Unpopular opinions

Pemderp63 said:
I don't like Pokémon Legends Arceus that much. The open areas feel empty and the lack of trainer battles made me bored. I also don't like the battle system either. More often than not you either get totaled in one attack or the opponent spams moves while you struggle to catch up. The inclusion of a more in depth Pokedex completion system is nice. The problem is it can make actually completing an entry feel like it takes forever. Of course a part of these feelings comes from the general burn out I feel toward open world games. I'm genuinely concerned I won't enjoy Scarlet and Violet because of the genre alone.
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I also felt PLA to be very underwhelming. I absolutely HATED the battle system and I pray that it never comes back. I honestly think that the classic pokemon battle system is one of, if not THE best of any turn-based RPG. Instead of using this battle system and ramping up the difficulty of the battles, we get this FF-X-like battle system that does not work for Pokemon (FF-X's battle system works great for that game, but not in PLA). Taking away the ability to switch if you have a slower pokemon with a type disadvantage removes a classic strategy that has been a staple of the franchise since day one.

I also found the core gameplay loop of catching pokemon to get pretty dull and boring (granted, catching pokemon is one of my least favorite parts of pokemon games and I will usually use 6-10 mons in my non-nuzlocke playthroughs). The story was abysmal, which is an achievement considering how bad most stories in this franchise are. I also was disappointed on how they handled the lore of this game. For a game called Pokemon Legends Arceus, it hardly expands on the lore of this mysterious diety. If anything, Palkia and Dialga got more new lore than Arceus did (albeit as a result of the single worst design in the series in Origin Dialga).

I did love how easy it is to change movesets of pokemon. I'm glad that the previous few generations have given the player many options to learn great movesets, and PLA's changes to learning moves make this even better. I also liked how you could catch pokemon without battling them.

PLA was a (kinda?) ambitious pokemon game, but I feel that many of the changes made were either half-baked at best, or genuinely awful.
 
Pemderp63 said:
I don't like Pokémon Legends Arceus that much. The open areas feel empty and the lack of trainer battles made me bored. I also don't like the battle system either. More often than not you either get totaled in one attack or the opponent spams moves while you struggle to catch up. The inclusion of a more in depth Pokedex completion system is nice. The problem is it can make actually completing an entry feel like it takes forever. Of course a part of these feelings comes from the general burn out I feel toward open world games. I'm genuinely concerned I won't enjoy Scarlet and Violet because of the genre alone.
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I've been borrowing the game from a friend and compared to the more recent trash main series Pokemon games have been, I have FEWER gripes with it. That said, I don't find it all that impressive. The game already feels like it came out 10 years ago. I just recently beat Electrode on my first try. Perhaps it's because I've gotten used to actually hard games that play like this like Dark Souls and Yo-Kai Watch Busters, but Electrode felt so easy and I can't imagine people calling that one hard. Perhaps I'll sing a different song once I get to Avalugg

superstrike66 said:
I also felt PLA to be very underwhelming. I absolutely HATED the battle system and I pray that it never comes back. I honestly think that the classic pokemon battle system is one of, if not THE best of any turn-based RPG.
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I disagree with this on many levels. The lack of a fast forward button makes it slow as molasses, especially since a feature like that would still allow us to see animation without the game slowing down to crawl. Even turning the animation off still makes the game sluggish for a number of reasons like needing the HP bar animation to take ages. There's also arguably far more dopamine rush and fun if not just basic player feedback from actually seeing the damage numbers you do. There's not much point in keeping that invisible to the player since we can just tell visually that if we hit a full HP Pokemon and their HP goes below yellow, we can assume it'll be a 2HKO. We already use damage calculators and Showdown's percentage feature to get around that and achieve the same thing anyway. Not to mention the whole system is basic and lacks alot of relevant resource systems that make it have any significant depth or that the whole system just ends up favoring bulky offense and hyper offense above all else. I like the system just as any other Pokemon fan, but I don't think it's that great.
 
Separating Water from Ice in the first place is arguably dumb. Both Ice and Water are scientifically the same element in the first place. Most other games keep them both as the same element, use some slight flavor animations to make them appear different and give it an advantage over Fire which makes more sense anyway since covering a flame with a bucket of water or a bucket of snow will extinguish it regardless. Any game that DOES seperate them tends to have a better balanced elemental chart to excuse that.
 
Steel for that matter could just as easily also be classed as Earth like Rock and Ground. Steel may be an alloy but the iron it's made of is still a mineral i.e. Earth. Steel Pokemon that lean towards machinery like Probopass and Klingklang would arguably benefit more from being Electric anyway since they can run moves like that for coverage or utility anyway.
 
