Unpopular opinions

I *could* say that the hate over the chibi models in BDSP had to do more with fans not wanting to be perceived as "childish" over an actual critique of the visuals, but that might too much of a hot take even for here lol.

That being said, I think BDSP does look a bit bland, but it still looks nice enough considering the conditions it was made on. Some of the battle backgrounds are easily some of the best in the series.
 
Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl look mid until you play it during sunset, where it becomes one of the prettiest Pokemon games yet.

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I also particularly like how water looks in this game and Pokecenters.
 
Wukong said:
But even the most ardent fans of those works could not argue that they have already shown considerable age. Playing Platinum on the original hardware just doesn't result in the kind of snappy feel that even Gen's 3 and 5 managed to produce. Even something as small as not being able to check your starter's stats until after your first rival battle AND a flood of dialogue from your mom, sets the tone out of the gate for a slow paced experience that becomes difficult to defend over time. So while the skeleton is nearly perfect, the blood flow so to speak is far from it.
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See, something I have commended XY even when they were my least favorite of the mainline games at some point is that the loading times are excellent, despite the jump to 3D graphics. Going into a battle, checking your boxes, etc. it still felt as fluid as before.
 
pokemon4eva said:
See, something I have commended XY even when they were my least favorite of the mainline games at some point is that the loading times are excellent, despite the jump to 3D graphics. Going into a battle, checking your boxes, etc. it still felt as fluid as before.
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Yeah, credit where credit is due. Even Ruby & Sapphire were quite fluid for being on a new hardware. I thought those were remarkably well made games for their time actually and set a good foundation for Emerald to build upon.

Unlike Diamond & Pearl, which is the first time I thought the series took a step backwards in multiple respects.
 
ant4456 said:
I also particularly like how water looks in this game
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One particular moment that I remember while playing was the scene where Barry is confronting Jupiter at Lake Acuity. The camera angle shifts from the regular top-down view to an over-the-shoulder view from behind Barry, and I swear, in that moment the water in the lake looked practically photorealistic, which was such an odd contrast next to the very cartoonish chibi characters standing there.
 
Wukong said:
This is why I like this forum. Because it challenges and lends perspective to my pre-conceived notions.

I wrote here about my criteria for judging Pokemon games. But I forgot about one - technical prowess. And this is unfortunately where Platinum falters.

As a Zelda fan too, the OoT analogies are apt. As a Star Wars fan too, I'll add one more - A New Hope. Platinum, OoT, and ANH all give off a seminal, iconic, classic feel. Even arguably representing the most definitive experiences of their respective franchises. As has been alluded to earlier in this thread, Platinum in some ways represents the most refined version of the classic formula Pokemon tried to perfect with Gen's 1-4. And I believe they succeeded. In terms of the other criteria I listed in that previous post, Platinum's bones/skeletal structure are excellent. The best the franchise has to offer, in my opinion. It's for a similar reason I still rank OoT at the top of its franchise and ANH second behind ESB in the Star Wars franchise (not to digress, sorry). OoT just feels like pure Zelda, and A New Hope feels like Star Wars. It sounds esoteric but I'm not sure how else to explain it.

But even the most ardent fans of those works could not argue that they have already shown considerable age. Playing Platinum on the original hardware just doesn't result in the kind of snappy feel that even Gen's 3 and 5 managed to produce. Even something as small as not being able to check your starter's stats until after your first rival battle AND a flood of dialogue from your mom, sets the tone out of the gate for a slow paced experience that becomes difficult to defend over time. So while the skeleton is nearly perfect, the blood flow so to speak is far from it.

My biggest problem with BW2 is its inability to stand well as a self contained game. It took arguably the worst part of BW1's storyline (the Ghetsis plot point) and drew a straight through line of that point through the entirety of the game. Even roping in and ultimately infecting your rival's character in the process. So structurally I still think Platinum has BW2 beat.

But BW2's maximization of the DS's technical specs (even if pushed over the edge at times graphically) may ultimately, if not already, result in the games aging much better than Platinum. Perhaps akin to Majora's Mask and Windwaker if we're to use that analogy.

However, Platinum's near perfection of the original games' intended formula still warrants its place as a masterpiece, technical limitations notwithstanding.
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My problem with this post is that comparing Ocarina of Time to Platinum is silly as hell.

