it would still make flavour sense (arguably more so) if it worked as described in this thread, so...
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Unpopular opinions
- Thread starter antemortem
- Start date
Nah. Its literallu rocks digging into the opponent, it makes sense to work based on type matchups. With Spikes for example the type is basically irrelevant, its just Ground type because the spikes are on the gound - it could also be a Normal or Steel move and make perfect sense
then why don't the poison and burn statuses scale their damage with poison and fire type matchups? association with a type doesn't need to imply a type matchup
Because they’re statuses - not actual direct attack damage.
Would make catching easier.
You have just described why Riki is OP in Xenoblade Chronicles
The Rise of Gengar. TWave, Toxic, Hypnosis, and WillOWisp all on one mon.
The Ghastly line may be the only line that gets that post-Toxic limit. Plenty of Grass or Bug types get Spore/Sleep Powder, Stun Spore, and Toxic/Poison Powder. Ghost types and the occasional Psychic often get Hypnosis and Will-o-Wisp, and occasionally get either Toxic or TWave for various reasons. But nothing I could think of and check gets all 4. The Grass/Ghost mons are not powder-users, the various powder users don't get any way to burn, and stuff like Rotom doesn't get Toxic. The pro-Gen 1 bias is the only thing that lets Ghastly keep it's perfect status status.
Paldea is one of the worst regions in Pokemon. You heard that right. Yes, the non-linear exploration is great and is a much needed addition to the series, but a region itself feels so shallow. I really don't want to write an essay here, but to put it simply: All the towns either consist of sandwich shops, meal power shops, Pokemarts, Pokemon Centers, and maybe a gym. This makes every town feel functionally the same even if some ingredients or items are exclusive to one shop. And you can't even walk around the shops: The game just gives a pop up menu and you buy things from there. It comes off as rushed and lazy, especially the former. Even Megasoza you can't even walk around like a normal building in the older titles- you have to use a menu to navigate between the floors. The only two towns I can think of that any reason to back to is Zappacio for Armor required to unlock Charcadet's evolutions and the the place where the auctions take place ( Can't remember the name ). Heck even the gym reception halls are all the same, though this is a problem with SwSh as well. So you are basically stuck exploring the region, which is fine at first because the Pokemon serve as the prize, but once you've caught the Pokemon, what else is there to do? I suppose there are raids, but those are also tied to Pokemon.
Anyway, I've been replaying Soulsilver recently on my 3DS, and I'm really enjoying Johto as a region. Playing the older generations ( 1-4 ) has made me realize how strong the inspiration of JRPGs was in Pokemon ( specifically DragonQuest ) and how much worse the RPG elements have gotten worse in later games, especially the switch games. With Johto specifically, I love how each region has it own unique culture for it. Violet City has a Sprout Tower in which trainers who are veterans are encouraged to reflect on the past, Azelea Town is close to nature between the Ilex Forest, Slowpoke Well, and Kurt's unique Pokeball Process, Goldenrod is the most modern city with department stores, radio towers, and underground shop full of trinkets for someone to buy, Blackthorn has the only location of wild Dragon type Pokemon as well as the ultimate moves in the remakes, Ecruteak is the most culturally historic town between Johto and Kanto due to the Legendary Pokemon tied with the town, Union Cave might seem like generic cave at first glance, but once you get Surf and explore further, your prize is a Lapras with the rare Ice type, and the Ruins of Alph has its own unique challenges between the Unown, secret location for Natu and Smeargle ( especially the utility for the latter ), Fossils, and even ties to the Sinnoh region with the Sinjoh ruins should one bring an Arceus. Even the Pokemon fit in this theme: The Legendary Beasts are a direct counterpart to the Birds, with their main distinction being with their lore: The Beasts are celebrated in myth as a celebration of life and a reminder of the tragedy 150 years ago, while the birds are merely called " Legendary " due to being simply rare Pokemon. Kingdra is very formidable boss because of its amazing typing, balanced stats, and Dragon/Ice are very rare especially the former, making it very difficult in practice to exploit Kingdra's Weaknesses, hence why Kingdra is a great surprise boss.
