Unpopular opinions

This is exactly what happened to Sonic in the wake of 06, and it's not pretty. It would be absurd to say NOTHING good came out afterwards (Generations, Colors, a third of Unleashed), but there was absolutely a huge curtailing of scope that led to deeply unfortunate knock-on effects, such as multiple playable characters being sacked outside of side games for a long, LONG time. It took 17 years to get another mainline 3D game where you could play as Tails, Knuckles and Amy. 17 years. In Pokemon terms this would probably mean, among other things, open world being ditched and GF returning to XY/SM level scope. Maybe even some kind of return to sprite art if things are sufficiently dire and reputational triage is that badly needed.

Now I'm imagining a desperate-looking Masuda breaking one of those "in case of emergency" boxes labeled HD-2D
 
honestly i just want more non-open world pokemon games because I don't like open world and it's a bit sad to see every other franchise i enjoy/new games id like to try go that path. its a selfish desire but :blobshrug: my wants will not fundamentally alter how the games are made either way so I'll continue being a hater
 
honestly i just want more non-open world pokemon games because I don't like open world and it's a bit sad to see every other franchise i enjoy/new games id like to try go that path. its a selfish desire but :blobshrug: my wants will not fundamentally alter how the games are made either way so I'll continue being a hater
I wouldn't mind as much if the majority of the worldbuilding was worth spending time just wandering around, but bootleg real-world locations is well below par. Like maybe I could give them a pass on SV's exploration if they put the entire game in Area Zero.
 
I had a lot of fun exploring Scarlet and Violet's world tbh. I just had fun finding where Pokemon spawned, going around landmarks, seeing more of the world. Pokemon intrinsically has an interesting mechanic for open worlds, the fact that the world can be filled with different spawns to find new teammates. Exploration is my opportunities for my team.
 
I'm not against open worlds, I've played lots of them and one of my favourite games of all time, which is Elden Ring alongside the entirey of the Souls series allowed to invest 2035 hours into it and counting, but I've always preferred a more linear approach. That beign said, the open world is a problem for Pokémon games but for a different reason. The guys on Game Freak have been having problems regarding new and more potent systems. They reached their peak back on GBA and NDS generations, pretty good games even in the technical department (peak spriting), and more or less attained some technical success in the 3DS era. Switch was too much, and this is probably due to a variety of reasons like the last Pokémon games being rushed by TPC therefor lacking content and having a lot of problems (bugs, glitches, etc.).

Game Freak needs more time to cook. They have the talent and I think we all know it. Some of us have been playing Pokémon since RB. It's been a long way and many years have passed but we all know what Game Freak is capable of, for the good or worse. I just don't like the open world in the Pokémon series when it comes alongside a lack of development time, because it transform the open world into something that feels empty, and that's been the dynamic for the lack 2 generations. Yes, they are fun. They are fun because the Pokémon formula is just that good and if you like Pokémon you'll always find it fun as long as you can move and battle things, that's how it is for us fans of Pokémon, but their open world can be improved quite a lot. They've lost much of their personality. You can't find an Ecruteak City, a Bell Tower, a Saffron City. You instead move on an open-world-skin and travel from well to well looking for battles, be it dynamax or teras or whatever.

Everytime I replay one of the oldest generations, I just find myself so inmersed in the sheer amount of routes, caves/dungeons and buildings (some of them serving as dungeons themselves) and hope to see that in the newer generations. But again, for that to happen Game Freak has to be given time.
 
I don't disagree that the open worlds can be better, that's why I want them to do more of them and improve on it rather than just ditch it. I meant it earlier when I said that, for the conditions of the game's development, Scarlet/Violet is actually fairly competent IMO.

It's just a game that literally feels like an early Beta or late Alpha, needing an extra year easily. And of course, even if it was polished there'd be problems, but they can always improve.

One thing I appreciate about SV is that the towns are seamless. Even a game like BotW really skimps out on having actual human settlements, while SV has quite a few more. I like the few caves that are in the game and I think developing them more into dungeons would work really well. Take the
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South Province is a great example for me. If you played like I did, you went through the area with the windmill and followed the path into the cave, which exits out by the coast. You go up these winding pathways above the coast back to another part of the cave, and then exit out at the town. I think with more polished mechanics and better structure, this is actually a very good "Route"/dungeon as it would be in a 2D Pokemon game. If this was a route in like, Gen 5, it'd probably be well-loved.

