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Let's put aside the obvious elephant in the room, the performance. We all knew that one sucked on release and is still somewhat mediocre even now.
The world of SV is solid. It's wide enough to give a sense of distance, but not "wide for the sake of wideness".
There are significant enough variations in the biomes to not feel repetitive.
The entire map is accessible right away (post tutorial) yet several sideways open up as you unlock more of the raidon abilities.
There is plenty of vertical feel! The world isn't "2d with stairs", verticality not only has a sense, it's relatively on scale, and elevated areas very often have caves or nooks that you can explore and find things in them.
The world feels alive! Regardless of dexit, you are always surrounded by pokemon going on their own thing, some curious, some aggressive (fuck you Tauros hordes btw).
The few big cities do feel like actual cities. They are big, full of npcs, and with many facilities.
There are NO LOADING ZONES aside Meszagoza and Area 0. Big plus, even though the game suffers performance wise.
And outside of like... maybe 2 places, "if you can see it, you can reach it". Big positive in feeling that the world is "real" and not just a selection of places cut off from you.
Ofc it is not perfect, it has issues (some areas are still bland, trainers sometimes dont make sense, small cities arent really believable compared to the bigger ones, and ofc outside of the actual gym/titan/star camps everything is basically same level), but honestly? Still one of the better executed open world of the decade imo.
I also think regardless of how you feel about SV's structure with respect to leveling and whatnot, that it's a remarkably ambitious game despite its technical lack of polish and still having some faults.
Even if you were to put the "open world" aspect aside, I think SV is the first mainline Pokemon game on the Switch that truly feels like a proper "console scale" Pokemon game. Paldea is a vast region, large in scope and the big areas offer tons of exploration and things to find no matter where you go. You're not railroaded into any one place and it's tons of fun to figure things out around Paldea while discovering its many twists and turns, having tons of biomes and fitting Pokemon in them, and in general just really trusts you to explore the region and it's so much fun to truly do so. It's a really cool experience getting to experience such a large and vast region on my big TV screen (which mind you, is the draw of the Switch that Pokemon should be trying to aim for especially from here on). For me, one of the things I love about playing Pokemon is exploring a world and discovering a region's many secrets, and Paldea has really delivered on that in a scope that is fitting for a game that I'm playing on the big TV screen.
I'd also like to remark that the final area, Area Zero, is also stunning despite the games' faults.
A big problem I had with SwSh before its DLC was how comically underwhelming in scope it was for the platform it was on. Like I don't hate SwSh as much as everyone else but it was so boring when it all came down to it. Galar was just incredibly half baked for a console Pokemon mainline game's region, and I was left feeling dissatisfied afterward. A relatively boring Wild Area that was very homogenous and repetitive, with wild encounters being determined entirely by daily weather, and for the campaign all you had was hallway-scope routes that were so small and had little to offer that they were inferior to routes from the DS and 3DS games, which was embarrassing to say the least, and followed an aggressively linear and railroaded progression that ended up making a remarkably boring experience. Needless to say, I was definitely underwhelmed with it all because of how half-baked it was on both ends: the linear routes were small and worse than even DS/3DS era Pokemon games' routes, and the big Wild Area was underwhelming in scope and in variety.
The DLC helped a lot, and the Isle of Armor and Crown Tundra were much more like what I thought the Wild Area should have been, with a wider variety of biomes and secrets to explore like legendary ruins and whatnot, feeling more alive than mainland Galar. But that didn't change how boring mainland Galar itself was.
For SV, it really nails that feel of a proper mainline console game from the get go. The DLC is coming soon, and I think Kitakami and the Blueberry Terrarium show great potential to deliver even better areas than Paldea has. But as a whole, even with Paldea itself, SV really takes a lot of steps forward and feels like a genuine console-scale Pokemon experience and is much closer to the kind of Pokemon game I dreamed of when I was a kid in the 2000s with the DS games (and GBA games), the kind that seemed like only a distant dream back then. There's room for improvement, which I hope future generations build upon, but SV itself has shown great promise and lots of steps towards that.
for what it's worth there are still far more players playing primarily handeld with their Switch than on console play, so I don't agree
the main draw of the Switch is "console level games on the go"
this is pedantic since I also think it achieves that in terms of scope, but the Switch is much more a handheld with an HDMI cord than a console with the ability to be a handheld, via usage surveys by Nintendo or just marketing / components (the dock doesn't actually have any power, any increase to power is simply from the charging port being on rather than the dock providing anything)
It sounds good on paper: the world progresses with you, so you always have a challenge.
And that's the catch: since the world progresses with you, there's no sense of progression. The feeling of going through a lower level area and murdering (or ignoring) enemies that arent a challenge anymore is pretty important in RPG to give the player the sensation that "they're getting stronger".
