(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon

[Pikachu315111]

On the subject of badly translated move names, Double Slap still sticks out to me like a sore thumb, when it hits up to 5 times. It really makes you wonder why none of the programmers ever caught that during the translation phase. I'll concede to character limits of the much less advanced systems preventing the move from being dubbed Quintuple Slap, but even 5-Times Slap (or 5x Slap if you're really stingy with characters) is still a better name than freaking Double Slap because it actually conveys what the effect of the move is and don't outright lie to you.

I can get past Rock Slide being named Avalanche in other translations because they're effectively synonyms for each other, but when something is outright lying to you or not giving you the full story of its effects, that's not good game design in my opinion.

I SORTA get why its called Double Slap. It's Japanese name is "Round Trip Slap" and the animation for the move is the user slapping the opponent two times before damage is done and goes on to either the next slapping or ending. It's essentially a literal and visual translation and not a descriptive translation. Would probably have been better if named "Multi Slap" (since it also doesn't hit all five times so it describing any number wouldn't be accurate).

It's like all of the missing information in the descriptions in SUMO/USUM, despite their being a much larger description box:

• Water Bubble not mentioning that the user's attacking stats are doubled when using Water-type attacks,
• Prankster not mentioning that Dark-types are immune to an opponent's Prankster.
• Light That Burns the Sky not saying that its category depends on the user's highest attacking stat.
  • And for that matter, neither LTBTS or Photon Geyser mention that the category also determines which defensive stat is used, which can be important because you could think that it always uses Special Defence just because the attack's naturally a Special attack, despite that not being the case.
• Shadow Tag omitting that you're immune to other Shadow Tags.
• And probably others. But these stick out to me.

The problem is they only give on description to describe both what the Move/Ability/Item is and then its effects. If they give Moves, Abilities, and even Items both a description box (a box which describes the move, ability, or item looks like or is presented) and an effect box (a box which tells you all the info you need to know about the move) I think that would work much better than having to sacrifice either space or flavor text.

 

[Siggu]

It's like all of the missing information in the descriptions in SUMO/USUM, despite their being a much larger description box:

• Water Bubble not mentioning that the user's attacking stats are doubled when using Water-type attacks,
• Prankster not mentioning that Dark-types are immune to an opponent's Prankster.
• Light That Burns the Sky not saying that its category depends on the user's highest attacking stat.
  • And for that matter, neither LTBTS or Photon Geyser mention that the category also determines which defensive stat is used, which can be important because you could think that it always uses Special Defence just because the attack's naturally a Special attack, despite that not being the case.
• Shadow Tag omitting that you're immune to other Shadow Tags.
• And probably others. But these stick out to me.

I think Pokemon should have a feature like the Wormopedia Worms World Party had.

As a post-game reward, you could get an in-game book with deeper explanations, such as chances of secondary effects, on everything - moves, abilities, status, etc. - and why not base stats as well. It's fine if they want to keep some things short and concise, but details are necessary.

 

[ZettaiRyouiki]

Why is the word "seed" banned? And why don't they just use another word like nut or shell? Come on Spanish translators, English did the hard part by translating the name from Japanese you just need to put it in context in your language.

Different but based on the same root word. Like all the characters, he's named after a plant, the sea hibiscus. The sea hibiscus's Hawaiian name is "Hau", and that's what his name is in the Japanese, English, Korean, Chinese, and Russian versions. The sea hibiscus's scientific name is "Hibiscus tiliaceus", which is where the French got "Tili" and the Spanish got "Tilo". German version decided to be a bit special and chose a cousin species, the "Talipariti tiliaceum", to get the name "Tali". Finally, Brazilian Portuguese didn't want to mess around and just named him after the genus getting "Hibi".

Dunno why the word Seed is taboo. The only thing I can think of is because seed is sometimes used as an euphemism for sperm, but that seems like grasping at straws. It's not like Juan Corrida from Ace Attorney being renamed because his name DOES sound dirty!

On a funnier note the ability Poison Heal was named Antidote because they thought it heals poison instead of making poison heal you!

As for Hau I wanna think they avoided using that name because in Spain "hau" is the stereotypical Native American salute and naming a guy that would look funny.

