(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon

DrumstickGaming said:
I don't like Pokemon Collosseum at all and think it aged like milk compared to XD, which is still very playable today.

Let's start with the positives. Pokemon Colosseum is a Pokemon game.

lol

Now for the negatives:

This is a very difficult game. The bosses are less of a fun challenge and more along the lines of "lol let's spike 5 levels AGAIN from the regular stuff." This is already a tedious enough game since literally all you do is battles. It didn't need forced level grinding.

All of the bosses are also designed to irk the heck out of you. Miror B. may be iconic but nobody likes the actual battle where you have less than a handful of SE options and stall tactics. I mean, yes the music but good music can't save bad design. They can't even kill you fast anyway, making for a very boring battle.

Everyone knows about Dakim's EQ killing Entei, but other than that he generally has some strong Pokemon. His team, despite some Protect prediction, is actually fairly exploitable due to 3 quad weaknesses and at least you can finally level Shadows before him. Mostly a fair, fun fight.

Venus is just...

View attachment 372825
status cancer.

But Ein is even more annoying
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Have fun exploiting those weaknesses when Confuse Ray is on half the team.

And then there are the issue of the final bosses. Nascour isn't that bad but its annoying as heck how if you lose you have to do the four filler fights again. Evice is by far the worst and hardest final boss in the franchise BY A LANDSLIDE, he takes the level spike issue already prevalent to an unreasonable degree (level 60s when you've been fighting high 40s/low 50s), you HAVE to go grind to beat him if you're playing normally. His Pokemon are good when 80% of your options are just pure crap, it's not fair or good game design in the slightest. Seriously, look at this team and tell me it isn't Gen 3 competitively-oriented at least somewhat:
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It's not fun at all, makes the game slow to a crawl worse than Sinnoh ever did at the end (which is saying something considering Cynthia's notorious reputation). It makes me actually appreciate Diantha! I mean Diantha may be "literally who?" and easy but it's much better that I can beat the game without wanting to snap my controller in half.

Many of the interesting options fail to reach their full potential mostly because the physical / special split hadn't happened yet or they need absurdly late / hard to get TMs like Sludge Bomb for Qwilfish. Yanma, Dunsparce, Sneasel, Sunflora, Delibird, Aipom, Remoraid at level 20 lol - there are so many borderline useless options, in contrast to XD, where even garbage like Spinarak gets Signal Beam. Even most of the usable Pokemon in Colosseum have virtually ONE move they are good at using - Slugma with Flamethrower, Ariados with Sludge Bomb and that's about it. Diversity? Sorry, that's for other games (yes Octillery, but again, level 20 when you start the game at level 30). Not to mention the overabundance of Water types at the expense of other Pokemon types, which usually get a grand total of like 1-3 options.

The dark tone isn't much to write home about either. They wasted the most interesting protagonist we ever could have had by making Wes mute, like, what was even the point of the opening cutscene if you're going to skimp on characterization??? I mean, yes Michael from XD is a kid and also a mute, but that also ties in with the rest of the series better. Sure, Wes may be cooler, but they did nothing with him. The villains are neat admittedly but the actual fights sour my opinion on them. Not to mention the whole "dark" aspect isn't even unique anymore thanks to Gens 5 and 7.

Not a negative, but Pokemon Colosseum does have some pretty good music, same with XD. Tsukasa Tawada deserves more games to work on, amazing composer!

So yeah. Pokemon Colosseum aged terribly and I think it's one of the worst games out there, like I even like HGSS more. XD is so much better balanced to the point I'd tell you to skip Pokemon Colosseum entirely and just play XD. Sure the last couple areas drag in XD but at least I can finish the game.
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Preach
Also Rui is a literal slapped in nobody with heavily spaced eyes. It's not funny
Shadow mons are based on the Celebi movie anyway, so Colo isn't exactly original
and to make things worse, the supposed "mons can attack you?" it's extremely rare
it only happens when the mon is in hyper mode, and typically the player immediately calls to them, or just use Shadow Rush
Otherwise you're not likely to see it ever. It's as dark as a wet paper bag
 
