they are the minority, i assure you
-
Check out the relaunch of our general collection, with classic designs and new ones by our very own Pissog!
-
Welcome to Smogon! Take a moment to read the Introduction to Smogon for a run-down on everything Smogon, and make sure you take some time to read the global rules.
Unpopular opinions
- Thread starter antemortem
- Start date
Well that might be true but it doesn't have much to do with what TCP and Game Freak judge to be good business decisions. People "really liking" a game doesn't have much bearing on reality unless it translates into actual sales and X&Y aren't even close to being the worst-selling original titles in the main series (it being a longstanding trend that remakes sell more poorly than original titles).
It's also fairly well-known by now that X and Y were initially intended to get at least one followup but that the project was shelved in favour of making Sun and Moon the 20th anniversary release. But the argument that L:A will definitely get a sequel or similar titles because "people liked it" doesn't really hold up to numbers.
I'm not saying it won't (and course L:A's sales performance is skewed a bit by virtue of only being one title instead of two) but I feel like you're projecting the wishes of a fandom onto a decision that's ultimately always going to be based on commercial reasons.
If you look past the more heavily online fandom, X and Y are actually among the more popular games in the series, worldwide in general, but I also think it's very well liked in Japan as well. While the online fandom opinion on it, particularly the older crowd, is less favorable, especially since it was robbed of a third version/follow-up due to SM needing to make it to the 20th anniversary (and commercially, it made more sense for the 20th anniversary game to be a new generation), the games are still among the most well known and popular, and I think are very well liked and received among most of the casual crowd and to an extent a substantial portion of the core crowd as well. We are now reaching a point where the kids who grew up with the 3DS era are becoming the dominant crowd online as well, and I've seen more and more favorable opinions towards XY and Gen 6 as a whole online in recent times.
In general Gen 6 is arguably one of the most popular generations overall commercially and in public attention. X and Y are well known as the first 3DS Pokemon games, and by extension the first mainline foray into 3D, and gains long time attention for that. The introduction of the Fairy-type as well as Mega Evolutions means it brought notable changes to the series that will always be known. In addition to stuff like Pokemon Amie and the incredible online it had at the time, it has cemented itself as a well known entry. Its roster, while small, has many well known standouts even amongst casuals. Megas are obvious. Greninja is the most popular final form starter since Charizard. Sylveon has cemented itself as the most popular Eeveelution, being the new Fairy-type's poster child and having tons of appeal thanks to its cute yet powerful combination and its magical girl vibe. It enjoys plenty of other iconic favorites, like Talonflame, Aegislash, Hawlucha, and its own pseudo-legendary Goodra who is well liked thanks to its cuteness (same with its base form Goomy, who exploded in popularity very rapidly).
As someone who was around during Gen 6, I can safely say yes: it was an extremely hype time to be a Pokemon fan back then.
It's important to remember that Pokemon is basically the biggest franchise in the world and the online fandom composes a much smaller portion of its active fanbase than it seems. Even current fan favorites like DP and BW had less than favorable opinions towards them online back in the late 2000s and early 2010s: yet as a DP kid I know for a fact it was hyped among kids back then and then when we became old enough to join the online fandom we basically caused an online fandom opinion shift. This is all despite Diamond and Pearl being a deeply flawed game for instance, same with HGSS, and Black and White on the other hand were always strong games imo but the online opinion on them wasn't always positive.
That and as I said some time ago, even before the likes of Gen 6 where they are already modern enough to begin with, we can see with Sinnoh already the shift in philosophy, and there's another reason for that: the games starting from Gen 4 onwards are modern enough as you said (unlike the first three generations), but also reimagining older regions in the modern engine with the Switch now commands a significantly higher amount of design effort to recreate old regions in the new engine. It made sense for HGSS and ORAS to be by-the-number remakes because HGSS in the DPP engine is still 2D, but more advanced and allows for creative expansion of the original. ORAS was on the 3DS but XY while 3D still conformed to several 2D design conventions so Hoenn in the 3DS engine still allowed for a recognizable reimagination of the original in the XY engine while also expanding on it.
Sinnoh or Unova in the SwSh or SV style and engine on the other hand requires way too much reconsideration of the original design to be worth it to the point where a Sinnoh or Unova in a console scale world design would be flat out unrecognizable, so it makes more sense to do alternative original experiences anyway. I think Game Freak doesn't want to force themselves to have to reconcile the faithfulness of a typical remake with modern graphics in that regard. It wouldn't be worth it for games like Gen 6 onwards where the difference is too insignificant, or in the case of the DS games, the aesthetic difference is on the other hand too significant from a world design standpoint and commands too much design effort to be worth it. If Sinnoh or Unova is gonna be borderline unrecognizable on the Switch and its style anyway, might as well go all the way with it, hence why we got PLA which was a "pre-make", set in the ancient past as an original story.
In general Gen 6 is arguably one of the most popular generations overall commercially and in public attention. X and Y are well known as the first 3DS Pokemon games, and by extension the first mainline foray into 3D, and gains long time attention for that. The introduction of the Fairy-type as well as Mega Evolutions means it brought notable changes to the series that will always be known. In addition to stuff like Pokemon Amie and the incredible online it had at the time, it has cemented itself as a well known entry. Its roster, while small, has many well known standouts even amongst casuals. Megas are obvious. Greninja is the most popular final form starter since Charizard. Sylveon has cemented itself as the most popular Eeveelution, being the new Fairy-type's poster child and having tons of appeal thanks to its cute yet powerful combination and its magical girl vibe. It enjoys plenty of other iconic favorites, like Talonflame, Aegislash, Hawlucha, and its own pseudo-legendary Goodra who is well liked thanks to its cuteness (same with its base form Goomy, who exploded in popularity very rapidly).
As someone who was around during Gen 6, I can safely say yes: it was an extremely hype time to be a Pokemon fan back then.
It's important to remember that Pokemon is basically the biggest franchise in the world and the online fandom composes a much smaller portion of its active fanbase than it seems. Even current fan favorites like DP and BW had less than favorable opinions towards them online back in the late 2000s and early 2010s: yet as a DP kid I know for a fact it was hyped among kids back then and then when we became old enough to join the online fandom we basically caused an online fandom opinion shift. This is all despite Diamond and Pearl being a deeply flawed game for instance, same with HGSS, and Black and White on the other hand were always strong games imo but the online opinion on them wasn't always positive.
