And the Kirby fandom took that personally.
Jokes aside, I've wanted to play XD for years, but it's so rare and expensive, plus GameCube games are region-locked so I'm worried I'll accidentally buy a copy I can't play.
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(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon
- Thread starter BriarRose
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Jokes aside, I've wanted to play XD for years, but it's so rare and expensive, plus GameCube games are region-locked so I'm worried I'll accidentally buy a copy I can't play.
That's way more justified in Kirby's case given how it handles its appeal to multiple audiences though.
Kirby is, first and foremost, a series made to be wholesome to a large chunk of demographics. Their focus is on making the worlds colorful and easy to pick up and play. Kids likely don't tend to care about pause screen text. They care about "OH MY GOSH LOOK AT HOW COOL THIS YO-YO IS" or "LOOK AT THAT HUGE BATTLESHIP." Yes, you are conditioned to read pause text to use certain moves like in games to learn the controls, but a good chunk of the Abilities in the older games were very simple before Super Star and Return to Dream Land on buffed them (the latter especially). This is actually a good thing because that means you don't have to stop and read to utilize some of the simpler ones, keeping the pace up. Kirby games tend to have 1-3 minute opening cinematics, and even when they start off with an antagonist invading or causing problems, it usually is juxtaposed by Kirby having fun adventures before being called to action. They have an antagonist, but it's usually an excuse to have fun in a lighthearted world.
After that, until the boss of each world it's just you and a usually happy "sugar bowl" world (and even then, you usually need to clear a few worlds before the story starts moving beyond "fight a boss because videogame," like Kirby: Planet Robobot and Kirby: Star Allies. I mean, yes Planet Robobot has a robotic invasion as thematic window dressing, but there's no tangible person leading them until you find out about Susie and spoiler spoiler spoiler. In some extreme cases there is basically no story "beyond stop this bad guy from doing bad guy things" until the VERY end like in the last world of Kirby Triple Deluxe or in some cases the true final boss like Zero in Kirby's Dream Land 3. This is actually a good thing. Sometimes you just want to go on a power craze with little to justify it beyond the "rule of fun", and that's what makes the games so appealing and accessible. At the same time, they sneak in those story elements for people that see the games to the end with some subtle links to older games. The continuity and darker themes are a reward for people who want to see everything the game has to offer.
A lot of Kirby's lore tends to be hidden behind 100% completion via extra modes like Meta Knightmare and The (True) Arena, modes that are intentionally designed to be harder than the main game. As an adult, former kids might come back and conquer those harder modes when they get better at the game. They might start looking for more depth in their stories and stumble upon the pause text, where Kirby sneaks its hidden dark themes in. Hey, isn't that a cult in Star Allies? What's that scream Marx Soul made and why is it my Kirby game? If those themes were more overt, they would lose their mass appeal, but by having them off to the side in the last, typically hardest moments, you learn to appreciate them. Think Giygas in EarthBound, snuck in at the very end.
In conclusion, Kirby games aim for kid audiences primarily, and aim for adult audiences subtly, and that's why I love the series as an adult, because it sneaks its themes in for those who want them without going HEY MURDER ANGST TRAUMA TRAIN from the very beginning.
After that, until the boss of each world it's just you and a usually happy "sugar bowl" world (and even then, you usually need to clear a few worlds before the story starts moving beyond "fight a boss because videogame," like Kirby: Planet Robobot and Kirby: Star Allies. I mean, yes Planet Robobot has a robotic invasion as thematic window dressing, but there's no tangible person leading them until you find out about Susie and spoiler spoiler spoiler. In some extreme cases there is basically no story "beyond stop this bad guy from doing bad guy things" until the VERY end like in the last world of Kirby Triple Deluxe or in some cases the true final boss like Zero in Kirby's Dream Land 3. This is actually a good thing. Sometimes you just want to go on a power craze with little to justify it beyond the "rule of fun", and that's what makes the games so appealing and accessible. At the same time, they sneak in those story elements for people that see the games to the end with some subtle links to older games. The continuity and darker themes are a reward for people who want to see everything the game has to offer.
