(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

SV places so much importance on sandwiches that a completely inconsequential sandwich that the player's mom makes at the start of the game is for some reason referenced much later as if it's a vital component of the story.

You seen what that sandwich did to the Raidon at the beginning of the game tho?

Shiiiii, I need a sandwich like that at work, that thing was hitting like prime Mike Tyson. If the player ate that, they'd probably be able to fix the whole Area Zero mess in 5 minutes with no mons.

 

[Sixfortyfive]

You seen what that sandwich did to the Raidon at the beginning of the game tho?

Shiiiii, I need a sandwich like that at work, that thing was hitting like prime Mike Tyson. If the player ate that, they'd probably be able to fix the whole Area Zero mess in 5 minutes with no mons.

I would understand why it would make a strong impression on the paradox pokemon.

I do not understand why it makes such a strong impression on Nemona, who I maintain is one of the most poorly written characters I've seen in all fiction.

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

I do not understand why it makes such a strong impression on Nemona, who I maintain is one of the most poorly written characters I've seen in all fiction.

This means war. All that girl ever did was want to run the fade.

There's no need for further plot than this. One day she woke up, laced up her black air force 1's, and crashed out on every trainer in sight until she became Champion. Twice. Pure, beautiful writing. I've never felt so understood and represented.

 

[R_N]

Nemona Nemowns(a) sorry not sorry

 

[DrrT]

I don't try to hide I love all the SV cast (even including the DLC despite the questionable writing) and that includes Nemona. I'm not going to pretend she is the most deep character ever even in Pokemon context but she works well enough for me. A Goku-esque girl who is obssesed with battles but has issues because of being too strong, too intense and some people even believing she only got that far because of her family. Then she finds her "treasure" in the player. It's simple but it works. If we are going to keep pushing overly friendly rivals (hopefully not after Kieran or even if he wasn't a rival, Drayton, but still) I want one who is at least fun even if it gets ridiculous. And I just love the idea if the rival for once purpousedly getting on a disadvantage against the player instead of "I'm choosing second, but I'm gonna pick the one weak to yours for no reason!"

On the topic of sandwichs tho, it did bother me they somehow got the right idea of how here in Spain we eat a lot of bocadillos but got such an insane list of ingredients for them. Like no, you don't put a whole small tortilla inside it. That's a crime.

That same insanity allows you to give jamón or pork to your Lechonk tho, so I guess it evens out. But yeah, overall it's weird they tried to push them so much into the story. It's more than enough with just the initial one the player gives to the Raidon as a symbolic gesture and Arven feeding Mabosstiff.

 

[leafsaber47]

Shiny Pokémon (excluding the Pikachu line) that Game Freak took zero to negative effort to make.

You can almost make a OU-viable team with these lame bastards.

 

[pika pal]

Is there something about Japanese as a language that lends itself to those kinds of verbal tics being more common? Because every time I hear it in English it sounds unnatural as fuck and really annoying.

Exhibit A: Yunobo in Tears of the Kingdom ending every sentence with "goro"

As an English speaker not fluent in Japanese, I think it's just not being as familiar with the sound. Like in a lot of Anime and games I see things like Cat/Cat-related characters appending "nyas" to the end of their sentences, and the closest approximation English gets that sounds "readable" or speakable is making "Meow" puns.

 

[Bakugames]

I think japanese also has the benefit of already having sentence enders built within the language, all with different functions/nuances/gender usage

 

[DrrT]

Shiny Pokémon (excluding the Pikachu line) that Game Freak took zero to negative effort to make.

You can almost make a OU-viable team with these lame bastards.

I know we very recently talked about the Charcadet line and all that, but I will forever be amazed at how Gible managed to have a cool different shiny, but someone saw it and apparently said "nah tone that down on Gabite" and again "turn it down for Garchomp".

Another thing that annoyed me, despite being a White 2 player (I was so lucky about liking Zekrom above Reshiram but White over Black Kyurem) is that the free shiny in Black 2 was fucking Gible. Of all shinies, it had to be that one? Literally any other pseudo would have worked better. I don't like Dragonite's shiny but at least is easy to recognize. I feel for the little children who managed to get Gible then evolved it without knowing any better and they couldn't even brag about their cool shiny to other kids because of how lame Garchomp is.

 

[CPU]

Garchomp's shiny looks good (I like the subtle differences) but agree it's got a lot of lost potential.

Blissey (and Happiny) just being a paler pink than normal is a stranger decision to me, as Chansey's shiny is a pale yellow and green.

