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(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon
- Thread starter BriarRose
- Start date
That might be right, I only know Emerald out of Gen 3, because I dropped out after the first two Generations.
It just annoys me that you get so many forced healing at a point, where everyone should have understood how to use a PokemonCenter and there are so few trainers in between those encounters...
This supports the enforced linearity of ORAS even more - RSE let you skip two of the gyms for quite some time and had less artificial barriers. This way I could easily Nuzlocke the game without using a PokemonCenter and no item use in battle just fine.
But that babbling aside, my main focus is on character development in RPGs.
Adding more facial expression and gestures might seem cool for that, but it needs some serious rework. I´m somewhat annoyed that a game that was so innovative for the RPG scene in Gen 1 does not even meet the standards over the last generations.
Sum it up: Imo up to date graphics should be the next main focus instead of new moves or new Pokemon. ORAS just didn´t go far enough for me in that respect.
I guess something I want to get off my chest is something that's actually been present for some time now but is most prevalent in Gen 6.
The Linear system of Pokémon games and your inability to choose a path.
If there's anything that keeps me coming back to FRLG and HGSS - despite the latter's awful slowness ugh gen 4 why - it's surprisingly the multiple paths I can take. I can totally choose to go to the Lake of Rage and get Gyarados as soon as I beat Morty rather than heading to Olivine City. I can choose to beat Silph Co. before even going against Lt. Surge. If I really want to I can completely skip Chuck even though it'd be a bloody pain.
If there's two things I love in video games, it's customizability and choosing to stray from the intended path. Both of those are presented almost perfectly in the Kanto and Johto games and come into making your save file your own aside from anyone else's and indeed from your last playthrough. No two playthroughs will ever feel the same and straying from the path really came into this. It may seem like a small thing but I adore the fact that aside from Brock, Misty and Koga you can totally choose whatever order you like for the gym leaders in FRLG, and you can do this to a lesser degree with the Johto gym leaders and then when you go to Kanto in GSCHGSS it's a totally free open world that you can explore and do in absolutely any order you like. This really makes it feel like your own adventure rather than following a script.
Starting in Ruby and Sapphire it really started to stray from this. Aside from leaving off Brawly and Winona till later - which you can't even do in ORAS anymore - and deciding to challenge Crasher Wake before Maylene, there's really not much of a choice of order after the Johto games. It no longer feels like a free world. Now, I must mention that BW and BW2 I exempt from this because they were extremely story-based games and hence following a script was fine for those. But while RSE and DPPt did have more of an emphasis on plot than RBY and GSC, it was still fairly disconnected to the point where you could totally have had some form of free roaming. But hey, RS and DP still had some sort of examples of this.
Enter XY. Now we'd already followed a completely scripted region in Unova, but as I said, they were extremely story-based and the attention to detail and plot, while not perfect, was what kept me hooked rather than an open world and adventure, and even then I had that in the aftergame if I really wanted to. XY's shallow, hollow and honestly what feels like an unfinished attempt at a plot is not enough to distract me from the fact that Kalos, for all it's variety in Pokémon is extremely linear. This is where Pokémon is ironically beginning to show it's age; it no longer feels creative enough to create multiple paths for you and instead tries to keep you hooked with a rather boring story. I think this is why XY fell apart for so many people including myself but why the Kanto and Unova games didn't. You either have to have a wide open mysterious world like with Kanto, or you have to have an engaging story like with Unova. When you have neither of those... well, there's why XY is so damned boring. While I will admit that upon a second playthrough that was purely a speedrun for legends - in French for some reason, well done past Kurona, I'm sure you won't regret that... - there are actually a lot of emotional moments and touches I do love, such as Lysandre slamming his Mega Evolution amplifier thing on the ground in sheer rage after you beat him, or the amazing Kalos War backstory from Az. If only they had kept that feeling constant throughout the whole game and given a more solid plot, or at least more vague hints and mysteries like the Kanto games did, we would have had something to distract from the painful linearity of Kalos. Instead, we end up with a game that in the end has to stand on it's new gimmicks of Mega Evolution, the Fairy-Type, the vastly improved metagame & ease of getting into it, and the newly redesigned 3D perspective to stand out. And while I loved all those personally, if those do nothing for you, then XY fails almost entirely as a game.
tl;dr - either improve on gen 5's amazing storytelling or gen 1/2's amazing open world or you have an ass game
The Linear system of Pokémon games and your inability to choose a path.