A lot of Kirby's lore tends to be hidden behind 100% completion via extra modes like Meta Knightmare and The (True) Arena, modes that are intentionally designed to be harder than the main game. As an adult, former kids might come back and conquer those harder modes when they get better at the game. They might start looking for more depth in their stories and stumble upon the pause text, where Kirby sneaks its hidden dark themes in. Hey, isn't that a cult in Star Allies? What's that scream Marx Soul made and why is it my Kirby game? If those themes were more overt, they would lose their mass appeal, but by having them off to the side in the last, typically hardest moments, you learn to appreciate them. Think Giygas in EarthBound, snuck in at the very end.
In conclusion, Kirby games aim for kid audiences primarily, and aim for adult audiences subtly, and that's why I love the series as an adult, because it sneaks its themes in for those who want them without going HEY MURDER ANGST TRAUMA TRAIN from the very beginning.
I highly recommend you read the spoiler tag above for context on my statement on Pokemon Colosseum if you don't mind Kirby spoilers. In contrast to Kirby, Pokemon Colosseum clearly isn't trying to be your low-key Pokemon game in the introduction where you move to a new area. You start by blowing up a gang's base. You take their prized possession with a wicked smile of triumph. Who WOULDN'T want to know more about that? But it's wasted because the game never expands upon it. Every villain in Pokemon Colosseum has one trait, maybe two if they are lucky.
You can argue the inverse with Kirby: a series you wouldn't expect to have depth ends up having it if you look closely despite seeming simple. It's like the few episodes of Batman: The Brave and the Bold that take on a more somber tone despite having the kid-friendly themes front and center in most other episodes. Kirby villains do tend to get their lore shoved in all at the end, I'll admit that, but if they didn't - if the intro just ended with the Marx Soul scream - then they'd probably lose their all-ages appeal.
A lot of the main series Pokemon games also start out simple, then sneak in their slightly adult themes in the background - that's why Pokemon Black and White is so good when you look closer (in contrast Sun and Moon's idea of "subtle" is BIG EVIL OBVIOUS SLASHER SMILE HI I'M THE VILLAIN - yeah Ghetsis was kind of a jerkwad but he fooled some generic NPCs even if he's probably obviously evil to the player).
Sorry for the long rambling post, I just really love Kirby's approach to story and think the games are wonderful at appealing to all ages. So when a game like Pokemon Colosseum fumbles when it is aiming for an older demographic than the main series, I notice it more.
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In Sword and Shield, Fling could be used with TRs to give you a one-time 130 BP move without any other drawbacks if used with a strong move like Overheat. I thought this would be the case again in Scarlet Violet, but unfortunately, the move does not work with TMs, so you can't give a Pokemon a Hyper Beam TM and have a 150 BP Dark-type move.
I kinda understand this, but it still sucks nonetheless since you have to run useless items like Rare Bone for Fling to only have middling power, which isn't ideal.
I kinda understand this, but it still sucks nonetheless since you have to run useless items like Rare Bone for Fling to only have middling power, which isn't ideal.
But Lusamine isn't meant as a twist villain? I'm confused by what you are saying here
I didn't mean she was a twist villain by that statement. I'm saying the foreshadowing was really unsubtle.
I think the game tries to make you think she is a good person until that moment though. Why else would she be presented as a benevolent president?
okay you know what point taken lmao
I don't know how I forgot about that scene
I'm dumb
Yeah, even without Z-Moves they should at least come up with a way for a Fused Necrozma to become an Ultra Necrozma. Like maybe have a hold item (for now we'll call it the "Zenith Totem") that when held by Fused Necrozma turns "Photon Geyser" into "Light That Burns the Sky" after you knock out an opponent. When you use Light That Burns the Sky, Necrozma turns into Ultra Necrozma to do the attack (or have it fail if used against a Dark-type...), and for the rest of the battle it remains Ultra Necrozma (with "Light That Burns the Sky" turning back into "Photon Geyser"). Since you're losing the Item Slot and have to knock out an opponent first to "charge" the Zenith Totem, I feel its a fair trade off.