 

[Celever]

This is the littlest thing ever but I just got baffled when starting a HeartGold Randomiser.

In the first 2 gens we all know don't have a real name for your rival, but they tend to default to the opposite version. If you're playing Red then your rival is called Blue, or if you're playing Gold your rival is named Silver. The inverse is also true, with Red or Gold, but these tend to work fairly well.

In HeartGold if you don't choose a name for your rival, the default name is Soul, not Silver. Apparently the opposite is also true, so in SoulSilver the rival is named Heart. That's wild to me.

Soul is a fine name, but it's such a strange choice to retcon it when the character's already been established as "Silver" among everyone with the asterisk of being Gold if you're playing the Silver version. Heart is a bad name, don't name your kids Heart. I think you can get away with Soul but Heart is worse than calling them Silver irl.

IK in FRLG the player's name can be suggested as Leaf or Fire, but they still suggest Red or Green higher on the list. The female character being called Leaf was never formally done until years after fans already denoted the name, and after HGSS decided to change the rival's name to Soul or Heart. And most importantly, Leaf didn't exist in RBY, so there's no retconning happening there.

Soul just seems wrong when the character had been established as Silver for a decade lol.

EDIT: and tbc for those who don't remember how naming the rival works in gen 2, you never get a list of suggested names. It opens the screen, if you press enter without inputting anything, the cop in Elm's lab just says "oh so his name is Soul right?" and that's it. So if you want to call your rival Silver in HeartGold or SoulSilver, you have to type Silver in yourself.

 

[AztecCroc]

This is the littlest thing ever but I just got baffled when starting a HeartGold Randomiser.

In the first 2 gens we all know don't have a real name for your rival, but they tend to default to the opposite version. If you're playing Red then your rival is called Blue, or if you're playing Gold your rival is named Silver. The inverse is also true, with Red or Gold, but these tend to work fairly well.

In HeartGold if you don't choose a name for your rival, the default name is Soul, not Silver. Apparently the opposite is also true, so in SoulSilver the rival is named Heart. That's wild to me.

Soul is a fine name, but it's such a strange choice to retcon it when the character's already been established as "Silver" among everyone with the asterisk of being Gold if you're playing the Silver version. Heart is a bad name, don't name your kids Heart. I think you can get away with Soul but Heart is worse than calling them Silver irl.

IK in FRLG the player's name can be suggested as Leaf or Fire, but they still suggest Red or Green higher on the list. The female character being called Leaf was never formally done until years after fans already denoted the name, and after HGSS decided to change the rival's name to Soul or Heart. And most importantly, Leaf didn't exist in RBY, so there's no retconning happening there.

Soul just seems wrong when the character had been established as Silver for a decade lol.

EDIT: and tbc for those who don't remember how naming the rival works in gen 2, you never get a list of suggested names. It opens the screen, if you press enter without inputting anything, the cop in Elm's lab just says "oh so his name is Soul right?" and that's it. So if you want to call your rival Silver in HeartGold or SoulSilver, you have to type Silver in yourself.

It's not like he's the only one, remember HGSS calls Gold Ethan.

 

[DreamPrince]

The Finale for DP's Team Galactic Arc. Now its not a bad ending by any means, its an actually an epic fight. But there's a huge problem: In the games, its stated that it takes all three of the Lake Guardians to balance one of either Dialga or Palkia, but they can't maintain the balance against the two, hence why Giratina has interfere in Platinum. I was always frustrated in my youth when Giratina was completely absent from that arc in DP's anime. Would it have killed them to add Giratina to the plot, though its not the only thing that anime misses from Platinum, like how Bertha and Volkner are the only two major characters with teams from Platinum.

 

[AztecCroc]

The Finale for DP's Team Galactic Arc. Now its not a bad ending by any means, its an actually an epic fight. But there's a huge problem: In the games, its stated that it takes all three of the Lake Guardians to balance one of either Dialga or Palkia, but they can't maintain the balance against the two, hence why Giratina has interfere in Platinum. I was always frustrated in my youth when Giratina was completely absent from that arc in DP's anime. Would it have killed them to add Giratina to the plot, though its not the only thing that anime misses from Platinum, like how Bertha and Volkner are the only two major characters with teams from Platinum.

Given that the Platinum content is basically completely absent from the anime aside from the Giratina movie, I'm pretty sure they'd written the anime before the Platinum content was added. It was the first case of a game adding new things midway through.