The Mind Electric said:
That works, but you're probably not supposed to do it. Anything that involves changing the clock on your system can pretty safely be called unintended unless the developers are Team Salvato or something.
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Yeah I don't think it was perfectly implemented nor was it particularly intuitive. But it works. And Platinum's Gym Leader rematches were still far better implemented than Emerald and HGSS's.
 
the only redeeming factor of Colosseum I feel is the Master Ball Glitch. So if you don't want to invest in Entei early on, you can get away with defeating it. Don't expect to softreset it.
I kept for softresetting purposes to train my Quagsire to learn EQ and my Swablu to turn into Altaria to kill all those EQ spamming Pokemon and then catch that Entei.

I still like the game over the early Sinnoh ones because while you don't have a huge viarity of Pokemon to catch, your opponents do so you don't keep fighting the same 10 people who use 3 of the same species of Pokemon. Who in the right mind runs 3 Geodude?

But damn, what bothers me about Colosseum aside from the tedious saving spots being used is the Crunch animation taking forever. So glad XD fixed it.
 
mertyville said:
the only redeeming factor of Colosseum I feel is the Master Ball Glitch. So if you don't want to invest in Entei early on, you can get away with defeating it. Don't expect to softreset it.
I kept for softresetting purposes to train my Quagsire to learn EQ and my Swablu to turn into Altaria to kill all those EQ spamming Pokemon and then catch that Entei.

I still like the game over the early Sinnoh ones because while you don't have a huge viarity of Pokemon to catch, your opponents do so you don't keep fighting the same 10 people who use 3 of the same species of Pokemon. Who in the right mind runs 3 Geodude?

But damn, what bothers me about Colosseum aside from the tedious saving spots being used is the Crunch animation taking forever. So glad XD fixed it.
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The trainer variety is nice but it doesn’t help that most battles, particularly those in XD, drag as a result. When every battle has 5 or so Pokémon, progression slows to a crawl. It’s like the Kanto mooks all over again.
 
Wukong said:
Yeah I don't think it was perfectly implemented nor was it particularly intuitive. But it works. And Platinum's Gym Leader rematches were still far better implemented than Emerald and HGSS's.
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I have yet to play Emerald so I can't speak to how the rematches are implemented there, but "better than HG/SS rematches" is a pretty low bar. That said, yeah I prefer four or five random fights every day to the bullshit HG/SS makes you do. I actually bothered with the rematches in Platinum, can't say the same about HG/SS.
 
The Mind Electric said:
I have yet to play Emerald so I can't speak to how the rematches are implemented there, but "better than HG/SS rematches" is a pretty low bar. That said, yeah I prefer four or five random fights every day to the bullshit HG/SS makes you do. I actually bothered with the rematches in Platinum, can't say the same about HG/SS.
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well RSE the E4 don't get stronger
And Steve in Emerald despite being level 70s can only be fought once
 
DrumstickGaming
I definitely agree that Colosseum hasn't entirely aged well. The physical special-split and general lack of a decent movepool for a lot of the pokemoncan be very restrictive. I definitely want a re-make/sequel with modern mechanics.

But I don't agree that having annoying boss fights is a bad thing. Its a boss in an RPG. They're meant to make you feel in over your head and to irritate you. I don't think its a bad thing that you might have to fail, and level up for a re-match or prepare for tactics like Ein's rain team and Venus' stall tactics.
Too many of the main games have bosses who are almost all fully type based, and they shove an easy solution right in your face. I don't remember the last time I've faced a gym leader that actually felt like a challenge. The only battle in the campaign of the last three generation of pokemon that felt likely to white out my whole team was ultra necrozma.

Also, at least the RNG isn't rigged AF like it was in Stadium and Stadium 2...


Wesbeing mute is annoying. But no more annoying than you as a player having basically no input on the story in literally every other game. You very rarely even get to express an emotion as a player.
 