If there's anything that keeps me coming back to FRLG and HGSS - despite the latter's awful slowness ugh gen 4 why - it's surprisingly the multiple paths I can take. I can totally choose to go to the Lake of Rage and get Gyarados as soon as I beat Morty rather than heading to Olivine City. I can choose to beat Silph Co. before even going against Lt. Surge. If I really want to I can completely skip Chuck even though it'd be a bloody pain.
If there's two things I love in video games, it's customizability and choosing to stray from the intended path. Both of those are presented almost perfectly in the Kanto and Johto games and come into making your save file your own aside from anyone else's and indeed from your last playthrough. No two playthroughs will ever feel the same and straying from the path really came into this. It may seem like a small thing but I adore the fact that aside from Brock, Misty and Koga you can totally choose whatever order you like for the gym leaders in FRLG, and you can do this to a lesser degree with the Johto gym leaders and then when you go to Kanto in GSCHGSS it's a totally free open world that you can explore and do in absolutely any order you like. This really makes it feel like your own adventure rather than following a script.
Starting in Ruby and Sapphire it really started to stray from this. Aside from leaving off Brawly and Winona till later - which you can't even do in ORAS anymore - and deciding to challenge Crasher Wake before Maylene, there's really not much of a choice of order after the Johto games. It no longer feels like a free world. Now, I must mention that BW and BW2 I exempt from this because they were extremely story-based games and hence following a script was fine for those. But while RSE and DPPt did have more of an emphasis on plot than RBY and GSC, it was still fairly disconnected to the point where you could totally have had some form of free roaming. But hey, RS and DP still had some sort of examples of this.
Enter XY. Now we'd already followed a completely scripted region in Unova, but as I said, they were extremely story-based and the attention to detail and plot, while not perfect, was what kept me hooked rather than an open world and adventure, and even then I had that in the aftergame if I really wanted to. XY's shallow, hollow and honestly what feels like an unfinished attempt at a plot is not enough to distract me from the fact that Kalos, for all it's variety in Pokémon is extremely linear. This is where Pokémon is ironically beginning to show it's age; it no longer feels creative enough to create multiple paths for you and instead tries to keep you hooked with a rather boring story. I think this is why XY fell apart for so many people including myself but why the Kanto and Unova games didn't. You either have to have a wide open mysterious world like with Kanto, or you have to have an engaging story like with Unova. When you have neither of those... well, there's why XY is so damned boring. While I will admit that upon a second playthrough that was purely a speedrun for legends - in French for some reason, well done past Kurona, I'm sure you won't regret that... - there are actually a lot of emotional moments and touches I do love, such as Lysandre slamming his Mega Evolution amplifier thing on the ground in sheer rage after you beat him, or the amazing Kalos War backstory from Az. If only they had kept that feeling constant throughout the whole game and given a more solid plot, or at least more vague hints and mysteries like the Kanto games did, we would have had something to distract from the painful linearity of Kalos. Instead, we end up with a game that in the end has to stand on it's new gimmicks of Mega Evolution, the Fairy-Type, the vastly improved metagame & ease of getting into it, and the newly redesigned 3D perspective to stand out. And while I loved all those personally, if those do nothing for you, then XY fails almost entirely as a game.
tl;dr - either improve on gen 5's amazing storytelling or gen 1/2's amazing open world or you have an ass game
The fact that almost every Swellow in OR/AS has Double Team and Aerial Ace. Like, not only is Double Team annoying, but slapping it on every Swellow is just lazy.
