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Unpopular opinions
- Thread starter antemortem
- Start date
Detective Pikachu I also think fell into some common trappings with "Pokemon if Real!" art designs, in that they didn't really seem like they redesigned the Pokemon so much as edited a few features. Like, Mr. Mime they basically reduced some of the "fat" in his design to give him a more human face, as opposed to trying to retain the aesthetic of the Pokemon concept which was a rounded and funny Clown guy. Ludicolo falls into a similar trapping by just throwing the wet "hair/feather" look and the cross-eyed expression. The colors aren't particularly vibrant and there's nothing peppy or goofy about how this arguably-stereotypical Hispanic Hat Dancing Duck Kappa looks.
Bulbasaur and Greninja handle this a bit better, giving them more real-world Texturing but retaining more or less the same color scheme, and I think most importantly, the faces were kept in proportion with the rest of the look without adding unnecessary detail. Mr. Mime's face is basically a human one on top of the body shape, so it evokes the uncanny valley a lot harder than "real-ified" versions of distinctly non-human Creatures, doubly so when adding things like brow furrowing but retaining the lack of a nose.
The only Pokemon for whom I kind of let this slide is Mewtwo, since the Manmade origin of the Pokemon sort of benefits from the uncanny and unnatural air the detail gives off.
Bulbasaur and Greninja handle this a bit better, giving them more real-world Texturing but retaining more or less the same color scheme, and I think most importantly, the faces were kept in proportion with the rest of the look without adding unnecessary detail. Mr. Mime's face is basically a human one on top of the body shape, so it evokes the uncanny valley a lot harder than "real-ified" versions of distinctly non-human Creatures, doubly so when adding things like brow furrowing but retaining the lack of a nose.
The only Pokemon for whom I kind of let this slide is Mewtwo, since the Manmade origin of the Pokemon sort of benefits from the uncanny and unnatural air the detail gives off.
I am perfectly fine with their choices of Fairy type retcons. All of them were either single-typed Pokemon that got Fairy added as a 2nd type(Igglybuff/Jiggypuff/Wigglytuff, Mime Jr./Mr. Mime Azurill/Marill/Azumarill, Ralts/Kirlia/Gardevoir, Mawile, Cottonee/Whimsicott), or a Normal type that had it's Normal typing swapped out for Fairy(Cleffa/Clefairy/Clefable, Togepi/Togetic/Togekiss, Snubbull/Granbull). They intentionally left out ones that could potentially be overpowering(Chansey and many Single-typed Legendary/Mythical Pokemon) or would require swapping out a type that was not Normal(Lots of them I could list that fans wanted, most commonly stuff like like Gallade) so as not to disrupt their STAB options too much. Also for Normal type, which lost 8 Pokemon, they made sure to add exactly 8 new Normal types in Gen VI so at least the number would stay the same instead of going down. Additionally, the only moves to be retconned to Fairy type were three normal-type status moves introduced in Gen II(Charm, Moonlight, and Sweet Kiss) and they simply created a whole line-up of brand new damage moves for the type.
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I feel like this is at least in part a response to what I said in the other thread, but the only Legendary/Mythical Pokemon that you can unambiguously argue from a design standpoint should be Fairy-type are the Lake Trio (and possibly Manaphy but I'll concede that balance is at least a question in its case). I don't think that any of the Lake trio would be even close to overpowered with Fairy-typing added. You've got your pick of a faster Lele with way less team support and less hitting power, a wall with no recovery, and... whatever role it is Mesprit is supposed to fill (AKA also outclassed by Lele, and probably Gardevoir too). None of these Pokemon would suddenly be broken if they gained Fairy-typing, however they would be a little bit better.
There are other legendaries/mythicals I think you could argue should logically be Fairy-types (Celebi, Jirachi, and Manaphy specifically) but at least there are valid concerns there, with Celebi and Jirachi already being dual-typed Pokemon and possible balance concerns around giving Manaphy, already a fantastic Pokemon, Water/Fairy typing. I think you'd be hard-pressed to raise similar concerns about the Lake Trio, however.
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I disagree slightly on Gallade but idk how much that is just me wanting a new and novel typing in Fairy/Fighting vs the redundant Psychic/Fighting, which it shares with Medicham (and Mega Medicham and Mewtwo for extra redundancy). The fey, empathic qualities of Ralts et al are equally in tune with Fairy as they are with Psychic. But Gallade's Psychic side is rather underdeveloped - it's mentioned in a couple of Pokedex entries, but only passingly:
HGSS dex entry: Because it can sense what its foe is thinking, its attacks burst out first, fast, and fierce.
Shield: Sharply attuned to others' wishes for help, this Pokemon seeks out those in need and aids them in battle.
Only the former explicitly suggests Psychic abilities - the latter only really screams "Psychic" with context. It could just as easily apply to Cobalion or Lucario. Gallade leans much more into the Fighting side than Psychic, which isn't entirely atypical for dual-typed mons. But Gallade tacks to one side more than most.