Aduro said:
DrumstickGaming
I definitely agree that Colosseum hasn't entirely aged well. The physical special-split and general lack of a decent movepool for a lot of the pokemoncan be very restrictive. I definitely want a re-make/sequel with modern mechanics.

But I don't agree that having annoying boss fights is a bad thing. Its a boss in an RPG. They're meant to make you feel in over your head and to irritate you. I don't think its a bad thing that you might have to fail, and level up for a re-match or prepare for tactics like Ein's rain team and Venus' stall tactics.
Too many of the main games have bosses who are almost all fully type based, and they shove an easy solution right in your face. I don't remember the last time I've faced a gym leader that actually felt like a challenge. The only battle in the campaign of the last three generation of pokemon that felt likely to white out my whole team was ultra necrozma.

Also, at least the RNG isn't rigged AF like it was in Stadium and Stadium 2...


Wesbeing mute is annoying. But no more annoying than you as a player having basically no input on the story in literally every other game. You very rarely even get to express an emotion as a player.
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Sun and Moon made you able to be a deadpan snarker, if only for a few lines. I appreciate that very much even if you are still a mute.

My problem with Wes is that while yes he is a mute like every other protagonist, it makes you feel like the developers really wanted to make you believe there was something more there. I don’t take umbrage with a silent protagonist, I take issue with the bait and switch. That isn’t to say I automatically dislike a bait and switch-Raiden from MGS2 is a good example but that’s a topic for another day.

As for being challenging, XD does a much better job. The earlygame is one of the hardest in the series - Delcatty hits surprisingly hard early, Exol is so tough the game lets you lose and continue and Snattle has very few counters, arguably the hardest fight in the game.

One of my favorite games is BW1 and I will be the first to admit that game is pretty easy. There’s nothing wrong if your game is hard. I think USUM is the right way to do it (not just Ultra Necrozma; the whole game is tough) and Colosseum is the wrong way to do it.

There’s nothing wrong with a competent enemy roster, I just hate the artificial difficulty of constant level spikes, which is also a reason why Ultra Necrozma is bad difficulty.

I’d want a remake of either game or a sequel to XD. Both games have huge potential Game Freak doesn’t realize and they also fit in with the mature tone some of the more recent games aim for (Gens 5 and 7). I would buy either day 1 regardless of quality.
 
I find the whole "well its ok to have fights be annoying/bullshit because its an rpg" a very outdated view on the genre in general. Many rpgs have shown that you dont need to cheap out and use infuriating stuff or cranking up the level to create difficulty. Just a different strategy, some team synergy, interesting moves, anything can make the fight just as hard, while also being enjoyable.

Yes, you can still do bullshit for the sake of annoying the player, but unless youre creating a rage game, I do not understand why this is still considered good game design
 
Siggu said:
But that raises a whole new question entirely: why does Mega Dragonite not exist? It's popular, it's a pseudo, it's a Dragon, it's from Gen I...

(And I doubt the Mega Stone name is a problem, as it's not a problem in Japanese)
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Dragonite's Mega Stone would likely have been Dragonitite.

DrPumpkinz said:
For whatever reason, starting in Gen 5, Game Freak kinda just gave up on naming new items.

Prior to Gen 5, there were two sets of type-associated items. The first set were stuff like Miracle Seed and Black Glasses, a menagerie of unrelated objects that all happened to boost the power of a type. Then there were the plates, which had neat names like Meadow Plate and Dread Plate or were at the very least synonyms of their type like Flame and Insect. And then in Gen 5 they just said "fuck it, Grass Gem. Dark Gem. Fire Gem. Bug Gem." This continued into Gen 7, with Grassium Z and Darkinium Z, as well as the plate counterparts in Grass Memory and Dark Memory.

