Idk for me the frustration of raising weaker mons without the revamped Exp Share is outweighed by how colossally boring I find it to smash through a Pokemon game with an overlevelled starter.
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Unpopular opinions
- Thread starter antemortem
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This is another one where the real issue is that GF can't decide on what they want the games to actually DO. Granted, difficulty curves are notoriously difficult to get right, but...
How much grinding should happen between major fights, when using an established team?
How long should a new member added to the team take to "catch up"?
How much benefit should the player get from going out and doing extra? (grinding, exploring for items/tms, playing the gen's minigame)
How hard should a major fight be in general?
I don't know what the answer to those should be. I'm sure everyone here would have their own answers*. But what bothers me is I'm not sure TPC has even considered these questions in any sort of official way. It honestly feels like their answers are mostly vibes, varying from game to game, and often severely changing within a single game. And that's not a good thing for building an interesting gameplay loop.
*ranging from "you should be perpetually underleveled and grinding should take hours" to "just give us a Showdown-style editor we can access at any center"
How much grinding should happen between major fights, when using an established team?
How long should a new member added to the team take to "catch up"?
How much benefit should the player get from going out and doing extra? (grinding, exploring for items/tms, playing the gen's minigame)
How hard should a major fight be in general?
I don't know what the answer to those should be. I'm sure everyone here would have their own answers*. But what bothers me is I'm not sure TPC has even considered these questions in any sort of official way. It honestly feels like their answers are mostly vibes, varying from game to game, and often severely changing within a single game. And that's not a good thing for building an interesting gameplay loop.
*ranging from "you should be perpetually underleveled and grinding should take hours" to "just give us a Showdown-style editor we can access at any center"
Honestly, one of the many reasons I hated Y was that Megaevolution was a win button that made Charizard unstopable. Without a cooldown like at least Tera has initially, it can be just too broken.
Destroying everything with your starter may be fine when you are a child-trough even then I didn't consider it exciting- but even as a pre teen I was bored of the concept. I tried to handicap myself by not using Mega unless the opposing trainer also had it...and well, most don't so I wasn't using the new exciting gimmick of the gen. I didn't have that problem in Galar, where I could at least Dynamax without feeling guilty. LA gives you a lot more teasons to use different teams so the issue isn't as prevalent, but you can still easily outlevel your starter (trough to be fair levels have less of an impact because of how the styles work).
I'm not asking for the Indigo Disk being the new baseline, just make battles interesting and exciting even if they are not really hard and take the exp share in mind. As mentioned above, just some consistency would be nice.
Destroying everything with your starter may be fine when you are a child-trough even then I didn't consider it exciting- but even as a pre teen I was bored of the concept. I tried to handicap myself by not using Mega unless the opposing trainer also had it...and well, most don't so I wasn't using the new exciting gimmick of the gen. I didn't have that problem in Galar, where I could at least Dynamax without feeling guilty. LA gives you a lot more teasons to use different teams so the issue isn't as prevalent, but you can still easily outlevel your starter (trough to be fair levels have less of an impact because of how the styles work).
I'm not asking for the Indigo Disk being the new baseline, just make battles interesting and exciting even if they are not really hard and take the exp share in mind. As mentioned above, just some consistency would be nice.
Following some discussion about
, I’ve got a new hot take I want to share with you guys before I call it a night, and I love for a feeling some of you are really not going to like this one. takes a deep breath
I think The Pokémon Company needs to take some serious notes from… Call of Duty of all places? Yes, you read that right, and no, this isn’t a meme post. I’m being completely serious. Please allow me a moment to explain: so you all know how Pokémon generations generally last three years, occasionally four? And you know how The Pokémon Company is actually owned by three different groups (Nintendo, Creatures Inc., and Game Freak)?
Hardcore Pokémon fans are always talking about how the newer games are rushed and bad and all that, but I think I have at least a business pitch for how The Pokémon Company could release yearly core series installments and still have time for every single one to not be as rushed as some of the games we have gotten. The Call of Duty fanbase can tell you that this I.P. has a somewhat similar dynamic, that in our case can be tweaked a little bit to account for the needs of Pokémon, and the way to do this is, at least in theory, so stupidly obvious that I’m shocked this hasn’t been mentioned more. Literally all you have to do is make it so Nintendo, Creatures Inc., and Game Freak can rotate on a three-year cycle system with their own yearly releases, but have all of these games list The Pokémon Company as the publisher while they’re listed as your rotating developers. That’s… that’s literally it.
What that does is acknowledges the correlation between a successful marketing strategy and a quality product, and I am almost certain that even the less popular Pokémon games could look and feel more appealing than some of the newer Call of Duty games have. Being able to rotate between different series of games all under the same parent publisher helps keep yearly releases fresh without the I.P. becoming stale. We’ve seen how this cycle style can bring success to quality works- see how Mario rotated between 3D Mario, Mario Kart, and 2D Mario every year from 2004 all the way to 2015. See how even the less popular Call of Duty installments have led the I.P. to maintain its spot as the best selling games in its biggest market (the United States) for 12 out of the past 15 years going back to 2009, and even those three off years still had Call of Duty just outside of the top spot. Some of those games may feel a bit rushed in situations like, say, the pandemic, but even games like Scarlet & Violet have their fans who enjoyed what was brought to the table, and the quote “actually good games” released during the past two decades that were made with genuine passion have been some of the best video games… maybe ever?