"It's bad outside of the extremely busted move that shits on every encounter" is an... interesting take.
A fast Sleeper in Doubles is kind of a big deal when the AI has no way to deal with it and Sleep Clause doesn't exist. I've legit considered moving Skiploom to S in my tier list because it's just that useful.
.....does Pokémon Colosseum aim for an older demographic? Like it's different to the main series but I don't think it's in order to intentionally aim to older kids. Yes it starts with an explosion, but explosions aren't exactly an age-restricted feature of games. And in XD there's a Gloom that uses Sleep Powder on the player character, which the whole "a Pokémon actually using a move on a human" seems to be an imaginary line a lot of fans have decided can only be crossed in fan games due to it being so violent, but I don't think that's ever really been the case anyway. Arguably every encounter in Pokémon Ranger is a human vs Pokémon fight where the Pokémon fights back. Hell, so are the Safari Zones, just Pokémon in the Safari Zones don't fight back they only run away.
I just don't think the train of thought that "Colosseum is cooler" = "Colosseum aims for older audiences" = "Colosseum's story is TERRIBLE and SHALLOW for its target audience" tracks. Kids like cool things, and d'ya know what's cooler than thinking about something with deep meaning? Explosions and violence. Marvel made a multi billion megafranchise out of that.
And that's not to say that Colosseum doesn't have a shallow story, it absolutely does. It's to say that IDK why you're holding it up to a way higher standard than any other Pokémon game just because the player character
There was an interview that Did You Know Gaming translated where the developers of Pokémon Colosseum said they were aiming for teenagers who grew up with the original games.
None of the main games up to that point were exactly peak JRPG storytelling. Gen I basically has no plot and is almost entirely carried by the rival's face-punchable personality being an effective motivator to make you want to keep playing to beat him. Gen II has a plot but it's sloppy and underdeveloped. Gen III also has a plot and it's actually developed, but it's also just kind of goofy and not really deep.
Considering the Colosseum devs basically slapped the story mode together on a super short timeline iirc, they did a competent enough job.
I don’t know if it’d even need to involve that much. I feel like they could just change it to work like Primal Reversion where you have DM/DW Necrozma hold an Ultranecrozium Z (the item could still be given a function even if Z-Moves aren’t present), and it just transforms automatically when it enters battle.
I would like to say that I agree none of the plots save Gen V, VII, and IX are all that deep…and I’m fine with that!
Despite my criticism of Colosseum’s story above, I actually do not mind XD being more in line with the main series or that you play as Michael at all!
Heck you could even make the same claim that the Shadow Lugia intro and the Battle SIM test with Salamence and Metagross are still trying to be “action-packed intro” now that I think about it. Michael is just as mute as Wes so aside from appearance and scooter he’s basically the same silent protagonist in terms of function: you’re still trying to stop an evil organization.
Heck, I think XD is actually darker than Colosseum to some extent. Kidnapping an entire town and impersonating people, how you actually see the Shadow stuff on assembly lines in Cipher Key Lair, stuff like that is great. It definitely feels a lot more higher stakes throughout, even with stuff like the ONBS raid which is essentially the Team Rocket Radio Tower plot if it weren’t a snooze fest and actually interesting!
Despite my criticism of Colosseum’s story above, I actually do not mind XD being more in line with the main series or that you play as Michael at all!
Heck you could even make the same claim that the Shadow Lugia intro and the Battle SIM test with Salamence and Metagross are still trying to be “action-packed intro” now that I think about it. Michael is just as mute as Wes so aside from appearance and scooter he’s basically the same silent protagonist in terms of function: you’re still trying to stop an evil organization.
Heck, I think XD is actually darker than Colosseum to some extent. Kidnapping an entire town and impersonating people, how you actually see the Shadow stuff on assembly lines in Cipher Key Lair, stuff like that is great. It definitely feels a lot more higher stakes throughout, even with stuff like the ONBS raid which is essentially the Team Rocket Radio Tower plot if it weren’t a snooze fest and actually interesting!
