Unpopular opinions

Tough Claws is good tho. Barbaracle just suffers from bad defensive typing and Base Stats that can't keep up with this crazy power creep.
But Tough Claws is entirely useless for one of it's types, with none of the rock moves it learns being contact moves. Otherwise it is a good ability, but does restrict it in the moves it uses.

While I am on the topic of contact rock moves, the only contact rock moves are Rollout, Accelerock, and Head Smash, which Barbaracle has none of.
 
No contact Rock is unfortunate and all, but Tough Claws is still really good for Barbaracle and he has plenty of moves for it. STAB Liquidation and Razor Shell, Cross Chop/Low Kick/Superpower/Brick Break (how does he get all of these!), Dual Chop, Aerial Ace, and Poison Jab, with others besides. This ain't Sheer Force Braviary.

Barbarcle is a good Pokemon. You have to be more than just "good" to get in OU these days; you have to be exceptional or unique.
 
I think Gates to Infinity should've gone "all-out" and only had Gen 5 Pokémon. It would be cool to see what would fill the shopkeeper role, for example.

(Side-note: why do so many people think GTI only has Gen 5 Pokémon in it when Dunsparce is literally on the boxart?)
 
I looked at some of the Diamond and Pearl Beta Sprites which include some cut gender differences.
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I am so glad most of these were cut. Female Charmeleon loses it's uniqueness of the evolutionary line as it's color matches Charmander and Charizard. That was my favorite thing about Charmeleon and why it's my favorite middle stage Pokemon.
And that may sound weird to some considering there are far worse designs for female Pokemon that could have been.
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Only a handful of the current Gender differences I can tolerate. And female Wobuffet is I tolerate because it's that hilarious.
 
Yeah, a lot of the cut gender differences seemed to boil down to “take something on the Pokémon’s body and make it smaller on the female”, which was kinda lazy (not to mention it raised some odd questions when the shortened body part was the ears or something).
I would somewhat disagree.
In actual real nature, it isnt uncommon for the female (or, occasionally, the male) of a specie to just be smaller or have smaller parts.
Or rather, the opposite, the sex that actively competes for the partner (which is usually the males) tends to have flashy and bigger body parts they use to showoff in some way to show that they are fancier than the other males.
(No, not what you're thinking, you pervs :P )

So no, I wouldn't consider using a design that reproduces how real world looks "lazy". If anything, the only complaint one could really have is that they would have been trying to put realism in designs that are anything but.
 
I looked at some of the Diamond and Pearl Beta Sprites which include some cut gender differences.

Yeah, "some", as in most every single Pokemon which had genders, lol. :psysly: (FUN FACT: Psyduck's gender difference was female's hair were shaped like a heart)

Yeah, a lot of the cut gender differences seemed to boil down to “take something on the Pokémon’s body and make it smaller on the female”, which was kinda lazy (not to mention it raised some odd questions when the shortened body part was the ears or something).

Lazy? Maybe a bit, though then again it's a proper representation of real life gender dimorphism where for many animals the main difference is usually in size. Though it's not always as cut and dry as "females have the smaller parts", they do consider real life animal counterparts and in species where the females have the bigger parts (for example, the bug world) the Pokemon of those species are given the bigger parts/males are shrunk so the female can be bigger.

(EDIT: Shedinja'd, but posting my thoughts anyway as I got more to say)

But that said, yeah, while a lot of these probably would have changed if they kept the idea of every gender having a difference (one horned female Charizard just doesn't look right; yes I know it's from an early promotional picture, there's a reason that's the only depiction of Charizard like that), I also agree that it wasn't needed for a lot of Pokemon if they couldn't think of a good difference (like the shorter ear Eeveelutions even if some of them look cuter with short ears). That said I do think they probably could have still had more gender differences, especially with the Pokemon who have a notable masculine/feminine appearance to give the opposite gender some bit of separation... oh, and wished they kept doing it after Gen IV.
 
I also agree that it wasn't needed for a lot of Pokemon if they couldn't think of a good difference (like the shorter ear Eeveelutions even if some of them look cuter with short ears).
I do agree that a lot of Pokemon don't need a visual difference, but one thing they could have done that would have made sense is make (depending on the species) one of the genders weigh more based off of real life, with an example being making female bug types heavier due to the larger size in real life. For pokemon like Eevee that looks somewhat like a dog, they could make males weigh more once again due to the fact that almost all male dogs are larger than females. It would be a cool easter egg of sorts, and would give you more reason to catch a certain gender other than breeding and the Ralts situation.
 