I can see it now- a system where three different kinds of core series games are designed, each by a different member of our Pokémon developer trio. Game Freak could maintain their role with the “new games” of each generation and have three years for both of their internal teams to work on the same game (effectively multiplying product quality by six), Creatures Inc. could upgrade from occasional spin-offs to core series developer with the remakes and still have their in-between years for smaller Pokémon projects that might come along (such as their work on Detective Pikachu for example), and the Nintendo-sanctioned developer group could handle other kinds of “side games that feel like the core series”; think like your Pokémon Colloseums or your Pokémon Rangers, though Creatures may still want to keep the latter. If any one game in a three-year stretch needs that extra year, I don’t see why they couldn’t hold an internal shareholder’s conference to discuss things like release date flips, potential gap years, or new console announcements. If I was in charge, this is how I would opt to try and handle Pokémon’s developmental growing pains, but what do you think? This might not be a perfect solution, but it’s by far the best idea I can come up with.
the lack of Pokémon Legends Z-A announcements at Worlds
I think The Pokémon Company needs to take some serious notes from… Call of Duty of all places? Yes, you read that right, and no, this isn’t a meme post. I’m being completely serious. Please allow me a moment to explain: so you all know how Pokémon generations generally last three years, occasionally four? And you know how The Pokémon Company is actually owned by three different groups (Nintendo, Creatures Inc., and Game Freak)?
Hardcore Pokémon fans are always talking about how the newer games are rushed and bad and all that, but I think I have at least a business pitch for how The Pokémon Company could release yearly core series installments and still have time for every single one to not be as rushed as some of the games we have gotten. The Call of Duty fanbase can tell you that this I.P. has a somewhat similar dynamic, that in our case can be tweaked a little bit to account for the needs of Pokémon, and the way to do this is, at least in theory, so stupidly obvious that I’m shocked this hasn’t been mentioned more. Literally all you have to do is make it so Nintendo, Creatures Inc., and Game Freak can rotate on a three-year cycle system with their own yearly releases, but have all of these games list The Pokémon Company as the publisher while they’re listed as your rotating developers. That’s… that’s literally it.
What that does is acknowledges the correlation between a successful marketing strategy and a quality product, and I am almost certain that even the less popular Pokémon games could look and feel more appealing than some of the newer Call of Duty games have. Being able to rotate between different series of games all under the same parent publisher helps keep yearly releases fresh without the I.P. becoming stale. We’ve seen how this cycle style can bring success to quality works- see how Mario rotated between 3D Mario, Mario Kart, and 2D Mario every year from 2004 all the way to 2015. See how even the less popular Call of Duty installments have led the I.P. to maintain its spot as the best selling games in its biggest market (the United States) for 12 out of the past 15 years going back to 2009, and even those three off years still had Call of Duty just outside of the top spot. Some of those games may feel a bit rushed in situations like, say, the pandemic, but even games like Scarlet & Violet have their fans who enjoyed what was brought to the table, and the quote “actually good games” released during the past two decades that were made with genuine passion have been some of the best video games… maybe ever?
I can see it now- a system where three different kinds of core series games are designed, each by a different member of our Pokémon developer trio. Game Freak could maintain their role with the “new games” of each generation and have three years for both of their internal teams to work on the same game (effectively multiplying product quality by six), Creatures Inc. could upgrade from occasional spin-offs to core series developer with the remakes and still have their in-between years for smaller Pokémon projects that might come along (such as their work on Detective Pikachu for example), and the Nintendo-sanctioned developer group could handle other kinds of “side games that feel like the core series”; think like your Pokémon Colloseums or your Pokémon Rangers, though Creatures may still want to keep the latter. If any one game in a three-year stretch needs that extra year, I don’t see why they couldn’t hold an internal shareholder’s conference to discuss things like release date flips, potential gap years, or new console announcements. If I was in charge, this is how I would opt to try and handle Pokémon’s developmental growing pains, but what do you think? This might not be a perfect solution, but it’s by far the best idea I can come up with.
After clowning on Ash-Greninja since forever, I've majorly come around on the idea of the Bond Phenomenon. The concept of a Pokemon and its trainer achieving such perfect sync over a lifetime of adventures and battles that the Pokemon is able to achieve an enlightened state where it assumes the physical features of its trainer and an accompanying power boost is just so oddly beautiful and thematically resonant. I can imagine it as something only a tiny handful of trainers have achieved throughout history, those who have dedicated themselves completely and utterly to the art of raising Pokemon and understand these creatures and all their complexities at the deepest level. Of course Ash would be able to bring this out - from taking care of pesky babies to confronting world-shaking Legendaries, he has witnessed every aspect of Pokemon, every type of Trainer. More than anyone in his era he has seen their trials, their joys, their sorrows, their hopes and dreams. This is the final mark of his exceptional life, the culmination of his odyssey, his Ultra Instinct, his Musou Tensei. And so it is only appropriate that his final evolution would be alongside his most prized partner, the one who has stood by his side since he left Pallet Town so long ago...
...Oh, wait. Yeah, hate to end on a downer note, but this is why I emphasized me liking the idea earlier, not the execution. In some alternate timeline Ash-Pikachu was the final trump card against Leon's Charizard, but that's neither here nor there.
...Oh, wait. Yeah, hate to end on a downer note, but this is why I emphasized me liking the idea earlier, not the execution. In some alternate timeline Ash-Pikachu was the final trump card against Leon's Charizard, but that's neither here nor there.
I like the idea of the Bond Phenomenon outside of the context of being restricted to certain people. Though I will admit, 90% of that sentiment comes from me going on record saying I don't like Ash as a character like... at all. That's a post for another day, but even if I enjoyed Ash compared to actually compelling, more developed anime protagonists, the fact is that there's nothing stopping other Pokémon from wanting to... get stronger and look different... when they have a strong bond... hey wait a second, that's just Mega Evolution with a different coat of paint! Never mind, I take back everything I said. Except the part about Ash. Though I will say, I prefer Bond Phenomenon's take on this more than Mega Evolution's take on the friendship thing, so I can still vibe with your opinion.