I think the crux of this issue is that while several types may be thematically similar, Rock, Ground, and Steel have significant mechanical differences. So I think there's a reason for all three types to exist, even if there's a lot of thematic overlap (and a lot of Rock/Ground, Rock/Steel, and Ground/Steel mons as a result).

I also end up thinking of metal as more separate from a generic earth element, given how common in folklore it is for metal being used to ward off supernatural creatures. I.e. there's not much reason for Rock or Ground to beat Fairy, but there is for Steel.
 
Nokocchi said:
I know of quite a few other JRPGs where they are counted as separate elements, Pokemon is hardly the first, or even the last one to do so.
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And like I said, they tend to have more balanced elemental charts to justify that.
Ice Type Pokemon vs Ice Attribute Yo-Kai.png
 
DrCoeloCephalo said:
And like I said, they tend to have more balanced elemental charts to justify that.View attachment 447075n
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People been keeping talking about how GF started to treat newer Pokémon with better viability in mind.

Guess what? Too many newer Ice-type Pokémon to count suffered the same problem as older Ice Pokémon, and not just because of the problem with the type itself. It’s just one of the examples that made me shake my head in disbelief, since it only truly applies to Legendary Pokémon and Mythical Pokémon in terms of later Pokémon having viability in mind… even then, it’s not always consistent either (i.e. Zamazenta).
 
The funnier thing is, Ice was a fine type Gen 1. Gen 2 it was still fine, same with early 3 comp
It crashed hard when Gen 4s powercreep and hyper coverage made Ice's already many weaknesses more accessible. Fighting getting better didn't help, and Hail is a garbage weather type. Despite this, Weavile and Mamoswine did decently, though Abomasnow suffered

Then after GF randomly didn't take from those 2, and every ice type after is still slow and frail

Seriously, have it resist Grass, Ground, and Flying too if you're so adament on it being defensive. EQ resist is nice long term
 
If the Ice type’s biggest problem is that they are too slow to take advantage of their offensive type, I was thinking Hail should buff speed of any Ice type by 50% when it is active . That would also make Slush Rush sweepers significantly more effectively because it would be a 2.5 boost to speed since a lot of Slush rush sweepers are considerably slow. Or make Freeze/Frostbite more common, since that would give Ice types a legitimately good defensive niche. On the topic of weather, I always found it odd that Hail was the only weather that doesn’t boost an attribute of a type like the others do. I just find it inconsistent and they should give Ice types a weather effect just for sake of consistency.
 
DreamPrince said:
On the topic of weather, I always found it odd that Hail was the only weather that doesn’t boost an attribute of a type like the others do. I just find it inconsistent and they should give Ice types a weather effect just for sake of consistency.
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In my hack, cuz Hail was too rigid, I used MD's passive weather Snow alongside it, with Snow boosting Ice Type speed, and slowing down Water and Dragon speed (unless dual typed with Ice)
Hail still sucks, but at least there's an alt
 
Sonikku A said:
Then after GF randomly didn't take from those 2, and every ice type after is still slow and frail
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:darmanitan-galar:

I genuinely believe that Gamefreak thinks adding Darm-G counts as a "buff" to the Ice-type. There's no other reason they'd make it so obviously overtuned. The same goes for the creation of Aurora Veil and the increase in distribution to the other Snow Warning users in Gen 8 (though Aurora Veil is only overtuned when used by Ninetales-A specifically).
 
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DrCoeloCephalo said:
That's cuz those guys are good for reasons that have nothing to do with strictly being Ice.

Having STAB Earthquake is good (see RBY Rhydon, DPP Gliscor, Hippowdon and Swampert, Landorus-T and Dugtrio)

Having STAB priority is good (see Scizor)

Having STAB Pursuit is good (see Tyranitar)

Having a 125 Speed tier is good
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I mean those help, but the Ice STABs definitely play a role in their performance regardless, and the other factors listed play in tandem with the Ice Attacks, not in-spite of them. Same way I'd note a LOT of the mons you listed prior were good for reasons synergistic with the traits listed moreso than any one being high up (Dugtrio is carried by Arena Trap, Scizor's defensive profile is why that Priority is big for it, Ttar has Sand, etc.)