And lastly, I know some people are going to say that it doesn't matter of the game's quality, because the whole point is to sell plushies/cards, but that's still not a good excuse for the rushed nature of the switch era games, graphics and quality absolutely have an influence on the enjoyment of the game-better graphics are nicer and while it is subjective putting in the time and polish really shows love and care and a dedication towards the success of the game. If they don't have time to make an open world game, then don't do make it. Its quite obvious that the crunch cycle is a veru unsustainable cycle that needs to change- Because of this I didn't by the SV DLC- Since my primary interest is on the competitive scene which is easier to play on PS! and the fact that I refuse to support this crunch cycle which clearly has poor health on the laborers making these games.
Anyway, I've been replaying Soulsilver recently on my 3DS, and I'm really enjoying Johto as a region. Playing the older generations ( 1-4 ) has made me realize how strong the inspiration of JRPGs was in Pokemon ( specifically DragonQuest ) and how much worse the RPG elements have gotten worse in later games, especially the switch games. With Johto specifically, I love how each region has it own unique culture for it. Violet City has a Sprout Tower in which trainers who are veterans are encouraged to reflect on the past, Azelea Town is close to nature between the Ilex Forest, Slowpoke Well, and Kurt's unique Pokeball Process, Goldenrod is the most modern city with department stores, radio towers, and underground shop full of trinkets for someone to buy, Blackthorn has the only location of wild Dragon type Pokemon as well as the ultimate moves in the remakes, Ecruteak is the most culturally historic town between Johto and Kanto due to the Legendary Pokemon tied with the town, Union Cave might seem like generic cave at first glance, but once you get Surf and explore further, your prize is a Lapras with the rare Ice type, and the Ruins of Alph has its own unique challenges between the Unown, secret location for Natu and Smeargle ( especially the utility for the latter ), Fossils, and even ties to the Sinnoh region with the Sinjoh ruins should one bring an Arceus. Even the Pokemon fit in this theme: The Legendary Beasts are a direct counterpart to the Birds, with their main distinction being with their lore: The Beasts are celebrated in myth as a celebration of life and a reminder of the tragedy 150 years ago, while the birds are merely called " Legendary " due to being simply rare Pokemon. Kingdra is very formidable boss because of its amazing typing, balanced stats, and Dragon/Ice are very rare especially the former, making it very difficult in practice to exploit Kingdra's Weaknesses, hence why Kingdra is a great surprise boss.
And lastly, I know some people are going to say that it doesn't matter of the game's quality, because the whole point is to sell plushies/cards, but that's still not a good excuse for the rushed nature of the switch era games, graphics and quality absolutely have an influence on the enjoyment of the game-better graphics are nicer and while it is subjective putting in the time and polish really shows love and care and a dedication towards the success of the game. If they don't have time to make an open world game, then don't do make it. Its quite obvious that the crunch cycle is a veru unsustainable cycle that needs to change- Because of this I didn't by the SV DLC- Since my primary interest is on the competitive scene which is easier to play on PS! and the fact that I refuse to support this crunch cycle which clearly has poor health on the laborers making these games.
The gym reception halls in Paldea are all identical because it's non-linear. They can do the little pre/post gym cutscenes with Nimona and the E4 members in any gym because each gym is the same where that cutscene happens. It's a bit of a lazy programming hack, but smart-lazy rather than cheap-lazy IMO.
The SWSH Gym Foyers are not identical. They're very similar, but they have various changes to make the nature of the gym and your progress more clear(fewer challengers and more evolved mons as you go along are the ones I specifically remember, I'm sure there were others).
I don't see how linearity equals each gym reception hall has to be the same. They could take the time to personalize it: Like maybe giving the Water Gym Aquatic Plants or giving Tullip's hall actual Tullips or changing the color to the appropriate type. Your right about SwSh though, my bad.