I think in particular just taking areas like this and turning them more dungeon-like and naming them would help the map be more memorable and make people feel there's more structure. Also, maybe a hot take, but climbing everywhere is a problem for the design. I think one of the reasons Elden Ring works is that it doesn't let you climb and fly like BotW, and I think that's partially a necessity for RPG open worlds with structure.
 
The sad thing is that a lot of people shit on SV's openworld when in reality it's one of the best Openworlds made in the last couple years

Let's get the elephant out quickly: yes, performance wise, it sucks. I won't pretend it doesn't, the optimization is awful, the very questionable choice to load all the spawns at once hurts the FPS horribly and so do certain areas.

With that out of the way, SV has a fully 3d openworld, completely explorable, with decent enough biome variety, and most importantly, actually managing to keep that role as you unlock more raidon abilities.
One of the most compelling and successful parts of SV's open world is the fact that you're never done exploring it. You have FULL ACCESS to the entire place at once, but the more movement abilities you unlock (until you finally get flying), the more hidden areas of the map become accessible. Caves, mountain tops, islands that you couldnt previously reach are now accessible and keep giving you a reason to go back to places you "just went to earlier but couldn't access".
And honestly the Terarium expanded even more on the variety, producing those massive cave systems and giant mountainranges.
And all those PoIs are completely "self inserted", you aren't arbitrarly getting spammed by map icons telling "hey check here", you find them yourself or look for them. The only minimap icons you ever see are the raids and the Pokemon centers.

And most importantly, all of this without loading zones. You can go from part to part of the map in a row, without ever needing to pause for a loading.

While yes, performance wise it sucks, design wise it's amazing. All it really misses is a tiny bit more pokemon interactions. There's already some very cool ones (like dittos/zoruas mimicking wild pokemon, 10/10 idea), but it could definitely use "more". But I think in the end this is a good direction for the series.
 
honestly i just want more non-open world pokemon games because I don't like open world and it's a bit sad to see every other franchise i enjoy/new games id like to try go that path. its a selfish desire but :blobshrug: my wants will not fundamentally alter how the games are made either way so I'll continue being a hater

It's hardly a selfish desire if you don't think this format best serves the series. As you said, multiple franchises are going this direction and it feels somewhat bandwagon-y.

A selfish desire would be "maybe open world isn't the best format for Pokemon, but fuck it, I like open world games so I want an open world Pokemon game anyway, I don't care"
 
tbh I feel like Pokemon conceptually just works really well with open world. Exploring a world full of Pokemon is just really fun and it's not a franchise where open world would feel forced at all. So I'm really glad they switched to that and I hope they continue with it. I'm sure it could make for a fantastic game if they ever get enough time to cook.
 
One thing I appreciate about SV is that the towns are seamless. Even a game like BotW really skimps out on having actual human settlements, while SV has quite a few more.
There are more, maybe (only "maybe" because the stables dotted across Hyrule act as mini settlements, and the Rito/Goron/Zora/Korok/Gerudo towns bump BotW's number up by a fair amount, even if they're not technically human/Hylian), but they just feel empty because there's so little reason to interact with anyone there. Actually, scratch that, there's so little ability to interact with the inhabitants of SV's towns and cities. Sure, there are a couple of interactable NPCs per town, but the number of them that actually offer anything worthwhile is almost nothing.

No interiors are modeled for the settlements aside from the gyms and the occasional sandwich shop (every other vendor just opens up a menu, and I have gripes with how this menu transition is handled, too). Once you clear out a settlement's gym leader, there's almost no reason to go back to one unless you need something specific from a shop. BotW's towns and cities each have at least 5 (making up a number off the top of my head, but having watched someone play through the game again recently, I actually think this is a low estimate) requests per location, some of which only open up when other story beats/quests have been completed.

Visually and aesthetically SV's towns look really nice and have great music, but they're largely just empty setpieces (and unfortunately they also reflect the poor optimization that plagues the rest of the game). I respect that you like the number of them, but I think their barebones presentation is one of SV's biggest flaws.
 
There are more, maybe (only "maybe" because the stables dotted across Hyrule act as mini settlements, and the Rito/Goron/Zora/Korok/Gerudo towns bump BotW's number up by a fair amount, even if they're not technically human/Hylian), but they just feel empty because there's so little reason to interact with anyone there. Actually, scratch that, there's so little ability to interact with the inhabitants of SV's towns and cities. Sure, there are a couple of interactable NPCs per town, but the number of them that actually offer anything worthwhile is almost nothing.

