Unpopular opinions

[Yung Dramps]

I've seen some people fill in the cracks with very cool fanfiction for some of the evil teams but as far as the text is concerned plot writing is bad in this series.

Click to collapse...

Mind recommending me some? A novel about Team Galactic But Good or Team Flare But Good would intrigue me (I tried XY Spe once but I thought it was too fast-paced and they lowkey fucked up Emma so y'all know I can't abide by that)

So you'd get one cutscene of the player character getting marched off in chains and then what? Any meaningful result of Ghetsis' policies would logically lead to a crippled savefile: reduced Centers or battling-centric shops, limited trades, etc.. Letting the player overwrite their single save and get locked into that unless they want to start over from scratch is the kind of thing that's sketchy in purely single-player games trying to preach about gaming as a medium, let alone something as centered around multiplayer as Pokemon. The player absolutely needs to be able to try again like nothing happened, whether or not that's true for the characters.

Click to collapse...

Thanks for remind me of my 1/8 finished BW2 AU where after Hilbert losing Unova is now an Orwellian dictatorship ruled by Ghetsis with Rosa being a member of a resistance group

 

[CynicalGiant]

Game Freak hardly ever incorporates the consequences of an important loss in these Pokémon games because this is a gigantic multimedia franchise for kids!

Click to collapse...

I don't really understand this criticism of black and white's story because very rarely do games, for children or whomever, show you the results of you losing. I can't even think of more than like a single game that ever did this?

some players are self motivated and some are not, the plot often escalates to world-ending level threats as a way to keep people engaged. it's one of the reasons video game story writing is so stilted in general even when it's done well.

 

[Bakugames]

if gamefreak wasnt too busy trying to #ownpeta, they probably could have made a better story for bw

 

[Magcargo]

:bw/reshiram: :bw/zekrom:

Here’s a discussion some of you aren’t ready for. The storyline of Pokémon Black & White is objectively one of the worst in the core series and while it is absolutely not the worst- it takes genuine effort to write a storyline as bad as what Sword & Shield was given- I do not believe this game ever truly figures out what it wants to be as someone with a bit of background and interest in creative writing myself.

Pokémon Black & White’s storyline ultimately suffers from a major identity crisis that begins the moment the player meets N in Accumula Town. Placing extra story emphasis on a character who is not the player isn’t the issue here- it’s the fact that the game is deliberately trying to balance telling the story of the player character and their indeterminate actions with the linear storyline of N’s character arc. For the first 1/3 or 1/2 or so of the main story, N doesn’t do too much besides provide cryptic dialogue just like we saw from Maxie/Archie and Cyrus earlier in the franchise, and he really only gets off the ground after the Ferris wheel scene where he reveals he’s a part of Team Plasma. This shift towards N’s role with Team Plasma changes the player’s perception of what Team Plasma was attempting to do in previous parts of the story (we never did find out what they wanted to do with that Dream Mist either, did they just forget about that whole part?) and I would like to say Team Plasma is more relevant in the story’s second act, but compared to other evil teams they’re really not, and their appearance at Dragonspiral Tower and the Relic Castle reeks of “Evil Team shows up right around the seventh Gym cliché”. During the third act of the story where you finally get to see more of what Ghetsis has been planning, you start to think, man, the game’s taken ages to get here but finally we’ll get to see what sets Team Plasma apart from the other evil teams. Aaaand then the entire thing falls apart the moment the player defeats N in the castle. Not only is this the one set of games where the main character of the story arguably not the player, but any sort of character depth Ghetsis had disappears as he regresses back to the archetypal “I want to rule the region” villain the Junichi Masuda Era of games is known for. You can make the argument that he’s simply trying to silence the protagonist from revealing the truth about his plans to Unova now that N’s been defeated… except this logistically makes little sense because we’re a Silent Protagonist and even if we weren’t, in the situation that the player loses against Ghetsis, Game Freak hardly ever incorporates the consequences of an important loss in these Pokémon games because this is a gigantic multimedia franchise for kids! We don’t have to put in effort! We’re going to make billions regardless! In all seriousness, since the player doesn’t get exposed to the consequences of something like that, any impact of Ghetsis’s threat is completely undermined by Game Freak’s handling of whiting out to the nearest Pokémon Center and trying again like nothing ever happened.

…so as you can see, I don’t like Team Plasma, but this post doesn’t end there. A major part of the appeal of Pokémon in the late 1990s and again in the mid-2010s onward is that, in a sense, the adventure and discovery was the story. What I mean by this is that, especially for large ensembles of newer fans playing Pokémon for the first time, the writing direction of these games is directly influenced and attributed to the concept of exploring a new, vaguely familiar world to our own but with a touch of fantasy, and by the time Unova came out, Pokémon was already an established franchise, and while Unova’s writing is different in places, it’s fundamentally not THAT different. As much as we all bash on Kanto and Johto for how boring they can be to go back to, these older regions and their narratives worked because they leaned into the idea that you, the player, are experiencing this new world for the first time, and I also would not argue that elements of Johto’s storyline feel like an overcorrection of certain elements of its predecessor in the same way that Black 2 & White 2 intentionally try and erase the more in-depth but potentially controversial parts of their own predecessor, such as Team Plasma’s religious imagery for example.

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I don't agree that Ghetsis really needs character depth - he's more of a catalyst to N turning out the way he did (which is the type of vibe we get from the initial cutscene and N's room, as well as some of the dialogue with the two girls in the castle). The character the player is suppose to be captivated by is N, who has his own vision for the region. In a lot of ways he is a foil to the protagonist - capturing a wide variety of Pokemon and eventually challenging and defeating the league, but unlike the player, he releases almost all his captures, hates the concept of the Pokedex, is opposed to the conept of battling, etc. But the player - specifically the player's Pokemon - cause his to start reconsidering his own perspective. All compelling stuff.

