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Unpopular opinions
- Thread starter antemortem
- Start date
Every time I see this man's name attached to something it genuinely makes my skin crawl. I don't want to automatically say something along the lines of "he's a bad person" when I quite frankly know nothing about his personal life (for all I know he could be a really great person!), but there's a reason why "Masuda ruined Let's Go" and especially "Masuda ruined BDSP" aren't the kinds of unpopular opinions this thread is looking for. And even then, the Let's Go one might just be me coping with the lack of FireRed & LeafGreen content in that game.
If there's one role I think Masuda excels at, it is actually as a composer. As a game director, though? Oh, boy. Let's take a look at the list of games he directed, actually. Before I say anything else, let's at least give this man a shot before I proceed to absolutely clown on him.
- Crystal (co-directed with Satoshi Tajiri)
- Ruby & Sapphire
- FireRed & LeafGreen
- Diamond & Pearl
- Black & White
- X & Y
- Let's Go Pikachu & Eevee
- Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl
Also, what the heck was he doing from 2013 to 2018? I feel like there's a very small but noticeable gap there, and there's another forming from 2021 to present day. Junichi Masuda being a bad game director on average is the "unpopular opinion" for the sake of me posting this, but as much as I think his decisions have negatively impacted the story, characters, and even some of the new Pokémon of the games he did lead, there at least was new games. Five years remains the record for his longest stint without an Executive Director role, but there are still people out there who like the bulk of his games even if I only like a small handful of them myself. Where is this man and what is he doing? I'm genuinely asking because I'm curious. Did he retire after BDSP or something? Was there a BDSP style Kalos remake that got scrapped? (Hey, it wouldn't be the first time a Kalos game got cancelled, so that tracks.)
Yeah that's the point lol
I know Let's Go gets some hate but I think it was well-executed for what it was (a bridge between Go and the mainline games) and I enjoyed it on those merits. It was meant to be simpler, a little cuter, and a way to
Also, Masuda became the "Chief Creative Fellow" at Game Freak mid-2022, which is why you don't see his name in the credits as Director/Producer anymore.
I'm going to be honest, I don't entirely get your hate toward Masuda as a director. I thought people generally liked RS and BW, with DP and XY still being... well... DP are flawed, mostly with the regional 'Dex, but I probably spent the most time in the postgame of Diamond compared to any other game because of how almost the entire National Dex was available in one way or another. I haven't ever revisited Gen 6, so I don't have a great memory on how the game played out, but I want to say the gameplay was probably reasonable, especially with Kalos's large Pokémon selection. There are definitely issues (awkward early game pacing, lack of Megas available/used in the story, questionable villain writing), but it introduced character customization with aplomb and had what I usually see regarded as the best online features in the series.
If your problem with these games as a whole is that they're they're the "base" games and not the upgraded "third/sequel" games, I don't think the fault for that lies on Masuda's shoulders. The decision to make Emerald/Platinum/BW2 was probably a group decision (so, sure Masuda might have had a say in it, but he's going to be limited on what he can put in the base game pairs as director with that decision made).
Really? He's not going to be directing these things anymore? Thank the freaking Lord.
...alright, alright, I'll stop hating on him. Am I being a bit dramatic for the sake of getting my points? Oh, absolutely. It's quite literally in my nature to overcomplicate everything. All jokes aside, I did what I came back here to do and that was post an unpopular opinion. Even so, though, my opinion has shifted a little bit. Like you said, it's not his fault he got, for lack of a better word, "stuck with" the base games for the most part. Originally this opinion came about as a result of me looking at different peoples' directorial roles and asking myself, "why haven't we seen that guy in a while?". I'll admit it was probably unfair of me to do this to him for as long as I have, but I've always compared each of them based off how popular and well-received their catelog is on average. Three examples immediately come to mind:
- Shigeki Morimoto: Was Executive Director for Emerald and HeartGold & SoulSilver, in Masuda's absence as he was busy with Diamond & Pearl and Black & White respectively, but hasn't seen a directorial role since then in any generation
- Kazumasa Iwao: Originally was just the Executive Director for Ultra Sun & Moon, but then came back out of nowhere to lead Legends: Arceus too (I thought he might return for Legends ZA as well, but this has since been debunked)
- Shigeru Ohmori: Masuda's own handpicked successor as the director of new main games, he first led Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire and has since worked on Sun & Moon, Sword & Shield, and Scarlet & Violet's base games
Gonna be honest. Your last two posts come off like the presumptuous sort of reading-between-the-lines that makes me sympathetic toward any game developer who never wants to do an interview with anybody ever.
I'd say the biggest reason why the original series of the anime fell off is they had no idea the show would explode in popularity, and the characters were not intended to last past a year and a half. The anime was originally going to end after Kanto and the Mewtwo movie, but because it became so popular it continued.
