I gave up catching up to the thread when I went away for two days, I was 110 pages behind, and it kept gaining pages faster than I had time to read them. So I'm not entirely caught up with what happened over the weekend. But from what I've seen (mainly posts up until about Friday evening), here are some rambly thoughts.
Overall, I really like the Pokémon roster of this generation. One of my biggest gripes with the rosters of generations VI-VIII was how deeply they were stuck in certain patterns. They introduced relatively few Pokémon, but at the same time insisted on adhering to a bunch of standard archetypes like the regional bug, bird, cat, fossils, pseudo-legendaries, regular legendaries, and all the whatnot, resulting in a Pokédex approximately half-full of Pokémon adhering to design templates we've already seen multiple times before, with the other half mostly consisting of a two-stage family of every type so all the types could have roughly equal representation in a tiny generation. There was little room for experimentation once that "checklist" was complete.
Gen IX seems to have avoided this for the most part. It seems to have scaled down on the archetypes (with the bird and bug being two-stage, missing the fossils, and so on), and afforded itself a lot more room to play with the unconventional. This gives the overall Pokédex much less of a by-the-numbers feel.
I have slowly and begrudgingly come to accept that two-stage evolution is the default for Pokémon families. The majority of them evolve once if at all. Fortunately, Gen IX has still found room for eight three-stage evolution families, and for once, the majority of them aren't archetypes. Okay, there's the three starters and the pseudo-legendary as usual, but the rest of the small number fortunately isn't taken up by a regional bird and bug. There are four "atypical three-stage evolution families" around this time, and I dig them all. Okay, the Pawmi family is a little bland, but it has enough going for it in other aspects to be interesting still.
Cross-generation evolutions are also back, in force. Dunsparce and Girafarig are elevated out of the single-stage crapmon curse, while Primeape and Bisharp go from being passable second-stage evolutions to serving as the middle stage before a badass third stage. I once again thank the devs for taking the chance with Wyrdeer and Ursaluna, and hope the reception of cross-generation evolutions remain positive enough to make them a mainstay going forward. There's something really satisfying about knowing that the familiar old 'mon you've used in several games now has another evolutionary stage to turn it even more badass. The regional forms and evolutions of Gen 8 couldn't quite match that. Hoennese Linoone are still kinda meh, as they are unaffected by the existence of Obstagoon.
There are some negatives, of course, but the positives outweigh them in my book so they aren't that big of a deal. Still, might as well get them off my chest:
1) There are a few too many evolutionary families that feel very alike. There are three sets of two-stage dogs, for a start (and I
hate dogs with a fiery passion - might use Greavard still, though, as I guess it fits my "the only good dog ..." criterium). Likewise the three sets of two-stage bugs, the three single-stage Flying-type birds, the three single-stage fish, and the five different fully evolved Pokémon that fit the description "weapon-carrying hominid".
2) The future Paradox forms really lack creativity in their naming. I wonder who approved the various creative names for the past Paradox forms, then signed off on "eh, just call them all Iron something" for the future ones. The fact they all break naming conventions will also be a headache going forward, but I assume Game Freak will just solve the problem by making them exclusive to Gen IX and never bring them up again, like the Gigantamax forms of Gen VIII.
3) The legendary quartet. Specifically, their names. Brilliant design on them all, but what's with the "syllable-dash-syllable" naming? Is it Japanese, or another Eastern language? They are awfully non-descriptive (in English, that is) and it makes them hard to distinguish from another even though their designs are nothing alike. I bet the names make some sense in whatever the native language is, but they don't in English,
and that's why names are usually translated. I guess I will get used to it in time, but it'll remain an annoyance for a while.
As for the starters, I'm generally impressed. Less so with Meowscarada, as it is the most humanoid of the three, but I can appreciate that the design is based on the tale of the puss in boots, wherein a cat pretends to be a human and Meowscarada is shown to be an illusionist. I love that Skeledirge's design is nowhere near humanoid. For once, the Fire-type starter is a good ol'
beast, not a guy in a fursuit. Quaquaval impressed me the most, however. I was prepared to dislike it, as it looks very humanoid at a glance, but they employed a few tricks to make it more avian. Specifically, it's the lower body and hips. With a human, and most human-like Pokémon, everything is sort of stacked vertically. But Quaquaval is given a proper bird body with tail feathers and
ornithischian hip joints, giving an appearance like a lanky Donald Duck rather than the "guy in a costume" look of earlier starter birds like Blaziken or Decidueye. Add to this a decidedly avian face and feet, and we've got ourselves a proper bird this time, despite overall human-like proportions. It's a subtle, but effective way of chasing the design out of the uncanny valley.
I'll probably come up with more things to say eventually, but this'll do for now. It's already plenty.
