• Check out the relaunch of our general collection, with classic designs and new ones by our very own Pissog!

Unpopular opinions

KalosianPorygon said:
Sorry, but I hated the very ending of the FRLG chapter. The "heroes are turned into stone" part.
And Sird is the worst villain of all official Pokémon media, and part of why I don't like the "villain with mysterious motivations" trope.
Click to expand...
I think Sird’s fine. It was interesting to see the infighting between the Rocket admins which also prevented the final segment from being a “boss rush” which is never fun in written form, with the other two admins ending up fighting Sird the story is free to focus on just Giovanni followed by Sird as the final battles rather than all four. I do agree that Red and Yellow turning to stone is weird and unnecessary, surely they could have come up with a better way to get the RBY protags to appear at the end of Emerald than the deus ex machina that is petrification.
 
Ooh, manga discussion let's go!


tier list pokemon adventures arcs.png


- I have this old tierlist I made and most of it still holds up. Although nowdays I'd swap DP with RS, bc the characterization it did for the Sinnoh story is just genius, and I'd also swap ORAS and BW2 (literally trash vs garbage).

- I find it ironic that Sapphire is supposed to specialize in conquering gyms (battles), and Ruby is supposed to be the coordinator, but Brendan seems perfectly skilled in both contests and battles, to the point it could beat a trained (thanks, ORAS...) Salamence and capture a Celebi even with his early team (thanks, ending of RS). It sucks to admit but I don't like what the RS arc turned into later, although it still manages to reach some of the highest highs in Adventures.

- FRLG still holds up as my favorite of the arcs, everyone gets their moment to shine in different ways. Red vs Giovanni 2, Silver revealed as Giovanni's son for the first time ever in any media, Yellow going overdrive, Green getting her parents back, even the ending was a dramatic way to close this (although it raises the question how tf a Darkrai can pertrify people).

- The next arc, Emerald, begins very slow and I can understand people getting impatient specially with how FRLG ended, but Emerald's backstory and development pays off better and the second half, and we get the closest to an avengers endgame moment in the end. Plus, it's the most accurate representation of the Battle Frontier, so cool points for that.

- Sird is such a huge disappointment, not in FRLG/DP tho, but the fact that this villain was built up for two arcs as an evil manuipulator and then she just...dissapears forever is such a disservice. But hey, maybe she can still come back, like the first Deoxys in ORAS, but the excitement is not gonna be the same...

- I may be mean towards Gen 6 and Kalos as a whole but PLEASE give XY arc a chance if you haven't to. I'm pretty disappointed that SM didn't do much to improve the lacking points and the result was just kinda the same story as the games (I love the alola games tho), with two protags with little traits aside from the guy being greedy and the girl being good at everything and anything. SWSH seems to follow this same direction but I like the extra bit of focus Bede gets.
 
Here's an unpopular opinion: SM is an okay story by RPG standards that stands out more because mainline Pokemon plots in general tend to be weak, and is still bogged down storytelling-wise by franchise tropes and incompetent presentation/QoL implementations that games have known about and/or dealt with since 2001.


Sonikku A said:
Hareta's manga is better than Adventures/SPE DP manga :psysly:
Click to expand...
Oh hey someone besides me who read this one.
 
pika pal said:
Here's an unpopular opinion: SM is an okay story by RPG standards that stands out more because mainline Pokemon plots in general tend to be weak, and is still bogged down storytelling-wise by franchise tropes and incompetent presentation/QoL implementations that games have known about and/or dealt with since 2001.
Click to expand...
This, so much!

As much as I like most of SM’s characters, I can’t help but feel that the pacing and how Hau is handled would be done better. There’s also the fact that the player tend to be railroaded by having an evil team, the Island Trials, and Aether Foundation + Ultra Beasts in one storyline, leaving little to no breather. Other than Lusamine’s peak moment and the Ultra Beast’s involvement, the adventure is just as lighthearted as your typical mainline Pokémon adventure.
 
Coronis said:
I mean I don’t think thats really unpopular tbh, when Gen 7 first released that was pretty much the entire commentary on the ingame. “Great story…… for a Pokemon game”
Click to expand...
Honestly while I use the term "okay" for it, I don't think it's very good even in the context of what Pokemon can pull off, and I cite it as unpopular because I remember outcry about how much worse USUM were written, when frankly the originals weren't particularly competent narratives to begin with. Most of the praise tends to center around Lusamine and Lillie, but the rest of the narrative doesn't really do a whole lot to maintain the bar people set based on a couple characters, and it's to the point the latter one is really let down by the Player character having to exist.

I say it stands out from the often-mediocre plots of most Pokemon games, but frankly that's more a condemnation of them than a praise of SM. BW and the Mystery Dungeon games all clearly demonstrate the series is capable of integrating the protagonist into the plot rather than simply having them watch it unfold... so why was that still what they had you doing with the entirety of Lillie's plot up until the point where someone has to battle?
 
pika pal said:
Here's an unpopular opinion: SM is an okay story by RPG standards that stands out more because mainline Pokemon plots in general tend to be weak, and is still bogged down storytelling-wise by franchise tropes and incompetent presentation/QoL implementations that games have known about and/or dealt with since 2001.



Oh hey someone besides me who read this one.
Click to expand...
I read Diamond and Pearl Adventure! too when I was kid.
 
unknown.png

Megas, in their current state and with the benefit of hindsight were a mistake. There's a world where they were actually properly utilized in boss fights and didn't get cut leading to several Pokemon that really did need them forever being crimped out of key buffs at the mercy of whenever the creators decide to bring them back. That world is not this one. Even if it was, they wouldn't have the immediacy and dependability of cross-gen evos, nor the worldbuilding contributions of regional forms. More Ursalunas and Wyrdeers, less Mega Garchomps por favor.
 
What's so bad about m-manectric, m-glalie, and m-absol? Gonna comment on m-ampharos too and say base ampharos could probably be given the dragon typing

EDIT: image was squashed for me so I missed that ampharos and absol weren't in the same tier as glalie and manectric, whoops
 
Yung Dramps said:
unknown.png

Megas, in their current state and with the benefit of hindsight were a mistake. There's a world where they were actually properly utilized in boss fights and didn't get cut leading to several Pokemon that really did need them forever being crimped out of key buffs at the mercy of whenever the creators decide to bring them back. That world is not this one. Even if it was, they wouldn't have the immediacy and dependability of cross-gen evos, nor the worldbuilding contributions of regional forms. More Ursalunas and Wyrdeers, less Mega Garchomps por favor.
Click to expand...
Dear lords, that’s the most negative rant about Mega Evolution I’ve ever seen in Smogon Forums!

That said, I agree how much of net loss Mega Evolution caused in the long run; it doesn’t help that GF intended it to be one-timer either, making the concept feels more and more insincere, and I’ve seen too little fangames implementing them without significantly rebalancing them, either.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top