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Unpopular opinions

pokemon4eva said:
The thing is that it happens way too quickly to feel impactful. All I described happens already at the start of the game, and I feel it would be more impactful if the process of gaining trust would've been more gradual. We never really see anyone in the village outright rejecting Pokemon as a whole despite the frenzied Nobles, in fact, you see the Galaxy Team working together with Pokemon since the start (e.g. Abra), like how things should be in the Pokemon world. That said, I'll try to replay this game sometime soon, before the inevitable ZA trailer this Pokemon Day, and see if I'm forgetting sth crucial.
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Again, the Galaxy Team and the Clans alike mostly only use Pokemon at a very basic level, namely first or maybe second-stage helpers, with a large portion of citizens not having any Pokemon at all. Before the Origin Palkia/Dialga encounter you never fight anyone with a team bigger than 4. It's only after that point you begin to see anything resembling the more fleshed-out rosters of modern Pokemon trainers on a consistent basis. You fight a team of 6 two times: One of those instances is against a fellow time traveler and the other is The Obligatory Cynthia Fanservice Power Hour.

Could this conflict have been a more consistent throughline of the narrative? Maybe. But when you get right down to it videogames are a visual medium: You could have hired [insert your favorite prestige author here] as chief dialogue writer and no words they could've put in the textboxes of a game for children would've been able to sell "Pokemon are terrifying creatures" better than a Garchomp with glowing red eyes trying to maul you or the roar of a colossal Avalugg with glaives on its face

ant4456 said:
Wulfric from Kalos, Clay from Unova, Wally from Hoenn, Laventon is Leon/Hop Galar, Irida has been speculated to be May, Karen Johto, and probably a few more.
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I respect your broader point but two little addendums:

-Laventon and Irida are not ancestors lol, this game and Indigo Disk show that when they wanna make a relative to a pre-existing character they beat you over the head with it ("SO THERE'S THIS GIRL WHOSE NAME IS AN ANAGRAM OF CLAY AND HER ACE IS EXCADRILL AND HER AREA'S THEME HAS A DRIFTVEIL MOTIF AND SHE SAYS SHE'S THE DAUGHTER OF A UNOVA GYM LEADER AND-")
-Iscan is actually likely an homage to an interview tidbit about Clay being a Japanese immigrant
 
Esserise said:
In all seriousness, I think that’s a pretty good read, and I’d even add to it that I think it’s actually rather shrewd for Cynthia to let you, a Trainer whom she clearly recognizes as capable, take on Cyrus first — by doing so, she makes herself, the strongest Trainer in Sinnoh, the last line of defense against a Cyrus whose team has been softened up. There is, after all, no reason why she can’t also battle him in the event that you lose.
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that's an interesting point I hadn't considered directly
Esserise said:
The problem, I feel, is mainly with the presentation of the moment. There’s ways you could indicate that this is Cynthia’s plan, giving her a sort of sharp analytical portrayal that would be befitting of a Champion, but the actual sequence in the game just sort of… deflates. Cyrus goes on a rant, and if you even bother to take a moment to talk to Cynthia, she just protests that “That’s no justice at all!”, and then the game just stops as if sitting there saying, “… Well? It’s boss time; you’re gonna walk up and challenge him now, right?”

(I should note that any praise in this post only extends to Platinum, since in DP and BDSP, Cynthia isn’t involved in the climax at all, and is only marginally more excusable than Diantha by virtue of the fact that the Spear Pillar is more out-of-the-way than Geosenge Town, and that Cyrus didn’t publicly announce his plans over the airwaves like Lysandre did — though she definitely knew that Team Galactic were dangerous, given that they bombed a lake.)
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To a certain point, I think you have to suspend belief at the particulars. NPC dialogue doesn't change as you progress through the game, when you repeat fights you originally lose there is no acknowledgement of it, and these two occasionally combine for boss fights where Koga will be talking shit about how it's not over yet to your +6 Gyarados who one-shotted his last 3 Pokemon.

In a region where every single student has been sent out to explore, no one discovers the really monstrous Pokemon wandering around, and in a region where there should be multiple champion level trainers, you only run into the one that happens to be your rival. Not only that, but in a region where Pokemon battling is such a normal activity, it's obscene that people don't use easy-to-find battle items or any semblance of a strategy. Even things like "Switching out" are beyond them.

