

But yeah, ima say Gates starts well, characters like Gurdurr and Virizion being the standouts imo, some dungeons use a bit of overworld exploration and there's some puzzles like Inflora. However, the game suffers from "mucho texto" syndrome. Like for example, when you fall from the sky at the start of the game, the partner mentions that you fell from the sky like 3-5 times. Infamously during the Great Glacier expedition everyone stops to repeat over and over how the place is covered with ice. This 'people die when they are killed' dialogue, coupled with the slow text speed really hampered the experience for me...
View attachment 615261View attachment 615262
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GTI definitely has some bad dialogue (and mucho texto syndrome is a good term for it), but this specific dialogue is a funny meta joke. RPGs often have those types of silly location names, and seeing it spelled out by a character gets a chuckle out of me. I think it was intentional.
 
Sword and Shield were shockingly awful imo. Genuinely one of the worst games I have ever played, Pokemon or not. The whole world feels dead and half-baked, it makes me depressed playing it. I was absolutely in awe of how truly terrible it was. However, I did enjoy Scarlet and Violet, they weren't the best games in the series, but I actually thoroughly enjoyed the experience, I liked the characters and enjoyed the story, and the world actually feels alive. I did experience bugs, but nothing too serious, and didn't encounter them very frequently.

Overall it somewhat reminds me of Gen 7, in that it was a refinement and improvement of the previous generation. My feelings on Gen 6 are similar to 8, but 6 was nowhere near as bad.

I say this is an unpopular opinion because it generally seems like people who didn't like SwSh didn't like SV either.
 
ac2127 said:
Sword and Shield were shockingly awful imo. Genuinely one of the worst games I have ever played, Pokemon or not. The whole world feels dead and half-baked, it makes me depressed playing it. I was absolutely in awe of how truly terrible it was. However, I did enjoy Scarlet and Violet, they weren't the best games in the series, but I actually thoroughly enjoyed the experience, I liked the characters and enjoyed the story, and the world actually feels alive. I did experience bugs, but nothing too serious, and didn't encounter them very frequently.

Overall it somewhat reminds me of Gen 7, in that it was a refinement and improvement of the previous generation. My feelings on Gen 6 are similar to 8, but 6 was nowhere near as bad.

I say this is an unpopular opinion because it generally seems like people who didn't like SwSh didn't like SV either.
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Unsure if that's an unpopular opinion for veteran fans.
 
As a guy who very much disliked SwSh (at a region at least, the roster and a lot of the cast gets my approval), the idea that "hating SwSh but liking SV" would be an unpopular opinion is definitely news to me.

Like whether or not one thinks either is good they feel like they have such different approaches to world design and the story structures that I wouldn't expect a correlation between disliking one and disliking the other as games (barring people who simply dislike larger scale design mentalities that permeate more than just those two gens).
 
I'm in the camp of "SWSH is passable, but SV is just unacceptable"

Which is curious bc I have always found the second pokemon generation in a console better than the prev one: I prefer GSC over RBY, BWBW2 over DPPt, and SMUSUM over XY, so I guess there's a first time for everything. SV is just...worse in near every aspect from SWSH, and in general it hits plenty of new lows (no srs how can you create a worse gym than DP Fantina?! Tulip is just AWFUL)
 
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When leaks were coming out, the portraits we had of the Gym Leaders were pretty disappointing, but I ended up liking most of them. Going from a character perspective, Tulip probably is the weakest, but that puts her about on par with the best of the XY Gym Leaders (the weakest set of them in the franchise, IMO). Her Gym Challenge was pretty bad, but that's because unlike most of the others in SV, it didn't make use of the overworld (Ryme and IIRC Iono share this).

Gym Challenges haven't been super interesting for the most part for some time, and... maybe they haven't worn out their welcome, but it's gotta be hard to come up with something novel when you're getting to around 70 Gyms throughout the franchise.

At least Tulip's "challenge" gave us this moment:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1593758218584354817

Basically, I'm not judging Gym Leaders based on their challenges, because at best, they're a fun gimmick, and at worst, they're just a mild time waster.
 