Ocarina of Time was genuinely the inventor of the Adventure Story Game, a genre that is still extremely prevalent today. But it was also fairly ahead of its time, despite how I don't even actually like that game tbh?

But like, it did so much ahead. It holds up really IMO.

Gen 4 was behind on release. I've talked about this many times, but including Platinum but especially DP, were not ahead of their time in technical prowess at all or in game design. Sinnoh's game design is about on par with Kanto's and lower than Johto/Hoenn while its graphics are IMO some of the weakest in the series, especially compared to other JRPGSs on the systmem at the end.
 
ant4456 said:
My problem with this post is that comparing Ocarina of Time to Platinum is silly as hell.

Ocarina of Time was genuinely the inventor of the Adventure Story Game, a genre that is still extremely prevalent today. But it was also fairly ahead of its time, despite how I don't even actually like that game tbh?

But like, it did so much ahead. It holds up really IMO.

Gen 4 was behind on release. I've talked about this many times, but including Platinum but especially DP, were not ahead of their time in technical prowess at all or in game design. Sinnoh's game design is about on par with Kanto's and lower than Johto/Hoenn while its graphics are IMO some of the weakest in the series, especially compared to other JRPGSs on the systmem at the end.
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The DP point is a bit of a red herring for reasons I've already covered, so refocusing on Platinum -

There's obviously a difference between "comparing" and analogizing as I was in this post. Zelda as a video game franchise is in a different class compared to Pokemon. The former has produced what are widely considered some of the greatest titles in the history of video games; the latter is a casual, beginner friendly JRPG with basic gameplay containing depth one could explore should they so choose. To compare Platinum to OoT at face value would be a little absurd.

But within the confines of their respective franchises their places do mirror one another, in my view. We can go back and forth (as we already have) about things like level design, boss design, art style etc. But the intricate way the map is woven around Mt. Coronet was pretty unprecedented for the time and still hasn't really been topped for me. This post does a good job of explaining it.

A boss like Cynthia (a champion with no overlapping types, good move sets, good AI, reasonable level curve) hadn't been seen before, and is again still in the higher echelons of the franchise design wise.

And graphically HGSS is probably the best in the series, but Platinum is still very solid. They showcased great, never-before-seen depth with the over world 2.5D graphics, without the pixelated slight push over the edge of the Gen 5 games. The sprite work is still incredibly vivid, and locations like the Distortion World and Battle Zone made excellent use of color in being aesthetically intriguing.

Again, games like BW2 and Emerald may end up aging better than Platinum due to their more fluid gameplay. Just as Majora's Mask and Windwaker might due to their unique stories and/or art style. But Platinum to me still represents the quintessential Pokemon journey, in much the same way OoT represents a pure Zelda journey. They may show their wrinkles more quickly, but rightfully deserve their place in the highest rungs of their respective franchises, as many still view them.
 
Wukong said:
But within the confines of their respective franchises their places do mirror one another, in my view. We can go back and forth (as we already have) about things like level design, boss design, art style etc. But the intricate way the map is woven around Mt. Coronet was pretty unprecedented for the time and still hasn't really been topped for me. This post does a good job of explaining it.
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I don't agree with this part because I dislike Mt Coronet.


Wukong said:
A boss like Cynthia (a champion with no overlapping types, good move sets, good AI, reasonable level curve) hadn't been seen before, and is again still in the higher echelons of the franchise design wise.
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I also don't think Cynthia is well-designed as a boss fight or character.


Wukong said:
And graphically HGSS is probably the best in the series, but Platinum is still very solid. They showcased great, never-before-seen depth with the over world 2.5D graphics, without the pixelated slight push over the edge of the Gen 5 games. The sprite work is still incredibly vivid, and locations like the Distortion World and Battle Zone made excellent use of color in being aesthetically intriguing.
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I also do not think HGSS or Platinum are in the Top 5 artstyles of the series.


Wukong said:
Again, games like BW2 and Emerald may end up aging better than Platinum due to their more fluid gameplay. Just as Majora's Mask and Windwaker might due to their unique stories and/or art style. But Platinum to me still represents the quintessential Pokemon journey, in much the same way OoT represents a pure Zelda journey. They may show their wrinkles more quickly, but rightfully deserve their place in the highest rungs of their respective franchises, as many still view them.
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Don't agree.
 
ant4456 said:
My problem with this post is that comparing Ocarina of Time to Platinum is silly as hell.

