Unpopular opinions

Apart from Megas and Z-Moves, I think the power creep is inevitable. I mean, whoever are in charge of the competitive aspect of Pokémon at Game Freak seem to slowly get a better idea of what works and doesn't in doubles (singles is optional).

Up to Gen III, they were mostly doing what they pleased.
 

earl

(EVIOLITE COMPATIBLE)
is a Community Contributor
Apart from Megas and Z-Moves, I think the power creep is inevitable. I mean, whoever are in charge of the competitive aspect of Pokémon at Game Freak seem to slowly get a better idea of what works and doesn't in doubles (singles is optional).

Up to Gen III, they were mostly doing what they pleased.
The only time we lost powercreep was maybe gen 1 to gen 2. But then again gen 2 is the generation in which Snorlax is the best pokemon in the game, even in Ubers, so god knows what's happening there
 
1. I think the TPCi voice acting is better than the 4kids one. I don't think 4kids was ever bad, but just that the new voices are better.

2. The original english opening is not the best. Again, was never bad, but I think many of the later openings are just better.
 
I'm not terribly fond of the implication that a focus on the look of the game is superficial, or that the game is even being judged solely upon that when not only was the conversation focusing on the feel and soul of the game; but you've also mistaken "feel and soul" for "graphic design" when it also applies to narrative, sound design, character. You are certainly entitled to your opinion, but I find it equally superficial to look at a game purely - or heavily - in terms of its numbers, its coding and its balance. Without artistic direction, without sound design, without some form of character; the function means nothing. A good example that comes to mind is XY; a game that is technically sound, that functions fine, that doesn't have too many balance problems if you decide against going with certain things like Mega Lucario or the Exp. Share, but is still so dull and boring and half-hearted in what it does with pretty much any element of its storytelling and visual design that there's not a lot of people that would call it one of their favourites or go back to play it much.

In the scenario you've laid out where ORAS was not just as competently made as RSE but actually improved upon many of its mistakes to be technically superior, but looked and felt as bad if not worse than it is now... then I would still far, far prefer Emerald. Judging a game on its function is just as superficial as judging a game on its graphic design, and to toss aside one as if it's not anywhere near as important as the other is in my eyes quite naive and unaware as to how we consume media. And, if I may; comes across as a little ironic coming from someone with a Dragon Quest XI avatar; a game that quite heavily relies on the beauty of its world.



Also, I would disagree that FE:3H looks garbage and very heavily disagree that function is the pure reason people like it. You might argue that its graphics aren't quite as high quality as they could be; but fantastic art direction and some of the best character design the series has seen in years (granted, Fates set the bar pretty low) greatly pulls it through; to say nothing of other elements like the intriguing story, the loveable characters that the game forms its emotional core around, and the as-always fantastic music. There are low points such as the unfortunate blend of 3D and cel-shading used for cutscenes which I really wish FE would realise are not a good idea, but they are just not enough to hurt this game much at all. I would highly contest people only like FE:3H because it is functional when so much of the fan reception has been focused on how much they love the characters and narrative.

I also disagree that 3 Houses looks garbage in terms of the artistic development- I actually disagree on Fates Character Designs, I happen really to enjoy them- but back to the point, well 3 Houses is easily best in terms of artistic design- that being said, there are some graphical errors that can be examined close up, but the voice acting is the honestly one of the finest I've seen in a video game. The fact that literally every line and support conversation is voiced really draws fleshes the characters out and makes it the easily the best cast of characters in Fire Emblem. The music is wonderful as always. I could go into a bit more why 3 Houses is an amazing game, but I won't because this is the Pokemon Forums not Fire Emblem.

Anyway, on the topic of visuals and Mt. Coronet, I'm not really sure why people are jumping on Pokemon for bad visuals. Pokemon has never been spectacular when it comes visuals, I mean was DP were criticized for its poor visuals. SwSh were criticized for their Nintendo64 Graphics when were first revealed, but that seems to have improved. Mt. Coronet should have been something like the Tower of Spirits in Legend of Zelda: In Spirit Tracks- You constantly traverse a dungeon filled with Phantoms ( Who act like security guards ) to gain access to new places. Maybe Mt. Coronet could have something like that: You can explore parts of it to gain entry to the Lake Guardians.