By the way, it's not just sets of type-associated items that dropped the ball on naming. Pokemon-specific items also suffered. Compare Stick and Light Ball with Garchompite and Mewnium Z.
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Eh, for most of that stuff I just give them a pass:

Gems: The Gems just being named after theit Type may just be for player convenience. It's alright for Arceus Plate to have fancy names as its most likely only Arceus going to use them and gives them a special lore. The Gems? Just rocks you pick up off the ground and your Pokemon use up with one move, not exactly something someone would spend a lot of time thinking up a fancy name for.

Memories: They were likely purposely kept simple because they were made by scientists to try and have Silvally replicate Arceus' Type changing Ability. Naming the Memory after the Type saves them the trouble from having to remember that the Earth Memory is for Ground-types and not Rock-types and Dread Memory is for Dark-types not Ghost-types.

Mega Stones & Z-Crystals: BTW, a lot of these were also just following the Japanese name conventions and patterns. That's especially notable here and since Pokemon names are usually different they had to make extra sure the proper naming conventions were applied when needed. Heck, not sure what they could have called these that wouldn't make them sound more generic.
 
Aduro said:
Too many of the main games have bosses who are almost all fully type based, and they shove an easy solution right in your face. I don't remember the last time I've faced a gym leader that actually felt like a challenge. The only battle in the campaign of the last three generation of pokemon that felt likely to white out my whole team was ultra necrozma.
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And despite finding both Miror B (Severely outleveled, lacks offensive prowess) and Dakim (Relies too much on Protect, offensive mons are slow and can be taken down before attacking) extremely easy, there is something of value here.

The strategy.

They didn't make a team based on one type and called it a day, there was an attempt at strategy here with B's healing stall and Dakim's EQ + Protect spam.

Colosseum so far has a wealth of very irksome issues (Horrible pacing, no reminder, several TMs outright missing from the game including all HMs, Gen 3's general clunkiness), but it does have points in presentation and world-building.

I know this game gets harder down the road, but so far, the difficulty here is quite frankly non-existent. For reference, I just beat Dakim 1 and snagged Entei.
 
My honest to god take is that I find difficult games the most fun, as long as they're fair. I'll gladly play the last pantheon of bosses of hollow knight or something from rain world because even though they're difficult, they're all patterns you can learn and adapt to. I've been thinking of playing bloodborne too, because of that.

I do not think that force-grind or gimmick bosses are that interesting. They're either super frustrating or easy to cheese. It's a cheap call to hard fights without doing the work to balance them out. Often end up not that fun too. Idk I'm not a game designer so I don't know how hard it is to make a truly difficult pokémon boss without having something able to bypass it easily, but that's a challenge you have to take when designing something harder.
And unless that's something the pokémon devs care to do for a possible hard mode, I wouldn't play it most likely. I'll just play a well-designed hard game instead LOL
 
For me, I prefer RPG bosses that check player knowledge more than player stats. More gimmicky boss encounters can be a part of that provided adequate counterplay is available. This means that I often welcome cheese as a better solution than needing to level. For Colosseum, I'm thinking that the boss design relying more on common concepts than common types was done because of the significantly reduced opportunities to catch pokemon. In the main games, there's relatively few bosses with a diverse team and so the default solution when you would need to step back and reevaluate your strategy is to go and catch new mons with a type advantage. That's not nearly as much of an option in Colosseum, so the focus shifted to finding out the non-type weaknesses of a boss. It's been a while since I went through the main game of Colo, but I recall getting through everything pretty normally before knowing that much, only being hung up on trying to catch Raikou against Ein 2 since I believed it was my last chance. Even then, I was used to needing to reset to catch legendaries.

It occured to me while typing the last paragraph that this could be part of why I enjoy monotype playthroughs a lot: It turns off the near-universal solution of good type matchups, allowing each boss to be solved differently.
 
Lemingue said:
I do not think that force-grind or gimmick bosses are that interesting. They're either super frustrating or easy to cheese. It's a cheap call to hard fights without doing the work to balance them out. Often end up not that fun too. Idk I'm not a game designer so I don't know how hard it is to make a truly difficult pokémon boss without having something able to bypass it easily, but that's a challenge you have to take when designing something harder.
And unless that's something the pokémon devs care to do for a possible hard mode, I wouldn't play it most likely. I'll just play a well-designed hard game instead LOL
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To be honest, Pokémon is an RPG, so there isn't any focus on movement, spacing, parrying, and the like. Strategy is the way to go when you want a good boss.

