Sometimes those self-restrictions are things that make sense as a normal way to play the game in the mind of a child. For example, losing to Drake over and over because you value the thematic cohesion of Surf Muddy Water Earthquake Mud Shot too much to just teach your overleveled Swampert Blizzard and call it a day.
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Unpopular opinions
- Thread starter antemortem
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Fun fact, this is actually acknowledged by Cynthia in Platinum if you visit the Celestic Ruins after entering the hall of fame.
Cynthia outrights states Dialga and Palkia are considered rulers of time and space because of people in the past interpreting their time and space power as holding dominion of the entire concept. Think like how Volcarona is seen as a sun god in myth even though it's "just" a powerful and rare Fire type. This is reflective of how real world myths develop, like how oak trees often being struck by lightning due to their height lead to oak trees being associated with storm gods in various cultures.
this is going to be a massive, unstructured, unpolished rant. skip if no want
legends arceus sucked
like, really sucked
it was fun at first when I had this childlike joy: Holy shit, fully 3D movement in Pokemon! I can explore the world!
and then it's 5 small dinkly areas with jack shit to do
people complain about Mario Odyssey having 900 moons (a lot of which are repeats), but at least a lot of them are good, there are only 3 objectives in Legends Arceus' collectathon:
1. aggro mon
2. neutral mon
3. scared mon
the story also sucked ass. I don't know where people got the notion that Legends was strong characters wise, all of the characters are one-dimensional and have nothing going on, and the plot makes no sense
people compare its plot to Pokemon Mystery Dungeon 1 (the PMD game with the dogshit plot that no one younger than 35 enjoys) but even that game at least makes more sense, and has interesting things. It answers questions like: Why is the player here? Why are these disasters happening? which isn't a lot but at least something I guess.
Legends Arceus' plot is also disrespectful to the real history it is based on. Essentially, we are playing as the direct equivalent to a real life group that actually aimed for genocide of the real life people's, who were religious, kinda like... hm....
(what the Galaxy Hall is based on)
to be FAIR to Game Freak, this building is the (former) Hokkaido Government Office building which was to my knowledge revamped after the Hokkaido Development Commission (Department of Colonization) was abolished after around 20ish years.
This Department of Colonization brutally colonized Hokkaido to the active detriment of the Ainu, people who lived there already, they lost their culture as they were assimilated (again, aggressively, trying to remove their culture and replace it) and Ainu have been discriminated for a long, long time. To my reading, and a frankly very direct correlation, the two opposing factions we see in Legends Arceus are these indigenous people, and we are the colonizers. And we are just "lol wow Pokemon amirite?" waltzing in and taking it over mostly willingly, we are such nice people just trying to slice our own piece of this land pie, right? (Every action done has to be approved by the colonizers in this game)
on top of that, the story just outright sucks on its own merits, soooooo, Volo is the best part and he just unexplainedly just is evil, and just dips?
Why are we collecting the Pokedex, by the way? Why does Arceus need this? Can't they do this otherwise? Most of Sinnoh's dex is Pokemon from other regions anyways, won't it be catalogued regardless? Arceus is almost entirely unexplored, it's literally there to give an iPhone, act mysterious and dip
ok ok ok gameplay, it sucks. The catching mechanics are more active, but they are in direct contrast to the turn based combat, which also has been nerfed into the ground.
fundamentally catching Pokemon will always be the same throughout the playthrough and once you have smoke balls + heavy balls it's GG no Re, you can do this and just beat the game. Find training Pokemon fun? Fuck you, catch a Level 75 Garchomp with no effort.
this is truly making Pokemon more fun (for people who might not even like Pokemon gameplay in the first place)
"evolution" my ass, this shit is less interesting than LGPE catching, at least in that game I have gotten actual fear. If you don't believe me, shiny hunt without a Master Ball knowing that if you don't get it right in like 40 seconds, the Pokemon can run away. Even for scared Pokemon in Legends Arceus, they usually run away and that allows you to get an easy critical shot, because you can just run behind them.
the turn based gameplay is worse than RBY and that is saying something. They changed the battle formula guys! Isn't that so great, lazy Game Freak finally got off their ass after a bajillion years! maybe the battle system was never a problem, maybe they were stealth updating it to perfect it every generation and legends arceus instead stripped away 80% of what made it interesting
and we changed the turn system so speed creep matters even MORE now, hope you don't enter a trainer battle because that shit is unpolished as hell. Double battles? Bro does this look like 2022? We back to 1996 in this bitch, but we did make it like Alola's S.O.S battles where it is 1v(not even just 2, even more now!) isn't that fun?
oh wait everyone hated S.O.S so much that USUM nerfed it in normal gameplay
Alright guys, we won't have the time to make a flashy gimmick for this game. What can we do instead. Uhhh, Strong and Agile moves, do more damage or get more turn priority.
Cool, what is the opportunity cost? One more PP? Okay, so it doesn't have an opportunity cost, got it. So just spam this the entire game, use Agile into Strong if you get free turns, Strong if it won't effect your turns negatively / kills, Neutral if neither. This isn't interesting and after I got used to it I just barely even thought about what I was doing with it, that simple criteria will work.
Abilities could have made catching more interesting in battles, which is the opposite of something I've seen some defenders of the battle system cuts say. "This isn't about competitive or anything, it doesn't matter!". Example: I have the game knowledge to know Geodude has Sturdy. Thus, I can use a 4x effective Water Gun without fear, and know I can catch it optimally rather than finding a way to chip it down slowly and safely. this makes the game way more enjoyable and a lot more Pokemon have more different methods to figuring out how to optimally catch them
though, even with that, throw one heavy ball and gg (we need this in SV so you never actually get into a turn based battle in this turn based rpg guys!!!"
now, go explore these five generic biomes with exactly 1 or 2 places of interest at best (this is counting things like the volcano which disappointed me as a place of interest) per map, then just find where a Pokemon spawns, throw smoke ball, throw ball.
the music is good.