Finally on the topic of ORAS VS Emerald. I like ORAS better. To me, the only thing Emerald has that ORAS doesn't have is the Battle Frontier. And some people mention the Rayquaza cutscene, but I find it really lame in the end. Two forces of nature are clashing, and all it takes is one dragon to roar in order to stop the fighting. You don't even capture Rayquaza. ORAS at least has a notorious fixing of the wrong orb scene, and actually provided a back story for the Weather Trio. On another note, I think it was lame that Wallace wasn't champion. And it was probably done for it being a remake of RS, I feel that it could easily been put in, they could say that Steven gave up his role of champion to solve mega stone mystery; not to mention Mega Milotic which could have been his ace, it could also allow Juan to appear as an NPC, since he's only mentioned in ORAS. Also Wallace>Steven.
 
I also disagree that 3 Houses looks garbage in terms of the artistic development- I actually disagree on Fates Character Designs, I happen really to enjoy them- but back to the point, well 3 Houses is easily best in terms of artistic design- that being said, there are some graphical errors that can be examined close up, but the voice acting is the honestly one of the finest I've seen in a video game. The fact that literally every line and support conversation is voiced really draws fleshes the characters out and makes it the easily the best cast of characters in Fire Emblem. The music is wonderful as always. I could go into a bit more why 3 Houses is an amazing game, but I won't because this is the Pokemon Forums not Fire Emblem.

Anyway, on the topic of visuals and Mt. Coronet, I'm not really sure why people are jumping on Pokemon for bad visuals. Pokemon has never been spectacular when it comes visuals, I mean was DP were criticized for its poor visuals. SwSh were criticized for their Nintendo64 Graphics when were first revealed, but that seems to have improved. Mt. Coronet should have been something like the Tower of Spirits in Legend of Zelda: In Spirit Tracks- You constantly traverse a dungeon filled with Phantoms ( Who act like security guards ) to gain access to new places. Maybe Mt. Coronet could have something like that: You can explore parts of it to gain entry to the Lake Guardians.

Finally on the topic of ORAS VS Emerald. I like ORAS better. To me, the only thing Emerald has that ORAS doesn't have is the Battle Frontier. And some people mention the Rayquaza cutscene, but I find it really lame in the end. Two forces of nature are clashing, and all it takes is one dragon to roar in order to stop the fighting. You don't even capture Rayquaza. ORAS at least has a notorious fixing of the wrong orb scene, and actually provided a back story for the Weather Trio. On another note, I think it was lame that Wallace wasn't champion. And it was probably done for it being a remake of RS, I feel that it could easily been put in, they could say that Steven gave up his role of champion to solve mega stone mystery; not to mention Mega Milotic which could have been his ace, it could also allow Juan to appear as an NPC, since he's only mentioned in ORAS. Also Wallace>Steven.
Eh, we really didn't need to fight two Water specialists in Hoenn's Pokemon League. And there's no guarantee that they would have done a Mega Milotic, as they probably would've done it if they wanted regardless of Wallace's place.

But at least they gave him his champion team for the Delta Episode.
 
Eh, we really didn't need to fight two Water specialists in Hoenn's Pokemon League. And there's no guarantee that they would have done a Mega Milotic, as they probably would've done it if they wanted regardless of Wallace's place.

But at least they gave him his champion team for the Delta Episode.
Plus, due to the too much water factor, we must have fought like a million water types by this point. Having Steel types to fight makes for a nice change of pace.
 
I also disagree that 3 Houses looks garbage in terms of the artistic development- I actually disagree on Fates Character Designs, I happen really to enjoy them- but back to the point, well 3 Houses is easily best in terms of artistic design- that being said, there are some graphical errors that can be examined close up, but the voice acting is the honestly one of the finest I've seen in a video game. The fact that literally every line and support conversation is voiced really draws fleshes the characters out and makes it the easily the best cast of characters in Fire Emblem. The music is wonderful as always. I could go into a bit more why 3 Houses is an amazing game, but I won't because this is the Pokemon Forums not Fire Emblem.

Anyway, on the topic of visuals and Mt. Coronet, I'm not really sure why people are jumping on Pokemon for bad visuals. Pokemon has never been spectacular when it comes visuals, I mean was DP were criticized for its poor visuals. SwSh were criticized for their Nintendo64 Graphics when were first revealed, but that seems to have improved. Mt. Coronet should have been something like the Tower of Spirits in Legend of Zelda: In Spirit Tracks- You constantly traverse a dungeon filled with Phantoms ( Who act like security guards ) to gain access to new places. Maybe Mt. Coronet could have something like that: You can explore parts of it to gain entry to the Lake Guardians.