That and as I said some time ago, even before the likes of Gen 6 where they are already modern enough to begin with, we can see with Sinnoh already the shift in philosophy, and there's another reason for that: the games starting from Gen 4 onwards are modern enough as you said (unlike the first three generations), but also reimagining older regions in the modern engine with the Switch now commands a significantly higher amount of design effort to recreate old regions in the new engine. It made sense for HGSS and ORAS to be by-the-number remakes because HGSS in the DPP engine is still 2D, but more advanced and allows for creative expansion of the original. ORAS was on the 3DS but XY while 3D still conformed to several 2D design conventions so Hoenn in the 3DS engine still allowed for a recognizable reimagination of the original in the XY engine while also expanding on it.
Sinnoh or Unova in the SwSh or SV style and engine on the other hand requires way too much reconsideration of the original design to be worth it to the point where a Sinnoh or Unova in a console scale world design would be flat out unrecognizable, so it makes more sense to do alternative original experiences anyway. I think Game Freak doesn't want to force themselves to have to reconcile the faithfulness of a typical remake with modern graphics in that regard. It wouldn't be worth it for games like Gen 6 onwards where the difference is too insignificant, or in the case of the DS games, the aesthetic difference is on the other hand too significant from a world design standpoint and commands too much design effort to be worth it. If Sinnoh or Unova is gonna be borderline unrecognizable on the Switch and its style anyway, might as well go all the way with it, hence why we got PLA which was a "pre-make", set in the ancient past as an original story.
Now I want "anti-Legends" games: taking Galar or Paldea and reimagining them back into the older map style I prefer.
Legit I have wanted this for every game since BW ever since someone made an April Fool's trailer of a GBC version of those games.
Ages ago I was also working on recreating Sinnoh, Unova, and the Sevii Islands in GSC's tileset
Good grief, folks.
Must we always do this? Someone slanders XY and I have to return to set things right.
Must we always do this? Someone slanders XY and I have to return to set things right.
Considering the flaws Pokemon games have especially nowadays, if the biggest flaw in a Pokemon game is that it's "too easy", I'd consider that a pretty dang good Pokemon game, especially since Pokemon games are incredibly flexible with how you can alter the difficulty through the usage of Pokemon, items, and EXP Share. I've heard too many arguments against "self-restriction" being a bad look but c'mon I've done it multiple times with several Pokemon games and created the best playthroughs I've ever had off it, plus you have a story to tell. "Hey, I completed ORAS only using Clamperl." or "Hey, I completed Ultra Sun only using NFE Pokemon." The Pokemon are the biggest determinant factor to the difficulty of a Pokemon game anyway, and all Pokemon games are incredibly easy if you use the right Pokemon and moves, regardless of whether you're aware of those Pokemon or not. The 3DS titles are especially flexible as you can just send Pokemon through Bank and have early access to daycare. You can complete a game and use virtually whatever upon resetting. Pokemon games are meant to be flexible. They're meant to be played through in an enormous variety of ways. This is part of why they've likely never established a real difficulty setting, because since the days of Red and Blue they've intended on the Pokemon TO BE that setting.
On the side note I've always seen people complaining about XY being incomplete and not having a Pokemon Z to finish it off but honestly Gen 5 is even worse in this aspect and it's sad because B2W2 exist and created one of the most redundant plotlines ever in the series. Instead of taking the direction of resolving Unova's lore and mysteries, they decided to have Team Plasma come back as terrorists and have Kyurem's only use be a superweapon. We needed this game to be about Kyurem. We needed the Unova sequels to flesh out further on Unova lore and try its best to complete it all the way. At the end of the day Zygarde by now got more fleshed out without ever having its own game than Kyurem ever did with two games. Kyurem is also still one of the most misunderstood Pokemon to this very day, and its involvement in B2W2 was nothing more than DLC-level. To put it this way, there's a reason why, despite Kyurem having two whole games to flesh it out, everyone is still asking for Kyurem to get a game that fleshes it out. Pokemon having sequels within its own generation is overrated especially as Black 2 White 2 failed to do it right and finalize Unova.
Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon were all about the backstory of Necrozma, how it influenced the Alola region, and how it was responsible for all of its culture, all of its traditions, everything they have that represents them. They were about how Necrozma got in some freak accident from getting betrayed by humanity, resulting in the Pokemon bleeding light out of ultra wormholes to Alola, creating totems, and sparkling stones to power up z-crystals, then heading to Alola to steal its light and getting defeated by Tapus, forcing it back over. Alola setting up a trial system to celebrate the defeat of Necrozma, you enter into the scene 500 years later to take on those trials and understand the mystery of Necrozma. Necrozma's out there held in a tower with artificial light given to it, but that tower is about to run out of light. These games taught us how totems were made, why z-moves were a thing, how its trial system got set up, how the people in Alola were worshipping a full blown deity without their knowledge, and we got to see the deity's original, most powerful forme. Necrozma shaped their entire culture, all of their traditions, what they do, through an incident. Necrozma gave out its trust to humanity, the people who worshipped it, only to get backstabbed and suffer a permanent injury off it, where it's constantly leaking out light, which is virtually its blood, and is in constant need of more to survive. It's a brutal injury giving it eternal pain and suffering for trusting humanity too much. Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon fleshed out on the history of Alola, gave an extraordinary role to its box art, and finalized the region within its own generation. Black 2 White 2 wishes it could be this. We WISH Black 2 White 2 were this.
Platinum also wishes to be this.
All the Platinum plot gave out was double the embarrassment on the creation trio, with a BS explanation as to how BOTH Palkia and Dialga were used and instead of lake trio making up for their own incompetencies, or the game really being about Giratina, Giratina was just shoehorned into the exact same climax just to save the day without an explanation at the time. Took us 13 years to get an explanation on this, and unlike with USUM, which was all about Necrozma's backstory and the impact it had on Alola, Giratina just showed up for the sake of showing up in its own game. The Distortion World was cool and such, but from a story standpoint they were really lazy in how they handled Giratina. Not to mention, while Gen 4's story was more complete than Gens 5 and 6, a complete story does not necessarily mean a good one at all.
