Unpopular opinions

[QuentinQuonce]

The counterpoint to this will always be: You forget who the target demographic is.

The target demographic is *kids*. Most kids don't replay the games. They play the story and put them away to move to the next thing.

The adults who buy the game are a "extra", it's a playerbase they know will buy the game regardless (mainly for PvP or completionism) and don't require extra investment to maintain.
Even among the adults who play the game, the slice that actually *replay* the game is insanely small. This is the same issue with battle facilities, it's development time dedicated to a slice of playerbase so small that it was the first thing to be cut once GF started running out of time to develop the games per time.

So based off this assumption (which I believe is perfectly reasonable), it suddently becomes logical to not care for "making replayability comfier".

(And as usual, don't think that me understanding *why* they do it means I approve it. Incidentally, the terribly lenghty unskippable intro is why I never bothered learning the SV speedruns despite them being imo one of the funnier run of the series after L.A.'s: you have to sit through an hour of tutorial until the school sequence is done and you actually can play the game. It's half of that with Switch 2, but still, 30 mins of literally nothing but mashing through text every time you want to start a run isn't very interesting.)

I think that's certainly true today, but I don't know if it was always the case? I can't speak to RBY's heyday as I was ever so slightly too young for those games, but playing Gen II and III in my youth restarting your save file the games was absolutely a thing most of my friends/family who played would do (which is kind of funny given breeding was designed for pretty much exactly this purpose - in RBY if you wanted the other starter/fossil/Hitmon/Eevee your options were either trade or start new game, but GSC onwards you could just borrow your friend's mon and return it once you had an egg)

Maybe it's a casual vs superfan thing - and maybe it's just my own experience - but replaying the game was absolutely seen as a core part of Pokemon back in the day. It's something I think that's less true now because, as I alluded to, there are more ways to complete a file - trading is far easier than it once was, and legendary encounters are respawnable. I'm very much of the opinion that the shift to DLC vs third versions has something to do with it too - less incentive to keep an RS file when you suspect there'll be a "truer" version coming eventually (again, anecdotally a lot of my friends who played RS very much expected there to be an Emerald version later on even before it was ever announced).

 

[Just A Seaking]

Maybe it's a casual vs superfan thing - and maybe it's just my own experience - but replaying the game was absolutely seen as a core part of Pokemon back in the day.

Speaking anecdotally at least, when you're a kid you also can't just go out and buy new games all you want. (Well, as an adult you can't either, but you get my point.) That means you had to make the games that you did own last - and replaying the games is one of the best ways to get more mileage out of them, particularly in the games where the postgame is more threadbare. It also helps that these games lend themselves very naturally to replays with all the different one-off choices and different Pokemon you can try, so there's a pretty strong incentive to starting up a new save file.

 

[Bakugames]

Honestly i think gamefreak doesnt do save files because they believe a kid sees no difference in save files vs saving over a game since theyd just play again and not really touch the old file, and adults who play the games would either be more interested in post game than replayability or can just kinda deal with it. and then the switch has multiple profiles so theyre like well just use that lol

monster hunter stories also has no save files and it does take insp from pokemon so i wonder if they took that from them

 

[S.A.C. Martin]

I'm probably coming off as if I hate SV or something, and I don't. But this is such a formulaic franchise that it sometimes feels like people will really oversell any kind of shake-up at all, even when it's superficial or half-baked in its implementation. Like, okay, I didn't hate that they at least tried something a bit different. B- or C+ for effort, but I'd be pretty irritated if gen 10 went back to this well without improving upon it a lot.

I think we are all with you in that, Gen 10 really does need to be a proper step up.

What is astounding me this week is seeing how much better SV runs on Switch 2. It sort of feels to me that SV was just rushed and instead of being a proper step up from sword/shield, was sacrificed a tad for the next gen development. After all…it’ll be a four year cycle when Gen 10 is announced.

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

I've said this before and I'll say it again: The rosetta stone for understanding so many of this series' design choices over the years - especially a lot of the weird, controversial and flat-out unpopular ones - is realizing Game Freak fundamentally does not intend for these games to be replayed. Any and all continued engagement after beating the main story is meant to be some manner of PVP, functionally endless resource grinding mills like battle facilities and raids and building up your perpetually-growing collection via transfer software.