Finally on the topic of ORAS VS Emerald. I like ORAS better. To me, the only thing Emerald has that ORAS doesn't have is the Battle Frontier. And some people mention the Rayquaza cutscene, but I find it really lame in the end. Two forces of nature are clashing, and all it takes is one dragon to roar in order to stop the fighting. You don't even capture Rayquaza. ORAS at least has a notorious fixing of the wrong orb scene, and actually provided a back story for the Weather Trio. On another note, I think it was lame that Wallace wasn't champion. And it was probably done for it being a remake of RS, I feel that it could easily been put in, they could say that Steven gave up his role of champion to solve mega stone mystery; not to mention Mega Milotic which could have been his ace, it could also allow Juan to appear as an NPC, since he's only mentioned in ORAS. Also Wallace>Steven.
Story and character whise is undeniable that they did a really good job with the game, they have a lot of personality and the story isn't generic or a mess like with more than half of the fire emblem games, but the graphics are an issue, below average model quality, the stock image fruits, every single character having the same animations, ingame cutscenes either being a jpng image or two or more characters staring to each other while talking on a very robotic way (i mean the movement of the models, the voice acting and script are well done) and a good ect...I can forvige it tho, the game shifted to the warriors engine in the middle of the development, reseting the proyect on the process, so they didn't had all the time in the world to finish the game, which is notorious in stuff like the black eagles having a shorter campain than the others and one route being a copypaste of another.

On your comments about ORAS, you did fair points on that, but do you actually think that some story tweeks are enough to call ORAS the better game? This is not me crying like a baby because of the battle frontier, i don't give a shit about that thing, what i care is that they pretty much added multiple mechanics that were not compatible with the design of the gen 3 games, is like if i add pair ups into sacred stones, the enemies of that game are already pretty weak, at contrary to the 3DS games where they are competent enough, do we really need to add a mechanic that trivializes an already easy game? because that is exactly what they did with ORAS by adding the buffed exp share and megas, two things that basically broke what was a passable game design-wise. And no, don't come at me with the "just don't use it" excuse, i already wrote two times on this thread why i find that an stupid excuse.
 
do we really need to add a mechanic that trivializes an already easy game? because that is exactly what they did with ORAS by adding the buffed exp share and megas, two things that basically broke what was a passable game design-wise.
Think this hits the nail on the head, because to you adding megas and the new Exp Share ruined what little difficulty was left in-game while to me and others it's a lot like multiplying by 1: nothing changes by making an easy game easier. Emerald wasn't that hard of a game, Mudkip can solo the whole thing so your challenge automatically takes a step down based on "did you pick Mudkip or not?"

While the Pokemon battle formula can be fun, challenging, and engaging, that mostly comes from either post-game challenges or the metagame. Because in-game most trainers and bosses have only 3 pokemon, barely switch, and have such type-theming that my high school cliques would call them cliche. In this game, advanced AI is "use supereffective attack, and if not use most powerful STAB".

Any challenge in-game comes from 3 areas:

1. Lack of info - that you don't know what a pokemon is, what moves they have, what ability they have, etc. And you waste turns trying to figure it out.

2. Lack of availability - that the perfect counter to whatever challenge you face lies after you face it. The ice beam isn't until after the dragon gym leader, there's only one fighting type and you have to do an in-game trade for it, etc.

3. Time cost - that the effort to train up or create your perfect counter is higher than what you're reasonably willing to commit to. Sure there's an ice type for those dragons, but you get it at level 5 when the gym is level 40.

And as you can probably see, all of these are in the realm of "fake difficulty" where the game isn't giving you a fair challenge but more frustrating you by limiting your options. Because all three are pretty easily broken (use the internet to look up what pokemon it is, trade in pokemon you want). The only one that's harder to get around is the time cost, which is a pretty big deal as the hassle to train up brand new pokemon does discourage the player from shuffling their team too much. I believe its the primary reason the Exp Share changed, as it makes subbing in new pokemon less of a resource drain and grind to get them in fighting shape.

Heck, the Johto games are some of the hardest but I doubt any of you would say it's a fair challenge. Whitney is the perfect little example of it, all of her difficulty is because there aren't enough trainers to overlevel her and only Geodude and the Machop you get in a trade will reliably counter her Miltank.

So as much as you bemoan creating your own challenge, that's been the name of the game since day 1. Even in the original Red and Blue your difficulty was determined by which starter you chose (Bublasaur for the easiest time, Squirtle for medium, Charmander for the [relative] hardest). This entire series is founded on managing difficulty around what pokemon and tools a player will and will not use!

