(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon

[Pikachu315111]

Why though? Wouldn’t it save them time to just retexture the existing model?

Wouldn't it have been more efficient to just call up the Lillie model instead of hiding a model of her on every map in the Gen VII games that has a cutscene with her? Same with the Gentlemen & Maid hidden in every Pokemon Center for the ORAS event with them for Diancie. Wouldn't it make sense for them to make a program that upscale a Pokemon's model and smooth out the texture instead of creating a model for every Dyanamax Pokemon?

GF's programming style is forceful, especially when it comes to models. Instead of using tricks many programmers use to make cleaner code (and may ultimately save them time), they just either place the model where they think they'll need it or create another of the model if any change was done to it so they wouldn't have to mess with how its rendered. And while admittedly for something like the cutscene characters being on the map is trivial as loading them in is no more of a hassle, something like having different models instead of just manipulating the one model is possibly now showing its effect on the games if that was a deciding factor in Dexit (with either the Dynamax models taking up more space than GF realized (and them not liking to compress their code either) and/or them not wanting to create an individual Dynamax model for every Pokemon nor create & test a program that does it for them).

This also made me come up to a sad realization that one of the great achievements Iwata is credited for, compressing Kanto in Gen II so that GF was able to put it into the games, wasn't as impressive as one may have thought because it's seeming more likely GF didn't compress anything. Iwata was still a great programmer for all his other feats (like coding in the Type Chart into Stadium without a source code to go off from), but this might be more of an instance where it was just GF's own programming incompetence of not doing something as obvious as compressing their code which may have made them cut one of the elements that made Gen II very memorable had Iwata not stepped in.

I've heard this before but haven't seen any real evidence for it. What does "next hexadecimal code" mean, anyway? The next "palette," when each Pokémon has its own (unique?) palette?

After some basic Google searching didn't find any articles online going into more detail. I found one Youtube video that explains a bit more but that's about it:

While it doesn't explain how the color is chosen, it does explain that from Gen I-V the Shiny Pokemon was made by taking the entire color palette of the sprite and adjusting all the colors at once; even if its a slight change in hue or saturation no Shiny Pokemon shared a same color with its normal counterpart (except maybe pure black or pure white).

However there is evidence that GF still didn't handpick the color palette but was simply letting the game choose the next color palette in the code. Many Pokemon who share similar colors have their Shinies also share similar colors (like how many blue Water-type Pokemon have a purple-pink Shiny or orange Pokemon's Shiny are yellowish). Also, if the shiny Pokemon were handmade, why do so many only slightly change in color? If you were making a Shiny wouldn't you pick a color that's strikingly different from the original?

Infact, the video above implies they stopped doing it not because they suddenly decided to make more interesting looking Shinies but because model textures work differently from sprite color palettes (and that GF didn't want to palette swap textures but instead make a whole different model); had we kept with sprites they may have kept this old way of doing Shinies!

 

[earl]

Wouldn't it have been more efficient to just call up the Lillie model instead of hiding a model of her on every map in the Gen VII games that has a cutscene with her? Same with the Gentlemen & Maid hidden in every Pokemon Center for the ORAS event with them for Diancie. Wouldn't it make sense for them to make a program that upscale a Pokemon's model and smooth out the texture instead of creating a model for every Dyanamax Pokemon?

GF's programming style is forceful, especially when it comes to models. Instead of using tricks many programmers use to make cleaner code (and may ultimately save them time), they just either place the model where they think they'll need it or create another of the model if any change was done to it so they wouldn't have to mess with how its rendered. And while admittedly for something like the cutscene characters being on the map is trivial as loading them in is no more of a hassle, something like having different models instead of just manipulating the one model is possibly now showing its effect on the games if that was a deciding factor in Dexit (with either the Dynamax models taking up more space than GF realized (and them not liking to compress their code either) and/or them not wanting to create an individual Dynamax model for every Pokemon nor create & test a program that does it for them).

This also made me come up to a sad realization that one of the great achievements Iwata is credited for, compressing Kanto in Gen II so that GF was able to put it into the games, wasn't as impressive as one may have thought because it's seeming more likely GF didn't compress anything. Iwata was still a great programmer for all his other feats (like coding in the Type Chart into Stadium without a source code to go off from), but this might be more of an instance where it was just GF's own programming incompetence of not doing something as obvious as compressing their code which may have made them cut one of the elements that made Gen II very memorable had Iwata not stepped in.



