What Pokémon Game(s) do you think are Overrated and what do you think are Underrated?

[LPBvgc]

Self explainitory title. What Pokémon games do you think get too much praise and what Pokémon games do you think don't get enough praise?

I'll start

Overrated:

I have been replaying this recently with Rare Candy and Exp. Share cheats, and while I might have treated it too harshly, I still think Pokémon Emerald is VERY overrated. The amount of backtracking is really annoying, especially before getting the HM for Fly. After beating the 4th Gym I had to backtrack ALL THE WAY TO PETALBURG then after defeating Norman, go BACK TO MAUVILLE to progress. All on foot. And I haven't even made it to the bigger water routes, so IK damn well navigation will be much worse. Another issue is the grind. Wattson was so hard I had to level my team of 5 mons up to Level 26-28 to win. Now imagine doing that on cart without Rare Candy cheats. It would take DAYS to pull of a grind like that.

Underrated:

While I DID grow up with it (yes it is possible, it is nearly 7 years old), Pokémon Sword and Shield (with the DLC) has to be one of my favorite entries so far. While it does have issues such as the VERY linear Routes and lack of exploration or side content in the base game or especially the mediocre story, this game does plenty of things right. The progression is extremely smooth, the music and atmosphere with stuff like The Wild Area or Gym Battles are some of the best. And the DLC fixes the side content issue by adding plenty of stuff to do. 2 new battle facilities, a new postgame E4 rematch facility, multiple side quests involving Legendary Pokémon (one trio's quest encourages exploration), and just general QoL enhancments for competitive.

 

[Esserise]

I don’t think people really tend to have a good bead on this sort of thing. Whenever someone makes an “overrated/underrated” thread, it always inevitably ends up turning into a “I like this game that I’ve seen other people dislike, and dislike this game that I’ve see others like” thread because everyone’s sense of “____ratedness” is entirely conjectural and vibes-based. Nobody ever brings up actual metrics, and if we’re being real, pretty much every main series Pokémon game has reviewed fairly well according to critical metrics. SV took an unusual beating due to its performance, but I think it’s widely agreed that said beating was deserved.

Like, I love USUM for example. Plenty of people dislike them for reasons ranging from subjective (not liking the changes to the storyline) to the more objective (the Rotom Dex being more intrusive, going back to an enhanced version instead of a sequel), but these games have a “Generally Favorable” Metascore of 84 and User Score of 7.6. Even as someone who would personally rank them quite highly, I think that’s a perfectly fair place for them to land, and it’s hardly a score to complain about.

 

[QuentinQuonce]

DP are the first games which come to mind as being underrated. In the years since their release my impression is that general opinion has turned against them quite sharply compared to the immense hype I recall before their release. They're very, very far from being perfect games in many respects and Platinum made a ton of very needed QoL updates, but on their own merits they're impressive, expansive titles absolutely full of content and have a fairly decent postgame challenge in the Battle Tower. The most impressive factor, though, is that almost every single evolutionary line is obtainable in the games in some way or another - no other region (bar the obvious example of Kanto) has ever matched this, and it makes Sinnoh feel huge to me.

Do they pale against modern efforts in some respects? Sure, and there are a lot of design choices in them which are just baffling in hindsight. But popular opinion seems to largely be that DP were absolutely terrible, which I think is judging them far too harshly given they're the first mainline DS titles.

 

[Esserise]

DP are the first games which come to mind as being underrated. In the years since their release my impression is that general opinion has turned against them quite sharply compared to the immense hype I recall before their release.

I’ll admit, I often do make jokes at DP’s expense that play up their “unplayability.” But the truth is, I know for a fact that if I’d been able to play them at the time, in their heyday, I’d have loved them. I just happened to miss the boat on them because by the time I got a DS, they had already released Platinum, HGSS, and BW. But before then, I loved looking up all the information about DP that I could, daydreaming about getting to play them eventually. They did seem like the “ultimate” Pokémon games to me at the time.

In fact, the reason why BDSP actually… well, “work,” isn’t the right word, but “have some unique value” to me is because I never got to play the original DP in their own time, so BDSP’s rigid fidelity to those games actually allowed me to experience a version of Sinnoh that only ever had an imagined relationship with.

