Unpopular opinions

ant4456 said:
Gen 6 hadn't moved on from Chibi yet so they used the anime keyart to try to bring the battle intros to life.

I don't think this is "cutting corners" I just think they were going for battles being a different visual style that wasn't accompanied by the way trainer battles were set to be made, likely in the game's planning stage- ie. IIRC there are no in-battle trainer 3D models besides the player.

Where I think this battle definitely doesn't cut corners is IMO it's one of the most memorable and coolest arenas in the entire series. Left an impression on me as a kid, which I think is kinda what counts.

From here on out, except for SWSH where arenas are part of the aesthetic, almost every Champion Battle is kinda just on a building or something.

I always thought Alola's Champion Arena was a gigantic missed opportunity:

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yeah it's pretty funny to go from Diantha's room in XY (legit great, I agree)
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to Geeta's room
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Now to the game's credit, that's not the game playing its full hand (if you know, you know) but the point still stands - it undersells this individual moment. Granted, you could argue Nemona is the final battle, but yeah still a weak arena for Geeta here
 
Inkay being the spotlight hour in Pokemon Go today reminded me that it's part-Dark, since apparently I was under the impression it was pure Psychic and acquires Dark upon evolving like Pancham does.

...why not, though? It has to actively go through a mood shift of sorts to evolve (the holding-your-console-upside down thing is as much an evolution gimmick as having a Dark-type in the party) and, unlike Malamar, isn't described as being malicious or scheming.

X/Omega Ruby dex entry: Opponents who stare at the flashing of the light-emitting spots on its body become dazed and lose their will to fight.

Y/Alpha Sapphire dex entry: It flashes the light-emitting spots on its body, which drains its opponent's will to fight. It takes the opportunity to scuttle away and hide.

Sure you could argue that using its powers to flee from conflict is cowardly and deceptive, but pretty much every prey animal in the world would qualify to be a Dark-type under that criteria. And there are a plethora of other Pokemon which are described as disliking conflict - Ralts and Gothitelle are an immediate (Psychic) example.
 
I think the reason champions feel a lot weaker to players compared to the classic era has less to do with the actual boss design and moreso because around half the time they just aren't the focus anymore. Kanto through Sinnoh had other things going on in the world, but ultimately everything converged on the champion. Clear that point, however, and you get:
-BW1, where Alder is literally a jobber to show how much of a threat N has become
-Alola, which makes a whole point of there not even being a champion yet. Yes, Kukui & Hau mechanically serve the same purpose, but their characterization and story presence gives them a very different vibe to Lance/Steven/Cynthia or even Blue
-SV, where Geeta is not even the final boss in one of three micro-campaigns which in turn are just setups for the actual final boss which has absolutely nothing to do with the gym challenge or pokemon league whatsoever

The decoupling thus far has reached its apex with LA and SV; N at least won the Champion title, which in fact existed. Leon is basically the only really good classic-style champion we've gotten for a decade now.

None of this is a criticism for the record. If this series wants to keep telling more interesting stories and play around with its structure for more varied worldbuilding and game design, you can't have every game end with a classic-style champion anymore.
 
DrumstickGaming said:
Now to the game's credit, that's not the game playing its full hand (if you know, you know) but the point still stands - it undersells this individual moment. Granted, you could argue Nemona is the final battle, but yeah still a weak arena for Geeta here
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I will actually disagree there for a moment.

The "Champion" in SV is a bit different from the champions in other Pokemon entries.
By the way it is presented, it looks like in Paldea "Champion" is just the qualification given to a trainer that has passed the champion test.
It does not equal to "strongest trainer of the region", something shown by both Geeta having a stronger team available than what she uses and (like many gym leaders) just using one that "she considers appropriate" in the exam, and Nemona herself having trained plenty of pokemon and challenging you as champion equal.
This is way different from the previous games where there was "THE" Champion and it was "THE" strongest trainer.

Paldea has multiple champions, all considered "the strongest of the region", and apparently also people that get called when shit is problematic and Pokemon experts are required (see area zero). Nemona is mentioned to be one of the youngest, but definitely not the only one.

Thus, the Elite 4 and Geeta battles happening in what's essentially just a sterile building is somewhat appropriate. I agree it's not really exciting, but it really is "just a exam". You're doing the final exam for your Pokemon Trainer Degree (tm). Differently from the other places, you're not "done" after it, there's still plenty to go and grow as trainer.
(And the games themselves reiterate on this with the fact that the story isn't even done after that)

Ultimately, the "final battle" of SV (before the DLCs anyway) was within the Area Zero final mission, and that is a proper final battle with its own spicy arena, as good if not better as the Champion battles of other games (on top of the emotional weight it carries).
 
DrumstickGaming said:
yeah it's pretty funny to go from Diantha's room in XY (legit great, I agree)
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to Geeta's room
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Now to the game's credit, that's not the game playing its full hand (if you know, you know) but the point still stands - it undersells this individual moment. Granted, you could argue Nemona is the final battle, but yeah still a weak arena for Geeta here
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VGC has been blowing up SV's arena problem, especially since it's coming off SS's hype stadiums.