Playing through the Spanish version of Pokemon X was worth it to see Team Flare grunts saying things like "Me aburro como una ostra" (literally "I'm bored like an oyster"). The dialogue seems to be fine, but then again I'm not a native Spanish speaker.

Were the Team Flare grunts talking about milk and cookies confusing?

 

[adman2]

I don't remember a "milk and cookies" (or "leche y galletas") line, so I doubt it confused me. The last time I played Pokemon X was a monotype Normal run a couple of years ago. Team Flare was pathetic even by Pokemon gang standards, so perhaps I don't remember them as much?

The Spanish character names in Moon hindered me more than you might think. I used to play the Battle Tree often before I burned out on competitive battling, and I couldn't use the Smogon Excel spreadsheets as efficiently because all the trainers had different names and classes. (The guys in Hawaiian shirts are called "Aristócratas", for example.)

 

[Detective Barricade]

I don't remember a "milk and cookies" (or "leche y galletas") line, so I doubt it confused me. The last time I played Pokemon X was a monotype Normal run a couple of years ago. Team Flare was pathetic even by Pokemon gang standards, so perhaps I don't remember them as much?

The Spanish character names in Moon hindered me more than you might think. I used to play the Battle Tree often before I burned out on competitive battling, and I couldn't use the Smogon Excel spreadsheets as efficiently because all the trainers had different names and classes. (The guys in Hawaiian shirts are called "Aristócratas", for example.)

As in aristocrat? Kind of makes sense given the Gentlemen class is usually stupidly rich.

 

[ZettaiRyouiki]

I used to play the Battle Tree often before I burned out on competitive battling, and I couldn't use the Smogon Excel spreadsheets as efficiently because all the trainers had different names and classes. (The guys in Hawaiian shirts are called "Aristócratas", for example.)

Yeah, for some reason from Gen 4 on the trainer classes were renamed from mostly faithful translations of the English class names to random nonsense. Beauties became Models, for example. The worst case was Super Nerds becoming Scientists... while the Scientists were still Scientists.

Can I just give "lack of agreement about translators" as another thing that annoys me? Like how Cosplay Pikachu was named that in every single translation... except the Spanish one, which went with Coquettish Pikachu which isn't even an accurate translation! And the less we talk about the mess that are the HGSS Rocket admins the better. Maybe we should do like Street Fighter fans and give everyone nicknames.

One last thing: all the European translations minus obviously English ones make NPC Pokémon speak like in the anime, saying their names. I really can't stand that, since it looks dumb and tries to pretend the anime is better and more important it actually is. The English and Japanese growls and grunts are better.

 

[adman2]

Yeah, for some reason from Gen 4 on the trainer classes were renamed from mostly faithful translations of the English class names to random nonsense. Beauties became Models, for example. The worst case was Super Nerds becoming Scientists... while the Scientists were still Scientists.

Maybe we should do like Street Fighter fans and give everyone nicknames.

You mean like "Dictator", "Boxer", etc. instead of "M. Bison"?

One thing that really annoyed me about Moon was the ending. Wow, did that take forever! And I didn't know you could beat Tapu Koko and catch a better one later. . .

I like Moon, but it desperately needed a "skip cutscene" feature. Bravely Default can do it; why not Pokemon?

 

[Siggu]

Was the original Kanto Diglett you had male? Maybe that was the issue, though breeding with a Kanto Diglett, since Ditto doesn't have a regional variant it's considered of the region it's in, thus when playing mother and holding the Everstone if bred with a male Kanto Pokemon, even if its holding an Everstone, the child will be Alolan.

... I swear that paragraph makes more sense in my head.

I decided to re-check this... and this is what I got.

5 eggs from female Alola Diglett and male Kanto Diglett = 5 baby Alola Diglett
5 eggs from female Kanto Diglett and male Alola Diglett = 5 baby Kanto Diglett
Several eggs from a Ditto and male Kanto Diglett = All babies were Alola Diglett

(All parents had Everstones on them)

This makes me raise more questions... why does this specific breeding mechanic not ignore Ditto?

 

[Hugin]

Me: Has wiped the floor with every single member of the evil team I’ve seen, including probably a couple admins
Evil team member: I can’t let you go to the next route/gym/section of the building
Me: Turns around and walks away.

Just...WHY? Find another way to block something, GF.