-Why was the handling of BW2's difficulty settings such byzantine nonsense? Because you're not actually meant to use them yourself, you're just supposed to trade them to other players for their own playthroughs, such as Easy Mode for your little sibling
-Why do some of these games have such sluggish, unskippable intros? Because they do not intend you to ever go through them again
-Why do they refuse to implement multiple save files and make deleting your current one essentially require a cheat code? Because given all of the above, they serve no purpose from the developers' perspective

If I'm right on this, then badge-based level scaling will never happen because that's a ton of extra design work for a feature where at least 50% of the appeal only kicks into gear on replays which, again, they do not want you to do. And yes, this is absolute horseshit for a JRPG series with hundreds of playable characters, but I'm just stating what I believe the facts to be, not what I want them to be.

And then they cut the post-game, and the online is...

And don't get me started on VGC

Multiple save files are whatever now that Home and Switch Profiles exist. It really doesn't make a difference to me.

 

[Sixfortyfive]

The target demographic is *kids*. Most kids don't replay the games. They play the story and put them away to move to the next thing.

I think that's certainly true today, but I don't know if it was always the case? I can't speak to RBY's heyday as I was ever so slightly too young for those games, but playing Gen II and III in my youth restarting your save file the games was absolutely a thing most of my friends/family who played would do (which is kind of funny given breeding was designed for pretty much exactly this purpose - in RBY if you wanted the other starter/fossil/Hitmon/Eevee your options were either trade or start new game, but GSC onwards you could just borrow your friend's mon and return it once you had an egg)

I don't think any age bracket is more or less averse to replaying a game. I think the dividing line here was when online play was added to the series. That alone substantially changed the value of "post-game" material.

I'd restart RBY every month for a while. It released when I was going into high school. I was in the upper fringe of the target demo and had nobody else to play with, so the multiplayer component may as well have not existed. No reason not to get the same kind of replay value out of it that I would for any other RPG that I dug enough to keep playing. The discovery of certain glitches even made it enticing to start fresh and try them out on a new run.

But I still have my original Platinum cartridge, and it's still on its original save file. Once online connectivity actually made the multiplayer functionality relevant for me, not to mention the presence of the Battle Frontier as substantial replayable singleplayer content, there was more to lose out on by wiping everything and starting fresh. By this point there was very much a pervasive feeling that "the real game doesn't begin until you see the credits," as the singleplayer quest was already extremely formulaic at this point (in and of itself reducing the appeal of starting over) and the PVP depth was much more accessible.

 

[Yung Dramps]

Galar's regional dex is the most bloated in the series.

Yes, you read that right: I am seriously arguing that base SWSH has too many Pokemon. Now, granted, this is largely an extension of the well-worn "Galar map design sucks" criticism, but the fact is that ten routes and the map design meme that is the Wild Area simply isn't enough game to sustain a 400 mon Pokedex. I can't comment on how SV handles this number but USUM Alola not only just had more places in it but a good 50 mons are legendaries, UBs and miscellaneous catches only available in postgame areas, meaning the effective tally for a standard playthrough is more like 350ish.

No, but seriously, have you looked at Wild Area encounter tables? They are so insanely cursed dude

I'm sure that this place was considerably bigger in initial planning phases before the whole dev cycle melted down but unless they nuked 3 whole biomes (Dusty Bowl doesn't count) there can't have possibly been enough to sustain almost the entire Pokedex. No seriously, I did a rough count for a project of mine by going through Wild Area Bulbapedia pages and with all the Galar Pokemon added I got into the 390s. It can't be less than 75% in this one area, and I wasn't even counting raid den exclusives!

When I think of the bloat and incoherence of the Galar dex I think of Galvantula just being out and about in a generic grassy field route. Yeowch!

 

[ScraftyIsTheBest]

When I think of the bloat and incoherence of the Galar dex I think of Galvantula just being out and about in a generic grassy field route. Yeowch!

In general one disappointment I had with the original Wild Area when I first played SwSh was how relatively monotonous it is. Outside of the Dusty Bowl and a few lakes, it's very much just a big grassy field.

What makes meeting Pokemon and exploring a region fun to me in a Pokemon game is to go through a variety of different biomes, meeting different kinds of Pokemon who naturally fit into those biomes, and in turn really seeing a diverse world of Pokemon who all have different habitats and live alongside other Pokemon naturally. Open fields, forests, deserts, swamps, caves, snowy mountains, bodies of water, and so on and so forth. And that's fun to me. It makes the world of Pokemon feel alive.

