(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon

Coronis

Impressively round
is a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnus
The title of "Pokemon Master" is an extremely important element. It's the driving force of the anime and they use the term in the official games too. It seems they allude to that being the role of the Champion but they retconned that. If all it takes is to become Champion, that's certainly nothing to brag over given the game's broken, easy nature despite the fact they try so hard to play up the fact being a Pokemon Trainer at all is a serious, challenging endeavor.View attachment 449061

It's never explained what the title means. i.e. its become a meaningless fluff title. If their stories, lore and fantasy biology wasn't so poorly written, I'd be more likely accept an answer like this in their attempt to explain it. This just sounds like a fancy, kinder way of saying "We don't know. You figure it out."
View attachment 449062
I mean it literally says it in that last pic, a title left up to the imagination of the (mostly young) fans. Helps you set your own goals imo, whatever your definition of Pokemon Master is, thats what you strive for after completing the story in a game. (or multiple games)
 
What is a Legendary Pokémon?
According to Bulbapedia... It's any Pokémon Game Freak/TPCi/whoever is in charge of the franchise slaps the "Legendary" label on.
no criteria.png

Is anyone else confused by the lack of consistency among this group of Pokémon? Because nothing fully unifies Legendary Pokémon and makes them fully distinct from non-Legendary Pokémon:
  • High stats? Phione (disputable), Cosmog, Cosmoem, Kubfu, and vanilla Calyrex would disagree.
  • No gender? Many non-Legendary Pokémon have this trait, also Lati@s, Cresselia, Heatran, the Forces of Nature
  • Lore? Important to the story? *laughs at Heatran and the legendary birds*
  • Old? Mewtwo and Type: Null are recent creations.
  • Unique? *laughs harder at the legendary birds, also Kubfu*
  • Can't lay eggs in gameplay? Manaphy is a Mythical Pokémon strictly speaking, but it can still lay eggs thanks to Ditto.
  • Can't evolve? Same as many non-Legendary Pokémon, also Type: Null, Cosmog, and Kubfu exist.
  • Uses the Legendary Pokémon battle theme? Rotom does this in the Sinnoh games, and it's not classified as Legendary.
  • Doesn't use the normal battle theme? Say hi to Shaymin, Mythical Pokémon are a subcategory of Legendary Pokémon.
  • Placed at the end of a regional Pokédex?
    • Not in Johto, where the legendary birds and beasts are placed before the Dratini and Larvitar line.
    • Same with Platinum's expanded Sinnoh Dex, regular Pokémon like Nosepass, Houndour, or Tropius are placed after the lake trio, Dialga, Palkia, and Manaphy.
    • Unova's Dex starts with the Mythical Victini.
    • In Alola, Type: Null, Silvally, and Zygarde are all in the middle of the Dex. Depending on whether you consider Ultra Beasts to be legendary or not, they are all placed between unambiguous Legendary Pokémon.
    • In Galar, Silvally is closer to the end but still before the Pseudo-Legendary Pokémon
  • Placed at the end of a generation in the national Pokédex? Same deal for the legendary birds, legendary beasts, Victini, and the Type: Null line. Also, the Hisuian non-legendary Pokémon are placed after Calyrex.
 
Gen 3 is so annoying to play.

Horrendous level-up movepools in general, a lot of types don't have solid STAB options, the IV/EV changes and the introduction of natures make running mixed builds a chore, and the lack of a modern physical-special split makes it really clunky to play.

It is a shame, because Emerald is really good despite all of this nonsense.
 
What is a Legendary Pokémon?
According to Bulbapedia... It's any Pokémon Game Freak/TPCi/whoever is in charge of the franchise slaps the "Legendary" label on.
View attachment 449137
Is anyone else confused by the lack of consistency among this group of Pokémon? Because nothing fully unifies Legendary Pokémon and makes them fully distinct from non-Legendary Pokémon:
  • High stats? Phione (disputable), Cosmog, Cosmoem, Kubfu, and vanilla Calyrex would disagree.
  • No gender? Many non-Legendary Pokémon have this trait, also Lati@s, Cresselia, Heatran, the Forces of Nature
  • Lore? Important to the story? *laughs at Heatran and the legendary birds*
  • Old? Mewtwo and Type: Null are recent creations.
  • Unique? *laughs harder at the legendary birds, also Kubfu*
  • Can't lay eggs in gameplay? Manaphy is a Mythical Pokémon strictly speaking, but it can still lay eggs thanks to Ditto.
  • Can't evolve? Same as many non-Legendary Pokémon, also Type: Null, Cosmog, and Kubfu exist.
  • Uses the Legendary Pokémon battle theme? Rotom does this in the Sinnoh games, and it's not classified as Legendary.
  • Doesn't use the normal battle theme? Say hi to Shaymin, Mythical Pokémon are a subcategory of Legendary Pokémon.
  • Placed at the end of a regional Pokédex?
    • Not in Johto, where the legendary birds and beasts are placed before the Dratini and Larvitar line.
    • Same with Platinum's expanded Sinnoh Dex, regular Pokémon like Nosepass, Houndour, or Tropius are placed after the lake trio, Dialga, Palkia, and Manaphy.
    • Unova's Dex starts with the Mythical Victini.
    • In Alola, Type: Null, Silvally, and Zygarde are all in the middle of the Dex. Depending on whether you consider Ultra Beasts to be legendary or not, they are all placed between unambiguous Legendary Pokémon.
    • In Galar, Silvally is closer to the end but still before the Pseudo-Legendary Pokémon
  • Placed at the end of a generation in the national Pokédex? Same deal for the legendary birds, legendary beasts, Victini, and the Type: Null line. Also, the Hisuian non-legendary Pokémon are placed after Calyrex.
Also them deciding to separate legendaries and mythicals. The only difference between the two is the method of obtaining them in the games. But in the Pokémon universe that's not really a thing, so the mythical classification literally has no relevance there.
 