On the side note I've always seen people complaining about XY being incomplete and not having a Pokemon Z to finish it off but honestly Gen 5 is even worse in this aspect and it's sad because B2W2 exist and created one of the most redundant plotlines ever in the series. Instead of taking the direction of resolving Unova's lore and mysteries, they decided to have Team Plasma come back as terrorists and have Kyurem's only use be a superweapon. We needed this game to be about Kyurem. We needed the Unova sequels to flesh out further on Unova lore and try its best to complete it all the way. At the end of the day Zygarde by now got more fleshed out without ever having its own game than Kyurem ever did with two games. Kyurem is also still one of the most misunderstood Pokemon to this very day, and its involvement in B2W2 was nothing more than DLC-level. To put it this way, there's a reason why, despite Kyurem having two whole games to flesh it out, everyone is still asking for Kyurem to get a game that fleshes it out. Pokemon having sequels within its own generation is overrated especially as Black 2 White 2 failed to do it right and finalize Unova.
Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon were all about the backstory of Necrozma, how it influenced the Alola region, and how it was responsible for all of its culture, all of its traditions, everything they have that represents them. They were about how Necrozma got in some freak accident from getting betrayed by humanity, resulting in the Pokemon bleeding light out of ultra wormholes to Alola, creating totems, and sparkling stones to power up z-crystals, then heading to Alola to steal its light and getting defeated by Tapus, forcing it back over. Alola setting up a trial system to celebrate the defeat of Necrozma, you enter into the scene 500 years later to take on those trials and understand the mystery of Necrozma. Necrozma's out there held in a tower with artificial light given to it, but that tower is about to run out of light. These games taught us how totems were made, why z-moves were a thing, how its trial system got set up, how the people in Alola were worshipping a full blown deity without their knowledge, and we got to see the deity's original, most powerful forme. Necrozma shaped their entire culture, all of their traditions, what they do, through an incident. Necrozma gave out its trust to humanity, the people who worshipped it, only to get backstabbed and suffer a permanent injury off it, where it's constantly leaking out light, which is virtually its blood, and is in constant need of more to survive. It's a brutal injury giving it eternal pain and suffering for trusting humanity too much. Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon fleshed out on the history of Alola, gave an extraordinary role to its box art, and finalized the region within its own generation. Black 2 White 2 wishes it could be this. We WISH Black 2 White 2 were this.
Platinum also wishes to be this.
All the Platinum plot gave out was double the embarrassment on the creation trio, with a BS explanation as to how BOTH Palkia and Dialga were used and instead of lake trio making up for their own incompetencies, or the game really being about Giratina, Giratina was just shoehorned into the exact same climax just to save the day without an explanation at the time. Took us 13 years to get an explanation on this, and unlike with USUM, which was all about Necrozma's backstory and the impact it had on Alola, Giratina just showed up for the sake of showing up in its own game. The Distortion World was cool and such, but from a story standpoint they were really lazy in how they handled Giratina. Not to mention, while Gen 4's story was more complete than Gens 5 and 6, a complete story does not necessarily mean a good one at all.
Dialga is the embodiment of time. It is omnipresent throughout all planes of it. The literal nanosecond it was summoned by Cyrus it could have also "went back" to stop the bomb Galactic dropped on Lake Valor. Palkia could have erased Cyrus from existence for a bit within that same timeframe.
Another example is how the Red Chain was used to COMPLETELY control Palkia and Dialga despite nothing about the Lake Trio indicating they can't do this. Even Legends Arceus gave the Red Chain a completely contradictory effect. The Red Chain comes exclusively from their power and it's what they use to handle Palkia and Dialga. How the heck did it outright control them here when the Lake Trio were never shown to be able to do this? It doesn't even make sense that they could only handle one of the two at a time, since Palkia and Dialga are both infinite simultaneously... Uxie could have dismantled Team Galactic just by opening its eyes, and since it's the embodiment of knowledge, it could have quickly escaped somewhere and informed the other 2 lake trio members. Azelf could have bent Galactic's willpower and forced them to give up on their plan. It could even just use them as servants to clean up their mess. Mesprit could have instantly teleported somewhere far away just like every single time you first encounter it... In reality the lake trio had possibly billions of ways they could have avoided the situation they were put in, canonically, and not one was chosen.
Speaking of Cyrus, with the backstory they gave him, there were so many missed opportunities with how he could have been more developed. Uxie could have erased his bad memories or lead the way of Azelf and Mesprit, Mesprit could have manipulated Cyrus's emotions to have him see the good side of life since Galactic was backing him up with heavy respect, and Azelf could have given him the willpower to strive for a new, better life influenced by Mesprit. Not to mention, Galactic had his back this whole time. They respected Cyrus regardless of who he was and didn't even fully understand what he wanted until it was too late. Cyrus could have recognized the sheer respect he was being given despite his preference dissuading others, and could have used it to build a company on his own with them, in a happy ending. Man even had a Crobat that could've been used for how he changed under these scenarios.
Another example is how the Red Chain was used to COMPLETELY control Palkia and Dialga despite nothing about the Lake Trio indicating they can't do this. Even Legends Arceus gave the Red Chain a completely contradictory effect. The Red Chain comes exclusively from their power and it's what they use to handle Palkia and Dialga. How the heck did it outright control them here when the Lake Trio were never shown to be able to do this? It doesn't even make sense that they could only handle one of the two at a time, since Palkia and Dialga are both infinite simultaneously... Uxie could have dismantled Team Galactic just by opening its eyes, and since it's the embodiment of knowledge, it could have quickly escaped somewhere and informed the other 2 lake trio members. Azelf could have bent Galactic's willpower and forced them to give up on their plan. It could even just use them as servants to clean up their mess. Mesprit could have instantly teleported somewhere far away just like every single time you first encounter it... In reality the lake trio had possibly billions of ways they could have avoided the situation they were put in, canonically, and not one was chosen.
Speaking of Cyrus, with the backstory they gave him, there were so many missed opportunities with how he could have been more developed. Uxie could have erased his bad memories or lead the way of Azelf and Mesprit, Mesprit could have manipulated Cyrus's emotions to have him see the good side of life since Galactic was backing him up with heavy respect, and Azelf could have given him the willpower to strive for a new, better life influenced by Mesprit. Not to mention, Galactic had his back this whole time. They respected Cyrus regardless of who he was and didn't even fully understand what he wanted until it was too late. Cyrus could have recognized the sheer respect he was being given despite his preference dissuading others, and could have used it to build a company on his own with them, in a happy ending. Man even had a Crobat that could've been used for how he changed under these scenarios.
BDSP after doing a full national dex nuzlocke (yay Pkmn Home except Spinda for a reason) I have to say...