Galar fell short in that regard. The 10 routes have a bit of variety in biomes but are so small in scope, and the Wild Area was so monotonous: so many Pokemon, but the area itself was mostly a grassy field, and the availability was predicated on daily weather as opposed to them feeling like they naturally belonged there.

It's why I liked Isle of Armor and Crown Tundra so much. I loved the Wild Area as a concept, but the original base Wild Area was pretty underwhelming. Isle of Armor felt more alive: a variety of biomes, and Pokemon living in those biomes naturally where they would fit. Crown Tundra a bit less so, but it also had decent variety in snowy areas, a lake, caves, and a graveyard, and whatnot, and there were legendaries to hunt and secrets to find, which I also love doing. That is the kind of thing that makes exploring a region fun.

 

[S.A.C. Martin]

Sword and shield feel, like SV to me, like prototypes for things which came further along in the development cycle. If you look at some of the things from the tera leak you can see how PLA slots in neatly between those two games and how much of the models and coding is shared.

Gen 10 I am hoping is a proper step up - gens 8-9 have been the experimental, sometimes incomplete era.

Been fun though!

 

[RocketSurgery]

Sword and shield feel, like SV to me, like prototypes for things which came further along in the development cycle. If you look at some of the things from the tera leak you can see how PLA slots in neatly between those two games and how much of the models and coding is shared.

Gen 10 I am hoping is a proper step up - gens 8-9 have been the experimental, sometimes incomplete era.

Been fun though!

I wonder if the discourse around Pokemon games would be a little bit more positive if people tended to view each generation as a natural, gradual evolution of the previous game in a franchise with shorter release cycles rather than "prototypes." Like, if we compare SM to SV, the "step up" looks a lot more significant, perhaps more comparable to the jump from Skyward Sword to Breath of the Wild, which boast a similar gap in release times. If there had been a home console Zelda game halfway between Skyward Sword and BotW it might have looked more incremental and had features that felt like a "prototypes" for BotW too. If GF had just completely skipped SwSh and spent the time working on SV, I'm not sure if we would have gotten much more than working windmills (hopefully).

Personally, I am fine with more frequent games and gradual evolutions of concepts because to me Pokemon is primarily a fun comfort game and the part I like most about a new gen is the new Pokemon, and I like getting a new batch of mons every 3 years. I appreciate the evolutions in gameplay concepts, but I am happy to look at how much things have changed since the handheld days, rather than wishing every generation was a BotW-sized innovation.

 

[S.A.C. Martin]

I wonder if the discourse around Pokemon games would be a little bit more positive if people tended to view each generation as a natural, gradual evolution of the previous game in a franchise with shorter release cycles rather than "prototypes." Like, if we compare SM to SV, the "step up" looks a lot more significant, perhaps more comparable to the jump from Skyward Sword to Breath of the Wild, which boast a similar gap in release times. If there had been a home console Zelda game halfway between Skyward Sword and BotW it might have looked more incremental and had features that felt like a "prototypes" for BotW too. If GF had just completely skipped SwSh and spent the time working on SV, I'm not sure if we would have gotten much more than working windmills (hopefully).

This pretty much nails it IMO.

Been replaying Colosseum recently and I realised how much of reusing assets has been baked in to Pokemon games for such a very long time. That game reuses the Stadium games’ 3D models for the original 251 but for Hoen’s 135 new ones (plus Bonsly) new models were added.

This was obviously down to time and resource constraints, and we have seen a similar thing in the engine sharing for gens 8 and 9 (culminating, I suspect, with ZA and with Gen 10 likely taking all the knowledge forward to a new engine - or not, as the case may be).

 

[AztecCroc]

This pretty much nails it IMO.

Been replaying Colosseum recently and I realised how much of reusing assets has been baked in to Pokemon games for such a very long time. That game reuses the Stadium games’ 3D models for the original 251 but for Hoen’s 135 new ones (plus Bonsly) new models were added.

This was obviously down to time and resource constraints, and we have seen a similar thing in the engine sharing for gens 8 and 9 (culminating, I suspect, with ZA and with Gen 10 likely taking all the knowledge forward to a new engine - or not, as the case may be).