Because Gamefreak has made it loud and clear, delivering a challenging in-game experience isn't their creative priority. They wanted the thrill of exploration first and foremost, everything else secondary. So whether you like it or not is one thing, but singling out ORAS for being too easy is missing the forest because of the trees: they're all easy unless you're going into this series completely blind.

You don't have to like it, but complaining about one iteration in a series plagued with it doesn't seem fair.
 
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Think this hits the nail on the head, because to you adding megas and the new Exp Share ruined what little difficulty was left in-game while to me and others it's a lot like multiplying by 1: nothing changes by making an easy game easier. Emerald wasn't that hard of a game, Mudkip can solo the whole thing so your challenge autmatically takes a step down based on "did you pick Mudkip or not?"

While the Pokemon battle formula can be fun, challenging, and engaging, that mostly comes from either post-game challenges or the metagame. Because in-game most trainers and bosses have only 3 pokemon, barely switch, and have such type-theming that my high school cliques would call them cliche. In this game, advanced AI is "use supereffective attack, and if not use most powerful STAB".

Any challenge in-game comes from 3 areas:

1. Lack of info - that you don't know what a pokemon is, what moves they have, what ability they have, etc. And you waste turns trying to figure it out.

2. Lack of availability - that the perfect counter to whatever challenge you face lies after you face it. The ice beam isn't until after the dragon gym leader, there's only one fighting type and you have to do an in-game trade for it, etc.

3. Time cost - that the effort to train up or create your perfect counter is higher than what you're reasonably willing to commit to. Sure there's an ice type for those dragons, but you get it at level 5 when the gym is level 40.

And as you can probably see, all of these are in the realm of "fake difficulty" where the game isn't giving you a fair challenge but more frustrating you by limiting your options. Because all three are pretty easily broken (use the internet to look up what pokemon it is, trade in pokemon you want). The only one that's harder to get around is the time cost, which is a pretty big deal as the hassle to train up brand new pokemon does discourage the player from shuffling their team too much. I believe its the primary reason the Exp Share changed, as it makes subbing in new pokemon less of a resource drain and grind to get them in fighting shape.

Heck, the Johto games are some of the hardest but I doubt any of you would say it's a fair challenge. Whitney is the perfect little example of it, all of her difficulty is because there aren't enough trainers to overlevel her and only Geodude and the Machop you get in a trade will reliably counter her Miltank.

So as much as you bemoan creating your own challenge, that's been the name of the game since day 1. Even in the original Red and Blue your difficulty was determined by which starter you chose (Bublasaur for the easiest time, Squirtle for medium, Charmander for the [relative] hardest). This entire series is founded on managing difficulty around what pokemon and tools a player will and will not use!

Because Gamefreak has made it loud and clear, delivering a challenging in-game experience isn't their creative priority. They wanted the thrill of exploration first and foremost, everything else secondary. So whether you like it or not is one thing, but singling out ORAS for being too easy is missing the forest because of the trees: they're all easy unless you're going into this series completely blind.

You don't have to like it, but complaining about one iteration in a series plagued with it doesn't seem fair.
There's Onix, too for Whitney, though to be fair at least Geodude has a fair chance of getting better if you stick with it via evolving into Graveler and then Golem through trade.
 
There's Onix, too for Whitney, though to be fair at least Geodude has a fair chance of getting better if you stick with it via evolving into Graveler and then Golem through trade.
Onix has an attack stat of 45 (compared to Geodude's 80), so while he could tank anything Whitney throws at you there's not much you can do in return. It's possible I just wouldn't consider him viable (like how Nidorina with double kick and rivalry I can say by experience will work, but I wouldn't consider her a reliable option either).

But I'm splitting hairs here, the point is Whitney's difficulty comes from a strong pokemon with few reliable easy counters.

I’ll say it once again, any Pokemon game can virtually be soloed by a 6 yr old spamming their starter. They aren’t difficult.
Yes... but at the same time no. Having watched some true blind lets-plays of later games, if you no nothing about pokemon this game is overwhelming. How do you keep over 800+ species straight?! You don't know true cringe until you watch someone get defeated by a Magneton because they thought it was immune to ground attacks because it was levitating (having remembered that from fighting Haunter. And this person was 30 years old!).

Which I suspect is why Gamefreak has double and triple downed on giving nukes to the player like mega-evolution, free to easy legendaries, and z-moves so that if worst comes to worst most newbies can power through a tough spot. Since the new crowd is always going to be the focus (as your company dies without always injecting new blood), and they haven't embraced researching pokemon on the internet, this is the future of in-game challenge.
 