No interiors are modeled for the settlements aside from the gyms and the occasional sandwich shop (every other vendor just opens up a menu, and I have gripes with how this menu transition is handled, too). Once you clear out a settlement's gym leader, there's almost no reason to go back to one unless you need something specific from a shop. BotW's towns and cities each have at least 5 (making up a number off the top of my head, but having watched someone play through the game again recently, I actually think this is a low estimate) requests per location, some of which only open up when other story beats/quests have been completed.

Visually and aesthetically SV's towns look really nice and have great music, but they're largely just empty setpieces (and unfortunately they also reflect the poor optimization that plagues the rest of the game). I respect that you like the number of them, but I think their barebones presentation is one of SV's biggest flaws.
If you actually did shit in BotW's towns then we just had very different experiences. Putting some fetch quests with zero weight/reward and being able to go into the building to find nothing didn't stop me from flying over them, and only using them as areas to buy arrows or to do necessary quests like at Gerudo Town.

To me, towns aren't necessarily about any mechanical need. It's just nice to be able to see shit in the world. BotW obviously has other stuff but it's also basically a 100hr+ experience while SV is a 20hr campaign in expected length, and for me BotW kinda really doesn't have enough shit to fill in that space in actual settlements. I have replayed BotW 4 times, I know and love it, and I also know that 90% of the world is basically (the breath of the) Wild with shrines sprinkled around.

On top of this I think that the "interactable" comment has to be deliberate, because it discounts the fact that while not every SV NPC has interactable dialogue, most of them that don't have that have text that appears without a textbox. Like, is that really a bad thing? I actually decided to do some shiny hunting so for convenience, I checked Cortondo and here is the data:

This is not going to be 100% exact because I'm not spending more than like 15 minutes on this. I counted around 30 non Pokemon Center NPCs. This

10 Regular Interactable
2 Shop
14 Non-Interactable Text
5 Does Nothing

I think this is entirely acceptable. 10 interactable NPCs not counting shops is basically like other Pokemon games. 14 give text but you don't get to interact with them; this is also fine and even common/normal in modern RPGs. 5 that I counted are basically just decorative people. These towns have interactable NPCs.

Now, maybe you are trying to compare this with BotW, but I am comparing this to: Pokemon. See, here is something that is actually the opposite case between the games. BotW comes from a series of 3D Zelda games that often have very interesting NPCs, one of the games being basically about your interactions with NPCs. From that perspective, BotW is frankly a failure within its franchise with NPCs.

Pokemon NPCs are basically entirely transferred into SV with them using other forms of NPCs to keep the 3D environments feeling more populated. This basically persists the status quo, and I find that acceptable.

BotW's NPCs have side quests but I actually don't like this. I am a side quest hater. My least favorite part of Legends Arceus is the side quests. For me to enjoy side quests, they need to be well-written and be well, good. Xenoblade 3 is a good example of this. BotW and every form of sidequest we've seen in the Pokemon franchise is really boring IMO and I don't think the world would feel more full if side quests were made a bigger part of SV.

To me, stables in BotW feel far more like the random Pokemon Centers around Paldea rather than actual towns. They're practically copy pasted. I could not tell you one from another. I don't mind the mechanical disposability of Paldea's towns because I just don't care. I don't care about towns in the 2D Pokemon games, either. When I am casually playing any Pokemon game, a town without a gym is a Pokemon Center glorified; I am going to heal my Pokemon and walk forwards.

I just think it's weird that people criticize SV's RPG towns in particular because so many of its flaws are basically just, things that most games with several towns have, but they decided to just cut out the middleman of forcing themselves to put in interiors when having the interactables out in the open just saves time. This is a game that already is literally unfinished, this is one of the most unnecessary things they could have added.
 
I will repeat a sentiment from SV prerelease that I still stand by even now; maybe SV is undercooked in terms of interior quantity, but I really love the ones it does have and how nicely they implement Pokemon into the setting. I remember seeing a picture of what I believe is the Academy Cafeteria with Polteageist at all the tables Makuhita manning the lunch counter and being like "This is what it's all about, this synthesis between humans and Pokemon in day to day life. This was the goal from RBY and now it's finally here."
 
