Unpopular opinions

[Sixfortyfive]

I feel like I could sum up some peoples’ problems with SV as “they strayed too far from the known formula” at this point.

Again, been here (in terms of fandom, not Smogon) since Red/Blue and we’ve never had a Pokemon game with three very clearly distinctly storylines, every other game has been at best maybe two overlapping stories that focus on the “evil team/big bad” and the gym campaign (see also: totems).

SV’s three concurrent storylines are designed to make you take everything at your own pace, Team Star especially. It’s not fully and exhaustively optional, but you can pick it up when you want in relation to the rest of the game.

It’s the difference between a more rigid structure for storyline and gameplay and a more relaxed one.

What are you talking about?

The main story/quest formula in SV is barely any different from RBY.

- Become the Pokemon League Champion.
- Defeat Team ___.
- Catch 'em all.

Area Zero is even kind of analogous to Cerulean Cave.

It's the same template. Again. Just assembled in a slightly different way, one in which each individual component has less impact on the others than ever before.

 

[Samtendo09]

What are you talking about?

The main story/quest components in SV are barely any different from RBY.

- Become the Pokemon League Champion.
- Defeat Team ___.
- Catch 'em all.

Area Zero is even kind of analogous to Cerulean Cave.

It's the same story. Again. Just assembled in a slightly different way, one in which each individual component has less impact on the others than ever before.

That’s not forgetting about the other components regarding new Pokémon lines like “late-game Ice-type” (lesser extent but still a big issue), Pseudo-Legendary Dragon since RSE, weak early-game Bug-type, fully evolved Starter trio with secondary type of either Fighting, Ghost, Fairy or Dark since XY (with exception of SwSh though not necessarily a good thing), or weak single-stage Pokémon that have no right to be obtained later than the early game.

 

[Karxrida]

What are you talking about?

The main story/quest formula in SV is barely any different from RBY.

- Become the Pokemon League Champion.
- Defeat Team ___.
- Catch 'em all.

Area Zero is even kind of analogous to Cerulean Cave.

It's the same template. Again. Just assembled in a slightly different way, one in which each individual component has less impact on the others than ever before.

The open world aspect of SV does change a lot about how you go about your objectives even if the template is still there on paper.

It's like saying BotW is similar to OoT when it's really not.

 

[S.A.C. Martin]

What are you talking about?

The main story/quest formula in SV is barely any different from RBY.

Please re-read my posts. I don’t believe I was arguing either way, only that the complaints could be summed up as straying too far from the formula. I wasn’t advancing a belief that SV is a huge leap from RBY, but I do think it’s a natural progression into a more modern take on the franchise.

It's the same template. Again. Just assembled in a slightly different way, one in which each individual component has less impact on the others than ever before.

Will agree to disagree, if that’s okay?

 

[Sixfortyfive]

The open world aspect of SV does change a lot about how you go about your objectives even if the template is still there on paper.

It's like saying BotW is similar to OoT when it's really not.

Again, not really. And what it does change arguably isn't for the better.

SV could have changed a lot about the flow of the quest for the player, had Game Freak gone to the trouble of, for example, scaling the levels and team compositions of your opponents based on how much overall progress you had made in the game up to that point. For example, giving the Bug gym leader a very low-leveled team if you fought against her 1st, but a much stronger team if for some reason you skipped around and completed other parts of the map before her. Or maybe even making unique events altogether for being in specific places at specific points of progression, to the point where you couldn't do all of them in any single playthrough.

But they didn't. All of the opponents are still static, so while you technically have the option to roam wherever you want, you can't really do whatever you want because you're still kinda railroaded into mostly staying on the intended progression path anyway. Like, it's not good enough to just allow the player to do things in a different order; there ought to be some kind of meaningful consequence for choosing to do certain things when you do them. Otherwise it's just kind of pointless to even have that option in the first place. As-is, all that this "freedom" really allows you to do is make the intended late-game material harder and the intended early-game material easier. And because each of the three questlines are siloed now, with no story events from any one of them being intertwined with either of the other two, it diminishes the impact of each of them on the game as a whole. It's an "open world" game where everything feels like a side quest instead of a cohesive adventure. The DLC arguably plays out better because it isn't shackled by that structure.

I'm probably coming off as if I hate SV or something, and I don't. But this is such a formulaic franchise that it sometimes feels like people will really oversell any kind of shake-up at all, even when it's superficial or half-baked in its implementation. Like, okay, I didn't hate that they at least tried something a bit different. B- or C+ for effort, but I'd be pretty irritated if gen 10 went back to this well without improving upon it a lot.