DrCoeloCephalo

Banned deucer.
People saying a Pokemon is "too big"(size wise) to get a cross-gen evolution, when the very first batch of cross-gen evolutions in Gen II gave an evolution to the biggest Pokemon in Gen I
It's not like newer Pokemon games care enough about the practically useless realistic height and weight values they assign to monsters anyway to actually respect them. Why should that be used as a constraint?
 
Gen 3 is so annoying to play.

Horrendous level-up movepools in general, a lot of types don't have solid STAB options, the IV/EV changes and the introduction of natures make running mixed builds a chore, and the lack of a modern physical-special split makes it really clunky to play.

It is a shame, because Emerald is really good despite all of this nonsense.
Cries in Shiftry until Gen 8
 

AquaticPanic

Intentional Femboy Penguin
is a Community Leaderis a Community Contributor
Community Leader
I'm not sure how much of a hot take this is but

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This dude himself is something that annoys me in Pokémon. I should probably preface this post by clarifying that I do like Leon's personality, but what annoys me moreso is just how he is treated by the franchise in general.

Right off the bat they introduce him as "The strongest trainer in the entire world!" whichin itself isn't really an issue but imo the problem is that they don't explore this. The games and the anime both keep telling you that he is the strongest trainer in the world but they never really bother exploring how he got to that spot or how he manages to keep his title for so long.

Speaking of the anime, to give credit where its due they do make him have a pretty likeable personality, but imo the whole "strongest ever" concept is even worse there than in the games., and imo this is perfectly illustrated on his battle vs Alain. I'm not particularly an alain fan in one way or another, but it is imo pretty over the top that the way Leon wins against him is by essentially just KOing everything with two hits max. (Chesnaught gets 2HKOd by Max Drumbeating + Acrobatics, Malamar gets one shot by charizard's Flamethrower, Mega Zard X gets two shot by Charizard's Ancient Power + Dragon Pulse). It makes for an incredibly boring way for the character to be strong where he's just good at battling because the writers conviniently agree that he should deal so much damage while taking very little.

I know that this may sound like its asking much from the anime, but the fact that the opening ceremony of Gen 8's final tournament was made completely underwhelming and boring to watch just to hype up Leon's status kind of shows the issue with how he is written, and if they need to downplay XY's "big strong guy who went up against actual legendaries" just to prove how strong Leon is by comparison, then they didn't write Leon to be a strong character, they just ended up writing Alain to be out of character instead. (Conversely I think that this should be exactly what the game did instead with Eternatus - having the whole game tell you that "Charizard is undefeated" only for Eternatus to roll in at the climax and KO charizard would have been a great payoff to set the stakes)

And the episode right after that, with Diantha vs Lance, did show the two of them having actual strategy put into their games. Imo it would've been much more interesting if the reason Leon is the world champion was because he was good at adapting to each challanger rather than just dealing massive damage - It'd be a lot more interesting to watch and feel way less like plot convinience if the dude analysed his matches and came up with new strategies on the spot. Recently an anime interview revealed that (at least the anime interation of) Leon has never had more than two of his Pokémon faint in a battle and imo that just furthers my point that he's just made out to be strong in possibly the most boring way possible.

I feel like Charizard is honestly the perfect fit for Leon's ace - they're both pretty cool on their own right but the franchise's overexposure of them makes me really tired of them. Leon is also the only trainer whose outfit is available in Pokémon Unite fwiw


At the end of the day I suppose my biggest gripe with leon is that he feels like an OC that I'd make when I was 10. He's the strongest trainer in the whole world, he never lost more than two Pokémon in a match, his strongest Pokémon is an undefeated Charizard, he is unbeatable and he is straight out of a fancfic.
 
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View attachment 449168



Speaking of the anime, to give credit where its due they do make him have a pretty likeable personality, but imo the whole "strongest ever" concept is even worse there than in the games., and imo this is perfectly illustrated on his battle vs Alain. I'm not particularly an alain fan in one way or another, but it is imo pretty over the top that the way Leon wins against him is by essentially just KOing everything with two hits max. (Chesnaught gets 2HKOd by Max Drumbeating + Acrobatics, Malamar gets one shot by charizard's Flamethrower, Mega Zard X gets two shot by Charizard's Ancient Power + Dragon Pulse). It makes for an incredibly boring way for the character to be strong where he's just good at battling because the writers conviniently agree that he should deal so much damage while taking very little.

...

And the episode right after that, with Diantha vs Lance, did show the two of them having actual strategy put into their games. Imo it would've been much more interesting if the reason Leon is the world champion was because he was good at adapting to each challanger rather than just dealing massive damage - It'd be a lot more interesting to watch and feel way less like plot convinience if the dude analysed his matches and came up with new strategies on the spot. Recently an anime interview revealed that (at least the anime interation of) Leon has never had more than two of his Pokémon faint in a battle and imo that just furthers my point that he's just made out to be strong in possibly the most boring way possible.
I feel like this could have been achieved better with two changes.