The whole Area Zero thing flies under the radar too as far as I remember.

I think some of it can be filled in with your imagination, I have an idea for a Johto challenge run where I make it a plot device that Lance was in league with Team Rocket and you kept catching him at inopportune moments where he was forced to act a hero.

I do think Post Gen 4 they've made a more concerted effort to make the games feel realistic, and it hasn't been to their benefit. Even in Gen 5, it felt like they were constantly pulling up the football at the last second of a good boss fight with your enemies, and it does make the 7 Sages cooler but it also is dissatisfying. Similarly it was more fun to fight low-stakes mobsters than have a more realistic enemy of "sympathetic bullies" imo

ant4456 said:
I read this post and I agree with a lot btw, though I think if you haven't engaged much with a lot of the convo around the game and just aren't super well-acquainted with deeper bits of the series I can see why you wouldn't agree on the characters.

But essentially almost every character in the game is an "ancestor" to some character from the prior entries, not even really just limited to Sinnoh. And honestly one thing I've always said to myself is that it's kinda silly that so many characters have their roots in Hisui, it feels like this artificially makes Hisui wayyy more important to Pokemon history than any other region.

Like this:View attachment 713032

You mean to fucking tell me that Alder's family came from Hisui?

Why

Like that just doesn't make sense. I mean it can technically be true! But they do this kind of thing like 20 times and I think it kinda cheapens the series a bit.

Wulfric from Kalos, Clay from Unova, Wally from Hoenn, Laventon is Leon/Hop Galar, Irida has been speculated to be May, Karen Johto, and probably a few more.

Some of these are from regions that are close to Sinnoh/Hisui anyways so I don't quite mind as much, Karen/Wally/Irida, but I think the other three are just. Why lol.

Part of why I don't like this is also just, again, I hate this anime trope. As for the characters on their own merits, I find them to be weak. My gold standard is still Alola where the characters have actual arcs, they seem to exist for more than just to serve the player plot, and they have relationships with each other that effect how they act. To me the closest three is Adaman/Irida and Kamado, but ehhhhh. It's just not very important to the game imo. And that's fine but I still don't like it for that

Especially when they like. Talk a lot. Replaying this game is hard because the first like 2 hours of the game is just non-stop yapping from people I don't really care about
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Okay well that is just silly. I have mixed thoughts on canon discourse especially for something like Pokemon that is explicitly trying to sell a toy, ie why did Pokemon decide to add a Paradox Pokemon of a Pokemon that only recently appeared? Because the design is popular and they can make money repackaging it!! but something like that is lazy nostalgia bait. Not everything has to tie together and nor is it cool because it does. It borderlines on the weird bloodline science that anime engages with where some bloodlines are just genetically superior to others. The whole "team galaxy" thing was bad enough, I talked about how its like making a movie about colonizing America with the different groups of settlers called Republicans and Democrats lol.
 
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Yung Dramps said:
Where? All the Trivia section on his article talks about is the hints that he's from Galar, which isn't the same thing as being a direct Hop/Leon relative
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Oh sorry IDK why but Google SEO decided to just link a user's page on Bulbapedia, and I just thought it was an actual article lol

https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/User:Force_Fire/List_of_ancestors

My bad on that, but I also do still think Laventon is related probably

Hop is implied to become a Professor at the end of SWSH. I think this is the biggest tie-in. Meta-contextually SWSH was the last game (BDSP is fake) and I think that just makes it easier.

Now for some stretches: This is probably debatable/maybe even just wrong, I think Laventon's hair color we see in the concept art is a very similar color to what is Leon's likely actual hair color (facial hair, compared to what looks probably dyed)

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Next, if you make an even bigger leap/stretch, I think Laventon's hat fits into a motif between the three with puffy material stylized a similar way:

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Now that one is just cope so feel free to 100% ignore it lol

Okay by the way I just realized Sugimori art for humans looks really fucking wonky nowadays what the fuck happened
 
ant4456 said:
Okay by the way I just realized Sugimori art for humans looks really fucking wonky nowadays what the fuck happened
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Am I crazy or did a sizable chunk of S/V characters look like someone was screwing around on the Character creation page? Like how Miis used to look in Wii Sports Resort.
 
pika pal said:
So in theory this would be a balancing aspect, but in practice the shortcoming is that Pursuit was most commonly ran on Proper Dark Types for a variety of reasons (Resist/Immune to the types they could "trap," more limited distribution for a while), with a few rare cases such as Aegislash or Metagross experimenting with it (and not being particularly strong if they didn't get the "switched" power).