I'm generally not a fan of open worlds in the vein of Paldea/BotW/whatever in general, but like, if level scaling were to get introduced in a game I always just thought it'd make sense to lock the levels of areas to whenever you beat whatever boss or objective in the relative place; does still require basically making ~20 different encounter pools and trainer teams per area but like, locking them to whatever area you "beat" them at (potentially until postgame where everything jumps up to whatever postgame levels are) makes sense to me to let there be a relatively smooth level curve while also still actually having a sense of progression. Besides like, if you want certain fights to be harder than others as well there's other ways than just levels to tune difficulty;
There are two entries in the game data for her initial battle. One after the Darkest Day, which I'm sure you'll be familiar with as she has a Lv. 58 Venipede and a Lv. 60 Slowpoke. Said Venipede ONLY has Poison Tail as an attack. It is as pathetic as it sounds.
As is said here, (the same thing is also done in Pt's League/Rival rematches as well for the record) just making movesets absolutely pathetic or whatever can let like, Katy still fit her role of being supposed to be a pushover while not really looking the part purely visually through their levels.
I also think regardless of how you feel about SV's structure with respect to leveling and whatnot, that it's a remarkably ambitious game despite its technical lack of polish and still having some faults.
Even if you were to put the "open world" aspect aside, I think SV is the first mainline Pokemon game on the Switch that truly feels like a proper "console scale" Pokemon game. Paldea is a vast region, large in scope and the big areas offer tons of exploration and things to find no matter where you go. You're not railroaded into any one place and it's tons of fun to figure things out around Paldea while discovering its many twists and turns, having tons of biomes and fitting Pokemon in them, and in general just really trusts you to explore the region and it's so much fun to truly do so. It's a really cool experience getting to experience such a large and vast region on my big TV screen (which mind you, is the draw of the Switch that Pokemon should be trying to aim for especially from here on). For me, one of the things I love about playing Pokemon is exploring a world and discovering a region's many secrets, and Paldea has really delivered on that in a scope that is fitting for a game that I'm playing on the big TV screen.
I'd also like to remark that the final area, Area Zero, is also stunning despite the games' faults.
A big problem I had with SwSh before its DLC was how comically underwhelming in scope it was for the platform it was on. Like I don't hate SwSh as much as everyone else but it was so boring when it all came down to it. Galar was just incredibly half baked for a console Pokemon mainline game's region, and I was left feeling dissatisfied afterward. A relatively boring Wild Area that was very homogenous and repetitive, with wild encounters being determined entirely by daily weather, and for the campaign all you had was hallway-scope routes that were so small and had little to offer that they were inferior to routes from the DS and 3DS games, which was embarrassing to say the least, and followed an aggressively linear and railroaded progression that ended up making a remarkably boring experience. Needless to say, I was definitely underwhelmed with it all because of how half-baked it was on both ends: the linear routes were small and worse than even DS/3DS era Pokemon games' routes, and the big Wild Area was underwhelming in scope and in variety.
The DLC helped a lot, and the Isle of Armor and Crown Tundra were much more like what I thought the Wild Area should have been, with a wider variety of biomes and secrets to explore like legendary ruins and whatnot, feeling more alive than mainland Galar. But that didn't change how boring mainland Galar itself was.
For SV, it really nails that feel of a proper mainline console game from the get go. The DLC is coming soon, and I think Kitakami and the Blueberry Terrarium show great potential to deliver even better areas than Paldea has. But as a whole, even with Paldea itself, SV really takes a lot of steps forward and feels like a genuine console-scale Pokemon experience and is much closer to the kind of Pokemon game I dreamed of when I was a kid in the 2000s with the DS games (and GBA games), the kind that seemed like only a distant dream back then. There's room for improvement, which I hope future generations build upon, but SV itself has shown great promise and lots of steps towards that.
True. Despite all its flaws, it definitely felt like a step in the right direction.
I'll also add that the glitches made it a lot more fun than I'd think otherwise. Throwing balls at wild mons over ledges to essentially hookshot your way across and get stuff is great.
A lot of this comes down to the red-text with how money is funneled around with productions. I'm not sure as to how 1:1 this is with video games, but in the film community it's fairly common knowledge that a movie has to make about 2.5x its production budget to be considered profitable.
Considering how much production costs have increased in recent years, if 2.5x is the benchmark, I don't know how anything "high quality/triple A" has been profitable as of late.
Well, if that's the case, and post game we see they too have stronger teams, why aren't all the Star Bosses as strong as Eri or at least Ortega? They have no reason to be holding back, they see the player as an invader. Only way it would make narrative sense is if you did them in "order" at which point you could say Giacomo and Mela weren't taking the player seriously; but like with Katy & Brassius, if you skip them to battle last you'll bulldoze them despite them being alerted the player have defeated the Atticus, Ortega, and Eri.
(The Titans at least have the excuse of being Wild Pokemon so they just reflect the levels of the surrounding Pokemon).