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Think this hits the nail on the head, because to you adding megas and the new Exp Share ruined what little difficulty was left in-game while to me and others it's a lot like multiplying by 1: nothing changes by making an easy game easier. Emerald wasn't that hard of a game, Mudkip can solo the whole thing so your challenge autmatically takes a step down based on "did you pick Mudkip or not?"

While the Pokemon battle formula can be fun, challenging, and engaging, that mostly comes from either post-game challenges or the metagame. Because in-game most trainers and bosses have only 3 pokemon, barely switch, and have such type-theming that my high school cliques would call them cliche. In this game, advanced AI is "use supereffective attack, and if not use most powerful STAB".

Any challenge in-game comes from 3 areas:

1. Lack of info - that you don't know what a pokemon is, what moves they have, what ability they have, etc. And you waste turns trying to figure it out.

2. Lack of availability - that the perfect counter to whatever challenge you face lies after you face it. The ice beam isn't until after the dragon gym leader, there's only one fighting type and you have to do an in-game trade for it, etc.

3. Time cost - that the effort to train up or create your perfect counter is higher than what you're reasonably willing to commit to. Sure there's an ice type for those dragons, but you get it at level 5 when the gym is level 40.

And as you can probably see, all of these are in the realm of "fake difficulty" where the game isn't giving you a fair challenge but more frustrating you by limiting your options. Because all three are pretty easily broken (use the internet to look up what pokemon it is, trade in pokemon you want). The only one that's harder to get around is the time cost, which is a pretty big deal as the hassle to train up brand new pokemon does discourage the player from shuffling their team too much. I believe its the primary reason the Exp Share changed, as it makes subbing in new pokemon less of a resource drain and grind to get them in fighting shape.

Heck, the Johto games are some of the hardest but I doubt any of you would say it's a fair challenge. Whitney is the perfect little example of it, all of her difficulty is because there aren't enough trainers to overlevel her and only Geodude and the Machop you get in a trade will reliably counter her Miltank.

So as much as you bemoan creating your own challenge, that's been the name of the game since day 1. Even in the original Red and Blue your difficulty was determined by which starter you chose (Bublasaur for the easiest time, Squirtle for medium, Charmander for the [relative] hardest). This entire series is founded on managing difficulty around what pokemon and tools a player will and will not use!

Because Gamefreak has made it loud and clear, delivering a challenging in-game experience isn't their creative priority. They wanted the thrill of exploration first and foremost, everything else secondary. So whether you like it or not is one thing, but singling out ORAS for being too easy is missing the forest because of the trees: they're all easy unless you're going into this series completely blind.

You don't have to like it, but complaining about one iteration in a series plagued with it doesn't seem fair.
First, the exp share was reworked because soloing the game with one mon became the dominant strategy on pretty much all the games on the franchise, but only let's go, out of all games, realized that they had to cut down the amount of exp received to both make sure your entire party doesn't get overleveled and to makes sure that soloing the game is a less effective strategy, the other games just forgot about that and also didn't designed the game around that exp grow, making what was an already easy game straight up boring.

Second, I know the games are a joke, there's a reason of why i only actually respect 3 out of all the mainline games, and even then those are flawed too, pokemon itself is a flawed franchise, 1v1 turn based combat on what is supposed to be a team based game is horrendous, not only because there's no reason to ever have a full team because they basically become exp thiefs, but also because there's barely any strategy, it's basically just brute forcing your way through and/or cheesing everything with X items. The differences in the combat quality between colloseum and most of the mainline games is so high that it's not even funny, which is why i think that the franchise should focus on doubles only, because 1v1 on the story is just fundamentally flawed.

Third, just because something was easy, doesn't mean that i shouldn't complain that they are making it even easier, for example, kirby games are already easy, but also really fun, but now on this new game you never take knockback, never lose an ability and have 50 hits per life, making the game extremely boring, we shouldn't be allowed to complain because "it was already easy anyways"?

Fourth, lack of aviability is bad game design and it is another reason of why i only respect platinum and gen 5, those games actually gave you options while on jotho for example, you literally have nothing viable besides your starter, which ends up on the player always steamrolling the game with it because there's 0 reasons not to.

Fifth, just like grinding, using online options to obtain extremely overleveled mons should never be taken in mind while judging both the game's difficulty and the aviability of said mon, because they both destroy the design of any game.