You can tell while watching through the Johto saga that the writers just had no idea what to do with Misty or Brock, and outside a handful of eps that focused on them, the writers just treated them like background characters in most episodes. Even all the filler characters tended to get more screentime than them in your average ep (since most eps plots revolved around the 1 episode filler characters Ash and co. met in every ep), so they often got sidelined to background exposition. Didn't help matters Misty got stuck with Togepi at the time. Honestly everytime I've gone back to rewatch the older seasons I actually feel sorry for Misty/Brock fans, I think a lot of people just didn't realize at the time how little focus they were getting toward their characters or their pokemon. I never understood why Misty fans tried to deny that for so many years either, she rarely got a chance to battle or shine outside a few eps here or there and never had any major arcs centered around her beyond an ep. They were quite literally the most stagnant characters of the entire anime for an individual region arc, lol.
Sure, you could argue Hoenn should of been Brendan and May, and DP could have been Lucas and Dawn, etc...with Ash leaving as early as Johto, but I do still think Ash staying for awhile was important as it let us see him gradually develop into a competent trainer. If it wasn't for BW's semi-reboot, you could say Ash had somewhat believeable development to the end of his run, even with the character alterations to him in Sun/Moon and JN making him seem a bit younger and more energetic.
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Warning, disparaging post
I feel Gen 3 they wanted him to mentor May, but then May shifted aggressively to Contests and her rivalry with Drew (corrected by precita) so this was partially dropped (partially cuz she was a very novice trainer initially, but as the contests came by Ash wasn't as needed). Dawn meanwhile is May 2.0 effectively, but with even less of mentoring cuz contests were set early. This was also unfortunately when Team Rocket got overused in Gen 3-4
Ash's dev unfortunately effectively plateau'd Gen 3, with Gen 4 making him have less attitude, even if outside that for skill he was nearly at his strongest. If not for the Paul rivalry he would've been perceived as boring. Though it's straight up horseshit how the League was set, he should've won then
Gen 5 is a bit more than just rebooting Ash/Pikachu's skill/IQ only, they genuinely wanted to cater to the Gen 1 fans. Iris is a failed Misty attempt of a sniding follower, and Cilan is Brock 2.0. Team Rocket being weirdly competent is weird, which makes Ash's regained idiocity more frustrating cuz how are you losing to this guy!?
Gen 6 as much as fans overrate his skills comes super cardboard for personality. Made the shipping tease with Serena very awkward, with Bonnie and Clemont just...being there (though Bonnie killing a guy is wild). And again, he lost the league disappointingly
Bear in mind, I don't like Gen 7/8 Ash, or the artstyle for humans, but Ash being dumb hyper is better than being a dumb regressive idiot and bland cardboard. And the League win was much needed for a send off. Though I find Brock/Misty coming back very transparently uncreative "we need to ref the Gen 1 anime"
I do think the anime should've ended or passed the torch around Gen 3, specifically for Ash. I mentioned it in another post before, but Ash losing the league in 1998 was extremely uncommon for shounen protags, and even now across the genre. It's a shame it was a "crutch" to delay sending him off
I feel Gen 3 they wanted him to mentor May, but then May shifted aggressively to Contests and her rivalry with Drew (corrected by precita) so this was partially dropped (partially cuz she was a very novice trainer initially, but as the contests came by Ash wasn't as needed). Dawn meanwhile is May 2.0 effectively, but with even less of mentoring cuz contests were set early. This was also unfortunately when Team Rocket got overused in Gen 3-4
Ash's dev unfortunately effectively plateau'd Gen 3, with Gen 4 making him have less attitude, even if outside that for skill he was nearly at his strongest. If not for the Paul rivalry he would've been perceived as boring. Though it's straight up horseshit how the League was set, he should've won then
Gen 5 is a bit more than just rebooting Ash/Pikachu's skill/IQ only, they genuinely wanted to cater to the Gen 1 fans. Iris is a failed Misty attempt of a sniding follower, and Cilan is Brock 2.0. Team Rocket being weirdly competent is weird, which makes Ash's regained idiocity more frustrating cuz how are you losing to this guy!?
Gen 6 as much as fans overrate his skills comes super cardboard for personality. Made the shipping tease with Serena very awkward, with Bonnie and Clemont just...being there (though Bonnie killing a guy is wild). And again, he lost the league disappointingly
Bear in mind, I don't like Gen 7/8 Ash, or the artstyle for humans, but Ash being dumb hyper is better than being a dumb regressive idiot and bland cardboard. And the League win was much needed for a send off. Though I find Brock/Misty coming back very transparently uncreative "we need to ref the Gen 1 anime"
I do think the anime should've ended or passed the torch around Gen 3, specifically for Ash. I mentioned it in another post before, but Ash losing the league in 1998 was extremely uncommon for shounen protags, and even now across the genre. It's a shame it was a "crutch" to delay sending him off
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I agree that he should've won in DP, then get packed up by the Elite 4 or Cynthia.
