Looking upon the design again and comparing both it really does look like a scrapped Mega Evo design for Wishcash almost, but yea it could've been an evo of Wishcash kinda like Basculegion or Jynx
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Unpopular opinions
- Thread starter antemortem
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Looking upon the design again and comparing both it really does look like a scrapped Mega Evo design for Wishcash almost, but yea it could've been an evo of Wishcash kinda like Basculegion or Jynx
In the case of Dondozo, it feels like its purpose was to be an ultimate boss for the Titan Pokemon: It has highest stats and BST of all of them, and even has an ability that grants it stat boosts! But here's my problem they don't utillize the commander abillity at all- the Dondozo doesn't have the stat boosts. What was even the point then? It just feels unecessary to design Dondozo and Tatsugiri this way, I'm guessing the devs it would be too hard if Dondozo got +2 in every stat, hence the lack of boosts, but looking at Dondozo's movepool, a defensive Grass type would still pose a problem.
Base SV doesn't really have any of those though.
Honestly, I don't mind 
Dondozo's limited moveset. It's a big dumb boy, it makes sense for it to learn almost no Special moves, its job is to beat up others with tail slaps and slams.
The size of
Tatsugiri's moveset, on the other hand, bothers me a lot. It's far from the worst moveset I can think of ―it's hard to make a Nasty Plot user bad, and it learns good Status moves such as Taunt, Memento, and Helping Hand― but only Normal-, Water- and Dragon-type Special moves other than Icy Wind is super odd. Like, it's the smart one, you would think it would be able to learn a few more moves.
Dondozo's limited moveset. It's a big dumb boy, it makes sense for it to learn almost no Special moves, its job is to beat up others with tail slaps and slams.The size of
Tatsugiri's moveset, on the other hand, bothers me a lot. It's far from the worst moveset I can think of ―it's hard to make a Nasty Plot user bad, and it learns good Status moves such as Taunt, Memento, and Helping Hand― but only Normal-, Water- and Dragon-type Special moves other than Icy Wind is super odd. Like, it's the smart one, you would think it would be able to learn a few more moves.
It's very likely this was an intentional balance decision, despite it having Storm Drain (probably just for the sake of having a usable singles ability) it was pretty clear that these 2 mons were made *specifically* to be used toghether. Giving Tatsugiri a wide moveset would have created a valid case for standalone usage, as after all we're looking at a strong defensive type and non-negligible bulk pokemon with high speed and spatk, which is not what they were looking for while designing it.The size of
(Also i'm not really sure why it's a Dragon type... prolly some reference I'm missing somewhere... )
I'm suspicious that it's a combination of wanting the pair as a Titan encounter, not overlapping displayed types between maingame bosses, and already having a Water gym. i.e. there's no significant in-universe explanation.
If it was just for the whole sake of type overlap, Dondozo would have honestly made more sense as the Dragon type (though, I think that'd have made it unironically overpowered, Unaware Water/Dragon with that bulk and that ability and stab signature move that raises a stat is the stuff of nightmares)
it's supposed to be a fake out
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Also Dondozo is literally a catfish, making more of a pun with how it's a fake out and the "False Dragon" with its partner Tatsugiri being the real one.
Because the word "catfish" also refers to someone who pretends to be someone they aren't, while also referring to the literal animal Dondozo is based on, carrying a double meaning. Dondozo being a catfish while at the same time masquerading as the "false dragon" Titan with Tatsugiri both being a real dragon and the real Titan in the final boss fight is something of a pun in that regard.
Because the word "catfish" also refers to someone who pretends to be someone they aren't, while also referring to the literal animal Dondozo is based on, carrying a double meaning. Dondozo being a catfish while at the same time masquerading as the "false dragon" Titan with Tatsugiri both being a real dragon and the real Titan in the final boss fight is something of a pun in that regard.
From Bulbapedia:
Shachihoko
Polypterus senegalus/Senegal bichir
Shachihoko
Polypterus senegalus/Senegal bichir
i know this is on the smogon forums but I do wish yall would at least Try to consider other reasonings for why pokemon are created and designed beyond singles/bss OR vgc. yes theres a consideration given considering gamefreak needs to make esports viable picks every gen but also...... sometimes theyre like this because its flavorful, because it references some mythology, folklore, animal, location, the design itself etc. sometimes gimmicks are done because it looks fun for the player, or makes a cool boss
It was never about the tree.