That's because PMD's fan community got major juice from fanfic. Fanfic meant that PMD community speedran the process of learning how to do PMD worldbuilding and storytelling by process of terrible writing by 2012, ever since then many of the popular PMD fanfics are stellar, and therefore a large part of the fangame community is turning similar level of writing into titles.
A lot of modern PMD fanon is derived from a story from 2008 called "Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Silver Resistance", and its effect on how people justified worldbuilding in PMD so hard that newer writers to the scene who never even read it still, from osmosis of other fics they probably read, put Silver Resistance fanon into their stories.
Basically, the PMD community spent decades of furry-fueled fanfic writing to get to the place it is now.
Pokemon main community is almost entirely gameplay focused with people not really respecting the need for good stories. It's bizarre since fakemon cannot carry your game. There are people like me who do not care to get invested into your fakemon dex and learn 100+ creatures' types and abilities only to throw them out after the playthrough. But a good story and campaign? That lasts a while. That instantly is a major reason to play the game.
Now, Pokemon DOES have tons of fanfic, but Pokemon fanfic almost always was basically shipping. There is some that isn't really like that, but it's a lot rarer- in the space a story about a trainer becoming a champion is called a "trainerfic", and unlike PMD community, the rules of writing a Pokemon world fic are far less centralized, and this is even assuming that fanfic writers are helping on fangame projects, unlike the PMD community where that is 100% true. Can Pokemon talk with each other? Maybe in general? Psychic powers? Do they not talk? How sentient are they? Is it species by species? Conditional? Sometimes it's trained vs untrained, and sometimes it's just made the fuck up as the story goes along. Even a basic question such as "How much agency do the Pokemon have" is something that basically every story has a different answer to.
A lot of fangames kinda just focus on the evil team, have the shonen legendary Pokemon moment, and dips. The Pokemon don't really have that much of a role, nor the relationships between the Pokemon and trainers, nor even the trainers between each other unless they are rivals. It's kinda sad honestly.
Pokemon fangames that aren't like Radical Red type difficulty hacks usually don't have the game design or narrative chops to make it work. Radical Red types are the best ones IMO because it does what the community does best, gameplay. When you see devs try to do both, you get Unbound, a game where the opening to the story is literally impossible if one single non-villainous group was competent whatsoever. Every single person involved in that plot besides the antagonists had to be stupid for the opening of it to work lol.
Now, here are the problems with the PMD fangame community:
1. People are using the wrong tool. People are trying to romhack Explorers of Sky, which is actually wayyy worse than the fanmade game engine-and-game Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Origins. This faithfully recreated the mechanics of EoS, but then adds a tons of other way better roguelike mechanics on top of it to make for a more... better gameplay experience.
A lot of PMD fans see the gameplay as basically busywork. While Super Mystery Dungeon IMO has good gameplay, the restmight as well be press move + move simulator, with the difficulties people talk about mainly coming from blind experience or just being kids when they played it. PMDO on the other hand has lots of gameplay depth.
It's also made to be modded, basically designed for people to make their own fangame out of. EoS romhacking still hasn't solved the problems that come with romhacking, ie. it hasn't had it's Ultimate Firered Leafgrean moment yet. Which means it's inherently way more limited. PMDO doesn't have that. It has the data for every Pokemon and any Pokemon that has sprites from the Sprite Resource is fully in, already, including all the moves.
2. As kind of mentioned before, tons of PMD fans don't really care much about the gameplay, and don't have much interest in making it Good.
Overall, I'd bet on PMD having better fangames in general in the future, but it really depends on if people realize the goldmine PMDO is. I think EoS is a bit of a dead end, and is mainly hubris- tons of the PMD community practically ignores the 3DS games despite Super being excellent, EoS has the nostalgia and cultural victory.
tldr: Pokemon main-game community didn't take the time to hone the craft of writing a story in the Pokemon universe like the PMD community did.
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Fuck it, I'm going into more depth:
Sometimes it feels like a Pokemon fangame with a story hasn't even thought of this question yet. Because most Pokemon fangame stories basically don't even need Pokemon. They copy the weaknesses of mainline Pokemon too hard.
Here is a concept, for instance, that I came up with years ago: It is semi-confirmed that infinity energy is taken from Pokemon to power New Mauville. With how secretive this information is, and it being in a shipwreck, the context clues of ORAS are telling us that this is a sinister practice.
In fact, you can make a basic connection that this could be related to how the Mega Death Beam Nuke from XY works, too, and why Pokemon were sacrificed for that. Now, is this assumptions that enter semi-fanon territory? Sure! But also, this allows us to practically endless possibilities of storylines based on Pokemon-human relationships and infinity energy.
You could get dark with it in an actually meaningful way, too- not in a Pokemon Insurgence way (though strangely, I am fond of that game). Exploring potential sacrifices of Pokemon for potential further fanon implications (what if Potions are made from infinity energy? that'd be interesting!), or have the "evil team" be a corporation.
If you just ask questions about the universe you can find interesting not-even-so-large-leaps into Very Interesting Territory, but it feels like Pokemon fan land isn't there yet, at all. This is just one avenue you can take!
Even just rewriting plots we already have now to explore Pokemon human relationships are inherently far more interesting: Instead of Sword and Shield ending as it is, Hop challenges you at the 4th gym after you beat the last leader, and during this he loses. He feels humiliated in front of his brother and the world at large! A few gyms later, he comes back, but from insecurities he was preyed upon by an evil team, and was convinced to try an experimental Dynamax Band that allows him to Dynamax every Pokemon. Win or lose, the battle ends with Hop's Pokemon being injured, and he leaves in disgrace. The team takes his Pokemon under the guise of health reasons in order to learn more about the experiment's results, with no intention to give them back.
