I wasn't referring to Pokémon with that.
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Unpopular opinions
- Thread starter antemortem
- Start date
What needs further clarification? I enjoy Gen 1's unique mechanics, like speed-based crits, full stat exp. allocation, connectivity to Stadium 1, Razor Leaf and Slash being stupid moves, Hyper Beam actually being a functional move, Wrap + Toxic being hilariously oppressive, Psychic being so busted that it actually makes Mewtwo as strong as advertised...
Meanwhile, what I do not enjoy about Gen 3 are Grass-types being objectively worse than Gen 1, which makes using Venusaur miserable, the IV/EV system, which I hate to this day, having to reset a ton of catches because of bad natures, mixed attackers feeling less optimal because of the aforementioned IV/EV system, and yet it doesn't have the Physical-Special Split we're used to, so it's the worst of both worlds, the Sevii Islands, not being able to use an Espeon without modding the game despite the fact it exists in the code unlike in Gen 1, Brock being even worse designed now that he gets a Rock move, the improved graphics exposing how plain Kanto looks, and Lostelle. Especially Lostelle.
In my opinion, Gen 1 offers an unique experience that is janky af, sure, but it's very different from modern games. For the sake of completeness, I think the same of Gen 2. Both are very different from modern standards and are tied to the GOAT side series, Stadium.
Gen 3 is closer to modern standards, but in that awkward phase of it where it just feels like a worse version of what we got today. Which makes sense as it was the first step towards said standard, so of course, there was a lot ironed out since then.
Any further questions?
Isn't the point that it's supposed to look like a fetus? Mew behaves like a baby, plays with its tail like an umbilical cord, and its the foil to the genetically engineered Mewtwo. I thought it is supposed to look like a newborn.
It is, but i think the design is much more interesting in gen 1, where it Commits to looking like a fetus, instead of the modern one, which is by all intents and purposes a pink cat mascot. modern mew ("modern", the design was rehauled as early as 1998 lmfao) could be a precure mascot, a type of design i find boring when its not in a precure show
Mew always looked like its "modern" self. The non-Yellow gen 1 sprites are just funky and wrong in general like GMax Exeggcute here.
This Mew art with its wierd colored toes...
This actually sums up a lot of why I have really enjoyed my Gen 1 playthroughs the last year or so, more than I enjoyed Ruby/Sapphire and so far LeafGreen. The physical/special split is wild in the GBA games, some Pokemon are literally neutered by the lack of it for the moves.
Whether or not Fetus Mew is the "original" design for Mew shouldn't have any impact on whether or not someone prefers that design direction for it.Mew always looked like its "modern" self. The non-Yellow gen 1 sprites are just funky and wrong in general like GMax Exeggcute here.
This Mew art with its wierd colored toes...
is actually older than the hunchbacked Mew art.
The Red&Green and Red&Blue sprites are just bad, Mew was never intended to actually look like that.
but it did and thus it is canon design that mew had. and thus i can prefer it over its rehauls for being a much better design
i can see why frlg would be boring to some but i always enjoyed them just for being really solid entries in the series. good variety of mons, decent difficulty and level curve, and the non-linear nature of kanto gives it a lot of replay value. rby definitely has its charm and i can enjoy playing it too but the complete lack of difficulty and generally slow and clunky gameplay makes it hard for me to prefer it over frlg, even if messing with some of the glitches can be fun
Yeah, I can respect that. They're objectively different experiences, so it boils down to what fits one's tastes better.
I'm glad you pointed that out. It felt like RBY wasn't afraid to make pokemon not a complete utopia unlike the other 8 Regions. It's not anything crazy, but it has a subtle edge to its worldbuilding. Things like the biker gang in the cycling road, who literally threaten to steal your shit illustrate that feeling.
Also, it kinda reminds me of Earthbound and Onett, the town being filled with a gang run by mobsters led by Frank.
Makes more sense when you know that most of the RBY staff also worked on Earthbound.