It was about how so many Pokemon fans lost something significant for no apparent reason, only to receive nothing in return
despite even being promised they would receive things in return.
Personally, I believe all dexit did for the Switch era was give Gamefreak opportunities to cut out more content and rush games harder than ever before, only to repackage their missing content for an extra $30-35 as DLC. It literally did nothing else during this era. Competitive is more broken than it ever was within the past several generations, graphics look ugly this time around, the animations are worse than any 3D Pokemon game prior to dexit, sure it made completing the dex is somewhat more appealing, but it could've easily been like Gen 7 where you could use all the existing Pokemon while still just having a regional dex. In regards to playability of metagames, National Dex Anything Goes is virtually unplayable now, yes. That's not because we have too many Pokemon. That's because Gamefreak made many of their stupidest mechanical decisions in the history of the series throughout the Switch generations alone and they've taken a massive toll on the entire premise overall. Dexit also did not give Gamefreak less overall work. It just gave them opportunities to blitz through game after game now to send them out in shorter durations than ever. It's giving Gamefreak more room to maximize their profit by exploiting the trust of the playerbase. I'm sorry to get nasty here but I genuinely cannot see it any other way. The Switch games even have every single Pokemon in the series programmed in them, but with wiped stats in Gen 8, and completed stats in Gen 9. Their priority isn't to make the best game they could, but to make the most money they can get, which right now is by spending less time and money on the resources of one game, and pushing out as many different games as possible.
To me, this is why I believe Scarlet and Violet dropped the way they did, and why Gamefreak has been dodging any promises to spend more time on the games, despite acknowledging their schedules were an issue. It's confirmed by some of Gamefreak's dissatisfied staff through company reviews, that they know Pokemon games will still get a lot of sales no matter what state the game is finalized in, by virtue of being a main series Pokemon game. Thanks to this, a lot of the higher ups in Pokemon don't really care how the final product ends up.
I made this sometime ago and posted it somewhere, but was proud of it so I want to share it somewhere else.
It was about how so many Pokemon fans lost something significant for no apparent reason, only to receive nothing in return
despite even being promised they would receive things in return.
Personally, I believe all dexit did for the Switch era was give Gamefreak opportunities to cut out more content and rush games harder than ever before, only to repackage their missing content for an extra $30-35 as DLC. It literally did nothing else during this era. Competitive is more broken than it ever was within the past several generations, graphics look ugly this time around, the animations are worse than any 3D Pokemon game prior to dexit, sure it made completing the dex is somewhat more appealing, but it could've easily been like Gen 7 where you could use all the existing Pokemon while still just having a regional dex. In regards to playability of metagames, National Dex Anything Goes is virtually unplayable now, yes. That's not because we have too many Pokemon. That's because Gamefreak made many of their stupidest mechanical decisions in the history of the series throughout the Switch generations alone and they've taken a massive toll on the entire premise overall. Dexit also did not give Gamefreak less overall work. It just gave them opportunities to blitz through game after game now to send them out in shorter durations than ever. It's giving Gamefreak more room to maximize their profit by exploiting the trust of the playerbase. I'm sorry to get nasty here but I genuinely cannot see it any other way. The Switch games even have every single Pokemon in the series programmed in them, but with wiped stats in Gen 8, and completed stats in Gen 9. Their priority isn't to make the best game they could, but to make the most money they can get, which right now is by spending less time and money on the resources of one game, and pushing out as many different games as possible.
To me, this is why I believe Scarlet and Violet dropped the way they did, and why Gamefreak has been dodging any promises to spend more time on the games, despite acknowledging their schedules were an issue. It's confirmed by some of Gamefreak's dissatisfied staff through company reviews, that they know Pokemon games will still get a lot of sales no matter what state the game is finalized in, by virtue of being a main series Pokemon game. Thanks to this, a lot of the higher ups in Pokemon don't really care how the final product ends up.
I made this sometime ago and posted it somewhere, but was proud of it so I want to share it somewhere else.