Here's a Unpopular Opinion: I don't like people saying Nemona is a psychopath or other negative cognitive terms. Yes, she had that "yandere" moment at the start of the game where she says the player doesn't need to battle anyone else but her (and I guess after becoming Champion you keep selecting the "joke" option you didn't win and she doesn't let you continue until you say that you did). But she shows know ill-will or extreme selfishness. She's definitely hyperfixated & impulsive (if you want you can say she has ADD/ADHD but I'm not a psychoanalysis so not going to give her any labels), but those aren't necessarily negative traits but quirks of her personality. The post game talk with in her dorm reveals that if she suffers from anything it's more loneliness as she's hyperfixated on training & battling that she has become too strong of a trainer no one can keep up with her; the above mentioned yandere moments now more sounding as slips of desperation than an assertion of obsession/possession.
That said it is still something she needs to learn to control, notably on when to chime in on conversations (Nemona, how about we give Arven a few minutes to grieve over his parent being dead & their robotic clone vanishing before we start gushing over the Legendary's Pokemon battling prowess; maybe even show a little empathy there (when Penny has more emotional awareness than you...)).
She is? I always thought Penny was the controversial one due to hacking your phone and not getting punished for it ( She gets punished for stealing League Points, and you can also argue that she wasn’t actually punished at all ).
The whole ending to Team Star's story is iffy. They pretty much wrote themselves into a corner where, to have a good ending, everyone just had to forgive Team Star even though some harsher punishments should have been handed out.
It can't be ignored that for over a year the Team Start Captains and subordinates have not attended classes (which also speaks to the handling of the Team Star issue by the Academy) and tried recruiting other students to join them. Yet, while they are now attending classes again, not only are they being allowed to continue where they left off but also are allowed to keep their bases that been converted into official Academy supported training grounds (so, um, there's no issue with the bases like property ownership or disturbing the environment?). Like I'm not suggesting expulsion, but I don't know, community service or something? Or was converting the bases into training grounds now make them like a school club thus are now subject to Academy regulations going to be required to show positive results of their work?
Which I felt was sort of what they implied with Penny's consequences, at least from her reactions. Sure she started the whole Team Star thing and stole quite a bit of League Points, but she's a good computer engineer so instead of fining her she now works for the Pokemon League and no, she doesn't get a choice in this. "That's slavery". We prefer "indentured internship"; it makes the PTA less angry.
Actually, them letting the player keep the League Points I think shows how much the League cared about that issue. Altogether Penny probably only "stole" a few thousand dollars, probably a drop in the bucket for the League, the salary for a computer engineer on Penny's level probably would cost WAY more in just a month. Penny's skills are worth way more than what she took, but they could use her "grand theft" as a means to get free labor.
Oh, and of course I think Penny and the Team Star Captains could benefit from mandatory therapy sessions (Arven and Nemona too).
Idk how unpopular this is, but looking back at a lot of FRLG's sprites it's really dawned on me how much I prefer RSE's art style.
(...)
Amusingly I lean more to liking FRLG's art style in general when it comes to the overworld and human characters: it's quite noticeable when trading between Kanto and Hoenn games because the art style for the opposing games looks so different.
For the Pokemon sprites, I can imagine the thinking being "well, these are remakes of Gen I, we should prioritize having the Gen I Pokemon being in a clear pose so you can see it's features" whereas in RSE they're willing to do more dynamic poses as, even for the Gen I Pokemon in Hoenn's Dex, the attention is still going to be all on the Gen III Pokemon (maybe even thinking they need to have the older Gen Pokemon in more dynamic poses to made players interested in them).
For the Trainer overworld sprites, I see that more as just are evolution. Ruby & Sapphire were just continuing how they traditionally did the sprites as GF was more focused on making the new region, but when FRLG came around they probably decided to focus more on details like how "hey, this is a top down perspective, the trainers wouldn't be looking right at the screen when walking down but rather at the bottom of the screen".
My favourite type of "working" level scaling is partial + story related one.
For example, in Dragon Quest XI, the overworld enemies change depending on which act you're on. However, they are not related to the player level per se, just to the point of the story, progressively getting harder but still staying at the level they are at the start of a given act.
So in the same area you'd have (invented names/levels) lvl 3 Wolves, then at start of act 2 you'd find level 20 Dire Wolves, and in act 3 you'd find level 40 Undead Werewolves.
This does make sense as the story progresses, and you keep the feeling of the progressive danger on the world, but at same time, you do keep the feeling of progression, as this is both 1) limited to overworld enemies, 2) makes sense plotwise, and 3) still static, the Undead Werewolves will stay level 40 no matter if you're lvl 40 or 100.
Worldie, that's the kind of level-scaling I'm talking about.
Level-scaling going by the party's Level? That's a terrible idea, I can't imagine a system which actually takes the party's Level and base opponent's on that. No matter what scenario I do there's both a way it can cause problems and to be abused.