Eh, most of the underlying engine is unchanged since Gen 4, just with new graphical capabilities stapled on. Gen 10 might have a more extensive rework given some of the issues SV had, but ultimately the existing infrastructure like Home means it can't change that much. Just look at all the hassle and issues caused getting it to interact with the Unity-based BDSP.

 

[S.A.C. Martin]

Eh, most of the underlying engine is unchanged since Gen 4, just with new graphical capabilities stapled on. Gen 10 might have a more extensive rework given some of the issues SV had, but ultimately the existing infrastructure like Home means it can't change that much. Just look at all the hassle and issues caused getting it to interact with the Unity-based BDSP.

Is the engine from SW/SH really linked that far back? I can’t think of another game series where the main engine is used that heavily generation to generation.

You could argue quite cogently that BDSP being run on unity is an improvement in some ways…

 

[Karxrida]

I can't imagine it's the same engine per se, but there is definitely some degree of continuity in the code to allow Pokémon transfers while keeping track of their stats and ribbons and whatnot.

 

[Hugin]

I can't imagine it's the same engine per se, but there is definitely some degree of continuity in the code to allow Pokémon transfers while keeping track of their stats and ribbons and whatnot.

I'm really surprised we haven't had another Gen 2/Gen 3 break in all this time(and presumably Home means we won't). Dexit was the closest, and they reset movesets automatically now, but the mons survive.

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

This pretty much nails it IMO.

Been replaying Colosseum recently and I realised how much of reusing assets has been baked in to Pokemon games for such a very long time. That game reuses the Stadium games’ 3D models for the original 251 but for Hoen’s 135 new ones (plus Bonsly) new models were added.

This was obviously down to time and resource constraints, and we have seen a similar thing in the engine sharing for gens 8 and 9 (culminating, I suspect, with ZA and with Gen 10 likely taking all the knowledge forward to a new engine - or not, as the case may be).

Which is not only good, but also an industry standard. Assuming the assets are good, of course.

For example, no one really questions the quality of the 3D models for mons. They argue, rightfully so, about the animations, which have some real stinkers, especially the idle ones.

 

[Sixfortyfive]

I don't think it's correct at all to say that modern Pokemon games are running on a "similar engine" as gen 4. Core game logic and data structures haven't changed much but that's not really what people are talking about when they say "engine."

I'm really surprised we haven't had another Gen 2/Gen 3 break in all this time(and presumably Home means we won't). Dexit was the closest, and they reset movesets automatically now, but the mons survive.

Tbh the break between gens 2 and 3 is more due to hardware limitations than game design. People have homebrewed up some solutions to bridge that gap, but it requires custom hardware to do the actual link. Game Freak themselves implemented a transfer method for those older games for the Virtual Console.

 

[LPBvgc]

People need to stop talking exclusively about the mainline games when talking about "The Best Generation of Pokémon", because just the mainline games as a whole don't paint an accurate picture of the era.

Like if people took into account the anime, Gen 5 would have been seen as overrated a year or two ago, and Gen 6,7, and 9 would have been viewed more positively.

 

[Sixfortyfive]

I don't think I've seen a single episode of the Pokemon anime produced after its first year on US television.

 

[SandVeil10]

People need to stop talking exclusively about the mainline games when talking about "The Best Generation of Pokémon", because just the mainline games as a whole don't paint an accurate picture of the era.

Like if people took into account the anime, Gen 5 would have been seen as overrated a year or two ago, and Gen 6,7, and 9 would have been viewed more positively.

When people say "This gen was the best one", I don't think all of them are actually seeking to argue "This era of Pokémon was the greatest in every medium". Those two angles (mainline games only, and every piece of media) are both valid topics of discussion on their own, and depending on the context one can tell whether that given person is arguing the former or the latter. I also think it's fair to want to focus on the games, or any individual aspect of the franchise for that matter, as interests for the games, anime, TCG etc can vary.

Now, if the conversation really shifts to describing what each gen did for the franchise overall and/or how it felt like being a Pokémon fan in those different eras and experiencing its different pieces of media, not just the games, then said person would need to look at the anime and stuff to try and argue their points.

Part of your post highlights that "only talking about the mainline games doesn't paint an accurate picture of that era". I reckon this takes the focus more towards gauging popularity or community consensus, than actually presenting one's opinion on why X or Y is the best.
To re-use the example you listed, you could meet someone who genuinely thinks the Unova anime was great ; maybe their arguments won't all hold water, but their stance isn't necessarily invalid outright. The reverse is true as well for someone who dislikes the XY anime but loves the games.
Both of these hypothetical people are in the minority, but what matters most isn't really what their stance is and how it matches up with the consensus, but more so how they go about explaining how they feel.

