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Unpopular opinions
- Thread starter antemortem
- Start date
Posting in the unpopular opinion thread includes an implicit request for other people to give feedback on your take.
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I'm pretty sure "Gen 5 is good, actually" hasn't been a minority opinion in the fandom since, what, 2012? The critical re-evaluation of the Unova games began the moment the XY trailer dropped.
Transitioning into my own opinion, there is a 100% chance the SwSh redemption arc begins once we hear any concrete news about Gen 9. The Alola games benefitted from a similar phenomenon.
Transitioning into my own opinion, there is a 100% chance the SwSh redemption arc begins once we hear any concrete news about Gen 9. The Alola games benefitted from a similar phenomenon.
Gen 5 has been getting progressively more popular ever since it ended, and it got a big boost when the kids who grew up on it got old enough to form coherent thoughts and post on Internet forums. "Gen 5 good" isn't an unpopular opinion anymore.
Minor thing, but I don't remember it being this way. From what I can remember, the criticism for Gen 5 continued for quite long after the first trailer for X/Y dropped. And long after X/Y were released, for that matter. If anything, X/Y got a rather positive reception when they were first announced, it seemed like everyone was looking forward to them. They also got a quite positive reception from the fandom when they got released. In retrospect, it is sad to see how that has changed as they seem to be among the most disliked games in the series right now (personally, I loved them, so I'm not happy about their current status in the fandom). At the same time, I remember that Gen 5 was still very heavily disliked and criticized by the fandom all the way to 2014 or so, which was when it started being less disliked. That's how I remember it at least, chances are your experiences with how the fandom has viewed Gen 5 and X/Y are different from mine.
And while I'm here, I might as well make a semi-late reply to another subject:
I agree with most of this. The difference is that for me, I have fond memories of G/S/C rather than HG/SS. G/S/C definitely had that special atmosphere, they gave me a feeling of mystery and wonder when I played them as a kid (and I am convinced that the kids of today who play modern Pokémon games will get the same or a similar feeling from these games, no matter what anyone says). But for me, HG/SS did not manage to recreate the feeling from G/S/C, nor did they improve upon the games in any significant way, which is why I don't appreciate them all that much.
And I agree that all Pokémon games gave their own feeling of mystery, at least when I played them for the first time. I was able to experience a feeling like this the first times I played Black, X, Moon and Sword, just like for when I played Blue, Silver, Ruby and Pearl when I was younger. It was different from how it was when I was younger, but it was still there.
People's rankings of the games are always meaningless anyway since so many moving parts are involved and it seems silly to think you can reduce all of them to an accurate hierarchy - design, gameplay, story, multiplayer experience, and post-game would be my personal criteria, and I would rank the games so differently under each header that there's just no way a simple overall ranking would reflect my actual opinion.
For example, I think gen 5 offers the best single-player campaign in the series, and as a bug-type lover I am a big fan of its pokedex, but it was also a horrible gen for multiplayer with many poorly designed systems, the dream world especially being one of the top 5 worst decisions gamefreak have ever made. On the other hand I think Kalos is a very poorly designed region with the worst new mons and the worst story, but I have by far the highest amount of hours recorded across gen 6 games because they made competitive breeding and shiny hunting so much more accessible, AND they had by far the best multiplayer experience to date. Anyone who was around for early gen 6 GTS and wondertrading can tell you the multiplayer boom was real with so many people who had essentially played the games as exclusively single-player up til this point being brought into the fold. I still think the Vivillion craze is the most successful "community project" gamefreak has ever designed. Bankball trading was also just a perfect storm of obsessive detailing for collectors.
TBH the fact that multiplayer is rarely addressed when fans discuss the games in general is kind of annoying, in fact my biggest issue with SWSH is that its multiplayer experience is so shit and short-sighted, not the dumb graphics debate or even dexit.