Since me just saying it isn't good enough *rolls up sleeve* here is my idea of what the theoretically Paldea Level-Scaling would look like for the 18 bosses (and remember, if I a single person could do this, GF a company with a whole team of planners surely can):
So some ground rules. Going to stick around the Levels GF had settled on, no need to complicate things for just an example.
Because we have 3 separate Stories, each will work within it's own Level System. All Level System works via # of Badges. The more Badges you have, the stronger the next boss will be. Wild Pokemon and Trainers on the overworld are not affected by this, how they are now is how they would be in this system. The only difference I would maybe do is have certain pocket of areas where there are stronger Wild Pokemon (that way, after getting stronger there's a reason to come back) and after a certain of Badges have defeated Trainers refresh with stronger teams (and since you defeated them have them appear on the mini-map with an icon that looks like the VS Seeker; post game all trainers refresh once every day).
Victory Road (Gyms):
There are two sub-systems here: Total # of Badges & # of Gym Badges.
The total # of Badges adds +1 to the Levels of all the Gym Leader's Pokemon for each Badge.
The # of Gym Badges decides two factors: Base Levels & # of Pokemon. Each Gym Leader is going to have 8 teams, starting from 0 Gym Badges to 7 Gym Badges. For each Gym Badge they have the Base Levels increase (which is than further increased by total # of Badges you have) and at certain benchmarks gain an additional Pokemon. Here's how that table looks:
Gym Badges
Base Levels
# of Pokemon
0
14/15
3
1
16/17
3
2
20/21
3
3
22/23
4
4
27/28
4
5
33/34
4
6
37/38
4
7
40/41
5
And it then goes without saying each team will have the Evo Stage & Movesets (& maybe Abilities) adjusted based on the Base Levels (with maybe allowing for a Pokemon to evolve if they do so by Level and the total # of Badges has them exceed that Level).
Starfall Street (Team Star):
Two sub-systems here as well and they're pretty much the same: Total # of Badges & # of Team Star Badges.
The total # of Badges adds +1 to the Levels of all the Squad Captain's Pokemon for each Badge.
The # of Star Badges decide two factors: Base Levels & # of Pokemon. Each Squad Captain is going to have 5 teams, starting from 0 Star Badges to 4 Star Badges. For each Star Badge they have the Base Levels increase (which is than further increased by total # of Badges you have) and at certain benchmarks gain an additional Pokemon (Starmobile counts as a Pokemon in this case). Here's how that table looks:
Star Badges
Base Levels
# of Pokemon
0
14/15
3
1
18/19
3
2
23/24
4
3
33/34
4
4
40/41
5
Of course each team will have the Evo Stage & Movesets (& maybe Abilities) adjusted based on the Base Levels (with maybe allowing for a Pokemon to evolve if they do so by Level and the total # of Badges has them exceed that Level).
Path of Legends (Titans):
And the final pair of sub-systems: Total # of Badges & # of Titan Badges.
The total # of Badges adds +1 to the Titan's Level for each Badge.
The # of Titan Badges just decides the Base Level. Each Titan has 5 Movesets, starting from 0 Titan Badges to 4 Titan Badges. For each Titan Badge they have the Base Level increase (which is than further increased by total # of Badges you have). Finally, the 'Raidon Upgrade you get is based on the number of Titans you defeat, not what Titan you defeat. Here's how that list looks:
Titan Badges
Base Level
'Raidon Upgrade Reward
0
15
Dashing
1
19
High Jump
2
24
Swimming
3
34
Climbing
4
41
Gliding
I'll admit, this was a bit more complicated than I thought, but it was a fun thought experiment, gave me insight of design aspects I had to put more thought into, and overall I think I came up with a good system that both should give Trainers a good challenge but nothing this is too much that a little training can't help with.
That means they're not doing 250ish-sized dexes because if they go for a small dex, it'll be even worse. So every game needs to have 400-500 mons on it now and that's not working well for the cohesiveness of the regions. It also makes team building a pain because you have a lot of options packed together. And it also drowns out the newer mons because they're naturally making less of them.
Hm, maybe it would be best for the main game just have the Regional Dex be like 200 (with focus on the new Pokemon of course though plenty of veterans to fill out gaps and teams, especially for the Gym Leaders). But there's still like 200-300 additional Pokemon in the code, they just don't have a Dex entry until you've at least seen all the Regional Dex in which case the Expanded Dex opens up (all the Pokemon in the Regional Dex can be at least seen, if not obtained than at least used by another trainer in the game; also you don't need the Expanded Dex to obtain a Pokemon outside of the Regional Dex, it just won't have a Dex entry (but will be searchable in the Box)). The Expanded Dex is not needed for completion, the Shiny Charm is only rewarded for completing the Regional Dex. The Expanded Dex is just a bonus to give all the Pokemon in the game a new dex entries.