First, if they played a bit more on something noted in Leon's battle with Raihan, that he had changed Charizard's moveset since his early battle with Ash, which plays into the idea that Leon considers his opponents ahead of time and prepares his team accordingly (Charizard's moveset was prepared for Duraldon in particular, but also carried moves like Dig and Brick Break to counter moves or dodge attacks while also being helpful if we guess Raihan has similar Pokemon to his Champion Tournament roster). This would also present an interesting contrast to another rival of Ash's, Paul, who rather than adapt his Pokemons' movesets to an opponent, had several different Pokemon he simply rotated in as suited him (which fit his more callous and impersonal training style for most of Sinnoh), while Leon's Pokemon are seemingly strong enough to take on anyone, he just has to know what he's up against (Eternatus being a problem because besides its strength, it's unfamiliar and turns his trump card of Gigantamax against him). Maybe it's strategy on a very basic level, but it's a trait Leon is already set up for that lets you pull out surprises both with moves and creative ways to use them (which I think they were going for to an extent with his Charizard having Ancient Power and Dragon Claw prepared for Alain, but the fight ended too quickly to emphasize prep over power).

Second, I think this would have worked better if Leon was the final bout of Preliminaries instead of the opening ceremony. It would make for a more effective swerve if, after 3 battles of intense back-and-forth between the other Champions, Leon proceeds to control his match with comparative ease (maybe not to the extent the anime went with, but easier than Lance vs Diantha or Ash vs Steven is still fine). Instead of having invincible Leon on the mind throughout the tournament, it's an escalation to show "you won the first round, but things are definitely gonna get more extreme now" to Ash and the audience. Also production-wise, the shorter Leon fight fits better to give the other half of the episode to "before-break" wrap-up and seeing off those champions that went home after their matches (if they must leave).

Leon kind of frustrates me because I had horrible expectations for him pre-release on the back of them shilling him AND Charizard, but most of the things I was concerned about didn't manifest in the character come release, and I actually liked some of the points he addresses. Things like hearing Rose out and agreeing to help after the League to avoid panic, as opposed to dismissal outright, taking part in conflicts that are his responsibility as the Champion, and taking his loss gracefully despite still being a bit bummed at being dethroned were all traits I found nice compared to the usual Pokemon cliches, especially with how "ah whatever" the writing felt throughout the rest of the Gen. Despite this, I can't call him GOOD either, because the above things are incidental touches at best; he's still a victim of tell-don't-show in a lot of ways, and moreso ranks highly for me because he doesn't do a lot wrong as opposed to his character doing a lot well.
 
What is a Legendary Pokémon?
According to Bulbapedia... It's any Pokémon Game Freak/TPCi/whoever is in charge of the franchise slaps the "Legendary" label on.
View attachment 449137
Is anyone else confused by the lack of consistency among this group of Pokémon? Because nothing fully unifies Legendary Pokémon and makes them fully distinct from non-Legendary Pokémon:
  • High stats? Phione (disputable), Cosmog, Cosmoem, Kubfu, and vanilla Calyrex would disagree.
  • No gender? Many non-Legendary Pokémon have this trait, also Lati@s, Cresselia, Heatran, the Forces of Nature
  • Lore? Important to the story? *laughs at Heatran and the legendary birds*
  • Old? Mewtwo and Type: Null are recent creations.
  • Unique? *laughs harder at the legendary birds, also Kubfu*
  • Can't lay eggs in gameplay? Manaphy is a Mythical Pokémon strictly speaking, but it can still lay eggs thanks to Ditto.
  • Can't evolve? Same as many non-Legendary Pokémon, also Type: Null, Cosmog, and Kubfu exist.
  • Uses the Legendary Pokémon battle theme? Rotom does this in the Sinnoh games, and it's not classified as Legendary.
  • Doesn't use the normal battle theme? Say hi to Shaymin, Mythical Pokémon are a subcategory of Legendary Pokémon.
  • Placed at the end of a regional Pokédex?
    • Not in Johto, where the legendary birds and beasts are placed before the Dratini and Larvitar line.
    • Same with Platinum's expanded Sinnoh Dex, regular Pokémon like Nosepass, Houndour, or Tropius are placed after the lake trio, Dialga, Palkia, and Manaphy.
    • Unova's Dex starts with the Mythical Victini.
    • In Alola, Type: Null, Silvally, and Zygarde are all in the middle of the Dex. Depending on whether you consider Ultra Beasts to be legendary or not, they are all placed between unambiguous Legendary Pokémon.
    • In Galar, Silvally is closer to the end but still before the Pseudo-Legendary Pokémon
  • Placed at the end of a generation in the national Pokédex? Same deal for the legendary birds, legendary beasts, Victini, and the Type: Null line. Also, the Hisuian non-legendary Pokémon are placed after Calyrex.
Idk to me it makes perfect sense from a world-building perspective that you can't neatly fit all legendary Pokemon into some kind of taxonomical classification. In any given game, the player character basically becomes the foremost expert on the legendary Pokemon of that region, with other characters (even professors) only really knowing what they've heard through myths and folk tales. Adding all these little twists on what being a legendary Pokemon entails adds to their mystery and reflects real life pretty well.

As a comparison, the modern definitions of 'mammal' range between somewhat arbitrary ("Mammalia is defined by its ancestry as the taxon originating with the most recent common ancestor of extant Monotremata and Theria") and wildly unintuitive to a layperson ( "Synapsids that possess a dentary–squamosal jaw articulation and occlusion between upper and lower molars with a transverse component to the movement"). Seems pretty reasonable to me that a group of rarely-seen god-like creatures would end up being classified based on vibes rather than some intuitive objective standard.
 
At the end of the day I suppose my biggest gripe with leon is that he feels like an OC that I'd make when I was 10. He's the strongest trainer in the whole world, he never lost more than two Pokémon in a match, his strongest Pokémon is an undefeated Charizard, he is unbeatable and he is straight out of a fancfic.
Thing is, that's what he is and it's deliberate. He's the Player Character 20 years later. His team is a bunch of rare mons that you need to research to figure out how good they are(and his starter). He's late getting everywhere because he wanders off on tangents. He's made it his entire career without losing once. His outfit is a bunch of rare items that individually look cool but are actually ridiculous. Leon is a commentary of how players usually play the games. I don't watch the anime, but "2hko everything via a bare minimum knowledge of type matchups" sounds like how E4 runs tend to go for players.