I disagree on Paldea being a bad region... at least from a regional design standpoint. This feels more like a situation where the game brings the region down rather than the region bringing the game down.
Pokémon fans, myself included, have a bit of a tendency to associate the quality of the region with the quality of the games they were made for. So, for example, if Scarlet & Violet are bad Pokémon games, but they are the only games to take place in Paldea, then by extension that means Paldea itself must be a bad region. Let's compare this to something like Pokémon Platinum, which I would argue is the biggest relative improvement upon its home region's initial pair of games. In other words, the improvement between Diamond & Pearl and Platinum is more than the improvement between, say, Ruby & Sapphire compared to Emerald. There is no doubt in my mind that if Platinum did not exist and revitalize the unfinished game that is vanilla Diamond & Pearl, the Sinnoh region would look a lot less appealing to the masses as a result of that. This is without mentioning the fact that Sinnoh's region design honestly didn't add that much that wasn't already seen in previous entries- an earlygame cave (two of them, actually), an earlygame forest, a giant mountain splitting the region in half, dedicated water Routes, a Victory Road cave full of required field moves, they're all things we have seen before at that point.
Focusing on why I say Paldea's regional design is good, we're looking at a region that was built with two mechanics in mind- open world exploration and actual multiplayer within the region's overworld. From a gameplay perspective, things aren't as polished as one would like, sure, but that's the entire point. Alola's shift away from the classic overworld tile system, Galar's Wild Area, Galar's DLC areas, and Hisui's... whatever you want to call them were all progressively building up towards a truly open-world Pokémon experience. It's the first of its kind, much in the same way Kanto was all those years ago. And to Paldea's credit, while the repetitive nature of the few buildings you can go inside of is noticeable, the outdoor overworld in the context of the kind of region Paldea is trying to be is a noticeable improvement over those examples I mentioned. Excluding obvious things like unlocking the ability to go across water, I noticed there were less things getting in my way when navigating the overworld compared to Hisui in particular. Alfornada (the city with the Psychic Gym) immediately comes to mind as a location you can most easily reach by climbing up to it, but I would much rather have one location than an entire map that was the Coronet Highlands feeling like a slog to traverse at times. In addition to this, you still at least have an attempt at different biomes, which is more than I can say for, say, half of the Hoenn region's map consisting of water areas (the other half is really good, to be fair), or Black 2 & White 2's main story straight-up reusing half of Black & White 1's main story route through Unova when the new areas that the sequels did add tend to be more original and varied in comparison.
The other thing I want to bring up is how I think it's a bit unfair to compare this style of region to the old style if we can make the reasonable assumption that this newer style might be here to stay. Coming from a big fan of the Johto region's design myself, Johto took what Generation 1 gave it and ran with it. I'm expecting Paldea to be the same sort of situation for this region style for the purpose of what will eventually become other open-world regions in the future. In other words, an argument can be made in favor of both Kanto and Paldea being well-designed regions because they set the foundation to allow future regions in their respective styles to succeed. Saying that one style is bad and one style is good almost feels like a double standard to me, when Kanto's overworld had much of the same issues that Paldea's has, but people only focus on the rushed nature of Scarlet & Violet as a game because they don't want to take their nostalgia glasses off and admit that by the standards of modern AAA gaming, Paldea's first attempt for the core series at a combination of open-world world design and gameplay isn't even that bad.
Pokémon fans, myself included, have a bit of a tendency to associate the quality of the region with the quality of the games they were made for. So, for example, if Scarlet & Violet are bad Pokémon games, but they are the only games to take place in Paldea, then by extension that means Paldea itself must be a bad region. Let's compare this to something like Pokémon Platinum, which I would argue is the biggest relative improvement upon its home region's initial pair of games. In other words, the improvement between Diamond & Pearl and Platinum is more than the improvement between, say, Ruby & Sapphire compared to Emerald. There is no doubt in my mind that if Platinum did not exist and revitalize the unfinished game that is vanilla Diamond & Pearl, the Sinnoh region would look a lot less appealing to the masses as a result of that. This is without mentioning the fact that Sinnoh's region design honestly didn't add that much that wasn't already seen in previous entries- an earlygame cave (two of them, actually), an earlygame forest, a giant mountain splitting the region in half, dedicated water Routes, a Victory Road cave full of required field moves, they're all things we have seen before at that point.