After some basic Google searching didn't find any articles online going into more detail. I found one Youtube video that explains a bit more but that's about it:

While it doesn't explain how the color is chosen, it does explain that from Gen I-V the Shiny Pokemon was made by taking the entire color palette of the sprite and adjusting all the colors at once; even if its a slight change in hue or saturation no Shiny Pokemon shared a same color with its normal counterpart (except maybe pure black or pure white).

However there is evidence that GF still didn't handpick the color palette but was simply letting the game choose the next color palette in the code. Many Pokemon who share similar colors have their Shinies also share similar colors (like how many blue Water-type Pokemon have a purple-pink Shiny or orange Pokemon's Shiny are yellowish). Also, if the shiny Pokemon were handmade, why do so many only slightly change in color? If you were making a Shiny wouldn't you pick a color that's strikingly different from the original?

Infact, the video above implies they stopped doing it not because they suddenly decided to make more interesting looking Shinies but because model textures work differently from sprite color palettes (and that GF didn't want to palette swap textures but instead make a whole different model); had we kept with sprites they may have kept this old way of doing Shinies!

Isn’t the multiple models thing a trick to save RAM or something on the 3DS? Regardless I’ve seen input from people that made it not seem as cut-and-dry as just comically stupid programming

 

[Zowayix]

It's the classic space-time tradeoff in programming - consume extra space on the 3DS cart, in exchange for having to load models from only a single area at a time (which is faster than loading both an area's models + a bunch of global models shared between areas). The 3DS cart has room to spare but the 3DS already has slow load times and it's desirable to speed this up as much as possible.

This also made me come up to a sad realization that one of the great achievements Iwata is credited for, compressing Kanto in Gen II so that GF was able to put it into the games, wasn't as impressive as one may have thought because it's seeming more likely GF didn't compress anything. Iwata was still a great programmer for all his other feats (like coding in the Type Chart into Stadium without a source code to go off from), but this might be more of an instance where it was just GF's own programming incompetence of not doing something as obvious as compressing their code which may have made them cut one of the elements that made Gen II very memorable had Iwata not stepped in.

I'm afraid I can't find the source for this, but I remember the situation being slightly different - GF was able to compress Johto, but the data compression process for each area(?) was being done by hand, one by one. This was super slow and wasn't going to be finished in time. What Iwata did was successfully create a tool to automate the data compression process, speeding it up drastically. Automating something as hard to debug as data compression is an extremely impressive feat.

 

[Karxrida]

Fucking Coalossal.

I had high hopes for you. You could have been great. You could have been a train. Rolycoly is cute. I can forgive Carkol because it's on-theme. But you? You're just a generic rock monster piece of flammable shit. You disgust me. And I don't actually hate that many Pokémon.

So good job.

 

[Kurona]

Coalossal and Grimmsnarl are both cases where I really like the Pokémon (a friendly rockbiter-adjacent giant and a monstrosity of hair), but I'm ultimately disappointed because their pre-evolutions were steering in a completely different direction that I was really enjoying.

 

[R_N]

Coalossal and Grimmsnarl are both cases where I really like the Pokémon (a friendly rockbiter-adjacent giant and a monstrosity of hair), but I'm ultimately disappointed because their pre-evolutions were steering in a completely different direction that I was really enjoying.

i dunno i think grimmsnarl becomming a final form dbz villain flows pretty fine from its previous evolution

and then it g-maxes into is even more final form

 

[Magcargo]

I wish Gamefreak chose a better selection of Fighting-types for gen 8. Bringing back both the Hitmon line and Sawk / Throh floods the game with way too many mono-fighting. It doesn't help that all the new Fighting-types introduced are also mono-typed.

I don't mind most of the Battle Tower changes, but I do have some gripes. The battle background is pretty lame with nothing going on. Having a few NPCs sitting in chairs and cheering you on would have been cool and worked well in the context of the story. Fighting Leon as the last trainer also gets repetitive. There should have been a pool of trainers that you'd battle similar to the Champion's league. Also, multi-battles should have been in this game. Even if its minor, battling with other NPCs in the story was really cool to do and made me more attached to the other character.