Now, how good that satire is is definitely up for debate, but GF knew what they wanted to do with him.
 

Pikachu315111

Ranting & Raving!
is a Community Contributoris a Top Smogon Media Contributor
People talking about unreleased games in unrelated threads for people trying to avoid spoilers :psycry:
Now while I apologize for talking about the new game without a spoiler tag, out of curiosity, what constitutes as a spoiler? Like, I can understand being upset you read about the new mechanic before seeing the trailer of it for yourself, but unfortunately, unless you completely unplug yourself from every single thing that reports anything about Pokemon for the next few months, anything they release in the trailer is also going to be heavily marketed. There was no way you were not going to find out about the new super mechanic as long as you read any Pokemon news. This isn't like the Metroid: Dread situation with them revealing of a certain boss that Nintendo could have kept as a surprise but showed them for marketing purposes, this is going to be at least pushed as a major mechanic in the game. Like the surprise with it will be all the details of the super mechanic, not the existence of the super mechanic itself.

So I posted the other day about how much I appreciate dex orders that aren't straightforward, but I'd like to make one addendum.

Perhaps this is giving it too much undue importance, but I do often think that being the final "regular" species in a listing before the legendary section begins is a position of privilege. (...)

Giving the final spot to the pseudo emphasises that it's on par with the legendaries; it illustrates that it's rare and powerful and important. (...)

So it irks me when a new generation doesn't put its own pseudo-legendary in that position of prominence.

So yeah, does anyone agree or am I just utterly nuts for putting this much thought into it?
Never really though about it, but at the same time I do agree. Yeah, most dexes now go by encounter order which makes sense, but for certain Pokemon I feel they could set up some nice mystery and/or excitement if they do something a bit unique with its ordering. Best example is with the Pseudo, placing it where you encounter it may mean the middle of the game which makes it feel like any other 'mon. Now, for those who don't really bother checking their dex much or look at the dex number, this will still remain true. However, for those who do, and don't already know that what they just cause was the pseudo, them seeing that it's been placed ALL THE WAY BACK in the Pokedex would be an indicator they caught something special.

"Huh? All the other Pokemon I caught in this place is in the middle, why is this little guy/gal at the end?".

Even if they don't know Legendaries are placed in the back of the Dex, it would still hint to them some things about it if they being to train it. Because Pseudos evolve late, a player who didn't know may give up on them after this weak basic Pokemon hasn't evolved for 20/30+ levels. Then, if they do decide to keep training it until it finally evolves, it's only a middle stage and by then all your other Pokemon are fully evolved and stronger than it. "I trained it for so long for this? How long is the next stage gonna take? Forget it, I'm throwing it in a box for the next mon I'm interested in". HOWEVER, if they see it's in the back of the dex, it could be enough to have them keep training it. "Well, its mid evo isn't that strong, and who knows what level it'll evolve next, but if its placed where the endgame Pokemon are maybe it's final stage is that good". And, lo and behold, with that little hint they keep training it until it finally evolves (like 20 levels later) and, even if they aren't impressed by its appearance, its stats would sure make up for it. "Oh, wow, this look pretty cool! I wonder how strong it is... IT'S STATS ARE THAT HIGH! This Pokemon is a beast! Gonna sweep the Pokemon League with it! *Cue it being taken out by a Fairy/Ice-type move*".

The only reason I would place it in the middle of the dex is if the idea is the player is making the dex. Not sure where I wrote the idea, but I think in one game it would be neat if the in-game Pokedex didn't have a number system already placed for each Pokemon and instead the player adds the Pokemon as they go along (and when a Pokemon evolves go back and correct the numbering so evos are with one another). Something like that I could see placing the Pseudo in the middle because that would be literally when you caught it.

But, for games where the number system is already set? Not only would I like to see the Pseudo in the back with the Legends, I also wouldn't mind if mid game mons were placed around more graciously. Like, still try to give an idea of "I'm in the early/middle/final third/last part of the game so now I'm filling in the early/middle/final third/last part of the dex", but also have those Pokemon which are placed maybe a bit later on where you can also catch them later, to show the Pokemon world isn't so segmented but rather is supposed to be like a real ecosystem and you can catch certain Pokemon at other points later on. May also show the Pokemon, like Pseudo, is a bit more complex than its most early catching point leads on and thus, in-world, took more research by the Professors to figure out than the other Pokemon you're also catching at the time. World build a bit.

They didn't do it for BW1 since they really wanted to hammer home the Unova pokemon so that logic trumped the new one.
Also, there is one instance where the ordering of the Pokemon in the Dex is purposely done out of normal order: Victini being #000 in the Unova Dex (and being the first Unova Pokemon in the National Dex). Granted, unlike the above idea you don't know there's a number zero Pokemon until you get it, but I still like the story reason behind it and makes Victini feel that more special.

I'm thinking that ever since that the game has like a dozen of language option, TPC don't want any language to left behind from having a dubbing.
They don't want to have English and Japanese dub only. It's either all of those language to have voice-acting (very much work) or none at all. They decided for the latter.
The thing is, we're not asking them voice the ENTIRE game, just the cutscenes. Heck, not even every cutscene, just the cutscenes with special camera angles and animations. Also, if there's a moment in a non-voice cutscene or a non-cutscene where you should be hearing a character talking or singing or some notable voice, just add in the voice. Pokemon has had spoken lines, remember Roxie singing in B2W2? Or how about the male Skull Grunts yelling "dokuro" when they spot you (which is Japanese for "Skull"; yeah they didn't even feel the need to translate that).