Wow does it suck that you cannot turn of exp share and love mechanics. It breaks the game. I think this is quintessential what people mean with too easy, because it is braindead actually.
I even considered no healing items and level Limits...
Wow does it suck that you cannot turn of exp share and love mechanics. It breaks the game. I think this is quintessential what people mean with too easy, because it is braindead actually.
I even considered no healing items and level Limits...
Permanent EXP Share has generally been handled alright in most of the Switch games barring BDSP itself, which is because BDSP is a shoddily designed copy-paste of Diamond and Pearl that very sloppily imbues Switch-era mechanics like baked-in EXP Share and Affection into it without actually adjusting to accomodate for them. This is in large part because BDSP was not developed by Game Freak (it was developed by ILCA), was likely created under strict creative control which is why 99% of the game is a copypaste of DP to the exact T, and was innately a secondary concern that was created in less than two years as a crutch for PLA which was the real Sinnoh revisit developed by Game Freak and the true follow-up Gen 8 game after Sword and Shield.
LGPE, SwSh, PLA, and SV handle permanent EXP Share pretty well for the most part, because their level curves are designed to work in tandem with the EXP All mechanic in mind, even if not perfectly, same with the scaled EXP formula. BDSP on the other hand uses the original Diamond and Pearl's level curve to the exact T with no changes, and DP's level curve was not designed around the modern EXP formula as Gen 4 was a no-EXP All game that also used the flat EXP gain formula as opposed to the modern scaled EXP gain formula.
Affection was very sloppily implemented as well, as they just threw in the mechanic without actually putting the cap on, as BDSP being a copypaste of DP uses the Gen 4 friendship method that goes all the way to 255, as opposed to the SwSh Friendship method of capping off at 179 and then needing Camp/Picnic to break it and go higher, and above 180 is where affection bonuses are implemented, which is how SwSh and SV handle affection. BDSP did not apply the cap and thus affection bonuses come automatically.
Putting it bluntly, BDSP was a horribly designed game because it was a copypaste of Diamond and Pearl to the exact T with Switch-era mechanics very shoddily implemented alongside them. The issues you highlighted are not with the mechanics themselves but the sloppy implementation owing to BDSP being a rushed and sloppily designed game that was innately an afterthought.
Sword and Shield, Legends: Arceus, and Scarlet and Violet work better with them because they are designed in tandem with the mechanics. Meanwhile BDSP implements Gen 4 mechanics in a way where the original DP aspects and the affection/EXP All are working antithetical to each other.
In short, BDSP is just a horrible blemish in the history of mainline games. SwSh, SV, and even PLA are by no means perfect but are still overall competently designed games, even if I find base SwSh to be on the underwhelming side. But BDSP is just the standout exception in an extremely bad way and not representative of everything else in the Switch era.
LGPE, SwSh, PLA, and SV handle permanent EXP Share pretty well for the most part, because their level curves are designed to work in tandem with the EXP All mechanic in mind, even if not perfectly, same with the scaled EXP formula. BDSP on the other hand uses the original Diamond and Pearl's level curve to the exact T with no changes, and DP's level curve was not designed around the modern EXP formula as Gen 4 was a no-EXP All game that also used the flat EXP gain formula as opposed to the modern scaled EXP gain formula.
Affection was very sloppily implemented as well, as they just threw in the mechanic without actually putting the cap on, as BDSP being a copypaste of DP uses the Gen 4 friendship method that goes all the way to 255, as opposed to the SwSh Friendship method of capping off at 179 and then needing Camp/Picnic to break it and go higher, and above 180 is where affection bonuses are implemented, which is how SwSh and SV handle affection. BDSP did not apply the cap and thus affection bonuses come automatically.
Putting it bluntly, BDSP was a horribly designed game because it was a copypaste of Diamond and Pearl to the exact T with Switch-era mechanics very shoddily implemented alongside them. The issues you highlighted are not with the mechanics themselves but the sloppy implementation owing to BDSP being a rushed and sloppily designed game that was innately an afterthought.
Sword and Shield, Legends: Arceus, and Scarlet and Violet work better with them because they are designed in tandem with the mechanics. Meanwhile BDSP implements Gen 4 mechanics in a way where the original DP aspects and the affection/EXP All are working antithetical to each other.
In short, BDSP is just a horrible blemish in the history of mainline games. SwSh, SV, and even PLA are by no means perfect but are still overall competently designed games, even if I find base SwSh to be on the underwhelming side. But BDSP is just the standout exception in an extremely bad way and not representative of everything else in the Switch era.
Okay so I have some significant disagreement with the sentiment expressed in the USUM portion of this rant, in that I think it's just assuming that because it gave all these ties and answers to Necrozma that it is immediately preferable. I'm all for a culture or mythology with a lot to speculate on, but when everything has a concrete answer it kind of becomes a checked box instead of a source of wonder to me. Sometimes fantastic stuff or magic simply IS a thing in a setting and doesn't need to all tie back to a source, whether or not that source is fantastical. This is especially the case for me when half of Alola is drawing from a real world basis of Hawaii (which has a very rich culture and Mythology that didn't have to ascribe things to one Alien Dragon Shell) and the other half is based on extra-dimensional and borderline Lovecraftian Alien creatures (which by nature are most intriguing/intimidating because they're hard/impossible to comprehend). I would infact posit the opposite position that explaining so much of the world, and especially as a consequence of one Pokemon, makes the story and setting less intriguing when it's all answered questions with nothing to explore.
The issue with XY is not being "incomplete" in that I think it needed to tell a story or focus more on Zygarde necessarily. Its issue is that the story it chooses to tell is incredibly threadbare in what it uses or contains: Team Flare is not a general criminal nuisance (as is the case with Gen 1 Rocket for example), yet mostly appears in incidents with no relation to their overall Endgame.
Compare Magma/Aqua doing things like stealing the Orb and the Submarine for the Ultimate Goal of reaching and controlling their respective Titans, Galactic incidents being in their bases of operation while they steal Energy or the aftermath of their capturing Legendary Pokemon for the Red Chain, or Part-1 Plasma searching for the Legendary Dragon Stones and their side incidents involving Propaganda that ties directly into their goal (which involves "convincing" people to follow N rather than just beating down EVERYTHING with their power outright). Lysandre has a few not-subtle scenes hitting you with his motive and then the Endgame just very abruptly hits you with the exposition and dungeons related to Team Flare's "Nuke the Planet" MO. It feels like there are pages missing because an outline is here but Team Flare has almost nothing to do with Lysandre himself in the Endgame other than being his Manpower.