I should stop somewhere so I will here, with one addition: I think that most people who see Legends Arceus as an "evolution" of Pokemon, never saw what made the mainline games good in the first place, or just don't like turn based combat. Which isn't exactly a popular combat style in games, but is not a problem. So many solutions especially in the West to "fix/modernize Pokemon" are not to put it into a new context (like hm an open world jrpg), but to throw out turn based combat
There are a lot of people who see turn based combat as outdated. It isn't. They are wrong.
Legends Arceus was made by the LGPE devs, aka veteran Game Freak staff, which should make its choices more clear. Legends Arceus is not a modernization of Pokemon, it is the next step of LGPE, a game where the battling system is mostly shafted in favor of the catching.
so overall Legends Arceus? mid, cya gn thats the hot take bye
legends arceus sucked
like, really sucked
it was fun at first when I had this childlike joy: Holy shit, fully 3D movement in Pokemon! I can explore the world!
and then it's 5 small dinkly areas with jack shit to do
people complain about Mario Odyssey having 900 moons (a lot of which are repeats), but at least a lot of them are good, there are only 3 objectives in Legends Arceus' collectathon:
1. aggro mon
2. neutral mon
3. scared mon
the story also sucked ass. I don't know where people got the notion that Legends was strong characters wise, all of the characters are one-dimensional and have nothing going on, and the plot makes no sense
people compare its plot to Pokemon Mystery Dungeon 1 (the PMD game with the dogshit plot that no one younger than 35 enjoys) but even that game at least makes more sense, and has interesting things. It answers questions like: Why is the player here? Why are these disasters happening? which isn't a lot but at least something I guess.
Legends Arceus' plot is also disrespectful to the real history it is based on. Essentially, we are playing as the direct equivalent to a real life group that actually aimed for genocide of the real life people's, who were religious, kinda like... hm....
(what the Galaxy Hall is based on)
to be FAIR to Game Freak, this building is the (former) Hokkaido Government Office building which was to my knowledge revamped after the Hokkaido Development Commission (Department of Colonization) was abolished after around 20ish years.
This Department of Colonization brutally colonized Hokkaido to the active detriment of the Ainu, people who lived there already, they lost their culture as they were assimilated (again, aggressively, trying to remove their culture and replace it) and Ainu have been discriminated for a long, long time. To my reading, and a frankly very direct correlation, the two opposing factions we see in Legends Arceus are these indigenous people, and we are the colonizers. And we are just "lol wow Pokemon amirite?" waltzing in and taking it over mostly willingly, we are such nice people just trying to slice our own piece of this land pie, right? (Every action done has to be approved by the colonizers in this game)
on top of that, the story just outright sucks on its own merits, soooooo, Volo is the best part and he just unexplainedly just is evil, and just dips?
Why are we collecting the Pokedex, by the way? Why does Arceus need this? Can't they do this otherwise? Most of Sinnoh's dex is Pokemon from other regions anyways, won't it be catalogued regardless? Arceus is almost entirely unexplored, it's literally there to give an iPhone, act mysterious and dip
ok ok ok gameplay, it sucks. The catching mechanics are more active, but they are in direct contrast to the turn based combat, which also has been nerfed into the ground.
fundamentally catching Pokemon will always be the same throughout the playthrough and once you have smoke balls + heavy balls it's GG no Re, you can do this and just beat the game. Find training Pokemon fun? Fuck you, catch a Level 75 Garchomp with no effort.
this is truly making Pokemon more fun (for people who might not even like Pokemon gameplay in the first place)
"evolution" my ass, this shit is less interesting than LGPE catching, at least in that game I have gotten actual fear. If you don't believe me, shiny hunt without a Master Ball knowing that if you don't get it right in like 40 seconds, the Pokemon can run away. Even for scared Pokemon in Legends Arceus, they usually run away and that allows you to get an easy critical shot, because you can just run behind them.
the turn based gameplay is worse than RBY and that is saying something. They changed the battle formula guys! Isn't that so great, lazy Game Freak finally got off their ass after a bajillion years! maybe the battle system was never a problem, maybe they were stealth updating it to perfect it every generation and legends arceus instead stripped away 80% of what made it interesting
and we changed the turn system so speed creep matters even MORE now, hope you don't enter a trainer battle because that shit is unpolished as hell. Double battles? Bro does this look like 2022? We back to 1996 in this bitch, but we did make it like Alola's S.O.S battles where it is 1v(not even just 2, even more now!) isn't that fun?
oh wait everyone hated S.O.S so much that USUM nerfed it in normal gameplay
Alright guys, we won't have the time to make a flashy gimmick for this game. What can we do instead. Uhhh, Strong and Agile moves, do more damage or get more turn priority.
Cool, what is the opportunity cost? One more PP? Okay, so it doesn't have an opportunity cost, got it. So just spam this the entire game, use Agile into Strong if you get free turns, Strong if it won't effect your turns negatively / kills, Neutral if neither. This isn't interesting and after I got used to it I just barely even thought about what I was doing with it, that simple criteria will work.
Abilities could have made catching more interesting in battles, which is the opposite of something I've seen some defenders of the battle system cuts say. "This isn't about competitive or anything, it doesn't matter!". Example: I have the game knowledge to know Geodude has Sturdy. Thus, I can use a 4x effective Water Gun without fear, and know I can catch it optimally rather than finding a way to chip it down slowly and safely. this makes the game way more enjoyable and a lot more Pokemon have more different methods to figuring out how to optimally catch them
though, even with that, throw one heavy ball and gg (we need this in SV so you never actually get into a turn based battle in this turn based rpg guys!!!"
now, go explore these five generic biomes with exactly 1 or 2 places of interest at best (this is counting things like the volcano which disappointed me as a place of interest) per map, then just find where a Pokemon spawns, throw smoke ball, throw ball.
the music is good.
I should stop somewhere so I will here, with one addition: I think that most people who see Legends Arceus as an "evolution" of Pokemon, never saw what made the mainline games good in the first place, or just don't like turn based combat. Which isn't exactly a popular combat style in games, but is not a problem. So many solutions especially in the West to "fix/modernize Pokemon" are not to put it into a new context (like hm an open world jrpg), but to throw out turn based combat
There are a lot of people who see turn based combat as outdated. It isn't. They are wrong.