 

[Yung Dramps]

I've said this before and I'll say it again: The rosetta stone for understanding so many of this series' design choices over the years - especially a lot of the weird, controversial and flat-out unpopular ones - is realizing Game Freak fundamentally does not intend for these games to be replayed. Any and all continued engagement after beating the main story is meant to be some manner of PVP, functionally endless resource grinding mills like battle facilities and raids and building up your perpetually-growing collection via transfer software.

-Why was the handling of BW2's difficulty settings such byzantine nonsense? Because you're not actually meant to use them yourself, you're just supposed to trade them to other players for their own playthroughs, such as Easy Mode for your little sibling
-Why do some of these games have such sluggish, unskippable intros? Because they do not intend you to ever go through them again
-Why do they refuse to implement multiple save files and make deleting your current one essentially require a cheat code? Because given all of the above, they serve no purpose from the developers' perspective

If I'm right on this, then badge-based level scaling will never happen because that's a ton of extra design work for a feature where at least 50% of the appeal only kicks into gear on replays which, again, they do not want you to do. And yes, this is absolute horseshit for a JRPG series with hundreds of playable characters, but I'm just stating what I believe the facts to be, not what I want them to be.

 

[Karxrida]

-Why do some of these games have such sluggish, unskippable intros? Because they do not intend you to ever go through them again
-Why do they refuse to implement multiple save files and make deleting your current one essentially require a cheat code? Because given all of the above, they serve no purpose from the developers' perspective

I legitimately think these two specifically are at least in part the result of some bizarre mindset where the games have to be childproofed for complete morons. This naturally comes at the cost of basic QoL, even though the nonissue of "what if some idiot kid accidentally skips a cutscene" has been solved by the industry for about two decades with multiple potential safety nets (require confirmation that you want to skip, provide a text log of the cutscene's dialogue, etc.) that don't actively interfere with people who want to speed through stuff. The fact that the save file delete one has a tangible benefit (stopping a younger sibling from overwriting your file, which has happend to me at least once) seems to be a complete accident tbh.

The lack of multiple save files in particular can easily be explained by greed, though; good way to push someone into buying both versions of a game. At least the Switch and Switch 2 have built in ways to bypass it now.

 

[AztecCroc]

The lack of multiple save files in particular can easily be explained by greed,

You do comprehend that game cartridges have limited space for save data right? And that Pokémon saves are a lot bigger than most?

Some examples and comparisons:
The Gen 3 games have 128kb saves, all three save files for FF6 Advance total out to 64kb, same for either of the GBA Fire Emblems 64kb for all three combined. GBA Yugioh games? Only one save file which is 64kb or less.

DS Era games? 513kb (both Gens 4 and 5 are the same). Now for comparison:

• Fossil Fighters 1: 2 save files that take a combined 257kb.
• FFC: 2 save files that take a combined 513kb.
• Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon: 3 saves in 257kb.
• Dragon Quest 9: 1 save file at 65kb.

I don't have a bunch of 3ds save files on hand but I'm pretty sure the results are similar. Pokémon is a big RPG where you can collect hundreds of extremely customizable characters with basically none of the save file optimizations available to other RPGs and game cartridges only come in predefined save file capacities, with Pokémon always needing the largest available for just a single file.

 

[Heatranator]

You do comprehend that game cartridges have limited space for save data right? And that Pokémon saves are a lot bigger than most?

Some examples and comparisons:
The Gen 3 games have 128kb saves, all three save files for FF6 Advance total out to 64kb, same for either of the GBA Fire Emblems 64kb for all three combined. GBA Yugioh games? Only one save file which is 64kb or less.

DS Era games? 513kb (both Gens 4 and 5 are the same). Now for comparison:

• Fossil Fighters 1: 2 save files that take a combined 257kb.
• FFC: 2 save files that take a combined 513kb.
• Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon: 3 saves in 257kb.
• Dragon Quest 9: 1 save file at 65kb.

I don't have a bunch of 3ds save files on hand but I'm pretty sure the results are similar. Pokémon is a big RPG where you can collect hundreds of extremely customizable characters with basically none of the save file optimizations available to other RPGs and game cartridges only come in predefined save file capacities, with Pokémon always needing the largest available for just a single file.

Well, sure, maybe in the ds days and before. Now though? Not really.