For example, I think gen 5 offers the best single-player campaign in the series, and as a bug-type lover I am a big fan of its pokedex, but it was also a horrible gen for multiplayer with many poorly designed systems, the dream world especially being one of the top 5 worst decisions gamefreak have ever made. On the other hand I think Kalos is a very poorly designed region with the worst new mons and the worst story, but I have by far the highest amount of hours recorded across gen 6 games because they made competitive breeding and shiny hunting so much more accessible, AND they had by far the best multiplayer experience to date. Anyone who was around for early gen 6 GTS and wondertrading can tell you the multiplayer boom was real with so many people who had essentially played the games as exclusively single-player up til this point being brought into the fold. I still think the Vivillion craze is the most successful "community project" gamefreak has ever designed. Bankball trading was also just a perfect storm of obsessive detailing for collectors.
TBH the fact that multiplayer is rarely addressed when fans discuss the games in general is kind of annoying, in fact my biggest issue with SWSH is that its multiplayer experience is so shit and short-sighted, not the dumb graphics debate or even dexit.
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Took until me playing BW2 to really get into Gen 5, but when I did play B2, I regret that I skipped over them when they came out. I was still bummed out from BW1 being so "meh" and disappointing to me, so I didn't get them. Turns out, they were the last good main series Pokemon games and a major improvement over BW1 (story not withstanding.... But that's never been Pokemon's strong suit. As long you don't get XY tier bad in the story, we're good. Leave the storytelling to PMD.). I have grown a bit less harsh on BW1 over time and didn't hate them, but they still just don't hold a candle to BW2 (or HGSS. Or Platinum. Or Emerald. Etc.) on a replay. Certainly not as bad as the garbage from Gen 6 onwards, though.
And about the sexualization of minors in Pokemon (and in Japan and media in general).... yeah... Why? Are your consumers so insecure that they need to see minors like this? Why is it generally females? Why are they generally wearing school clothes? Why do they generally lack personality (barring hitting on the main character(s))? Why do I need to wait a while in Pokemon games with character customization to get respectable clothes if I'm playing a female character? I get that minors, even preteens, can find others (including their age group) attractive, develop crushes, and fall in love.... but it's done so tactlessly here. Do we really need to have this, especially when it's poorly done and handled. And it's not really "romantic" (Do we even need this in a Pokemon game? Especially between the 17 and below characters?), just "Look, I dress questionably!". None of this really needs to be done.
And I get that fanservice has and always will exist. Humans, along with being lazy, selfish, and horrible, are generally horny creatures at heart. They can and will find things to sexualize and get horny to.... but does it really need to be minors? Can't you restrict it to people of legal age (18+.... always. Don't care if it's lower elsewhere. This is a moral issue.)? And can't you be more egalitarian? Can't you make both women and men fanservice, instead mostly the former? I'm pretty sure straight women, gay men, and bi people would like the nod (and in bi peoples' case... the diversity). If you're going to have fanservicey characters in a Pokemon game, keep it (tastefully) to adults like Kukui and Burnet (who I know have followings and a following for the pairing), not short skirted protagonists
.
And about the sexualization of minors in Pokemon (and in Japan and media in general).... yeah... Why? Are your consumers so insecure that they need to see minors like this? Why is it generally females? Why are they generally wearing school clothes? Why do they generally lack personality (barring hitting on the main character(s))? Why do I need to wait a while in Pokemon games with character customization to get respectable clothes if I'm playing a female character? I get that minors, even preteens, can find others (including their age group) attractive, develop crushes, and fall in love.... but it's done so tactlessly here. Do we really need to have this, especially when it's poorly done and handled. And it's not really "romantic" (Do we even need this in a Pokemon game? Especially between the 17 and below characters?), just "Look, I dress questionably!". None of this really needs to be done.