Not deep for most of the international market, but if you were Japanese you may recognize the struggled between preserving bodies of water for the wildlife and expanding the land for human development. It's all better explained & in detail in Tama Hero's retro review of Ruby & Sapphire, but to summarize the region Hoenn is based on had a massive controversial dam project occur in one of its bays. Note that during this same time GF were crating and releasing Gen I in Japan, so they were living this (or at least seeing it play out on the news in real time) during the development of the most important project in their life:
The Japanese government and farmers chose to drain the bay to make more land for farmers to produce more food (Japan was struggling to feed all its people but had little land to farm on). However, the bay was a critical wetland for not only fisherman but also the natural ecosystem (a few bird species migrated only there, the natural species there acted altogether as a filter which kept the water clean, and it would disrupt currants meaning nearby bodies of water would stagnate longer). Despite massive protests, the government went ahead with the project and the ecosystem collapsed. In the last part of her review she revealed Japan was in a no-win scenario: Japan loses a billion dollar each year paying fisherman in damages done to the fishing industry, and they can't open the floodgates without wiping out the farms and any other home or business built on that land.
Now knowing this changed my views a bit, or at the very least explained some criticisms I had. I never understood why Team Aqua was solely focused on Pokemon while Team Magma were for people, but now I know it was to reflect this real life event of preserving nature vs human development (whether it was done well is up to opinion; I personally think they made things to simple as well as try to make it so both sides were in the wrong; or at least didn't set up the region to explain both sides extreme behavior).
Honestly the way it's presented in RSE is so badly dumbed down even for a kids' game that I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people in Japan didn't get it either
I think what they needed to do was have a few land reclamations in Hoenn. Have a major one happening east of Slateport (I think geographically that is where the real bay project happened in you roughly aligned Hoenn's map with its real life counterparts) but also have some smaller completed ones around the coast (maybe even have Littleroot be settled on one thus indirectly thrusting the player into the core conflict). While it won't be directly said (though talking with NPCs on Routes and Towns/Cities will reveal it), what happened in real life if happening in Hoenn: Locals including fisherman don't approve of the project due to its environmental damage but the government and businesses are in full support of the project. That is where the two teams come in:
- Team Magma is shadow supported by businesses to assure the project goes unhampered. In a way you could compare what they do to the Pinkertons, they disrupt and intimidate protests while also performing espionage so that the project can more easily acquire (land) rights & resources. Archie's family would have been migrant farmers and grew up in near poverty, thus his view is that more land means more opportunity and less people suffering. However with Team Aqua making things difficult and the dam project at a near halt because of it, it escalates to them deciding to take control of Groudon so that they can create land anywhere they wish.
- Team Aqua are made up of fishermen and environmentalists who have decided the only way to save the ecosystem is by becoming environmental extremists/terrorists. It's obvious the government isn't going to listen to them, so they start sabotaging the project both physically and financially, tampering with equipment and secretly working with communities to make it tougher for the project to secure rights & resources (if not outright be hostile). Maxie is from a fishing family, he himself a fisherman before another land reclamation project forced him and many other fisherman he knew to retire; watching the beautiful shores he once fished from become an industrial wasteland. To him it's clear: these projects both ruin livelihoods and the environment. But with Team Magma working on behest of the businesses to force the project's continuation, it escalates to them deciding to take control of Kyogre so that they can reclaim the areas where land had taken away water and assure no more land reclamation projects are done.
And obviously, whatever game you play, things go bad as the Legendary goes nuts and Groudon tries drying up the oceans and Kyogre tries flooding & drowning all land. Once the player stops the Legendary, both team realize they've nearly caused the end of the world. Both teams agree to compromise and try & work together: the major project is cancelled while they work to find other smaller places they can reclaim land that won't cause much harm. A happy & hopeful ending which sadly the real circumstances never got.