One memory that remained extremely clear in my mind for over 10 years was looking at this screenshot on Serebii’s section on Legendary Pokémon in DP:

Such that, even though I’m not really a nostalgic person, I felt I had to commemorate the moment when I got to that point in BDSP, because Platinum has you encounter Giratina in the Distortion World instead, meaning that this precise experience had always eluded me. And so:

Hide

(Okay, yeah, it doesn’t really feel the same, and I realize the irony of the fact that I’m wearing the Platinum outfit, but that’s not the point!)

 

[bdt2002]

I feel like Internet culture has ironically gotten a point where calling something overrated is, in itself, overrated. People tend to think that Overrated = Bad and Underrated = Good, but something can just as easily be one or the other as these words are purely up to subjective opinion. I think there’s another factor to take into consideration, too, where something that was initially seen as “overrated” can receive so much criticism that an argument can be made “overrated” turns into “overhated”. What a difference one letter of the alphabet makes, huh?

Being the Pokémon spin-off defender I am (for the most part, anyway, I don’t care for the mobile games and what’s been happening with Detective Pikachu), one game has always stuck out to me like a sore thumb. Gates to Infinity was a game I was actually quite fond of for a while, but it’s not exactly a well kept secret that this game feels like the black sheep of the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series for a multitude of reasons. The most immediate issue is the difficulty of the game, or lack there of in this case, compared to the previous games, and the significantly gutted postgame offerings also isn’t the best look. Despite those flaws, I feel like what Pokémon Mystery Dungeon tries to be at its core still works great in the main story, and I would still call the game under-appreciated for maintaining a sense of simplistic charm and some of the best OSTs in the series, among other things. The game’s successor, Super Mystery Dungeon, from 2015 didn’t have nearly the same kind of impact for me to the point where I actually got bored of the game, as I found the game’s recruiting mechanics to feel too much like a forced innovation and the game was trying to be something it’s not- it wants to be similar to Gates to Infinity, but it also wants to feel like a return to form for the series, and in practice it doesn’t really stick the landing at either of those things.

On the “overrated” side of things, you have something that actually gets too much credit and isn’t just overhated because of it being milked to death like, say, Charizard is. Pokémon Black 2 & White 2 are, in some ways, the most complete mainline Pokémon games we’ve gotten up to this point, and I for one welcome true sequels over upper versions and DLCs. Shoutouts to Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon for not being sequels, on a brief side note. That all being said, as much as I’m a sucker for a good sequel, this… well, it’s not bad, but we once again have a case of a game trying to be something it’s not. These games are very comparable to HeartGold & SoulSilver for me, and those are some of my all time favorites, so what’s the issue here? Well, a lot of small things that define how something can still be good, but overrated at the same time. Many features from Gens 3 and 4 are still not present here, and the features that replaced them don’t have enough replay value to make up for their exclusion. The Pokémon World Tournament is neat, I guess, but I can see either side of the coin on if you would prefer this or the Battle Frontier. Unlike most other modern (Gens 3-present for the sake of this post) generations, these games are also lacking access to other starter Pokémon and, to a lesser extent, Legendary Pokémon, specifically the major ones. I can understand why the Sinnoh and Johto box art Legendaries aren’t here, because they were in Pokémon Dream Radar, but there are still some exclusions that I find strange- it never made sense to me why some of the Boss Trainers in Black Tower/White Treehollow have access to Legendaries the player can’t find. Perhaps their intention was to get people to use the Poké Transfer Lab, but I digress. I also take issue with the mid-game of Unova feeling more or less the same as the first games, what with the same areas we’ve already visited should you have played Black & White first, but I can give that more of a pass since almost every area in Unova has at least one new encounter to find, if not multiple, and “Unova 2” ironically uses around the same number of returning Unova Pokémon as Johto uses Kanto Pokémon. Other far more specific things, such as the Elite Four largely being the same and not even having any new members when Gen 2 had some (even Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon had Molayne), Ghetsis’s and much of Team Plasma’s character feeling significantly watered down this time around, and the literally unfinished difficulty modes which is a feature people wanted for several years are ultimately nitpicks bit hard nitpicks for me to ignore.