As for Team Plasma, I will actually say I do like that sequence in the dream yard because it shows that the organization isn't a monolith. A decent number of members want Pokemon to be liberated, but we also see that several members of the organization are just using it as an excuse to terrorize Pokemon and just cause havoc. As such, it becomes perfectly believable the organization splits into 2 by the events of Black and White 2.

I personally don't see much of an issue with the game following the standard evil team plot either.

In general though - it does become a bit hard to really defend a game's plot because most discussions by hardcore players / fans of a game will boil down to "The video game story is bad because of *cinemasins nitpick* or *it didn't do x thing that I would have wanted*." I also think that the hyperbolic ways fans glaze or hate on certain storylines to be a bit annoying as well. Not aimed at you specifically, but it is something in broader gaming discussions that I dislike when discussing stories. Perhaps its a sign that I shouldn't look online to get opinions on a game's story in the first place....

 

[Bakugames]

i dont know how unpopular it is on the wider fanbase, but for the context we're in (smogon) I think itd be fairly unpopular: i think the games should be doubles only and focus entirely on the balance of doubles and also the presentation of it (both in ui, animations, etc)

 

[Genuine_Angus_B33F]

(BW1 Plasma Post Response)

Click to collapse...

Maybe the details bdt uses to make a point aren't perfect but I understand and agree with the conclusion. BW1 Plasma builds towards this conflict between two perspectives and reaches a climax where one of those perspectives is rug pulled with the implicit claim that it could only ever be made naively or in bad faith. N is a character that the story gives a lot of attention to, we learn a lot about him and he shows up a bunch of times, but he ends up not being the driving force behind the ideological perspective he and Team Plasma come to represent and it takes the bite out of the narrative. The use of established tropes around Evil Teams and their appearances feels worse in BW1 than they do in other games as well. The dissonance between Team Plasma's stated ideals and the actions you see as the player is a point of tension the story starts building from the start, and realizing that they are retreading the exact narrative footsteps of others that came before and after them is deflating. Much of that is in comparison, BW1 being touted as having a good plot is a false advertisement for what is ultimately a plot full of missed potential, and I think without those expectations it probably doesn't land as badly, but without that exact cocktail of preconceptions the gap between the potential and reality is noticeable.

This feels like missing the forest for the trees. N is clearly “what sets Team Plasma apart from the other evil teams,” because none of them had characters who received such copious amounts of narrative focus with as much attention paid to illustrating their perspectives. Ghetsis is simply a means to that end. Why are you looking toward Ghetsis for character depth when the game has been serving that to you via N the whole time?

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Because the game itself sidelines N. N's depth doesn't matter to the climax of the story because Ghetsis takes the reigns the second N falters, and the impact of N's perspective on entities outside of the Player and Team Plasma is so weak. In a story where the forces outside these key characters are subtle to non-existent, Ghetsis as a flatly evil antagonist behind a naive ideological leader in N doesn't end up a wrinkle to a more complex situation, it just deflates the legitimacy of the antagonistic forces on the spot. N is the heart of the potential in BW1 Plasma's storyline. I'd like to just focus on N. But Ghetsis is plainly the mover and shaker of the whole operation in practice. I can't just ignore the Ghetsis in the room. There's nothing else to look at.

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the consensus is still bw1 is the bestest game ever and its really annoying because the game really has a lot of flaws

the DS era in general quickly went from underrated to overrated

Click to collapse...

I'll be clear, I do think BW1 is among the best games in the series. I just think that's in spite of it's Scenario Writing rather than because of it. I especially think the RPG gameplay is head and shoulders the best tuned in the series, even if the aim to make that tuning pitch perfect did result in a heavily restricting first ~hour of gameplay.

love me a tier list mmm mmm opinions (not necessarily unpopular ones though?)

Ordered vaguely but doesn't matter too much, XD and Colo are last in their respective tiers. I'm also looking at them as RPGs first and foremost, not at competitive play of any kind or their social / MMO / long term gameplay loops.