The closest thing to "Straight up hard" non-E4/Champ bosses we got are like, Jupiter 1 and Plat Fantina. Straightforward but strong bosses. I'm not particularly opposed to those, but they don't really work late-game in Pokémon since you'll inevitably have options to deal with most match-ups unless you're doing a restricted run or are bad at team building.

I actually agree with you with the "force-grind" and "gimmick" bosses being bad. Matter of fact, grinding, in general, should be completely optional in RPGs. If you have to grind in an RPG, they messed up the level curve. Straight up. You should be able to grind, especially in a game like Pokémon so kids can brute-force their way if things get tough, but something like Red in the Johto games or the 4-5 level spike between Kabu and Hammerlocke in SwSh are straight up bad design.

I have to ask where do you draw the line on "gimmick" though. Because well-designed thematic teams force the player to develop some strategy to counter the opponent, while Champion Cup Raihan... (Raihan in general if we're being honest, Sandstorm doesn't exactly make that team better) well, I don't need to elaborate, do I?
 
Siggu said:
Or the game going (IIRC) from Oleana's ace at level 50, Rose's at level 55, Eternatus at level 60, and Leon's ace at level 65 with no trainer battles in-between them.
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Raihan 2 was at 55 and then after all that running and Scooby-Doo chasing that Cosmos Grunt, the Rose Tower, and Oleana, Rose capped at 57.

Champions having level spikes are common and kinda expected since they're supposed to be final boss material, so I don't count them unless they're raised to a silly degree.
 
Volt-Ikazuchi said:
Raihan 2 was at 55 and then after all that running and Scooby-Doo chasing that Cosmos Grunt, the Rose Tower, and Oleana, Rose capped at 57.

Champions having level spikes are common and kinda expected since they're supposed to be final boss material, so I don't count them unless they're raised to a silly degree.
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Forgot about Raihan. I guess my disappointment at it not being as exciting as the gym battle made me not remember.

But I don't remember another level spike comparable to Leon's, though. I mean, yes, it's the Champion, but he's five levels above what is basically the Sword/Shield Ultra Necrozma (which is actually at the same level as Hau's ace).
 
Volt-Ikazuchi said:
I have to ask where do you draw the line on "gimmick" though. Because well-designed thematic teams force the player to develop some strategy to counter the opponent, while Champion Cup Raihan... (Raihan in general if we're being honest, Sandstorm doesn't exactly make that team better) well, I don't need to elaborate, do I?
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I should have clarified: When I said gimmick, I should have instead said relying on cheap strategies to win, or things that are out of control of the player and very hard to counter. Something like a boss who uses confusion, para/flinch (or both together), evasion, and other types of tactics to make progress. They either stip control from the player, or are very hard to counter unless you bring very specific moves or abilities. They are also very unfun to play agaisnt, so even if it's a completely valid strategy, we have to think of what experience the player will get from it.

Thematic bosses, such as something as sticky web, weather, boosts, etc are completely fine. They're just something new that you have to learn how to fight, find the clear weaknesses and strenghts, and such.
 
Lemingue said:
I should have clarified: When I said gimmick, I should have instead said relying on cheap strategies to win, or things that are out of control of the player and very hard to counter. Something like a boss who uses confusion, para/flinch (or both together), evasion, and other types of tactics to make progress.
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The thing is that pokemon battles are very broad in scope. There are multiple counters to all of those luck-based tactics if you know where to look. But the campaign of any pokemon game doesn't make you think about any of it.
I would rather lose a battle, then come back with a more prepared team. Rather than just spam my way through every battle using an obvious type advantage. That way, I would feel like I had earned the win.
I think part of the issue with NPCs using a variety of strategies is that Game Freak would have do time consuming and complicated work getting their NPCs to play differently in different situations.
 
