The Positives of your Least Favorite Pokemon Game and the Negatives of your Most Favorite

[Karxrida]

Oh neat thread. Must have been made during my sabbatical.

I don't have any standout least favorite games (or I should say ones I've played recently enough to properly give credit to) nor do I have a singular most favorite, but I do have some tiny bones to pick with Gens I'm really attached to.

• GSC: We all know the level curve sucks. I'm not going to dwell on that since what's left of that horse is currently nothing but a fine powder from how much it's been beaten. What I will dwell on is how Johto really doesn't want you to use a bunch of Johto Pokémon, makes them bad, or heaven-forbid both. But for this I want to hone in on how Crystal decides you are not allowed to have Mareep without trading. Who said "hey let's take this cute new sheep mon that's actually kind of good and just remove from what should be the best version of Johto"? Nothing hates Johto more than Jobto, I swear.
• RSE: The Grass-type selection is kind of lame in Gen 3 Hoenn. While Treecko is good it's a starter you might not want compared to the other two, and Breloom is functionally not a Grass-type. RSE admittedly isn't exactly unique on this front (it's way worse in Johto, which hates Grass and gives you bad options on top of that), you feel it more in Hoenn because Water is a lot more prevalent.
• DPPt: Sinnoh kind of pigeonholes you into specific team comps on every playthrough unless you do a Nuzlocke or something to actively fight against it. The number of Bonzor and Bronzong heavily encourage picking Chimchar as your starter (even in Platinum with its better dex), Starly is too good to ignore, you're probably using a Bidoof as your HM mule...
• BW: Kind of a similar story to Gen 4 in that I feel compelled to use the same teams when replaying. However, this is more because your early options are very limited and the first Gym forces your hand by design, but it's less severe because your options do open up around Castelia.
• BW2: Something that kind of applies to BW but comes to the forefront here is how I feel Unova's starters are super disposable and kind of uninteresting. I love Unova but I'll be the first to admit it probably has the weakest overall starter set. This is probably the only game in the series where I have actively dropped my starter because you have so many good options throughout the game that quickly and easily replace them.

 

[Omastar68]

Well oras is horribly easy, and bdsp had a better underground.

 

[CPU]

• DPPt: Sinnoh kind of pigeonholes you into specific team comps on every playthrough unless you do a Nuzlocke or something to actively fight against it. The number of Bonzor and Bronzong heavily encourage picking Chimchar as your starter (even in Platinum with its better dex), Starly is too good to ignore, you're probably using a Bidoof as your HM mule...

Whenever I see comments about DPPt's team composition I'm always reminded that I feel that my Diamond team was weird, for both the average player and for me. I only used five main Pokémon (Torterra, Golduck, Bronzong, Crobat, Machamp), and none of them are particularly strong favorites (I did like Torterra and Bronzong a fair amount when Gen 4 was new, at least). I think I did use Bibarel for HMs, though.

Ironically it was Platinum where I used a more "standard" Sinnoh team (don't remember everything I used but I had Empoleon/Staraptor/Luxray, at least).

 

[bdt2002]

Some other people are doing a Nintendo Switch version of this prompt, so I want to do one too. I’m going to pick two games from each category (Most & Least Favorite).

• Most Favorite: Legends Arceus
  • This issue stems back from the 3DS era, to be fair, but I’ve mentioned a few times how I don’t really care for Manaphy in newer games after Pokémon Ranger and the DS generations. The Seaside Hollow does bring some nice world building with it, and this game doesn’t have Eggs so it’s not like they could have brought the Manaphy Egg back outside of the BDSP event but it would have been nice to see some kind of reference to the Egg itself.
  • There’s almost nothing to do after defeating Volo aside from the PokéDex itself and Shiny hunt. The Daybreak update had a few things I suppose, but with Mega Dimension on the horizon by comparison, I can confidently say I’m glad Daybreak didn’t have its own paywall.
• Most Favorite: Scarlet & Violet
  • You can tell this game is and feels like their first attempt at an open-world style mainline region. Kanto and Paldea were both the first of their respective kinds, but Kanto as a region itself has aged significantly better than Paldea had, though it’s probably not too fair of a comparison to make.
  • Not having overworld Shiny sparkles in the original build of the game sucks, but I can at least understand why they couldn’t bring the feature back for the Switch 1. For the Switch 2 update, though? I feel like they absolutely could have re-added this as part of the patch, even if the sparkles are Switch 2 exclusive once the patch is downloaded.
• Least Favorite: Pokémon Let’s Go
  • The exclusion of the Sevii Islands was unfortunate for FireRed & LeafGreen fans because Junichi Masuda directed both of these games. That being said, I do believe this to be the definitive best version of the base Kanto region by some margin. If you look past the gameplay itself, this iteration of base Kanto I think has the best overall world building and is about even with the Gen 3 versions in terms of presentation relative to its own hardware.
  • I think I have to agree with the masses on this one and say this is probably the best looking Switch Pokémon game graphically. I quite like this art style and find Galar and Paldea’s art direction a bit choppy-looking by comparison. Legends Z-A does give it some competition for this title for me but the name of the game here is “simplistic charm”. That, and not having wallpapers for windows and the like.
• Least Favorite: Sword & Shield
  • I do not like the generational gimmick trend, and I know I might be alone in this opinion specifically in regards to Mega Evolution, I think getting rid of those and Z-Moves in favor of Dynamaxing, which itself is somewhat restricted in where you can use it, was the right call overall. In a similar vein, while Dynamax as a mechanic is overpowered when you can use it especially in multiplayer, I appreciate that Gigantamax Pokémon aren’t strictly an upgrade over the regular version with some actually being worse off.
  • Piers is unironically one of my favorite Gym Leaders in the series for a multitude of reasons, even with the infamous lack of voice acting. The obvious point in his favor is that he (and by extension Marnie) were the first Dark-Type Gym Leaders ever, but there is a second trope subversion that I don’t see anyone talk about. The first six generations had a tendency to use Gym #7 as a sort of “anchor spot” for the evil teams of the games, specifically Johto, Hoenn, Sinnoh, Unova 2, and Kalos. By contrast, Shigeru Ohmori’s games were really the start of a new style of “villain character”, with one “joke team” and one twist villain usually being the formula. This is why Piers, as the leader of Team Yell, being the seventh Gym Leader and largely being independent from the Macro Cosmos stuff, works so well. I also just find it funny that there are exactly eight Gyms and it took until Generation number eight to get the first Dark-Type one.