• BW1 > BW2 largely because of gameplay tuning. BW2's Dex additions are fun but are definitely not balanced; the bulk of additions fall toward the extremes of balance, being stupidly strong or pathetically weak compared to the BW1 roster. BW2 is very strong when it is doing it's own distinct thing but when retracing BW1's midgame the mismatch shines through in a negative way to me, the game just feels worse and the pasting of older pokemon into areas that didn't previously have them feels forced. Narratively I also appreciate BW1's ambitious face first fall for at least generating some kind of intrigue vs BW2 where I could not give less of a care for what the narrative is doing at any point.
• SuMo > USUM in large part because of the Scenario Writing bag fumble of all time. I also like SuMo's slightly smaller Dex and UI a bit more.
• RBY > FRLG is a change in opinion I've had somewhat recently, I have a big soft spot for Gen 3 but it is a bit jarring noticing how many Pokemon have their ingame function gutted in FRLG compared to RBY which has solid ingame tuning that is outright exceptional given its age and scope. Even narratively I can't help but give RBY the advantage despite the condensed script because the intrigue you can get from the subtext of the plot lands a lot harder and as much as I love Sevii it is practically completely unneeded fluff / fan service stuffed into RBY's extremely tight pace. Being a bit presentationally crusty and mechanically opaque are the only real downfalls of the game and even those can be looked at as comparison being the thief of joy.
• DPPt > BDSP mostly because of EXP system. I am harping on gameplay tuning a lot and BDSP has the absolute worst of any game in the series. Wild encounters remain intact from DP, but the Great Underground upon access renders every overworld grass patch useless. Basic Trainers remain exactly the same or as close as possible to DP, but the player's net EXP gain is something like 2.5* with a full party, so they all go from reasonable if easy obstacles to literal wastes of time to be avoided. This persists through the ENTIRE GAME and then reaches the Elite Four where if you had to spend a single brain cell thinking about a fight at any prior junction you WILL hit a sudden sheer cliff face of difficulty in the form of a comparatively ridiculous Cynthia fight. ORAS with EXP Share locked On might end up a worse experience overall, but you can at least choose to turn off the EXP Share in that game. Patently bizarre to me that a game so obsessed with faithfulness in many unnecessary respects would absolutely uproot its gamefeel on such a fundamental level and expect that to not do anything.
• RSE >>>> ORAS. It isn't close for me. I am biased for RSE and against ORAS for several deeply subjective reasons. I greatly enjoy RSE's down to earth / left to the imagination character design and do not care for ORAS's elaborate costuming. I think ORAS's scripting changes are near universally for the worse, and I despise the way basically every writing change made around Archie and Maxie. I do not like Mega Evolution and find it at its absolute worst ingame, and ORAS hoisting Lati@s with stone in hand upon the player is a declaration from the game that it just does not want players to care about its gameplay design. The Gen 6 EXP Share can be turned off in ORAS anyway and is nice to speed up grinds / catch up with levels, but kept on with no care it obliterates the gameplay tuning carryover from RSE, and that being the default play experience sucks for discussion about the game. Things like the DexNav end up being conceptually neat but ultimately unnecessary fluff for ingame playthroughs, and all of the unique encounters available post Kyogre/Groudon are way too late to really have an impact on subsequent playthroughs. I hate how much more linear ORAS is compared to RSE, especially with regards to Dewford/Slateport and Fortree/Lilycove portions of the game. I don't entirely hate condensing the early game accessible portion of Granite Cave but forcing players to wait longer to get Mawile / Sableye / Aron is baffling. ORAS has worse music than RSE in every head to head comparison, even if all ORAS's original songs do slap. ORAS is ugly. The only thing the game has going for it over RSE is the series of weirdly poignant new pieces of writing with commentary on corporate overreach and greed in Sea Mauville and the Safari Zone among other places. One step forward after a tumble down a flight of stairs, sure. I'm sort of shocked this opinion isn't more common.
• SV has blatantly terrible tuning as far as an "intended" experience but gives players so much freedom to carve their own path that I just can't be mad at it. In my blind playthrough of Scarlet, I spent a few hours bumbling around the Open World scavenging items, catching whatever, and doing Tera Raids with Randos. The first three story challenges I completed were Great Tusk, Ortega, and Grusha. I used a team with Dugtrio and Wugtrio on it. It was terrible. I had a blast.

LGPE would I guess be D tier on this list but I didn't include it because I don't feel confident in examining its gameplay when I haven't had a brain unrotted by this franchise in the near decade since its release and the game is blatantly catering itself to new players. Best case scenario I still don't like the writing.

 

[QuickBH]

I think the evil team plots are kinda junk across the series. Gen 1 Team Rocket works nicely due to the much less utopian setting and subtextual implications of wider corruption and the Rival... and that's the best it gets. SuMo gets away with a fair bit off the back of Team Skull being so charming but the Aether Foundation is sort of weak outside of specifically Lusamine. Gen 3 Team Aqua + Magma almost has me to some extent with how much more frighteningly reasonable ecoterrorism is becoming in the modern real world, but the actual writing doesn't hold up and ORAS being ORAS mostly just makes me cringe with embarrassment. (ORAS's aesthetic overhaul being a massive downgrade is my hot take within a hot take but I just don't have words to say that without the rose tintedest of glasses)

Click to collapse...

Team Plasma isn't an organization that's valuable for it's own sake but the hypocrisy of Ghetsis and Team Plasma serves how N's dreams are extremely untenable given the corrupt nature of his surroundings and the fact that the world has accepted that capturing and using Pokemon to fight is just engrained into these society's psyches. I won't say that these integrations are flawless and I think that Team Plasma not having Poke Balls for instance would've been better at keeping the illusion for the player but this is ultimately designed for children and I can only assume the writers wanted them to be established as hypocrites early on rather than obscuring the overall message and convoluting things which I respect.

the consensus is still bw1 is the bestest game ever and its really annoying because the game really has a lot of flaws

the DS era in general quickly went from underrated to overrated

Click to collapse...

Black and White actually puts effort into its story while the rest of the series really doesn't. It gets outdone by Ranger and Mystery Dungeon but it's the only game in Pokemon that actually feels like it cares about the bonds of Pokemon instead of having an entire sport based on Pokemon fighting each other overwhelm the course of the story. The events in the world feel overall serious enough and integrated to the story actually enough so that the story does feel like the motivating factor for your character's journey and not just an add-on.

 

[SandVeil10]

i dont know how unpopular it is on the wider fanbase, but for the context we're in (smogon) I think itd be fairly unpopular: i think the games should be doubles only and focus entirely on the balance of doubles and also the presentation of it (both in ui, animations, etc)

Click to collapse...

I'd like to see that happen, at least to see what I'd think about it. Doubles in the mainline games and as a competitive format are a fun way to switch things up to me, but I've never had that moment where I went, "This format is what I wanna focus on". Maybe it's because I'm just too used to Single battles.
I imagine Game Freak could definitely make a fun Doubles-focused main campaign if they put their minds to it. Ideally I'd rather see a 50/50 split between Singles and Doubles but, full Doubles sounds interesting

 

[ant4456]

I especially think the RPG gameplay is head and shoulders the best tuned in the series, even if the aim to make that tuning pitch perfect did result in a heavily restricting first ~hour of gameplay.