Legends Arceus was made by the LGPE devs, aka veteran Game Freak staff, which should make its choices more clear. Legends Arceus is not a modernization of Pokemon, it is the next step of LGPE, a game where the battling system is mostly shafted in favor of the catching.
so overall Legends Arceus? mid, cya gn thats the hot take bye
While I disagree with most of the rest of your post, this point cannot be emphasized enough
the way Pokemon Legends: Arceus handles its historical inspirations is not just bad it's terrible, the Frito Bandito is more respectful than this game
Look imma let you finish, but RT's plot is fine main game. Post game is awkward though with how they had to pile on legendaries, same with the player coming back
But do not diss RT like that
Remember that both the Diamond and Pearl clan are also comprised of people who moved to Hisui, in contrast to the Celestic.
Pictured: Traditional Ainu headwear
I'll argue the bigger issue is the Celestic being a stereotypical precursor culture that disappeared except for Volo and Cogita, which sidesteps the whole issue of colonization by having Hisui be abandoned by people, which just flat out doesn't happen in real life. Either way, I don't think the devs are going to 1:1 mirror historical issues in a series with electric rodents. The Hisuian groups aren't even the only indigenous Japanese group to appear in a Pokemon game.
Remember the Draconids?
Basically, the whole plot of Arceus isn't going to delve deep into the complication relationship with how cultures evolve, assimilate, and migrate beyond "People should accept one another" and "People and Pokemon are inseparable". That last one I'll argue is stronger because L:A is also about how modern Sinnoh came to be, with the player character gaining the respect of the Galactic Corps and the Diamond and Pearl clans by not fearing Pokemon and considering them partners, which amazes most characters.
Pictured: Traditional Ainu headwear
I'll argue the bigger issue is the Celestic being a stereotypical precursor culture that disappeared except for Volo and Cogita, which sidesteps the whole issue of colonization by having Hisui be abandoned by people, which just flat out doesn't happen in real life. Either way, I don't think the devs are going to 1:1 mirror historical issues in a series with electric rodents. The Hisuian groups aren't even the only indigenous Japanese group to appear in a Pokemon game.
Remember the Draconids?
Basically, the whole plot of Arceus isn't going to delve deep into the complication relationship with how cultures evolve, assimilate, and migrate beyond "People should accept one another" and "People and Pokemon are inseparable". That last one I'll argue is stronger because L:A is also about how modern Sinnoh came to be, with the player character gaining the respect of the Galactic Corps and the Diamond and Pearl clans by not fearing Pokemon and considering them partners, which amazes most characters.
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the draconids are pretty bad indigenous rep too tbh. while yes i dont expect pokemon to tackle racism/colonization as a topic, i also dont think that means the usage of indigenous cultures in pokemon isnt often at best shallow and at worst stereotypical and racist. are they doing this intentionaly? probably not. but it exists in the game regardless and should be pointed out
I'm not expecting Game Freak to come out with some crazy good writing about deeper topics, Sun and Moon used their one and only "Good Writing" Token (I'll talk about Gen 5 someday, just you wait) but I just think including it was weird. It's one of those things where you can't half-ass it, just don't.
Anywho, I wanna talk more about the game since I got my main thoughts out of the way, now.
Something I didn't touch on before is that to me, Legends Arceus feels like it was a tech demo for like a year and a half, and then they decided it had to be Sinnoh for the upcoming and newly decided "Year of Sinnoh". And what is the easiest way to do that?
Make 5 small areas with one hub world, and make most of the game a set of small repeatable tasks with little actual notable content. To me, Hisui in general feels like an excuse, and that's what bothers me further.
Hisui is just (from how I see it) an excuse to be able to make 5 barren lands with little shit going on with a plot that justifies it being a poor collectathon, and no one can convince me otherwise. Look at Hisui's maps and tell me that this shit could not have been made without it even being a Sinnoh-related game. The forest in the first area has Sinnoh music, sure, but also it is literally just a forest. Sure it has some Sinnoh Pokemon, but with a swap to say, Kalosian Pokemon, boom! This could be any forest in Kalos.
Not only are most Hisuian Pokemon not even from Sinnoh, meaning they probably could have been made before they decided the game would be Sinnoh themed, but also the game misses what makes Sinnoh, to me, Sinnoh. The Canalave Library, Mount Coronet connecting various biomes. I barely even think of beaches when I think of Sinnoh, the beaches it has feel like "it's a Pokemon game it has to have beaches". I really like exploring towns with history.
This may be weird, but I am really into urban exploration. My favorite bits of Pokemon lore are about how people live day-to-day with Pokemon, not really "what did the Gods do", though that is interesting to me sometimes as well. I think part of why people missed going into houses in Scarlet and Violet so much is you get to see how people live with Pokemon in various parts of the world, while in Hisui we get some of that learning, but I don't feel like I'm exploring urban environments, just small shacks.
I think this is going to really annoy some people: Pokemon are not supposed to be mindless monsters. Period. They are not supposed to be adversarial by nature as a collective. Period. Pokemon are not animals. Period.
Since, funnily enough, right around Sinnoh, Game Freak has moved into the direction of Pokemon sentience. They are people, not necessarily pets. I mean the dialogue has changed so much even in just a short time. It goes from early gens of stuff like "My Nidoran shit on the carpet!!! Let's battle!!!" to "My Blitzle helps me at work by bla bla bla, it really enjoys the activity."
I mean, if I am to mention Gen 5 writing again, the intro deadass has N speaking to your Pokemon, and getting verbal replies. Pokemon can speak. They may have more animal-esque traits and an ecosystem, but they are not monsters that will hunt you down mindlessly like Garchomp in Legends Arceus will do.
This was also around the time of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, and for the record the Pokemon that attack you in those games have reasons too, beyond just being feral monsters. For instance, in PMD1 there is a major territorial crisis and anxiety amongst the Pokemon because of these natural disasters literally destroying the world, Rattata does not care about who you are, it is trying to get the fuck out of Death's Door.
