Unpopular opinions

Why haven't we been to South America yet*? Just in Peru, you have rainforest, mountains, oceans, ancient ruins from a variety of cultures...actually Peru is kind of legit. The shape is even long enough to let them do Open World while still having an expected path. Gen 10 location confirmed?

if we do go to south america, they'll 100% do brazil first. i know im biased as a brazilian myself but its pretty much the face of latam for japan and has the benefit of having a long history with japan itself and the largest number of japanese people outside of japan (including me hiiii)
 
if we do go to south america, they'll 100% do brazil first. i know im biased as a brazilian myself but its pretty much the face of latam for japan and has the benefit of having a long history with japan itself and the largest number of japanese people outside of japan (including me hiiii)
After what's going on with Nintendo currently in Brazil, I think you can completely forget that pokemon games will ever go there :wo:

But in case you live under a rock...
 
Really though, this all just stems from TPC preferring the more immersive framing of “this Pokémon was first discovered in the Hoenn region” over “this Pokémon is from Gen 3.” And from that perspective, I guess it’s like, if they’re already using “Paldea” as an obfuscation for saying “Gen 9,” then there’s not much point in distinguishing further between Paldea, Kitakami, and Blueberry.
this is really silly and leads to pokemon like murkrow, which in gsc is only found in kanto, being categorized as being from johto
 
Brazil, China, and India regions are all terrible ideas: It's very obvious all 3 of these countries are far, far too big and ecologically/culturally diverse to get one each

Frankly Galar being all of Britain and Paldea being all of Spain were probably bad calls or at least majorly pushing it, but giving this treatment to the above 3 (especially China & India) would actually be so unbelievably half-assed and insulting that it would be among a small handful of game design choices that would make me go "Ok yup the doomers were right, Game Freak is lazy and incompetent, time to seize this franchise from them and give it to another developer"
 
Brazil, China, and India regions are all terrible ideas: It's very obvious all 3 of these countries are far, far too big and ecologically/culturally diverse to get one each

realistically, brazil would simply be the southeast region: rio de janeiro, são paulo, minas gerais. then some random amazon inclusion. most devs that arent brazilian themselves dont care about anything else, and ive come to expect nothing beyond that
 
this is really silly and leads to pokemon like murkrow, which in gsc is only found in kanto, being categorized as being from johto

On the other hand, it was silly to have Murkrow, Slugma, et al. not be found in Johto in the first place :woo:

Brazil, China, and India regions are all terrible ideas: It's very obvious all 3 of these countries are far, far too big and ecologically/culturally diverse to get one each

To be fair, they laser-focused on New York for Unova rather than trying to condense all of the U.S. into a region, so in theory, they could do something similar for other large countries. I kind of doubt that they would, these days, but it’s an option.
 
I guess one thing that can stop pokemon from having mainly double matches is that it could be more complicated, because you would have much more options to choose from. I found a video from Wolfe Glick mentioning in his video "Why Double Battles are Harder than Single Battles" that in double matches there can be 37,636 possible game states whereas singles would have 81. Granted, it's from a vgc perspective, so it wouldn't be the exact same as the double matches in a pokemon game, but I thought it would be worth mentioning.

I doubt a non-PVP doubles match would be any more complex and daunting then a fight in a mario & luigi game.
 
I think that continuing to base regions heavily on real-life locations prevents them from making a more open game worth exploring for its own sake since I've only enjoyed doing that in high fantasy games like Xenoblade. Regardless, if it is necessary, I'd probably pick Iceland. There's something to be said for having clear access to both glaciers and volcanoes.
I suspect part of the reasoning they keep doing that is just that it gives them a starting point to work with. For a large team, it would be very easy for "let's invent a region" to get bogged down in a lot of debates before anything gets off the ground. "Do we have temperate, rain, or evergreen forests, or some combination of those? Is there a desert? What language elements do we want to include? Do rivers run straight through the map or are there significant lakes?" Picking a real country lets them start with a map, a list of features on that map, a culture, etc and then they can build a story around that/make changes as necessary in a much more focused way.
 
Why haven't we been to South America yet*? Just in Peru, you have rainforest, mountains, oceans, ancient ruins from a variety of cultures...actually Peru is kind of legit. The shape is even long enough to let them do Open World while still having an expected path. Gen 10 location confirmed?