If you actually did shit in BotW's towns then we just had very different experiences. Putting some fetch quests with zero weight/reward and being able to go into the building to find nothing didn't stop me from flying over them, and only using them as areas to buy arrows or to do necessary quests like at Gerudo Town.

To me, towns aren't necessarily about any mechanical need. It's just nice to be able to see shit in the world. BotW obviously has other stuff but it's also basically a 100hr+ experience while SV is a 20hr campaign in expected length, and for me BotW kinda really doesn't have enough shit to fill in that space in actual settlements. I have replayed BotW 4 times, I know and love it, and I also know that 90% of the world is basically (the breath of the) Wild with shrines sprinkled around.

On top of this I think that the "interactable" comment has to be deliberate, because it discounts the fact that while not every SV NPC has interactable dialogue, most of them that don't have that have text that appears without a textbox. Like, is that really a bad thing? I actually decided to do some shiny hunting so for convenience, I checked Cortondo and here is the data:

This is not going to be 100% exact because I'm not spending more than like 15 minutes on this. I counted around 30 non Pokemon Center NPCs. This

10 Regular Interactable
2 Shop
14 Non-Interactable Text
5 Does Nothing

I think this is entirely acceptable. 10 interactable NPCs not counting shops is basically like other Pokemon games. 14 give text but you don't get to interact with them; this is also fine and even common/normal in modern RPGs. 5 that I counted are basically just decorative people. These towns have interactable NPCs.

Now, maybe you are trying to compare this with BotW, but I am comparing this to: Pokemon. See, here is something that is actually the opposite case between the games. BotW comes from a series of 3D Zelda games that often have very interesting NPCs, one of the games being basically about your interactions with NPCs. From that perspective, BotW is frankly a failure within its franchise with NPCs.

Pokemon NPCs are basically entirely transferred into SV with them using other forms of NPCs to keep the 3D environments feeling more populated. This basically persists the status quo, and I find that acceptable.
That's a fair point that the number of interactable trainers in SV's towns is pretty equivalent with past games in the series, and I don't necessarily hate that those that aren't have little automatic dialogue quips (I can agree that this is a good way to add more people to a location in a simpler way). What gets my goat is how those that do require interacting with have nothing of note 99%' of the time.

Just my personal opinion, but I think BotW's lack of interesting NPCs is a direct result of its story being de-linearized. All of the "interesting" NPCs are interacted with just by completing all main quests. I guess a lot of the randos aren't as distinct as they were in previous iterations of the franchise, but that's probably because they're generated using the Mii Maker and have their features tweaked to fit BotW's art style.

BotW's NPCs have side quests but I actually don't like this. I am a side quest hater. My least favorite part of Legends Arceus is the side quests. For me to enjoy side quests, they need to be well-written and be well, good. Xenoblade 3 is a good example of this. BotW and every form of sidequest we've seen in the Pokemon franchise is really boring IMO and I don't think the world would feel more full if side quests were made a bigger part of SV.

To me, stables in BotW feel far more like the random Pokemon Centers around Paldea rather than actual towns. They're practically copy pasted. I could not tell you one from another. I don't mind the mechanical disposability of Paldea's towns because I just don't care. I don't care about towns in the 2D Pokemon games, either. When I am casually playing any Pokemon game, a town without a gym is a Pokemon Center glorified; I am going to heal my Pokemon and walk forwards.

I just think it's weird that people criticize SV's RPG towns in particular because so many of its flaws are basically just, things that most games with several towns have, but they decided to just cut out the middleman of forcing themselves to put in interiors when having the interactables out in the open just saves time. This is a game that already is literally unfinished, this is one of the most unnecessary things they could have added.
There's definitely a difference in opinion in why we go to towns in Pokémon games, I can tell that much. I have historically liked exploring towns to see what items and I can find (both in the overworld and from NPCs). Oftentimes NPCs also exist to give you hints about rare Pokémon or unusual locations, too. And, what probably causes SV to fail the most in my eyes, they have also existed to offer special features. I think consolidating features like the Name Rater and Move Reminder into the player's Pokémon menu is a good thing from a gameplay perspective, but it also removes aspects of towns that gave you a reason to remember them. I'm not sure if any NPC just directly gives you an item you can't get elsewhere in its locales. There are a handful of trades, I guess (or at least one, the only one I can remember, in Levincia). Even scouring their topography to find items probably isn't necessary because of how much stuff you find in the overworld (or how many TMs you're given access to through Starfall Street).