 

[Esserise]

and the literally unfinished difficulty modes which is a feature people wanted for several years are ultimately nitpicks bit hard nitpicks for me to ignore.

The way in which the difficulty modes in B2W2 are implemented is so beyond asinine that it completely defeats the point of even having them. As flaws go, they’re definitely bigger than nitpick status.

“Congratulations, you beat Pokémon White 2! Would you now care to enjoy the rest of it… on easy mode?”

 

[bdt2002]

The way in which the difficulty modes in B2W2 are implemented is so beyond asinine that it completely defeats the point of even having them. As flaws go, they’re definitely bigger than nitpick status.

“Congratulations, you beat Pokémon White 2! Would you now care to enjoy the rest of it… on easy mode?”

As a Black 2 main, we have it even worse Challenge Mode doesn’t even raise the Pokémon’s stats when you’re in battle and it even keeps their Abilities the same. Literally all that changes are the level numbers (better for grinding, at least) and some AI routines. That’s it. I too remember Marshal’s Flame Orb Sheer Force Conkeldurr. Truly one of the Pokémon of all time.

 

[tentaghost]

The way in which the difficulty modes in B2W2 are implemented is so beyond asinine that it completely defeats the point of even having them. As flaws go, they’re definitely bigger than nitpick status.

“Congratulations, you beat Pokémon White 2! Would you now care to enjoy the rest of it… on easy mode?”

There was a reason for challenge keys right? Like was it just to be different or what?

 

[Esserise]

There was a reason for challenge keys right? Like was it just to be different or what?

The key system itself was originally a concept that they’d thought of for the original Black & White games, but didn’t have time to implement it. When they decided to make another game for the DS after Black & White, then-President of Nintendo Satoru Iwata felt that another Pokémon game for the DS would need to bring something new to the table. Seeing an opportunity to revive the key system concept, Game Freak decided to make two enhanced versions instead of the usual one, and then Masuda had the idea to make them sequels to further distinguish them.

In Junichi Masuda’s own words concerning the key system, “When you completed the game, you would get a sort of key. It was a mechanism by which you could unlock the other game. Then, because of that, when you played the second one, you would get a different impression. […] We wanted to make a mechanic whereby after you played one game, you could play the other in a deeper way, like with slightly stronger Pokémon appearing.”

Takao Unno, director of B2W2, added, “For example, if someone just can’t seem to complete the game, someone who is better at it could say, ‘I’ll help you out,’ and use the key to change that world.”

What I glean from this is that it wasn’t really a case of them deciding to add difficulty modes and then going about it in the most circuitous way possible. Rather, the key system was envisioned first and foremost as a multiplayer connection feature that took advantage of there being two different versions of the game. So fundamentally it was a question of, “How can this version’s keys be used to alter the other version?” Even though you can apply the keys to your own game after completing the main story, the core idea was to use it interactively with other people.

Though even with that in mind, I don’t think there’s any reason why game completion couldn’t have simply unlocked both levels of difficulty — which would still be a clunky and counterintuitive way to handle difficulty levels, but it would have at least preserved the main intention of using it to adjust someone else’s game without the extra hoop of requiring you to have a specific version to unlock a specific difficulty setting. (And it wouldn’t have compromised the presence of version-exclusive aspects altogether, either, since you could still have the keys for the Regi trio and Black City / White Forest be specific to each game.) But as we’ve seen plenty of times by now, Game Freak’s commitment to the bit on version exclusivity does sometimes lead them to make some very silly decisions (hello, inverted time of day for Moon, and version-exclusive clothing colors in Gen 7).

 

[bdt2002]

Game Freak’s commitment to the bit on version exclusivity does sometimes lead them to make some very silly decisions (hello, inverted time of day for Moon, and version-exclusive clothing colors in Gen 7).

I’ve always thought of the Moon “version” of Alola as its own separate continuity of events apart from all the other games. Makes me wonder if there are other versions of all the other Pokémon games we don’t see that have the inverted time as well; Johto immediately comes to mind as the region that introduced the day/night cycle to begin with, and like I said, for all we know maybe there are inverted versions of the other regions that we just don’t get to see on-screen.