That's all to say, I think a brutal depiction of Pokemon just doesn't make sense anymore. Pokemon is fundamentally not edgy, as the Pokemon evolve in the games, they have evolved in the real world brand too. Hydreigon can go berserk! But that isn't because it's an apex predator, that's because Ghetsis harmed it, or it's going through actual, sentient body horror. If it was in Legends Arceus? Oh it's on the spot, it's rushing to fucking kill you.
What about the good old Wild Grass Gonna Kill Ya routine? For a few generations now, canonically the Pokemon you find are fighting you and found because they are willing to be, they stay by roads and want to test trainers via battle to test worthiness. Badda bing badda boom.
This just doesn't make sense to me, I would get if you are trying to catch it, or battling it. But Shinx just sees you and wants to throw hands, and it is mechanically annoying too, so... Pretty please?
To be fair, Legends Arceus actually has a fine reason, I guess. These Pokemon could maybe just have largely never interacted with humans, I guess. But it feels more like a strive to be edgy than to make sense.
Speaking of which, what if an action game only had basic attacks and you need to be hit like five times to actually die? Honestly the "action combat" aspects of Legends Arceus could be thrown out besides the actual bosses. I don't think I ever died due to actual Pokemon. I fell of a cliff like thrice, though. It was annoying.
ok I really gotta stop talking about this game that I don't even think is bad I just think it's mid and overrated
I'm not gonna get into that last thing lest I find another topic and write another two or three paragraphs about it
cyaa
An actual unpopular opinion, we love you for this queen. I share the same resentments as you and feel like this game is having its time to shine right now but in the coming years, this game will age the worst I feel. (Also a comment about the map structure of the PLA, they really gave the locations no thought and the homage locations for Sinnoh are so awful like the solaceon ruins being a single room and vast empty fields with sinnoh location namesakes....they really didn't gaf)
Oh we're talking about reasonably well-liked games we don't think are that good? Aight, ripe time for me to dump this.
It's something of a recurring gag that the PMD fanbase only actually likes Explorers so I'm not even sure how hot of a take this is but RB Rescue Team just doesn't hold up. I will confess that on my recent replay, the first in well over a decade, I did not finish the game. I gave up at Mt. Blaze. Why was this?
-Teambuilding, at least in the main story, is a waste of time. For a Pokemon game without a fixed roster i.e. Pokepark, this is about as fundamental of a failure as it gets. Your starters are buffed to high heaven and all the recruited Pokemon you get are weak. Level 13 Scyther should not have over 10 less HP than Level 15 Charmander, that's all there is to it. Frankly I could file this complaint under a broader one of this game's balancing being absolutely inscrutable at times: For example, considering this was pre-DP, why does Silent Chasm Yanma give more EXP when defeated than Ampharos in the same location and nearly as much as Arcanine later on in Mt. Blaze? And that's small fry stuff: If I had the energy I could devote an entire series of paragraphs to the absurdity of the power gaps between starters. Any Grass starter in this game is effectively a challenge run.
-Menuing is tedious as hell. Why do I have to re-assemble my team every time I complete a mission? Why can't I mass-withdraw stuff from storage? Why can't I just quickly have partners use items instead of having to waste time giving the item to them as a held one?
-Pokemon Square is a disappointingly empty hub. The benchmark of comparison I'm using here is Jubilife Village, and it's no contest. Jubilife does this cool thing, you see, where it actually evolves over the course of the game and you can talk to the joe schmoe villagers and do fun little sidequests that give you insight on this time period of the Pokemon world and how the commoners are adjusting to it. Meanwhile in Pokemon Square you can't even enter any of the houses. The whole appeal of PMD's world is seeing the Pokemon themselves be characters and how they run a society, so why not show more of that? Imagine being able to go into Lotad's house and its a big jacuzzi with lily pads, or Bellsprout's home being a greenhouse overgrowing with vines.
-And now the big dealbreaker that made me throw in the towel: This story is fuckin lame, dude. I was immensely caught off-guard by how fast you get to Great Canyon, and not in a good way: It feels like there are a whole 3 dungeons of setup cut with how abruptly the game pivots to the exiling of the player from the village. Gengar the known troublemaker who tried to extort a child tells the village that your existence will bring about the apocalypse and everyone just... Believes him unconditionally. Team ACT doesn't buy it, but they don't even try to use their fame and moral authority to stand up for you. There can be no adequate descriptor for this series of events other than "complete bullshit". If it's not at the Chairman Rose's heel turn tier of contrivance, it sure as hell ain't far behind. And yknow what? Normally, I wouldn't even care. My second and third favorite main series games have pretty nothing plots too. But after being inundated with years of hype about PMD being the spinoff with consistently great storytelling 95% of the core games' material can't even hold a candle to, my expectations were raised to a level that this junk doesn't come close to fulfilling.
If I had to rank it alongside the main series, I would put RB Rescue Team at C Tier, i.e. my second least favorite only beaten by DP. There's enough polish and care that I can't in good conscience call it an outright bad game but I wouldn't earnestly recommend it to anyone either. Honestly my big mistake was not replaying Explorers instead, I have no idea how many of my complaints are first game syndrome and how many are just endemic to PMD going forward.
It's something of a recurring gag that the PMD fanbase only actually likes Explorers so I'm not even sure how hot of a take this is but RB Rescue Team just doesn't hold up. I will confess that on my recent replay, the first in well over a decade, I did not finish the game. I gave up at Mt. Blaze. Why was this?
-Teambuilding, at least in the main story, is a waste of time. For a Pokemon game without a fixed roster i.e. Pokepark, this is about as fundamental of a failure as it gets. Your starters are buffed to high heaven and all the recruited Pokemon you get are weak. Level 13 Scyther should not have over 10 less HP than Level 15 Charmander, that's all there is to it. Frankly I could file this complaint under a broader one of this game's balancing being absolutely inscrutable at times: For example, considering this was pre-DP, why does Silent Chasm Yanma give more EXP when defeated than Ampharos in the same location and nearly as much as Arcanine later on in Mt. Blaze? And that's small fry stuff: If I had the energy I could devote an entire series of paragraphs to the absurdity of the power gaps between starters. Any Grass starter in this game is effectively a challenge run.