Leon talks to his brother about his fuck up, and offers him a second chance to help you take down the evil team, he gives Hop the Charmander the player gets in the post-game, instead. In the next sequence he relearns why he enjoys being a trainer, and he is a big part in taking down the evil team, badda bing badda boom. He reconciles with his Pokemon, changes his ways, we rewrote his character arc to be more central to the plotline.
That's a story beat!!! You can have it for free!!! Change the Nouns!! It's really, really not that hard to come up with interesting scenarios in this world, and yet it's so rare. Every "interesting scenario" in Pokemon fangames is a legendary Pokemon has appeared.
Another legendary Pokemon has hit the Plot!
The moment we get a Pokemon fangame that has the gameplay and technical skill to match the ambition of an average PMD fanfic's storytelling is actually going to become the most popular fangame for the next few years, I am 100% being honest. I think it'd actually be written in headlines if there was a Pokemon fangame that looked up to par with modern trends, had the gameplay at least average, and had a good story.
Late reply to the "definitive romhack discussion" but I can give my own two cents on this.
I love fangames and romhacks and seeing the consumers take their own spin on a piece of media is satisfying to partake in.
While the pokemon fanbase's star fangame is hard to see-- the fangames infinite fusion and xenoverse come to mind but they aren't really that giant overhaul everyone has played like Rockman Unlimited or Sonic Triple Trouble. Not to say the poke fan games are inferior, far from that. From what I see, we are making steady progress, with Yisuno making great changes in bdsp's engine, and Drayano's storm silver update adding Megas. When it may seem that the fandoms main hack demographic is kaizo hacks to appeal to the challenge yter, even those hackers are artists trying to put their own spin on this great game.
What im trying to say is, the poke fangame and hack community can only get better.
I love fangames and romhacks and seeing the consumers take their own spin on a piece of media is satisfying to partake in.
While the pokemon fanbase's star fangame is hard to see-- the fangames infinite fusion and xenoverse come to mind but they aren't really that giant overhaul everyone has played like Rockman Unlimited or Sonic Triple Trouble. Not to say the poke fan games are inferior, far from that. From what I see, we are making steady progress, with Yisuno making great changes in bdsp's engine, and Drayano's storm silver update adding Megas. When it may seem that the fandoms main hack demographic is kaizo hacks to appeal to the challenge yter, even those hackers are artists trying to put their own spin on this great game.
What im trying to say is, the poke fangame and hack community can only get better.
My unpopular opinion is I don't like Infinite Fusion
For one, Kanto remake but done in a way where the story is way worse and I hate the lore. Not in a way that is well-thought out, either.
Two, I think Fusions in general are pretty ugly. I remember trying it and finding the spritework ugly. The mechanics felt lame too.
Three, I think fusion in general is just not that interesting of a mechanic.
Personally I think the best Essentials game is Pokemon Rejuvenation. If Pokemon Reborn was made with a confident plot and dev team, and clean. Its story is servicable and the gameplay is good.
Not sure why people don't talk about it more tbh?
For one, Kanto remake but done in a way where the story is way worse and I hate the lore. Not in a way that is well-thought out, either.
Two, I think Fusions in general are pretty ugly. I remember trying it and finding the spritework ugly. The mechanics felt lame too.
Three, I think fusion in general is just not that interesting of a mechanic.
Personally I think the best Essentials game is Pokemon Rejuvenation. If Pokemon Reborn was made with a confident plot and dev team, and clean. Its story is servicable and the gameplay is good.
Not sure why people don't talk about it more tbh?
Find it incredibly biased/self aggradizing to have a name "Pokemon Reborn" or any synonym indicating they are superior to current Pokemon. Mainly cuz the base is literally from GF for gameplay ideas regardless
Even moreso if as you noted, it's just rehashing regions, or doesn't give a shit for its lore
The Sonic fandom has a similar issue. And despite Omens, the fandom still hasn't learned
As for Rejuvenation not being as known
-I already noted the name issue, which some might find disrespectful. The sad thing is this name moreso refers to its own story, but it does sound samey to typical fandom narcissism for names
-This is partially built off of Reborn. Comparisons if any will be made to Reborn
-The specs can't be played on XP. While 7 is old, this does limit reach somewhat
-The official site link is broken(?)
-It's still not done. Also being split into 3 parts cuz of the amount of content
Even moreso if as you noted, it's just rehashing regions, or doesn't give a shit for its lore
The Sonic fandom has a similar issue. And despite Omens, the fandom still hasn't learned
As for Rejuvenation not being as known
-I already noted the name issue, which some might find disrespectful. The sad thing is this name moreso refers to its own story, but it does sound samey to typical fandom narcissism for names
-This is partially built off of Reborn. Comparisons if any will be made to Reborn
-The specs can't be played on XP. While 7 is old, this does limit reach somewhat
-The official site link is broken(?)
-It's still not done. Also being split into 3 parts cuz of the amount of content
It's called that because the original idea for the game was based on a roleplay
Reborn didn't do this, it has its own region (called Reborn)
It's called that for plot reasons lol, you made up the idea that it was named this as to denote it is a higher quality than the official games
Yea, they're both hosted on the same forum website and the creators know each other
I'm pretty sure that's not why it's overlooked. In fact Pokemon Essentials in its modern form just doesn't use RPMXP, and instead uses an open source remake of XP, and thus basically any Pokemon Essentials fangame (all of them except romhacks) that are made on any even semi recent Essentials is recommended for Windows 7.
Looks like it's working to me
This is also true of basically almost every Pokemon fangame, and on the other hand there is already like 50 hours of content + done on the main game.
sorry, 80+
The reason is that the attention people give to the types of Pokemon fangames that actually try to do unique campaigns has fallen, especially when most modern Pokemon youtube content isn't Let's Play episode 8, it's livestream clips. And if you're doing that, there isn't much room to engage the viewer in an 80 hour storyline.