CPU said:
When leaks were coming out, the portraits we had of the Gym Leaders were pretty disappointing, but I ended up liking most of them. Going from a character perspective, Tulip probably is the weakest, but that puts her about on par with the best of the XY Gym Leaders (the weakest set of them in the franchise, IMO). Her Gym Challenge was pretty bad, but that's because unlike most of the others in SV, it didn't make use of the overworld (Ryme and IIRC Iono share this).

Gym Challenges haven't been super interesting for the most part for some time, and... maybe they haven't worn out their welcome, but it's gotta be hard to come up with something novel when you're getting to around 70 Gyms throughout the franchise.

At least Tulip's "challenge" gave us this moment:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1593758218584354817

Basically, I'm not judging Gym Leaders based on their challenges, because at best, they're a fun gimmick, and at worst, they're just a mild time waster.
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Gym Challenges went downhill when they started to be full-time gimmicks.

It's supposed to be a simple idea, have an environment full of trainers to showcase a type. That's it.

They should be closer to mini-dungeons than weird amusement park attractions or whatever the SV Gyms were doing.
 
Volt-Ikazuchi said:
Gym Challenges went downhill when they started to be full-time gimmicks.

It's supposed to be a simple idea, have an environment full of trainers to showcase a type. That's it.

They should be closer to mini-dungeons than weird amusement park attractions or whatever the SV Gyms were doing.
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I agree that they should be mini-dungeons of some sort, but what exactly that means in Pokémon is pretty vague. The series has never had great ways of interacting with the actual environment (HM blockades like Cut/Strength/Rock Smash are about it, and of those, there's only potential puzzle elements when Strength is involved). They can incorporate small setpieces for puzzles, and they've done this, but by design these have to be simple to interact with and understand, since they're not going to be used outside of this one instance. I suppose I'm not sure how "interactive setpieces used only in one building" is less of a gimmick than what SV usually did.

Maybe they didn't succeed in execution, but I liked most of SV's gym challenges as concepts because they forced you to interact with the world in some way, usually tying it to local theming. If anything, given how mini-dungeons/caves/whatever locations in Pokémon you consider dungeons usually go, forcing you to explore a little fits that design better than a goofy little puzzle.

  1. Katy had the Olive Roll, which you can mess around with outside of the Gym, and is thematic to Cortondo.
  2. Brassius's Sunflora hunt fits in with his Sunflora statues, and the city's generally impressive greenery.
  3. Iono didn't do this, really, but she has her own theming and it plays along with that. Not a particularly inspired challenge but it was okay; maybe they held back for hers because Levincia is the second biggest city in Paldea.
  4. Kofu's intended challenge is never seen; instead we trek to a neighboring city to participate in its auction minigame, which can be used to obtain rare items.
  5. Larry's challenge works a bit like an investigative puzzle. I think some of the location's clues are not as clear as they should be to find, but it still made players interact with 3D space.
  6. Ryme's challenge is mostly just a way for players to try and get a feel for double battles, because they otherwise don't exist in SV. There's some poor rapping dialog interspersed to fit her theme, which gratefully doesn't impact the fight except for stat boosts from the crowd's cheers (is this also meant as an introduction to raid cheers?).
  7. Tulip's ESP is a bad acronym pun and the easiest Simon Says minigame ever, and doesn't really tie into Alfornada or her character at all aside from the aforementioned pun (and I guess her friendship with Dendra). Maybe it's intended to show off camera poses and expressions?
  8. Grusha's challenge is a very easy snowboarding minigame. It doesn't add anything, but it ties in with his gym's remote location and his history with the sport.
Again, they want to make these challenges a fun diversion, but they also need to make them simple enough to not cause problems for younger players. I am a lifelong gamer™ so I can't say how difficult other sorts of puzzles would be. I vaguely remember not solving Chuck's Strength puzzle in GSC first try, and actually being briefly stumped by it, despite it only being 3 boulders (and I was around 9 or 10 at the time, so not particularly young). I think it is a loss that they set up all this work for gym challenges only to use them once and discard that effort immediately after. Could be fun to reuse some of the assets for a minigame somewhere else, or to have a tougher, redone gym challenge using the same system for potential Gym Leader rematches.
 
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