I mean they could always try to use Regional Variants as a way to fill in the gaps for those Pokémon if they want to do BW again. They seem to be using regional variants as a way to create new Pokémon but with also restraining themselves to go over the thousand mark, though I’m not sure what’s the point since they are going to be introducing new Pokémon anyway, and the 1000 mark will be reached within the next two generations anyway. Regardless, it seems that the way Regional Variants are handled is that they are mechanically new Pokémon, but are the same Pokémon due to name. That’s the vibe I get. A game like BW would require at least 150 Pokémon. That’s a lot, but assuming that 70-80 are new Pokémon, regional variants would be the remaining 70-80. A lot, but it does give opportunity for a more balanced distribution of regional forms for different Gens than before. Not to mention BW was hated on for using only new Pokémon, new regional variants would be a compromise, like: Here’s Galarian Mothim! It’s Mothim, but mechanically speaking it’s not Mothim if that makes any sense.
Interesting idea. I also feel that they seem to be using regional variants as a way to create new Pokémon without actually creating new Pokémon as regional variants are only new forms (and because of that, I do personally not count them as new Pokémon - the same goes for Megas and other kinds of forms as well). But I really like regional variants, especially now in Gen 8 when they did very well with both the concept and the execution regarding them. Unfortunately, I see several problems with doing a "B/W" again, but with both regional variants and new Pokémon. You listed all of the problems I could think of. And at this point, I fear that having only 150 Pokémon again in a regional dex would feel very small since having larger regional dexes with 3-400 Pokémon is something that at least I have gotten used to at this point since it has been in all non-remake games starting from Gen 6. In comparison, the remake dexes have felt smaller since they have had considerably less Pokémon in them. That is something I fear will feel different in the upcoming remakes as well, but I'll talk more about that in the right thread when it opens again. Either way, as much as I loved what B/W did, and as much as I like both regional variants and new Pokémon, I don't think we'll ever see something like another B/W again in the future.

I also wanted to say some things about some other topics that were brought up recently.

Would "Z" have saved Kalos?
Depends on how you look at it. If you ask me, both yes and no. My unpopular opinion (or at least I think so) is that I really liked X/Y, I think they were amazing games and I really don't think they had to be "saved" as much as other fans often seem to claim. X/Y had excellent gameplay all around (way better than S/M) with very few issues. They didn't need a regional dex expansion, what they could have done if they wanted to change things a bit was to either revamp the dex a bit, or shuffle around the encounter slots. Or both. I don't think that including more Pokémon in their regional dex would have changed things since the Kalos dex is already very big and X/Y had very many Pokémon available on the whole. I don't care much for story in Pokémon games, but I do believe that "Z" would have changed the X/Y story for the better (like what Platinum did to the D/P story). But there's the X/Y chapter of Pokémon Adventures, so I can just read that if I want a good Kalos story.

If anything, I think the biggest issue with X/Y was their lack of content. This is something I am convinced that "Z" would have fixed, no matter if it had been a third version, sequels or alternate versions. If we look at the three most recent instances of each type of follow-up game (Platinum, B2/W2 and US/UM), each of them added a lot more content to their first pairs. Because of that, I think "Z" would have done the same. And for me, that would have been enough. As said, I think X/Y are excellent games. They are my third favorite games in the series and my favorite main series games for the 3DS. Seeing as they were excellent to start with, I am convinced that "Z" would have been even better. I think it would have done an even better job than X/Y at being the closest to rivaling the Gen 5 games as my favorites in the series.

In comparison, I think S/M had much more and considerably bigger issues than X/Y. I always felt that it was way more necessary for them to be "saved" compared to X/Y. Fortunately, that happened, because we got US/UM. I think those games did a great job at improving upon S/M. They did not fix every issue with S/M, but they improved upon them in many imporant areas and they added much more content. I think they are clearly the superior Alola games, no contest whatsoever. It is partly because S/M were decent to start with (not sure if I'd call them "good" anymore as my opinion of them has sadly fallen quite a bit in recent years, but I still think they were decent at least). Fortunately, US/UM went past that and made Alola great! US/UM are my fifth favorite games in the series, while S/M are my least favorites from the main series games games that were released for the 3DS. I think X/Y are even better than US/UM though.