Sixth, if we use the logic about the games only being challenging because of blindness, then my point still stans, while RSE requires you to know about strats and to pass across battles like the second may fight on the bridge in order to steamroll it, ORAS pretty much breaks itself, so while RSE is only any challenging because of blindness, ORAS isn't even that, as you get way too many tools, making stuff that could mean something on a blind run a complete joke.

Seventh, no the games aren't designed with that in mind, or at least they aren't anymore, as the exp share has become a permanent passive since let's go and starter's choice has been meaning less and less as time went on. The games are designed for young players to be able to beat it, and veterans that were left wanting more just made their own rules, but those rules are not part of the design itself. Im not against selfchallenge runs, i have done multiple of those on a lot of different games, but they aren't of the game itself and judging the game based on it is like judging a notebook based on the stickers it has, even though you were the ones who put those stickers.


I have more to say but i don't have all the time in the world right now, so have my two cents.
 

earl

(EVIOLITE COMPATIBLE)
is a Community Contributor
I’m just saying if semi-literate 7 yr old me could beat both Gold and Diamond almost exclusively using the Water starter the games ain’t hard.

Although the gen 5/7 exp mechanics may have fixed this “just solo with the water starter” problem that has always plagued earlier entries. I wouldn’t know as I haven’t tried
 
Fifth, just like grinding, using online options to obtain extremely overleveled mons should never be taken in mind while judging both the game's difficulty and the aviability of said mon, because they both destroy the design of any game.
While the rest of your points and opinions are valid (although I still disagree that you're picking on just ORAS too much), I do want to mention that this is by definition choosing to not utilize tools the game is giving you just to preserve the challenge in the game.

So no more dismissing the "just don't use it" argument as stupid, okay?
 
While the rest of your points and opinions are valid (although I still disagree that you're picking on just ORAS too much), I do want to mention that this is by definition choosing to not utilize tools the game is giving you just to preserve the challenge in the game.

So no more dismissing the "just don't use it" argument as stupid, okay?
There's a difference between a tool and spending tons of time fighting wild mons over and over just so you can brute force a challenge, not gonna deny that the game would be better overall if it didn't had any way of grinding, but it is a necessary flaw to keep in so bad players aren't forced to start the entire game from the beginning. And for the online thingy, do i even have to say anything? it's something that not everyone is going to have access to (specially now that there's paid internet) and that the game never had into consideration on his design,it also forces you to get external help from another person 100% of the time and not everyone is willing to help on that unless you go to forums asking others to help, there's just no way this was ever meant to be part of the singleplayer experience.
 
The point is you (not Gamefreak, but YOU) are framing an intended user experience based on denying options the game presents, so arguments that difficulty in this game is based on which items, pokemon, and tools you choose to use or not use do have some validity. You don't get to decide what is intended play, so any and all options the game presents to make it easier are valid. Therefore, challenge on some level is dependent on self-control.

I'm not saying that turning off the exp share is on the same level as choosing not to use pokemon you got in trades, but they do live in the same house.
 
1v1 turn based combat on what is supposed to be a team based game is horrendous, not only because there's no reason to ever have a full team because they basically become exp thiefs, but also because there's barely any strategy, it's basically just brute forcing your way through and/or cheesing everything with X items. The differences in the combat quality between colloseum and most of the mainline games is so high that it's not even funny, which is why i think that the franchise should focus on doubles only, because 1v1 on the story is just fundamentally flawed.
I agree so much with this. Not only are double battles the main official competitive format, but many Pokemon learn moves that are almost exclusively useful in double battles.

Volbeat grew to level 36!
Volbeat is trying to learn Helping Hand. Delete a move to make room for Helping Hand?

In a game that's mostly single battles, the player is likely to completely ignore this move, as it's useless 99% of the time. But if the game is mostly double battles, the player might actually consider it, especially if they've already seen it in action in a previous trainer battle.

Speaking of moves that go unused in most playthroughs, egg moves. On the surface, it's an interesting concept. Cross breeding two Pokemon to get something with special traits. However, there are two big problems with it. The first is that, to my knowledge, there isn't a way to know what egg moves are available to a given Pokemon. It's not like TMs and tutors where there will be a clear "CAN LEARN" next to a Pokemon in your party.

However, even if Game Freak gives a way for the player to know what egg moves are available, or if they have and I just don't know about it, that still wouldn't solve the fundamental problem. Breeding is wildly impractical for a normal playthrough because of just how long it takes. You gotta run around aimlessly until the egg is laid, run around some more to hatch the egg, and then train up a level 1 Pokemon to whatever level it needs to be at. Who the fuck has time for that? Young me, apparently, because I have a box full of Swablus.