 

[ScraftyIsTheBest]

I don't think I've seen a single episode of the Pokemon anime produced after its first year on US television.

I have seen episodes of post-Indigo Pokemon anime. Still, this post does point to how fascinatingly funny it is that even though Ash was the main character of the Pokemon anime for so long, the vast majority of his show past the original series is really obscure and niche. Even nowadays in the streaming service era most of it is lost to time, and you're rarely going to find anyone with in-depth knowledge of what happened in Ash's story past the Ash/Misty/Brock era.

Journeys is the only Ash-era season that's easily accessible besides OS nowadays, since it's on Netflix, and I imagine Pokemon GO and Goh's existence combined with Ash finally getting his big win and being allowed to leave have made that season more memorable in a way, but everything that came in-between? No shot. You're gonna be hard-pressed to find it anywhere, and ask your average layperson about anything that happened between the original series and Journeys...and they probably won't know much. There's some shot a person might know about, say, Serena or Dawn, but even those two don't reach the pop culture level of iconic that Ash's OGs did.

And frankly I don't blame anyone for the fact that things turned out that way. Most of the stuff that came between Gens 3 and 7 for Ashnime ranges from bland and boring at best to borderline unwatchable at worst. You could cut a very significant portion of Ash's 1000+ episodes in the show out of existence and lose absolutely nothing in the process. Ash staying that long and a lot of his show being an endless tango of mediocrity dropped his reputation into the gutter. I grew up in the Gen 4 era but back in my middle and high school days in the 2010s I would sometimes talk about Ash with my IRLs and the conversation would always boil down to "Yeah the show sucks lol" and making fun of Ash.

Which is to say, I'm glad that Ash's run on the show is finally over. I enjoyed Journeys, and I'm glad they finally ended him there. Horizons is the first series of the anime that stars a new protagonist, and Liko is genuinely a great character. I really enjoy watching her. Seeing her story unfold really shows how much keeping Ash for so long stifled the anime's potential. Watching it on Netflix has been a real treat over the past year or so (and I do watch the original Japanese through...means I shall not speak of here).

Going back to what you said, I think that applies to a lot of people. The Indigo League and Orange Islands seasons seem to be the only seasons of Ash's story (at least pre-Journeys) that have genuinely withstood the test of time in the greater public consciousness. The vast majority of his show just faded into obscurity and most people didn't really pay attention to them. And looking back, especially in hindsight now that I get to witness a totally new story from the Pokemon anime, and I look back at most of the post-OS Ashnime particularly from AG to SM and I'm like "Wow...yeah this fucking sucks". Even the better parts of those were carried hard by other characters like Dawn or Paul or whatnot...not Ash. I don't ever wanna touch a lot of that again. So I don't really blame a lot of people for not knowing much about those seasons. They did suck and it showed.

 

[Sixfortyfive]

Just from what I've heard through osmosis, Ash was basically written as a character who couldn't have an arc. The fact that he stayed on as the protagonist across different eras made sure that he had to be "reset" to some degree on multiple occasions, and at a certain point that just feels like the show is spinning its wheels and going nowhere. Not shocked to hear longtime viewers say that the side characters started shouldering more of the weight at some point.

That sort of protagonist can work with a monster-of-the-week kind of series with mostly standalone episode plots, but if continuity is important then a protagonist who can't really grow over time will eventually become an anchor.

 

[Bakugames]

i mean the pokemon anime was pretty much a monster of the week show. ash resetting was never a big deal because his "arcs" were already very simple and barely arcs. pokemon fans would just rather die than say they grew out of it

 

[Ironmage]

As somebody who never got into the anime, the big thing that comes to mind when attempting to look at the franchise as a whole is that the spinoff scene feels pretty awkward after gen 5-6. I guess Legends could be considered to be the single-player-focused games making up for the decline of e.g., PMD and Ranger, but I can't really say they work for me as an alternate since they share a decent chunk of why I don't have much interest in the current mainline games.

 

[BIG ASHLEY]

Journeys is the only Ash-era season that's easily accessible besides OS nowadays, since it's on Netflix

for any brits itt, sinnoh series and onwards are on the iplayer -- pretty cool!