You can hardly find a decent one, and Mesagoza's looks wack.
 
DrumstickGaming said:
I'm a gameplay over graphics person - that Diantha stuff just sticks out as particularly egregious to me. I find it overblown everyone jumps on graphics when I've never heard anyone complain before then (I'm not gonna open that can of worms that was that dubious "improving animations" statement here)

HeartGold and Soulsilver is what happens when pretty graphics takes precedent over good design (I talked about this sort of thing to death in my playthrough)
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I wanna read through the whole thread, but after reading through the first post, I had some thoughts. I do think that HGSS butchers Silver's character but I strongly disagree that 1). Silver is just like Blue: to me Blue comes across like a spoiled brat, and Silver comes across like a feral child -- Someone who had come from a bad environment and didn't understand how to connect with other people. and 2). that Blue and Silver should have "learnt their lesson" and been nicer after losing to you one last time. I'd say both are meant to be trash talkers, and there are subtle differences in how they treat you pre/post end of game. And if they were deferential, it would have felt like childish storytelling

Compared to that fellow in Gen 7, I'd say he, like all the other characters in Sun/Moon, is poorly written garbage.

I almost finished my dex in Arceus and pretty much burnt out of the game. I didn't put in that many hours either, finished with 45 which is less time than I put into any other game. It was fun for awhile, but the gameplay loop became very repetitive. I lose interest in collecting when it feels pointless. What's the point of having Arceus if it's just another Pokemon I can't do anything with besides catch and fight other Pokemon I can already beat. I'll finish the game eventually but meh.

To me, collecting is about 2 things: they have to look cool and it should serve a purpose to have it. And I don't get the latter from L:A.

I'm replaying HGSS rn and I'm liking it a lot more. I traded in a bunch of Pokemon, tms, evolutionary items, and a lucky egg, which has helped with grinding. I did forget 2 evolutionary items which really pisses me off (dawn stone and razor fang) so now i have to wait til postgame, because GameFreak had to make every single Gen 4 evolution unusable until they gave the say-so, BUT the game is still much more fun because I'm getting xp at a bettter rate. There is still something off with the gen because it feels like it has worse encounters than Crystal although there's obv only a few differences. And the game feels smaller.

IDK, all the critiques I made of it earlier itt still stand, but the extra stuff I traded in and made-easier xp curves help a lot, and honestly, the games are set up for you to do that, and I'm sure a lot of ppl did replay them multiple times to stack up on resources, and I think that gets lost in 2025 when a lot of people are doing casual playthroughs on cart with one DS and/or on an emulator when they're not using pkhex, and are often trying to go through the game quickly. maybe some of that's projection, but either way, there isn't a 3ds or switch game, where I intentionally trade in a Pokemon like I did here with Abamosnow and Froslass to see how they fare vs the champion. And that matters.

well I tried with Froslass but forget the [redacted] dawn stone
 
Basedwell said:
I do think that HGSS butchers Silver's character but I strongly disagree that 1). Silver is just like Blue: to me Blue comes across like a spoiled brat, and Silver comes across like a feral child -- Someone who had come from a bad environment and didn't understand how to connect with other people
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Unless I'm misremembering from a later post, I didn't say Silver is explicitly like Blue though: I said "As for my opinion on Silver as a character, he's a tiny bit more interesting than Blue, but not by much. I like Blue's development in this game more than I like Silver's personally. I feel like with Silver, they went so all in on making an outright mean character, and it went horribly right."

As for Silver coming from a bad environment, my response is the game needs to show me that. Multiple times. Even if you take the Celebi stuff into consideration, that's just one scene. I wouldn't say Silver is a bad character at all, I just wish they thought it out a little more.

One of the things I disliked most about SWSH was Bede's character-I really dislike them going back to a shallow character with no depth that arbitrarily hates you. People may knock friendly rivals all they want, but they're way more interesting. Hop in SWSH gets the box legendary and temporarily changes his team on account of Bede (as much as I dislike Bede, that was an amazing curveball the first time). Bianca is such a similarly realistic portrayal of what if a Pokemon game asked "what if the rival isn't good enough?" - heck even XY's distaff counterpart rival flirted with this. The SV rival characters were wonderful with the exception of Kieran (my least favorite Pokemon character by a landslide).
 
QuentinQuonce said:
View attachment 715555

Thoughts on this?

Because it feels like a hugantic, ginormic reach but I'd genuinely be happy to be corrected
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Reach, but maybe not as much of one as it seems at first glance. Venusaur, Blastoise, Pinsir, Ampharos, Gyarados, Steelix, Heracross, Houndooom, Sceptile, Blaziken, Swampert, Gardevoir, Sableye, Medicham, Manectric, Camerupt, Bannette, Salamence, Rayquaza, Gallade, Diance all look nothing like either. While there are some X and Y shaped megas, Glalie, Metagross and Abomasnow being the most obvious ones, it's nowhere near pretty much all.
 