-Menuing is tedious as hell. Why do I have to re-assemble my team every time I complete a mission? Why can't I mass-withdraw stuff from storage? Why can't I just quickly have partners use items instead of having to waste time giving the item to them as a held one?
-Pokemon Square is a disappointingly empty hub. The benchmark of comparison I'm using here is Jubilife Village, and it's no contest. Jubilife does this cool thing, you see, where it actually evolves over the course of the game and you can talk to the joe schmoe villagers and do fun little sidequests that give you insight on this time period of the Pokemon world and how the commoners are adjusting to it. Meanwhile in Pokemon Square you can't even enter any of the houses. The whole appeal of PMD's world is seeing the Pokemon themselves be characters and how they run a society, so why not show more of that? Imagine being able to go into Lotad's house and its a big jacuzzi with lily pads, or Bellsprout's home being a greenhouse overgrowing with vines.
-And now the big dealbreaker that made me throw in the towel: This story is fuckin lame, dude. I was immensely caught off-guard by how fast you get to Great Canyon, and not in a good way: It feels like there are a whole 3 dungeons of setup cut with how abruptly the game pivots to the exiling of the player from the village. Gengar the known troublemaker who tried to extort a child tells the village that your existence will bring about the apocalypse and everyone just... Believes him unconditionally. Team ACT doesn't buy it, but they don't even try to use their fame and moral authority to stand up for you. There can be no adequate descriptor for this series of events other than "complete bullshit". If it's not at the Chairman Rose's heel turn tier of contrivance, it sure as hell ain't far behind. And yknow what? Normally, I wouldn't even care. My second and third favorite main series games have pretty nothing plots too. But after being inundated with years of hype about PMD being the spinoff with consistently great storytelling 95% of the core games' material can't even hold a candle to, my expectations were raised to a level that this junk doesn't come close to fulfilling.
If I had to rank it alongside the main series, I would put RB Rescue Team at C Tier, i.e. my second least favorite only beaten by DP. There's enough polish and care that I can't in good conscience call it an outright bad game but I wouldn't earnestly recommend it to anyone either. Honestly my big mistake was not replaying Explorers instead, I have no idea how many of my complaints are first game syndrome and how many are just endemic to PMD going forward.
Regarding Legends, I wouldn’t go as far as to say that the game sucked, but I agree that it is overrated and nowhere near as great as (a large chunk of?) the fandom claims it is. When it comes to Pokémon games for the Switch, I find S/S and ScaVio a lot more enjoyable. They have their flaws, but they are still very fun at the core. I haven’t played LGP/E or BD/SP so no opinion there.
The story in Legends wasn’t anything special, I don’t see what’s so great about it and it didn’t leave an impression on me, I don’t even remember that much from it. I find S/S and ScaVio to be way better in the story department. Yes, I liked the story of S/S, now that’s an unpopular opinion! Regarding the historical accuracy in Legends, that’s nothing I care for personally. But after reading posts by others on the subject, I can definitely understand why people are bothered by it.
As for me, my biggest issue with the history and lore is more from an in-game point of view. The game takes place in the past, but I don’t think it does a good job at explaining the history of Sinnoh. It feels like the game raises more questions than it gives answers. Yet at the same time, some of the historical events it actually showed were not as grand as I imagined them to be. The most notable was the Shaymin event and the creation of what later became Floaroma Town, it was a massive letdown compared to how I imagined it after the NPC dialogue in D/P/P.
The changes to the battle system is definitely my biggest issue with Legends. Battles are my favorite part of Pokémon, and Legends ruined them by turning every battle into a luck-based revenge kill fest. Speed is the one stat that matters the most, because if you don’t get to move first, you lose. And if you don’t hit hard enough, you lose, making everything that isn’t a fast attacker completely useless. Being ganged up by four wild Pokémon that can move an absurd amount of turns in a row is also a really horrible way to make the game “difficult”. In fact, it is even worse than the SOS mechanics in Gen 7 (which is another of my least favorite features in the series).
Another issue with the game is that it doesn’t do a good job at encouraging exploration. The aggressive wild Pokémon is the biggest hinderance to this because once they spot you, you either have to battle them or run across half the map to get away from them. There’s no good way to get rid of them quickly (the Let’s Go feature from ScaVio would have been perfect for this), nor can you catch them without battling them first once their aggro has started. And they will always be aggressive, no matter your progress. Wild Shinx at level 3 will still target you even if you have beaten the whole game, reached rank 10 in the Pokédex and have a whole team at level 100. The fact that you are unable to travel directly between the wild areas and forced to do a "middle landing" in Jubilife every single time also makes exploration a lot less convenient. In comparison, I think ScaVio did the exploration aspect much better. It isn’t perfect, but it is miles above Legends.
I’m not going to say that much more about Legends, I think other people summarized my thoughts on it quite well and I have posted some more in-depth thoughts regarding my issues with the game in the past. The more I think back on Legends, the less fond I grow of it. My opinion of it has gotten lower and lower as time has gone by. I don’t dislike the game, but I find it very average on the whole. In fact, it is the most average Pokémon game I have ever played. There are many better action RPGs out there. In the end, Legends is my least favorite modern Pokémon game, my least favorite game of 2022, and my least favorite Switch game.
The story in Legends wasn’t anything special, I don’t see what’s so great about it and it didn’t leave an impression on me, I don’t even remember that much from it. I find S/S and ScaVio to be way better in the story department. Yes, I liked the story of S/S, now that’s an unpopular opinion! Regarding the historical accuracy in Legends, that’s nothing I care for personally. But after reading posts by others on the subject, I can definitely understand why people are bothered by it.
As for me, my biggest issue with the history and lore is more from an in-game point of view. The game takes place in the past, but I don’t think it does a good job at explaining the history of Sinnoh. It feels like the game raises more questions than it gives answers. Yet at the same time, some of the historical events it actually showed were not as grand as I imagined them to be. The most notable was the Shaymin event and the creation of what later became Floaroma Town, it was a massive letdown compared to how I imagined it after the NPC dialogue in D/P/P.