I did a brief amount of research, and X-Y had a game size 1.7GB. The average 3ds game had between 1-4GB. ORAS also had 1.8GB.
Sun and Moon are 3GB, with USUM at 3.4GB.

Sword and Shield are 12.4GB and Scarlet and Violet at 6.8GB. 5-15GB is the size of normal switch devices, with some going up to 20GB.

Multiple saves can be possible, I even believe on some of the 3DS ones you can do temporary saves that ofc, don't save, but you can still play the normal story (I remember doing something like that, but cannot check due to my 3ds being uh, dead).
And this is coming off the fact that Pokemon games are sometimes unoptomised (I mean, look at the size of Sword and Shield compared to SV, that should show that you can definetely optomise them further).

In this day and age, even if you say, double the sizes of them (this is generous btw, probably 50% bigger would be better), only SM/USUM and Sword/Shield would be unable to have multiple save files.
Pokemon just doesn't want to do it, they aren't bigger in this day and age, they are normal sized.

 

[QuentinQuonce]

-Why do they refuse to implement multiple save files and make deleting your current one essentially require a cheat code? Because given all of the above, they serve no purpose from the developers' perspective

I legitimately think these two specifically are at least in part the result of some bizarre mindset where the games have to be childproofed for complete morons. This naturally comes at the cost of basic QoL, even though the nonissue of "what if some idiot kid accidentally skips a cutscene" has been solved by the industry for about two decades with multiple potential safety nets (require confirmation that you want to skip, provide a text log of the cutscene's dialogue, etc.) that don't actively interfere with people who want to speed through stuff. The fact that the save file delete one has a tangible benefit (stopping a younger sibling from overwriting your file, which has happend to me at least once) seems to be a complete accident tbh.

Yeah as someone who has had their save file overwritten by another kid before (I can't remember who it was that had "I fear nothing but save deletion" in their sig but honestly, the realest thing ever) I would much rather live in the world where deleting a save file takes additional steps and effort, regardless of how inconvenient some people might find it.

But I do agree with Dramps' take that GF don't seem to have replayability in mind as a core concept, which is frankly nuts in a series with so many options and where one-or-the-other choices are so frequent. But the obvious rebuttal to that (from GF's point of view) is "just trade for the other one!" which... sure, you can do that too.

Which is completely antithetical to the way I play because I generally consider my first save file on any game to be my "practice run"; it's inevitably the one where I'll fuck some stuff up. That's less of an issue as the series has progressed and it's harder to permanently fuck up (the first time I played Crystal I knocked out both Suicune and Raikou) but all the same, it's a mindset that's persisted.

 

[Worldie]

But I do agree with Dramps' take that GF don't seem to have replayability in mind as a core concept, which is frankly nuts in a series with so many options and where one-or-the-other choices are so frequent. But the obvious rebuttal to that (from GF's point of view) is "just trade for the other one!" which... sure, you can do that too.

The counterpoint to this will always be: You forget who the target demographic is.

The target demographic is *kids*. Most kids don't replay the games. They play the story and put them away to move to the next thing.

The adults who buy the game are a "extra", it's a playerbase they know will buy the game regardless (mainly for PvP or completionism) and don't require extra investment to maintain.
Even among the adults who play the game, the slice that actually *replay* the game is insanely small. This is the same issue with battle facilities, it's development time dedicated to a slice of playerbase so small that it was the first thing to be cut once GF started running out of time to develop the games per time.

So based off this assumption (which I believe is perfectly reasonable), it suddently becomes logical to not care for "making replayability comfier".

(And as usual, don't think that me understanding *why* they do it means I approve it. Incidentally, the terribly lenghty unskippable intro is why I never bothered learning the SV speedruns despite them being imo one of the funnier run of the series after L.A.'s: you have to sit through an hour of tutorial until the school sequence is done and you actually can play the game. It's half of that with Switch 2, but still, 30 mins of literally nothing but mashing through text every time you want to start a run isn't very interesting.)

 

[QuentinQuonce]

The counterpoint to this will always be: You forget who the target demographic is.

The target demographic is *kids*. Most kids don't replay the games. They play the story and put them away to move to the next thing.

The adults who buy the game are a "extra", it's a playerbase they know will buy the game regardless (mainly for PvP or completionism) and don't require extra investment to maintain.
Even among the adults who play the game, the slice that actually *replay* the game is insanely small. This is the same issue with battle facilities, it's development time dedicated to a slice of playerbase so small that it was the first thing to be cut once GF started running out of time to develop the games per time.