B2W2 are not strictly "redundant" because they do not espouse on the lore of Kyurem (and frankly I think this is downplaying the implication/impact of outright showing Kyurem re-absorb one of the Tao Dragons into itself after Part 1 alluded to it having a role as the "shell" left behind). This is to assume that the games MUST be about answering the existing mysteries, when frankly answering those mysteries in a lot of cases is boring for some people (in my case go back to "everything about Alola is Necrozma" for a personal example). And THIS is the point where I think you're being very reductive
Because this is to ascribe the following to the Unova games for this criticism
- Their focus was specifically upon Kyurem as a Pokemon, despite your simultaneous claim that its lore was not gone into.
- That the first games were ABOUT Kyurem in the first place (the focus clearly being on the Truth/Ideals conflict between the actual Cover Legendaries and You vs N) for that to be a failed criteria across the Generation
- That people want more focus and fleshing out about Kyurem because they think there is not enough of it
- That the lore all has to specifically pertain to Kyurem rather than exploring myths and legends throughout Unova such as the Swords of Justice or even just other relatable Legendary Trios (since the Kami Trio in LA don't originate from Sinnoh's Gen after all)
- That people are literally asking for Kyurem and not the obvious Elephant in the room of the Original Dragon that was split off into these 3, which has never been depicted on screen and has no name to be referred to over Kyurem as a shorthand since it's the one that most directly links the trio back to this entity
First and foremost: Nothing hard confirms the Sinnoh Legendaries as controlling masters of their themes. Sure chalk it up to writers not having a sense of scale for these concepts, but look at how many other games include appearances by these Pokemon that should give absolutely no mind to the things they're presented with: Mystery Dungeon clearly depicts Time and Space being fucked with on a Planetary Scale as something that troubles the duo but they do not have direct ability to prevent (Dialga is shown being driven mad by time's collapse rather than vice versa), and given this is a world of Pokemon as dominant, their feats and abilities aren't being filtered or exaggerated through Legends as is. They are not "infinite" for this to be contradictory, they're worshiped as beings of this nature by the people of the Sinnoh region (and in LA case, not even directly the Dragons so much as a more ambiguous image of Arceus that they ascribe to one or the other Dragon). I feel the need to hard emphasize this limitation because nearly 2 decades later when revisiting Sinnoh for LA, TPC has made a point that while Dialga/Palkia and co. are depicted consistent with their "grounded" Gen 4 interpretations, Arceus has been reaffirmed if not elevated to a Capital-G God entity with the being you use in Battle being one fraction of its power given an Avatar, so this idea of the Dragons as Omnipotent masters rather than Powerful Influencers of their respective fields isn't even a result of neglecting their lore after the initial depictions, which I also remind you have shown them able to be captured by skilled-but-still-young Trainers after battle (the Counterpart is assisted by the first Legendary and the Origin Ball, but said first Legendary still had to be caught as a "Plan B" when the Red Chain failed).
The above also brings me to the Red Chain and the Lake Trio: it most logically would control Palkia and Dialga by manipulating their emotional states, not by enforcing a direct control over their powers or being as, say, Gen 3's teams thought the Red/Blue Orbs would do. This is consistent with depictions like Primal Dialga in MD clearly depicting that for all their power they are still creatures with emotional states and frenzies. The Lake Trio being able to negate control induced by something made by their power feels like an odd thing to consider a contradiction, and claiming Legends Arceus to give it a contradictory effect especially: The plot of that game is "Giratina tears a rift and pisses off Palkia/Dialga," which if the Red Chain draws on the emotion/spirit Pokemon as a means to control/influence the Pokemon, puts it perfectly in-line with what it would do DPPt, just the player character is using it here to pacify the Legendary rather than direct its power (and this all with the fact that it doesn't even work so as to push the player into a capture battle anyway).
Palkia and Dialga are rarely depicted as "Sapient" levels of intelligence for Legendaries, which we have points of reference for in most Speaking/Telepathic legendaries such as Mewtwo, Lugia, Jirachi, Darkrai, Shaymin, Arceus, Kyurem, Keldeo and the Swords of Justice, Diancie, etc. Putting aside the above issues I noted with assuming their Omnipotence as a source of contradiction, this would be assuming they have the intelligence and rational thought to act on what is occurring as soon as they become aware of it, because they are consistently shown NOT to be omniscient or aware of everything everywhere and every-when all at once within their sphere. This is also assuming that the Legendaries care enough to actively resist Cyrus's plan if we ascribe the level of being to them that you describe: if rewriting reality is effortless what makes one better or worse than another for the Dragon? If they are Omniscient and Omnipotent, then if they can be captured by the player on a whim as some people prescribe, what makes following Cyrus's direction any less plausible under an influence at that point? The simpler explanation is that they are not immune to such control, but if that interpretation must be placed on them there exists explanation with as much or more ground than "the writers put in contradictory story with no justification"
And on the same point of "why do they care about Cyrus?" I will mention the Lake Trio as brought up: why do they give a shit about showing a happier outlook or a better prospect to the guy who had them captured and put through the evidently painful procedure of making the Red Chain? If we're going to assume their abilities can be done at face value for them to be able to stoke emotions or manipulate memories, they're just as capable of indiscriminately wiping his memories of everything in general or removing his emotions/drive to pursue his plans, which would be simpler solutions than trying to selectively affect him and his followers to correct his emotional distress. I don't see why they'd be inclined to help someone who goes to a cruel option especially after LA establishes they can give the RC materials willingly. I focus more on this question than the previous because other depictions around the same time DO suggest these are within the scope of the Lake Trio's powers (Uxie wiping Memories is brought up in PMD, and Gen 4 Manga depict Azelf influencing Willpower when the Heroes are struggling in battle with Saturn at Lake Verity). Mesprit's acknowledgement and playfulness can easily be ascribed to the player saving them rather than being in their default nature for such an encounter. On the teleporting point, Pokemon also has you unable to use Teleport in a situation as mundane as being inside of a building, and given Mesprit usually does it when in control of itself (after being freed at the Veilstone Building, leaving Spear Pillar after breaking the Red Chain, and starting what is essentially a game of tag for the Roaming Capture), I think it's fair to assume that whether it's the extreme pain or something Galactic built to contain these 3 Specific Pokemon they need for their plot, there is a major obstacle to being able to teleport out of captivity even while conscious (to discard the possibility that Galactic fainted them and took them to the building while unconscious since they're not depicted as Titanically powerful-class Legendaries by most depictions either).