And... personally, voice acting is not something important. It can improve things, but it's not a must-have.
Voice acting is one of those things where if devs give fans an inch the fans will demand a mile. If Piers' thing was voice acted, fans would be saying "well why not this cutscene" "why isn't the professor talking to you at the start of the game voice acted" "Pokémon should all use their anime voices". Leaving Pokémon as a game series with essentially no voice acting is honestly the better option.
I can't argue personal preference, though I do feel the Pokemon games are at the point where, while maybe not a "must-have", would certainly help a lot as it's one of the few things they have left to go which can be reasonably expected. Like they seem pretty satisfied with how they do graphics and animations, would like them to do better but that seems like a hard sell, so doing some voice acting feels like another angle they could try.

Then there's the other side of the spectrum. Who wants to remember Metroid: Other M?
Well, how do you feel about the voice acting in the recent trailer? Or in Masters? Or in the animated specials? I feel Pokemon has gotten a pretty good handle on voice acting front, it's just putting it into the games.

Considering Gen 8 from the start basically completely changed Toxic's distribution to make it more limited instead of a universally learnable move, I think they decided to repurpose Hidden Power from day 1 during Gen 8's conception to basically change it from a move any Pokemon can learn to being Unown's signature move.
  • Director: It's decided, Hidden Power is too troublesome in the competitive scene. We're making it Unown's Signature Move.
  • Developer: Agreed. And this will give us a chance to finally update Hidden Power now that we don't got to worry about other Pok...
  • Director: Actually we're just gonna leave it as is.
  • Developer: What? But it seriously needs to be updated, like the formula doesn't allow it to be Fairy-type! And if it's going to be Unown's Signature Move maybe we can make it so Unown has actual use for it.
  • Director: Who uses Unown?
  • Developer: No one, but that's because its stats are low, only learns Hidden Power, and Ability is plain ol' Levitate. Even if it doesn't make Unown competitive it'll at least make it fun in-gam...
  • Director: We're ONLY focusing on the competitive. If they're not bringing it to competitions, it's not touched.
  • Developer: ... All we'd need to do is change the sum multiplier from 15 to 16 and add Fair...
  • Dirctor: Actually all we need to replace is you, how does that sound? Silent, good. Now next agenda is nixing Signal Beam, like what Pokemon uses that?
(TBC)
 

Coronis

Impressively round
is a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnus
Now while I apologize for talking about the new game without a spoiler tag, out of curiosity, what constitutes as a spoiler? Like, I can understand being upset you read about the new mechanic before seeing the trailer of it for yourself, but unfortunately, unless you completely unplug yourself from every single thing that reports anything about Pokemon for the next few months, anything they release in the trailer is also going to be heavily marketed. There was no way you were not going to find out about the new super mechanic as long as you read any Pokemon news. This isn't like the Metroid: Dread situation with them revealing of a certain boss that Nintendo could have kept as a surprise but showed them for marketing purposes, this is going to be at least pushed as a major mechanic in the game. Like the surprise with it will be all the details of the super mechanic, not the existence of the super mechanic itself.
I mean, since the initial trailer and starter reveal, thats basically what I’ve done. Apart from OI all I have is the SwSh events page bookmarked for serial code or Wifi distributions. I stay away from the Pokemon Youtube stuff and yeah does anyone actually watch TV these days lol?

Anyway its not like a big deal or anything though, that post was a while ago, I can’t even remember the contents of it, pretty sure I’ve forgotten everything about Gen 9 bar the starters design and the names of the games.
 

DrCoeloCephalo

Banned deucer.
I'm not sure how much of a hot take this is but

View attachment 449168


This dude himself is something that annoys me in Pokémon. I should probably preface this post by clarifying that I do like Leon's personality, but what annoys me moreso is just how he is treated by the franchise in general.

Right off the bat they introduce him as "The strongest trainer in the entire world!" whichin itself isn't really an issue but imo the problem is that they don't explore this. The games and the anime both keep telling you that he is the strongest trainer in the world but they never really bother exploring how he got to that spot or how he manages to keep his title for so long.

Speaking of the anime, to give credit where its due they do make him have a pretty likeable personality, but imo the whole "strongest ever" concept is even worse there than in the games., and imo this is perfectly illustrated on his battle vs Alain. I'm not particularly an alain fan in one way or another, but it is imo pretty over the top that the way Leon wins against him is by essentially just KOing everything with two hits max. (Chesnaught gets 2HKOd by Max Drumbeating + Acrobatics, Malamar gets one shot by charizard's Flamethrower, Mega Zard X gets two shot by Charizard's Ancient Power + Dragon Pulse). It makes for an incredibly boring way for the character to be strong where he's just good at battling because the writers conviniently agree that he should deal so much damage while taking very little.

I know that this may sound like its asking much from the anime, but the fact that the opening ceremony of Gen 8's final tournament was made completely underwhelming and boring to watch just to hype up Leon's status kind of shows the issue with how he is written, and if they need to downplay XY's "big strong guy who went up against actual legendaries" just to prove how strong Leon is by comparison, then they didn't write Leon to be a strong character, they just ended up writing Alain to be out of character instead. (Conversely I think that this should be exactly what the game did instead with Eternatus - having the whole game tell you that "Charizard is undefeated" only for Eternatus to roll in at the climax and KO charizard would have been a great payoff to set the stakes)

And the episode right after that, with Diantha vs Lance, did show the two of them having actual strategy put into their games. Imo it would've been much more interesting if the reason Leon is the world champion was because he was good at adapting to each challanger rather than just dealing massive damage - It'd be a lot more interesting to watch and feel way less like plot convinience if the dude analysed his matches and came up with new strategies on the spot. Recently an anime interview revealed that (at least the anime interation of) Leon has never had more than two of his Pokémon faint in a battle and imo that just furthers my point that he's just made out to be strong in possibly the most boring way possible.