 

[ToadBrigade]

Me: Has wiped the floor with every single member of the evil team I’ve seen, including probably a couple admins
Evil team member: I can’t let you go to the next route/gym/section of the building
Me: Turns around and walks away.

Just...WHY? Find another way to block something, GF.

Be careful what you wish for...

 

[Pikachu315111]

Me: Has wiped the floor with every single member of the evil team I’ve seen, including probably a couple admins
Evil team member: I can’t let you go to the next route/gym/section of the building
Me: Turns around and walks away.

Just...WHY? Find another way to block something, GF.

Especially dumb when you're in a open area and have a big enough Pokemon that can fly, like when in Y I was storming the Poke Ball Factory:

You have to get to the chairman who's in the right house. As you can see, the "easy" way to get up there is blocked by grunts so you need to play around on the conveyor belts to get up there. Thing is, I HAD A CHARIZARD WHICH KNEW FLY (best I could give it at the moment, Air Slash needs to be taught via Move Reminder who's in Dendemille Town)! Why couldn't I just fly up there and ignore all the grunts entirely?

 

[Tenebricite]

Be careful what you wish for...

I always found that scene to be one of the weirdest in any pokemon game lol

 

[stuuful12]

Especially dumb when you're in a open area and have a big enough Pokemon that can fly, like when in Y I was storming the Poke Ball Factory:

You have to get to the chairman who's in the right house. As you can see, the "easy" way to get up there is blocked by grunts so you need to play around on the conveyor belts to get up there. Thing is, I HAD A CHARIZARD WHICH KNEW FLY (best I could give it at the moment, Air Slash needs to be taught via Move Reminder who's in Dendemille Town)! Why couldn't I just fly up there and ignore all the grunts entirely?

I mean the obvious answer is that Gamefreak doesn't want you to break the game or make some pokemon overpowered by letting you skip chunks of the game.

But a probably better in-game reason as for why you can't do this is A) You don't know that the director is there and B) even if you did, you probably could easily get spotted by the grunts and forced into a battle with them or worse, which would not only be more exhausting because a charizard flying with a trainer on its back would easily get more attention from the grunts,but possibly be even more dangerous as Charizard can't fight, and giving aerial commands to your pokemon would be a complicated and hard maneuver, even for your prodigy like trainer. Plus, this is a pretty well protected place, who knows what security they might have placed to prevent those shenanigans. For that, just going on land with stealth is probably the safer option for your trainer to choose, even if you run into hordes of grunts, as you aren't attracting the entire mobs attention

 

[TMan87]

For that, just going on land with stealth is probably the safer option for your trainer to choose, even if you run into hordes of grunts, as you aren't attracting the entire mobs attention

This is true up until a certain point only, because while using stuff like Flame Wheel or Magical Leaf is stealthy enough, starting spamming moves like Earthquake or Draco Meteor or Surf or maybe even whatever your legend has as Signature move should actually attract the entire building's attention...

 

[Kurona]

Be careful what you wish for...

An actually funny meta-joke that's able to land because it's not overdone, hence managing to leave me with some momentary humour instead of rolling my eyes at a poor excuse?

 

[hypno28]

An actually funny meta-joke that's able to land because it's not overdone, hence managing to leave me with some momentary humour instead of rolling my eyes at a poor excuse?

Yeah, that’s one of the best (low bar) roadblocks they’ve ever done. People complaining about it have the whole issue backward. Things that blatantly require player involvement to clear don’t make any sense (except in certain situations obviously); the world doesn’t revolve around you, and the more it seems like it does, the less realistic and therefore immersive the game is. The dancing people being there as a coincidence is kind of a stretch to believe, but at least it’s technically plausible, unlike stuff that blatantly depends on your game progress.

 

[Pikachu315111]

Yeah, that’s one of the best (low bar) roadblocks they’ve ever done. People complaining about it have the whole issue backward. Things that blatantly require player involvement to clear don’t make any sense (except in certain situations obviously); the world doesn’t revolve around you, and the more it seems like it does, the less realistic and therefore immersive the game is. The dancing people being there as a coincidence is kind of a stretch to believe, but at least it’s technically plausible, unlike stuff that blatantly depends on your game progress.