 

[Yung Dramps]

As far as I know there is not a single English voice of Giovanni in any voice-acted Pokemon media he appears in that gives him an Italian-American mobster accent. Unless there's an obscure anime dub or something I'm not aware of that does this I am greatly saddened.

 

[Kurona]

Max Ooze and Max Knuckle.

So, for Max moves; the sort of power range you get is what you might expect. Here, for instance, is the table of all bug-type moves transformed into Max Flutterby.

Hide

And this is generally the case for almost every other standard-typed max move in the game. Very few moves of 90 at the lowest; most moves being around 110-140; a select few going as high as 150. Makes sense.

... so, um, what happened with Max Knuckle and Max Ooze?

Hide

I'm genuinely befuzzled here; just trying to rack my brain figuring out why they'd make the Fighting and Poison Dynamax moves bad.
Is it to make Machamp and Garbodor's G-max moves look better? Well first of all it'd be weird to do it specifically for them and no others, but G-max moves use the exact same damage tables anyway (which, yes, means after you spend so much time and effort getting that G-max Machamp; look forward to its exclusive move not being very good).
Is it for lore reasons? At first I reasoned it might be because Eternatus is poison-type and there's some clever story detail to that, but then why include fighting? Zamazenta? But what about Zacian's Fairy?
Is it so you don't have easy tools to use against big end-game bosses? Well... no, Eternatus doesn't care about these types at all; Leon's team isn't exactly quivering at them either; and you could maybe argue Fighting for Rose but why Poison, then?

Is it for balance reasons? This is the only aspect that might make sense: they're the only two Max moves that directly increase your offensive stages; Max Knuckle increases Attack by one stage, and and Max Ooze increases Special Attack by one stage. So it's because of that, right? They figure that increase plus a good base power would be too much.

... but then what the heck are the Weather and Terrain-summoning Max Moves doing being so high? Hell, those ones ONLY increase their type; while you can still use the +1 boost from Max Knuckle in conjunction with, say, a 140 base power Max Move of another type! And what about specially-orientated fighting types, or the many physically-orientated poison types? This comes back to the Terrain/Weather thing too; Sun doesn't care if your max move is special or physical, and Psychic Terrain doesn't either -- you just get a straight 1.5X buff no matter what! So why the big focus on balancing out buffing moves when it comes to Knuckle and Ooze specifically?

It's just so bizarre. It actively discourages me from Dynamaxing because I know my HJK and Gunk Shot will be not just unbuffed, but straight-up worse from Dynamaxing; and generally seems to be a badly thought-out aspect to the whole thing.

 

[sb879]

Max Ooze and Max Knuckle.

So, for Max moves; the sort of power range you get is what you might expect. Here, for instance, is the table of all bug-type moves transformed into Max Flutterby.

Hide

And this is generally the case for almost every other standard-typed max move in the game. Very few moves of 90 at the lowest; most moves being around 110-140; a select few going as high as 150. Makes sense.

... so, um, what happened with Max Knuckle and Max Ooze?

Hide

I'm genuinely befuzzled here; just trying to rack my brain figuring out why they'd make the Fighting and Poison Dynamax moves bad.
Is it to make Machamp and Garbodor's G-max moves look better? Well first of all it'd be weird to do it specifically for them and no others, but G-max moves use the exact same damage tables anyway (which, yes, means after you spend so much time and effort getting that G-max Machamp; look forward to its exclusive move not being very good).
Is it for lore reasons? At first I reasoned it might be because Eternatus is poison-type and there's some clever story detail to that, but then why include fighting? Zamazenta? But what about Zacian's Fairy?
Is it so you don't have easy tools to use against big end-game bosses? Well... no, Eternatus doesn't care about these types at all; Leon's team isn't exactly quivering at them either; and you could maybe argue Fighting for Rose but why Poison, then?

Is it for balance reasons? This is the only aspect that might make sense: they're the only two Max moves that directly increase your offensive stages; Max Knuckle increases Attack by one stage, and and Max Ooze increases Special Attack by one stage. So it's because of that, right? They figure that increase plus a good base power would be too much.