Focusing on why I say Paldea's regional design is good, we're looking at a region that was built with two mechanics in mind- open world exploration and actual multiplayer within the region's overworld. From a gameplay perspective, things aren't as polished as one would like, sure, but that's the entire point. Alola's shift away from the classic overworld tile system, Galar's Wild Area, Galar's DLC areas, and Hisui's... whatever you want to call them were all progressively building up towards a truly open-world Pokémon experience. It's the first of its kind, much in the same way Kanto was all those years ago. And to Paldea's credit, while the repetitive nature of the few buildings you can go inside of is noticeable, the outdoor overworld in the context of the kind of region Paldea is trying to be is a noticeable improvement over those examples I mentioned. Excluding obvious things like unlocking the ability to go across water, I noticed there were less things getting in my way when navigating the overworld compared to Hisui in particular. Alfornada (the city with the Psychic Gym) immediately comes to mind as a location you can most easily reach by climbing up to it, but I would much rather have one location than an entire map that was the Coronet Highlands feeling like a slog to traverse at times. In addition to this, you still at least have an attempt at different biomes, which is more than I can say for, say, half of the Hoenn region's map consisting of water areas (the other half is really good, to be fair), or Black 2 & White 2's main story straight-up reusing half of Black & White 1's main story route through Unova when the new areas that the sequels did add tend to be more original and varied in comparison.
The other thing I want to bring up is how I think it's a bit unfair to compare this style of region to the old style if we can make the reasonable assumption that this newer style might be here to stay. Coming from a big fan of the Johto region's design myself, Johto took what Generation 1 gave it and ran with it. I'm expecting Paldea to be the same sort of situation for this region style for the purpose of what will eventually become other open-world regions in the future. In other words, an argument can be made in favor of both Kanto and Paldea being well-designed regions because they set the foundation to allow future regions in their respective styles to succeed. Saying that one style is bad and one style is good almost feels like a double standard to me, when Kanto's overworld had much of the same issues that Paldea's has, but people only focus on the rushed nature of Scarlet & Violet as a game because they don't want to take their nostalgia glasses off and admit that by the standards of modern AAA gaming, Paldea's first attempt for the core series at a combination of open-world world design and gameplay isn't even that bad.
Not including Miraidon because it's not really the same, Iron Valiant is the only well designed future paradox and the others should have been more like it rather than "What if X, but made of metal?"
i am a paradox centrist, both sides have Incredible work (sandy shocks and raging bolt, iron treads and iron valiant) and also... not very inspired work (brute bonnet and great tusk, iron moth and iron crown). most of the others are Just enough of a spin on the original designs to not be boring. the past paradoxes end up having an edge for me just because i already liked misdreavus and jigglypuff a lot lol.
As much as I like Iron Valiant in terms of game mechanics and for how creative it is in combining both Gardevoir and Gallade, I think Iron Treads is the most well-designed future paradox strictly in the sense of "what would this Pokemon look like as a robot?" since it fully leans into Donphan's already-kinda-mechanical wheel theming.
Oh, we're talking about Paradox Pokémon again? Perfect timing, I have some complaining I want to do about the Raikou, Entei and Suicune forms. That is to say... they're not necessarily the worst ideas Pokémon's ever come up, but pending the extremely far-fetched possibility a new Johto game provides closure on what I'm about to say, I think they're the biggest cases of missed potential I've seen from the series in quite some time. The way I look at things, the so-called "Future forms" are more consistent across the board in terms of design quality whereas the "Past forms" have higher highs and lower lows. I genuinely want to know if I was alone in thinking of this, but when I heard for the first time we were getting new forms of the Legendary Beasts, I thought what might be happening was that we would finally get to see what Raikou and the others looked like before the untimely Burned Tower incident.