There, no need to end his journey. The whole argument of "Ash must not win or we'll have to retire him" was stupid. I'm not even going to mention Alola, he got a ring in the Orange Islands!
Now his book ended with Mr. Can't Catch a Dub becoming the World Champ with a fresh team.
Charizard, Snorlax, Sceptile... All of y'all on fraud watch.
That's the one gripe I have with Masuda as a director. It is significantly easier to build upon a solid foundation, and a lot of the games he directed, as horribly flawed as they were, did provide that.
But then...
Piece of shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!!!
"Ash, upon obtaining the title of League champion suddenly realized he wasn't that into battling. The trend of Pokémania was over... After mulling it over with his friends, he realized his true calling: a Country Swing Dance Instructor down in Pacifidlog
Pikachu said 'fuck this' and left the bizarre specimen of a human, settling to be Max's ace Pokémon for the Battle Frontier
Brock finally got psychotherapy and realized his unresolved maternal issues causing his women seeking behavior. He got over his lesbophobia
Dawn got her sandwich. It was some good ass gourmet shit"
Miraidon starts sobbing uncontrollably at such a happy ending.
Koraidon raises its paws and makes noises similar to "Cinema! Cinema!"
When I think country swing dance, I think farms and ranches, so it seems odd to pair it with the one town in Hoenn incapable of agriculture. Though I suppose if anyone would need an instructor to teach them how to country swing dance, it would be someone from Pacifidlog.
I didn't watch the later seasons of the anime, so maybe I'm missing something, but it always struck me as extremely uncomfortable that the Alola League, newly-founded as proof the islands can stand with the rest of the world, was won for the first time by an outsider to the islands who isn't even good enough to reach the League in any other region. That's...pretty imperialist.
As much as I never really liked the anime, I wouldn't really blame them for this. Alola's league being new and its first champion being someone who just showed up is copied from the games. Sure, the SMUSUM protagonist doesn't have a history of losing to the E4, but they don't have a history at all besides being from Kanto.
I think BDSP was put in this awkward position where it was handed off to another company and there wasn't a real push behind it because Game Freak was coming to the conclusion that remakes were no longer needed. There aren't enough mechanics to upgrade and the mainline game's direction has shifted so much that, as we saw with BDSP, trying to balance the modern approach with the traditional style no longer works well.
it would require a massive rework to fully modernize them, and that energy is instead going to be diverted to projects like L:A and Z:A or whatever the new one is called. As for why there's no Platinum, the same reason the attention to detail that made the original games so special is being removed: that's not why the masses play them, apparently.
As I never watched the anime beyond one movie as a kid, but every time I read about it, it seems like a low-effort attempt to sell more toys and shouldn't be taken seriously. Like the manga seems to have some creative intent at least from what little I've seen.
I doubt they meant anything by it since TPCi got mad at what happened in Kalos and demanded Ash be handed a win, but yeah this is some RWBY-tier "oops we put zero thought into this and it turned out problematic as hell" writing lmao.
Doesn't help that Alola is based on Hawaii.
To be fair that's also what happens in the games, I'd blame it on that more than the anime.
That being said, I did always find it kinda sad how Alola has this much more interesting and cool system instead of the typical gyms and stuff, only for the region to be starting to phase that out in favor of a typical pokemon league.
That's the thing, there was no need to.
I know people hate the chibi artstyle and all that, but that's how DP was back in the day.
The one thing they should've done was copy Platinum's code instead of DP's and adjust version exclusives accordingly.
That. Was. It.
People were making mods to change its features to Platinum's since day 1, and it IMMEDIATELY felt just right. Granted, the Exp. Share and removal of affection cap were huge issues, but that's not a lot to ask out of these devs. It's literally the same work, but with a better source material. It would literally cost zero extra dollars to use Platinum as a base instead of DP.
You know what happened? Masuda was the director. He directed DP, but not Plat, and Plat sold less than DP because all third versions sell less. So he forced DP down everybody's throats again. Except now we knew just how much better it could be, and was.
It is a shame, because there are just so many things that game does right, including the Grand Underground, which is an incredibly fun feature, but most people will never see it because you have to mod it all in.
Here are the biggest issues with BDSP:
- It's based on Diamond and Pearl, not Platinum, which causes significant issues for Cyrus' portrayal, and Pokédex, limiting several major trainers and players. This unfortunately, extends to the coding, which was heavily recycled from DP, including its buggy AI.
Using Platinum as a base would've fixed literally all of these issues, even if they had to revert the Mt. Coronet climax to DP's. - The game was very clearly NOT intended to be played with the modern Exp. Share. But we always gotta fix that shit anyway because Exp. Groups are a disaster.