I guess if you basically see Pokémon's towns and cities as gussied-up stages for Gyms and Centers, you wouldn't really mind the way SV handles them, but the removal of basically all interiors takes away a lot of what I liked about them: personality that existed independent of the Gym Leaders. Looking back at Gen 1, the games that probably had the closest presentation to an open-world Pokémon game before modern times, almost all of Kanto's towns had something to set each of them apart:

Petwer: Museum
Cerulean: Bike Shop (kinda weak, I admit)
Vermilion: S.S. Anne (/S.S. Aqua in the Johto games)
Lavender: Pokémon Tower (though it lacks a gym), Name Rater (IIRC???)
Celadon: Game Corner, Rocket Hideout, Celadon Mansion, Department Store
Saffron: Fighting Dojo, Silph Co., the Copycat Girl (and the Magnet Train)
Fuchsia: Safari Zone
Cinnabar: Pokémon Lab, Pokémon Mansion

Pallet and Viridian are a little lacking, but Pallet is where you start (and is closest to Cinnabar), and Viridian has the fun little backtrack to get to the final Gym right before you head west from there to go to the league. All together, these locations have multiple dungeons and sidequests to find items/Pokémon you can't get other places. Meanwhile, SV's towns exist to show off the Gym Leader (if they even have one). They do all have some sort of theming that isn't always tied to the Gym Leader, but most of the NPCs you can talk to really only talk about the Gym Leader if they talk about any specific other characters at all. Gen 1 didn't give the Gym Leaders as much of a presence as Game Freak does now, so they kind of had to give their towns life in other ways, but it would be nice if there were more than just that one important NPC per town. Why should I even consider returning to SV's towns if they don't have anything unique to offer? I haven't revisited the games since I beat it once so I forget some of the town names, but aside from the auction, the bottle cap guy, and the Tera Type eatery, I don't think there's any compelling reason to revisit the other towns.

Regarding sidequests: yeah, a lot of the time they suck. I think that's true for both Pokémon and Zelda. There's always going to be a variety of how engaging sidequests are. I like doing them because they make the world feel more inhabited, like the little bits of data disguised as characters actually care about where they live. BotW's sidequests encourage you to explore and interact with parts of the world that aren't necessarily connected to the main quest. They give you a reason to explore the world. I guess Pokémon kind of has that inherently with, you know, Pokémon collecting, but while I enjoy the way the overworld is structured generally (really easy access to go around collecting Pokémon and items), I think it would be nice to have other places to visit that had more to them. I also think the way BotW's NPCs change depending on time of day (and, occasionally, location) is a nice touch for the same reasons. Pokémon doesn't really have that.
 
SV's open world is trash for the simple fact that Game Freak is completely incapable of making a good level curve the moment players get any kind of freedom on their routing.

Examples: Johto, DP Sinnoh.

And while I do bash Game Freak a lot over a bunch of stupid things they do, I don't actually blame them for having trouble with that. Balancing a level curve for a game like HGSS is INSANELY difficult. The easiest solution to it would be tying levels for both wild mons and trainers to certain flags, and they'd still need to make custom extra entries for major battles also based on those flags. Those things take up a bunch of space and make loading take longer in certain cases. GF would need to churn some authentic, handmade Italian spaghetti learned from a nonna on a beautiful Sunday morning to make that shit work and I don't think they can do it.

I kinda think PLA had a nice idea going with wide areas but linear progression. The very idea of a open world without real blockades and field moves to navigate isn't appealing to me tbh.

To put it bluntly, open worlds, more often than not, are boring to navigate. I couldn't possibly care less about running around a bunch of plains to get anywhere just for the sake of having big open fields to run on. Especially with regional dexes with 400 mons.

I can't stress enough how much I hate the massive regional dexes post-Dexit. Now we got a bunch of regions with no identity.

Do you know what we call that? Bloat.
 
SV's open world is trash for the simple fact that Game Freak is completely incapable of making a good level curve the moment players get any kind of freedom on their routing.

Examples: Johto, DP Sinnoh.