The above also brings me to the Red Chain and the Lake Trio: it most logically would control Palkia and Dialga by manipulating their emotional states, not by enforcing a direct control over their powers or being as, say, Gen 3's teams thought the Red/Blue Orbs would do. This is consistent with depictions like Primal Dialga in MD clearly depicting that for all their power they are still creatures with emotional states and frenzies. The Lake Trio being able to negate control induced by something made by their power feels like an odd thing to consider a contradiction, and claiming Legends Arceus to give it a contradictory effect especially: The plot of that game is "Giratina tears a rift and pisses off Palkia/Dialga," which if the Red Chain draws on the emotion/spirit Pokemon as a means to control/influence the Pokemon, puts it perfectly in-line with what it would do DPPt, just the player character is using it here to pacify the Legendary rather than direct its power (and this all with the fact that it doesn't even work so as to push the player into a capture battle anyway).
Palkia and Dialga are rarely depicted as "Sapient" levels of intelligence for Legendaries, which we have points of reference for in most Speaking/Telepathic legendaries such as Mewtwo, Lugia, Jirachi, Darkrai, Shaymin, Arceus, Kyurem, Keldeo and the Swords of Justice, Diancie, etc. Putting aside the above issues I noted with assuming their Omnipotence as a source of contradiction, this would be assuming they have the intelligence and rational thought to act on what is occurring as soon as they become aware of it, because they are consistently shown NOT to be omniscient or aware of everything everywhere and every-when all at once within their sphere. This is also assuming that the Legendaries care enough to actively resist Cyrus's plan if we ascribe the level of being to them that you describe: if rewriting reality is effortless what makes one better or worse than another for the Dragon? If they are Omniscient and Omnipotent, then if they can be captured by the player on a whim as some people prescribe, what makes following Cyrus's direction any less plausible under an influence at that point? The simpler explanation is that they are not immune to such control, but if that interpretation must be placed on them there exists explanation with as much or more ground than "the writers put in contradictory story with no justification"
And on the same point of "why do they care about Cyrus?" I will mention the Lake Trio as brought up: why do they give a shit about showing a happier outlook or a better prospect to the guy who had them captured and put through the evidently painful procedure of making the Red Chain? If we're going to assume their abilities can be done at face value for them to be able to stoke emotions or manipulate memories, they're just as capable of indiscriminately wiping his memories of everything in general or removing his emotions/drive to pursue his plans, which would be simpler solutions than trying to selectively affect him and his followers to correct his emotional distress. I don't see why they'd be inclined to help someone who goes to a cruel option especially after LA establishes they can give the RC materials willingly. I focus more on this question than the previous because other depictions around the same time DO suggest these are within the scope of the Lake Trio's powers (Uxie wiping Memories is brought up in PMD, and Gen 4 Manga depict Azelf influencing Willpower when the Heroes are struggling in battle with Saturn at Lake Verity). Mesprit's acknowledgement and playfulness can easily be ascribed to the player saving them rather than being in their default nature for such an encounter. On the teleporting point, Pokemon also has you unable to use Teleport in a situation as mundane as being inside of a building, and given Mesprit usually does it when in control of itself (after being freed at the Veilstone Building, leaving Spear Pillar after breaking the Red Chain, and starting what is essentially a game of tag for the Roaming Capture), I think it's fair to assume that whether it's the extreme pain or something Galactic built to contain these 3 Specific Pokemon they need for their plot, there is a major obstacle to being able to teleport out of captivity even while conscious (to discard the possibility that Galactic fainted them and took them to the building while unconscious since they're not depicted as Titanically powerful-class Legendaries by most depictions either).
Rant over, do not start with my on Gen 4 slander unless you're prepared for walls of half-coherent text.
I hate that I feel the need to stand up here and point out that I was (barely) able to avoid difficulties with exp and affection during my own playthrough of BDSP. I hate that BDSP is my favourite mainline game on the Switch. I wish I could look at the copy-paste content, the questionable coding mistakes, the half-assed features and use "not representative of the other games" dismissively. But I can't escape that significant parts of my enjoyment of the series are only there in the one place they didn't have a chance to remove them.
I pointed out in another thread that "brilliant" is already a word you would associate with diamonds and "shining" is already a word you would associate with pearls compared to the Johto/Sinnoh (but not Kanto) remake titles. My new theory is that they were called that to indirectly imply they would be more remasters and not remakes, and Legends Arceus would be the game that actually introduced significant new lore.
Though it would be easier if they were explicit about that from the beginning.
Though it would be easier if they were explicit about that from the beginning.
wrt difficulty.
We always have to remember that Pokemon is generally marketed towards a much younger audience than the average age of members on this forum. Unlike say BotW and TotK which are marketed towards an older age group and have a much higher difficulty.
They have to go for a low difficulty level because their main demographic is kids. Its really not that hard to put on self restrictions and its just something we have to accept since we are in essence playing a game MAINLY designed for quite young children.
A challenge mode might be nice, but they tried that once and it didn’t do so well (I believe due to horrible implementation/unlock reqs). They just aren’t gonna go back to that.
We always have to remember that Pokemon is generally marketed towards a much younger audience than the average age of members on this forum. Unlike say BotW and TotK which are marketed towards an older age group and have a much higher difficulty.
They have to go for a low difficulty level because their main demographic is kids. Its really not that hard to put on self restrictions and its just something we have to accept since we are in essence playing a game MAINLY designed for quite young children.
A challenge mode might be nice, but they tried that once and it didn’t do so well (I believe due to horrible implementation/unlock reqs). They just aren’t gonna go back to that.
Sometimes those self-restrictions are things that make sense as a normal way to play the game in the mind of a child. For example, losing to Drake over and over because you value the thematic cohesion of Surf Muddy Water Earthquake Mud Shot too much to just teach your overleveled Swampert Blizzard and call it a day.
Fun fact, this is actually acknowledged by Cynthia in Platinum if you visit the Celestic Ruins after entering the hall of fame.