So the new paradoxes strangely (but at least likely intentionally) don't do the "trio merged" thing that the sketches implied from the Scarlet/Violet books, but Walking Wake does still take some design cues from it, such as the more beastial horn, the mane and the spikes popping out of the mane reinterpted as red spiky fur
But man it is turbo lame that Iron Leaves is literally just Virizion but a robot. It didn't take on anything extra from the sketch, like the thicker legs or the terrakion-esque horns, the cobalion collar...there's plenty of things to pick from & reinterpret while still leaving it be 90% Virizion.
But man it is turbo lame that Iron Leaves is literally just Virizion but a robot. It didn't take on anything extra from the sketch, like the thicker legs or the terrakion-esque horns, the cobalion collar...there's plenty of things to pick from & reinterpret while still leaving it be 90% Virizion.
Pretty much the only thing that Wild Wake took from the book is the horn (or headpiece, idk), which was the main part that looked like suicune. The rest just looks like Suicune, but more primal, while the sketch in the boost felt like it was taking a lot more cues from Entei. The mane might have spikes and be longer, but it doesn't look like the one in the book, at least to me.
The spikes also aren't really anything to make note of when basically ever past paradox has them.
Yeah, I really don't like the new Paradoxes. They could have gone with the "Bipedal Dragon" for Wake while keeping the Entei/Raikou elements, or even leaning into them more. And Leaves is just a Virizion retexture, which is sad.
The way I see it, there's 2 options. Either they decided against the "Original trio combined" option late in production and forgot/didn't have time to change the Book, which is sloppy, but happens. Or they intentionally put false info into the game to show the book's wrong. I think it's option 2, and that option annoys me. They knew fans would be pouring over this for any scrap of info. If it had been false info about a mon in the game, that'd be one thing. That's shown and disproven within a reasonable time span. They essentially told us about a mon in November and are revealing that those designs were a lie and are never being released 3 months later. Which, if I liked the new designs more than what the Book had, I'd forgive. But the Leaves design is lazy as hell, and the Wake design isn't amazing. Just...it's annoying, and I don't get why they thought it'd be a good idea.
The way I see it, there's 2 options. Either they decided against the "Original trio combined" option late in production and forgot/didn't have time to change the Book, which is sloppy, but happens. Or they intentionally put false info into the game to show the book's wrong. I think it's option 2, and that option annoys me. They knew fans would be pouring over this for any scrap of info. If it had been false info about a mon in the game, that'd be one thing. That's shown and disproven within a reasonable time span. They essentially told us about a mon in November and are revealing that those designs were a lie and are never being released 3 months later. Which, if I liked the new designs more than what the Book had, I'd forgive. But the Leaves design is lazy as hell, and the Wake design isn't amazing. Just...it's annoying, and I don't get why they thought it'd be a good idea.
Both the sketch and Wake have a giant shaggy mane
And I didn't say they looked the same, I said they clearly took elements. There's spikes throughout the mane in the sketch, and we get spiky red fur in the mane in the final. It's different but clearly meant as similar.
There's a reason I acknowledged in the same breath that they didn't take the trio merger concept. But there's absolutely stuff from the sketch that you can see they probably kept in mind while designing Wake.
Which does not stop them from being something present in the sketch that is also present, in some form, in approximately the same place (through the mane)
I think you're right it was a probably intentional swerve (especially since the drawings weren't actual Paradox Pokemon but the artist's impression of what a Paradox Pokemon would be like, obviously drawing inspiration from Legendary Pokemon they knew). But if they were going to do that, they should have gone all the way. Have the two Paradox Pokemon have parts which resemble aspects of the Legendary Beasts/Swords of Justice, but are entirely their own creature.
One of the other big annoyances for me is Walking Wake's typing. Water/Dragon feels kind passe, especially since we just got Tatsugiri.
I can take or leave Grass/Psychic for Iron Leaves, but would have preferred something weirder like Grass/Rock or Grass/Electric.
I can take or leave Grass/Psychic for Iron Leaves, but would have preferred something weirder like Grass/Rock or Grass/Electric.