If the (mainline) series of games ended, would your thoughts and/or ranking of them change?

[Nickeljorn]

I noticed a theme in the Nintendo Life ranking of the mainline games. Anybody who signs up for a Nintendo Life account can rate these games on the website and the ranking you see in the article is based on that, but from what I understand the descriptions are written by Nintendo Life staff, and I have noticed something about the descriptions of the two most recent games which also have the lowest rankings.

Legends Z-A

We’ll forever find filling up our Pokédex fun, and for the Switch 2 generation, this is a good starting point for the franchise. But if the Legends series is to continue, it needs to recapture its personality and fuse that real-time system with a bit more freedom.

Scarlet and Violet

There are still plenty more ways we’d like to see the Pokémon franchise evolve but despite some glaring technical hiccups, Pokémon Scarlet & Violet has us cautiously excited about the series' future.
…
We really hope Game Freak can figure out how to smooth out the series’ ongoing performance issues because they’re going to become a serious detriment over time.

To me, the Nintendo Life staff are implying that they believe “the future” is one of the main reasons why their readers gave the lowest ratings to the two most recent mainline games, and that those readers are effectively basing part of their rankings on games that do not exist yet. This got me thinking that the Nintendo Life readers might enjoy the games more or at least have fewer reasons to dislike them if Game Freak stopped making Pokemon games. I know that the series is still doing well enough that the games, TCG, etc will probably all be around for a very long time, but this is a thought experiment.
I’ll use EarthBound as an example because I am more familiar with it than I am with other turn based RPGs that have not gotten a new game in a long time. The writer of the series, Shigesato Itoi, decided before the first game came out that he only wanted the series to have three games, and since he owns the copyright to the series Nintendo could not make a new game even if they wanted to. I virtually never see “the future” get brought up when someone says what they like or do not like about one of the EarthBound games on a website such as Reddit because the most recent game in that series is almost 20 years old, but many posts about what someone likes about generation 8 and generation 9 mainline Pokemon games will have responses like "you should expect more from Game Freak" even though I think that would just make the OPs more likely to double down instead of changing their minds.

 

[Ironmage]

For me, the mainline series of games has effectively already ended. The current games continue to diverge from what I consider the essentials of the series, with the highly-regarded points being stuff I don't care about nearly as much as what gets cut to put them in. I'm not buying or playing the new games right now, nothing would change if they stopped making them. I always got the impression, which may or may not be projection, that "expecting more from GF" was in comparison to the past rather than the future.

 

[bdt2002]

Generally speaking, I think Game Freak’s hesitation to provide an official definition of what counts as a mainline Pokémon game has been largely to their benefit. Among other things that sets Pokémon apart is that there’s arguably no one or two games that defines the entire franchise. Take something like The Legend of Zelda, a franchise that, for several years, was almost entirely defined by the success of Ocarina of Time to the point where the definition of a mainline game completely warped around it with games like Majora’s Mask and Twilight Princess.

What could be considered mainline Pokémon has been changing for the franchise’s entire lifespan. We got a sequel game for Gen 2, the first remakes during Gen 3, an entirely separate timeline in Gen 6, and the Legends games starting during Gen 8. Even the definition of what could be considered a generation has changed over time. This kind of variability I think is what can help maintain Pokémon’s appeal to a greater audience and for that reason alone I don’t mind if newer games keep changing up the formula.

Going back to the Zelda example, the 2000s feeling like they were all just Ocarina of Time 2.0 to a certain degree honestly got stale after a while which I think was reflected in in the 2010s with games that took a completely different, noticeably less linear direction. Majora’s Mask and Twilight Princess were both intentionally designed to be similar, yes, but even a game like The Wind Waker still has some of that “I’m not completely original” feel to it despite still being a good game in its own right. Had those games not been willing to change things up and redefine what a mainline game is, they almost certainly would have died off after Twilight Princess.

 

[Esserise]

I don’t think this would affect my assessment of any existing games at all. Outside of a very, very few specific cases, I don’t really grade anything according to what I’d have preferred or what I think something might lead to. For the most part, I take things on their own merits, and I take great care to not let my critical opinion be meaningfully influenced by nostalgia or by my own personal expectations. Analyzing something relative to those kinds of factors is an entirely different, and generally far less interesting, discussion as far as I’m concerned.

So really I’d just be sad that there weren’t going to be any more Pokémon or regions. It’s the world of the games that I love the most and that I want to see continue to expand.

 

[tentaghost]

Generally speaking, I think Game Freak’s hesitation to provide an official definition of what counts as a mainline Pokémon game has been largely to their benefit. Among other things that sets Pokémon apart is that there’s arguably no one or two games that defines the entire franchise. Take something like The Legend of Zelda, a franchise that, for several years, was almost entirely defined by the success of Ocarina of Time to the point where the definition of a mainline game completely warped around it with games like Majora’s Mask and Twilight Princess.

What could be considered mainline Pokémon has been changing for the franchise’s entire lifespan. We got a sequel game for Gen 2, the first remakes during Gen 3, an entirely separate timeline in Gen 6, and the Legends games starting during Gen 8. Even the definition of what could be considered a generation has changed over time. This kind of variability I think is what can help maintain Pokémon’s appeal to a greater audience and for that reason alone I don’t mind if newer games keep changing up the formula.