Click to collapse...

i could spend a few paragraphs saying why bw1 specifically (not b2w2) is badly designed from a gameplay and balance perspective but i want to know anyone would care or want to hear it because i dont wanna be writing essays if no one will wanna read them

idk if this feels passive aggressive im not tryna be i just have written abt this stuff before so if im gonna rehash its still gonna take effort and wanna know first

Black and White actually puts effort into its story while the rest of the series really doesn't.

Click to collapse...

maybe for the time it came out but i think literally every game except swsh after it put in more effort and succeeded more

 

[Hugin]

So you'd get one cutscene of the player character getting marched off in chains and then what? Any meaningful result of Ghetsis' policies would logically lead to a crippled savefile: reduced Centers or battling-centric shops, limited trades, etc.. Letting the player overwrite their single save and get locked into that unless they want to start over from scratch is the kind of thing that's sketchy in purely single-player games trying to preach about gaming as a medium, let alone something as centered around multiplayer as Pokemon. The player absolutely needs to be able to try again like nothing happened, whether or not that's true for the characters.

Click to collapse...

What they really need to do there is Game Over and kick you back to the "Load last save" screen, possibly after a cutscene. It's a weird element of these games that there isn't a game over ever, while there's also not fights you're expected to lose. Romhacks include both of those, as do many modern RPGs, and Pokemon just...doesn't.

I'd like to see that happen, at least to see what I'd think about it. Doubles in the mainline games and as a competitive format are a fun way to switch things up to me, but I've never had that moment where I went, "This format is what I wanna focus on". Maybe it's because I'm just too used to Single battles.
I imagine Game Freak could definitely make a fun Doubles-focused main campaign if they put their minds to it. Ideally I'd rather see a 50/50 split between Singles and Doubles but, full Doubles sounds interesting

Click to collapse...

Absolutely not half-and-half. A team that's good at singles is not one that's good at doubles. Any game should pick one and stick with it.

That said, what I'd do is make significant portions of the game true doubles, Player+NPC partner. We can use that to both demonstrate alt strategies to the player as well as force them to adopt those strategies to compensate for their partner. Picture a game with the usual Angry Rival+Friendly Rival, where one of them is hyper-offense and the other has almost entirely support moves. And you partner with one or the other for every cave and evil team dungeon in the game. If you have the support partner, you need damage output, but if you have the attack partner, ways of reducing incoming damage are key. Gyms are Player vs Leader, 2v2. And the champion fight is, of course, both of them against you. It would take careful design, but I think that's a way of both making doubles easier on the hypothetical "first game ever 3rd grader", keeping it interesting, and teaching strategies to casuals.

 

[QuickBH]

maybe for the time it came out but i think literally every game except swsh after it put in more effort and succeeded more

Click to collapse...

Perhaps effort is a loaded term that can't really be determined but Sun and Moon ultimately can't tell you a story about organically living with the world around you because the game forces you into a linear path throughout the entire game which makes any environmental storytelling fall flat. Lusamine's children have interesting stories but ultimately don't use the Pokemon's system in any creative way and the game still feels like Pokemon's battle system doesn't really have a place. Then you have Scarlet and Violet which has 1/4th of a good story pre-DLC but is handicapped by how frustrating and tacked on the non-Arven parts of the story are. I'd say post DLC is also 50/50 where the Ogrepon festival is a solid small scale story and the Blueberry Academy is whatever.

Gen 5 are the only game that feels like it even bothered to integrate the main gameplay loop into the story which makes them the only mainline Pokemon games I can actually recommend to an RPG fan who doesn't have an attachment to the franchise.

 

[Genuine_Angus_B33F]

i could spend a few paragraphs saying why bw1 specifically (not b2w2) is badly designed from a gameplay and balance perspective but i want to know anyone would care or want to hear it because i dont wanna be writing essays if no one will wanna read them

idk if this feels passive aggressive im not tryna be i just have written abt this stuff before so if im gonna rehash its still gonna take effort and wanna know first

Click to collapse...

Can say for one I would read it. And not at all crazy to want an audience for something you put effort into.

If I had questions prior to seeing such a thing;

-What are some of your favorite / least favorite Pokemon to use ingame for BW1 / BW2?
-What is your favorite / least favorite boss fight in BW1 / BW2?
-Do you use Shard Tutors when you play BW2?

 

[Yung Dramps]

Perhaps effort is a loaded term that can't really be determined but Sun and Moon ultimately can't tell you a story about organically living with the world around you because the game forces you into a linear path throughout the entire game which makes any environmental storytelling fall flat.

Click to collapse...

Did not use the Poke Finder or pay attention to encounter tables award

Lusamine's children have interesting stories but ultimately don't use the Pokemon's system in any creative way and the game still feels like Pokemon's battle system doesn't really have a place.

Click to collapse...

Hmmmmmmmm...... It's very curious how Lusamine's signature Pokemon is a giant bear that tries to be nice and caring by hugging people but does so in such a reckless and overbearing way that it ultimately hurts those it loves.... Also quite intriguing how all of Gladion's team members evolve via friendship with Type: Null and his USUM Zoroark having their true selves obscured, as if they are trying to hide something.... I wonder if these are symbolic of anything...?

Gen 5 are the only game that feels like it even bothered to integrate the main gameplay loop into the story which makes them the only mainline Pokemon games I can actually recommend to an RPG fan who doesn't have an attachment to the franchise.