Aduro said:
The thing is that pokemon battles are very broad in scope. There are multiple counters to all of those luck-based tactics if you know where to look.
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I dunno, it depends a lot on the pokemon available to you, and a boss themed around it will often have different abusers that would all need specific counters, which can either lead for you needing to replace almost all your team for this one fight, or your counter guy(s) being worn out or just not useful with the next pokemon they send out.

And even if you can find perfect counters, then you have the opposite issue that the boss kinda falls apart/becomes very easy, as the difficulty was placed in the gimmick. Compare this to a rain theme team. It would be strongest in rain, but as long as you give it decent tools and good pokemon, you'd still have a nice boss to fight after you solve the puzzle of "how to get rid of rain".
 
Aduro said:
There are multiple counters to all of those luck-based tactics if you know where to look.
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Luck is the one gimmick that always is just not fun to play against. (Except Metronome battles.)

Colosseum got Justy. Look at this wonderful experience.

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It's fairly easy to deal with it, Umbreon can Snatch things and it's bulky enough to take hits even 13 levels below these mons. Is it fun tho?

No. You'll have ample time to attempt to stack damage while they spam Double Team, and if you fail, you'll watch the miss message constantly. Nothing about the whole thing is fun. This ain't even obnoxious stall, this is just Evasion spam. The only thing I can give to this piss poor team is that it's obnoxious to use Rain Dance + Thunder against it and that's the easiest perfect accuracy combo in Colosseum.
 
Volt-Ikazuchi said:
Luck is the one gimmick that always is just not fun to play against. (Except Metronome battles.)

Colosseum got Justy. Look at this wonderful experience.

unknown.png


It's fairly easy to deal with it, Umbreon can Snatch things and it's bulky enough to take hits even 13 levels below these mons. Is it fun tho?

No. You'll have ample time to attempt to stack damage while they spam Double Team, and if you fail, you'll watch the miss message constantly. Nothing about the whole thing is fun. This ain't even obnoxious stall, this is just Evasion spam. The only thing I can give to this piss poor team is that it's obnoxious to use Rain Dance + Thunder against it and that's the easiest perfect accuracy combo in Colosseum.
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This really embodies the big problem I have with difficulty in Pokémon games. Well, part of the big problem. It seems to me like the developers can only consistently think of two ways to make a fight hard:

1. A massive level/power gap (the Red method).
2. Horseshit like this.

These things aren't fun to fight against, even if they do provide a challenge.
 
As I've said many times before the two flagship Gen 4 games epitomize how to correctly handle a difficulty curve in a Pokémon game, and how to botch it.

It's fairly simple honestly. Platinum gives you a ton of resources throughout the game in terms of team building options, TMs, hold items, evolutionary items, Heart Scales, shards, you name it. But your opponents also have access to terrific resources themselves, namely the team building options. And the game has an even pacing in that it starts hard with the likes of Mars, Jupiter and Fantina in the early game, difficult treks in the mid game like the one to Snowpoint City and to Spear Pillar, and Cyrus, Lucian and Cynthia in the late to end game. These are all battles that test your ability to strategize (like using Captivate on Fantina's Mismagius for example) rather than just brute forcing your way through or being forced to grind. It doesn't get much better than Platinum in terms of an even, challenging difficulty curve.

HGSS on the other hand is almost the exact opposite. Restrictive team options, inconvenient TM placement, limited evolutionary item availability, few fixed locations for Hearts Scales and shards. Horrible pacing in that Lance 1 almost randomly appears as arguably the most difficult boss in the series while the rest of Johto is frankly nowhere near as difficult. You are almost forced to grind to defeat Lance unless you plan a very specific team to beat him (I'm talking like 2-3 possible iterations). This results in what amounts to probably the worst example of a difficulty curve in the series.

But GF has proven to me that they once upon a time knew how to nail this almost perfectly with Platinum. Too bad they haven't really come that close since.
 
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