This started quite a discussion. Time to make some replies.
Something that stuck out to me reading this is that it did not consider my largest issue with three houses. Specifically, that it is a step back in the ability to produce interesting and synergistic skill builds, which is where I got most of my time and enjoyment from the previous entries. To be honest, I haven't played 3H all the way through because I don't feel like the game respects my playstyle enough to make it enjoyable. If we're going to parallel that to pokemon, we're probably back to talking about the Natdex mess.
Also going to disagree with your main point. I don't owe the masses enough to feel like their preferences are more valid than my own, and I don't consider "does this make business sense" to be an indication of whether a game is good. So to me, this is completely irrelevant to whether I consider newer pokemon games or 3H to be well-designed.
I actually disagree. I believe Three Houses does allow you to create skill sets that do combo well together. One example would be Batallion Wrath + Battalion Vantage + Lancefaire + Counterattack to give Dimitri guaranteed first attack + 95% crit chance every time regardless of distance attacked. Was my MVP for my Azure Moon playthrough.
You are right, just because it’s understandable from a business point of view does not mean it’s a good game design choice. But in the end, its very subjective, and its best to go with the decisions that the majority will like. I’ll go back to Dexit. If it truly was because they did not have enough time to implement models as well as reaching the deadline for Merch to sell, then yes it’s an understandable decision. Does it make it a bad game design choice? Well, that really depends on who you ask. If you talk to a Smogon player or a casual veteran, they will probably say yes. But if you to talk to a VGC player or a brand-new Pokémon player, they might say yes for the former and don’t care for the latter. For those that don’t know, with the people I’ve spoken with on Smogon VGC Discord, they have told me that they are used to a Dex cut because each VGC year is this format: Regional Dex, National Dex, and GS Cup last. Because of the Regional Dex formats, lot of players from VGC didn’t mind a Dexcut. In fact, some thought it was great because it allowed certain Pokémon like Butterfree to thrive. In the end, features and design choice are very subjective and people shouldn’t act like their opinion is the universal opinion and developers can’t expect to cater to a small minority over the larger demographic when the larger demographic gives them more money.
If that is in fact your opinion, I respectfully disagree. Pre-Gen 6 games never really suffered commercially. It's not like Pokémon was some starving franchise on life support which needed to dumb down its difficulty in Gen 6 in order to retain its core audience. The reduction in difficulty really doesn't have a good reason behind it, in my eyes. Removing more enhanced post game battle facilities like the Frontier and PWT kind of goes together with this point. While those facilities are difficult compared to main campaigns, it's not as if younger or casual fans are forced to partake in them. They could even set smaller goals for themselves than trying to obtain all Gold symbols at the Frontier, for example.
Its true Pokemon games have always been successful, its wasn’t always like that. Around the launch of RS, PokeMania was fading. According to Tamashii Hiroka, this was the reason why FRLG were made, they were a safe adventure that could encourage players new to Pokémon to join. Compared to GS and RB, RS did not sell nearly as well despite being the best selling game on the GBA, 16 million copies sold compared to 20 Million for GS and 31 Million for RB.
Worldie already touched on this, but Battle Facilities take a lot of extra time, and it’s a feature that only hard core players could take advantage of, and the amount of hard core players vs Casual players very small, especially in a time where VGC was just starting, which was Platinum. And the last time they created a game dedicated to competitive battling, Battle Revolution, sold poorly and was widely criticized for its lack of options of a casual player.
Older Fire Emblem games, for instance, had terrible accessibility to all but very hardcore Tactical RPG players and were difficult, until FE Awakening, Fates, 3H, and vice versa added a casual mode and other player friendly conveniences for newer players to get into the games more easily. That's not an inherently bad concept: what likely is the concern is how it's executed in practice making the games seemingly less fun for more experienced/hardcore players.