This is a really stupid thing to be annoyed about, but I'm annoyed. I want to walk with my pokemon again like we did in HGSS. Honestly, that is the primary reason those games are my favorite in the line (although now they're tied with XY).
Gen VI did SUCH a good job at making your pokemon feel alive. You can feed and pet and play with them, you can see them much better in battle, if you're close with them they'll act differently...Arrgh, I wanna let them out of the ball so badly! Other people do it! There's freaking furfrous and skiddos running all over Kalos! WHY CAN'T I LET MY DELPHOX OUT OF THE BAAAAAAAAALL??
Also, why the hell are we still fighting a 70-some-odd percent male rate on the starters?? I do not want to sr for three hours just because I want a female freaking pokemon. This is ridiculous.
And you know what else? As much as I adore the new 3D battle perspective, why on Arceus's green Earth does it take EIGHT MILLION YEARS for the opposing pokemon to faint? JUST KEEL OVER ALREADY. THE TEXT SAID YOU FAINTED LIKE FIFTEEN SECONDS AGO DEAR LORD.
And of course, that's in addition to the eight million years it took the battle to begin (between the oh noez a battle! scene transition and the ball-exit animation...oy vey...)
Gen VI did SUCH a good job at making your pokemon feel alive. You can feed and pet and play with them, you can see them much better in battle, if you're close with them they'll act differently...Arrgh, I wanna let them out of the ball so badly! Other people do it! There's freaking furfrous and skiddos running all over Kalos! WHY CAN'T I LET MY DELPHOX OUT OF THE BAAAAAAAAALL??
Also, why the hell are we still fighting a 70-some-odd percent male rate on the starters?? I do not want to sr for three hours just because I want a female freaking pokemon. This is ridiculous.
And you know what else? As much as I adore the new 3D battle perspective, why on Arceus's green Earth does it take EIGHT MILLION YEARS for the opposing pokemon to faint? JUST KEEL OVER ALREADY. THE TEXT SAID YOU FAINTED LIKE FIFTEEN SECONDS AGO DEAR LORD.
And of course, that's in addition to the eight million years it took the battle to begin (between the oh noez a battle! scene transition and the ball-exit animation...oy vey...)
I actually wouldn't mind seeing a game which lets you battle the Gym Leaders in any order you want. Make it open world, have story events depend on the number of badges you have, and have it so that you need the badges to use HMs which can be used to access more areas (such as plot related ones). Of course this might cause level problems, though I think if the implemented a level cap which increases as you get more Badges it shouldn't cause too much of a problem (and may encourage the player to either stay focused on their task or train their other Pokemon). I don't feel they need to sacrifice a well told story to do an open world game and vice versa, the thing is Pokemon has gotten comfortable in a certain formula and though they stray from it time to time they never go outright against it.
Taking Your Mon For A Walk: Sadly I think time constraints put a kibosh on that. Remember, the models used in battle are not the same models used in the overworld. So in order to have our Pokemon walking with you they would have had to not only make a in-battle model but ALSO an overworld model and being they needed to make a model for every single Pokemon this generation they already had their plate full. Hopefully either in XY2 or Gen 7 they might be able to do this as all the in-battle Pokemon have been made so the can now focus that time on modelling other things (they may touch up model when Gen 7 roles around, but I think that would just be a minor thing. Of course doing this would mean they may not be able to have more animation or give more trainers in-battle models so it all depends what GameFreak deems important to do (and at the moment it looks like it might be making the overworld models more animated)). But a thing to remember, everything in the overworld is a bit deformed since they're low detailed models (and details coming from the textures which are essentially 2D drawings). So a big Pokemon may look smaller then it should (and while HGSS could easily get away with that since they were all sprites, some people may not be willing to suspend their disbelief with 3D).