Barbaracle
I like Barbaracle, though I wouldn't go as far as it is one of my overall favorite designs. It is still really great though. I really like how unexpected it feels, I never expected Binacle to become likes this when it evolved. It is a bit ridiculous in a good way and I really like that. I used a Barbaracle on my in-game team in Y and from what I remember, it was quite good.

Charmeleon
Like some other posters here, I really like Charmeleon. I like it way better than Charmander and Charizard. If anything, I think Charizard loses a lot of its coolness when it evolves from Charmeleon (sorry, Charizard fans). IMO, Charmeleon and Mega Charizard X are the best members of the Charmander line.

Lastly, I have a new unpopular opinion. At least I don't think I have posted it here before, not sure though. Either way, my unpopular opinion is this: I have never been annoyed by mandatory tutorials in Pokémon games. Most notably, the mandatory capture tutorial which appears early on in (almost) every main series game. I'm not sure why, but I guess the reason is because I rarely replay Pokémon games and the tutorials are only a small part of the games (for the most part). So they have never annoyed me. While I can sort of think it would be better if they were just optional, it should at the same time not be too easy to miss them for new players. While mandatory tutorials seem to annoy many other players, I have personally never been bothered by them.
 
Most people wouldn't be able to recognize the sex of an animal (that has no major changes like peafowl) without direct comparision from another specimeb, the size difference is really not that big and the exaggerated "make the female ones have less" gender differences are a bit cringy imo.

Not as bad as making every female have hearts, because feminine <3 I guess
 
Most people wouldn't be able to recognize the sex of an animal (that has no major changes like peafowl) without direct comparision from another specimeb, the size difference is really not that big and the exaggerated "make the female ones have less" gender differences are a bit cringy imo.

Not as bad as making every female have hearts, because feminine <3 I guess
Not. True, several bird species have Males being bright and colorful while the females are dull. Most people I know can easily tell the sexes apart. I don’t see what’s cringy about it.
 
Still don't see what's cringe about aesthetic changes for different genders.
It's not about the concept of aesthetic changes. I think unfeazant is one of the better regional birds because of the gender difference. The issue is just how lots of the dp beta gender differences were just removing/downplaying traits from the females that made the pokémon look good in the first place, even though almost all of the real-life counterparts of those pokémon don't have changes other than "one of the genders is a bit bigger", and completely ignoring the idea that sometimes the male is the one that's a bit smaller.

It just felt more like they were going with the "female pokemon need to look weaker/softer because they're female" but more exaggerated.
 
Also, most predatory birds the females are larger
The contemporary gender differences like hearts, or worse, lipstick honestly makes Pokemon a joke from a beast/animal standpoint, seemingly catering to casuals more and making their world less "real or grounded". More unique gender diffs like Torchic on the other hand are extremely cool, albeit disgusting

It's like some fan ideas of gender differences one can find out there in the internet. You can usually guess the female has something resembling eyelashes and a more pink-ish body color.

Except we are talking about the official ones.
 
It's like some fan ideas of gender differences one can find out there in the internet. You can usually guess the female has something resembling eyelashes and a more pink-ish body color.

Except we are talking about the official ones.
...to be fair we're still talking of a Japanese company, and Japanese games are infamous for throwing around this kind of stereotypes since it's a social aspect where their society is way behind.

Questionable in 2021 sure, but Pokemon designs are hardly unique in this.

.....also I'll just be a broken clock and remind you we're talking of a game aimed at kids, and honestly while extremely stereotypical, this kind of differences is also extremely easy to "recognize".
 
It's like some fan ideas of gender differences one can find out there in the internet. You can usually guess the female has something resembling eyelashes and a more pink-ish body color.
Suffer
74zjyxgmu0151.jpg

Keep in mind that Venusaur already have a gender difference with female Venusaurs having a seed in their flower, which is accurate to plants while this redesign giving females stamens instead are giving it male plant parts. (This is also why male Meganiums have longer stamens on their head)
 
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Only a handful of the current Gender differences I can tolerate. And female Wobuffet is I tolerate because it's that hilarious.

I dunno, I get mad when my mons get OHKOd by a punching bag wearing a lipstick :psyangry:

Suffer
74zjyxgmu0151.jpg

Keep in mind that Venusaur already have a gender difference with female Venusaurs having a seed in their flower, which is accurate to plants while this redesign giving females stamens instead are giving it male plant parts. (This is also why male Meganiums have longer stamens on their head)

Yiiiikes, I also remembered those bad looking "male Primarina", "female Cinderace", fan """"corrections"""".
 
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