I think one of the better/best examples of the roadblocks was in SM/USUM with the trial roadblocks. It makes complete sense that if you're sending kids on an island wide quest you'd want guides to be around to point them in the right direction and heal their Pokemon (as well as showing this foreign concept to the Pokemon world known as adult supervision). "But how do other people get past the roadblocks then"? The Trial Guides open the gates for them. The roadblocks aren't meant to prevent everyone from going ahead, and honestly they don't physically stop you if you decide you want to hop it. They're their for the Trial Goers who go a bit far so the Trial Guides can go "Wait Trial Goer, this area ahead may be too experienced for you, complete your next Trial and I'll let you pass. Now let me heal your Pokemon before you go. Good luck!".

Also, remember the Trial Guides are all volunteers, they're not being paid and if anything might be losing money and personal time making sure you and other Trial Goers are heading in the right direction. So let's give them respect and do what they ask us to for them to open the roadblock for us, we gotta do it anyway.

 

[Detective Barricade]

I think one of the better/best examples of the roadblocks was in SM/USUM with the trial roadblocks. It makes complete sense that if you're sending kids on an island wide quest you'd want guides to be around to point them in the right direction and heal their Pokemon (as well as showing this foreign concept to the Pokemon world known as adult supervision). "But how do other people get past the roadblocks then"? The Trial Guides open the gates for them. The roadblocks aren't meant to prevent everyone from going ahead, and honestly they don't physically stop you if you decide you want to hop it. They're their for the Trial Goers who go a bit far so the Trial Guides can go "Wait Trial Goer, this area ahead may be too experienced for you, complete your next Trial and I'll let you pass. Now let me heal your Pokemon before you go. Good luck!".

Also, remember the Trial Guides are all volunteers, they're not being paid and if anything might be losing money and personal time making sure you and other Trial Goers are heading in the right direction. So let's give them respect and do what they ask us to for them to open the roadblock for us, we gotta do it anyway.

But then there's the one leading into Route 12, which already puts up a roadblock with terrain only Mudsdale can traverse...

 

[stage7_4]

Did someone mention barriers and Gen 5?! You know that's like Beetlejuice for me, say it three times and magically I appear.

And for the record, while I'm not fond of the dancing men, it's not the worst artificial barrier ever (Lumiose city's "blackout" takes that honor). And it's not like I have anything against barriers themselves, just how they are used.

A barrier in the game is meant to control the pacing, to make sure the player has gone through the appropriate steps to move on to the next part, or railroad the player to a story or plot point so they don't skip it or other. And it's not like railroading is bad, I love riding on trains! They can make sure that you get the perfect view of what the designer wants you to experience. Slowing down the pacing can be a good thing, and sometimes giving the player free reign to run amuck can be terribly bad (see any Game Grumps video where they start cursing the game out because they rushed and forgot something).

But barriers become a problem though when they start to slow down the pace too much. Pokemon games are meant to capitalize on exploration and discovery, so going too long without letting the player get out and find their own adventure can make it feel like you're Sideshow Bob in a field of rakes.

at least thats what Gen 5 feels like

The other problem is if the set piece the game is trying to make you look at fails to live up to the hype, as it makes the barriers into the worlds most boring tour guide. And that's my biggest beef with Gen 5 as I love Unova as a world (it's got the biggest Earthbound feel to it) but the plot is annoying and the barriers just keep tripping me up from the part I love about it. So I get more frustrated by dancing men or yet another bridge being up because I know it means I can't get back to exploring without an ethics lecture on understanding other viewpoints given by a team that literally kicks babies.

baby pokemon technically

How are we supposed to take the plot seriously when they spoil the twist in the 1st hour?

As pointed out, plenty of other games used barriers, Alola and Gen 7 for the recent example, but I feel the barriers are more spread out in Alola. It feels like the game is better at giving me progressively bigger sandboxes to explore and feeding the world in larger chunks than the baby bird bits of Unova's pacing. So to me Alola has a better balance of story and exploration than Unova ever did.

 

[adman2]

When I did my solo Simipour playthrough for Pokemon White, I thought the villains gave away their real motives quickly too! The Grunts talk about how Ghetsis is "tricking people with his speeches" early on. If the 5th generation protagonists had at least a tape recorder, Looker could have arrested every member of Team Plasma within the first few hours of the game. There should have been some buildup before the alleged animal rights activists revealed their world domination plans.