Darn Gender Rates: Sadly that's a bit of a relic from the time when Eggs were new and there was no GTS. GameFreak didn't want you to easily mate for a better Starter and want you to use the one you get in the story. One could also say it explains why you can't find them in the wild. However in the time of GTS that's really no longer an issue and I think for the most part people do use the starter they get throughout the story (does anyone bother EV/IV training during the story?). Nowadays its silly and a bit annoying, but at least you can feel a bit proud when you finally get the Pokemon you want of the right gender when the odds were stacked against you. Though with that all said, maybe they could have an item that helps makes the likelihood of getting a gender of the Pokemon you want?
Skipscenes: Yeah, kind of wish they would let you skip some of those scenes. I'm okay with them showing what Pokemon you encountered, but I wish they let you skip sending your Pokemon out and instead head right into the battle. The same for fainting the Pokemon, I don't need to see them fall over, be returned, and opponent send out their next Pokemon. Let me skip to the scene when they send out their next Pokemon. They could make the option to skip being the X or Y button (which I don't think are used in battle) to assure you don't accidentally skipped any scenes you want to watch.
Walking The Babies: I know full well it's due to time restraints. Same reason why only Lapras has a surf model in XY (though I have no idea why Lapras doesn't have a surf model in ORAS. That's another thing that annoys me.) I just really, really, REALLY wish they'd take the time to do it. *crosses fingers* (I mean, I've been wishing for a way to snuggle/pet my pokemon since I got started. We finally got there, so I figure eventually we'll get to walk with them again.)
Improbable Gender Rates: I wouldn't really mind if they kept the weird gender rates on the old starters. But, dear lord, why are they putting it on the new ones??? Tradition? It's a terrible tradition. You're right - the GTS completely negates keeping you from breeding for a better starter. I mean, I know they want your starter to be special and unique, but it could do that and also be female. It's not like you can encounter them in the wild, and that's fine! And really, who the hell bothers with EVs/IVs during the story? No one. I mean, unless you're doing a challenge like a monotype run or something. Even still, probably not. And then you may not even be using the starter at all, so it's really a moot point.
12 Years of Fainting: Really, seeing the pokemon you encountered is fine. But the ball/faint animations? IMO those should be disabled with the attack animations under the battle scene option. Stupid that they aren't. No need for an extra button press at all.
You guys seem to want to remove everything that makes Pokemon, Pokemon, without actually adding anything back to add it back in.
I like all those animations, it gives me a sense of involvement. It engages with me and it lets me be more immersed in what I'm playing.
While it would be cool to have the walking Pokemon back, it's not a great idea. Maybe only on Pokemon less than your height or something. OH, on that note, let us change the height/weight of the character in the Pokedex to get a more "real" estimation of sizes? For some reason every dex holder is a midget.
I like all those animations, it gives me a sense of involvement. It engages with me and it lets me be more immersed in what I'm playing.
While it would be cool to have the walking Pokemon back, it's not a great idea. Maybe only on Pokemon less than your height or something. OH, on that note, let us change the height/weight of the character in the Pokedex to get a more "real" estimation of sizes? For some reason every dex holder is a midget.
Those 10 old midgets just haven't hit puberty yet. Give them time.
No one was suggesting to flat out remove animations, only to make the animations able to be skipped.
Yeah, evolution items for Pokemon you can caught in-game should give you at least a free one at a certain point in the game when evolving it would be appropriate. Maybe around the time when your other main Pokemon would be fully evolved.
All the evolution items should be available for free at least once no matter what.
True, but for Pokemon who aren't catchable in the game you can have their evolution item findable post game. I'm more talking during the main game.
OR/AS seems to not have a problem with shoving the likes of Steelixite and Pidgeotite into your face despite Onix and Pidgeotto not being available until the National Dex, so why not grant us a free Razor Claw or Whipped Dream or Magmerizer despite not being able to find the Pokemon that use them in the Regional Dex? I've got to completely agree with Vader_the_White here.
I think he's more just meaning like "finding evo items for non-regional mon is fine, but at the very least give us the evo items for regional mon"
I mean that every item should be found somewhere in the game outside of spending BP. For non-regional Pokémon, I would be fine with it not being available until the post-game, though.