 

[DrPumpkinz]

Given that the Platinum content is basically completely absent from the anime aside from the Giratina movie, I'm pretty sure they'd written the anime before the Platinum content was added. It was the first case of a game adding new things midway through.

How are Crystal and Emerald's changes not considered "adding new things midway through"? Or is this another instance of you being confidently wrong?

 

[R_N]

The Finale for DP's Team Galactic Arc. Now its not a bad ending by any means, its an actually an epic fight. But there's a huge problem: In the games, its stated that it takes all three of the Lake Guardians to balance one of either Dialga or Palkia, but they can't maintain the balance against the two, hence why Giratina has interfere in Platinum. I was always frustrated in my youth when Giratina was completely absent from that arc in DP's anime. Would it have killed them to add Giratina to the plot, though its not the only thing that anime misses from Platinum, like how Bertha and Volkner are the only two major characters with teams from Platinum.

I'd guess they just decided to keep things to what they had planned for the climax proper for simplicity's sake. There's already a lot going on with Dialga & Palkia mostly just being set dressing to stop and Cyrus abandoning this world to fling himself into the cosmos of his new world is a real good image without tacking on Giratina &/or the distortion world to stopping the rampage in the pretty quick wrap up sequence after that.

Then to offset that they still have Looker & Charon as relatively easy Platinum references.


besides the anime already kinda does their own thing in the lead up (up to & including that Spear Pillar is not atop Mt Coronet like it is in the game, it's locked away in a sphere within the mountain) so selectively ignoring stuff from the game tracks.

 

[DrPumpkinz]

I love Pyukumuku's aesthetic design, and I love Pyukumuku's mechanical design, but its two designs are in conflict. The central conceit of Pyukumuku's aesthetic design is its hand-shaped innards that it uses to punch stuff, yet its mechanical design of not learning any direct attacking moves restricts it from learning any actual punching moves.

 

[Samtendo09]

I love Pyukumuku's aesthetic design, and I love Pyukumuku's mechanical design, but its two designs are in conflict. The central conceit of Pyukumuku's aesthetic design is its hand-shaped innards that it uses to punch stuff, yet its mechanical design of not learning any direct attacking moves restricts it from learning any actual punching moves.

Yeah, it’s a case of a gimmick for sake of being a gimmick. If these two designs were seperate, one where we see Pyukumuku’s aesthetic design with actual attacking moves, and the mechanical design being an expy of Wobbuffet of sort but as an exotic animal like the other Alola-introduced Pokémon, it’ll help make Pyukumuku feels more organic (heh) without being restrained by it’s official mechanical design.

Innards Out can stay though, it’s both funny and allows it for “strike back” Ability without having a gutted attacking learnset.

 

[R_N]

I love Pyukumuku's aesthetic design, and I love Pyukumuku's mechanical design, but its two designs are in conflict. The central conceit of Pyukumuku's aesthetic design is its hand-shaped innards that it uses to punch stuff, yet its mechanical design of not learning any direct attacking moves restricts it from learning any actual punching moves.

to be fair if my innards are the thing I'm punching with (or slapping with or playing RPS with) I am probably fine with my mechanical design saving that for when I get knocked out.

 

[AztecCroc]

to be fair if my innards are the thing I'm punching with (or slapping with or playing RPS with) I am probably fine with my mechanical design saving that for when I get knocked out.

There's also Counter for all you innard punching needs.

 

[DreamPrince]

Time for a rant.

So I've been trying to complete a National Dex in Bank, and I have all the Johto Pokemon except for Stantler. I wanted to use my Virtual Console of Silver since the only other games where Stantler appears on the 3DS is ORAS, which only appears on a specific Mirage Island random. So I caught a Stantler in Silver, and went to transfer it using PokeTransporter. Well, it turns out that my App needs an update and I can’t use Transporter again since it was removed from the Eshop due to the shut down. Now the Eshop closure is a Nintendo Fault, but there was no reason to lock transfers behind a paywall in the first place other than to make unrequired profit from a company that make billions off merch and anime. Because of the greedy decision, Pokemon are now locked in an old gen without being able to transferred further. And Imagine Home will go through the same when the Eshop for the Switch shuts down. This terrible decision is just a sheer reminder of how 21st century capitalism is horrible for everyone other than owner class and how it needs to go away soon.

 

[Ironmage]

Time for a rant.