Ocarina of Time was genuinely the inventor of the Adventure Story Game, a genre that is still extremely prevalent today.
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You're missing the forest for the trees.

No one is directly comparing OoT to Platinum as games. The comparison made was their impact on their franchises as gold standards and how, in certain ways, despite their impact, they're showing their age.

Also, that second bit is objectively incorrect. The Zelda franchise did not start at OoT. A Link to the Past had a fairly similar structure to it in many ways. The biggest difference is that Ocarina of Time did it in 3D and on an unprecedented scale at the time. Building upon the old games, as Platinum itself did, is one of the reasons Ocarina wound up so iconic.

Wukong said:
But Platinum to me still represents the quintessential Pokemon journey, in much the same way OoT represents a pure Zelda journey.
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Perfectly said. :blobthumbsup:

There's another layer to this. Pokémon games nowadays have major gimmicks attached to them since XY introduced Megas. SV went a step beyond and made the game open-world. Regardless of how one feels towards it, SV is very different from a traditional Pokémon game. That only reinforces the comparison between OoT and Platinum's impacts on their franchises.
 
Ironmage said:
So would SwSh or SV be the BotW of pokemon? (I consider this a compliment to none of them)
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Just for the sake of discussion, I’d say SV. SwSh are structurally a very conventional Pokémon game, and while the DLC expands on the concept, the Wild Area is not much more than a glorified Safari Zone. The open world design philosophy to come is very clearly still in the early stages of gestation by the time of SwSh.

To make a clunky Zelda analogy, I suppose SwSh would be like A Link Between Worlds? In that they both are the beginning of implementing some degree of open world design into an otherwise very familiar shape of a game.
 
Ocarina of Time is a classic and a game that did many incredible things at a time when its closest competitors at the time in terms of gameplay were games like Tomb Raider, which were way smaller in scope and more limiting in the world building. Third person gameplay with large maps to explore in. It was a big technical leap forward for video games generally and for the Zelda franchise.

Ocarina of Time’s Hyrule field with everything bolted on around it was a genuine whhhhhaaattttt moment for so many people. It was “open world” before open world games really existed - you can play most of the dungeons out of order in some ways, there’s a lot of alternative routes and additional quests.

OoT in my head was the first time a game franchise changed things up so much that it was truly evolution, not revolution.

So no, Pokemon Platinum is not Pokemon’s OoT. That’s ridiculous. If you played every generation, as I did, from Gen 1 onwards, Platinum barely registers on the overall timeline - it’s a well polished third version of that fourth generation of Pokemon games, but it is not revolutionary or evolutionary from the third gen. The graphics are better, the maps are set up identically.

Remember that Ocarina of Time was the next Legend of Zelda game after Link’s Awakening on the Game Boy Colour. That jump and leap into 3D graphics and the huge world created was a huge leap forward.

The comparison for Pokemon I think isn’t the fourth gen, but in the third gen, and that big jump was Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire to Pokemon Coliseum, which is where we found the biggest technical jump between games.

So I refute the idea that Platinum is Pokemon’s Ocarina of Time. That’s ridiculous and overplays Platinum’s importance and underplays how important Ocarina of Time is to video game development.

I’d go so far as to say that Ocarina of Time is one of the most important video games of all time for what it achieved and what it pushed in the industry generally.

Pokemon is important to me and a big part of my life but I reckon I’d have to accept that its effect on videogame development is relatively minor - more important is how it as a franchise has influenced other brands in terms of its marketing strategy.
 
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pokemon4eva said:
More like the Crash Twinsanity of Pokemon (the difference is that I like Crash Twinsanity)

Now that I think about it, SWSH is comparable to Wrath of Cortex as well, considering that one of its main criticisms was the inability to innovate.
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Does that include the part where both games are very technically glitchy and unfinished, even acknowledging their strong suits/what people like playing them for?
 
Yeah, reception wise, Twinsanity got people more divided than games that are generally agreed to be mediocre/bad. Me personally, it does enough good to be an enyoable platformer, mainly the movement, the various scenarios and the collectables to pick up. The jankiness can get REALLY bad tho, and you can tell how unfinished the game is, to the point some collectibles are unused material.
 
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