I feel like Charizard is honestly the perfect fit for Leon's ace - they're both pretty cool on their own right but the franchise's overexposure of them makes me really tired of them. Leon is also the only trainer whose outfit is available in Pokémon Unite fwiw


At the end of the day I suppose my biggest gripe with leon is that he feels like an OC that I'd make when I was 10. He's the strongest trainer in the whole world, he never lost more than two Pokémon in a match, his strongest Pokémon is an undefeated Charizard, he is unbeatable and he is straight out of a fancfic.
Remember Drake and his Dragonite from the Orange Island League?

How it flew past Ash and Co. so fast?

How it treated Team Rocket as a weak distraction than a threat before tossing them aside?

How it beat down half of Ash's team including Charizard and Pikachu only barely won?

No empty words and vague explanations were used. Just constant displays of raw power.

Drake demands more respect than Leon.
 
I'm not sure how much of a hot take this is but

View attachment 449168


This dude himself is something that annoys me in Pokémon. I should probably preface this post by clarifying that I do like Leon's personality, but what annoys me moreso is just how he is treated by the franchise in general.

Right off the bat they introduce him as "The strongest trainer in the entire world!" whichin itself isn't really an issue but imo the problem is that they don't explore this. The games and the anime both keep telling you that he is the strongest trainer in the world but they never really bother exploring how he got to that spot or how he manages to keep his title for so long.

Speaking of the anime, to give credit where its due they do make him have a pretty likeable personality, but imo the whole "strongest ever" concept is even worse there than in the games., and imo this is perfectly illustrated on his battle vs Alain. I'm not particularly an alain fan in one way or another, but it is imo pretty over the top that the way Leon wins against him is by essentially just KOing everything with two hits max. (Chesnaught gets 2HKOd by Max Drumbeating + Acrobatics, Malamar gets one shot by charizard's Flamethrower, Mega Zard X gets two shot by Charizard's Ancient Power + Dragon Pulse). It makes for an incredibly boring way for the character to be strong where he's just good at battling because the writers conviniently agree that he should deal so much damage while taking very little.

I know that this may sound like its asking much from the anime, but the fact that the opening ceremony of Gen 8's final tournament was made completely underwhelming and boring to watch just to hype up Leon's status kind of shows the issue with how he is written, and if they need to downplay XY's "big strong guy who went up against actual legendaries" just to prove how strong Leon is by comparison, then they didn't write Leon to be a strong character, they just ended up writing Alain to be out of character instead. (Conversely I think that this should be exactly what the game did instead with Eternatus - having the whole game tell you that "Charizard is undefeated" only for Eternatus to roll in at the climax and KO charizard would have been a great payoff to set the stakes)

And the episode right after that, with Diantha vs Lance, did show the two of them having actual strategy put into their games. Imo it would've been much more interesting if the reason Leon is the world champion was because he was good at adapting to each challanger rather than just dealing massive damage - It'd be a lot more interesting to watch and feel way less like plot convinience if the dude analysed his matches and came up with new strategies on the spot. Recently an anime interview revealed that (at least the anime interation of) Leon has never had more than two of his Pokémon faint in a battle and imo that just furthers my point that he's just made out to be strong in possibly the most boring way possible.

I feel like Charizard is honestly the perfect fit for Leon's ace - they're both pretty cool on their own right but the franchise's overexposure of them makes me really tired of them. Leon is also the only trainer whose outfit is available in Pokémon Unite fwiw


At the end of the day I suppose my biggest gripe with leon is that he feels like an OC that I'd make when I was 10. He's the strongest trainer in the whole world, he never lost more than two Pokémon in a match, his strongest Pokémon is an undefeated Charizard, he is unbeatable and he is straight out of a fancfic.
I think Leon is ok in SwSh and a fun guy in the anime, but my biggest problem with him is that he is just way too OP in the anime specifically.

Granted, we have seen many OP trainers in the anime previously like Cynthia, Steven, etc. However, even these powerful trainers have been shown to struggle at some points in battle, which is actually evident this season. Cynthia's battle vs Iris for example wasn't exactly a walk in the park for her.

I do find it very ironic though that Leon's battle vs Alain was kind of a repeat of Alain's battle with Trevor, to just show how OP both trainers were in their respective seasons. I am actually very disappointed they brought back Alain for him to be thrashed so easily. He was the only one of the Master's 8 trainers who wasn't a champion, so I thought they'd do something more with him, maybe have an epsiode w/ him training with Ash or something, but we got nothing. Maybe they will do something with him later in the season but I doubt it.

At the very least, Leon is pretty cool when he's not battling. I did like the one episode where he went training with Ash and changed his plans on the fly to account for his poor sense of direction lol. It does show his flaws quite well, but also shows how adaptable he is to a given situation (which we actually see in battle too where he is able to react and counter his opponents strategies quite well).