Going back to the Zelda example, the 2000s feeling like they were all just Ocarina of Time 2.0 to a certain degree honestly got stale after a while which I think was reflected in in the 2010s with games that took a completely different, noticeably less linear direction. Majora’s Mask and Twilight Princess were both intentionally designed to be similar, yes, but even a game like The Wind Waker still has some of that “I’m not completely original” feel to it despite still being a good game in its own right. Had those games not been willing to change things up and redefine what a mainline game is, they almost certainly would have died off after Twilight Princess.

Im confused by what you mean by this since what you said about zeldas track record in the 2000s is arguably just as true for pokemon, espcially when you consider 1. how most people play these games and 2. How the games themselves are structured which only really began changing recently.

 

[bdt2002]

Im confused by what you mean by this since what you said about zeldas track record in the 2000s is arguably just as true for pokemon, espcially when you consider 1. how most people play these games and 2. How the games themselves are structured which only really began changing recently.

Sorry about that. Let me take this from the top. So, we have OoT in 1998, and the three new 3D mainline Zelda games after this all took inspirations and design aspects from this game. Majora’s Mask and The Wind Waker didn’t perform as well as OoT, but Twilight Princess did better in large part because of the Wii’s release and the stigma against The Wind Waker at the time. I was saying that if the newer games did not restructure that The Legend of Zelda probably would have died out after Twilight Princess especially if the original Wii ended up as a flop (which it definitely didn’t).

Pokémon by comparison, I know people give these games a bad rap for them feeling so similar to each other but ever since Sun & Moon they’ve done things to change up the formula enough and there’s still no one game carrying the franchise’s identity. Pokémon doesn’t have a Final Fantasy 7 or a GTA 5 or a Mario Kart 8 or Ocarina of Time that’s universally gotten praise as the undisputed “best in the series”. There’s a lot more parity with Pokémon’s games relative to each other than there is with something like The Legend of Zelda or even Super Mario to some extent.

 

[tentaghost]

Sorry about that. Let me take this from the top. So, we have OoT in 1998, and the three new 3D mainline Zelda games after this all took inspirations and design aspects from this game. Majora’s Mask and The Wind Waker didn’t perform as well as OoT, but Twilight Princess did better in large part because of the Wii’s release and the stigma against The Wind Waker at the time. I was saying that if the newer games did not restructure that The Legend of Zelda probably would have died out after Twilight Princess especially if the original Wii ended up as a flop (which it definitely didn’t).

Pokémon by comparison, I know people give these games a bad rap for them feeling so similar to each other but ever since Sun & Moon they’ve done things to change up the formula enough and there’s still no one game carrying the franchise’s identity. Pokémon doesn’t have a Final Fantasy 7 or a GTA 5 or a Mario Kart 8 or Ocarina of Time that’s universally gotten praise as the undisputed “best in the series”. There’s a lot more parity with Pokémon’s games relative to each other than there is with something like The Legend of Zelda or even Super Mario to some extent.

See that i dont really agree with because..

wind waker and twilight princess also did change up the way theyre structured so it doesnt feel like ocarina of time again.

the new super mario bros series (and wonder to an extent) adds in new mechanics and features to not make the games feel the same.

when you get down to it, all of the games you mentioned have games with mecahnics that either expand on or set themselves apart from the other just like with pokemon, the problem more comes with the fact that despite everything.. youre still doing the same things that you were last time.

The games structure never changes, the game never expects you to do more than what you would expect to do in the game and in pokemons case, yeah its just as guilty as those games even if GF has tried to change things up.

if you want a good explaination of what i mean this video goes into depth about it.

 

[RocketSurgery]

See that i dont really agree with because..

wind waker and twilight princess also did change up the way theyre structured so it doesnt feel like ocarina of time again.

the new super mario bros series (and wonder to an extent) adds in new mechanics and features to not make the games feel the same.

when you get down to it, all of the games you mentioned have games with mecahnics that either expand on or set themselves apart from the other just like with pokemon, the problem more comes with the fact that despite everything.. youre still doing the same things that you were last time.

The games structure never changes, the game never expects you to do more than what you would expect to do in the game and in pokemons case, yeah its just as guilty as those games even if GF has tried to change things up.

if you want a good explaination of what i mean this video goes into depth about it.

I was not expecting that video to be primarily about the neglect of status moves during casual playthroughs.

One thing I wonder about the typical groups of people complaining about how similar each entry feels is what Pokemon they tend to use on their teams. I can imagine, for instance, that there are a lot of players out there who are not really interested in new Pokemon and tend to gravitate towards old staples or popular like Gyarados, lucario etc, maybe with a couple of new mons that look cute/cool enough. To them I would guess the games feel very samesy because not only is the basic formula not too different from past games but their team is not too different from what they used in past games. In contrast, players who are more interested in new mons may not mind the formula being standard because their gameplay experience is different because they use a different team.

I would also wager another dimension of this comes down to whether a player replays a game a lot. Someone who finishes the game and wipes it to start again is probably going to feel more bored by the basic formula than someone who rarely replays a game.

This is where my perspective comes from: I would be disappointed if the series ends any time soon because the things I enjoy in a new game are new mons, and I don't usually restart a game after I finish it. As I result I am not bored of the formula because I really only experience it every 3 or so years, and I am satisfied with the tweaks in the formula and gameplay experience. In contrast, I would be much less interested in the Legends series if they didn't substantially change the gameplay because of the small number of new mons or forms introduced in those games.