As far as we know, this is very much not the case. Instead, they were haphazardly slapped together at the last minute and shoved into the game alongside the Future forms of the Swords of Justice trio (the lack of a Keldeo form being its own separate gripe I have) to be discovered in DLC and limited time raid events. As for my initial theory, maybe it's my older Johto bias from when I was younger speaking, but unlike a situation such as the Primal Reversions and Mega Rayquaza in ORAS, I don't exactly feel like sticking around and seeing if Game Freak decided to retcon this decision for the lore in a hypothetical future Johto game that may or may not include Paradox Pokémon. After all, this is the region that introduced the designated time travel Pokémon, so it's not the biggest stretch in the world. But like I said, until we're provided closure on this or we can just move on from Paradox Pokémon entirely, I'm mentally torn between wanting to enjoy these three and thinking they're among the most overhyped gimmick Pokémon in a generation full of gimmick Pokémon.
As far as we know, this is very much not the case. Instead, they were haphazardly slapped together at the last minute and shoved into the game alongside the Future forms of the Swords of Justice trio (the lack of a Keldeo form being its own separate gripe I have) to be discovered in DLC and limited time raid events. As for my initial theory, maybe it's my older Johto bias from when I was younger speaking, but unlike a situation such as the Primal Reversions and Mega Rayquaza in ORAS, I don't exactly feel like sticking around and seeing if Game Freak decided to retcon this decision for the lore in a hypothetical future Johto game that may or may not include Paradox Pokémon. After all, this is the region that introduced the designated time travel Pokémon, so it's not the biggest stretch in the world. But like I said, until we're provided closure on this or we can just move on from Paradox Pokémon entirely, I'm mentally torn between wanting to enjoy these three and thinking they're among the most overhyped gimmick Pokémon in a generation full of gimmick Pokémon.
Is this really an unpopular opinion? It’s like the #1 most common complaint about the future Paradoxes.
Personally, I think the across-the-board theming (dinosaurs and robots) for the two sets of Paradoxes communicates the overall concept more succinctly. The story isn’t actually about exploring the multitude of possibilities of what the relatives of Pokémon in the ancient past or distant future might have been like (interesting though that would be in its own right), it’s about a small group of aesthetically linked anomalies that are brought into this timeline because of one person’s particular fascination with a tome of such creatures.
bianca is not annoying she just has personality
I'm on the same page with this as I am the Unova Original Dragon: I don't want to see this. Occasionally there's a fan design which slaps, but it's better off never being revealed because it's been too hyped and discussed.
And I'm actually completely content believing that A.) they were originally a Vaporeon, Jolteon, and Flareon or B.) that they were three unrevealed species (either 3x the same or 3 different things). But I'm not crazy enough about either idea that I want it confirmed either way. The mystery is part of what makes it interesting.
I think this is a funny thing to say right before writing a bunch of symptoms of non-linear exploration and open world games. issues that even """good""" open world games had like botw and totk. sorry for always going unga bunga open world bad but, well, open world bad!
I feel like the extent to which open-world exploration (I'm using this term because defining what makes a game "open world" is contentious) is good for a game, or a franchise, depends on how hard the developers want to define how players experience that game's story. I think it also depends on what kind of gameplay the game has and how it defines progression (stage-based, strength-based, upgrade- or skill-based, plot-trinket- [macguffin-] or collectible-based, to name a few).
I'm a Metroidvania fan, and those tend to handle their progression via upgrades. Where and how you can navigate their world mostly depends on what your character can do, and thus their stories tend to be piecemeal and not something that has particularly strong ties to what the player character is doing, at least not actively. RPGs trend toward strength-based progression (sometimes with upgrades mixed in), and since what you can do depends on how strong you are, it's easier and more natural to have an ordered narrative that players are supposed to follow. But it's also important to give the player new areas to explore between most big story beats, as that opens opportunities to strengthen your characters as well as the ability to flesh out the world.