I don’t usually use gif memes, but this is a really good summation of the Switch games.
I got a bad guts feeling that GF never playtested their new stuff for balance, instead only playtest just to make them work as intended, causing a blatant increase amount of poorly executed mechanics and power creep lately.
There’s also the P2W (pay to win) nature via most Legends mons only available via transfer, along with DLC, making real life competitive tournaments such as VGC far more expensive than it should. Their push to ESports comes off as insincere as a result.
Because of their self-imposed strict schedule, they ended up making even more new problems than they fixed old ones, and who knows when, not if, many employees cannot take the pressure anymore even by Japanese standards and call it quit. I’m not likely to want buy anymore Pokémon games made or supervised by them and it’s all too unlikely they’ll slow down.
The only positive aspect (that do not outweight the negatives, mind you) is that they still got some big creativity juice. Heck, who could have known that they create an evolution for Duraludon of all Pokémon and even succeeded? But with the strict schedule, I wonder how soon they’ll run out of it.
I mean the only reason gen 7 dex is like that is Because of dexit. Like i get your point but that was a thing that was gonna happen and got delayed. Wouldn't be surprised if they decided on it as soon as they finished working on XY
thank god they didnt tho because alola is peak and i dont have to defend it from dexit bros
thank god they didnt tho because alola is peak and i dont have to defend it from dexit bros
Honestly instead of replying with the same thing for the millionth time, I'll just link a decent summary Wolfey made about SV which had me agree with more or less all he said. (Funnily, even "first impression" vs "replaying through it a year later")
TLDR: Pokemon games are just a relatively minor part of pokemon franchise income. They just need to work, and be cute to introduce kids to the game. They don't need to be good to sell, thus they don't put more money into them.
TLDR: Pokemon games are just a relatively minor part of pokemon franchise income. They just need to work, and be cute to introduce kids to the game. They don't need to be good to sell, thus they don't put more money into them.
I'm currently missing third versions rather than DLC. Yes, it's more total expense for the extra content if you already had the original games, but that keeps seeming like a larger and larger if. Now that I can't call the first release sufficiently complete to justify getting the base version, the balance starts to swing in the other direction: I would be waiting until there's good content (if any shows up) regardless, so I'd much prefer having a single package at 100% game price than two totaling 150%.
That doesn’t make it any less exploitative, as it comes off as taking advantage of children’s love of Pokémon with little return and slow improvements. Worse is that there are fans who defended flaws that are difficult to deny, such as inconsistent graphic qualities, because “the games are for children”. Being a kid’s game should not excuse poor quality.
Aiming for young children also contradict Game Freak’s, or TPC’s, push of turning their VGC into Esport since that audience is older than young kids on average. In turn, there is a lot of references to past games, even the one not from Kanto considering Let’s Go, that children may not get, though it does have an advantage of making them more curious of past regions.
Let’s not getting into the exploitative gacha elements or microtransaction in Pokémon GO, which is also partially aimed at children.
It’s a good thing the Pokémon games have strong replayability despite the incessesant cutscenes, especially Gen 6 and Gen 8-today, but the moment replayability becomes jeopardized, even children might only play it once and never again.
There’s no incentive for GF to get back to third versions, especially after USUM, despite financial success, proved to be a disaster in terms of content differences (too little for what are promised) and a hot mess of debate if it justifies being third version or not even today. Going back to third versions would not improve the situation that is happening to the mainline games, especially since games costs 60$ if not 70$ in America as of this writing.
But! I will say that the base game must be sufficently loaded to justify DLC. Both Gen 8 and 9 seems to have too little content other than main story to justify DLC, making it look like GF deliberately held off some potentially great stuff behind a paywall.
Oh don't misunderstand me, I fully agree that it's exploitative. And I've made my stance pretty clear on how much I despise the fact that not only they made gen 9 VGC P2W, but didn't even fully fix it with the 2nd DLC (due to some hisuians and the genies still being locked behind owning other games)
I'm just saying that there's no way to fix it.
It works and gets the effect they need. And since this is capitalism we're talking about, it aint changing until they actually lose money.
