DrCoeloCephalo
Banned deucer.
Let me preface by saying very much love and have a ton of nostalgia for Pokemon. I'm one of those people that's been supporting and playing the franchise since RBY days. However, I do not believe Pokemon is without flaws. In recent years, I've been expanding my repertoire of monster collecting RPG genre of games that have existed both before Pokemon (like Shin Megami Tensei and Dragon Quest) and after Pokemon (such as Fossil Fighters and Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth).
Having played games from these series have made a ton of Pokemon's flaws pretty clear to me and the biggest example of such has always been the Yo-Kai Watch games. It's especially noticeable from having played Yo-Kai Watch games how Level-5 has been able to hold a much higher standard than Game Freak towards their competitive format's quality. While it's true that Pokemon has a very big and very active competitive community, that's honestly no thanks to Game Freak. It's because of fanmade sites and simulations like Pokemon Showdown, Smogon Forums, Nugget Bridge, etc. that the competitive format is far more accessible to learn about and play with. Yo-Kai Watch, on the other hand, achieves a cordon blue competitive format in accessibility and variety without being completely reliant on fan resources. I believe that most of this comes from Level-5's understanding of basic power structure and making a simple yet consistent banlist.
Let me explain what I mean by this: Pokemon just has no sense of orderly hierarchy. Ever since the DPP days, the term "Legendary Pokemon" has lost all meaning. It's not because there's a huge number of them or anything like that. It's because a good number of them are objectively low tier trash. Regigigas, Phione, Mesprit, Silvally, etc. are delegated to low tiers in Smogon format and even in official formats like VGC Doubles, they're next to unusable because they just don't have the stats, movepool or options to be useful compared to the more metagame monsters. It's not like it's just with Legendaries, either. A huge number of Pokemon just aren't fit for being used for battling seriously and it's been like this since RBY days. It's because we have formats and tiers like Smogon that we can make use of this large number of otherwise useless monsters at all in a more skill based environment.
Other monster collecting games just don't have this issue because they understand how to organize a pecking order. Shin Megami Tensei makes a ton of strong monsters only accessible via fusion and easily discourages players from using the low tier trash monsters they encountered early in the game. Digimon has digivolution so that any monster can just evolve its way up to a god-level powerhouse at Mega level, which they stress again and again as being stronger than Ultimate level or Champion level, etc. Dragon Quest Monsters uses a letter-based ranking system with the F Rank and E Ranks being the general bottom tier monsters, D Ranks and C Ranks being your mid-low tiers, B Ranks and A Ranks being the high tiers and S Ranks and the X Ranks being the unquestionable top tiers. Yo-Kai Watch uses a letter Ranking system as well but it only goes from E to S Rank. Every Legendary Yo-Kai is a monster with S Rank stats and skillsets, making them stand above all the other monsters. The point I'm making here is that Level-5 just understands some monsters will always be better than others and gives players some kind of tool to make use of that knowledge. Because Pokemon is built to be a far easier game than any of the titles I mention, they make it so it's entirely possible to beat the game with any low tier trash and spoonfeed its playerbase into thinking "any monster can be strong with love, trust and bonding" just like in the anime. The reason this is important is because it goes into my next point about the banlist.
In Yo-Kai Watch, the banlist makes proper use of this letter based power structure. The official competitive format limits you to only being allowed to have a maximum of 2 S Rank Yo-Kai on your team of 6. In addition, players are only allowed to carry a maximum of 2 A Rank Yo-Kai on their team of 6. This means that 2 or more of your team slots are required to be B Rank or lower. It's not as though you can just throw any team of 2 S Ranks, 2 A Ranks and 2 B Ranks together and call it good as there are a ton of factors you have to take into account such as Tribe Unity, Soultimate synergy and feinting, blocking, grid links for combos, Inspirit and orb momentum, etc. This effectively makes Yo-Kai Watch's metagame very comparable to Pokemon's Draft League metagame where higher tier options have more restrictions to them and you have to make room on your team for lower tier Pokemon. Despite this banlist, it's not as though lower Rank Yo-Kai are completely unusable. Yo-Kai Watch 3 introduces a feature that will allow one to buff any Yo-Kai to higher letter Ranks. It's entirely possible to make an E Rank Yo-Kai you like into an S Rank powerhouse with good stats. However, those Yo-Kai still have to respect the banlist despite the Rank promotion. As a result, this makes Yo-Kai Watch competitive format extremely varied and reward a ton of creative teambuilding for making many of its monsters much more usable for its official formats. Compare this to official Pokemon competitve formats such the infamous VGC 2016, for example. This is why I'm convinced Yo-Kai Watch handles its competitive format far better than Pokemon does.