Which is fair being this is Unpopular Opinions. I think we've all gotten a bit ruffled on these subjects. Let's respect everyone's thoughts and have civilized discussions.
I just want to point out real quick that Scarlet and Violet is actually up there in the new numbers count of Pokemon. At 115 new Pokemon, it's ranked 4th place, defeating the numbers of most of the newer gens. However, even then there are also other things such as Regional Forms that do not count as entirely new Pokemon, but do make up some of the difference in Gens 7 and 8. If you don't include Regional Forms, then Gen 7 only adds 88 Pokemon. If you include Regional Forms, it becomes a much more reasonable 112. I count regional forms in terms of actual designs because they are featured prominently in-game, and generally act as new Pokemon, even if obviously based on another.
Legends Arceus only had around 240 Pokemon in the dex, which made sense for its smaller world and scope. Scarlet and Violet has 400 because part of the reason to explore this big world is to obtain new Pokemon. Sword and Shield having 400 is a lot more arguable, but I think Raids justify at least a good chunk of it; you need Pokemon to hunt down.
Also, something people do not often talk about is that each of the Switch games have changed the texturing and lighting of the Pokemon pretty drastically. LGPE and SWSH Pikachu may use the same model, but the touch ups make them look quite different; this goes even further with Scarlet and Violet, which created hundreds of new animations for old Pokemon, and even new models for a lot of them.
I just want to point out real quick that Scarlet and Violet is actually up there in the new numbers count of Pokemon. At 115 new Pokemon, it's ranked 4th place, defeating the numbers of most of the newer gens.
Here's a Unpopular Opinion: I don't like people saying Nemona is a psychopath or other negative cognitive terms. Yes, she had that "yandere" moment at the start of the game where she says the player doesn't need to battle anyone else but her (and I guess after becoming Champion you keep selecting the "joke" option you didn't win and she doesn't let you continue until you say that you did). But she shows know ill-will or extreme selfishness. She's definitely hyperfixated & impulsive (if you want you can say she has ADD/ADHD but I'm not a psychoanalysis so not going to give her any labels), but those aren't necessarily negative traits but quirks of her personality. The post game talk with in her dorm reveals that if she suffers from anything it's more loneliness as she's hyperfixated on training & battling that she has become too strong of a trainer no one can keep up with her; the above mentioned yandere moments now more sounding as slips of desperation than an assertion of obsession/possession.
That said it is still something she needs to learn to control, notably on when to chime in on conversations (Nemona, how about we give Arven a few minutes to grieve over his parent being dead & their robotic clone vanishing before we start gushing over the Legendary's Pokemon battling prowess; maybe even show a little empathy there (when Penny has more emotional awareness than you...)).
I still think if we're going to say Nemona has any issues, it's a physical disability, not a mental one. She's constantly out-of-breath, complains about the stairs which no one else does, wears a wrist brace, can't throw pokeballs well, and is the one out of the endgame 4 who is most in need of rest at the waystations. There's a lot of issues that would manifest with similar symptoms, and her dealing with that would make her monofocus on the one area where her physical ability doesn't matter(battling) make a lot more sense.
Well, if that's the case, and post game we see they too have stronger teams, why aren't all the Star Bosses as strong as Eri or at least Ortega? They have no reason to be holding back, they see the player as an invader. Only way it would make narrative sense is if you did them in "order" at which point you could say Giacomo and Mela weren't taking the player seriously; but like with Katy & Brassius, if you skip them to battle last you'll bulldoze them despite them being alerted the player have defeated the Atticus, Ortega, and Eri.
(The Titans at least have the excuse of being Wild Pokemon so they just reflect the levels of the surrounding Pokemon).
Here's a Unpopular Opinion: I don't like people saying Nemona is a psychopath or other negative cognitive terms. Yes, she had that "yandere" moment at the start of the game where she says the player doesn't need to battle anyone else but her (and I guess after becoming Champion you keep selecting the "joke" option you didn't win and she doesn't let you continue until you say that you did). But she shows know ill-will or extreme selfishness. She's definitely hyperfixated & impulsive (if you want you can say she has ADD/ADHD but I'm not a psychoanalysis so not going to give her any labels), but those aren't necessarily negative traits but quirks of her personality. The post game talk with in her dorm reveals that if she suffers from anything it's more loneliness as she's hyperfixated on training & battling that she has become too strong of a trainer no one can keep up with her; the above mentioned yandere moments now more sounding as slips of desperation than an assertion of obsession/possession.
That said it is still something she needs to learn to control, notably on when to chime in on conversations (Nemona, how about we give Arven a few minutes to grieve over his parent being dead & their robotic clone vanishing before we start gushing over the Legendary's Pokemon battling prowess; maybe even show a little empathy there (when Penny has more emotional awareness than you...)).
The whole ending to Team Star's story is iffy. They pretty much wrote themselves into a corner where, to have a good ending, everyone just had to forgive Team Star even though some harsher punishments should have been handed out.