And I get that fanservice has and always will exist. Humans, along with being lazy, selfish, and horrible, are generally horny creatures at heart. They can and will find things to sexualize and get horny to.... but does it really need to be minors? Can't you restrict it to people of legal age (18+.... always. Don't care if it's lower elsewhere. This is a moral issue.)? And can't you be more egalitarian? Can't you make both women and men fanservice, instead mostly the former? I'm pretty sure straight women, gay men, and bi people would like the nod (and in bi peoples' case... the diversity). If you're going to have fanservicey characters in a Pokemon game, keep it (tastefully) to adults like Kukui and Burnet (who I know have followings and a following for the pairing), not short skirted protagonists
.
on the topic of semi-unpopular(it's pretty mixed) takes, gen 8 is good and here's why I'm right and why you're wrong
Ok now that we have the clickbait title, I actually do think that gen 8 is on the better half of the series, if not on the top half in spite of its flaws(at least shield, I have a bit more gripes with sword but they're mostly the same game). No multiplayer commentary though sry, I really don't give a shit about in-game multiplayer outside of trading for the shiny charm which works easily enough, codes are a very easy way to connect to specific people vs how clunky SM's friend list was(and how names just refused to show up sometimes cause fuck you lol). This is more of an opinion piece about why I enjoyed Shield in spite of downsides, certainly not a defense of it because it has notable flaws that I don't put it past people disliking.
The Good
* Since I played Shield completely blind, I had no idea what the dex was going to be and my biggest fear getting the games would be that I ended up finding most mons mediocre like I did in gen 7(that I knew the entire dex before even buying Sun) but thankfully I found probably the second best dex in the entire series. Finding every new mon was one of the most enjoyable parts of the first playthrough I did, between the regional forms completely blowing alolan forms out of the water, and the creative and fun new mons, it was just a great experience. The "oh my god I need that" moment when I saw Nessa send out an Arrokuda, the cutest derpiest fish I've ever seen, is one of those moments that defines the dex for me and is largely the reason why I've since played gen 8 more times than I've played gen 3/4/7. Overall I feel that Galar has one of the best regional dexes in the series and the new mons have so much charm to them that have been generally missing in Kalos and Alola.
* Gamefreak is getting shockingly close at giving us actual characters for once, it's surprising but true. It certainly isn't perfect and most gym leaders suffer from "only appear once" syndrome that prevents them from having much character at all, but on the other hand you have some of the most memorable characters in the series. Hop gets a lot of hate for some reason(never got the Hau comparisons, they're not similar characters) but I think he's a pretty great example of there's room for good character growth that's possible in the rival formula GF uses, I will call him out for being almost too similar to Bianca minus the over protective father. Then you have the gym leaders and wew we got some gym leaders. Opal and Raihan are up there as some of the best gym leaders of all time(Getting to see Opal radiate theatre energy made me fall in love with her character as soon as I saw her). Trainer cards also help a lot giving characters some added depth so we got to know more about the earlier gym leaders with Nessa and Kabu, and while I didn't particularly like Bede I will say he's a well written character who's arc feels satisfying. I think it's obvious without going into detail that I like Leon and Raihan.
* Galar as a region is beautiful(besides 2 main gripes that'll be later). I think Galar has some of the nicest looking cities/towns we've seen. Going into the Slumbering Weald for the first time was such a mysterious almost ominous feeling, it was oddly atmospheric for a Pokemon game lol. Postwick and Wedgehurst are great starting towns that give you the feel for the aesthetic of Galar, the old rustic look of Motostoke, the regal looking Hammerlocke perfectly capturing the rich central area that most regions have, Circhester being gorgeous, and Wyndon being massive but not annoying to get through *cough* Lumiose. You can't talk about Galar's amazing scenery without talking about the Glimwood Tangle and especially Ballonlea are stunning to see, the glowing mushrooms are brought out so much by how dark the forest is, and getting to Ballonlea is like the exact type of place I'd expect a town in a fairy forest to look like, it's enchanting. The dlc islands are also very visually nice to look at.
* The music. Really don't have much to say here, every track hits way harder than it needs to and SnS has my 3rd favorite OST in the series. Though I hate how gen 7 and 8 both recycle old pokemon themes instead of having actual champion themes, I prefer remixes for post-game battles and callbacks, it's just lame to have the big climactic moment just be a theme we've heard a thousand times already. Leon's theme is decent though so I don't miiiiind it, just a gripe. Toby Fox's one is also pretty good so that's smth. Ballonlea's theme is the best town theme in the series.