I don't actually mind too much that his main Pokemon is Charizard. All things considered, the lizard is a solid Pokemon, and its Gigantimax is quite fun to use due to the massive amount of passive damage it can inflict on the foe.
 

churine

lunatic+
is a Smogon Discord Contributor Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnus
one of the things that annoy me about more recent pokemon games (like dpp/bw onwards) is that only evolved forms of certain pokemon exist in the wild and in order to get their pre evo you need to breed. i understand it makes sense gameplay wise cause people always go why doesnt x mon like loudred evolve already if its at level 50 but can evolve at level 40 for example. when i play these games i casually approach trying to complete the regional dex if im bored and so i prefer catching a pokemons unevolved form then evolving it to more effeciently fill out the pokedex but this whole thing puts a dent in that plan really. i understand for baby pokemon that this can be the case but im talking normal unevolved mons here.

i think this started happening in dpp where in the postgame you can find evolved forms of wild pokemon but their pre evos were either rarer or required breeding but it came into full by bw/bw2. bw2 is pretty noteworthy where you have pokemon like blitzle and golett which dont appear in the wild anywhere as only their evolved forms do. banette is a particularly funny case in that you can find it in the wild at around level 32 which is lower than the level shuppet evolves at, but you need to breed banette to get shuppet which is just like, why not have it as a shuppet instead, banette already appears in victory road anyways. some more mons in bw2 that do this include pelipper, drifblim, piloswine, metang, and a bunch of swarm pokemon. the swarm pokemon are pretty inconsistent too in that while they appear at around levels 40-55, they can either be unevolved like pineco, slowpoke, and natu, or fully evolved like fearow, hippowdon, and swalot, not even to mention that theyre a greater offender by being swarms and so they only have one area to spawn in, especially when all i need to do is level them up once to evolve which is faster with audino grinding than it is to hatch an egg.

again i understand why this is the case but it puts extra steps into completing the pokedex when it doesnt need to be. if a given area is the first area an evolutionary line appears in the game, imo that line should need to spawn the unevolved form first, thats how they did it in the early gens.
 
*two paragraphs about taxonomy*
So... the term "Legendary Pokémon" is a common name akin to "polecat"? I guess this makes sense.

Let's change the subject to stat-enhancing items, held items that affect a particular stat of a Pokémon and generally have effects only when used on certain species of Pokémon.
I'm talking about Pikachu's Light Ball, the Farfetch'd line's Leek, the Cubone line's Thick Club, Clamperl's Deep Sea Tooth, Lati@s' Soul Dew, that kind of items. Look at the corresponding Pokémon's Smogon Dex entries, you are going to see them a few times. Some are more useful than others, and sometimes it depends on the generation (RIP Soul Dew's viability), but there are three of these that are just plain useless: the Lucky Punch and Ditto's Powders.
1661596252721.png
The Lucky Punch is an item that increases the critical hit ratio by two stages, much like the Leek. Unlike the Leek however, it is exclusive to Chansey. Not the Chansey line, just Chansey.
What's the problem, you may ask? Well, when the Leek/Stick item was introduced, Farfetch'd has an Attack stat of 65 (90 from Gen VII onwards) and a Sp. Attack stat of 58. Not good, but there's a clear intent in making it an offensive Pokémon with a good offensive moveset.

When held items are introduced, Chansey has an Attack stat of 5 and a Sp. Attack stat of 35. These are pathetic offensive stats, and no, Seismic Toss can't inflict critical hits. And for some reason, it can't be used by Blissey, which has a relatively usable Sp. Attack of 75.

Chansey is clearly not meant to be an offensive Pokémon, not after Gen I at least. Chansey is a support Pokémon, it's here to take hits and use Status moves, not deal critical hits. And since the item is never seen in the anime or manga or other media, I am left wondering, "What's the point of this item? Flavor, maybe, since Chansey is a lucky Pokémon, but why don't have it appear in other media?"
This item makes me mad. :changry:

1661596349064.png
The Metal Powder is a held item introduced in Generation II and was actually Ditto's held item in its GSC analysis. In this generation, it increased Ditto's Defense and Sp. Defense by 50%, even when transformed. This doesn't make Ditto viable, but the 50% Defense and Sp. Defense increases even when transformed (remember this) look nice.
Then came Pokémon Stadium 2, which changed this item's effect for the worst:
Bulbapedia said:
Metal Powder only increases Ditto's Defense and Special Defense when it is not transformed.
What the heck!? Basically, if you use Transform, you become your opponent's Pokémon with no functional held item and a likely lower HP stat. This blows, and the item does not get better in subsequent Generations:
Bulbapedia said:
Generation III onward
If held by a Ditto, doubles its Defense stat. It does not work when Ditto is transformed.
And so, the Metal Powder is now pointless because of Ditto's new Impostor Ability, the reason why this Pokémon is usable now. Because Ditto now transforms the moment it enters the battlefield, Metal Powder won't have any effect.
But wait, there's more! Ditto gained another bad exclusive item in DPPt!
1661596271465.png
The Quick Powder is an item introduced in Generation IV that doubles Ditto's Speed stat. This sounds awesome! It's like a stronger Choice Scarf that doesn't force you to use only one move!
Bulbapedia said:
If held by a Ditto, doubles its Speed stat. It does not work when Ditto is transformed.
Are you serious? Are you fucking serious?
My guess is that you are supposed to use either item to facilitate Ditto's use of the Transform move with a choice between increased defenses and increased speed, but in exchange, you effectively are itemless upon Transforming.
The big problem is that Ditto is a gimmick Pokémon with shitty base stats in its basic blob form. 48 in any stat is awful. Impostor is why Ditto is viable because it won't be forced to spend one turn with crappy stats, and the Powder have no effect on Transformed Ditto!
These items make me sad. :psysad: And mad. :changry:
 
I'm not sure how much of a hot take this is but

View attachment 449168


This dude himself is something that annoys me in Pokémon. I should probably preface this post by clarifying that I do like Leon's personality, but what annoys me moreso is just how he is treated by the franchise in general.