 

[Kurona]

I felt this way for the longest time too, though recently I've been thinking that that in itself was set-up for the bigger twist; that there were both positive and negative elements to Team Plasma. While this is expanded on to a much greater degree in BW2, throughout the game and especially in Team Plasma's Castle you come across grunts with heavily differing opinions. Some outright state treating their Pokémon as just tools, while others seem to state genuine love and regard for Pokémon and hence faith in the stated goal. And, of course, this conflict is represented on a much larger scale in N and Ghetsis -- there's a lot you can read into about Ghetsis running the 'true' Team Plasma behind the scenes while N is tricked into being a figurehead and having a lot of followers who actually do love Pokémon. And while I don't want to get too political, this is quite true to how certain organisations and larger groups operate in real life; there's a corrupted 'core' of truly horrible people while the larger bulk of the group is made up of people who genuinely believe in the message they put out. If you want to get big but you're a terrible person, you don't tell everyone you're a terrible person; you tell them you have altruistic beliefs to guide members into your cause.

A lot of this could be me reading too deeply into it and none of this outside of the more direct Ghetsis vs. N is outright stated and drawn into a true conflict (at least, not until BW2), but the more I think about it the more it seems like showing directly abusive grunts kicking a Munna at the start of the game is very deliberate. It sets you up to believe that this is just another group of irredeemable bad guys who are all in on tricking the public... so it then challenges you later in the game when you come across individual members who don't fall neatly into the template set up that early.

 

[Antihaxxer]

The dancing men is my favourite roadblock ever ! So funny and really : Not all the world is about you :)

 

[Random Passerby]

This discussion about roadblocks remind me of how horrible Sinnoh was constructed. So you are chasing Team Galactic who may or may not have bombed a lake and captured a Legendary but wait, you need to use the Rock Climb HM - which you can't until you beat Candice. This kills off the game's pacing and tension immensely.

 

[Zowayix]

^ That was in Platinum; D/P had no Rock Climb roadblock but instead Team Galactic Grunts blocked the Lake Acuity entrance until you beat Candice. Toss-up as to whether that's better or worse.

 

[stage7_4]

A lot of this could be me reading too deeply into it and none of this outside of the more direct Ghetsis vs. N is outright stated and drawn into a true conflict (at least, not until BW2), but the more I think about it the more it seems like showing directly abusive grunts kicking a Munna at the start of the game is very deliberate. It sets you up to believe that this is just another group of irredeemable bad guys who are all in on tricking the public... so it then challenges you later in the game when you come across individual members who don't fall neatly into the template set up that early.

It's possible, but if that was the intent then they didn't follow up on showing Team Plasma as a fractured group of conflicting motives. At least until B2W2 made it explicit with the two different teams. Sure there's some dialogue in the castle if you go out and talk to everyone, but compared to the unskippable Munna-kicking cutscene that's a very long gap for a very weak payoff. Between those two Plasma mostly continues to act like irredeemable jerks, so squeezing in some moral conflict at the 11th hour just reinforces my point that this game had pacing issues.

To me the Munna kicking was meant to be a moral event horizon, a flag to show that no matter what Plasma was saying they're still the bad guys. A way to take the moral ambiguity out of the pokemon game so the kids wouldn't get confused. Which as a child raised on Don Bluth movies...

he gets off on your tears

...it just feels like not trusting your audience.

As you mentioned, B2W2 did take some steps to make this better. But those games had their own flaws.

like a certain freaky fish guy

Like, I know they just froze a city and all that, but does that really make them evil? YOU'RE THE WORST GYMLEADER EVER!

I've always been hard on Gen5's story, but I've been getting harder on it because SuMo came along and did about every plot point of Gen5 a million times better. Atmospheric storytelling, not spelling everything out for you, and while the Aether twist was predictable at least they kept the ruse up until it was time instead of spoiling it in the first hour. At least until UltraSun/UltraMoon ruined it.

Not that Gen5 doesn't have merit, as the climax at the Pokemon League/N's Castle is still one of the best moments in all of the pokemon games. It's just such an uneven and bumpy ride that it makes it hard to love.