And while I do bash Game Freak a lot over a bunch of stupid things they do, I don't actually blame them for having trouble with that. Balancing a level curve for a game like HGSS is INSANELY difficult.
It's not that that level curve is difficult, it's that it's impossible. Most open worlds, the player has options, and player skill matters a lot. Something like Elden Ring or even Skyrim, there's tools available if you wander into a high-level region early on. MOST players will still get smashed, but the player can evade, use terrain, kite the foes, etc. It might be slow and difficult, but you can win. Same thing in reverse, a high-level player encountering weak enemies can't just mash attack, it still requires some thought(and often there's emergent reasons weak enemies are funny to curbstomp).

Pokemon? A 5 level difference is a lot. 10? 15? No shot. Which means even slight deviations from the intended path can render the game trivially easy or brutally difficult. XP can then compound the issue, rendering you out-of-whack with EVERYTHING unless you actively try to get back on the curve.

The easiest solution to it would be tying levels for both wild mons and trainers to certain flags, and they'd still need to make custom extra entries for major battles also based on those flags. Those things take up a bunch of space and make loading take longer in certain cases. GF would need to churn some authentic, handmade Italian spaghetti learned from a nonna on a beautiful Sunday morning to make that shit work and I don't think they can do it.
I don't think you need to level wild mons, and if they've been reducing the impact of wild trainers for a while now. Give us leveled gyms and rivals(tied to how many badges you have, for simplicity), some kind of difficulty indicator for route trainers so players know who to dodge(or if they can't, that they need to back up), and people will probably be happy. Wild mons can be unleveled because TBH it's fun to go into an overleveled area and have to flee any movement while searching for items you definitely shouldn't have at this point.

I kinda think PLA had a nice idea going with wide areas but linear progression. The very idea of a open world without real blockades and field moves to navigate isn't appealing to me tbh.
PLA was definitely on the right path there, at least given the restrictions that Pokemon puts on the game design space. It avoids at least some of the obvious flaws and focuses on what people want(roaming around with their pokemon).

To put it bluntly, open worlds, more often than not, are boring to navigate. I couldn't possibly care less about running around a bunch of plains to get anywhere just for the sake of having big open fields to run on.
The thing about a lot of good open worlds is that there's constant distractions. You travel from City A to Quest Dungeon B in an Elder Scrolls game, there's alchemy ingredients to gather along the way, scripted/random encounters with NPCs who have some sort of interaction for you, fights to wear you down, and all of that is designed to move you slightly off the path so that you see MORE things. Dungeons, campsites, cool landmarks, hunting targets, bigger threats...By the time you reach B, you've already spent resources, made a profit, discovered a separate quest tied to a different dungeon, leveled up, and burnt an hour. All of which encourages you to keep playing because that's More Stuff To Do. BotW and Pokemon S/V are much worse at this. It's not that those things aren't there, the games are just...IDK, they're not as good at making them engaging.

It's like WoW or similar MMOs. The idea is to have several different gameplay loops running concurrently, where updates to those loops happen at semi-random intervals, so that while the official thing the player is doing is progressing quest X, the actual thing they're doing is making lots of small progress on lots of different gameplay loops. That way whenever the player finishes one thing, there's something else almost complete. And when they've spent 5 minutes on that, it's also progressed 2 other things nearly complete. Finish one of them, but it required you go out to the wilderness to do so, and there's a shiny map marker just a little to your left...

Basically just make the game constantly fun and engaging so you keep playing forever.
 
I don't think you need to level wild mons, and if they've been reducing the impact of wild trainers for a while now. Give us leveled gyms and rivals(tied to how many badges you have, for simplicity), some kind of difficulty indicator for route trainers so players know who to dodge(or if they can't, that they need to back up), and people will probably be happy. Wild mons can be unleveled because TBH it's fun to go into an overleveled area and have to flee any movement while searching for items you definitely shouldn't have at this point.
Again, Johto serves as an example on this.

I'm honestly not inclined to catch a Lv. 15 mon if I'm en route to the 7th Gym. That's literally what getting a Girafarig is like if you don't go out of your way to catch one early.

On bigger maps, like the ones in Paldea, you can do things like having pockets of low-level spawns for mons that you wouldn't have access otherwise and vice-versa, but the average mon level gotta be compatible with the game's progression.
 
Now I'm imagining a desperate-looking Masuda breaking one of those "in case of emergency" boxes labeled HD-2D

LIVE-A-LIVE is one of my favorite games ever, and even I would see that move as desperate. All that is left is Giovanni being voiced by Robert Downey Jr, thankfully this is Pokemon so no voice acting!