Pokémon has kept a relatively strict story progression in its games since Gen 3 (Gen 1 and 2 had story beats that couldn't be skipped both in their beginnings and endings, but are relatively freeform in the middle section, helped by the fact that their stories aren't particularly heavy), and Gen 9 tries to open that up a little. Scarlet and Violet present the main story "mystery" immediately, that being the history and source of your version's particular -Raidon (weird thought, but perhaps the games' true "main character" is your -Raidon, kind of like how Lillie is the "main character" in the Alola games), but mostly keep details hidden until the three sub-stories are resolved and the three converge for the "The Way Home" finale. I think the actual gameplay behind this structure is relatively solid, but they aren't built equally in execution.
- Champion Road is, IMO, the weakest of the three, but not because it's the usual structure that we expect from the series. Nemona is the other focal character of this sub-story, but she's... not a very interesting character. Whether you find her battle-obsessed antics funny or annoying, we don't really get any info about her history except that she's already a champion-ranked trainer. There's a little more to learn about her in The Way Home, but it doesn't serve to explain why she's so strange or make her more endearing. Ignoring Nemona for a moment, Champion Road not dynamically adjusting Gym Leader levels is a missed opportunity to make Paldea feel alive (counterpoint: gym leader battles being rigid lets you fight tougher gyms first for a challenge). Actually, Paldea's greatest flaw is probably that its cities and towns are devoid of life. Sure, there's people in them, but you can only interact with less than half, and basically none of them give you anything worthwhile. The near-complete lack of interiors compounds this problem. Visually, I think enough of its locales are distinct enough, but unless you want a very specific service or item from a shop there's no reason to revisit them.
- Starfall Street is... polarizing. I liked it well enough, but it definitely felt like it was missing something to give it more bite. It's probably meant to expand on the school that's central to Paldea, but the school itself is optional after the tutorial, and there's not much to be gleaned from physically exploring it (though it's more worthwhile than doing that with the cities), and not seeing any Team Star presence in the school makes beating them feel... unimportant to academic safety (I guess it makes sense that delinquents wouldn't be in class, though). Raiding the Team Star bases serves to introduce players to autobattle mechanic, and unlike Champion Road, it makes sense to me why their levels don't scale with your current "progression." Penny is reclusive and you only really learn about her at the end of the storyline, but the fake(?) mystery about her and Clavell at least can be amusing. It's a shame we never get to see the bullies that led to Team Star's foundation in the first place, but (IIRC) as they were expelled and the entire school faculty was replaced prior to the game, their absence isn't unwarranted.
- The Path of Legends feels like the most engaging of the three from a story perspective, something that's helped by two factors: its involvement in helping your ride Pokémon regain its strength, and how Arven (the only one of the game's three rivals who is tied to Area Zero to begin with) is actively being expounded on with each Titan you beat. The actual gameplay this sub-story provides is unfortunately mediocre, being a pretty easy inversion of Alola's Totem Pokémon (I don't have issues with their levels not scaling here). This is also the way the game incorporates new overworld actions (still called HMs), though what they actually open up is minimal; I think you can access all of the Gyms and Team Star bases without beating any Titans, so it's all just ruinous stakes, TMs/other items, and the occasional rare Pokémon.
Again, as mentioned when talking about Champion Road (and to a lesser extent Starfall Street), Scarlet and Violet's biggest problem is that the world doesn't really encourage exploration. It's the most severe in human settlements, but also extends to the overworld. There are lots of items scattered about, Gimmighoul coins to collect, trainers to battle (...if you want), and calamity-suppressing stakes to remove, but the space between all of these feels needlessly large sometimes. I guess that's a side-effect of creature collecting being the actual focus of the series and expecting the myriad monsters roaming about to fill that void. Unfortunately I feel like this is another area where SV messed up a little; not being able to interact with wild Pokémon outside from battling, (and likewise for wild Pokémon with you) feels like a step down from LA. Not saying that I want all games going forward to feel as tense as Hisui often did, but I liked having other ways of interacting with my surroundings.