It can't be ignored that for over a year the Team Start Captains and subordinates have not attended classes (which also speaks to the handling of the Team Star issue by the Academy) and tried recruiting other students to join them. Yet, while they are now attending classes again, not only are they being allowed to continue where they left off but also are allowed to keep their bases that been converted into official Academy supported training grounds (so, um, there's no issue with the bases like property ownership or disturbing the environment?). Like I'm not suggesting expulsion, but I don't know, community service or something? Or was converting the bases into training grounds now make them like a school club thus are now subject to Academy regulations going to be required to show positive results of their work?
Which I felt was sort of what they implied with Penny's consequences, at least from her reactions. Sure she started the whole Team Star thing and stole quite a bit of League Points, but she's a good computer engineer so instead of fining her she now works for the Pokemon League and no, she doesn't get a choice in this. "That's slavery". We prefer "indentured internship"; it makes the PTA less angry.
Actually, them letting the player keep the League Points I think shows how much the League cared about that issue. Altogether Penny probably only "stole" a few thousand dollars, probably a drop in the bucket for the League, the salary for a computer engineer on Penny's level probably would cost WAY more in just a month. Penny's skills are worth way more than what she took, but they could use her "grand theft" as a means to get free labor.
Oh, and of course I think Penny and the Team Star Captains could benefit from mandatory therapy sessions (Arven and Nemona too).
I discuss a bit about Nemona in a response to a response to you, so see below for that.
As for Team Star, my reconciling if we take the Scaling as Gameplay/Story Segregation is that the Team Star Leaders are just that strong relative to each other but were contributing in other manners to Operation Star and such: Eri is the strongest in a straight battle, Ortega's not as strong but he built the Starmobiles which was obviously important, Mela bonds with the Charcadet they evolve to power them but she may not have particularly strong individual Pokemon. Bearing in mind Team Star was formed by misfit Bullying Victims rather than an organized criminal group or gang, they had to work more with what everyon could bring to the table than pushing for Power = Authority.
As for the ending of the story, Clavell more or less says that they're in charge of the Bases-turned-Training-Grounds as Community Service for their truancy, so presumably proof that they're putting a real effort into it would be expected (albeit also easy to come by since they clearly have positive relations with a lot of the students outside pushy recruitment). It is at most a slap on the wrist, but I'm fairly sure that's the point given the full context of the situation that wasn't known to him or the current staff when he made the initial expulsion threat. As I could tell from the flashbacks, Star prepared the Starmobiles and put an intimidating front up towards the students bullying them, but the confrontation was without a direct threat or any altercation before the latter withdrew from the Academy, with the cover-up being more the Deputy Director protecting his ass over the ignored bullying that led to the incident to begin with. The obvious point the story wants to go for is that Team Star were the victims of the incident, so to have the Academy punish them for withdrawing from a hostile environment for a supportive one would just be proving the same point that the cover-up did.
The resolution is to get them back into interacting with the Academy and have some reprimanding on the record, but with the obvious point that Clavell isn't giving them a punishment he thinks they don't deserve after they were wronged already by his predecessors.
As far as Penny, I think the idea is a combination of "if she works for us she doesn't work against us" for wanting her on-board regardless of her intent, and Geeta not exactly being a fun boss to work for as is a throughline with the Gym Leader rematch dialogue, given most of the strong-arm dialogue towards Penny comes from her in the scenes.
Everyone seems to agree Nemona is basically a character replaying the game compared to you being a first timer (up to and including not using Legendaries for a challenge lol).
I kind of read Nemona (even if not by intention of the writing) as being on the Autism spectrum, as I was diagnosed with Aspergers in my younger years (whether that would hold up if I got a more current evaluation) and pattern-finding me correlates some of the more prominent behaviors/symptoms to her stand-out traits. If you'll indulge my cringe diagnosing of a fictional character
Hyper Fixation on things, in this case battling and your player character as a rival
Trouble with socially normative behavior, as per her obsessive talk with you about being rivals, following you between Gyms. More specifically here are a few from an article that came up for Symptoms in Adolescents on a cursory Google Search
find it hard to take turns in conversations – for example, they might like to do all the talking or find it hard to answer questions about themselves (Nemona constantly butts into topics even when she doesn't have something related to wat it started on)
talk a lot about their special interests, but find it difficult to talk about a range of topics or things they don’t find very interesting (literally anything besides Battling for her can be counted on 2 hands at most)
have difficulty reading nonverbal cues, like body language or tone of voice, to guess how someone else is feeling – for example, they might not be able to tell when someone is teasing them or using sarcasm (She's very bad at reading the room in Area Zero as discussed above with things like Arven or the aggressive Raidon scaring yours)
In light of the above, she's very bad at socializing given she's the class president and yet doesn't seem to have any friends or social circles alluded to within the school.