*We know why

Perú as a Pokemon region is like dream come true for the me from ages ago. It's not happening whatsoever and I'm not looking forward to it anymore, but it was good to toy with the idea from time to time. Here's some fun facts:

1. The Amazon rainforest harbors some of the biggest biodiversity in the planet, like a solid % of all animals.

2. Tumbes has the rare biome, mangrove. You can find regional Feraligatrs there.

3. We already have a Victory Road. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inca_Trail_to_Machu_Picchu

also wow we're at page 666 spoopy
 
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This is gonna be strange given how critical I am of GF's graphical prowess, but given it's unpopular...

I feel most Switch 1st/2nd party titles honestly are behind graphically despite GPU, same for Switch 2 so far. Note I don't mean compared to PS4, as it's silly, but I feel it genuinely was underwhelming. I preferred *Wii U's* at times.

Part of this issue is that Switch 1/2's CPU bottleneck and bandwidth from being handheld and decked does drastically impact certain things. Transparency sorting is suddenly a bigger issue than 6-7th Gen for the drawcalls. Bayonetta 3 suffers from horrid ways of trying to bypass this with aggressive yet ugly dithering, same with Mario Odyssey, though the latter doesn't have much transparent elements to begin with. Alternatively, Nintendo can just use alpha cut textures instead of alpha blended for opacity, but I find it bad, especially for how plastic it looks when it has specular

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They do this in DK Bananza, and his fur is super flat as a result, standing out to other kongs as well who...just don't do it. I prefer how his fur is in Mario Party Superstars, even if that isn't using fur cards at all (which ironically means it'll never suffer from transparency issues). And this ignores how wax DK's skin looks overall, something his art notably doesn't do, ignoring that it's raytraced prerendered

This also was the period that devs...started to not really focus on lighting. Mario Kart 8/DX has a nice light probe system taking advantage of mixed baked lighting, along with the then newfound PBR model for shading, and dynamic directional shadows for chars. Mario Odyssey is more simplified, with char textures overly red tinted for skin. Which is weird cuz MK8 had to deal with a bigger workload (60fps Online multiplayer), while Odyssey is just a singleplayer offline game for the most part

Smash Ultimate has disgusting muted shading with heavy rimlighting. The bland char textures returning from Smash Wii U are more exposed, and art clash for particle styles is present. Chars rarely look like they fit the stage compared to previous entries. Mario and Sonic 2016 unironically looks better than M&S 2020 cuz of how over saturated and unlit shading is in the latter. Pikmin 3 I find better looking than 4

Or whatever the fuck Bandai Namco is doing lately with BLOOM oversaturated spam for lower end stuff. The grass and some chars are nuclear, the buildings weirdly dim, and no shadows besides a basic drop one

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"But Sonikku" you might ask "How does this relate to Pokemon?"

Well the issue is a lot of fans when they want games to improve graphically don't really *know* how to outside better textures. People were gasing up LZA for the rimlight on chars, which I find shit with how much it takes over the model depending on shots. They're perfectly fine with flat toony particles clashing a middle tier detailed environment and char design. Or they want a "cel shaded anime" styled game which 90% of the time has limited lighting and texture diversity

Like I hate to say it, but even if GF suddenly became on level with most of everyone else now, it still won't be ok for me. Cuz the Switch is weirdly handicapping itself, and weird design trends popped up lately. It'll pacify fans at least

This doesn't mean Switch 1/2 doesn't have good looking games fitting for the GPU it uses. Kirby Star Allies (though laggy) and Air Riders are good, same for Mario Party Superstars. Luigi's Mansion 3 was also praised for interior lighting, and Pokemon New Snap is decent mostly (though Prof Mirror has heavy :| for facial expressions). BotW while I nitpick a lot is pretty dynamic for cel shading (though it's also on Wii U...), and Xenoblade's typically good. As much as I dislike Link's Awakening HD's aesthetic, it's graphically done well as well

Hopefully Gen 10 solidifies the graphics workflow, LZA is definitely better than before at least.
 
No, it’s because all of them are mechanically repetitive: most of them are physical attackers, with just a Dragon Dance + Sweep (or in Garchomp’s case, Scale Shot + Sweep). Sure, there might be exceptions, like Dragonite being bulky with Roost + Multiscale, Garchomp having Spikes + Stealth Rock as entry hazards, Salamence has Intimidate, and Baxcalibur having unique bulkness with Thermal Body + Ice Body & Aurora Veil. But when you look at it, all of them are the same. Some of them could run mixed coverage like Flamethrower, but that’s not their main bread and butter, and even when they do, it’s just to catch Steel-types like Skarmory or Ferrothorn off guard.