Click to collapse...

Mind elaborating further? I'm trying to think of how this is the case compared to the rest of the series and other than some connections to be potentially made between the story's themes and having a new mons only dex I got nothing

 

[ant4456]

Perhaps effort is a loaded term that can't really be determined but Sun and Moon ultimately can't tell you a story about organically living with the world around you because the game forces you into a linear path throughout the entire game which makes any environmental storytelling fall flat.

Click to collapse...

sun and moon's story isn't about that so i'm not really sure why you are taking this as a flaw in the story

there is worldbuilding and lore for those themes because pokemon has broad themes about ecology, human and animal balance, protecting nature, etc. almost every game does this. legends za does it. kanto had environmental themes, it's been in the series' DNA since 1996

but that isn't what The Story is about really. you can critique that it isn't about that but saying the story fails at accomplishing what it isn't trying to do isn't fair at all lol

see micro wording thing about this: "stories"

they are the story

these two statements make me feel like you do not understand the story and it's not a very complicated one so i'm not sure why

the game opens on a cutscene with lillie and ends with lillie command a pokemon to deal the final blow to the final boss who idk happens to be her mom

they ARE the story. they are not stories contained within this game's story, they Are The Pokemon Sun and Moon Videogame Story, so much so that the usual critique is that the protagonist is just kinda there.

Pokemon's system in any creative way and the game still feels like Pokemon's battle system doesn't really have a place.

Click to collapse...

this can be said for gen 5 (and most gens rlly) but its easier to skip through all the dialogue in bw (fastest engine in the series to skip dialogue) and then read that the plot was fire online and gush about N so people broadly don't care

more than that i dont think you can easily say gen 5 does less. totems and z crystals have much a lot to do with the game's themes. lusamine's pokemon have the totem effect for instance

also the stuff yung said rlly

Gen 5 are the only game that feels like it even bothered to integrate the main gameplay loop into the story which makes them the only mainline Pokemon games I can actually recommend to an RPG fan who doesn't have an attachment to the franchise.

Click to collapse...

it really doesn't it's the same old rival fights lol

i dont understand how you come to this conclusion and pokemon black was my first and most nostalgic pokemon game, i remember the entire game from start to finish essentially

 

[Sonikku A]

I greatly enjoy RSE's down to earth / left to the imagination character design

Click to collapse...

No Angus, Brendan doesn't have white hair
This is the only part of your list I disagree with, largely cuz that aspect leads to heavy misinterpretation or toxic nostalgia. Headcanoning based on limited info (graphical or writing)

I see this for many long running 80s/90s franchises (hi Sonic), and the fandom knowledge suffers, same for newcomers seeing the intense bias from "fans". Pokemon is no exception

This also impacts remakes. Remakes can't be faithful to intended environmental design fully realized in concept art/finished realized art, it'll get panned for ironically, not being "faithful" to the player

And we know Pokemon takes this to the extreme for map "faithfulness", becoming less and less its initial realization and more just archaic tile design

It's ironically part of the reason BDSP was so hated, we saw concept art that genuinely was lovely fully realized spaces, before getting the tiled down actual game. Legends Arceus is too graphically mediocre and barren to scratch that itch either, but it's *something*

Incidentally this also impacts writing. Gen 1's dev notes in the GameFreak Pokedex book + reverse engineering efforts expose how haphazardly designed many locations are. I think the funniest is the book noting mons birthed from overly industrialized areas, but in game they're not even found there*. And Moltres is woefully misplaced from its original location, Cerulean cave, because Mewtwo was very last minute. Gen 1 is still fairly straightforward, but the mystique is half bs, half cuz of volatile dev

*FRLG/LGPE partially tries to remedy this for Grimer being fishable near Celadon City, though the game is too pretty those areas

It's the same for the romanticised Ditto Mew theory, it only works cuz Yellow randomly changed the encounters from Koffing to Ditto in Poke Mansion cuz they're purple/pink (not even RGB had them there), but Ditto are very casually in the wild in Gen 2 in a completely unrelated area, and have a mild unrelated aspect of its signature item being Metal Powder

Otherwise I agree with your list mostly, but I don't like "vagueness to headcanon" being romanticized. "Imagination left to the player" has unfortunately become a crutch for some writers just not worldbuilding, though the inverse of overly explaining also is true. That said, Pokemon games kind of are just too basic to have the latter largely cuz the player is cardboard + railroaded game design until SV


With all that said, imagine if N in BW1 actually helped the player and strike back at Ghetsis after realizing how evil he is? Instead of the player generically finishing the big bad. Would make him less passive after the climax

Player is still too cardboard to their philosophy though

 

[ant4456]

Can say for one I would read it. And not at all crazy to want an audience for something you put effort into.

If I had questions prior to seeing such a thing;

-What are some of your favorite / least favorite Pokemon to use ingame for BW1 / BW2?
-What is your favorite / least favorite boss fight in BW1 / BW2?
-Do you use Shard Tutors when you play BW2?

Click to collapse...

only talking about BW1:

favorite ingame mons: Leavanny, Samurott, Stoutland, Darmanitan, Krookodile, Archeops

least favorite: Swoobat, Scolipede, Jellicent

boss favorite: Ghetsis, Clay

least favorite: Elesa, Striaton Gym


here are the main things that plague BW1's design:

1. Stat Creep

The Pokedex is trying to reflect Generation 1 except many of the Pokemon do not have Generation 1 style BSTs or stat spreads, instead they have powercrept ones. Excadrill is a demonic entity compared to most Pokemon in general, and it's in a dex comprised of shitters like Watchog and Pidove.