The "autistic savant" trope isn't necessarily a good one but under this lens I think Nemona does a better job of showing the negatives of living in that manner since she doesn't have much for friends/a support system and lacks the ability properly pursue them even if she
I just want to point out real quick that Scarlet and Violet is actually up there in the new numbers count of Pokemon. At 115 new Pokemon, it's ranked 4th place, defeating the numbers of most of the newer gens. However, even then there are also other things such as Regional Forms that do not count as entirely new Pokemon, but do make up some of the difference in Gens 7 and 8. If you don't include Regional Forms, then Gen 7 only adds 88 Pokemon. If you include Regional Forms, it becomes a much more reasonable 112. I count regional forms in terms of actual designs because they are featured prominently in-game, and generally act as new Pokemon, even if obviously based on another.
Legends Arceus only had around 240 Pokemon in the dex, which made sense for its smaller world and scope. Scarlet and Violet has 400 because part of the reason to explore this big world is to obtain new Pokemon. Sword and Shield having 400 is a lot more arguable, but I think Raids justify at least a good chunk of it; you need Pokemon to hunt down.
Also, something people do not often talk about is that each of the Switch games have changed the texturing and lighting of the Pokemon pretty drastically. LGPE and SWSH Pikachu may use the same model, but the touch ups make them look quite different; this goes even further with Scarlet and Violet, which created hundreds of new animations for old Pokemon, and even new models for a lot of them.
For the Pokemon sprites, I can imagine the thinking being "well, these are remakes of Gen I, we should prioritize having the Gen I Pokemon being in a clear pose so you can see it's features" whereas in RSE they're willing to do more dynamic poses as, even for the Gen I Pokemon in Hoenn's Dex, the attention is still going to be all on the Gen III Pokemon (maybe even thinking they need to have the older Gen Pokemon in more dynamic poses to made players interested in them).
For the Trainer overworld sprites, I see that more as just are evolution. Ruby & Sapphire were just continuing how they traditionally did the sprites as GF was more focused on making the new region, but when FRLG came around they probably decided to focus more on details like how "hey, this is a top down perspective, the trainers wouldn't be looking right at the screen when walking down but rather at the bottom of the screen".
Alright, yes, a lot of the Gen I sprites are famously a bit off, so I wouldn't want them exactly reproduced in a lot of cases. There are some that look fine (Grimer, Butterfree, Cubone, Charmeleon, Rhydon) but a lot need some work to make them less cartoonish or off-model. But overall, the poses and positioning of these sprites beat out the dullness of the ones FRLG used by miles.
Wonder if anyone's done this for the GSC sprites too... (edit: found a couple of partial examples)
I'd still say they're fair to count alongside Regional forms or Cross-Gen Evos, since they are given distinct slots and stats/typings that change their playstyle significantly. The Past-Paradoxes also definitely vary their designs up a lot, Future toss up based on the Chrome and some cases like IV or Iron Bundles cannon
I'd still say they're fair to count alongside Regional forms or Cross-Gen Evos, since they are given distinct slots and stats/typings that change their playstyle significantly. The Past-Paradoxes also definitely vary their designs up a lot, Future toss up based on the Chrome and some cases like IV or Iron Bundles cannon
Great Tusk's design would honestly be perfectly suited to a Donphan evo, and it kinda annoys me that it's saddled to a group of Pokemon which have zero future-proofing and are impossible to divorce from the scenario of SV.
Great Tusk's design would honestly be perfectly suited to a Donphan evo, and it kinda annoys me that it's saddled to a group of Pokemon which have zero future-proofing and are impossible to divorce from the scenario of SV.
So are it's stats. If you went back in time a few years and went "This is Greatusk, the Ground/Fighting evolved form of Donphan" most people would probably believe you.
Also, stat-wise, not so much design-wise Iron Hands is similar for Hariyama.
Great Tusk's design would honestly be perfectly suited to a Donphan evo, and it kinda annoys me that it's saddled to a group of Pokemon which have zero future-proofing and are impossible to divorce from the scenario of SV.
Great Tusk's design would honestly be perfectly suited to a Donphan evo, and it kinda annoys me that it's saddled to a group of Pokemon which have zero future-proofing and are impossible to divorce from the scenario of SV.
Poor Donphan, once a counterpart to Ursaring now doomed to stay in the shadow of Ursaluna and Great tusk. Worst part is that unlike the megas where bad Mons at least had a time to shine; Donphan is doomed to have nothing because Great tusk only looks like donphan, and isn’t truly related to it like how Ursaluna brought relevancy to Ursaring or Mega Mawile to regular mawile
Poor Donphan, once a counterpart to Ursaring now doomed to stay in the shadow of Ursaluna and Great tusk. Worst part is that unlike the megas where bad Mons at least had a time to shine; Donphan is doomed to have nothing because Great tusk only looks like donphan, and isn’t truly related to it like how Ursaluna brought relevancy to Ursaring or Mega Mawile to regular mawile
This kind of segways into an unpopular Opinion of my own: The Paradoxes, Megas, and Cross-Gen evos alike don't improve the previous Pokemon in any significant manner besides association with the design concept anyway. Literally the only 2 Pokemon that have ever benefitted from evolutions in their existing forms are Aipom being allowed into LC (before it became LC Ubers) and Porygon-2 by virtue of Eviolite a Gen later. Every other time the overlap is Fringe at best, as the two stages barely compete in the same environment while alternates/Megas often alter their playstyle to the point they end up in different tiers or don't play the same even in the same place.