Close Combat was relatively safe on Fighting Types since it was strong and reliable, and frequently employed to Wallbreak off STAB (usually not a massive loss losing the user if they got a key KO or 2). The main threat to a CC user is a revenge Kill, but before Gen 8 the main users were often reasonably fast for their tier such as Infernape or Terrakion with their 108 Speed over a then-benchmark of 100. This is also assuming the -1 made the difference in being KO'd or not given a lot of Fighters were pretty Glassy anyway.

CC's availability as a coverage move became a Homogenization problem when it was given to mons that had ways to circumvent this such as Priority (Scizor and Breloom) or for whom it was a straight upgrade over their existing option in something like Superpower (Tapu Bulu, Conkeldurr) or High Jump Kick (Blaziken, Scrafty). Practically every Pokemon that gets CC and runs any amount of Physical Prowess will consider it, because it's significantly less risky/debilitating than the alternatives of its power and in several cases they can exploit it better due to not being (pure) Fighting Types and thus having more tools to synergize with it.

tl;dr Close Combat's design made it strong but risky for a lot of Fighters, but the TM distribution gave it to things for whom many of those risks are mitigated/not applicable.
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Exactly. At first, the balance of CC was like:

Scenario 1: Infernape punched through something with Close Combat. Now they got something with priority on the field. Do you keep Ape in at -1 and likely get clapped, or do you switch in something else and let your opponent get momentum?

Scenario 2: Hariyama yeeted something with Close Combat. Now they got an attacker on the field, and Yama's otherwise solid bulk is compromised because it's at -1, can it take a hit? Should it take a hit?
 
Close Combat is a fine move imo. I think it's interestingly balanced- for a faster pokemon like infernape, you often have to be sure that you KO because at -1 you die to most attacks, sort of like gen 1 hyper beam, while slower pokemon have the downside of needing to take a hit before using it. It's not THAT strong- you won't be KOing neutral non-bulky targets (I'm thinking like support cinderace) with a non-stab close combat, and again, close combat is so much more reliant on getting that KO than a generic stab move like EQ. There's also the fact that fighting, while it does have a few key SE hits like dark and steel, is also far from a spammable type with resistances from ghost, fairy, flying, poison, and sometimes even bug. But you could say the same thing about Wellspring's Ivy Cudgel thudding into our many (6 OU proper and 8 at B or above on the viability rankings) dragons, and the difference in spammability is unreal- the point to make here is that when you use Close Combat, you basically are forced to switch out unless you are faster and can KO the next turn. So yeah, a balanced move, way more than that piece of shit Knock Off.

Also y'all are seriously exaggerating how many things get close combat, look at it versus earthquake knock off u-turn on showdown and you'll see the difference.
 
Just A Shroom God said:
Close Combat is a fine move imo. I think it's interestingly balanced- for a faster pokemon like infernape, you often have to be sure that you KO because at -1 you die to most attacks, sort of like gen 1 hyper beam, while slower pokemon have the downside of needing to take a hit before using it. It's not THAT strong- you won't be KOing neutral non-bulky targets (I'm thinking like support cinderace) with a non-stab close combat, and again, close combat is so much more reliant on getting that KO than a generic stab move like EQ. There's also the fact that fighting, while it does have a few key SE hits like dark and steel, is also far from a spammable type with resistances from ghost, fairy, flying, poison, and sometimes even bug. But you could say the same thing about Wellspring's Ivy Cudgel thudding into our many (6 OU proper and 8 at B or above on the viability rankings) dragons, and the difference in spammability is unreal- the point to make here is that when you use Close Combat, you basically are forced to switch out unless you are faster and can KO the next turn. So yeah, a balanced move, way more than that piece of shit Knock Off.

