Unpopular opinions

I said before I'm not a fan of the Paradoxes (in general, some specific ones I do like), and thinking it through it's because they check out all of the usual boxes:
1. They're uninspired, this is more agreed with the Future ones, but the Past ones also suffer from this, around half of them are just "let's give them bigger teeth/hair" and call it a day.

2. They're overly dominant in competitive, you see them everywhere across both non official and VGC scenes and it's tiring to see the meta revolving around them. Ironically it seems this is also the main factor of their popularity.

3. The concept has a lot of interest and intrigue with the whole time travel theme the games have, only to answer with a measly "well mayyyybe they're from parallel universes" in the DLC. I just think it's dumb to suddenly pull a multiverse and with such a lack of clarity, and now every Bulbapedia description has to look like this.

Screenshot 2025-03-29 123747.jpg
 
With the benefit of hindsight, the sad irony of Dynamax is that it would've worked significantly better as a gameplay mechanic in a Legends game. There's the obvious appeal of "Dynamax Alphas", for one thing, where you go into a hypothetical revamped Wild Area and see a giant Charizard with blazing wings looming over the horizon you have to dodge and weave around lest your character get hit with a stream of fire the size of a Gyarados. Where things get even more interesting is implementing the mechanic into Z-A's real time combat system. Doing so would introduce a whole new trade-off where your overpowered boss monster now has to deal with reduced mobility and being a massive target.
 
Yung Dramps said:
With the benefit of hindsight, the sad irony of Dynamax is that it would've worked significantly better as a gameplay mechanic in a Legends game. There's the obvious appeal of "Dynamax Alphas", for one thing, where you go into a hypothetical revamped Wild Area and see a giant Charizard with blazing wings looming over the horizon you have to dodge and weave around lest your character get hit with a stream of fire the size of a Gyarados. Where things get even more interesting is implementing the mechanic into Z-A's real time combat system. Doing so would introduce a whole new trade-off where your overpowered boss monster now has to deal with reduced mobility and being a massive target.
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Legends: The Darkest Day is going to be lit. :boi:

Hugin said:
I dislike the Paradoxes and UBs as a concept TBH. Some of the designs are good, for sure, but I hate mons that are locked to Victory Road or later. It's fine to have a lategame legendary or two I can ignore, but an entire group of mons? Where am I actually going to use these? I can't even trade their eggs to a new file and run them that way.

Other than that, there's some standout mons for me from all the recent generations. I'm on record as the one person who liked the SWSH fossils, of course, but there's plenty of good ones. Plenty of stinkers too, but that's also nothing new for pokemon.
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I agree.

The Paradoxes, with the exception of Tusk/Treads, are effectively post-game mons. And at that point... why bother?

Which is a shame, I like a lot of them, especially the past ones. The future ones bug me with all of them sharing the same chromebot look, being called Iron *Word*, and not ONE of them being Steel-type. :pikuh:

Scream Tail is neat tho. Cool design, unique gameplay idea... Great job. Shame it's locked to post-game. :mehowth:
 
Volt-Ikazuchi said:
Legends: The Darkest Day is going to be lit. :boi:
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Lowkey I don't think there's any game that actually needs a Legends game more than SWSH.

No, you don't need to see the Original Dragon. While I'd like Legends Celebi, ultimately that isn't really necessary. Fuck no to Kanto. I think a Legends Hoenn based on the Draconids would be interesting, but SWSH?

Like 80% of the game is based on a historical event we know jack shit about, and then a mechanic with so little lore.
 
pokemon4eva said:
2. They're overly dominant in competitive, you see them everywhere across both non official and VGC scenes and it's tiring to see the meta revolving around them. Ironically it seems this is also the main factor of their popularity.

3. The concept has a lot of interest and intrigue with the whole time travel theme the games have, only to answer with a measly "well mayyyybe they're from parallel universes" in the DLC. I just think it's dumb to suddenly pull a multiverse and with such a lack of clarity, and now every Bulbapedia description has to look like this.

View attachment 726795
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So I can't comment on VGC, but in Singles formats, honestly the dominance of the Paradoxes is overblown. The most prominent ones in OU are Tusk (who's moreso a glue to cover bases than a Meta Warper), followed by Raging Bolt (who's an alternate take on Kingambit's heavily centralizing style), Roaring Moon (admittedly up for Suspect over set variety that dwarfs other Dragons and Dancers), and Iron Valiant (which is basically "what if Gen 4 Infernape didn't fall off?"). Aside from the ones banned early on like Flutter Mane and Iron Bundle (which I do know were pretty big Doubles players), it's hard to argue the Paradox Pokemon are "overly dominant" relative to what has been considered an acceptable level of Meta-King for previous and even current Gen. None of them are in the realm of something like Gen 3 Ttar or Skarmory, Gen 4 Jirachi, or Gen 5 TTar/Latios/Excadrill which are single mons who dictate how the entire tier forms around their roles and performance.