The challenge-videoification of the Pokemon content community has shaped the attention as much as the games. Rejuvenation doesn't have an Infinite Fusion gimmick that is approachable to viewers coming in at the 12th hour of the stream, it's a long haul game that started development when shofu still published Pokemon Reborn lets play videos that were mainly unedited.
Hell, Pokemon Reborn went from probably in the top 3 most popular RPG maker fangames in the first half of the 2010s to falling off despite the updates coming around to finish the game, and polish up the entire game in general- it was a lot worse of a game when people were actually making content on it. And it was also not even close to finished.
That is the proof of the pudding. Rejuvenation is using the same update structure that Reborn used and got tons of videos on back in the day (big number update = gym leader + all the content leading up to it, and usually a revamp of some older content, usually being a few hours), but Rejuvenation can't get the attention from content creators- and content creators shape the scene.
As somebody who both frequently watches challenge runs and does them myself occasionally with no audience, the investment time argument feels a little backwards. A main reason I do variant runs is because I want to spend more time with a favourite game. Quality takes time, after all, so there's no guarantee of good new stuff for a given game right when I want to play it. An 80 hour storyline just isn't relevant at hour 250, while a gameplay system with loads of room for self-imposed challenges is. I don't personally speedrun, but it feels pretty similar: these are absolutely people who keep with a single game for the long haul, even if the final result would seem to indicate otherwise.
I'm not talking about people who play challenge runs.
I'm talking about streamers. You cannot join a narrative-based game stream 12 hours in. No matter how far the Nuzlocke run is in, you know the rules and you know what the stakes are.
Speedruns are similar. They are easy filler for tens of hours of stream time, because no matter when someone joins the stream, the stakes and rules of what is going on are easily apparent. The more gameplay focused the stream game, the easier it is for people to join in no matter what's happening.
ie. Northernlion, who mostly plays roguelike games or other games where it doesn't actually matter, it's background filter for the streamer to talk over and get visual stimulation.
Why do you think Ironmon was popular for a while, and some streamers still do it, despite it being basically a mundane challenge that is basically a lottery with minimal room for outplaying or underplaying the game? Because it makes for stream moments, it makes room for banter, and on the off chance one run goes far it is good clip bait.
Now try doing that with an 80 hour JRPG storyline where half the stream is reading dialogue or getting to the next point of dialogue.
When it comes to the videos, which nowadays are mainly based on streams cut up, it's a lot easier for people to get everything and craft a storyline around gameplay for your video rather than retell the game's story, and your story of playing it.
Challenge runs. Speedruns. Gimmicks like Infinite Fusion. That is the modern bedrock of gaming content. And the point is that content is what drives people to know about things.
Not many people are actually scrolling pokecommunity to find the next unknown gem. They see content and want to try it out.
"It's called that because the original idea for the game was based on a roleplay"
Ah, like Rejuvenation. The name's sadly "ulterior" out of context, which may turn off some interest
The reason I'm focusing on names is cuz Sonic fans have done bs like "Adventure 3, Sonic Reborn, Sonic Adventure Returns" for fangames, or even officially "Mania is the true Sonic 4", with notorious narcissism. Some just straight up showing it in promoting their game trailer. I've been too wary admittedly
It doesn't help that Pokemon suffers with feeling repetitive without the self imposed challenges, so a 50 hour campaign REALLY drags, regardless of story. Noticed Pokerogue players getting fatigued with the repetition post game. Even Mystery Dungeon struggles with post game feeling like a slog for recruit em alls, despite dungeon layout randomization
And again...being in dev for over a few years and still being unfinished will wane interest
I'm not fully sure why Rejuvenation is underlooked even further, but the rise of difficulty hacks is definitely a factor
Ah, like Rejuvenation. The name's sadly "ulterior" out of context, which may turn off some interest
The reason I'm focusing on names is cuz Sonic fans have done bs like "Adventure 3, Sonic Reborn, Sonic Adventure Returns" for fangames, or even officially "Mania is the true Sonic 4", with notorious narcissism. Some just straight up showing it in promoting their game trailer. I've been too wary admittedly
It doesn't help that Pokemon suffers with feeling repetitive without the self imposed challenges, so a 50 hour campaign REALLY drags, regardless of story. Noticed Pokerogue players getting fatigued with the repetition post game. Even Mystery Dungeon struggles with post game feeling like a slog for recruit em alls, despite dungeon layout randomization
And again...being in dev for over a few years and still being unfinished will wane interest
I'm not fully sure why Rejuvenation is underlooked even further, but the rise of difficulty hacks is definitely a factor
Historically, this has never been a blow against Pokemon fangame stuff. Again, the update cycle actually used to help these games, since the updates would also revamp the beginning content, and Pokemon lets players would get new players into the game.
The old way the scene worked was that Pokemon content was mainly lets plays. Once they ran out of main series content? Boom, gotta find alternatives. Easiest way is fangames. There's never been enough fangames to just lets play different ones forever, so new updates for unfinished fangames was very common, and lets plays would often stop and continue in a cycle until the game either was canceled, or ended.
I'll note in advance that yeah, these youtubers also did do nuzlocking content, but instead of being a supercut it was usually filler until the next game released- filler. Nuzlockes of fangames and romhacks were also done especially for stuff that was usually deemed bad and unfair, although that is kinda funny compared to nowadays.
Hell, sometimes it was neither: MunchingOrange did a Pokemon Uranium lets play from when it was a GBA game, and then restarted when it was a full fangame. The GBA version!
(Noteworthy is Munching Orange actually never covered Reborn or Rejuvenation, because he was always prioritizing a family friendly brand, and neither of those games work with that well. His way of surviving between generations was usually PMD, family friendly fangames, or Yokai Watch.)