... but then what the heck are the Weather and Terrain-summoning Max Moves doing being so high? Hell, those ones ONLY increase their type; while you can still use the +1 boost from Max Knuckle in conjunction with, say, a 140 base power Max Move of another type! And what about specially-orientated fighting types, or the many physically-orientated poison types? This comes back to the Terrain/Weather thing too; Sun doesn't care if your max move is special or physical, and Psychic Terrain doesn't either -- you just get a straight 1.5X buff no matter what! So why the big focus on balancing out buffing moves when it comes to Knuckle and Ooze specifically?

It's just so bizarre. It actively discourages me from Dynamaxing because I know my HJK and Gunk Shot will be not just unbuffed, but straight-up worse from Dynamaxing; and generally seems to be a badly thought-out aspect to the whole thing.

The difference between the +1 from Fighting/Poison moves and weather setting is that the stat boosts can stack. You also can't stall out raw stat boosts. Nerfing their power is definitely not a decision I disagree with.

 

[DreamPrince]

The difference between the +1 from Fighting/Poison moves and weather setting is that the stat boosts can stack. You also can't stall out raw stat boosts. Nerfing their power is definitely not a decision I disagree with.

One can argue through that logic, Max Airstream should be nerfed, cause with conjunction of Max Geyser, they can easily snow ball out of control, aka Gyarados. But Max Airstream does not have a power nerf.

 

[Merritt]

Is it for balance reasons? This is the only aspect that might make sense: they're the only two Max moves that directly increase your offensive stages; Max Knuckle increases Attack by one stage, and and Max Ooze increases Special Attack by one stage. So it's because of that, right? They figure that increase plus a good base power would be too much.

... but then what the heck are the Weather and Terrain-summoning Max Moves doing being so high? Hell, those ones ONLY increase their type; while you can still use the +1 boost from Max Knuckle in conjunction with, say, a 140 base power Max Move of another type! And what about specially-orientated fighting types, or the many physically-orientated poison types? This comes back to the Terrain/Weather thing too; Sun doesn't care if your max move is special or physical, and Psychic Terrain doesn't either -- you just get a straight 1.5X buff no matter what! So why the big focus on balancing out buffing moves when it comes to Knuckle and Ooze specifically?

It is almost certainly for balance reasons. Keep in mind Max Moves not only boost the user but also the ally in Doubles/VGC.

“Why nerf Ooze/Knuckle power when you can just use the boost it gives you on another Max Move next turn?” Because you can stack (Special) Attack boosts easily if the move itself is spamable.

“Weather/Terrain are functionally also boosts” Yes, but they do not stack and, since a large part of GF’s balance around Dynamax seems to have been ‘use your own!’ (See: ingame almost every area where you can dynamax you will be fighting an enemy dynamax) weather/terrain is easily removed by enemy Max Moves. In addition, terrain was nerfed to be a 1.3X boost this gen, making it a non-stackable, weaker boost than Ooze/Knuckle to only one specific type of move as opposed to a full category.

“Max Airstream power wasn’t nerfed though?” Speed control in VGC has always been really big. Stuff like Tailwind provides a more immediate and stronger boost, while Trick Room makes Max Airstream somewhat detrimental. It’s significantly harder to nullify or outpace enemy attack/special attack boosts. In short, GF probably thought boosting Speed was just not as dangerous (I don’t think I really agree).

“Special Orientated Fighting/Physical Poison” Sucks to be them, not all Pokemon can take full advantage of the gimmick of the generation (poor Audino) and there’s not a smooth way to resolve this problem that doesn’t lead to potential issues for strong mixed attackers.

Basically - it’s absolutely for balance reasons, the fact that Fighting and Poison boost attacking stats and they’re the only ones with a power nerf is incredibly unlikely to be a coincidence.

Spaghetti sidenote, because of this all Max Moves with Multi Attack as their base will be 95 BP, not just Fighting/Poison, as making it so only specific types get their power cut off wouldn’t let them just set a value for Max power tied to the move itself.

 

[DreamPrince]

It is almost certainly for balance reasons. Keep in mind Max Moves not only boost the user but also the ally in Doubles/VGC.

“Why nerf Ooze/Knuckle power when you can just use the boost it gives you on another Max Move next turn?” Because you can stack (Special) Attack boosts easily if the move itself is spamable.

“Weather/Terrain are functionally also boosts” Yes, but they do not stack and, since a large part of GF’s balance around Dynamax seems to have been ‘use your own!’ (See: ingame almost every area where you can dynamax you will be fighting an enemy dynamax) weather/terrain is easily removed by enemy Max Moves. In addition, terrain was nerfed to be a 1.3X boost this gen, making it a non-stackable, weaker boost than Ooze/Knuckle to only one specific type of move as opposed to a full category.