 

[QuentinQuonce]

I’ve always thought of the Moon “version” of Alola as its own separate continuity of events apart from all the other games. Makes me wonder if there are other versions of all the other Pokémon games we don’t see that have the inverted time as well; Johto immediately comes to mind as the region that introduced the day/night cycle to begin with, and like I said, for all we know maybe there are inverted versions of the other regions that we just don’t get to see on-screen.

This was always my thinking for why Red was given Espeon in GSC; aside from the fact that Dark-types in general are rarely associated with heroic or wholesome characters, the RBY games are in a perpetual state of daytime so it naturally follows he'd have evolved his Eevee into Espeon rather than Umbreon.

 

[PokePoindexter]

I'm not sure if I can really describe any Pokemon game as overrated or underrated, since almost all of them tend to be regarded pretty positively with the occasional detractors that go out of their way to tell you how much they hate them for such-and-such reasons. I don't really have any underrated ones at the moment, so I'll just post the ones I think are overrated.

Red/Blue/Yellow

Yes, I started with these games. Yes, I know they're the first games in the series. Yes, I was a part of the craze when Pokemon first came to America. No, I don't believe any of those reasons make RBY anywhere close to being the best.

Some of the problems with Gen 1 I can list off the top of my head: overpowered Psychic-types, glitches up the wazoo, the Special stat, abysmal sprites (Golbat and Blastoise, anyone?), being unable to carry more than 20 items at a time, managing PC boxes was a real mess, not to mention the potential to softlock yourself at the Safari Zone.

Oh, and I can also just play FireRed/LeafGreen and miss out on nothing from the original games (as well as get far better graphics and sprites, more balanced mechanics, and the Sevii Islands).

Gen 2 and its remakes

I know Gen 2 fans will cling religiously to these games and talk our ears off about how great the "new stuff" was, or how you could visit two regions, or how you can do 3 gyms midway through the game in any order, or how people being critical of various aspects of Gen 2 means that "eVeRyOnE hAtEs iT nOw waaaaah!". My response: Gen 3 gave the franchise a far bigger glow-up than Gen 2 did, Kanto is just plain boring, bad level curves are bad level curves (and 3 gyms is pretty pathetic when we have games that let you do 8 in any order now), and whatever "downfall" Gen 2 has taken lately is nothing compared to the falls from grace Overwatch or Fortnite have had (rightfully so, mind you).

But besides those, I find myself spending a lot more time level grinding in these games than any other, and when I'm not, the main adventure is very lackluster; Team Rocket just wants to bring their daddy back, Silver just feels like a juvenile delinquent whose character barely gets any development until way too late in the game, Lance is arguably the worst champion in the series, and I've beaten Red with Pokemon 20 levels lower than his with minimal effort (also, if he's supposed to be me from Gen 1, then where's his damn Mewtwo?). The day/night feature was always a pet peeve of mine in these games as well, mainly because I didn't like having to be able to play the game at specific times or days in order to catch various Pokemon or participate in events (and that was before I discovered that it drains the internal battery and wipes out the entire game).

As for HGSS, following Pokemon was a cute addition but doesn't singlehandedly make or break the game, and otherwise they still suffer from pretty much all of the major issues I had with the games they're remakes of (aside from the improved day/night feature).

Platinum

Note: I do like this game, but compared to the elite pedestal many others seem to put it on, I just can't put it there myself.

The main issue I have is the pacing. Yes, it's smoother and less sluggish than DP; that's not saying much. Compared to Gens 3 and 5 which felt smoother and generally moved things along at a reasonable speed, Platinum has several long stretches where hardly anything interesting happens. A couple examples would be the trek from Veilstone to Pastoria and the entire stretch between the Distortion World and the Champion battle (Volkner is a joke of a final gym battle and Victory Road is ultimately just another cave that you need a bunch of HMs to get through).

Additionally, Sinnoh has three of my least favorite locations in any region thus far: Route 212 with the mud that bogs the player down, Route 210 with its long gauntlet of trainers amid tall grass and fog, and especially everything between Mt. Coronet and Snowpoint City with all the snow that cuts movement speed and the Hail in every battle.

One final note, while Platinum may have had the better Battle Frontier, Gen 2 did Pokemon in trees better, and Gen 3 did Contests and Secret Bases better. So all things considered, I think Platinum is good, but nowhere near the best.