And he still went on to do it basically all, again.
This meant that these updates for fangames were a part of the scene. Release the game unfinished, get traffick from lets players, start releasing updates, cycle it.
Now let's see what Munching Orange uploads now:
Now, this isn't ALL the same style of videos, but also it is funny to note that the most popular one here basically just looks like any other Pokemon fangame with weird mechanics videos.
I'll note that it isn't really the creators' fault, to be clear- it's about where viewership went, and also that livestreaming is just a very nice way for Youtubers to operate. You get paid twice, and the viewers get content twice, everyone wins. But it does mean that gaming content that is about fully playing through a game has its own real genre now which is 2-5 hour long supercuts of other streams, where it's trying to condense an entire playthrough, which still doesn't work for a longer RPG.
Trust me, RT Games tried.
Elden Ring is one of the few RPGs in the last few years to break this mold, and a big part of that is that Elden Ring is basically Challenge Run, The Game in that there is such a metanarrative around Souls games that it basically takes the spot of a challenge run title, where getting past bosses is the challenge, and half the stream is dying.
Edit: Can you tell I am very autistic about this topic (I am autistic and I am autistic about this topic, I love talking about the history of gaming content and fangames)
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Aren't streamers who do challenge runs et al. a subset of people who do challenge runs et al. by definition? There's plenty of other options to fill the screen if the main objective is banter, after all.
At the same time, I'm also super deep into a let's play of Ace Attorney and it's 100% dialogue, with my enjoyment mostly being carried by the people being pretty good voice actors and/or comedians. Interestingly, I think it would be far less watchable if the games had full voice acting, because that would remove an opportunity for the presenters to do something and express themselves. At that point, there's no real distinction between an LP and a cutscene compilation, and the latter usually has a faster turnaround after the game releases. JRPGs generally provide more tools for somebody to express themselves through gameplay compared to dialogue, so it makes sense for the gameplay to be prioritized when attempting to make something unique from other options.
What used to be gaming youtubers now are called "variety streamers" and usually many of the people do all of these at different times.
For instance, SmallAnt1 started as a speedrunning streamer but his content is more like this:
As you can see it's a mish-mash of challenge runs, speedrun content, and sometimes multiplayer content. Also, even when streamers aren't doing speedrun content, often they'll have a speedrun timer on for some reason nowadays, anyways? I don't actually know the logic for this one, I think it's just part of an "aesthetic".
There are definitely "challenge run content creators" who's main bread and butter is that, even when they stream, like Gamechamps, but generally streamers will try all of the above as their content.
There are absolutely some people doing the traditional format, it's just rare. Aforementioned RTGame did Phoenix Wright streams and I loved them. But in general, the most common type right now is a "variety streamer" who usually just does the stuff I just talked about, and that usually gets the most views
Anywho, I think we're a bit off-topic, so I won't really talk about it much more.
What discouraged me to not play Rejuv by myself until it's fully done is bc of how much the story and world have been rewritten and retooled from the early game. I have a save file around mid game and I saw that I missed out on some story segments which have been added after I already went through those parts of the game. I don't want to restart from zero, since it's quite a hefty game (plus I don't want to lose my shinies and trained mons), and who knows if they're going to keep adding more scenes at earlier points of the game.
I understand how much effort it takes to create a game like this, and it's admirable how dedicated the community is towards Rejuvenation, but I don't feel this is doing it for me (plus some story beats later on discouraged me even more...). I feel like I was more dedicated to Reborn bc I was more impressionable back then, plus the PokeEssentials fangames scene was still quite new.
I understand how much effort it takes to create a game like this, and it's admirable how dedicated the community is towards Rejuvenation, but I don't feel this is doing it for me (plus some story beats later on discouraged me even more...). I feel like I was more dedicated to Reborn bc I was more impressionable back then, plus the PokeEssentials fangames scene was still quite new.
Starting from scratch in Rejuvenation is especially unappealing because there are a bunch of lengthy setpieces that become a real slog on subsequent playthroughs. It's cool to refresh the early game as you develop later sections, but it's hard to strike the right balance for longtime players who don't want to feel like they have to restart the game with each new release.
My biggest (and apparently most unpopular) issue with Rejuv is that I find almost every major character extremely grating, so it constantly feels like I'm being forced into a friend group with people I hate.
With how long the storyline is regarding Reborn and Rejuv and how often it tend to get reworked, I prefer to wait until the game’s storyline is completed in the case of Rejuvenation.
I know about the whole “a delayed game is eventually good” thing, but that is only true if the dev team doesn’t take the right priority, such as adding more fillers to the story when actual story progress should have been made. Reborn’s case is fine given it’s based of the roleplay of the same name and must have lasted this long; Rejuvenation does not have the same excuse, and comes off as much bleaker than it should due to how slow the pace feels.
After all, there’s such a thing as being too long. You don’t want it to end it too shortly lest we get a rushm convoluted and unsastifying one, but if the story started to drag on with no significant progress, made worse if the main characters continues to suffer with no positive character development (or a well-made negative character development if one wanted to make it logical), then the audience will eventually lose interest until the pace goes back up… and that’s only if the pace goes back up.
For streamers, it’s already not a good sign if the game’s story is pretty long. Now imagine how daunting it will be if such story ends up dragging on longer than it should due to fillers or exceedingly slow pace and lack of progress, so it’s not hard to see why many streamers would nope‘d out if they saw how long the likes of Reborn’s story is.
Reborn and it’s connected cousins of fangames worked due to high number of writers and programmers alike, not just because of it’s dark but nonetheless grounded tone, and given the sheer length, it’s one of the few fangames where the “all Pokémon available as of this writing” thing actually worked in it’s favor. Any smaller fangame dev trying to replicate the success by copying it’s formula and length will end up realizing that the task is more herculian than most players thought.