* SnS is generally more difficult or easier depending on if you use dmax or not, some matches like Nessa, Allister, potentially Opal(depending on your team, I've had sweeps and I had times I got swept lol), and potentially Raihan are all challenging battles. Allister being the main challenge because a SpA buffing Gengar is surprisingly brutal at that stage of the game. Leon as a champion is also probably the hardest champion albeit he doesn't have much competition, he doesn't have mons that let you easily set up against him so he can't be cheesed like Cynthia can be.
* Team Yell isn't the same copy/paste evil team we've had for 7 gens now. Hell Galar doesn't even have an evil team, Macro Cosmos is a functioning company in Galar and only fights you when you literally -break into- Rose's Tower because Leon promised dinner and hasn't shown up. I do like how Oleana is totally batshit insane but otherwise not a villain even though she sooorta takes that role(which again you're literally breaking into a building lol).
* The QoL, this is more apparent in IoA because there's just *so much* QoL additions in that dlc but gen 8 just made everything much more convenient to get which I like a lot. the CT dlc as a whole is a great experience too.
The Bad
* Dmax is the worst mechanic Gamefreak ever added in a Pokemon game to date. Gmax is a cute idea and I actually like a fair bit of the gmax forms but it's overshadowed by just how broken dmax is, and hilariously most gmax mons are unviable because the dmax alternative is just better. Only way I could approve of gmax existing is if they just entirely deleted dmax moves and just let gmax mons have their 1 signature move and the HP buff.
* While I find Galar a really nice to look at region, there are 2 big flaws. The shape of each town/city/route is just a line pretty much, this really ends once you get to the route going to Circhester though, bar Spikemuth which is yk ----- shaped lol, I get the arcade beat'em up reference but man...
It does suck though, Ballonlea is 3 buildings and a gym, Hammerlocke is just ┴ shaped, Stow-on-side is a Y, Motostoke is an uppercase i(gdi fonts that make I look like lower case L). Makes actually exploring Galar pretty much not an option which is probably the biggest gripe I have about the game as a whole. The other big flaw is the base Wild Area, which is a cool idea but I feel like Galar as a whole region suffered because of it. I don't really have anything to add that hasn't already been said a thousand times but I will say the wild area was fully realized in the dlcs at least.
* They removed Me First :( but yea besides that I didn't really notice that they removed moves from the game, the mons missing from the dex is only really relevant if you transfer mons across games so it didn't personally effect me at all and my favorites were all added in IoA. It is the notable downside to SnS though so I have it listed here, it's honestly a bit overblown though imo.
*While the characters are generally good I feel like some miss the mark, Bea is significantly more boring than Allister(doesn't help that Allister is significantly harder cause Gengar) due to her being nearly indistinct from other fighting specialists in the series outside of her design. Gordie and Melony generally received the least screen time of any gym leader but they are both memorable(even though Gordie's team is completely trivial). Marnie is saved by having the best battle theme in the game but as a character, Gamefreak just...dropped her for no reason. She completely disappears for half the game from the first time you battle her, you don't see her again until you get to Opal's gym where you don't even fight her. Then you FINALLY see her a 3rd time before you fight Piers. She definitely needed 2 or 3 more appearances in that large gap where she just disappears, especially since you have a few encounters with Team Yell during that time. It's not an uncommon or surprising complaint to say that Rose's character is handled really badly, they really should've just made Eternatus wake up due to excessive use of dmax during the Champion Cup. Would've had the same outcome without Rose being a last minute "oh fuck we don't have an antagonist we need to pull smth out of our ass."
* The game is easily broken, when I said "SnS is easier depending" that is a bad thing imo. If you have to restrict yourself from using a broken mechanic to sweep the game, it's not a hard game. This is really what pokemon has been struggling with since gen 6(lol free mega lucario and mega lati before the 4th and 6th gym respectively) and it really hasn't gotten better especially with things like EXP candy letting you easily over level as it's easy to get them in bulk once you have a few gym badges even if you just casually do raids during the 3 required visits to the wild area. This is more noticeable in Sword than Shield as Bea and Gordie are trivial compared to Allister and Melony. Not to mention Zamazenta Hop is a joke compared to Zacian Hop. I won't judge the dlc characters much since I've never seen Klara but I do like Avery a fair bit.