My bigger issue is specifically that a lot of the Future Paradox designs feel like they had an idea and then got cold feet on it in almost any direction: Future mons are all "Iron something" but then they have 2 Steel types as opposed to all or none (I might excuse Crown because of the trio but Treads still pops there). Another case is the wishy-washy shift between "give it a chrome plating" like Thorns, Jugulis, or Moth, and actually making creative use of the mechanized concept for things like Iron Bundle's detached head or Iron Hands's... hands giving it more range of movement. The main issue here is SOME of them have interesting designs going, but almost none of them possess a unique silhouette and thus are easy to write off (and correctly as noted for some cases) in still art or static poses that they are displayed in most of the time.

I prefer Paradoxes to the Ultra Beasts in that I think they have much higher highs compared to my overall indifference to the UB's on average, but their lows are much weaker considering the Beasts at least all have uniquely alien designs compared to standard Pokemon ethos, bar maybe the Poipole tree and Stakataka.
 
Bakugames said:
i think this is more of an unpopular opinion here than anywhere else, but i think all types should be extremely homogenous. i think types should all have similar tools and accessibility to them, because pokemon is not a game about types, but the pokemon that have them
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For the most part I agree with this, and I find it baffling that many people don't. I feel like every type should be able to function properly and have actual good attacks for different parts of the game.

IMO every type should get four very similar moves for both physical and special attacks, that are given to almost every pokemon of a type, so that every pokemon ca have at least one stab option for different sections of the game, and for things like battle facilities, competitive, etc. They wouldn't be the exact same but would follow the same battle purpose

The first would be a very weak attack for the beginning of the game, the second would be a stronger attack but still much weaker compared to late game options, the third would be a strong and consistent attack, and the fourth would be a really strong attack that has a downside. As an example, for special Fire types these could be Ember, Flame Burst, Flamethrower, and Fire Blast.

I do think beyond this, types should have a bunch of unique moves for themselves (Freeze Dry, Electro Ball, Solar Beam, etc), but I think those four basics should be around for every type and physical/special attack.
 
WinterArcanine said:
I do think beyond this, types should have a bunch of unique moves for themselves (Freeze Dry, Electro Ball, Solar Beam, etc), but I think those four basics should be around for every type and physical/special attack.
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That's what makes it such an unpopular opinion.

People think that wanting reliable STAB options means that this is all we want.

In fact, it's the opposite. It's a backbone so better moves can be made. Types having unique options would be great instead of having their unique options turned into TMs.
 
I never went back and explained my take: the issue i have with the idea of making every type unique is that it makes for extremely boring pokemon. every type would just be the ice type, where only one archetype can have major success while the rest flounder (other than idk 600+ bst abominations but thats kinda for every type. they can do whatever they want). I want all archetypes to be viable with all types, because its fundamentally more interesting to have different pokemon use the type differently than going "its an ice type so its a fast attacker. its a steel type so its a wall. its a fire type so its a bulky attacker"
 
Hugin said:
I dislike the Paradoxes and UBs as a concept TBH. Some of the designs are good, for sure, but I hate mons that are locked to Victory Road or later. It's fine to have a lategame legendary or two I can ignore, but an entire group of mons? Where am I actually going to use these? I can't even trade their eggs to a new file and run them that way.

Other than that, there's some standout mons for me from all the recent generations. I'm on record as the one person who liked the SWSH fossils, of course, but there's plenty of good ones. Plenty of stinkers too, but that's also nothing new for pokemon.
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I feel less positive about the Paradoxes than probably most people. While the UBs had fairly unconventional designs, it feels like every Paradox is just "what if X Pokémon was a dinosaur/robot?". The only ones that reinvent the original concepts in a creative way imo are Slither Wing and Sandy Shocks since they have drastically different silhouettes.

I also dislike how they're implemented in-game. Like cool, there's this in-universe occult magazine where people share sightings of cryptids, but it would be even cooler if there NPCs in the actual world (in a game that prioritizes exploration and discovery) that you explore that share these rumors and give you hints to where to find these rare Pokémon rather than just dump them all in a late-game area.
 
WinterArcanine said:
IMO every type should get four very similar moves for both physical and special attacks, that are given to almost every pokemon of a type, so that every pokemon can have at least one stab option for different sections of the game, and for things like battle facilities, competitive, etc. They wouldn't be the exact same but would follow the same battle purpose
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Definitely no to this. For competitive, you really only need the high or top tier damage attacks to make things work.