The silver lining in that there is nothing wrong with wanting to write a long story for a fangame, but you had to make sure to keep the story happening by making meaningful progress for both the protagonists and antagonists, not putting plot twists for sake of extending the already long plot, and making sure that the important characters does not overstay their welcome by becoming unintentionally hated in the process. It’s not easy, but it can pay off if done well.
On a game, however, you may want to put a “speedrun mode” or something along the line so that streamers or players not having patience with the story can enjoy it, or at least progress through the game faster. If the gameplay aspects turned out bas due to rollercoaster dififculty and unfair gauntlets like 6v12s, it at least makes it easier to expose the flaws on the game as well.
I know about the whole “a delayed game is eventually good” thing, but that is only true if the dev team doesn’t take the right priority, such as adding more fillers to the story when actual story progress should have been made. Reborn’s case is fine given it’s based of the roleplay of the same name and must have lasted this long; Rejuvenation does not have the same excuse, and comes off as much bleaker than it should due to how slow the pace feels.
After all, there’s such a thing as being too long. You don’t want it to end it too shortly lest we get a rushm convoluted and unsastifying one, but if the story started to drag on with no significant progress, made worse if the main characters continues to suffer with no positive character development (or a well-made negative character development if one wanted to make it logical), then the audience will eventually lose interest until the pace goes back up… and that’s only if the pace goes back up.
For streamers, it’s already not a good sign if the game’s story is pretty long. Now imagine how daunting it will be if such story ends up dragging on longer than it should due to fillers or exceedingly slow pace and lack of progress, so it’s not hard to see why many streamers would nope‘d out if they saw how long the likes of Reborn’s story is.
Reborn and it’s connected cousins of fangames worked due to high number of writers and programmers alike, not just because of it’s dark but nonetheless grounded tone, and given the sheer length, it’s one of the few fangames where the “all Pokémon available as of this writing” thing actually worked in it’s favor. Any smaller fangame dev trying to replicate the success by copying it’s formula and length will end up realizing that the task is more herculian than most players thought.
The silver lining in that there is nothing wrong with wanting to write a long story for a fangame, but you had to make sure to keep the story happening by making meaningful progress for both the protagonists and antagonists, not putting plot twists for sake of extending the already long plot, and making sure that the important characters does not overstay their welcome by becoming unintentionally hated in the process. It’s not easy, but it can pay off if done well.
On a game, however, you may want to put a “speedrun mode” or something along the line so that streamers or players not having patience with the story can enjoy it, or at least progress through the game faster. If the gameplay aspects turned out bas due to rollercoaster dififculty and unfair gauntlets like 6v12s, it at least makes it easier to expose the flaws on the game as well.
Regarding Legendary Pokemon, I actually much prefer their escalation in scale, going from "just" stronger creatures with some folklore around them to many being environment-molding Titans from Gen 3 onward. This is mostly the case in Gen 1 for me as Gen 2's lore can retroactively fit the idea that these Pokemon (the revived Beasts and Ho-oh) are part of a Legend in the region rather than being legendary just for their rare existence.
It always bugged me trying to dissect what in terms of lore makes something like the Kanto Birds "Legendary" as opposed to just extraordinarily powerful Pokemon that are on the rarer side given they're just sort of "there" in the games and the anime was no stranger to the premise that multiples of them could exist. The big hole for me is that Dragonite exists and is treated with a similar mysticism and power by a lot of lore at the time (being statistically stronger in the games and the signature mon of Lance as THE biggest NPC big wig across Kanto representation).
Beings on the level of Groudon and Kyogre or Dialga and Palkia make a lot more sense to me as legendary creatures with such awe-inspiring feats to their name that it's hard to believe more than one could exist, and why these organizations would go to such massive lengths to possess them for reasons beyond just powerful battling tools. The smaller scale legendaries meanwhile possess powers not directly related to battling or appear in legends for such reason (the Regis being Golems based on entities in real life religious texts that were similarly artificial)
I have mixed feelings about the way later generations have approached the matter: stuff like the Ultra Beasts and Paradox Pokemon don't have the "Legendary" classification officially since they're powerful but don't really have a place in the world itself, but then are adjacent to Pokemon who do get the classification without that sort of consistency (Solgaleo, Lunala, and Necrozma have lore in Alola's light and past, while the Raidons are not recognized as more than weird Cyclizar and get passing mentions for the Sc/Vi Books).
It always bugged me trying to dissect what in terms of lore makes something like the Kanto Birds "Legendary" as opposed to just extraordinarily powerful Pokemon that are on the rarer side given they're just sort of "there" in the games and the anime was no stranger to the premise that multiples of them could exist. The big hole for me is that Dragonite exists and is treated with a similar mysticism and power by a lot of lore at the time (being statistically stronger in the games and the signature mon of Lance as THE biggest NPC big wig across Kanto representation).
Beings on the level of Groudon and Kyogre or Dialga and Palkia make a lot more sense to me as legendary creatures with such awe-inspiring feats to their name that it's hard to believe more than one could exist, and why these organizations would go to such massive lengths to possess them for reasons beyond just powerful battling tools. The smaller scale legendaries meanwhile possess powers not directly related to battling or appear in legends for such reason (the Regis being Golems based on entities in real life religious texts that were similarly artificial)
I have mixed feelings about the way later generations have approached the matter: stuff like the Ultra Beasts and Paradox Pokemon don't have the "Legendary" classification officially since they're powerful but don't really have a place in the world itself, but then are adjacent to Pokemon who do get the classification without that sort of consistency (Solgaleo, Lunala, and Necrozma have lore in Alola's light and past, while the Raidons are not recognized as more than weird Cyclizar and get passing mentions for the Sc/Vi Books).