This compounds with:

2. Movepools

Movepools in BW1 range wildly between dogshit and excellent. Many, again, have movesets that feel reminiscient of Generation 1 design, which really just means weaker and more specific.

The Petilil line learns very few non-Grass moves, but Lilligant learns Quiver Dance, a rare move in the Pokedex, which gives it a niche compared to other competition in the same dex.

However, you can also just catch a Leavanny. It has a higher and slightly more balanced BST, it's a three-stage line so it is designed where it will scale continuously, and its movepool is incredible for an in-game 'mon at the time. You very quickly get dual STABs with very adequate stats and a fairly early evolution possible.

Well, that's alright. You get the Sun Stone as early as Nimbasa City, so Lilligant can immediately popoff, right? Certainly a good amount except, of course... Most of the time you would rather just click the button to kill.

That's fine: It's not necessarily a design flaw since getting a Quiver Dance up is so great that it still might be worth the trouble.

Also: well, hey, the Smogon In-Game BW Tier list ranks Petilil higher than Sewaddle, so it must be true for the average player and not someone considering Leavanny to not be good until it gets Swords Dance, a move the majority of players probably didn't use once.

Now you have an Electric gym with two Pokemon with STAB Flying. Physical. No matter: the next gym is Ground, and it does indeed destroy that gym. Then it's Flying. Then it's Ice. Then it's Dragon. Then Grass isn't super relevant in the Elite 4.

And if you wanted a good Grass-Type for the Ground gym, well...

3. Level Design / Encounter Tables

Even Leavanny has a major flaw if we use our brains and analyze the campaign playthrough: Why the fuck bother getting a Grass-Type so early in the first place? I mean, you catch it right before a Bug gym, and then as previously mentioned the Electric gym which should be pretty good for it? Two mons with quad effective STAB.

Why even do any of this when right next to Clay's gym you can get an adequately-leveled Deerling with Jump Kick, what I believe is the strongest Fighting-Type move any Grass Pokemon in the dex can learn up to this point, making it the perfect counter to Clay's Excadrill?

This is a design element most of the boss fights in this game have, they deliberately put the counter right next to the boss. Ever been playing RBY and been like, shit, I don't really have a Pokemon that can resist Electric, lemme go to "Ground Type Cave" and catch Ground Type? Diglett's Cave, I mean.

Almost every single bossfight in BW is like this, made worse that the game's fucking tutorial tries to teach you type advantage with "Explore to the right side of the gym to get a free counter!"

That's not very interesting level design or gameplay in my fucking honest opinion! There is a difference in rewarding exploration and traveling 20 steps west of the gym and catching the counter with a tech for the gym's counter-to-your-counter.

South of Normal Gym? Almost every non-Legendary Fighting-Type in the region. Brycen and Bugsy get the most pass likely because even Unova's designers know their types are ass, but you can go north of Castelia early and catch a Hustle Darumaka who will destroy the gym.

Darumaka itself plays into 1. which is you have later-gen balanced Pokemon (Darumaka just murders everything if it doesn't miss, no other real downside, can even take a hit or two) in the same general vicinity as Maractus (love that mon btw wish it wasn't dogshit).

Krokorok is really the designated Elesa encounter because it can get a Rock move and is of course immune to Electric. You can also find a Rock Tomb TM in Desert Resort which it can learn. I don't actually have a major issue with this one because Desert Resort in my opinion counts as real exploration worth rewarding.

Clay is next to almost every Grass-Type in the region. Shit. If you are patient with dark grass patches you can just CATCH a Leavanny.

You can get the Pawniard line before the Dragon gym. Next to Skyla is a trade Emolga.

Etc.

This kind of thing will not save you from Ghetsis, N, or the like, but even the entire Elite 4 is fairly checked by the Durant you can catch in Victory Road. Resists Ghost, Psychicand Dark, neutral to Fighting, solid stats click the button and win.

Onto the actual world itself, it's mostly bland and carried by Generation 5's excellent art direction and artstyle. People shit on Sun and Moon's linearity and to be fair, I think it is worse than Unova, but Unova is a circle with sometimes "oooh there's twooo paaathhssss", which is my least favorite type of RPG level design, anyways.

B2W2 subverts the more generic side of Unova and just flies you into the more interesting territory, the postgame areas. Waterfalls, cliffsides, Village Bridge, etc. are all great locations and it's a real shame we go West in Unova's campaign, honestly. I'm not saying it SUCKS sucks, and there are cool bits and interesting parts. Chargestone Cave is cool enough. The route north of Skyla is great with the decision-making of avoiding fights and balancing on the thin planks. Then we have discount Lavender Tower. The most forgettable mountain dungeon in the series. Dragonspiral is cool. It definitely ramps up in the second half, but ultimately I think I like the aesthetic of Unova more than it is interesting to explore.

4. Altogether

Unova is a game where they mixed Generation 1 design traits with balancing and the environments, which is positive in my opinion, I am a Kanto Gameplay Truther. But then they still had to throw in the late gen balancing for like 1/4th of the Pokedex, most of which are as easy or easier to catch compared to the rest. I think you can tell they know with all of those Late evolutions that are the easy Unova complaint, but without those the situation would be even worse to be honest.

Excadrill should be as hard to catch in BW1 as like, Dragonite in RBY, genuinely. Same for a lot of other Pokemon.

And I think this is all bad considering Sinnoh was actually fairly good (I have big complaints but the more I play it the more I feel the balancing was significantly better than GS/BW/XY) with balancing and level design by cribbing Kanto's notes, but the game that had 150 Pokemon and didn't need its dex to contend with old favorites did a terrible job with this balancing act.