Ingame though it is even worse. A whole lot of the fun can come from pokemon being pulled in different directions than their stat lines directly imply - using off attacking stats or relying on off type moves for a main damage dealing move for portions of the game can be really fun and a little less pure auto-pilot than usual. I'd much rather have a mon like say Vulpix / Ninetales use Wisp + Hex or Flare Blitz for portions of the game rather than purely just going down the Ember pipeline. (and that does, in practice, mean being exclusionary of the optimal stat aligned STABs at times, because otherwise those options may as well not exist for players not handicapping themselves)
 
I hate the idea of every type being relatively the same for the same reason I hate hit like Level Scaling.

At what point does the entire game start to feel the same outside of cosmetic differences. This shit matters to game feel. If my Fire Type and Bug Type feel essentially the same from a gameplay perspective, the texture of videogames, then everything starts to feel boring and stale.

Games should do more to make every bit of gameplay feel different, especially in their balance of different groups, not less. If your blorbo is bad because it doesn't have SpA Stone Edge, I don't care. That makes it more interesting.
 
Genuine_Angus_B33F said:
Definitely no to this. For competitive, you really only need the high or top tier damage attacks to make things work.

Ingame though it is even worse. A whole lot of the fun can come from pokemon being pulled in different directions than their stat lines directly imply - using off attacking stats or relying on off type moves for a main damage dealing move for portions of the game can be really fun and a little less pure auto-pilot than usual. I'd much rather have a mon like say Vulpix / Ninetales use Wisp + Hex or Flare Blitz for portions of the game rather than purely just going down the Ember pipeline. (and that does, in practice, mean being exclusionary of the optimal stat aligned STABs at times, because otherwise those options may as well not exist for players not handicapping themselves)
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I thought no but then I realized they were just talking about a mid-power accurate move and I was like yes. Otherwise no
 
ant4456 said:
Games should do more to make every bit of gameplay feel different, especially in their balance of different groups, not less. If your blorbo is bad because it doesn't have SpA Stone Edge, I don't care. That makes it more interesting.
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But then the issue is inversely they're generically bad, or as Baku said, pretty type cast for type role, or wanting to copy the typecasting as they are inferior

Like the type chart heavily dictates what's early to mid game as well, it's already formulaic without accounting moves or viability. Similarly, a lot of the "Can I beat X game with crappy mon" challenges just boil down to "the AI is stupid" and "I overgrinded cuz my stats/moves suck"
 
The Paradox Mons, especially the future ones, are huge victims of having their appeal stuck in Scarlet and Violet. Not just meaning Gen 9 as a whole, but those specific games.

When people make comments disparaging the designs of the Quark Squad and they refer to images like these
1743521977067.png
Iron Thorns Tyranitar.png
1743522220572.png

Well, yeah, I see it. They look really, really lame. The silhouettes really are near identical, and the small extra robo-details are cool but don't really come into focus.

Instead, almost all of the appeal of these designs comes into play when they exist within a space. Their animations, textures, and lighting are what make them stand out. Iron Moth's segmented pieces mechanically moving in contrast to Volcarona's wing flutter is a detail that comes to mind in this case. Even considering the identical silhouettes, seeing the two in motion for just a second makes them instantly distinguishable.

The obvious issues with this is that Scarlet and Violet are simply not very polished in presentation, and that the individual Paradox Mons outside of the box art duo don't get any specific appearance that takes advantage of their design strengths. Even just one somewhat dark and quiet location where the dim color light and eeire mechanical hum could create an atmosphere of some kind would have gone miles towards making their appeal land - imagine if there was a part of the game with such a location that contained many future Paradox Mons, and they could only be identified by their bright segments, with some turned off in the dark such that you bump into a 'wall' and it suddenly flickers to life. That's the kind of thing that's really missing imo, not the designs themselves.

With the modern churning dev cycles, imagining is all I expect to do with this kind of thing.
 
pokemon dont serve types, types serve pokemon. the baseline type having various tools doesnt mean that the pokemon itself needs to be able to access everything.

in this scenario, not all stab moves should be available to a pokemon, but rather the pokemon itself should be able to take something from its stab kit to work for its goals. a fast ice should take from the big boy attacks, not use as many ice utility. an ice wall should use ice defensive moves and ice utility, etc. but currently, all ice provides is big boy attacking, and ice utility/defense is left with crumbs, making the type one note and boring. hell, people keep making fun of gamefreak for making bulky ice walls, implying the correct course of action is that every ice type should be either weavile or baxcallibur. how boring
 
And honestly the type chart needs a rebalancing, but it can be chaotic. My joke hack went too far, but it was worth giving people migraines
:psysly:
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I will never forgive GF for making Fairy resist Bug. The fact that the leaks show they were planning for it to be SE on Bug is even more attrocious
 
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