Which let's be honest, it's Pokemon. They will never lose money unless they do a fuck up SO huge that the entire franchise gets murdered for it.
Bingo, everything you said is what I was saying 2 years ago and is on point, its all simply Gamefreak selling out for more money and turning Pokémon into a pure live service grift, Sword and Shield selling over 5 million copies in its first week represents that big issue cause they know they'll keep doing it, there isn't any excuse for no National Dex, its just all corporate greed, they don't care about the players one bit or the kiddos who don't understand buying DLCs and their parents giving them a flatout no towards borrowing their credit card,
I feel like im going insane and I grow concerned for Gen 10, there so many fan Pokemon artists creating 10/10 Fakemon and are never hired by gamefreak, now Gamefreak is rehashing older mons in the form of Paradoxmons huge headache
I mean... Yeah? I don't wanna be a smarmy nitpicker or anything, there's plenty of valid things to be frustrated about concerning Pokemon right now, but like... Nobody's really denying these problems? Did you actually think that the SWSH Treeposting was anything other than goofing on a very flawed game and later goofing on the reactions to said very flawed game? Have you personally encountered people online who genuinely think Pokemon fans harbored a grudge over a janky bit of geometry?
This is how we radicalize pokemon fans into communism and [i am shot point blank by the mods before a discussion can happen]
I don't know if i'd call it low expectations, but i do have deattachement to big company games and them maintaining quality nowadays, so its hard for me to care when a franchise like pokemon goes down in quality because I'm just like... well yeah? Of course it's gonna happen, that's what's been happening to almost everything under capitalism in years lol. And my takeaway just goes into that line of logic and politics etc, which is cool and all but just leaves the current discussion of the games themselves, so its pretty useless in this context.
My real answer is uuuh follow up the "stop expecting things from pokemon" with "interact with small projects and indie games to keep yourself slighly sane" instead of "so i'll just buy whatever game and accept the tragic fate of most big franchises and products"
I don't know if i'd call it low expectations, but i do have deattachement to big company games and them maintaining quality nowadays, so its hard for me to care when a franchise like pokemon goes down in quality because I'm just like... well yeah? Of course it's gonna happen, that's what's been happening to almost everything under capitalism in years lol. And my takeaway just goes into that line of logic and politics etc, which is cool and all but just leaves the current discussion of the games themselves, so its pretty useless in this context.
My real answer is uuuh follow up the "stop expecting things from pokemon" with "interact with small projects and indie games to keep yourself slighly sane" instead of "so i'll just buy whatever game and accept the tragic fate of most big franchises and products"
I've used Showdown as comfort gaming when dealing with despairing about society before. Even when my lack of competitiveness doesn't align with the main purpose, even though it's stripped to the bare essentials, I still find the project inspiring. The sheer number of formats it contains is capable of taking game design decisions that do not care about singles into a genuine attempt at "your favourite mon, whatever it is, has a place somewhere." Natdex dispenses with one of the series' biggest controversies. Showdown feels like it's not pokemon as it is, constrained by businesses doing business decisions, but as the playerbase has collectively decided it should be.
This is doesn't ignore the fact that Pokemon has turned into a live service grift
Its insane how we think alike cause I was almost about to make a joke about communism but I've gotten in trouble before but I don't wanna ruffle the scales of Finch and the Tantrums in the back
If you catch my Drift Blooming in the Delta Stream
Damn that rhyme was good!
I was extremely disappointed by the removal of Megas, so you know what I did? Took a break from recent games, played a ROM hack for the first time to get my Mega fix, then accepted Sword and Shield for what it is. If there's something connecting stereotypical Pokemon fans to stereotypical Nintendo fans, it's that they point at non-Nintendo games doing things, ask why isn't Nintendo doing this, then never play those games and wait and complain for their Nintendo games to change. If Pokemon isn't going in a direction you like, play another game, you might find new passions, and just wait until the tides turn back in your favor. One day you might get a subpar remake of your first Pokemon game, another you might get a prequal game that breaks new ground for the franchise while tying your two favorite regions together.
Can't say I'm embolded from that example, seeing as the new ground felt sufficiently un-pokemon-like that it lowered my standards enough for the subpar remake in question.