So based off this assumption (which I believe is perfectly reasonable), it suddently becomes logical to not care for "making replayability comfier".

(And as usual, don't think that me understanding *why* they do it means I approve it. Incidentally, the terribly lenghty unskippable intro is why I never bothered learning the SV speedruns despite them being imo one of the funnier run of the series after L.A.'s: you have to sit through an hour of tutorial until the school sequence is done and you actually can play the game. It's half of that with Switch 2, but still, 30 mins of literally nothing but mashing through text every time you want to start a run isn't very interesting.)

I think that's certainly true today, but I don't know if it was always the case? I can't speak to RBY's heyday as I was ever so slightly too young for those games, but playing Gen II and III in my youth restarting your save file the games was absolutely a thing most of my friends/family who played would do (which is kind of funny given breeding was designed for pretty much exactly this purpose - in RBY if you wanted the other starter/fossil/Hitmon/Eevee your options were either trade or start new game, but GSC onwards you could just borrow your friend's mon and return it once you had an egg)

Maybe it's a casual vs superfan thing - and maybe it's just my own experience - but replaying the game was absolutely seen as a core part of Pokemon back in the day. It's something I think that's less true now because, as I alluded to, there are more ways to complete a file - trading is far easier than it once was, and legendary encounters are respawnable. I'm very much of the opinion that the shift to DLC vs third versions has something to do with it too - less incentive to keep an RS file when you suspect there'll be a "truer" version coming eventually (again, anecdotally a lot of my friends who played RS very much expected there to be an Emerald version later on even before it was ever announced).

 

[Just A Seaking]

Maybe it's a casual vs superfan thing - and maybe it's just my own experience - but replaying the game was absolutely seen as a core part of Pokemon back in the day.

Speaking anecdotally at least, when you're a kid you also can't just go out and buy new games all you want. (Well, as an adult you can't either, but you get my point.) That means you had to make the games that you did own last - and replaying the games is one of the best ways to get more mileage out of them, particularly in the games where the postgame is more threadbare. It also helps that these games lend themselves very naturally to replays with all the different one-off choices and different Pokemon you can try, so there's a pretty strong incentive to starting up a new save file.

 

[Bakugames]

Honestly i think gamefreak doesnt do save files because they believe a kid sees no difference in save files vs saving over a game since theyd just play again and not really touch the old file, and adults who play the games would either be more interested in post game than replayability or can just kinda deal with it. and then the switch has multiple profiles so theyre like well just use that lol

monster hunter stories also has no save files and it does take insp from pokemon so i wonder if they took that from them

 

[S.A.C. Martin]

I'm probably coming off as if I hate SV or something, and I don't. But this is such a formulaic franchise that it sometimes feels like people will really oversell any kind of shake-up at all, even when it's superficial or half-baked in its implementation. Like, okay, I didn't hate that they at least tried something a bit different. B- or C+ for effort, but I'd be pretty irritated if gen 10 went back to this well without improving upon it a lot.

I think we are all with you in that, Gen 10 really does need to be a proper step up.

What is astounding me this week is seeing how much better SV runs on Switch 2. It sort of feels to me that SV was just rushed and instead of being a proper step up from sword/shield, was sacrificed a tad for the next gen development. After all…it’ll be a four year cycle when Gen 10 is announced.

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

I've said this before and I'll say it again: The rosetta stone for understanding so many of this series' design choices over the years - especially a lot of the weird, controversial and flat-out unpopular ones - is realizing Game Freak fundamentally does not intend for these games to be replayed. Any and all continued engagement after beating the main story is meant to be some manner of PVP, functionally endless resource grinding mills like battle facilities and raids and building up your perpetually-growing collection via transfer software.

-Why was the handling of BW2's difficulty settings such byzantine nonsense? Because you're not actually meant to use them yourself, you're just supposed to trade them to other players for their own playthroughs, such as Easy Mode for your little sibling
-Why do some of these games have such sluggish, unskippable intros? Because they do not intend you to ever go through them again
-Why do they refuse to implement multiple save files and make deleting your current one essentially require a cheat code? Because given all of the above, they serve no purpose from the developers' perspective

If I'm right on this, then badge-based level scaling will never happen because that's a ton of extra design work for a feature where at least 50% of the appeal only kicks into gear on replays which, again, they do not want you to do. And yes, this is absolute horseshit for a JRPG series with hundreds of playable characters, but I'm just stating what I believe the facts to be, not what I want them to be.