* Free move relearners is great and a huge QoL improvement over SM locking it till the E4, but you have an issue when gen 8 also gives you every single evolution stone in the wild area at the start of the game...meaning you can get an Arcanine with flare blitz, Musharna with psychic and moonblast, Vikavolt with bug buzz and tbolt, and Ninetales with nasty plot heatwave before you have 1 gym badge.
* The starters are still bad imo. Cinderace is possibly my 2nd least favorite mon and that's saying something cause I thought I disliked Braixen a lot, at least Braixen evolves into an ok mon though. Rillaboom is okay and I like Inteleon more than a lot of people but it's still just average, the NFEs are god awful though. You got whatever tf Thwackey is, emo frog, and naruto rabbit, skip them.
(jesus christ I didn't intend on this being a whole ass book lmao)
Ok now that we have the clickbait title, I actually do think that gen 8 is on the better half of the series, if not on the top half in spite of its flaws(at least shield, I have a bit more gripes with sword but they're mostly the same game). No multiplayer commentary though sry, I really don't give a shit about in-game multiplayer outside of trading for the shiny charm which works easily enough, codes are a very easy way to connect to specific people vs how clunky SM's friend list was(and how names just refused to show up sometimes cause fuck you lol). This is more of an opinion piece about why I enjoyed Shield in spite of downsides, certainly not a defense of it because it has notable flaws that I don't put it past people disliking.
The Good
* Since I played Shield completely blind, I had no idea what the dex was going to be and my biggest fear getting the games would be that I ended up finding most mons mediocre like I did in gen 7(that I knew the entire dex before even buying Sun) but thankfully I found probably the second best dex in the entire series. Finding every new mon was one of the most enjoyable parts of the first playthrough I did, between the regional forms completely blowing alolan forms out of the water, and the creative and fun new mons, it was just a great experience. The "oh my god I need that" moment when I saw Nessa send out an Arrokuda, the cutest derpiest fish I've ever seen, is one of those moments that defines the dex for me and is largely the reason why I've since played gen 8 more times than I've played gen 3/4/7. Overall I feel that Galar has one of the best regional dexes in the series and the new mons have so much charm to them that have been generally missing in Kalos and Alola.
* Gamefreak is getting shockingly close at giving us actual characters for once, it's surprising but true. It certainly isn't perfect and most gym leaders suffer from "only appear once" syndrome that prevents them from having much character at all, but on the other hand you have some of the most memorable characters in the series. Hop gets a lot of hate for some reason(never got the Hau comparisons, they're not similar characters) but I think he's a pretty great example of there's room for good character growth that's possible in the rival formula GF uses, I will call him out for being almost too similar to Bianca minus the over protective father. Then you have the gym leaders and wew we got some gym leaders. Opal and Raihan are up there as some of the best gym leaders of all time(Getting to see Opal radiate theatre energy made me fall in love with her character as soon as I saw her). Trainer cards also help a lot giving characters some added depth so we got to know more about the earlier gym leaders with Nessa and Kabu, and while I didn't particularly like Bede I will say he's a well written character who's arc feels satisfying. I think it's obvious without going into detail that I like Leon and Raihan.
* Galar as a region is beautiful(besides 2 main gripes that'll be later). I think Galar has some of the nicest looking cities/towns we've seen. Going into the Slumbering Weald for the first time was such a mysterious almost ominous feeling, it was oddly atmospheric for a Pokemon game lol. Postwick and Wedgehurst are great starting towns that give you the feel for the aesthetic of Galar, the old rustic look of Motostoke, the regal looking Hammerlocke perfectly capturing the rich central area that most regions have, Circhester being gorgeous, and Wyndon being massive but not annoying to get through *cough* Lumiose. You can't talk about Galar's amazing scenery without talking about the Glimwood Tangle and especially Ballonlea are stunning to see, the glowing mushrooms are brought out so much by how dark the forest is, and getting to Ballonlea is like the exact type of place I'd expect a town in a fairy forest to look like, it's enchanting. The dlc islands are also very visually nice to look at.