Donphan and Iron Treads in SV UU are very similar in viability because Donphan having an ability, Ice Shard, and no Steel Typing presents some benefits despite its lower stat total, and these would be traits it has regardless of Treads existing. No one using Mawile is using it (in the tiers the Mega elevates to) because Mawile at base is improved by Mega Mawile existing, same to Charizard, Ursaring, Kingambit, Farigiraf.
Donphan's as much doomed to stay in GT's shadow as much as Ursaring is in Ursaluna's shadow, because Ursaring didn't suddenly become more viable, it now just went from "that NU mon" to "that NU mon that evolves into the UU/OU Trick Room Monster" the same way Donphan is "that UU Ground Type they based Great Tusk on"
Something that surprised me in SV so far is that they kinda let future Paradoxes "not have an ability" considering Pincurchin is a joke and noone would ever use it, whereas Torkoal has always been a solid VGC mon (when Groudon isn't around obv).
I am moderately surprised that they didn't try to buff it or introduce a new Electric Surge pokemon. Ofc tecnically the chance Tapu Koko comes back in DLC is probably 99% or more so at that point they will actually have an ability, though I do wonder if they have planned something for it in DLC1: they probably don't want that only one side of the paradoxes actually sees VGC usage. (The only future paradoxes that really saw usage are Iron Bundle and Iron Hands, and Iron Bundle has all but disappeared now with the extended pokedex)
Yeah, the paradoxes counting as separate mons give the impression that they just really wanted to get to the 1000 Pokemon milestone asap. Gholdengo is still amazing tho, my favorite Paldea mon
And speaking about Nemona, I'm not much of a fan tbh. Her personality really doesn't differ much from previous friendly rivals, and it doesn't help the League path is so barebones in terms of plot and characters (although I heard she gets some focus in postgame). The concept of a champion being your rival is very wasted potential bc gameplay wise she does the same thing near every prev rival has done. She could've spiced up her team variety every now and then since she already did her journey with other mons, heck she uses a Tauros in the game's opening, but nah she just sticks with the same mons every time. So I never feel she goes easy on me like the game is implying, but instead she's nowhere near as strong and innonative to begin with...
surprised you're implying paradox pokemon shouldn't be considered new entire pokemon when most of them are unique designs (yes, even the future ones, don't @ me) with new types, movepools, etc.
and not shit like wugtrio which is literally just miscolored diglett but not considered a paldean form because "realism"
This kind of segways into an unpopular Opinion of my own: The Paradoxes, Megas, and Cross-Gen evos alike don't improve the previous Pokemon in any significant manner besides association with the design concept anyway. Literally the only 2 Pokemon that have ever benefitted from evolutions in their existing forms are Aipom being allowed into LC (before it became LC Ubers) and Porygon-2 by virtue of Eviolite a Gen later. Every other time the overlap is Fringe at best, as the two stages barely compete in the same environment while alternates/Megas often alter their playstyle to the point they end up in different tiers or don't play the same even in the same place.
Donphan and Iron Treads in SV UU are very similar in viability because Donphan having an ability, Ice Shard, and no Steel Typing presents some benefits despite its lower stat total, and these would be traits it has regardless of Treads existing. No one using Mawile is using it (in the tiers the Mega elevates to) because Mawile at base is improved by Mega Mawile existing, same to Charizard, Ursaring, Kingambit, Farigiraf.
Donphan's as much doomed to stay in GT's shadow as much as Ursaring is in Ursaluna's shadow, because Ursaring didn't suddenly become more viable, it now just went from "that NU mon" to "that NU mon that evolves into the UU/OU Trick Room Monster" the same way Donphan is "that UU Ground Type they based Great Tusk on"
On the contrast, I would argue the value in the cross-gen evos is that they complete lines, allowing them to actually be on an even level that is worth using. No one cared about half the Johto lines until Gen IV (and now Legends/IX) starting giving evolutions en-masse to them, but now it's arguably one of the strongest generations because there's so much worth using among its number.
That's the problem with Megas and Paradoxes. They are locking Pokemon's worth behind association with short-lived gimmicks, and once those gimmicks are gone, so too does any real reason to use them. You can use Togekiss or Weavile endlessly generation after generation, but Lopunny and Mawile just went right back to being effectively junk filling slots in your PC.