The changes to the battle system is definitely my biggest issue with Legends. Battles are my favorite part of Pokémon, and Legends ruined them by turning every battle into a luck-based revenge kill fest. Speed is the one stat that matters the most, because if you don’t get to move first, you lose. And if you don’t hit hard enough, you lose, making everything that isn’t a fast attacker completely useless. Being ganged up by four wild Pokémon that can move an absurd amount of turns in a row is also a really horrible way to make the game “difficult”. In fact, it is even worse than the SOS mechanics in Gen 7 (which is another of my least favorite features in the series).
Another issue with the game is that it doesn’t do a good job at encouraging exploration. The aggressive wild Pokémon is the biggest hinderance to this because once they spot you, you either have to battle them or run across half the map to get away from them. There’s no good way to get rid of them quickly (the Let’s Go feature from ScaVio would have been perfect for this), nor can you catch them without battling them first once their aggro has started. And they will always be aggressive, no matter your progress. Wild Shinx at level 3 will still target you even if you have beaten the whole game, reached rank 10 in the Pokédex and have a whole team at level 100. The fact that you are unable to travel directly between the wild areas and forced to do a "middle landing" in Jubilife every single time also makes exploration a lot less convenient. In comparison, I think ScaVio did the exploration aspect much better. It isn’t perfect, but it is miles above Legends.
I’m not going to say that much more about Legends, I think other people summarized my thoughts on it quite well and I have posted some more in-depth thoughts regarding my issues with the game in the past. The more I think back on Legends, the less fond I grow of it. My opinion of it has gotten lower and lower as time has gone by. I don’t dislike the game, but I find it very average on the whole. In fact, it is the most average Pokémon game I have ever played. There are many better action RPGs out there. In the end, Legends is my least favorite modern Pokémon game, my least favorite game of 2022, and my least favorite Switch game.
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PMD is a franchise where there is almost as much nostalgia-bullshit in how the playerbase talks about the games as the main series.
PMD1 is basically the Gen 4 equivalent, in that the story sucks, the gameplay is slow, the music is good (but every game's music is good), the graphics are average, the characters are mid, the difficulty is average, the amount of content is average, the game has almost no Quality of Life, but somehow the game is supposed to be part of the Golden Age?
Bit of a history lesson: Mystery Dungeon is not a Pokemon spinoff franchise, it is a Chunsoft franchise with a shit ton of spinoffs for different series; like Chocobo Mystery Dungeon (FF), Toreko's Mystery Dungeon (I probably spelled that incorrectly but DQ), their original IP Shiren the Wanderer.
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon was basically a test for the idea and it is mostly reusing assets from other Mystery Dungeon games. It's trying to just be a Pokemon Roguelite first, the games afterwards focus more with the ground set. The sequel, Explorers of (Time, Darkness and the third-version Sky) reuse a lot of assets, but make a lot of new ones and focuses more on story, QoL and content. It's the fan-favorite.
After that was the first 3DS game, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity. This game is extremely controversial.
You know how Pokemon X and Y is boring because most of the development time was dedicated to simply making a 3D top-down Pokemon game, including all of those models? The 3DS PMD games have their own "shittified" version of the mainline models, simplified manually (not downscaled) as to be able to run like five of them on screen at the same time in 3D.
Keep in mind, this came out before Pokemon XY!
Gates to Infinity isn't boring, but the game feels unfinished. It has the least options of any PMD game (least Starters, nothing like speed options) and has some cool ideas to spice up the exploration of dungeons, but they end up feeling underused/unnecessary. In turn, you have the slowest text speed in the series, tons of useless text, and inarguably the worst gameplay in the series.
It does have a "good story" (that's the consensus, but I disagree), but I'd first recommend:
Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon, the 2015 sequel, and last fully original PMD game. I fucking adore this game. It's so good.
Excellent story, good characters, incredible music (though some of it is actually from GTI), arguably the best gameplay in the series. The game is the hardest game in the series, it changes the leveling system and main story structure to essentially deny grinding. You will end the game around Level 25! But that is fine, because it has the most endgame content in the series by far.
The graphics are also really good for the 3DS, and the new mechanics really push the game. Wands, Emeras, new Leveling, Pushing, early on getting two-tile range moves, Character prompts, etc. etc. etc.
It makes you really FEEEEL like a small Pokemon fighting big Pokemon, where your main and usually only way to continue winning is to use every advantage you can take, every item in your arsenal, every bit of ranged damage you can give for free.
The story is probably the best of any Pokemon game if you are willing to put the time in, in that replaying it makes the story make so much more sense. It will give you big questions, but if you replay the game the new context will make it fun all over again.
I'd probably recommend playing Explorers of Sky first/next, and then Super Mystery Dungeon. If you are really insistent on playing the other two, be my guest, but outside of nostalgia they are mostly just outdone, to be quite honest.
And Rescue Team DX is my least favorite game of all-time, but hey that's something for another day shhhhhh. shhhhh.
I actually appreciate that RT is lighter on the main story and more weighted towards a freeform postgame, since it gives more space to choose teams that don't necessarily include the player or partner mon. (I still somewhat miss the ability to change which mon is used around town that was cut from all future games, DX included) It also feels more willing to let the player bring in a 3rd mon of their choice compared to the later games making heavy use of fixed allies for story purposes. I kind of feel that Explorers' story is too good, because it appears to get its position by compromising the gameplay.
for reference, have you played the games after Explorers of Sky, because to be honest this feels like a take for someone who only played the first two, considering 3/4 of the games are primarily focused on story before postgame
part of the reason for that is that the gameplay in all PMDs (except Super), is, mid
they're really not great with gameplay on their own, and that isn't even really a hot take, PMD is one of those series where it feels like half the playerbase would rather watch a let's play than actually play their favorite games
I mean, most of the fanbase is furries, fanfic, fanart and that's mostly it. And that isn't the fanbase's fault, that's because the gameplay just isn't that good and isn't the main appeal for the series
if you want a focus on good gameplay from a Mystery Dungeon game, you have things like Shiren which the first two(threeish) PMDs are basically just a watered down version of, but most won't because it is the IP and vibe that carries the games
unless it's Super, which most won't play because "it's too hard!" (krill issue) or say "changes the game too much!" because you hold B to pass by your party, or can push them for strategic reasons
I have played all of them. The 3ds games both hit the same unenjoyable experience I encountered in Explorers: getting stuck where the story won't let you go back to restock or change up anything.