It does get me how they kinda fucked up the world building with the sheer lack of side quests or even mention from NPCs about development. Gen 2 tried with the bug/fishing contests and noting the older apricorn balls, but the former being tied to a literal 24/7 clock hurts it, and there are no other side quests regardless
The 1996 Pokedex book GF made notes certain Poison mons being the result of urban pollution, but in the games...none are even in populated urban areas like stated LMAO*. And only Grimer's dex entry notes its origin
*GSC and LG actually makes fishing/surfing for Grimer possible in Celadon which is interesting. Unfortunately the area looks colorful and clean by that point especially in remakes, so....
The 1996 Pokedex book GF made notes certain Poison mons being the result of urban pollution, but in the games...none are even in populated urban areas like stated LMAO*. And only Grimer's dex entry notes its origin
*GSC and LG actually makes fishing/surfing for Grimer possible in Celadon which is interesting. Unfortunately the area looks colorful and clean by that point especially in remakes, so....
Idk it depends how you define sidequests, Gen II has a lot of minor errands/tasks like delivering that guy's Spearow with Mail, healing the sick Miltank, and even stuff like showing various NPCs the correct Pokemon/item for a reward. There's even extreeeemely minor stuff like getting Buena's phone number (how many people ever managed that by accident, I wonder).
And pretty much all the later games have something of this - even just stuff like the newspaper in Solaceon where you have to catch a certain species, or catching all the Unown, or bringing a Pokemon from the opposite version to that guy in Opelucid, or walking that woman's Mienfoo in Humilau City. The Alola games were absolutely full of them - off the top of my head there's that quest where you have to defeat all the Eevee users, for instance. Made that region feel extremely alive to me.
That said I always wish there were more. There's a scrapped sidequest in GSC about someone's daughter being lost in the Burned Tower which would have been very cool to implement. Guessing it was deemed too similar to the missing granddaughter quest on the SS Aqua (though it would have been really funny if it was the same little girl both times and her grandfather just couldn't keep hold of her no matter how hard he tried).
I also always found it odd that the Charcoal man in Azalea says "stay and train with us!" and then... does nothing. Like you can't ever battle him or anything.
Yeah this was always really odd to me. Celadon is so bright and pretty and uplifting, all the more incongruous for being next door to blank bare brutalist-looking Saffron City. It literally even has a Grass-type gym leader! You'd have thought she'd be hard at work ensuring the city was clean and free of pollution (in a modern game she absolutely would be)
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This is the main reason that I don't really buy the whole "Urban vs Nature" stuff people say about Kanto. It looks wayyyyy too clean for that, especially in the remakes.
With that said, there IS an edge to it with all the crime going on. Team Rocket took over Silph Co. in broad daylight and nobody batted an eye.
Johto is a really nice region, it just needed a bit more polish on gameplay. Especially on mon availability. It has a lot of the finer details that really makes a region pop, but it needed to be more distinct from Kanto in some ways, even as a direct sequel.
I mean, RGBY were developed in the early 90s, had a 1MB rom and 32KB of SRAM for the safe data and similar. The games had to simplify a lot of the graphical elements in terms of the pixel art by way of standardising on building types, tile placement, and more to fit onto the cartridge.
It’s why, looking back at FRLG, the lack of a more defined look to Kanto beyond “Gen 3 graphics for a Gen 1 game”, these games maybe don’t hit as hard as they should do. LGPE meanwhile did do a rather effective remake of Pokemon Yellow with completely updated graphics, but even that doesn’t bring Kanto “alive”.
Like criticise SW/SH and SV all we like for some aspects, but the former had great locations with spectacular graphical design that made each of the areas really come alive (Tanglewood anyone?) and the latter, though clearly needed the more powerful hardware (and I am specifically talking about SV as played on a Switch 2 now) suddenly does make some of the areas - the lake, the snow biome and Area Zero - look spectacularly different to one another.