Which is what I was saying. Though Detective Barricade does have a point. Maybe if they gave the evolution items have an effect outside of just evolving a Pokemon (like the Razor Fang, Razor Claw, Metal Coat, and King's Rock do) there would be a reason to have them findable during the story no matter what.
Honestly, all evolution items should be easily buyable. This is a problem going back all the way to RBY, where Moon Stones weren't buyable even though the others were, and it's only gotten dumber with time.
Not really ingame related, but since Gen 6 was the first Pokemon Gen to introduce this 'super duper useful feature' then I want to mention it.
Regional blocks. They're pure evil and do no favor to Nintendo at all. They actually harm it, leading people to either piracy or buying games from third parties (no silly Nintendo, nobody's gonna buy another 3DS if they can't use the one they have with the local games), both of which harm Nintendo's sales.
Also because of them I won't have my precious Omega Ruby until I find one in eBay for >30€ (about 37 USD if I'm not mistaken, not to mention shipping and taxes AND the fact that it'll take 2 weeks+ to arrive) or go to Spain (not happening until June) :'(
/me cry till I fall sleep
MOD EDIT: Please do not double post.
Regional blocks. They're pure evil and do no favor to Nintendo at all. They actually harm it, leading people to either piracy or buying games from third parties (no silly Nintendo, nobody's gonna buy another 3DS if they can't use the one they have with the local games), both of which harm Nintendo's sales.
Also because of them I won't have my precious Omega Ruby until I find one in eBay for >30€ (about 37 USD if I'm not mistaken, not to mention shipping and taxes AND the fact that it'll take 2 weeks+ to arrive) or go to Spain (not happening until June) :'(
/me cry till I fall sleep
Agree on everything but the bold part, it will take a stupidly high amount of time to code all of the sprites for the Pokémon, their forms, and their shiny versions, not to mention walking animation that don't look awkward. That'll make Pokémon X2/Y2 take about a year and a half to release (that is considering most of the map is done, plus all the things they'll add. Imagine how much would the next gen take)
MOD EDIT: Please do not double post.
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I agree, walking was a cute thing back on the beanie era, but for 3d onwards it's just a waste of resources.
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I still think that it would be good if they just limit themselves to a small selection of Pokémon. Maybe just the starters (that is a lot, but still) and Pikachu.
I just got to getting the Timespace Orbs and Plates in ORAS, and they were kind of annoying to get. They're hidden underwater throughout the water routes (don't know how you're suppose to know that aside from buying the strategy guide) and since you can't use the Item Finder underwater you're left clicking around the place you know where it is until the game decides you have clicked on the space where it is just the right way to award it.
Now while this makes sense for the Splash Plate, for the other items? No, I prefer my Plates to be hidden all throughout the region in places where they "fit in". Actually maybe I wouldn't have hidden the Splash Plate underwater either, I think Sea Mauville would have been an appropriate place to hide it.
As for the Timespace Orbs, I'd probably place them in Sky Pillar being its the closest "dragon" place in Hoenn. Well that or have the Timespace Dragon you can catch in your game holding its Orb, have Giratina holds its when you catch it, and have the one you're missing being in Sky Pillar or maybe given to you from Zinnia's grandmother as thanks for helping her.
Now while this makes sense for the Splash Plate, for the other items? No, I prefer my Plates to be hidden all throughout the region in places where they "fit in". Actually maybe I wouldn't have hidden the Splash Plate underwater either, I think Sea Mauville would have been an appropriate place to hide it.
As for the Timespace Orbs, I'd probably place them in Sky Pillar being its the closest "dragon" place in Hoenn. Well that or have the Timespace Dragon you can catch in your game holding its Orb, have Giratina holds its when you catch it, and have the one you're missing being in Sky Pillar or maybe given to you from Zinnia's grandmother as thanks for helping her.
Ugh. Finding plates underwater just like in BW(2) or without a time limit?
Also the fact that Yveltal's revival animation takes too long