I started this comment complaining about egg moves, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that breeding in general is a garbage mechanic. It's nothing but a grind, and the two biggest draws to breeding, egg moves and IVs, both shouldn't exist.
 
Story and character whise is undeniable that they did a really good job with the game, they have a lot of personality and the story isn't generic or a mess like with more than half of the fire emblem games, but the graphics are an issue, below average model quality, the stock image fruits, every single character having the same animations, ingame cutscenes either being a jpng image or two or more characters staring to each other while talking on a very robotic way (i mean the movement of the models, the voice acting and script are well done) and a good ect...I can forvige it tho, the game shifted to the warriors engine in the middle of the development, reseting the proyect on the process, so they didn't had all the time in the world to finish the game, which is notorious in stuff like the black eagles having a shorter campain than the others and one route being a copypaste of another.

On your comments about ORAS, you did fair points on that, but do you actually think that some story tweeks are enough to call ORAS the better game? This is not me crying like a baby because of the battle frontier, i don't give a shit about that thing, what i care is that they pretty much added multiple mechanics that were not compatible with the design of the gen 3 games, is like if i add pair ups into sacred stones, the enemies of that game are already pretty weak, at contrary to the 3DS games where they are competent enough, do we really need to add a mechanic that trivializes an already easy game? because that is exactly what they did with ORAS by adding the buffed exp share and megas, two things that basically broke what was a passable game design-wise. And no, don't come at me with the "just don't use it" excuse, i already wrote two times on this thread why i find that an stupid excuse.
It would be a lot of effort for every characters to have their own unique animations- keep in mind some characters have unique models in certain classes, and it would be way too much effort. I mentioned earlier that I do agree that its not the most beautiful game on Switch, its arguably Fire Emblem's best looking game, so I think you are being a bit to harsh. Also, do keep in mind unlike Fates, all the paths of 3 Houses share similar maps and concepts for the most part because you don't have to purchase the campaigns separately, hence why the the story and maps are reused primarily for routes.

Back to Pokemon though, well if your complaining about ORAS being way to easy due to Megas and Experience Shares, well that was probably intended. Pokemon is one of the easiest RPGs on the market, because it needs to appeal to a wide audience, and based on GF's current interviews, they seem to focus on making the games easier for children. Also, comparing pair-up to a FE remake to the addition of mega evolution is an unfair, since FE is single player experience with little no multiplayer. Pokemon, on the other hand, relies multiplayer- not including mechanics like Mega evolution really hurts the multiplayer Aspect.

I've just had a random thought. Its about the Battle Frontier. Now that I think about, it I think the Battle Frontier is a simple case of being there at the wrong time. Think about, when it was first introduced, Gen 3 was the first time IVs was introduced.; and almost no one would be playing competitively because official tournaments didn't exist. Who in their right mind would play something that requires complex strategies and IV optimization, especially since both are "hidden" main game. Not to mention that the methods of obtaining perfect IVs didn't exist back then, let alone the fact that they were linked to natures and the fact that the methods commonly used today don't exist back then. DP was the same story: Only difference being that VGC was introduced in Platinum as well as EV training items, encouraging use the IV mons for the first time. As VGC became more prominent, new methods open up in BW, such as the nature system in BW being the one today, but still no way to reliably obtain good IV Pokemon. Finally in XY, we have the Friend Safari to obtain breeding fodder as well as the Destiny Knot to pass on IVs. The Pokemon company reveals Parameter manipulation. But its too late. GF refused to put the Battle Frontier in ORAS, believing not enough people used it. But I highly doubt the reason people gave up was not because they found it too uninteresting. More likely, the tools needed to succeed were always hidden and the way to use them were revealed by TPCI only recently. So its GF and TPCI fault for not revealing how to manipulate these values sooner, and as a result, the BF is discontinued.
 

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But its too late. GF refused to put the Battle Frontier in ORAS, believing not enough people used it.
You know, now possibly knowing how GF does things, I question if "not a lot of players used it" was the actual reason OR if the reason was GF didn't want to put in the Battle Frontier because and found/made-up an excuse to do so since there was no way anyone could argue with them.

Infact, what was the demographic they asked that used the Battle Frontier? If it was kids, of course they wouldn't play the Battle Frontier as the BF was very competitive focused which involves breeding the right Pokemon and/or understanding the mechanics and coming up with strategies either going into the facility or able to adapt on the fly. And I'd imagine for most kids who just got off the easy to get through main story by just focusing on Type advantage would be thrown for such a loop they dropped it for the next game on their list. Thus, if GF wanted an excuse not to do the BF, they knew who to "test" to get the data they wanted to back up their claim.