Cynthia outrights states Dialga and Palkia are considered rulers of time and space because of people in the past interpreting their time and space power as holding dominion of the entire concept. Think like how Volcarona is seen as a sun god in myth even though it's "just" a powerful and rare Fire type. This is reflective of how real world myths develop, like how oak trees often being struck by lightning due to their height lead to oak trees being associated with storm gods in various cultures.
this is going to be a massive, unstructured, unpolished rant. skip if no want
legends arceus sucked
like, really sucked
it was fun at first when I had this childlike joy: Holy shit, fully 3D movement in Pokemon! I can explore the world!
and then it's 5 small dinkly areas with jack shit to do
people complain about Mario Odyssey having 900 moons (a lot of which are repeats), but at least a lot of them are good, there are only 3 objectives in Legends Arceus' collectathon:
1. aggro mon
2. neutral mon
3. scared mon
the story also sucked ass. I don't know where people got the notion that Legends was strong characters wise, all of the characters are one-dimensional and have nothing going on, and the plot makes no sense
people compare its plot to Pokemon Mystery Dungeon 1 (the PMD game with the dogshit plot that no one younger than 35 enjoys) but even that game at least makes more sense, and has interesting things. It answers questions like: Why is the player here? Why are these disasters happening? which isn't a lot but at least something I guess.
Legends Arceus' plot is also disrespectful to the real history it is based on. Essentially, we are playing as the direct equivalent to a real life group that actually aimed for genocide of the real life people's, who were religious, kinda like... hm....
(what the Galaxy Hall is based on)
to be FAIR to Game Freak, this building is the (former) Hokkaido Government Office building which was to my knowledge revamped after the Hokkaido Development Commission (Department of Colonization) was abolished after around 20ish years.
This Department of Colonization brutally colonized Hokkaido to the active detriment of the Ainu, people who lived there already, they lost their culture as they were assimilated (again, aggressively, trying to remove their culture and replace it) and Ainu have been discriminated for a long, long time. To my reading, and a frankly very direct correlation, the two opposing factions we see in Legends Arceus are these indigenous people, and we are the colonizers. And we are just "lol wow Pokemon amirite?" waltzing in and taking it over mostly willingly, we are such nice people just trying to slice our own piece of this land pie, right? (Every action done has to be approved by the colonizers in this game)
on top of that, the story just outright sucks on its own merits, soooooo, Volo is the best part and he just unexplainedly just is evil, and just dips?
Why are we collecting the Pokedex, by the way? Why does Arceus need this? Can't they do this otherwise? Most of Sinnoh's dex is Pokemon from other regions anyways, won't it be catalogued regardless? Arceus is almost entirely unexplored, it's literally there to give an iPhone, act mysterious and dip
ok ok ok gameplay, it sucks. The catching mechanics are more active, but they are in direct contrast to the turn based combat, which also has been nerfed into the ground.
fundamentally catching Pokemon will always be the same throughout the playthrough and once you have smoke balls + heavy balls it's GG no Re, you can do this and just beat the game. Find training Pokemon fun? Fuck you, catch a Level 75 Garchomp with no effort.
this is truly making Pokemon more fun (for people who might not even like Pokemon gameplay in the first place)
"evolution" my ass, this shit is less interesting than LGPE catching, at least in that game I have gotten actual fear. If you don't believe me, shiny hunt without a Master Ball knowing that if you don't get it right in like 40 seconds, the Pokemon can run away. Even for scared Pokemon in Legends Arceus, they usually run away and that allows you to get an easy critical shot, because you can just run behind them.
the turn based gameplay is worse than RBY and that is saying something. They changed the battle formula guys! Isn't that so great, lazy Game Freak finally got off their ass after a bajillion years! maybe the battle system was never a problem, maybe they were stealth updating it to perfect it every generation and legends arceus instead stripped away 80% of what made it interesting
and we changed the turn system so speed creep matters even MORE now, hope you don't enter a trainer battle because that shit is unpolished as hell. Double battles? Bro does this look like 2022? We back to 1996 in this bitch, but we did make it like Alola's S.O.S battles where it is 1v(not even just 2, even more now!) isn't that fun?
oh wait everyone hated S.O.S so much that USUM nerfed it in normal gameplay
Alright guys, we won't have the time to make a flashy gimmick for this game. What can we do instead. Uhhh, Strong and Agile moves, do more damage or get more turn priority.
Cool, what is the opportunity cost? One more PP? Okay, so it doesn't have an opportunity cost, got it. So just spam this the entire game, use Agile into Strong if you get free turns, Strong if it won't effect your turns negatively / kills, Neutral if neither. This isn't interesting and after I got used to it I just barely even thought about what I was doing with it, that simple criteria will work.
Abilities could have made catching more interesting in battles, which is the opposite of something I've seen some defenders of the battle system cuts say. "This isn't about competitive or anything, it doesn't matter!". Example: I have the game knowledge to know Geodude has Sturdy. Thus, I can use a 4x effective Water Gun without fear, and know I can catch it optimally rather than finding a way to chip it down slowly and safely. this makes the game way more enjoyable and a lot more Pokemon have more different methods to figuring out how to optimally catch them
though, even with that, throw one heavy ball and gg (we need this in SV so you never actually get into a turn based battle in this turn based rpg guys!!!"
now, go explore these five generic biomes with exactly 1 or 2 places of interest at best (this is counting things like the volcano which disappointed me as a place of interest) per map, then just find where a Pokemon spawns, throw smoke ball, throw ball.
the music is good.
I should stop somewhere so I will here, with one addition: I think that most people who see Legends Arceus as an "evolution" of Pokemon, never saw what made the mainline games good in the first place, or just don't like turn based combat. Which isn't exactly a popular combat style in games, but is not a problem. So many solutions especially in the West to "fix/modernize Pokemon" are not to put it into a new context (like hm an open world jrpg), but to throw out turn based combat
There are a lot of people who see turn based combat as outdated. It isn't. They are wrong.
Legends Arceus was made by the LGPE devs, aka veteran Game Freak staff, which should make its choices more clear. Legends Arceus is not a modernization of Pokemon, it is the next step of LGPE, a game where the battling system is mostly shafted in favor of the catching.
so overall Legends Arceus? mid, cya gn thats the hot take bye
legends arceus sucked
like, really sucked
it was fun at first when I had this childlike joy: Holy shit, fully 3D movement in Pokemon! I can explore the world!
and then it's 5 small dinkly areas with jack shit to do
people complain about Mario Odyssey having 900 moons (a lot of which are repeats), but at least a lot of them are good, there are only 3 objectives in Legends Arceus' collectathon:
1. aggro mon
2. neutral mon
3. scared mon
the story also sucked ass. I don't know where people got the notion that Legends was strong characters wise, all of the characters are one-dimensional and have nothing going on, and the plot makes no sense
people compare its plot to Pokemon Mystery Dungeon 1 (the PMD game with the dogshit plot that no one younger than 35 enjoys) but even that game at least makes more sense, and has interesting things. It answers questions like: Why is the player here? Why are these disasters happening? which isn't a lot but at least something I guess.