Probably because that was the primary difference between Gardevoir and Gallade that could be seen by casual players at first glance when it was first made available in Gen IV. Ralts, Kirlia, and Gardevoir were pure Psychic, and Gallade was Psychic/Fighting, so the dex entries would put a massive emphasis on its new type that the other members of the family lacked.
I feel like Blissey actually prefers being Normal instead of Fairy, since special Fighting stab isn't really much of a thing.
Gallade being male-only. They introduced the Ralts line in Gen 3, and made it a 50/50 gender split. Cool, some people joke about male Gardevoir, but they can be ignored. WHY, then, when they introduce a Gardevoir counterpart, is it male-only? Either make the evolutions both gender-exclusive, or, preferably, make both of them ignore gender. Doing it halfway is just odd.
Reminds me of chuggaaconroy's Pokémon Emerald let's play, where people in the comments of one video insisted that Gardevoir couldn't be male and Magneton had Levitate.
Most of the buffs people suggest for the Ice-type either wouldn't actually matter much, or wouldn't make much sense from a flavor standpoint. The single biggest buff Ice needs is a design philosophy change; instead of slow, bulky Pokemon like Avalugg, Regice, Glastier, etc., Ice needs more fast offensive Pokemon like Weavile and Darmanitan and... wait, there basically are no other fast offensive Ice-types, and that's the problem. Ice is garbage defensively but very solid offensively, but offensive Ice-types are few and far between, and often fall into the typical Ice-type trap of having a slow, awkward stat spread. The few Ice-types that are designed as fast, offensive Pokemon prove that Ice has a ton of potential as a type, it just needs more Pokemon who are designed around that potential.
I also consider Rock to generally be as bad if not slightly worse than Ice in practice, at least in modern metagames. More weaknesses, half the resistances it does have are basically irrelevant, and Rock-types are often saddled with a similar design philosophy of being slow and bulky, which also doesn't mesh well with their type match-ups. Even the few Rock-types that do succeed arguably do so in spite of their Rock typing, not because of it (I would argue that Tyranitar, for instance, would be even better if it was, like, Ground/Dark or Dragon/Dark or something).
I also consider Rock to generally be as bad if not slightly worse than Ice in practice, at least in modern metagames. More weaknesses, half the resistances it does have are basically irrelevant, and Rock-types are often saddled with a similar design philosophy of being slow and bulky, which also doesn't mesh well with their type match-ups. Even the few Rock-types that do succeed arguably do so in spite of their Rock typing, not because of it (I would argue that Tyranitar, for instance, would be even better if it was, like, Ground/Dark or Dragon/Dark or something).
Alolan Ninetails, Jynx, Froslass and Cryogonal are also fast.
Galarian Mr. Mime, Articuno, Mamoswine, Vanilluxe, and Kyurem also have a decent base Speed stat.
You're right, and it has a solid niche in OU as a support Pokemon, but that's almost entirely because of Aurora Veil. It's not really an offensive Pokemon with 81 base Sp. Atk.
95 base Speed is below average, and it doesn't have anything like Gorilla Tactics (which lets Darmanitan run a Scarf almost for free) to make up for it.
Again, not really offensive Pokemon.
All of these are noticeably below average speed, except I guess Kyurem, who, again, is a fantastic Pokemon so that kind of proves my point. Most certainly none of them qualify as fast offensive Pokemon.
I did specify fast offensive Pokemon, not just fast Pokemon in general. Things like Froslass and Ninetales don't have have enough offensive presence to leverage Ice as a typing (which kind of sucks, because Froslass's typing in particular would be pretty scary if it had the stats to back it up).
I will defend Cryogonal until I die.
- Levitate makes it easier for it to switch in. I mainly use it to remove hazards, so it doesn't have to worry about most of them. Also, Haze.
- It's a monotype Gen 5 Pokémon with actual coverage! Granted, it won't get much use out of Solar Beam, but Flash Cannon and Ancient Power are something. (RIP Signal Beam 2002 - 2019)
- It got a stat buff in Gen 7, so that's nice.
- It's partially based on Nordic ice giants, and that's awesome.
To each their own, but Cryogonal's coverage leaves it walled by Steels and any Fire-type that can take an Ancient Power, a problem exacerbated by its disappointing base 95 Sp. Atk. It's not a terrible hazard remover, but the Ice type isn't doing it any favors in that regard (and neither is Levitate honesty, since the Stealth Rock weakness kind of forces it to run Heavy-Duty Boots anyways), and between its mediocre Sp. Atk, bad coverage, and support-oriented movepool, it still doesn't fall into that category of fast offensive Pokemon I was talking about.
Idk how unpopular an opinion this is, but my hot take of the day is this: we don't need any more Pokeballs.
Item bloat is often talked about as a problem in this series and in nothing is that more evident than the sheer amount of Pokeball variants we have. Except, unlike with redundant items from older games, they can't be hidden away in the coding since Pokemon will retain them on their status screen in perpetuity. There's an impressive amount of variety, but we've got enough for pretty much every scenario.