- The soft affection caps from SwSh were removed. Again, no reason. Just shoddy copy-pasted code.
- They didn't add the Hisuian mons and other cross-gen evolutions to the game in an update. What. The. Fuck. They would've been PERFECT in the Grand Underground!!!
The anime is also not above changing things to suit their whims. The anime version of Lusamine is pretty much a separate character from her game incarnations, for instance. The writers weren't really obligated to keep the league stuff the same. Could have easily said "the league is still newish but a native won the first time" and dodged a lot of the unfortunate implications.
Yeah, true. Admittedly I haven't watched much of the anime either.
They were remaking Diamond and Pearl, not Platinum you were never gonna get any elements of Platinum changes cause they were all changes to the main story or Pokémon distribution, neither of which were ever carried over in remakes prior. ORAS has nothing of Emerald and HGSS only carried over part of the Suicune sidequest (even then the end was heavily changed).I agree that he should've won in DP, then get packed up by the Elite 4 or Cynthia.
There, no need to end his journey. The whole argument of "Ash must not win or we'll have to retire him" was stupid. I'm not even going to mention Alola, he got a ring in the Orange Islands!
Now his book ended with Mr. Can't Catch a Dub becoming the World Champ with a fresh team.
Charizard, Snorlax, Sceptile... All of y'all on fraud watch.
That's the one gripe I have with Masuda as a director. It is significantly easier to build upon a solid foundation, and a lot of the games he directed, as horribly flawed as they were, did provide that.
But then...
View attachment 759027
Piece of shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!!!
They were never gonna add Looker or whatever other Platinum changes even if BDSP had been more in line with previous remakes.
Don't fight wild Pokémon you don't intend to catch and don't randomly run around with less than six mons for extended periods and you'll be just fine. With the exception of Wake, since his levels are literally exactly the same as Maylene, you'll always be roughly around the Gym Leader/E4. So long as you're actually using a full team the whole time so the exp gets spread out instead collecting into only a couple mons. Don't try and play it like original game and leave team slots fully empty for Pokémon you want but can't catch yet or only have one or two mons do all the fighting. Switch which of your party members leads off if one's level starts to break off from the pack.
This isn't correct. BDSP's Exp. Share doesn't split the exp. between benched mons, it just gives each one 50% of the base yield. Whether or not team slots are empty doesn't matter.
I did manage to mostly avoid overlevelling (and, more relevantly to me, unsatisfying affection procs) in my playthrough, but it was by taking slower lines through fights that often included sacrifice plays (since fainted mons lose a bit of friendship and don't gain Exp). But that just kind of highlights that the system isn't that good at its intended purpose. It can't really help players that need a boost without overcompensating for ones that don't if it gives more total exp. from a clean sweep than just barely making it through.
I think it worked a lot better back then, I thought the overworld and people looked hideous on the Switch lol.
Yeah, they were already being lazy, and having to think about how to synthesize the differences between Diamond and Pearl into Platinum's plot was too much. Because there have to be enough to justify creating two versions of the game.
also, TBF, pretty much every remake has had this issue. HGSS didn't fix some flaws in the original games that could have been solved with a few lines of code, and both that remake and ORAS didn't incorporate in a lot of the material from the third version of the game. They were both made with more love and care than BDSP, which both speaks to the shift in paradigm Game Freak now operates under, and it was easier to modernize them to their corresponding generation.
Interestingly, I wonder if they get concerned about fans getting neurotic when the games aren't identical to the first two versions. And honestly Pokemon fans are that level of neurotic, but not about this.
This is pretty much the only positive way they could modernize it. I had mixed thoughts on the feature. I thought it was cool but combined with poor overworld encounters and the fact that many of the Pokemon were overleveled down there, it wasn't enough to save the game imo.
I agree. It's a good example to show how the direction of the games has changed. And the problem isn't just xp share - animations are also slower in 3d. Battles take forever to start. It made the game feel slow and easy, I lost any sense of curiosity.
yeah, they don't care about those details anymore, especially not in what was probably their last remake, although tbf they didn't do a great job of this in FRLG or HGSS. idk. BDSP was my introduction to Sinnoh and I hate the games so much I didn't finish them and felt negatively about the region as a whole until I made myself play through Platinum. And it still won't ever be my favorite region because of that first impression. Alongside SM, the only game I haven't finished.
I left it at a friend's house who I fell out with and I hope I don't need anything for competitive because I don't care enough to get it. He has a kid and the kid will get more out of it than me lol.
We play games to have fun, and sometimes banning things for the sake of "competitive integrity" takes the fun out of the game. Broken stuff is legitimately fun to use, and as long as there is counter-play, and the broken strat isn't just a straight up guaranteed win, we should caution on the side of fun. I play gen 1, and this is the main reason I want a gen 1 NC 97 ladder, which is a format closer to the vanilla game, with less bans than ou.