And then they cut the post-game, and the online is...

And don't get me started on VGC

Multiple save files are whatever now that Home and Switch Profiles exist. It really doesn't make a difference to me.

 

[Sixfortyfive]

The target demographic is *kids*. Most kids don't replay the games. They play the story and put them away to move to the next thing.

I think that's certainly true today, but I don't know if it was always the case? I can't speak to RBY's heyday as I was ever so slightly too young for those games, but playing Gen II and III in my youth restarting your save file the games was absolutely a thing most of my friends/family who played would do (which is kind of funny given breeding was designed for pretty much exactly this purpose - in RBY if you wanted the other starter/fossil/Hitmon/Eevee your options were either trade or start new game, but GSC onwards you could just borrow your friend's mon and return it once you had an egg)

I don't think any age bracket is more or less averse to replaying a game. I think the dividing line here was when online play was added to the series. That alone substantially changed the value of "post-game" material.

I'd restart RBY every month for a while. It released when I was going into high school. I was in the upper fringe of the target demo and had nobody else to play with, so the multiplayer component may as well have not existed. No reason not to get the same kind of replay value out of it that I would for any other RPG that I dug enough to keep playing. The discovery of certain glitches even made it enticing to start fresh and try them out on a new run.

But I still have my original Platinum cartridge, and it's still on its original save file. Once online connectivity actually made the multiplayer functionality relevant for me, not to mention the presence of the Battle Frontier as substantial replayable singleplayer content, there was more to lose out on by wiping everything and starting fresh. By this point there was very much a pervasive feeling that "the real game doesn't begin until you see the credits," as the singleplayer quest was already extremely formulaic at this point (in and of itself reducing the appeal of starting over) and the PVP depth was much more accessible.

 

[Yung Dramps]

Galar's regional dex is the most bloated in the series.

Yes, you read that right: I am seriously arguing that base SWSH has too many Pokemon. Now, granted, this is largely an extension of the well-worn "Galar map design sucks" criticism, but the fact is that ten routes and the map design meme that is the Wild Area simply isn't enough game to sustain a 400 mon Pokedex. I can't comment on how SV handles this number but USUM Alola not only just had more places in it but a good 50 mons are legendaries, UBs and miscellaneous catches only available in postgame areas, meaning the effective tally for a standard playthrough is more like 350ish.

No, but seriously, have you looked at Wild Area encounter tables? They are so insanely cursed dude

I'm sure that this place was considerably bigger in initial planning phases before the whole dev cycle melted down but unless they nuked 3 whole biomes (Dusty Bowl doesn't count) there can't have possibly been enough to sustain almost the entire Pokedex. No seriously, I did a rough count for a project of mine by going through Wild Area Bulbapedia pages and with all the Galar Pokemon added I got into the 390s. It can't be less than 75% in this one area, and I wasn't even counting raid den exclusives!

When I think of the bloat and incoherence of the Galar dex I think of Galvantula just being out and about in a generic grassy field route. Yeowch!

 

[ScraftyIsTheBest]

When I think of the bloat and incoherence of the Galar dex I think of Galvantula just being out and about in a generic grassy field route. Yeowch!

In general one disappointment I had with the original Wild Area when I first played SwSh was how relatively monotonous it is. Outside of the Dusty Bowl and a few lakes, it's very much just a big grassy field.

What makes meeting Pokemon and exploring a region fun to me in a Pokemon game is to go through a variety of different biomes, meeting different kinds of Pokemon who naturally fit into those biomes, and in turn really seeing a diverse world of Pokemon who all have different habitats and live alongside other Pokemon naturally. Open fields, forests, deserts, swamps, caves, snowy mountains, bodies of water, and so on and so forth. And that's fun to me. It makes the world of Pokemon feel alive.

Galar fell short in that regard. The 10 routes have a bit of variety in biomes but are so small in scope, and the Wild Area was so monotonous: so many Pokemon, but the area itself was mostly a grassy field, and the availability was predicated on daily weather as opposed to them feeling like they naturally belonged there.

It's why I liked Isle of Armor and Crown Tundra so much. I loved the Wild Area as a concept, but the original base Wild Area was pretty underwhelming. Isle of Armor felt more alive: a variety of biomes, and Pokemon living in those biomes naturally where they would fit. Crown Tundra a bit less so, but it also had decent variety in snowy areas, a lake, caves, and a graveyard, and whatnot, and there were legendaries to hunt and secrets to find, which I also love doing. That is the kind of thing that makes exploring a region fun.