What do you all think? If there's anything you all wish to know or don't understand regarding what I've stated regarding Yo-Kai Watch, please let me know so I can do the best I can to explain it as I know this game isn't the most popular or studied game among westerners.
Having played games from these series have made a ton of Pokemon's flaws pretty clear to me and the biggest example of such has always been the Yo-Kai Watch games. It's especially noticeable from having played Yo-Kai Watch games how Level-5 has been able to hold a much higher standard than Game Freak towards their competitive format's quality. While it's true that Pokemon has a very big and very active competitive community, that's honestly no thanks to Game Freak. It's because of fanmade sites and simulations like Pokemon Showdown, Smogon Forums, Nugget Bridge, etc. that the competitive format is far more accessible to learn about and play with. Yo-Kai Watch, on the other hand, achieves a cordon blue competitive format in accessibility and variety without being completely reliant on fan resources. I believe that most of this comes from Level-5's understanding of basic power structure and making a simple yet consistent banlist.
Let me explain what I mean by this: Pokemon just has no sense of orderly hierarchy. Ever since the DPP days, the term "Legendary Pokemon" has lost all meaning. It's not because there's a huge number of them or anything like that. It's because a good number of them are objectively low tier trash. Regigigas, Phione, Mesprit, Silvally, etc. are delegated to low tiers in Smogon format and even in official formats like VGC Doubles, they're next to unusable because they just don't have the stats, movepool or options to be useful compared to the more metagame monsters. It's not like it's just with Legendaries, either. A huge number of Pokemon just aren't fit for being used for battling seriously and it's been like this since RBY days. It's because we have formats and tiers like Smogon that we can make use of this large number of otherwise useless monsters at all in a more skill based environment.
Other monster collecting games just don't have this issue because they understand how to organize a pecking order. Shin Megami Tensei makes a ton of strong monsters only accessible via fusion and easily discourages players from using the low tier trash monsters they encountered early in the game. Digimon has digivolution so that any monster can just evolve its way up to a god-level powerhouse at Mega level, which they stress again and again as being stronger than Ultimate level or Champion level, etc. Dragon Quest Monsters uses a letter-based ranking system with the F Rank and E Ranks being the general bottom tier monsters, D Ranks and C Ranks being your mid-low tiers, B Ranks and A Ranks being the high tiers and S Ranks and the X Ranks being the unquestionable top tiers. Yo-Kai Watch uses a letter Ranking system as well but it only goes from E to S Rank. Every Legendary Yo-Kai is a monster with S Rank stats and skillsets, making them stand above all the other monsters. The point I'm making here is that Level-5 just understands some monsters will always be better than others and gives players some kind of tool to make use of that knowledge. Because Pokemon is built to be a far easier game than any of the titles I mention, they make it so it's entirely possible to beat the game with any low tier trash and spoonfeed its playerbase into thinking "any monster can be strong with love, trust and bonding" just like in the anime. The reason this is important is because it goes into my next point about the banlist.
In Yo-Kai Watch, the banlist makes proper use of this letter based power structure. The official competitive format limits you to only being allowed to have a maximum of 2 S Rank Yo-Kai on your team of 6. In addition, players are only allowed to carry a maximum of 2 A Rank Yo-Kai on their team of 6. This means that 2 or more of your team slots are required to be B Rank or lower. It's not as though you can just throw any team of 2 S Ranks, 2 A Ranks and 2 B Ranks together and call it good as there are a ton of factors you have to take into account such as Tribe Unity, Soultimate synergy and feinting, blocking, grid links for combos, Inspirit and orb momentum, etc. This effectively makes Yo-Kai Watch's metagame very comparable to Pokemon's Draft League metagame where higher tier options have more restrictions to them and you have to make room on your team for lower tier Pokemon. Despite this banlist, it's not as though lower Rank Yo-Kai are completely unusable. Yo-Kai Watch 3 introduces a feature that will allow one to buff any Yo-Kai to higher letter Ranks. It's entirely possible to make an E Rank Yo-Kai you like into an S Rank powerhouse with good stats. However, those Yo-Kai still have to respect the banlist despite the Rank promotion. As a result, this makes Yo-Kai Watch competitive format extremely varied and reward a ton of creative teambuilding for making many of its monsters much more usable for its official formats. Compare this to official Pokemon competitve formats such the infamous VGC 2016, for example. This is why I'm convinced Yo-Kai Watch handles its competitive format far better than Pokemon does.
What do you all think? If there's anything you all wish to know or don't understand regarding what I've stated regarding Yo-Kai Watch, please let me know so I can do the best I can to explain it as I know this game isn't the most popular or studied game among westerners.