“Max Airstream power wasn’t nerfed though?” Speed control in VGC has always been really big. Stuff like Tailwind provides a more immediate and stronger boost, while Trick Room makes Max Airstream somewhat detrimental. It’s significantly harder to nullify or outpace enemy attack/special attack boosts. In short, GF probably thought boosting Speed was just not as dangerous (I don’t think I really agree).

“Special Orientated Fighting/Physical Poison” Sucks to be them, not all Pokemon can take full advantage of the gimmick of the generation (poor Audino) and there’s not a smooth way to resolve this problem that doesn’t lead to potential issues for strong mixed attackers.

Basically - it’s absolutely for balance reasons, the fact that Fighting and Poison boost attacking stats and they’re the only ones with a power nerf is incredibly unlikely to be a coincidence.

Spaghetti sidenote, because of this all Max Moves with Multi Attack as their base will be 95 BP, not just Fighting/Poison, as making it so only specific types get their power cut off wouldn’t let them just set a value for Max power tied to the move itself.

We were discussing on Discord that when GF tested Dynamaxing to make sure it wasn’t broken, they probably tested the majority in Doubles with little to no play in Singles. Which is weird in-game, since the main campaign is 95% Singles. I’m guessing they thought that since it was limited in-game and the main format VGC Doubles that it wouldn’t be a big loss to balance in Singles. Of course, the problem is that now you get stuck with a mechanic that doesn’t fit in another format.

The mentality of use your ‘own’, is like saying that you should bring Pokémon A to counter Pokémon B in every match, which of course is a sign of brokenness in Smogon. Another example would be that in Stall, Dynamaxing your Toxapex would be a big momentum drain just for the sake of stopping an opponent’s Dynamax ruins my strategy for later on. But of course, stall doesn’t exist in Singles, so that problem goes blind in GF’s ears.

 

[Pikachu315111]

Coalossal and Grimmsnarl are both cases where I really like the Pokémon (a friendly rockbiter-adjacent giant and a monstrosity of hair), but I'm ultimately disappointed because their pre-evolutions were steering in a completely different direction that I was really enjoying.

As R_N said, Grimmsnarl feels like it was a natural flow when you compare Morgrem with Impidimp. Impidimp is bald and looks to be just a nuisance while Morgrem grows a full head of hair that also grows into an axe/spear making it look more deadly. Grimmsnarl completes the transformation by covering its body with hair that it controls giving it hundreds if not thousands of tendrils. It also goes with it's goblin theme, there being many kinds of goblin-like creatures and often the bigger they are the more hairy they become. The only complaints I have with Grimmsnarl is how the green that started growing on Morgrem is now its entire body, feels like an odd body color change. Also, while I understand it has a connection to a legendary giant in English legend, G-Grimmsnarl's G-Max Move, G-Max Snooze, feels like an odd G-Max as with all that twisting hair was more imagining it pulling a Bayonetta then just putting its opponent to sleep (and the Pokemon you'd think would have a sleep inducing G-Max, Snorlax, instead has one that restores held Berries).

However I'm in complete agreement with Karxrida, they ruined the Rolycoly family with Coalossal. Carkoal, a means to an end I also originally thought; I can overlook for the most part had it gone the obvious route it was leading up to (though I don't like how its face went from just being an eye to essential Golem's face; should have gone the Roggenrola route with the face). But I don't understand at what point did GF decide a mine cart evolves into a bipedal rock monster. "Well it's actually a furnace, the evolution route being a piece of coal taken by mine cart to the furnace". That still doesn't explained why a wheeled creature, something pretty unique to Rolycoly and Carkoal, then went to feet. Also, trains have furnaces. I would have also looked the otherway if they just made it a tank too (the coal revealed was the ammunition). I have to think maybe the original design was supposed to go train/tank but they then wanted to give it a Gigantamax, make it become a volcano, so worked backwards from there.

I don't mind most of the Battle Tower changes, but I do have some gripes. (...) Fighting Leon as the last trainer also gets repetitive. There should have been a pool of trainers that you'd battle similar to the Champion's league. Also, multi-battles should have been in this game. Even if its minor, battling with other NPCs in the story was really cool to do and made me more attached to the other character.