I don’t think we can be too critical about RGBY for their lack of aesthetic differences given the limitations they worked under, but we should probably be more critical about followups for not making Kanto feel overall that different.
GSC did, in my view, a good job of making Johto feel varied on a very small overall possible tileset. So it can be done, it’s just that RGBY were first…
I mean yes rgby was a very limited game but even some really small sprites of grime and trash or pollution would have sold the effect. Or being able to encounter the pokemon on the city itself or the outskirts.
in general while kanto Says its more roughed up than the following games, its design still feels pretty utopic and nice. the main difference really was the npcs, but the actual design of the region felt like the cities were close to nature and connected to each other
in general while kanto Says its more roughed up than the following games, its design still feels pretty utopic and nice. the main difference really was the npcs, but the actual design of the region felt like the cities were close to nature and connected to each other
Literally no-one is meaner than Kantonian NPCs, which is quite a feat when we have a whole region based on France.
Like, you just know Kanto has a reputation the world over as "the region with the unfriendliest locals"
It’s an interesting one this because I don’t think there was ever a clear aim to design Kanto as dystopian or particularly city-scaped, or even polluted: I think the poison type exists primarily to highlight what can happen to our nature if we don’t look after it.
On a sort of a linked note, think about Lapras. Its early dex entries talk about extinction. By the publication of the Gen 7 games, our attitudes globally to things like whaling have changed substantially and such creatures like some species of whales have seen their numbers rise up back to the extent that this is reflected in the Pokedex entries.
Pokemon as a videogame series has always been limited by hardware and software constraints, been influenced by what is happening around it in history, and by the game’s own development and change in approach, together with that of Nintendo, TOC and Game Freak.
Re the biker gangs - those NPCs always struck me as just being indicative of something which is a globally recognised phenomenon and also was quite prevalent in the 90s pop culture, of which Pokemon takes in ample inspiration (including and especially the Kaiju and JRPG motifs).
Yeah, no, that would just make people feel old for no reason. Gen 8 is definitely modern, quit playin
I'd say it's more about design choices, there's a very clear break in design philosophies across the board between say, Gens 1-2, 4, and 8.
The definition of modern pokémon needs some work, but it inevitably falls into "Modern = Bad, baby mode games" issue, so people can't get on the same page about it.
Make it 10 years, and that I think would be fair. That means gen 7 is barely modern pokemon (released in 2016), while XY/ORAS is old pokemon.
Doesn't make it any easier for me and makes me feel old though.
RBY-HGSS: Classic Era
BW-SWSH: ??? Era (still don't got a name)
Legends Arceus onward: Open Era
in terms of dividing the franchise up this seems like the most sensible way to do so in my eyes
BW-SWSH: ??? Era (still don't got a name)
Legends Arceus onward: Open Era
in terms of dividing the franchise up this seems like the most sensible way to do so in my eyes
I'd call it the experimental era. as much as people chide these games, they all have more in common that instead of bringing changes to the battle system, they try to experiment with the story, regions, gimmicks etc.
Gonna throw on my historian’s hat for this one, but maybe think about the tech involved as the main factor instead:
Era 1 - Classic Era - 1996-2001
Era 2 - Advance Era - 2002-2005
Era 3 - Dual Screen Era - 2006-2012
Era 4 - The 3D Era - 2013-2018
Era 5 - Home Console Era - 2018-2024
Era 6 - Modern Era - 2025 onwards
Notes:
Eras are largely based on the tech involved, as Pokemon Gens since Gen 3 have been in multiple on the same device.
The longest Era to date is Era 3 due to the nature of the Gen 4 and Gen 5 games development for the DS.
Era 4 and 5 overlap in 2018 due to the release of LGPE in November 2018.
I have deliberately made the “modern era” start from the Switch 2 starting with PLZA - as Switch 2 will bring some changes to gameplay and development.
This is different from “generations” which with the clear exception of Melmetal and Meltan, start and end from the moment a game is released where a new Pokemon can be caught within the boundaries of set games or games on the same or overlapping systems.
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