* The music. Really don't have much to say here, every track hits way harder than it needs to and SnS has my 3rd favorite OST in the series. Though I hate how gen 7 and 8 both recycle old pokemon themes instead of having actual champion themes, I prefer remixes for post-game battles and callbacks, it's just lame to have the big climactic moment just be a theme we've heard a thousand times already. Leon's theme is decent though so I don't miiiiind it, just a gripe. Toby Fox's one is also pretty good so that's smth. Ballonlea's theme is the best town theme in the series.
* SnS is generally more difficult or easier depending on if you use dmax or not, some matches like Nessa, Allister, potentially Opal(depending on your team, I've had sweeps and I had times I got swept lol), and potentially Raihan are all challenging battles. Allister being the main challenge because a SpA buffing Gengar is surprisingly brutal at that stage of the game. Leon as a champion is also probably the hardest champion albeit he doesn't have much competition, he doesn't have mons that let you easily set up against him so he can't be cheesed like Cynthia can be.
* Team Yell isn't the same copy/paste evil team we've had for 7 gens now. Hell Galar doesn't even have an evil team, Macro Cosmos is a functioning company in Galar and only fights you when you literally -break into- Rose's Tower because Leon promised dinner and hasn't shown up. I do like how Oleana is totally batshit insane but otherwise not a villain even though she sooorta takes that role(which again you're literally breaking into a building lol).
* The QoL, this is more apparent in IoA because there's just *so much* QoL additions in that dlc but gen 8 just made everything much more convenient to get which I like a lot. the CT dlc as a whole is a great experience too.
The Bad
* Dmax is the worst mechanic Gamefreak ever added in a Pokemon game to date. Gmax is a cute idea and I actually like a fair bit of the gmax forms but it's overshadowed by just how broken dmax is, and hilariously most gmax mons are unviable because the dmax alternative is just better. Only way I could approve of gmax existing is if they just entirely deleted dmax moves and just let gmax mons have their 1 signature move and the HP buff.
* While I find Galar a really nice to look at region, there are 2 big flaws. The shape of each town/city/route is just a line pretty much, this really ends once you get to the route going to Circhester though, bar Spikemuth which is yk ----- shaped lol, I get the arcade beat'em up reference but man...
It does suck though, Ballonlea is 3 buildings and a gym, Hammerlocke is just ┴ shaped, Stow-on-side is a Y, Motostoke is an uppercase i(gdi fonts that make I look like lower case L). Makes actually exploring Galar pretty much not an option which is probably the biggest gripe I have about the game as a whole. The other big flaw is the base Wild Area, which is a cool idea but I feel like Galar as a whole region suffered because of it. I don't really have anything to add that hasn't already been said a thousand times but I will say the wild area was fully realized in the dlcs at least.
* They removed Me First :( but yea besides that I didn't really notice that they removed moves from the game, the mons missing from the dex is only really relevant if you transfer mons across games so it didn't personally effect me at all and my favorites were all added in IoA. It is the notable downside to SnS though so I have it listed here, it's honestly a bit overblown though imo.
*While the characters are generally good I feel like some miss the mark, Bea is significantly more boring than Allister(doesn't help that Allister is significantly harder cause Gengar) due to her being nearly indistinct from other fighting specialists in the series outside of her design. Gordie and Melony generally received the least screen time of any gym leader but they are both memorable(even though Gordie's team is completely trivial). Marnie is saved by having the best battle theme in the game but as a character, Gamefreak just...dropped her for no reason. She completely disappears for half the game from the first time you battle her, you don't see her again until you get to Opal's gym where you don't even fight her. Then you FINALLY see her a 3rd time before you fight Piers. She definitely needed 2 or 3 more appearances in that large gap where she just disappears, especially since you have a few encounters with Team Yell during that time. It's not an uncommon or surprising complaint to say that Rose's character is handled really badly, they really should've just made Eternatus wake up due to excessive use of dmax during the Champion Cup. Would've had the same outcome without Rose being a last minute "oh fuck we don't have an antagonist we need to pull smth out of our ass."