This itself is notable as it's actually a STEP BACK from what they did last game. Gen VII's Battle Tree not only had thee hosts Red & Blue but also other notable characters in the games (some being version exclusive for some reason) BUT ALSO they brought a handful of past characters notably Cynthia and Wally. While I would get for the first run through of the Battle Tower it would be Leon as the boss, after beating him he should have said he invited strong trainers from not only Galar but also other regions to challenge the Galar Battle Tower and Gigantamaxing. And like what Gen VII did, not only would we have the characters in the games appear (including the version exclusive characters) but also have past characters show up (they not only have Cynthia & Wally but all the Gen VII characters). They could even have some of the minor League Gym Leaders make an appearance (I'm wondering if by the end of this gen Galar will be the first region to have a Gym Leader for every Type).

Speaking of which, another complaint I have with USUM: they didn't introduce more past characters in the Battle Tree (who weren't already in the game in some way). We have all the past Champions, Rivals, Frontier Brains and other notable characters (could have even thrown in Gym Leaders and Elite Four). This actually could have been one aspect where the "Ultra" part in these games name could have meant something by bringing in a lot of past game characters for the Battle Tree. But no, guess they were training us to be disappointed with them starting with USUM.

Max Ooze and Max Knuckle.

Putting in my two scents, while Merritt definitely explains why those two Types would have lower Power for their moves, I also have another thing to add on: Machamp and Gengar hit hard with 130 in their highest offense stat. And they're the Gigantamax aces for the version exclusive 4th Gym Leaders. For Bea's Machamp, though it doesn't increase Attack because its Fighting-type move turns into a special G-Max move, said G-Max increases Critical Hits by 1 stage and if it gets three off then all moves it does are doing Critical Hits. For Allister's Gengar, while it has the normal Poison-type move, unless your Pokemon is weak to Ghost or resist Poison after using the G-Max Ghost move which traps the opponent there's no reason not to use the Max Poison move to increase Gengar's Special Attack even higher. I can easily see Bea and Allister becoming "that one boss" so maybe they have a small part to play in Fighting & Poison Max Moves having lower power. Or heck, maybe they made the decision before designing them/assigning Gym Leaders and noting the lower Power for those Types decided they would make good 4th Gym Leaders.

 

[R_N]

Speaking of which, another complaint I have with USUM: they didn't introduce more past characters in the Battle Tree (who weren't already in the game in some way). We have all the past Champions, Rivals, Frontier Brains and other notable characters (could have even thrown in Gym Leaders and Elite Four). This actually could have been one aspect where the "Ultra" part in these games name could have meant something by bringing in a lot of past game characters for the Battle Tree. But no, guess they were training us to be disappointed with them starting with USUM.

iirc this is because of Rainbow Rocket. The villains were always supposed to come back as fanservice but in the Battle Agency. The intent was almost certainly to have them as the villainous counterparts to the battle tree's heroes. You can even see a remnant of that with how Giovanni replaces Sophocles as the Battle Agency boss after you beat the RR storyline. But then the RR storyline idea happened, though I dunno why they didn't just put them back in after you beat the story as options.





Side note I am pretty sure absolutely no one remembers the Battle Agency at all. It's not even listed on bulbapedia's USUM changes list.

 

[Ironmage]

It bothers me that Falinks takes battles from the front, rather than the side. The units lack weapons that could reach over the one in front, so the ones in the back are just standing around uselessly. Even being fully spread out is likely a smarter plan, given the prevalance of ranged attacks that could easily hit the rear when aiming at the front.

 

[Zowayix]

Side note I am pretty sure absolutely no one remembers the Battle Agency at all. It's not even listed on bulbapedia's USUM changes list.

You could always edit Bulbapedia ;) I've added it in.

 

[doipy hooves]

The critical hit message in Gen 8 lasts too long, and you can't end it with a button press unlike all other battle dialogue. It adds around 3 seconds of waiting per hit for Sirfetch'd.

 

[Cheryl.]

One little thing that’s always bugged me when playing Sword and Shield: the fact that the ability message doesn’t have a sound anymore, so when someone sends out their Intimidate Gyarados or something there’s just... no sound.