Also y'all are seriously exaggerating how many things get close combat, look at it versus earthquake knock off u-turn on showdown and you'll see the difference.
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Again, CC is a great move, ain't nothing wrong with it.

You could even make the case that Knock Off shouldn't be a TM either, that's the kind of thing I'm talking about. Certain moves just shouldn't be TMs.
 
While I agree in a vacuum, and I don't have a problem with Close Combat being a TM on paper, I have always kind of disliked the decision to let almost every Fighting-type have access to Close Combat after it became a TM.

And I'm not saying this because I think Close Combat is too good of a move per se, but rather from a flavor standpoint Close Combat becoming a more homogenous STAB for all Fighting-types really takes away from the variety and flavor that has always made Fighting-type Pokemon so interesting to me. What makes Fighting-type so interesting from a flavor standpoint is that there are so many powerful moves: Close Combat, Superpower, Hammer Arm, High Jump Kick/Jump Kick, and some weaker but more utilitarian moves like Brick Break, Drain Punch, and Power-Up Punch and whatnot, and there's a lot of interesting variety in Fighting-type attacks that are spread differently across different Pokemon. Because Fighting is an incredibly flexible type as to what kinds of designs it can invite into its roster, because there are so many different flavors and styles of Fighting-types, and back then not everything got Close Combat, but likely got another powerful Fighting STAB as an alternative, and this made things interesting from a gameplay standpoint as well as a flavor standpoint. You have agile fighters, Pokemon that focus on sheer physical strength and muscle power, some that specialize in some form of martial arts, and so on and so forth, and that's what has made Fighting such a fun and colorful type to me from a standpoint.

Like for instance, we have three Fire/Fighting starters: Blaziken, Infernape, and Emboar. Before Gen 8/9, they all had different Fighting-type techniques they could learn naturally. Infernape was the only one of the three who learned Close Combat, and this fits because Infernape is a slim, agile monkey and Close Combat flavor wise is the user getting in close and firing a relentless flurry of attacks at a rapid pace. When you look at Infernape, it is very believable for Infernape to pull off Close Combat from a flavor standpoint. Like the other move it learns naturally is Mach Punch, which is firing a punch at a mach speed. This gives Infernape a distinct flavor overall, not just from the other two Fire/Fighting starters but as a whole. Meanwhile Emboar is more of a slow, heavyweight fighter with a large build, and the strongest Fighting moves it learned are Hammer Arm and Superpower. Superpower is as strong as Close Combat but instead lowers Attack and Defense instead of both defenses, giving it a bit of a downside there, but flavor wise it fits Emboar well distinctly because a heavyweight like Emboar is the kind that would concentrate a lot of physical power and then deliver a single, powerful blow to the opponent. Blaziken learns kicking moves like High Jump Kick, and naturally it learns Double Kick and Blaze Kick, because it's a fighter that specializes in kicking. This allows the three of them to feel distinct from one another flavor wise.

I used those three as the prime examples but among the entire roster of Fighting-types the variety in flavor has always been interesting to me and Fighting-type's wide set of moves, each with rather limited distribution among Fighting-types, helped enforce that variety and flexibility. I don't mind other types being homogenous: elemental types like Fire, Water, Grass, Electric, and Ice are predicated on their element and don't invite too much variety in moves to begin with, Ground is a case where most attacks are iterations of "stomp the ground and cause a tremor", like Bulldoze, Magnitude, and naturally Earthquake, and so on and so forth. But I feel Fighting is one of those cases where at least before Gen 8, the variety in its flavor in both moves and Pokemon was/is a big part of its identity.
 
ant4456 said:
Okay by the way I just realized Sugimori art for humans looks really fucking wonky nowadays what the fuck happened
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It arguably has been an issue since Gen 3
When he draws and designs male chars, he almost always has the exact same pants design with little to no perspective, and really stiff poses. It was partially the reason Ohmura took over for designing humans starting in HGSS, then BW/BW2, the dude can draw perspective better for stock art
image0-39.jpg