MoonlightRose said:
Reach, but maybe not as much of one as it seems at first glance. Venusaur, Blastoise, Pinsir, Ampharos, Gyarados, Steelix, Heracross, Houndooom, Sceptile, Blaziken, Swampert, Gardevoir, Sableye, Medicham, Manectric, Camerupt, Bannette, Salamence, Rayquaza, Gallade, Diance all look nothing like either. While there are some X and Y shaped megas, Glalie, Metagross and Abomasnow being the most obvious ones, it's nowhere near pretty much all.
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I really wouldn't count Metagross in favour of this, it's been X-shaped since gen 3.
 
The Pokemon fandom and massive leaps in logic, name a more iconic duo. Feels like all the big fan theories are things like this.

"Hey, did you know X? I mean sure, the only real evidence for it is circumstantial at best, and if anything we have more proof against it, but we all know X is true, so why bother fighting against it?"
 
I have never seen a fanbase for any ongoing media franchise as utterly obsessed with nonexistent patterns as the Pokemon fanbase. I see shit like "Oh we gotta get a BW remake in Gen 10 because it fits the pattern of releasing remakes in even numbered gens" and I just. Literally where did this impulse come from. You can say "Oh it's because this series was so predictable for so long" but that hasn't been the case for a decade and even then I'm pretty sure Call of Duty fans don't do this shit
 
Yung Dramps said:
I have never seen a fanbase for any ongoing media franchise as utterly obsessed with nonexistent patterns as the Pokemon fanbase. I see shit like "Oh we gotta get a BW remake in Gen 10 because it fits the pattern of releasing remakes in even numbered gens" and I just. Literally where did this impulse come from. You can say "Oh it's because this series was so predictable for so long" but that hasn't been the case for a decade and even then I'm pretty sure Call of Duty fans don't do this shit
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You say "utterly obsessed" like it's a bad thing, and not part of the appeal of Pokemon. People are going to find non-existent patterns in everything, it's part of being human. The mystique of the world of Pokemon drives children to circulate rumors to each other about things like the truck Mew, Pikablu, and so on. Pokemon is a necessarily social game, so it's got a huge social base that's interested in thinking about these things and communicating about them. It also happens to be the biggest media franchise on the planet, which certainly helps.
 
missangelic said:
You say "utterly obsessed" like it's a bad thing, and not part of the appeal of Pokemon. People are going to find non-existent patterns in everything, it's part of being human. The mystique of the world of Pokemon drives children to circulate rumors to each other about things like the truck Mew, Pikablu, and so on. Pokemon is a necessarily social game, so it's got a huge social base that's interested in thinking about these things and communicating about them. It also happens to be the biggest media franchise on the planet, which certainly helps.
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It's annoying because when it doesn't happen people get viscerally upset and say the devs suck / don't know what they're doing

Shit, I've done this before when the theories for SV DLC, which were based on patterns in the game, vastly surprised the actual story. I'm guilty-!

Think about how many times people have gotten upset about not getting a second region lollllll
 
ant4456 said:
It's annoying because when it doesn't happen people get viscerally upset and say the devs suck / don't know what they're doing

Shit, I've done this before when the theories for SV DLC, which were based on patterns in the game, vastly surprised the actual story. I'm guilty-!

Think about how many times people have gotten upset about not getting a second region lollllll
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double post bc editing on mobile is awful

Also this is a long grudge I've held for like 6 years now, in SWSH hype season I told people in a Discord that a new Eeveelution wasn't gonna happen and was practically bullied by some people for that take lol

And ofc, no one gives a shit about how rude they were like that when they're wrong- they forgot long ago lmao
 
Also I just wanna get this out of my system because I don't know when I'll get another opportunity but I'm stunned at how many people are still asking for BW remakes. I thought Unova fans wanted followup on Blueberry Academy and a check-in on Emmet but a surprisingly large chunk apparently just wanna reheat the 2010 DS game and cram it in the next year while Kalos gets all the actual cool new content and worldbuilding. "But the original games are too expensive now and I want new players to experience them" ok, fair enough. Ask for a DS Pokemon Legacy Collection or NSO ports then.

I have seen one genuinely good argument for a BW remake and that's restoring the Dream World in an entirely in-game form. Everything else, in my view, is tantamount to asking for a boring, inferior product as a Unova revisit. This isn't even BDSP doom: They could release a Supreme Black and Wondrous White that's absolutely gorgeous and lovingly crafted with 5 years of dev time and more content than HGSS and my overriding thought on it "Why didn't you make a Link Between Worlds-style BW3 with all this stuff?????"

Legends has raised the bar. The possibilities for returning to old regions are basically near-infinite now. Let go of remakes.
 
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