 

[Yung Dramps]

No matter what game you play, one of Pokemon/s universal constants is absolutely baller OSTs. No matter the quality of the game in question, there's gonna be at least a few great songs in there, and there are almost never any songs that could be considered truly bad, or even slightly below average. Amidst this titanic bunker of bops, Cyrus' battle theme from DPP has always been a favorite of mine:

This is what I would consider the perfect theme for a character like Cyrus and one of Pokemon's best main villain themes in general: The composition gives off a cold, mechanical and ruthless air, with few instruments and the ones that do exist being forceful and impactful, especially the incredibly heavy drum rhythm from 0:58-1:08.

With all that in mind, how did the Rainbow Rocket remix fuck it up so bad?!

Everything that made the original theme so threatening is gone. The instrumentation is cluttered and bizarre (C A S U A L B O N G O S W H A T T H E F U C K), the theme is slowed down just enough to sound less forceful, and all of that chilling "oomph" goes down with all the changes made. Remember that earlier segment I mentioned in the original? From 0:52 onward in video, you can hear the remixed version of that portion, and it sounds flat-out bad (CASUAL FUCKING BONGOS GOD FUCKING DAMNIT). The other Rainbow Rocket themes vary from serviceable to actually good, but this track convinces me they should've gone with the original music for everyone except Giovanni and is, in my opinion, one of the few genuinely bad songs in Pokemon.

 

[Kurona]

No matter what game you play, one of Pokemon/s universal constants is absolutely baller OSTs. No matter the quality of the game in question, there's gonna be at least a few great songs in there, and there are almost never any songs that could be considered truly bad, or even slightly below average. Amidst this titanic bunker of bops, Cyrus' battle theme from DPP has always been a favorite of mine:

This is what I would consider the perfect theme for a character like Cyrus and one of Pokemon's best main villain themes in general: The composition gives off a cold, mechanical and ruthless air, with few instruments and the ones that do exist being forceful and impactful, especially the incredibly heavy drum rhythm from 0:58-1:08.

With all that in mind, how did the Rainbow Rocket remix fuck it up so bad?!

Everything that made the original theme so threatening is gone. The instrumentation is cluttered and bizarre (C A S U A L B O N G O S W H A T T H E F U C K), the theme is slowed down just enough to sound less forceful, and all of that chilling "oomph" goes down with all the changes made. Remember that earlier segment I mentioned in the original? From 0:52 onward in video, you can hear the remixed version of that portion, and it sounds flat-out bad (CASUAL FUCKING BONGOS GOD FUCKING DAMNIT). The other Rainbow Rocket themes vary from serviceable to actually good, but this track convinces me they should've gone with the original music for everyone except Giovanni and is, in my opinion, one of the few genuinely bad songs in Pokemon.

I actually went back and listened to all the Rainbow Rocket boss songs again recently, and I was surprised by how much I just... couldn't stand any of them. Cyrus might be the best example but all of them stick out to me as worse than their originals and just very underwhelming overall.

 

[Detective Barricade]

I actually went back and listened to all the Rainbow Rocket boss songs again recently, and I was surprised by how much I just... couldn't stand any of them. Cyrus might be the best example but all of them stick out to me as worse than their originals and just very underwhelming overall.

Last I listened, Cyrus' theme was one of my favorites among the returning evil team leaders that aren't Giovanni. (which isn't saying a whole lot) Maxie/Archie I much prefer the OR/AS version of their theme, and Lysandre and Ghetsis I prefer their original themes.

 

[Kurona]

Why is there a separate BP shop in Hammerlocke Pokémon Center separate from and way before the Battle Tower, when the Battle Tower is the only place you can get BP from?

 

[R_N]

Why is there a separate BP shop in Hammerlocke Pokémon Center separate from and way before the Battle Tower, when the Battle Tower is the only place you can get BP from?

You can also get BP from Ranked Series rankings, which you can do well before the post game. And there's passwords, I guess. So giving a BP shop somewhere in the game to get a head start makes some sense, if you have the funds.

It's still odd, though. There's useful stuff there for breeding, ev training and evolution that is expressly not available in the Battle Tower shop. It's nice that the evolution items are there isntead of post game (Weavile, hello) but...

 

[Cybertalon]

I don’t know if this is been said but I really dislike having super effective moves that do little damage or non effective moves that nearly or completely destroy your Pokemon...