And now free of that BF feature they could do what they really wanted to do: the Delta Episode.
 
You know, now possibly knowing how GF does things, I question if "not a lot of players used it" was the actual reason OR if the reason was GF didn't want to put in the Battle Frontier because and found/made-up an excuse to do so since there was no way anyone could argue with them.

Infact, what was the demographic they asked that used the Battle Frontier? If it was kids, of course they wouldn't play the Battle Frontier as the BF was very competitive focused which involves breeding the right Pokemon and/or understanding the mechanics and coming up with strategies either going into the facility or able to adapt on the fly. And I'd imagine for most kids who just got off the easy to get through main story by just focusing on Type advantage would be thrown for such a loop they dropped it for the next game on their list. Thus, if GF wanted an excuse not to do the BF, they knew who to "test" to get the data they wanted to back up their claim.

And now free of that BF feature they could do what they really wanted to do: the Delta Episode.
That's a shame tbh, i don't really care about the battle frontier, but it was definitively a better time waster than the delta episode lol, if they ever bring that postgame structure back, i hope it's in more ways than just a few joke fights, walls of text and exposition and then throwing a quick ball to a legendary and getting it turn 1.
 
I frankly didn't like the Battle Frontier much either. Outside of the Battle Tower and Battle Factory (which I both really like; it's a shame the latter was also cut outside of USUM), the other facilities are too gimmicky to be enjoyable.

(Not to mention the Battle Factory was also a nice way to get BP when you didn't have a competitive team yet)
 
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I frankly didn't like the Battle Frontier much either. Outside of the Battle Tower and Battle Factory (which I both really like; it's a shame the latter was also cut outside of USUM), the other facilities are too gimmicky to be enjoyable.

(Not to mention the Battle Factory was also a nice way to get BP when you didn't have a competitive team yet)
I must admit that while I could see the merit in them, even when I was younger and had more time on my hands I didn't really bother with Platinum/HGSS's frontier much. It was always far too intimidating and felt like a level I could never reach and furthermore even in the Battle Tower I often lost for luck reasons outside of my control; and I can only imagine this is a big part of what contributed to GF realising not a lot of people played these. They're very interesting in concept, but in execution they need a bit more of a draw and something to ease people in. Maybe there are lower versions with less penalties, but then more 'competitive' levels the further in you go that much more resemble the Frontiers we're used to. A little bit like Battle Tree's current 'singles' and 'super singles', but a little bit more thought out.
 
Admittedly I didn't use the Emerald Battle Frontier much either. While some of them seemed fun (Factory, Tower, Dome, Pike, and Pyramid) others were pretty frustrating (Arena, but especially the Palace).

That and to be frank it was a big time sink to get competitive pokemon back in those days, without most of the breeding and IV cheats we enjoy now. I think a lot of the desire to have it back was to see how Gamefreak would improve it with Gen 6 hardware.

Ironically, the Battle Maison is the one I've used the most, because I found the Triple Battle format really fun (and less prone to luck hax failures).
 
I must admit that while I could see the merit in them, even when I was younger and had more time on my hands I didn't really bother with Platinum/HGSS's frontier much. It was always far too intimidating and felt like a level I could never reach and furthermore even in the Battle Tower I often lost for luck reasons outside of my control; and I can only imagine this is a big part of what contributed to GF realising not a lot of people played these. They're very interesting in concept, but in execution they need a bit more of a draw and something to ease people in. Maybe there are lower versions with less penalties, but then more 'competitive' levels the further in you go that much more resemble the Frontiers we're used to. A little bit like Battle Tree's current 'singles' and 'super singles', but a little bit more thought out.
This. The Tower/Frontier always expected you to jump in with expert knowledge of the game's mechanics while nothing before them even vaguely hinted at their existence. You go in and just immediately get your ass kicked, and unless you've spent ages researching things on the internet, you're never going to understand why or improve.

I've never liked the winning streak concept of those facilities either. In practice it just means you have to spend hours recovering after a single instance of unfortunate luck, and the probability of losing to such luck is very high because the computer gets 50+ attempts. A lot of it boils down to gaming the AI, which is never an indication of a well-designed challenge.

The only postgame "facility" I have ever enjoyed was Black Tower/White Treehollow. I'd like to see those brought back and expanded upon. Besides that, I prefer story expansions like Delta Episode and Episode RR.
 

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