I do actually want to make a retraction for Salamence, because I realise it's not really accurate. At its initial generation, its stats are a mixed attacker with a 135 attack and 110 special attack. This isn't too far from most 3 mons as they are also mixed attackers like Blaziken, Sceptile, Cacturne, Camerupt, Jirachi, and Metagross. And because all Dragon attacks were special at the time, it could reliably run a mixed set. It's just that after Gen 4 introduced the physical/special split and given that Salamence gained Outrage and Moxie, its best set happens to be an all-physical set, which Salamence favors. Helps that it has a higher attack stat too.

Dragonite would also count, since it started as a cheesy wrapper, and then in Gen 2 and Gen 3, it ran mixed, as Dragonite's dragon moves were special, which happened to work well with its coverage moves like Thunderbolt and Fire Blast. Like Salamence, it also moved to a mainly physical set, but at least it can have a defensive utility mon with Multiscale + Heal Bell.
I guess the overuse of Physical Dragon can be blamed on Garchomp and Baxcalibur, which isn't much. I still think it's annoying that pseudo-legendaries do overuse the dragon type, even if some of them have different flavor in terms of design and move kit, like Dragapult or Hydregion. It doesn't help that the strongest and most popular trainers also tend to use dragons.
 
I think that continuing to base regions heavily on real-life locations prevents them from making a more open game worth exploring for its own sake since I've only enjoyed doing that in high fantasy games like Xenoblade. Regardless, if it is necessary, I'd probably pick Iceland. There's something to be said for having clear access to both glaciers and volcanoes.

Ehhh I'd gently disagree with this. Like, it's not as if Paldea lines up 1-1 with Iberia, there's literally a crater the size of a megacity in the centre of the region. They made a game set in New York in which a good chunk of Manhattan was an ancient desert and in SwSh Edinburgh is portrayed as a frozen forest with like one or two wooden cabins in it. Geography has never really been an issue for them except insofar as the basic shape of the landmass tends to be more or less the same and most of the major cities/towns are placed roughly equivalent to where their counterparts are IRL.

What I'm saying is I don't think they're held back by designing regions after real-world areas. Pretty much all the Pokemon regions to date have a bunch of varied geographical features - deserts, forests, swamps, glaciers, volcanoes - incorporated somewhere on the map no matter how little basis in reality this has. If they want to mix it up, they will.
 
Not the most unpopular opinion, but I'm fine with Luxray gaining Dark an additional type. Whilst it might not make sense thematically and logically, I just think they're just having fun with their favourite mon and I say just let them. Luxray might have been a top-tier mon in-game, but unfortuatenyl it's never been really good competeively because on how slow it is and its only STAB is Wild Charge, which is 90 base power with heavy recoil. It might feel unfair to them that it's not going to be as great like other popular Gen 4 mons like Infernape, Lucario, Garchomp, Gallade, Drapion or even Electivire. I also don't like that people make fun of them making fun of fans wishing Luxray to be part Dark type, they're just having fun and they're not bothering anyone.
 
Not the most unpopular opinion, but I'm fine with Luxray gaining Dark an additional type. Whilst it might not make sense thematically and logically, I just think they're just having fun with their favourite mon and I say just let them. Luxray might have been a top-tier mon in-game, but unfortuatenyl it's never been really good competeively because on how slow it is and its only STAB is Wild Charge, which is 90 base power with heavy recoil. It might feel unfair to them that it's not going to be as great like other popular Gen 4 mons like Infernape, Lucario, Garchomp, Gallade, Drapion or even Electivire. I also don't like that people make fun of them making fun of fans wishing Luxray to be part Dark type, they're just having fun and they're not bothering anyone.
Agree, people should let fans enjoy their favorite mons, even if it doesn’t make perfect sense thematical
 
It has Supercell Slam now.
To be honest some people consider it actually a downgrade to Wild Charge lol..

Yes higher BP, but you're trading 10 BP for the fact that if you thud in a ground type (which you likely will) or just fail that 5% miss chance you take 50% dmg back.

If it was 130 like HJK it would probably be a worthwile trade, but for 10 BPs?... People unironically ran Thunder Punch and Wild Charge on Iron Hand over SuperCell Slam for a reason...
 
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