 

[S.A.C. Martin]

Sword and shield feel, like SV to me, like prototypes for things which came further along in the development cycle. If you look at some of the things from the tera leak you can see how PLA slots in neatly between those two games and how much of the models and coding is shared.

Gen 10 I am hoping is a proper step up - gens 8-9 have been the experimental, sometimes incomplete era.

Been fun though!

 

[RocketSurgery]

Sword and shield feel, like SV to me, like prototypes for things which came further along in the development cycle. If you look at some of the things from the tera leak you can see how PLA slots in neatly between those two games and how much of the models and coding is shared.

Gen 10 I am hoping is a proper step up - gens 8-9 have been the experimental, sometimes incomplete era.

Been fun though!

I wonder if the discourse around Pokemon games would be a little bit more positive if people tended to view each generation as a natural, gradual evolution of the previous game in a franchise with shorter release cycles rather than "prototypes." Like, if we compare SM to SV, the "step up" looks a lot more significant, perhaps more comparable to the jump from Skyward Sword to Breath of the Wild, which boast a similar gap in release times. If there had been a home console Zelda game halfway between Skyward Sword and BotW it might have looked more incremental and had features that felt like a "prototypes" for BotW too. If GF had just completely skipped SwSh and spent the time working on SV, I'm not sure if we would have gotten much more than working windmills (hopefully).

Personally, I am fine with more frequent games and gradual evolutions of concepts because to me Pokemon is primarily a fun comfort game and the part I like most about a new gen is the new Pokemon, and I like getting a new batch of mons every 3 years. I appreciate the evolutions in gameplay concepts, but I am happy to look at how much things have changed since the handheld days, rather than wishing every generation was a BotW-sized innovation.

 

[S.A.C. Martin]

I wonder if the discourse around Pokemon games would be a little bit more positive if people tended to view each generation as a natural, gradual evolution of the previous game in a franchise with shorter release cycles rather than "prototypes." Like, if we compare SM to SV, the "step up" looks a lot more significant, perhaps more comparable to the jump from Skyward Sword to Breath of the Wild, which boast a similar gap in release times. If there had been a home console Zelda game halfway between Skyward Sword and BotW it might have looked more incremental and had features that felt like a "prototypes" for BotW too. If GF had just completely skipped SwSh and spent the time working on SV, I'm not sure if we would have gotten much more than working windmills (hopefully).

This pretty much nails it IMO.

Been replaying Colosseum recently and I realised how much of reusing assets has been baked in to Pokemon games for such a very long time. That game reuses the Stadium games’ 3D models for the original 251 but for Hoen’s 135 new ones (plus Bonsly) new models were added.

This was obviously down to time and resource constraints, and we have seen a similar thing in the engine sharing for gens 8 and 9 (culminating, I suspect, with ZA and with Gen 10 likely taking all the knowledge forward to a new engine - or not, as the case may be).

 

[AztecCroc]

This pretty much nails it IMO.

Been replaying Colosseum recently and I realised how much of reusing assets has been baked in to Pokemon games for such a very long time. That game reuses the Stadium games’ 3D models for the original 251 but for Hoen’s 135 new ones (plus Bonsly) new models were added.

This was obviously down to time and resource constraints, and we have seen a similar thing in the engine sharing for gens 8 and 9 (culminating, I suspect, with ZA and with Gen 10 likely taking all the knowledge forward to a new engine - or not, as the case may be).

Eh, most of the underlying engine is unchanged since Gen 4, just with new graphical capabilities stapled on. Gen 10 might have a more extensive rework given some of the issues SV had, but ultimately the existing infrastructure like Home means it can't change that much. Just look at all the hassle and issues caused getting it to interact with the Unity-based BDSP.

 

[S.A.C. Martin]

Eh, most of the underlying engine is unchanged since Gen 4, just with new graphical capabilities stapled on. Gen 10 might have a more extensive rework given some of the issues SV had, but ultimately the existing infrastructure like Home means it can't change that much. Just look at all the hassle and issues caused getting it to interact with the Unity-based BDSP.

Is the engine from SW/SH really linked that far back? I can’t think of another game series where the main engine is used that heavily generation to generation.

You could argue quite cogently that BDSP being run on unity is an improvement in some ways…

 

[Karxrida]

I can't imagine it's the same engine per se, but there is definitely some degree of continuity in the code to allow Pokémon transfers while keeping track of their stats and ribbons and whatnot.