And yet, going into Gen IX, we've got 38 Pokeball types*. Enough. So many of them are redundant, such as the Dive Ball. Possibly the best example of ball redundancy, because it literally took one game to become so. Since FRLG did not feature the ability to dive**, the Dive Ball works as a regular Pokeball. Later games without diving give it a catch modifier on water tiles, but since the vast majority of Pokemon found on water tiles are of the Water type it's functionally no different to using a Net Ball.
Some of the legacy ball variants are just plain unneeded. The Sport Ball, which in HGSS had the same level of efficiency as a Great Ball, now works identically to a Pokeball. It has no purpose except to look funky and different - but if it's just a glorified Pokeball, there's no point adding it back to the game data. Give it a new function or don't bother.
On the one hand it's nice that every ball has been made available, since so many would otherwise be exclusive to older titles. I certainly appreciated the re-addition of the Apricorn Balls in Gen VII, since most of those do have niche and useful catch effects. But the uselessness of some of the older balls demonstrates in my opinion why new balls are not needed - special cases like the Beast Ball aside. We really do have enough.
*though not all of these carry forward - no Pokemon can be in a Park Ball, and it remains to be seen if the L:A Pokeballs will be maintained
**amusingly, a trainer on Route 19 in RBYFRLG states that "I tried diving for POKEMON, but it was a no go! [...] You have to fish for sea POKEMON!" Maybe Kanto and Johto's seas are more inhospitable than Hoenn's...
Item bloat is often talked about as a problem in this series and in nothing is that more evident than the sheer amount of Pokeball variants we have. Except, unlike with redundant items from older games, they can't be hidden away in the coding since Pokemon will retain them on their status screen in perpetuity. There's an impressive amount of variety, but we've got enough for pretty much every scenario.
And yet, going into Gen IX, we've got 38 Pokeball types*. Enough. So many of them are redundant, such as the Dive Ball. Possibly the best example of ball redundancy, because it literally took one game to become so. Since FRLG did not feature the ability to dive**, the Dive Ball works as a regular Pokeball. Later games without diving give it a catch modifier on water tiles, but since the vast majority of Pokemon found on water tiles are of the Water type it's functionally no different to using a Net Ball.
Some of the legacy ball variants are just plain unneeded. The Sport Ball, which in HGSS had the same level of efficiency as a Great Ball, now works identically to a Pokeball. It has no purpose except to look funky and different - but if it's just a glorified Pokeball, there's no point adding it back to the game data. Give it a new function or don't bother.
On the one hand it's nice that every ball has been made available, since so many would otherwise be exclusive to older titles. I certainly appreciated the re-addition of the Apricorn Balls in Gen VII, since most of those do have niche and useful catch effects. But the uselessness of some of the older balls demonstrates in my opinion why new balls are not needed - special cases like the Beast Ball aside. We really do have enough.
*though not all of these carry forward - no Pokemon can be in a Park Ball, and it remains to be seen if the L:A Pokeballs will be maintained
**amusingly, a trainer on Route 19 in RBYFRLG states that "I tried diving for POKEMON, but it was a no go! [...] You have to fish for sea POKEMON!" Maybe Kanto and Johto's seas are more inhospitable than Hoenn's...
Kanto's high amount of Poison is acknowledged in canon? Whoa.
Presumably they’re still there because it might cause issues transferring Pokemon in those balls forward and its just easier to have them in the code.
Tbh I believe the Pokemon games have a lot of random "legacy data" in them just for ease of copypasted code and ID sustainability.
Es, afaik gen 8 id lists still have things like Z crystals, Z moves, megastones, even hidden power, simply cause it helps keeping porting forward when you're still sticking with the same lists/data, even if they don't get used anymore.
(Some bits of code can also just be leftovers of beta features, es maybe other type of Pokeballs were originally supposed to be in L.A., then they decided to not have them but they had already made the code for the functionality so just left it there to not mess with the data)
While i do agree that ice types should be designed like glass canon instead of a wall or tank. Ice type still needs resistances to switch in or set up.
Ice being resistant water and grass makes perfect sense.
Best buff rock could get is having more accurate moves. Why all good rock types have low accuracy?
Also i don't why rock doesn't resist rock and bug types.
I don't think TTar would have been better as a Dragon/Dark Type. Defensive they are kinda equal but offensively rock/dark is way more potent than dragon/dark.
Tbh probably because their effects are actually stronger then average.
Rock Slide notably being a high BP flinch *spread* move has made it a rolling meme when it comes to official competitions, to the point I suspect one of the reasons for Dynamax having flinch immunity was to prevent the same "everyone runs rock slides" and having games decided on who gets more flinches off it.
On a related note gf fucked some type comninations by designing them as a polar oppolar opposite to their types. The only electric/poison type Toxtricity is a special wallbreaker meanwhile electric/poison is a great defensive type. Same with the only ice/ground type mamoswine. It should have been a glass canon instead of a tank.
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