* The game is easily broken, when I said "SnS is easier depending" that is a bad thing imo. If you have to restrict yourself from using a broken mechanic to sweep the game, it's not a hard game. This is really what pokemon has been struggling with since gen 6(lol free mega lucario and mega lati before the 4th and 6th gym respectively) and it really hasn't gotten better especially with things like EXP candy letting you easily over level as it's easy to get them in bulk once you have a few gym badges even if you just casually do raids during the 3 required visits to the wild area. This is more noticeable in Sword than Shield as Bea and Gordie are trivial compared to Allister and Melony. Not to mention Zamazenta Hop is a joke compared to Zacian Hop. I won't judge the dlc characters much since I've never seen Klara but I do like Avery a fair bit.
* Free move relearners is great and a huge QoL improvement over SM locking it till the E4, but you have an issue when gen 8 also gives you every single evolution stone in the wild area at the start of the game...meaning you can get an Arcanine with flare blitz, Musharna with psychic and moonblast, Vikavolt with bug buzz and tbolt, and Ninetales with nasty plot heatwave before you have 1 gym badge.
* The starters are still bad imo. Cinderace is possibly my 2nd least favorite mon and that's saying something cause I thought I disliked Braixen a lot, at least Braixen evolves into an ok mon though. Rillaboom is okay and I like Inteleon more than a lot of people but it's still just average, the NFEs are god awful though. You got whatever tf Thwackey is, emo frog, and naruto rabbit, skip them.
(jesus christ I didn't intend on this being a whole ass book lmao)
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About the sexualization of minors, keep in mind that the legal age of consent in Japan was 13 for ages (though they did bump it up to 18 recently IIRC). That's the kind of culture we're dealing with here. I'm not saying that the cultural difference excuses the sexualization of young girls in shows like the Pokémon anime, there are plenty of good reasons to oppose an age of consent that low and I personally think the sexualization is pretty creepy, but it does explain why Japan tends to find that sort of thing more acceptable.
This isn't exactly correct, as prefectures set their own ages of consent which often default to 16-18, and the age of consent being 13 only relates to other minors. I don't remember the specific age gap or if it only allows for same-age sexual relationships with minors.
Just wanted to mention this because it's a common argument I see which doesn't paint the whole picture imo. Hope this isn't too off topic
All these Americans complaining about the sexualisation of fictional teenage girls in Japanese media when they themselves hold beauty pageants for real toddlers...
But to derail this thread not any further let's move on to another topic. Unpopular opnion: I think the sword/shield plot involving the darkest day was actually quite well executed and interesting. The Eternatus battle was quite climactic.
But to derail this thread not any further let's move on to another topic. Unpopular opnion: I think the sword/shield plot involving the darkest day was actually quite well executed and interesting. The Eternatus battle was quite climactic.
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The lore is pretty interesting (especially the additional stuff with Calyrex) and the final battle is pretty thrilling. But I was thoroughly underwhelmed with how Eternatus was introduced. It seems that there's zero mention of it until about 3 minutes before you get to the elevator and Sonia says "Rose has awakened the legendary Pokemon Eternatus!" Like... we're just taking for granted that it exists. Whereas every other legendary received some actual buildup.
I think they wanted it to be a plot twist.
I kinda agree that the idea of the plot wasn't bad, problem is just the way it's introduced.
Having you (a kid) do your own stuff (the gym challenge) while the adults (Leon & Sonia) deal with the actually dangerous stuff is a good idea, albeith they overdid a bit with the constant Leon's getting lost gag.
Having the main charachter "stick his nose in affairs that do not concern him" is still just standard pokemon plotline, and while the way it's done in SwSh isnt bad (you're doing your own stuff and suddently something stinks and Leon is gone), and I love the fact that Leon still *tries* to stop the disaster but fails and we have to step in, but the introduction could have really been done better than "Leon said he'd be here for dinner but he isn't".
As someone wrote somewhere else (cant remind who/where), the "plot twist" would have worked much better if they had Rose try to wake up Eternatus (and have him go berserk) in the middle of the Champion's Match or the preliminary matches without slotting the "Leon isnt at dinner, must beat all Macro Cosmos because yes" beforehand.