I can definitely respect the position that PMD is not the ideal way to mesh rougelike elements with pokemon. I end up thinking of rougelikes as a spectrum between focusing on resource management and focusing on constructing synergies. PMD ends up being a resource conservation game in what I consider to be an inherently synergy-building series.
My perspective for context is: To me, PMD is a roleplaying resource management game with a focus on story. I am roleplaying as the character I am playing as, and I generally do not focus on recruiting. My focus on building my party is solely on movesets/using items to increase their strength. I don't see PMD as a "rogueli(k/t)e" per se, but more of just a resource game with individual roguelike dungeons.
My first game was Explorers, then Rescue Team, then Gates, then Super and RTDX.
Part of why I like PSMD so much is that it gives me the most freedom to build my main character and partner, without letting me go out of my way to just grind forever. It gives me a sense of urgency to prepare my characters for the next part of the story. I also will say PSMD's post-game is almost entirely about the collection aspect; you are doing a Catch em All but with quests to befriend all Pokemon, which you can play with.
I wanna talk about Rescue Team DX since I'm here:
I hate Rescue Team DX because I believe it to be the least interesting game from a roleplaying or story standpoint, while it is also shaky in quality. It has weirdly long input lag, it has actual lag quite often, the game just doesn't look very good to me, I think a lot of the music remixes of the originals are a disappointment (compare like any Defy the Legends remix to the official one), and I think Rescue Team was already mid. The game also uses Super mechanics without what makes Super good to me, resource management.
Super throws a shit ton of items at you because it's about resource management, you will use a lot of items in every dungeon with a ton of strategy coming from when and where you use them, and this can be influenced by your player/partner choice at the beginning of the game. For instance, I may use a Warp Wand on one specific type of enemy throughout the dungeon because type wise we both lose to it, but I will eventually run outand have to find other riskier ways to combat this threat.
Basically, Super is hard. I remember dying from an offscreen rain boosted Hydro Pump. Using a Reviver Seed. The Pokemon evolved (cool mechanic by the way), and then just killed me again. I want that pain, I love that pain. It colors my experiences with the game and makes me feel more in line with what I am roleplaying as: a small Pokemon exploring a big world.
Rescue Team DX is the easiest PMD game because it gives you the toolkit of Super, but everything else is super nerfed. In the early dungeons of PSMD you are already fighting evolved Pokemon or things like Stoutland, which simply out class you in stats by a lot. You need to outplay the game, and it teaches you how to do so, and gives you the tools. RTDX gives you Super's toolkit (Egg Moves from the start, Wands, massive buff abilities, etc.) and you are fighting baby Pokemon and it's so free. It even has an auto button.
The post game has some more challenge, but I'm not playing for the postgame, really. I want that story! I want the roleplaying potential, and Rescue Team's post-game has none of that, it even encourages me to swap Pokemon out.
Lastly, we really didn't need a remake. It had been 5 years since Super, and we never even got a Generation 7 PMD game. And that could have had some amazing storylines, like Ultra Necrozma could make for an amazing villain. But no, we don't get that, we get a shit quality remake.
Gates to Infinity is in my opinion a bad game, and probably worse than RTDX on an """objective""" metric, but also it's original. It is something new with new characters, a new story, new setpieces; RTDX has nothing, it is a cold void from a series I love purely for not being cold. Every PMD game feels full of passion to me, except for RTDX.
Being the first PMD game in 5 years, for $60, having a Dex Cut like the main series but even less justified, being a shallow remake of the (IMO) worst PMD, feeling dead and empty inside. You think BDSP was bad? At least that game honestly did make some improvements, like having a faster running speed. Plus, frankly, I never really cared about DPP in the first place. PMD is far closer to my chest.
Rescue Team DX disappointed me so hard that it remains my least favorite Switch game at minimum, and if you ask me, my least favorite game ever.
while I agree with most of your points, super and gates were the worst performing games of the series, going from 5 mil to 1 mil in sales. DX, despite being younger will soon surpass gates in sales already. the last two new games were pretty much flops, and following up with a third would not have been a good idea.
following up to this, what most pmd fans don't want to admit is that they don't really want a new pmd, they just want explorers again. gates has a much better story and yet it got shat on for its gameplay, despite the main consensus between pmd players is that the gameplay is the worst part of the series, and even explorers gameplay was grindy and unfun, flip flopping from braindead to frustating without any tools or strategy to mitigate it. I find it hard to believe that a new pmd game will succeed all that much, we'll probably get an explorers remake, another new entry that flops and the series will be over
I don't really see performance in the market as much to do with the quality of the games.
Most games on Switch make record sales for their franchises. Metroid, Fire Emblem, Kirby, Mario, Zelda, almost Pokemon itself, Mario Kart, Mario Party, Super Smash Bros, Splatoon have all had their best selling games on Switch. If anything, the only reason RTDX sold as much as it did is because 1. The Switch basically doubles or triples the sales numbers of games put on it (not even an exaggeration), 2. With Main Series becoming less popular, people talk more about spinoffs.
I don't really care about how well the games perform, anyways. I want new ones.
Gates to Infinity's story is worse than Explorer's story in my opinion. Gate to Infinity's story is less picturesque and grand. When I think of the stories of each PMD game, I can imagine key moments colored with the emotions I felt and the game wanted me to feel during those moments. Every game except RTDX and GTI has me there. I don't care about GTI's characters, I think they are boring, and I don't like the narrative. Explorers of Sky's characters are generally super mid, but it at least has a few that are good. It does more with those characters. I like it more.