I also think they took the most cowardly
route with trying to teach the type chart and when I say "Maybe we should just stop doing monotype gym leaders", Unova is just as good an example as LGPE forcing you to get a Grass-Type before Brock. It's not interesting.

I think teambuilding is really not fun when half the Pokemon need to work 5x harder to be useful in any context than the rest. Even a "well I train a mon of this type now for the gym ahead" doesn't make sense for aforementioned reasons.

Of course, Pokemon is easy. You can make a Watchog work if you really want to. But if we just go "well I'ma do what I wanna do anyways and it works", I don't think we can qualify it as good design when it all has to be intrinsic desire to find a use for the vast majority of the Pokedex, especially in a region where most of the rare Pokemon aren't in special locations but instead are just The Usual, just farm encounters.

I can give you reasons for most Pokemon to be used in a Kanto, Hoenn, Sinnoh, even Alola playthrough and those are in my opinion the most balanced. BW1 feels like it has the easiest layup with the smallest dex besides Kanto and the freedom to do whatever they want. The region itself is linear and its pretty easy to put where Pokemon should be.

I could keep rambling but, ultimately, BW1 is definitely in the bunch of games that is poorly balanced, and its level design isn't really cool either, and in the case of how they tied it into boss design I think actively detrimental. Those are like, the main components of a Pokemon game's gameplay, and I just think it's not great overall.

I think in many ways BW1 is stolen valor from B2W2. BW1 gets away with a lot because it has the best presentation in a Pokemon game (debatably but I think that's fair to say) and the fastest engine. If you don't care for some parts, it's fine because you zip past it, so I guess you can say it's pacing is good! But I find it to not be a very memorable game to replay.

B2W2 has significantly better level design and despite giving up the insular Pokedex, actually way better balancing in my opinion. Yeah, the dogshit Pokemon are still dogshit, but at least the best Unovan Pokemon are now in competition with old good Pokemon, and finding some of them feels more like a dedicated task.

B2W2 has some flaws though. Scolipede is supposed to get a Poison Jab TM treat to fix its bad level up movepool around Brycen, but they didn't move the TM in B2W2, so you're shit out of luck.

Last note: None of these issues are unique to BW1. I even mentioned that Diglett Cave is like the counter next to gym thing: Blaine is literally on an island, Celadon City next to some of the only Fire Types in the region, Grass Type north of Cerulean etc. I'm also not talking about difficulty, but rather the teambuilding and balance.

Kanto gets away with it because those Pokemon are individually balanced and more often have significant long-term usage, and not every gym is like that at all. If you want a non-starter counter to Brock, you need to think far ahead of time to get a Mankey or train up some other moves with Nidos and Butterfree Psybeam. Sabrina doesn't have direct counters because Psychic counters don't exist to begin with. giovanni is surrounded by Level 2 guys, and Psychic Types are rarer to find to get for Koga, Ground Types less so but you gotta find one.

You can poke holes in these examples probably, and I'm aware of that. Pokemon has never been a pinnacle of balance, but I think BW1 is uniquely less interesting and badly balanced in gameplay compared to most titles in the series.

 

[Omastar68]

Barbaracle isn’t a fossil mon, so I’m not sure why it having a mega would matter for fossil mons.

Click to collapse...

Same water/rock typing
Like in base. Not sure they'd make two more of same type soon.

Esit: I am...regularly unclear. I kean other fossils to aerodactyl, who got mega ages ago. Not to barb, which i actually mention lol. Aero is relevant cause looking at Omastar kabutops

 

[Sonikku A]

BW1 is very easy to breeze for newcomers, but ye it compounded the power creep issue for early route mons that still is an issue till this day

The more Dragon Quest/RGB design definitely feels awkwardly implemented at times, the elemental monkeys being the worst

 

[Esserise]

BW1 Plasma builds towards this conflict between two perspectives and reaches a climax where one of those perspectives is rug pulled with the implicit claim that it could only ever be made naively or in bad faith.

Click to collapse...

Because it can only ever be made naively or in bad faith. You can’t look at a scenario in which the relationship between people and Pokémon is, for the vast majority, a mutually beneficial relationship, and then credibly suggest that simply because a minority of people abuse that relationship, it should be terminated and prohibited for everyone.

If N’s point were “we should listen to Pokémon and take care to make sure that they don’t end up being hurt by humans” (which is where he ultimately arrives at), that would be perfectly reasonable, but then there wouldn’t be a plot. The story only works if N has been led to proceed from false principles.

Because the game itself sidelines N. N's depth doesn't matter to the climax of the story because Ghetsis takes the reigns the second N falters, and the impact of N's perspective on entities outside of the Player and Team Plasma is so weak. In a story where the forces outside these key characters are subtle to non-existent, Ghetsis as a flatly evil antagonist behind a naive ideological leader in N doesn't end up a wrinkle to a more complex situation, it just deflates the legitimacy of the antagonistic forces on the spot. N is the heart of the potential in BW1 Plasma's storyline. I'd like to just focus on N. But Ghetsis is plainly the mover and shaker of the whole operation in practice. I can't just ignore the Ghetsis in the room. There's nothing else to look at.

Click to collapse...

The core thesis of Black & White is that harmful extremes emerge from an unwillingness to consider other peoples’ feelings and perspectives. Trying to force the world into a black-and-white paradigm doesn’t work, because reality is too complex, multifaceted, and nuanced for that. N is the focal point for this because he is someone who has been manipulated to believe only one way — the way that Ghetsis needs him to believe in order to rebel against the world order as it stands — and is then thrust into a world that constantly challenges his insular perspective because the way he was brought up was completely ignorant to reality. N’s arc simply isn’t complete until we get the revelation about the nature of his upbringing. Ghetsis’s true intentions are designed to tell us a lot more about N than they do about Ghetsis, whose all-consuming, one-dimensional evil has been foreshadowed constantly throughout the game.