This post and all of these "long game unfinished" posts are putting the cart before the horse.
90% of the people who got into Pokemon fangames in the last 4ish years don't even know that Rejuvenation exists. Because no one covers it anymore.
90% of people who play romhacks nowadays don't use Smogon Forums. They don't go on pokecommunity, and god no they do not find RebornEvo. They exclusively find new games through Youtube content.
Reborn didn't "work", by the way. Reborn actually is a far worse game than Rejuvenation and that's the reason why people who had interest in Reborn still care about Rejuvenation. Reborn after many of its updates ended up having a great tileset, good unique mechanics, a good artstyle and good taste in music- but its story was bad, and the game's difficulty went off the rails towards being mainly unfun towards the last third of the game. I say this as someone who actually did slog through terrible moments such as listening to an annoying character's dialogue in my head over and over, doing a fetch quest to be able to fight the Fighting gym leader, who's gimmick is practically luck-based and I had to reconstruct my team to do it without IVs.
Reborn is a game that falls off extremely hard as it goes on. I will say the beginning of it is one of the coolest bits of any Pokemon game, with the limitation of options the player gets meaning they actually have to try- Reborn is one of the best Pokemon fangames when it comes to getting the player to remake their team, and rewarding them for doing so. But as the world opens up it's more about convenience and the vibes of the game goes from this cool, atmospheric broken city, to just mainly normal Pokemon.
Rejuvenation in a way is actually fulfilling things that Reborn was supposed to do but with an actually coherent plot and game, while Reborn was always messy as fuck to begin with, and a way better difficulty curve.
Saying that Rejuvenation's plot is inherently not well-written because the game is long is just a bad take. Many of the best stories ever are absolutely long as fuck- is Rejuvenation one of the best stories ever?? No, but it's Pokemon as a series that is one of the few RPG series to have plotlines that aren't over 50 hours minimum. Reborn and Rejuvenation are just the length of normal RPGs.
All of y'all are bringing smoke for a project trying to reverse engineer a justification when the reality is that it's not about your thoughts on the game, it's that people don't make content on these games anymore. Rejuvenation isn't the only story game that isn't talked about much, and while I dislike Unbound there's a reason Radical Red got far more coverage- it has that streamable quality.
The idea of a "Speedrun mode" is literally just anti-games-as-art. Games should not be designed around convenience, they should be designed to elicit the feelings that the developer wants. Story games should be story games, and if the developer wants the game to be about the story, why would they do a "Speedrun mode" so that people will skip most of the work?
Redesigning games to appeal to streamers is such a cringe concept and it's one of the flaws with modern gaming, frankly. I'm not one of those people who thinks modern games are getting worse, I think there is a lot of variety in the genres that weren't there in the early 8th and majority of the 7th gens, where it was mainly just military shooters and other varieties of shooters. A 2023 couldn't happen a decade ago. But honestly, this touches on something that's making the indie game market less appealing to me as a potential maker; games being designed around going viral and being streamable will always win out over the games that are mainly singleplayer and often make people cry.
Lethal Company is a cool game, but compare its success to the likes of Rain World, where it took years and a DLC in order to be a small niche title with any fan community, despite being one of the most immersive games ever- an experience that will stick with players for decades. I think game design is in a war right now between games that try to stick with people forever (good!) and games designed for players to forget the experience the next day, but come back for their next dopamine hit.
Games like Radical Red are cool, but ultimately their main purpose is streamer fodder to be used by streamers so that their thousands of viewers can get their dopamine hit (Where they will forget everything the next day).
IMO this entire discussion is a microcosm of what the scene of developing is becoming. Trying to make a 100 hour campaign game with a story you want people to remember for free? But what if not all of the story is important! How will streamers stream this??
Then onward to do challenge run 42 that will be forgotten the day after completion, or watching Youtube/Streaming in a week for accumulative many hours, or many games where literally all of the time you spent will be forgotten.
We should support games that are actually aiming to be ambitious and try to make an experience that will stick with people, and not reverse engineer a justification for why the games failed to get traction when the actual reason is much more cynical than "Some people didn't wanna replay it", considering the majority of the audience doesn't know the game exists.
I understand if what I'm describing sounds pretty dramatic, but at the minimum I just want people to recognize the amount of effort that goes into this, and how it isn't "the developers fault" that they started making a game close to the end of an era. Rejuvenation is one of the last remnants of that era, and most of the fangames we get nowadays don't bother with a new campaign; people are spending hundreds of hours remaking Kanto. Again. In another engine (Essentials).
If you want one of the other few story games to come out in the last few years, there's a cool fangame I played called "Pokemon: The First Journey"; the premise is that the game is about Professor Oak in Kanto when he was young, and includes a lot of fanon lore about what Pokemon are and how they work. It's a decently lengthed game, about 15ish hours I think, and it has some interesting gameplay since Pokemon Centers don't exist. I don't like all of the lore, but the lore leads to an extremely interesting ending that is supposed to lead to the other game the creator is making. It is as I just said, another person spending hundreds of hours remaking Kanto, but instead of in the way that Pokemon Infinite Fusion just remade Kanto but again to fulfill a gameplay gimmick, the way this game plays through Kanto is mainly in reverse, and it's used for story context- it doesn't end up feeling much like a Kanto game, only maybe the last third can feel like it moreso when the areas open up. IMO it justifies that work.
And the game is done, so if you want a complete Pokemon story experience, there you go. I wish we got more games like these, because this is a game that actually really sticks with me; I'm not gonna act like it's some high-class writing, but what I'm getting at overall is that it doesn't need to be high-class writing to be something to stick with you. I recommend anyone who likes to get an interesting take on Pokemon lore to try it.
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