I wouldn't mind as much if the majority of the worldbuilding was worth spending time just wandering around, but bootleg real-world locations is well below par. Like maybe I could give them a pass on SV's exploration if they put the entire game in Area Zero.

I'd rather if the whole premise of the main game was around the DLC's second part, Blueberry Academy. The school having this huge terarium that expands with your progress, plus housing the 4 leaders to defeat and face the champ, already gives the school setting much more needed focus than whatever the Paldea academy did (or rather, didn't). The concept reminds me of that old anime episode School of Hard Knocks, in which students could potentially enter the league like they have 8 badges, that sounds like a neat alternative to avoid the usual 8 gyms formula like Alola sorta did.
 
I'd rather if the whole premise of the main game was around the DLC's second part, Blueberry Academy. The school having this huge terarium that expands with your progress, plus housing the 4 leaders to defeat and face the champ, already gives the school setting much more needed focus than whatever the Paldea academy did (or rather, didn't). The concept reminds me of that old anime episode School of Hard Knocks, in which students could potentially enter the league like they have 8 badges, that sounds like a neat alternative to avoid the usual 8 gyms formula like Alola sorta did.


Tbh I don't think either the main game or DLC use the school setting very well. I remember being extremely let down by the latter because I expected some sort of No More Heroes-esque point system in order to challenge the Elite Four. But nope! You get to challenge them right away because you're just special (and something about kids and cellphones)
 
Two related opinions:
1) The definitive Pokemon fangame has not been made yet. Solid attempts have come around over the years, but each of them are missing something or another to truly take them to that next level occupied by projects like Sonic & The Fallen Star, AM2R and Fallout London. The closest is probably Pokemon Xenoverse, which seems very well-thought out and made overall but still has some noticeable presentational deficiencies (lol at that adult Silver design just being Giovanni with a wig).
I know we've moved on but I believe an update is in order
https://www.pokecommunity.com/threa...l-release-spa-en-translation-complete.529202/
It has been brought to my attention that I am a moron. Forget I ever said anything. This conversation never took place.
 
my only pmd experience is trying to play explorers of sky many many years ago and not being able to beat drowzee on mt. bristle (literal first boss battle of game). i am scared to go back even now. he is so strong
update on this (if anyone cares): a few weeks ago i finally, after a decade+ of trying, defeated drowzee on mt. bristle



i am now stuck on the optional bidoof mission. possibly i am not cut out for this franchise
 
Well, Nintendo & The Pokemon Company just pulled the trigger on Palworld:
https://kotaku.com/palworld-pokemon-company-lawsuit-nintendo-pocketpair-1851652124

I'm both surprised but not surprised.

Surprised because it did look like Nintendo & TPC were maybe gonna let Palworld slide (at least while the game stays in "Early Access") and let it be the flash in the pan that it eventually settled into.

But then again, maybe that was their plan. Wait for its popularity to die down, which gives their lawyers more then enough time to find every single infringement, and when things are calm strike them. They could also say they gave Palworld more then enough time to change the more blatant infringement designs to something more original (there's more than one way to design a humanoid grass rabbit that doesn't look like Cinderace, I'm sure), but with Palworld releasing an expansion which includes some more "not Pokemon" it's clear that wasn't likely going to be the case.

And of course this could also be seen as an exercise by Nintendo & TPC of protecting their intellectual property. Even if the courts do say Palworld just slips under the radar, at the very least the next game which copycats Pokemon designs won't be able to use the excuse "well they let Palworld get away with it".

My guess of the end result of all this: In order for Palworld to continue, they will have to pay some kind of fine (though probably not as much as Nintendo and TPC are asking) and be forced to change all the Pal designs which will no doubt be brought up during the case (which will be the biggest hit to them).
 
As an artist, Nintendo doing this is based and I don't get why people think copyright infringement is cool in this manner just because it's a company that did it

Actual human beings made the Pokemon designs, not just an algorithm from a company

Also the CEO of Pocketpair is a cryptobro who posted AI generated Pokemon prompts onto his social media I have zero sympathy

also I guarantee I have played more monster collection games that aren't Pokemon than 90% of the people who say "if you dislike palworld you just dickride Pokemon" or whatever

Temtem/Yokai Watch/SMT if you count that/Monster Sanctuary/Coromon/uh fucking Palworld? I did play it!/more
 
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