This wasn't always the case for Sugimori, as his early 90s doujin art had much better volume and clothing variety, but when he got influenced mid 90s of Toriyama's style BUT suddenly had to crunch for Pokemon, his drawing focus/skills for humans faded. He even admitted later interviews that...he wouldn't be hired for merit/skill these days

Ohmura meanwhile, he wasn't ushered into the crunching standard for art. He was an established freelancer, along with other Gen 6 on artists for humans. Sugi improved for model sheet creation, but stock poses are still iffy

Like this

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Ironically my unpopular opinion despite saying all of this, I typically prefer char design in OG games over remakes. Being an average looking person with varied mon types is fine, I feel it gets aggressively defined/rigid for role otherwise (oh I use a ghost mon, all my outfits match)

Yes this includes Archie, even if I find the OG art's pose shit
 
Sonikku A said:
It arguably has been an issue since Gen 3
When he draws and designs male chars, he almost always has the exact same pants design with little to no perspective, and really stiff poses. It was partially the reason Ohmura took over for designing humans starting in HGSS, then BW/BW2, the dude can draw perspective better for stock art
View attachment 713689
This wasn't always the case for Sugimori, as his early 90s doujin art had much better volume and clothing variety, but when he got influenced mid 90s of Toriyama's style BUT suddenly had to crunch for Pokemon, his drawing focus/skills for humans faded. He even admitted later interviews that...he wouldn't be hired for merit/skill these days

Ohmura meanwhile, he wasn't ushered into the crunching standard for art. He was an established freelancer, along with other Gen 6 on artists for humans. Sugi improved for model sheet creation, but stock poses are still iffy

Like this

View attachment 713699

Ironically my unpopular opinion despite saying all of this, I typically prefer char design in OG games over remakes. Being an average looking person with varied mon types is fine, I feel it gets aggressively defined/rigid for role otherwise (oh I use a ghost mon, all my outfits match)

Yes this includes Archie, even if I find the OG art's pose shit
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Idk if you made the comparison/demonstrative image but picking Wake as an example for his clothing not having thickness is either blatant cherry-picking or an absurd level of ignorance as he's a wrestler and presumably wearing form-fitting clothes. That said, there should probably be an indent where his pants start on his abdomen and possibly where his gloves start on his arms. His boots don't make a lot of sense, either.
 
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it's tier list Tuesday somewhere!! I can repost somewhere else if too off topic + can resize because they look massive on my pc.

Edit: mainly a vibe based thing with a combination of how much I like the design and how much I enjoy using it in a game. If a design likes Sneasel gets a more usable in-game form later on, I'll still rate it highly because the original design is what I liked.
 
I wish people would treat Sword and Shield as actual games and not scapegoats for tired “modern Pokémon bad” soapboxes in general

While I think the games are mediocre, they have a couple of redeeming qualities. I like some of the new variants on old mons like Cursola and Galar Darmanitan. I think the Champion battle is among the series’s best. I don’t care much for the Wild Area due to low encounter percentages and the game not telling you if something is a traditional encounter in the grass instead of on the field, but hey, being fearful of strong wild mons without badges is a cool concept. I honestly didn’t think the games looked that bad either, mushroom town was pretty cool. Even a Pokémon game on autopilot is still a Pokémon game and thus enjoyable.

Only things I remember distinctly hating are that motion sensor pit gym puzzle and the phoned-in-even-for-Pokémon-standards evil characters. How do you go from Team Skull (one of the most interesting villain teams in the franchise) to Team Yell and “guess I’m gonna cause the apocalypse guys” Rose? Felt like they were there out of obligation - I seriously think the game would have been better without them being forced in there. The Piers fight is kinda a cool setpiece even if a Nintendo DS game had more singing, but other than that yeah the evil plot is an utter mess.
 
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DrumstickGaming said:
I wish people would treat Sword and Shield as actual games and not scapegoats for tired “modern Pokémon bad” soapboxes in general

While I think the games are mediocre, they have a couple of redeeming qualities. I like some of the new variants on old mons like Cursola and Galar Darmanitan. I think the Champion battle is among the series’s best.
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This is true, Leon's team absolutely slaps. Rhyperior, Aegislash, Dragapult, and Haxorus are all objectively very awesome but it takes a real man of style to use a Mr Rime and still look cool
 
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