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

DPPt: Sinnoh kind of pigeonholes you into specific team comps on every playthrough unless you do a Nuzlocke or something to actively fight against it. The number of Bonzor and Bronzong heavily encourage picking Chimchar as your starter (even in Platinum with its better dex), Starly is too good to ignore, you're probably using a Bidoof as your HM mule...

This argument will always be funny because BW1 was right after it.

In Sinnoh, people are encouraged to use the good early mons with unique traits because they're really good, but there are also plenty of viable options. Especially old mons that also got buffed and play completely different from previous games (Like Geodude and Onix having Rock Polish to circumvent their speed issues.)

Meanwhile, BW1 pigeonholes people because every early-game option sucks ass


You can almost count on one hand the options that are at least B-tier until say, Castelia. The game only really starts when you get to catch the busted desert mons.

 

[Wukong]

In Sinnoh, people are encouraged to use the good early mons with unique traits because they're really good, but there are also plenty of viable options. Especially old mons that also got buffed and play completely different from previous games (Like Geodude and Onix having Rock Polish to circumvent their speed issues.)

Yeah, I always thought this was a dumb argument against Platinum especially.

There's a huge difference between saying team composition is bog standard due to high quality early game options versus dearth of overall options. Platinum absolutely "suffers" from the former not the latter.

You don't have to use Staraptor as your Flier. Even without Honchkrow you still have Crobat, Togekiss, and Drifblim - all great options in their own right. Hell, Crobat is a de facto Flier of choice in many other games and is about as good in this one. There's just an option in this game that's objectively better.

Similarly, you don't have to use Luxray. Rotom and Raichu probably go even with it. And Jolteon and Magnezone are probably outright better even factoring in availability.

Platinum has a lot you can mix and match with. But Staraptor and Luxray are just cool, solid options people obviously like. Not that you can't choose otherwise.

 

[Omastar68]

This argument will always be funny because BW1 was right after it.

In Sinnoh, people are encouraged to use the good early mons with unique traits because they're really good, but there are also plenty of viable options. Especially old mons that also got buffed and play completely different from previous games (Like Geodude and Onix having Rock Polish to circumvent their speed issues.)

Meanwhile, BW1 pigeonholes people because every early-game option sucks ass


You can almost count on one hand the options that are at least B-tier until say, Castelia. The game only really starts when you get to catch the busted desert mons.

I never thought about that! But yeah mostly I can't think of many exceptions hm. Maybe munna? That will not help with bug ofc but I mean in general. I thought there were some fightings before pinwheel forest like tomburr though...and tympole is there. I don't....know what is exactly wrong with being able to count the early ok options on one hand, though. That's near a full team, and you probably don't need a full team THAT early(ignoring that you never really need six in game.) oh and drilbud in cave clouds.

 

[Biaxact]

My favorite is Heartgold. I miss that game so much (with the gambling lol and the pokemon walking with you) I guess one bad thing about it is the very original experiene I had with my copy where I ran out of oran berries and therefore (not owning any other pokemon game at the time) did not have any oran berries to grow and get more. Oran berries were extinct. It was painful.

least favorite would be pokemon go but thats a spin off I guess. Just looks ugly but i appreciate it for what it is. I am playing lets go pikachu right now, and I appreciate the gimmicks but all it will be is a spinoff game to me. Which again is fine but yeah lol