I much prefer Super's plot to both anyways which swings two ways between 1. An in-game character study of your partner -> 2. The more grand scale with a focus on sacrifice and ending with what the partner did. And replaying the game has you realizing just how much your Partner's actions colored the game, even before it takes place.
Anywho, next point:
It's not just gameplay-gameplay, it's things like terrible text speeds that slow GTI down to a crawl. And even if a lot of fans don't care that much about the gameplay, GTI actively is unfun to play, while the rest of the games are at worst "neutral", with Super being the best gameplay wise.
Explorers gameplay is not that deep but it's also snappy and fun enough. I wish it challenged me more, even if frustrating. Frustrating things are memorable, the main dungeons I remember from my first playthrough were the ones I struggled with the most, and I think it was only two dungeons in total. Give me more tough things, like PSMD.
My main point:
I don't want just Explorers of Sky over and over. If the next game is an Explorers of Sky DX, I will quit the franchise. They will have lost a customer.
A dedicated consumer who has theorized about PMD for years, loved the characters for years, truly come to understand why I like it in the first place. If they instead go all in on nostalgia bait, I'm out.
I'd 100% rather they go out with a blaze of glory with one more new original title only for the game to tank and the series die forever than just be, fucking nothing. That's what the path of Explorers DX goes.
It does fucking nothing. It adds no art to the world. No substance. Nothing, it's void. It's Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl corpses forever.
Would you rather the series be a zombie forever? Or let it end with something that, even if bad, we can at least talk about? Discuss? Make theories?Have new things?
basically, me @ Spike Chunsoft
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thought this said "enemas" and i was like woah.... pokemon gets weird in the spin-offs
no, but in PSMD you die and go to actual Hell, as in "The Voidlands", which has a dungeon that in Japanese is called "Hell Wastelands"
it acts like a greek hell, it's really cool, you fight these void creatures that look like Zelda chu chus, and the johto legendaries sacrifice themselves to help you escape
it acts like a greek hell, it's really cool, you fight these void creatures that look like Zelda chu chus, and the johto legendaries sacrifice themselves to help you escape
damn that sounds lit as hell
my only pmd experience is trying to play explorers of sky many many years ago and not being able to beat drowzee on mt. bristle (literal first boss battle of game). i am scared to go back even now. he is so strong
Bolded and italicized the main part that I wanted to focus on, but everything I quoted is relevant, so I just wanted to say that this is applies to so many major media franchises. It's all remakes/reboots/rereleases/remasters/re-whatevers nowadays. It doesn't just apply to video games, but focusing on those, the reason we see so many games remade, even relatively recent ones, is because big games take a lot of time and money to make. Game companies need to make money while they develop their new mainline titles, and the cheapest way to do that is to release an older [subjective] game that was popular that isn't already on the current platform. It's also usually safer, since said titles made money before, and the re-whatever model has proven to be lucrative across multiple media.
From a game accessibility standpoint, this is good (video games are probably the hardest to take to new formats because of how they tend to be built for specific systems and use particular engines), but part of me wishes they'd just release the original game at a cheaper price for the console most of the time. Re-whatevers usually have some QoL improvements and graphical upgrades [can be subjective], but I would usually prefer to experience the original game, warts and all. But a re-whatever for a game that hasn't be available for a long time is certainly better than nothing! (Super Mario RPG, Live A Live, etc).
Going back to the "safety" point, because of the huge temporal and monetary investment big games are, re-whatevers are just safer than new things, too. Obviously in this context we're talking about new games and stories from an existing franchise, but it also applies to entirely new IPs. Big media companies are scared to take risks, and thus we see relatively little innovation across media.
I hope it comes across that I don't dislike remakes as a concept, but as a replacement to an existing new game. For instance Zelda, at least those remakes are generally not done in-house, Grezzo usually makes them and they mostly just make remakes.
And I really do not mind Spike Chunsoft taking a major financial hit from a flop, but obviously they do. I know this, I am just saying my opinion anyways. However, something I didn't talk about but alluded to is that the better success of RTDX is not likely attributable to it being a remake, but simply because it's a Nintendo Switch game compared to consoles that, while successful, mostly kinda just existed. The 3DS at the time was seen as a big success, but the Switch and DS make it look tiny, and the marketing of the 3DS PMD games were pretty bad. Have you seen the infamous UK PSMD ad?
From an accessibility standpoint, I would like every PMD to be on the Switch, released on their own. No remake needed, GTI just needs like a text speed increase and it's golden, boom.
I just want companies to focus on new games in general. Maybe I'm just a weirdo, but even for say Pokemon, I really do not care about the prospects of a Gen 5 remake. Gen 6 could be cool I guess with maybe some cut Z content but no shot. Gen 7? Well, I'm dreading this because SM and USUM have very different plots and focuses, and I much prefer the originals.
I really don't want an Explorers DX not just because of the fact it'd be a remake, but also I think RTDX is just a really poor game, and a downgrade as an overall package. It felt lazy as hell, and passionless.
I won't pretend Explorers DX wouldn't be the more likely financial boon, but I doubt that would lead to more new PMD games. Because why bother? Remakes sell, as you said! Just keep going, around and around. In only a few years, RTDX would be pretty easy to remake and make significantly better, especially with the Switch 2.
Spike Chunsoft isn't a company that is really into making original games of this genre anymore in general. They've mostly coasted on Dangonronpa's success and turned Shiren, their own IP, into a Shiren 5 port machine. PMD only has one shot in my opinion: an original title that sells well, or if not, at least we got a real, new game.
Don't think you understood my point: a new game would have sold badly. it will probably still sell badly. people do not want new pmd games, the best selling game they had was dx because it's just rescuers again which is an old game people actually like. Dx didn't actually make record sales either, it's still currently the one with least sales too. This is a franchise that is one mid performance from being shelved. Releasing remakes is the only way pmd stays alive rn. Hell, it probably got shelved and then they brought it back just for the remakes.
I don't think you got my point either, to be fair. I would rather PMD die and get one last game than become zombie remake Hell. I'd also probably prefer it dying to remakes, too. If its fate is remake hell or death, I will take death every time.
Anywho, I've talked too much about this, sorry.