So I've been trying to complete a National Dex in Bank, and I have all the Johto Pokemon except for Stantler. I wanted to use my Virtual Console of Silver since the only other games where Stantler appears on the 3DS is ORAS, which only appears on a specific Mirage Island random. So I caught a Stantler in Silver, and went to transfer it using PokeTransporter. Well, it turns out that my App needs an update and I can’t use Transporter again since it was removed from the Eshop due to the shut down. Now the Eshop closure is a Nintendo Fault, but there was no reason to lock transfers behind a paywall in the first place other than to make unrequired profit from a company that make billions off merch and anime. Because of the greedy decision, Pokemon are now locked in an old gen without being able to transferred further. And Imagine Home will go through the same when the Eshop for the Switch shuts down. This terrible decision is just a sheer reminder of how 21st century capitalism is horrible for everyone other than owner class and how it needs to go away soon.

I am reminded of this comic.

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

Time for a rant.

So I've been trying to complete a National Dex in Bank, and I have all the Johto Pokemon except for Stantler. I wanted to use my Virtual Console of Silver since the only other games where Stantler appears on the 3DS is ORAS, which only appears on a specific Mirage Island random. So I caught a Stantler in Silver, and went to transfer it using PokeTransporter. Well, it turns out that my App needs an update and I can’t use Transporter again since it was removed from the Eshop due to the shut down. Now the Eshop closure is a Nintendo Fault, but there was no reason to lock transfers behind a paywall in the first place other than to make unrequired profit from a company that make billions off merch and anime. Because of the greedy decision, Pokemon are now locked in an old gen without being able to transferred further. And Imagine Home will go through the same when the Eshop for the Switch shuts down. This terrible decision is just a sheer reminder of how 21st century capitalism is horrible for everyone other than owner class and how it needs to go away soon.

One of the first things I've said when the 3DS servers started to croak was "Get all your mons to Retirement Home before it's too late".

It's unfortunate to see that I was right.

I am reminded of this comic.

It gets worse. Digital games always had issues with stores shutting down, games getting taken down and whatever.

Physical games are also about as worthless without updates too. BDSP was quite literally missing Ramanas Park and had placeholder music without the day 1 patch. And that's besides hardware failure. There are also many other similar cases.

Gaming has a very, very real preservation issue nowadays.

 

[Sixfortyfive]

Being a Sega Channel subscriber in the '90s was a formative and radicalizing experience regarding the fragility of digital distribution and subscription models on closed platforms.

"50 new games every month! I never have to buy a Genesis game again!"

*3 years pass*

"The subscription service shut down... I have no games."

Fast forward to 2025 and more than once I've gone out of my way to sell and rebuy a cartridge for patch/content purposes. Snagged a Middle East Mario Kart 8 release simply because it has the Booster Pack content on cart, lmao.

One of the first things I've said when the 3DS servers started to croak was "Get all your mons to Retirement Home before it's too late".

The main reason why BDSP was the first game I picked up since BW2 was because it was basically the perfect re-entry point to facilitate the transfer of my old DS collection to modern hardware, as 4th gen was when I was most active as a player.

And I still had to pick up a used gen 6/7 cartridge just to be able to use Poke Bank + Poke Transporter. On the whole, this franchise's cross-generation compatibility is pretty impressive, but man do they make it a hassle sometimes.

 

[DrrT]

I'm going to add on the criticism of digital media by saying that I literally lost my entire digital Switch library not long ago because of issues with my Nintendo Account beyond my control and Nintendo doesn't have human customer service in fucking Europe because I guess they are a small company that can't afford it. I still can access the account on my browser but I can't use it. I'm never buying big digital releases on the eshop ever again.

But yeah, there was never a real reason for this whole thing of holding mons hostage without paying, it just doesn't seem like a bigger deal because of Dexit, and, to be fair, we were warned for a long while beforehand about the shut down (I started a Ribbon Master because of that, but playing Y is so awful to me I have kind of stopped there). It's just...a pretty shitty move that they will kill the ability of transfering mons from older gens. Imagine you ger a shiny on those games from then on. They are stuck forever there. I know people like to point out "other monster catching games don't have transfers at all!" but that has always been such a dumb "this thing is not bad because it could be worse!" argument.


Anyways... for an unrelated thing: this is nothing weird or new in the TCG, but once again just like it happened with Zapdos in 151, in the new Unova set only one in a trio got an ex, this time being Serperior. Again it's something that actually happens quite often even in Pocket, but I will always be annoyed by it.

I guess the logic is that Samurott got in a way more focus previously because of the Hisuian cards and Emboar is maybe getting so by the time the new block releases because of ZA, but I'm not too big on that either because the former were not really that good (awesome art tho).