However, just because you need to be willing to consider other peoples’ perspectives, that doesn’t mean all perspectives are of equal credibility or that every conclusion is valid. People like Ghetsis, who mean to do violence upon others, are behaving in the extreme themselves by not caring about the harm caused by the violence they seek to do. It’s sort of a paradox of tolerance situation. At the end of the game, N is encouraged by Alder to find his own path and develop his own view — he’s not being told to just swallow the dogma of the status quo. But he needs to formulate a perspective of the world that is founded upon objective, observable reality rather than propagandistic lies.

It’s like… the institution of medicine, for example. I have no illusions about the fact that physicians can be imperfect and biased, that medicine is distributed within a capitalist, for-profit system rather than strictly for the good of public health, and that regulatory bodies can be corrupt or poorly managed. I acknowledge those things because I am willing to question the system as it exists. But nevertheless, we also need to acknowledge the objective and overwhelming amount of science that says we are, by and large, better off listening to experts and following agreed-upon medical guidelines rather than listening to unqualified podcast bros talking about all-meat diets curing cancer and vaccines causing autism or whatever the fuck.

 

[igiveuponaname]

It's the same for the romanticised Ditto Mew theory, it only works cuz Yellow randomly changed the encounters from Koffing to Ditto in Poke Mansion cuz they're purple/pink (not even RGB had them there)

Click to collapse...

Koffing wasnt in the mansion cuz Yellow doesnt let you catch any of the "main" team rocket mons (Koffing, Ekans, Meowth) and Ditto was probably considered a fitting enough replacement for it there. Can't really explain why its non-cerulean cave encounters were removed though

 

[Omastar68]

Maybe they should make a special body press for amnesia mons. I'm using amnesia on m venu and it's surprisingly been really cool, but it is true the meta, and all metas I've been in, seems just SLIGHTLY physically based, and that SpD just gets less kit sorta without that, a plus three in one use move, and no attack I can think of to buff your own.

 

[Coronis]

Honestly I prefer beta Stunky line (leaks not vid) cuz final puts WAY too much emphasis on the ass face

Click to collapse...

Chaw-haw-haw

 

[Bakugames]

i dont know how unpopular it is on the wider fanbase, but for the context we're in (smogon) I think itd be fairly unpopular: i think the games should be doubles only and focus entirely on the balance of doubles and also the presentation of it (both in ui, animations, etc)

Click to collapse...

to clarify more: its not that i find singles a "bad" format or that this should be done just because the comp is in doubles, i think that doubles focused balancing, story and presentation is more inline with the team building, bonding with your partners and making friends that the franchise wants to push. i think a big showcase of it is beastieball, who uses the doubles format because its volley, but it takes advantage of it by making beasties have tagteam combos, give them relationships based on what other beasties theyre paired most with, and in turn have your relationships to them also matter. its fun!!

also i dont actually think colo/xd is a good showing, because while it may be a doubles only series, it still relies on the heavily-made-for-singles movesets of gen 3. it was the game to introduce double battles, but it is also the game where theyre at its least interesting and least focused on

 

[QuickBH]

also i dont actually think colo/xd is a good showing, because while it may be a doubles only series, it still relies on the heavily-made-for-singles movesets of gen 3. it was the game to introduce double battles, but it is also the game where theyre at its least interesting and least focused on

Click to collapse...

It might be weird that I think that Pokemon is much better suited for doubles at a casual level, while being absolutely atrocious for doubles at a competitive level. The luck mechanics are perfectly fine and suitable for both casual playthroughs, and competitive singles where you are given multiple opportunities to also get a lucky opportunity to even things out due to the longer turn count, where multiple moves are viable so you can choose fully accurate moves, and critical hits serve as a means to pressure stall and other strategies that would otherwise be far above the curve.

Absolutely none of this applies to doubles though, where the concept of spread moves makes it so you are forced into inaccurate moves, and the game is so quick that a single freeze can straight up make the game unwinnable with nothing you could've done around because the options are so much more limiting that playing around it feels impossible. I really enjoyed stuff like Battle Revolution's draft and the Gamecube titles in doubles and wish they focused more on it rather than 4v4 VGC format which implements luck based elements that are okay in casual gameplay abyssmal.

 

[ant4456]

to clarify more: its not that i find singles a "bad" format or that this should be done just because the comp is in doubles, i think that doubles focused balancing, story and presentation is more inline with the team building, bonding with your partners and making friends that the franchise wants to push. i think a big showcase of it is beastieball, who uses the doubles format because its volley, but it takes advantage of it by making beasties have tagteam combos, give them relationships based on what other beasties theyre paired most with, and in turn have your relationships to them also matter. its fun!!

also i dont actually think colo/xd is a good showing, because while it may be a doubles only series, it still relies on the heavily-made-for-singles movesets of gen 3. it was the game to introduce double battles, but it is also the game where theyre at its least interesting and least focused on

Click to collapse...

the optimal pokemon training experience is dnd double battles imo where your pokemon create bonds with each other while being on the field

even negative ones

like your garchomp misses an inaccurate move follow up attack from its teammate toxapex and they have a negative bond, and different things change stuff

the games have so many systems that'd work for this esp. with gen 8 and 9 with the camping/picnicking shit but it doesnt rlly do anything

let my pokemon party have their own mini story