They wanted to give the feeling of "we had trusted the adults to deal with whatever is going on, but they are failed and now it's our time to shine", which they soooooorta manage to give, but really, the dinner part wasnt necessary ^^"
More specifically, I think the twist was supposed to be that the "Darkest Day" was actually a Pokémon. There is a lot of buildup about the "Darkest Day" being mentioned especially with Sonia investigating the Darkest Day incident that nearly destroyed Galar so long ago and the heroes who saved the day. It's later revealed that the heroes were actually Pokémon and that the "Darkest Day" was also brought about by a Pokémon in the form of Eternatus. But the myths about them disappeared over time so few knew about them until then.
I agree overall it wasn't the best executed, but I think that was the intention.
Shocking News: You Can Criticize Multiple Things
Honestly, the main issue with SWSH is that they put too much of the plot on the latter 3/4ths of the game. There should have been a darkest day research build-up earlier and with the player's involvement. A plot twist doesn't really work if you are indifferent to what the characters are saying because you aren't involved in it
Yeah, they really crapped the bed if that was the intention.
I mean really, even leaving aside the typical game formula, what else could it be? Yes, of course it could be a war or a natural disaster, but given how vaguely it's described it's not really a surprise that a Pokemon was behind it (they usually are, after all).
This is what I mean about the lore being interesting. It's just handled so clumsily that there's no grace or elegance or mystery to it at all (as opposed to say, BW1). Which, fair enough, they're not always going to get it right.
Incidentally, one of the best quotes about writing I've read is "a twist is when you show the audience an apple but expertly convince them that they're looking at a banana until at the end you reveal it was an apple all along". I'm not sure how many twists in the series live up to this ideal but there have definitely been a few revelations/reveals that surprised me.
Just curious here, which revelations in particular?
Off the top of my head:
a) the almost-but-not-quite-confirmation in FRLG that Silver was Giovanni's child
b) Kukui being the champion in SM (which, looking back, was kind of a lame twist but I'm fairly sure it was a surprise when I first played the game)
c) Ardos and Eldes being Greevil's sons in XD
d) various moments from the manga, like Red showing up to stop the Magnet Train in the GSC chapter or the identity of the Mask of Ice
e) not a plot twist per se but the endgame of BW (specifically having to deal with Team Plasma rather than battling Alder); even despite the clear telegraphing of where the plot will go, I honestly didn't expect them to mess with the usual formula in such a way so that was a cool surprise
b) Kukui being the champion in SM (which, looking back, was kind of a lame twist but I'm fairly sure it was a surprise when I first played the game)
c) Ardos and Eldes being Greevil's sons in XD
d) various moments from the manga, like Red showing up to stop the Magnet Train in the GSC chapter or the identity of the Mask of Ice
e) not a plot twist per se but the endgame of BW (specifically having to deal with Team Plasma rather than battling Alder); even despite the clear telegraphing of where the plot will go, I honestly didn't expect them to mess with the usual formula in such a way so that was a cool surprise
Also, Lance being the final member of the E4 in Gen I was a retroactive surprise for me because I played GSC first; nothing in those games indicates his former position so I assumed he was a random wandering powerful trainer, when I fought the E4 in Red and got to the final member I went "wait WHAT, he was part of the Elite Four originally?"
Well, GSC have the unique position of being actual sequels to RBY so stuff like Lance going from E4 to champion, Koga going from gym leader to E4 and leaving the Gym to his daughter, Blue taking over Giovanni's Gym, etc, were nice touches at the time.
Unfortunately, every game after that happens in a vacuum (notable exception being BW > BW2) so this kind of events has become basically non existant, which is a shame because they add a lot of depth to the universe.
And the, albeit very minor, thing about Caitlin being part of the Unova Elite Four after being an irrelevant character in the Gen IV Battle Frontier.
Hard to do continuity nowadays when the regions following each other can be thousands of kilometers apart. Unless you make it so they are from the same area (so we'd get two south american regions for example), but gamefreak prefers each region be a different place, even if we just went back and forth between europe and north america (canada region confirmed then I guess? Lol)