Hmm. That got a bit sidetracked and became more of a general critique of SV instead of a review of its merits as an open-world exploration game. Basically, my summary is: it's pretty good, and I don't have a problem with it being open world. But I do have a problem of there not being much worth actually exploring.
EDIT: forgot to mention, seems weird to lament the games' story being "weakened" by the game being turned open world when Pokémon's writing/story is consistently one of the biggest "issues" I see leveraged against the series. This isn't to anyone in particular, just a musing of mine.
I think the issue is that i find open world bad because they affect the development side, not just because i dont like to play them as games (but thats true). Even with good, competent dev teams given a longer time to work on their open worlds, it is so easy to create shallow gameplay, stories and art because you need to do so many things and fill so many quotas that you never really elaborate on anything ever.
botw lost so much of what made the loz franchise in interesting story, characters, plots, enemies etc because the bare minimum for open world takes too much time to do anything other than that. totk suffered beyond open world pitfalls and more because they forgot it was a loz game and not nuts and bolts but even with already having so much of that bare minimum already done, the game couldnt even expand upon the lore or story in any interesting way lol. and you can bring random failed open world games but idk if thats fair, you can do that for every genre.
and maybe you'll go "ok sure the lore was bad but the gameplay was good" but idk. i think botw and totk gameplay is kinda mid and even bad. shrines, ultrabeasts, depths all lack the effort and fun of loz dungeons and puzzles because its an open world so you have to make 100000 of them because the player needs to be able to find at least some of them wherever they go. combat lacks any spiceness because theres only 3 sets of enemies other than the bosses and a bunch of weapons that dont actually enhance or change how you play (once you see a meele weapon and arrows youve seen 90% of the nuance unless youre a speedrunner lol), but because there needs to be content they added a bunch of types to find and collect. and then what? walk around an empty world that loses the "well its a desolate area" wonder after an hour of playtime? do korok seeds even though you learn theres only a limited type of puzzles that repeat and once youve seen them youve seen all that koroks can offer, making them just be a chore or something to ignore once you got your slots (dont do 900 please. please. please.)? and im not even gonna talk about how totk building minecraft knock off gameplay sucks ass
and idk. i always single out botw and totk because theyre considered good open world games and they kickstarted the trend for many devs. i also find elden ring the worst of the franchise because its open world and thus has similar lessened impact in world, lore, and gameplay. and im ignoring games everyone considers bad because theres no point.
pokémon has an advantage in that they had a 900 enemy creature backlog with finished models and data they can just pick from, give slight updates and slap on the game + a few new ones, so they can fill up their world with encounters easier than loz or whatever fromsoftware does. but the games ive talked about were made by competent developers under a decent timeframe and had very clear goals. why do we think pokemon will be able to do better than Bad when they dont have that level of competence or the time and resources. of course the towns and routes and most characters will be bland, they have to waste time doing stuff for the open world. and all that time sacrificed just leads to a very mediocre gameplay feel. what the hell is there to do in sv routes other than catch pokemon, battle a few trainers, look for a gimmighoul coin and leave? have we really improved over the formula because now you can pick the route to go next? did pokemons exploration really benefit from this bare minimum half baked open world enough that it was worth to sacrifice the already dwindling effort and time taken on the region itself?
the kitakami and indigo disc plotlines and exploration were more involved and had much more interesting characters because it was a non-open world narrative disguised as open world, with smaller focused areas that got more thought put into them!! imagine if the actual main series plot had the same benefit of being focused? its not like youre losing anything anyway since nothing scales LOOOL. you could literally make each new town or whatever be a gym/titan/star member and it would be the Same Shit. itd probably be better because knowing where your player is and not wasting time in the barebones open world game would make the areas and encounters actually yknow. stand out and be fun
tl;dr open world bad and pokemon open world will never work. bring back linear games that force you into specific paths