Right off the bat they introduce him as "The strongest trainer in the entire world!" whichin itself isn't really an issue but imo the problem is that they don't explore this. The games and the anime both keep telling you that he is the strongest trainer in the world but they never really bother exploring how he got to that spot or how he manages to keep his title for so long.

Speaking of the anime, to give credit where its due they do make him have a pretty likeable personality, but imo the whole "strongest ever" concept is even worse there than in the games., and imo this is perfectly illustrated on his battle vs Alain. I'm not particularly an alain fan in one way or another, but it is imo pretty over the top that the way Leon wins against him is by essentially just KOing everything with two hits max. (Chesnaught gets 2HKOd by Max Drumbeating + Acrobatics, Malamar gets one shot by charizard's Flamethrower, Mega Zard X gets two shot by Charizard's Ancient Power + Dragon Pulse). It makes for an incredibly boring way for the character to be strong where he's just good at battling because the writers conviniently agree that he should deal so much damage while taking very little.

I know that this may sound like its asking much from the anime, but the fact that the opening ceremony of Gen 8's final tournament was made completely underwhelming and boring to watch just to hype up Leon's status kind of shows the issue with how he is written, and if they need to downplay XY's "big strong guy who went up against actual legendaries" just to prove how strong Leon is by comparison, then they didn't write Leon to be a strong character, they just ended up writing Alain to be out of character instead. (Conversely I think that this should be exactly what the game did instead with Eternatus - having the whole game tell you that "Charizard is undefeated" only for Eternatus to roll in at the climax and KO charizard would have been a great payoff to set the stakes)

And the episode right after that, with Diantha vs Lance, did show the two of them having actual strategy put into their games. Imo it would've been much more interesting if the reason Leon is the world champion was because he was good at adapting to each challanger rather than just dealing massive damage - It'd be a lot more interesting to watch and feel way less like plot convinience if the dude analysed his matches and came up with new strategies on the spot. Recently an anime interview revealed that (at least the anime interation of) Leon has never had more than two of his Pokémon faint in a battle and imo that just furthers my point that he's just made out to be strong in possibly the most boring way possible.

I feel like Charizard is honestly the perfect fit for Leon's ace - they're both pretty cool on their own right but the franchise's overexposure of them makes me really tired of them. Leon is also the only trainer whose outfit is available in Pokémon Unite fwiw


At the end of the day I suppose my biggest gripe with leon is that he feels like an OC that I'd make when I was 10. He's the strongest trainer in the whole world, he never lost more than two Pokémon in a match, his strongest Pokémon is an undefeated Charizard, he is unbeatable and he is straight out of a fancfic.
OK, this just got worse in the last episode.

Goodra also faints against rillaboom. (who btw destroyed tyrantrum, aurorus and gourgeist as well) It wasn't even his ace that took out four of diantha's mons! Remember how alain defeated the same rillaboom that also GIGANTAMAXED with only one down.
My boy Alain had it easy...
 

DrCoeloCephalo

Banned deucer.
When I'm watching a Nuzlocke and the person is very overlevelled. Part of the fun is the suspense, wondering whether all their Pokémon will survive. There's no suspense in watching a level 33 Excadrill with Earthquake and Rock Slide steamrolling Elesa.
Well, technically if you just DO NOT add a level cap, you can just train to 100 and sweep the entire game. That is why nuzlockes need a leveling rule.
I talked about this earlier on this thread. Just play another monster collector at that point since no other game seems to suffer from getting too much EXP at once, level growth is better balanced and slower and the games are designed to destroy bad teambuilds even at max level. If Pokemon actually respected its own worldbuilding, it'd be the same since they put such an emphasis on how being a Trainer is a rough, serious life and only the best of the best are expected to get anywhere from training their monsters hard.
 
Idk to me it makes perfect sense from a world-building perspective that you can't neatly fit all legendary Pokemon into some kind of taxonomical classification. In any given game, the player character basically becomes the foremost expert on the legendary Pokemon of that region, with other characters (even professors) only really knowing what they've heard through myths and folk tales. Adding all these little twists on what being a legendary Pokemon entails adds to their mystery and reflects real life pretty well.

As a comparison, the modern definitions of 'mammal' range between somewhat arbitrary ("Mammalia is defined by its ancestry as the taxon originating with the most recent common ancestor of extant Monotremata and Theria") and wildly unintuitive to a layperson ( "Synapsids that possess a dentary–squamosal jaw articulation and occlusion between upper and lower molars with a transverse component to the movement"). Seems pretty reasonable to me that a group of rarely-seen god-like creatures would end up being classified based on vibes rather than some intuitive objective standard.
Monster Hunter have pretty much the same thing with Elder Dragons, i.e. Monsters shrouded in myth, relatively unknown to science besides being extremely powerful, and all part of the same classification despite looking completely different to one another alongside Monsters that are borderline Elders with different classifications like Rajang, Akantor, Gore Magala, Raviente, and Ahtal-Ka. Think like how Solgaleo, Lunala, and Necrozma are the only Ultra Beasts that are legendaries and the rest of the Beasts are powerful enough to rival legendaries.
 
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Going through some of my posts on other sites reminded me of something.
Childhood is idolizing Pokemon Adventures violence.

Adulthood is realizing that Pokemon Origins and Generations have violence that made sense within the confides of the Pokemon Universe, except for Squirtle biting the shit out of Charmander; nothing like that ever happens again and I think it was added just for shock value.
Wtf was even that Squirtle biting scene? You never see anything that again in Origins and feels like it was added as a hook to keep people invested. Like I remember in Generations Bryce kicking Plasma grunts and Essentia kicking Mimi, but you don't see stuff like Charamander screaming bloody murder in its first battle anywhere else.
 

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