These Pokemon would not strictly be better if they were not Ice-Types, rather they're a rare instance of GF actually designing to the strength of Ice (ie Offense) instead of crowbarring them into a role that continuously fails to work.
 
pika pal said:
I mean those help, but the Ice STABs definitely play a role in their performance regardless, and the other factors listed play in tandem with the Ice Attacks, not in-spite of them. Same way I'd note a LOT of the mons you listed prior were good for reasons synergistic with the traits listed moreso than any one being high up (Dugtrio is carried by Arena Trap, Scizor's defensive profile is why that Priority is big for it, Ttar has Sand, etc.)

These Pokemon would not strictly be better if they were not Ice-Types, rather they're a rare instance of GF actually designing to the strength of Ice (ie Offense) instead of crowbarring them into a role that continuously fails to work.
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And lo and behold, Weavile managed to stay in OU throughout Gen 8 when it came back, particularly thanks to Triple Axel which is essentially a better Triple Kick by having higher BP and effective BP alone. The other only Ice-type prior of base Kyurem’s ban (and Kyurem-Black‘s banishment before it) was Alolan Ninetales due to being a fast Aurora Veil setter.

Speaking of Aurora Veil, I feel like that Aurora Veil is overcompensating Ice and Hail’s problems despite working well, as it ended up making such problems even more apparant instead of actually fixing some of these problems in question.

Galarian Darmanitan doing Ice’s offensive oriented specialty worked too well due to Gorilla Tactics, we can all agree with that.
 
Samtendo09 said:
Speaking of Aurora Veil, I feel like that Aurora Veil is overcompensating Ice and Hail’s problems despite working well, as it ended up making such problems even more apparant instead of actually fixing some of these problems in question.
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I feel similarly. Other weathers get most of their value as a team style from Abilities, which in turn means that they make heavy use of specific types those abilities are often found on. On the other hand, Aurora Veil is completely unattached to Hail once set up, so it being the primary effect you're running a Snow Warning mon for means there's less of a reason to invest in actual Hail synergy or other ice-tyeps. It says a lot that Ninetales-A runs Light Clay over Icy Rock most of the time even on Mono-Ice teams.
 
Volt-Ikazuchi said:
What's the point of a slow horse!? :facepalm:
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft_horse

In fact, Glastrier and Spectrier are pretty nice complementary pets for a noble: Spectrier was the horse he likely ride to hunt and get around the countryside, possibly also in battle, while Glastrier likely used to pull his wagons and (if applicable) do work in his gardens and farms.

Mudsdale is also based on draft horses for what matters, and in Alola it was usually seen as either doing farmwork or carrying people around as well.
 
KalosianPorygon said:
Draft horses are big horses used for stuff like plowing and pull carts. Maybe Calyrex did the same for Glastrier?
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Worldie said:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft_horse

In fact, Glastrier and Spectrier are pretty nice complementary pets for a noble: Spectrier was the horse he likely ride to hunt and get around the countryside, possibly also in battle, while Glastrier likely used to pull his wagons and (if applicable) do work in his gardens and farms.

Mudsdale is also based on draft horses for what matters, and in Alola it was usually seen as either doing farmwork or carrying people around as well.
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Y'know... some times y'all take things too literally. In the context of discussing the Ice-type mons, most of which are based on icebergs and glaciers, a horse would be an unique opportunity to have a pokémon that breaks the usual archetype when it comes to stats.

Also, a slow horse had just been introduced a gen prior, there was no need to double down on it.

Furthermore, in Calyhead's own words...

"The very same Pokémon that my statue in the village shows me riding. Alas, though in ancient times we spent many days together, dashing through the valleys and over the mountains of this land...
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Glastrier was *not* a draft horse. The only reason it's slow as molasses is because it's Ice-type.
 
Yeah I always thought Glastrier being Ice made sense but would’ve preferred a fast physical mon, though we already had that with Darm-G so I guess that’s their excuse. Sure made it easy to pick Spectrier for my horsey tho.

Just saw its Shield dex entry, makes me feel bad for ever fusing with Calyrex.

As it dashes through the night, Spectrier absorbs the life-force of sleeping creatures. It craves silence and solitude.

Then again, it is absorbing life force so it shouldn’t get what it craves. Bad horsey.
 
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Volt-Ikazuchi said:
Furthermore, in Calyhead's own words...

"The very same Pokémon that my statue in the village shows me riding. Alas, though in ancient times we spent many days together, dashing through the valleys and over the mountains of this land..."
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Glastrier was *not* a draft horse. The only reason it's slow as molasses is because it's Ice-type.
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It's the same Calyrex that is astonished by a bag. Perhaps it's easily impressionable.
 
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