They actually tried nailing this with Fates as mentioned earlier, with
Birthright being designed for newcomers and
Conquest being designed to be a challenge. Sadly due to the polarized reception of Fates ( It’s widely considered to have the worst story of any FE game ) they probably won’t being trying that again. And there’s also the fact that DLC model they used wouldn’t work on Switch. For those that don’t know, Fates campaigns work like this: You choose one campaign based on the Box Art you choose, and you have to purchase the other two campaigns separately. So it’s essentially an 80$ Game. On the bright side, each campaign is own game in terms of length. Something like this wouldn’t work on Switch due to the increased price of Switch games- it would be 30$ should the DLC model be handled on Switch.
And as a reminder: Gen V is the one with the lowest sales of all generations (well, technically it's Gen VIII but there's the DP remakes soon so...). Sure, we can excuse that to when it was released, and that BW has the lowest sales of any opening game pair of a generation. Even the heavily criticized USUM sold (barely) more than the acclaimed BW2 (in fact, only Platinum, Emerald, and Crystal sold less than BW2 - oh well, look at that, three of the bottom four have extensive battle facilities...).
I feel like this is less because they were bad games and more like the DS was overshadowed by the 3DS by that point. The 3 DS came out at the same year as BW, while the DS was more or less dead when BW2 came out. BW2 even had software that provided benefits if played on the 3DS. Also keep in mind that XY was announced only after three months after BW2 were in the west. They had the “ new game “ syndrome for a very short time. I think they sold very well for that time period.
My frustration boiled over with the sword and shield base game which was the worst experience I have ever had with pokemon: first, the exploration aspect of pokemon has been dying since gen 6 and sword and shield didn't even have a single optional route (not to mention an aggressively mediocre wild area); second, I felt I could legitimately close my eyes and spam A and never be in danger of losing a single battle. It made for a crazy empty experience and I straight up loathe the base game because of it. Then I played a difficulty hack and I had a genuinely great time. The increase in difficulty really made the mobile pc shine and I actually had a reason to use a 10 pokemon roster beyond forcing myself to. The crazy thing is that Game Freak has it easy since the vast majority of fans judge pokemon by a different set of standards than other games ( don't have to worry about pesky things like pushing technological boundaries or an engaging story) but they still wont give us something as standard as difficulty settings. VGC has been a thing for a little more than a decade and they literally just put long overdue QOL updates in the most recent game to give some people easier access to competitive play which means they know there is an audience that would appreciate a hard mode, but they still wont do it. At this point I am just going to wait until a good rom hack comes out before I buy any of the games, its straight up embarrassing that they cant deliver on already lowered expectations.
here:
The EV and IV system sucks ass. Clunky, hard to learn, and to keep track. We've had a lot of QOL improvements, but a lot of it has just been skirting past the entire system and bandaid fixes. The game refusing to give concrete numbers to this day doesn't help.
Where’s the unpopular opinion?
An actual unpopular opinion I have: the forced monkey tutorial for the first gym in BW1 was a good idea. Many people dislike this and I understand why, but in reality, borderline character select forcing / strongly recommended options even existed way back in Generation 1: only Grass and Water types can really stomach Misty and Starmie's BubbleBeam. Sure, you can overlevel by going to Vermillion, but I'd imagine most people would want their shiny new badge first if they didn't know going to Bill meant that path opened up and you could sequence break. Granted, the monkey is the ONLY option, so it's not 1:1 but with Cheren showing up frequently it's nice to get the player equipped for their starter and I don't mind a soft-reboot teaching me the basics rather than HEY DO YOU KNOW HOW TO USE THE POKE FINDER LET'S FIRE UP A TUTORIAL YES / YES? It's not the best execution sure, but many people forget the monkeys are solid Pokemon, yes, even Simisear once it gets Flame Burst.
I agree. I think it’s really cool that they used gyms as a way to show off type matchups. Yes you have to use the monkey, but you can immediately deposit it in the PC once the battle is over.
Lastly on the EXP Share: I agree with people saying that it does not make the game easier. I’ve played games where the EXP share was on the whole time, and never got over leveled or did I game easier. That also includes SwSh. I was never over leveled in SwSh.