Legends Arceus' plot is also disrespectful to the real history it is based on. Essentially, we are playing as the direct equivalent to a real life group that actually aimed for genocide of the real life people's, who were religious, kinda like... hm....
(what the Galaxy Hall is based on)
to be FAIR to Game Freak, this building is the (former) Hokkaido Government Office building which was to my knowledge revamped after the Hokkaido Development Commission (Department of Colonization) was abolished after around 20ish years.
This Department of Colonization brutally colonized Hokkaido to the active detriment of the Ainu, people who lived there already, they lost their culture as they were assimilated (again, aggressively, trying to remove their culture and replace it) and Ainu have been discriminated for a long, long time. To my reading, and a frankly very direct correlation, the two opposing factions we see in Legends Arceus are these indigenous people, and we are the colonizers. And we are just "lol wow Pokemon amirite?" waltzing in and taking it over mostly willingly, we are such nice people just trying to slice our own piece of this land pie, right? (Every action done has to be approved by the colonizers in this game)
on top of that, the story just outright sucks on its own merits, soooooo, Volo is the best part and he just unexplainedly just is evil, and just dips?
Why are we collecting the Pokedex, by the way? Why does Arceus need this? Can't they do this otherwise? Most of Sinnoh's dex is Pokemon from other regions anyways, won't it be catalogued regardless? Arceus is almost entirely unexplored, it's literally there to give an iPhone, act mysterious and dip
ok ok ok gameplay, it sucks. The catching mechanics are more active, but they are in direct contrast to the turn based combat, which also has been nerfed into the ground.
fundamentally catching Pokemon will always be the same throughout the playthrough and once you have smoke balls + heavy balls it's GG no Re, you can do this and just beat the game. Find training Pokemon fun? Fuck you, catch a Level 75 Garchomp with no effort.
this is truly making Pokemon more fun (for people who might not even like Pokemon gameplay in the first place)
"evolution" my ass, this shit is less interesting than LGPE catching, at least in that game I have gotten actual fear. If you don't believe me, shiny hunt without a Master Ball knowing that if you don't get it right in like 40 seconds, the Pokemon can run away. Even for scared Pokemon in Legends Arceus, they usually run away and that allows you to get an easy critical shot, because you can just run behind them.
the turn based gameplay is worse than RBY and that is saying something. They changed the battle formula guys! Isn't that so great, lazy Game Freak finally got off their ass after a bajillion years! maybe the battle system was never a problem, maybe they were stealth updating it to perfect it every generation and legends arceus instead stripped away 80% of what made it interesting
and we changed the turn system so speed creep matters even MORE now, hope you don't enter a trainer battle because that shit is unpolished as hell. Double battles? Bro does this look like 2022? We back to 1996 in this bitch, but we did make it like Alola's S.O.S battles where it is 1v(not even just 2, even more now!) isn't that fun?
oh wait everyone hated S.O.S so much that USUM nerfed it in normal gameplay
Alright guys, we won't have the time to make a flashy gimmick for this game. What can we do instead. Uhhh, Strong and Agile moves, do more damage or get more turn priority.
Cool, what is the opportunity cost? One more PP? Okay, so it doesn't have an opportunity cost, got it. So just spam this the entire game, use Agile into Strong if you get free turns, Strong if it won't effect your turns negatively / kills, Neutral if neither. This isn't interesting and after I got used to it I just barely even thought about what I was doing with it, that simple criteria will work.
Abilities could have made catching more interesting in battles, which is the opposite of something I've seen some defenders of the battle system cuts say. "This isn't about competitive or anything, it doesn't matter!". Example: I have the game knowledge to know Geodude has Sturdy. Thus, I can use a 4x effective Water Gun without fear, and know I can catch it optimally rather than finding a way to chip it down slowly and safely. this makes the game way more enjoyable and a lot more Pokemon have more different methods to figuring out how to optimally catch them
though, even with that, throw one heavy ball and gg (we need this in SV so you never actually get into a turn based battle in this turn based rpg guys!!!"
now, go explore these five generic biomes with exactly 1 or 2 places of interest at best (this is counting things like the volcano which disappointed me as a place of interest) per map, then just find where a Pokemon spawns, throw smoke ball, throw ball.
the music is good.
I should stop somewhere so I will here, with one addition: I think that most people who see Legends Arceus as an "evolution" of Pokemon, never saw what made the mainline games good in the first place, or just don't like turn based combat. Which isn't exactly a popular combat style in games, but is not a problem. So many solutions especially in the West to "fix/modernize Pokemon" are not to put it into a new context (like hm an open world jrpg), but to throw out turn based combat
There are a lot of people who see turn based combat as outdated. It isn't. They are wrong.
Legends Arceus was made by the LGPE devs, aka veteran Game Freak staff, which should make its choices more clear. Legends Arceus is not a modernization of Pokemon, it is the next step of LGPE, a game where the battling system is mostly shafted in favor of the catching.
so overall Legends Arceus? mid, cya gn thats the hot take bye
While I disagree with most of the rest of your post, this point cannot be emphasized enough
the way Pokemon Legends: Arceus handles its historical inspirations is not just bad it's terrible, the Frito Bandito is more respectful than this game
Look imma let you finish, but RT's plot is fine main game. Post game is awkward though with how they had to pile on legendaries, same with the player coming back
But do not diss RT like that
Remember that both the Diamond and Pearl clan are also comprised of people who moved to Hisui, in contrast to the Celestic.
Pictured: Traditional Ainu headwear
I'll argue the bigger issue is the Celestic being a stereotypical precursor culture that disappeared except for Volo and Cogita, which sidesteps the whole issue of colonization by having Hisui be abandoned by people, which just flat out doesn't happen in real life. Either way, I don't think the devs are going to 1:1 mirror historical issues in a series with electric rodents. The Hisuian groups aren't even the only indigenous Japanese group to appear in a Pokemon game.
Remember the Draconids?
Basically, the whole plot of Arceus isn't going to delve deep into the complication relationship with how cultures evolve, assimilate, and migrate beyond "People should accept one another" and "People and Pokemon are inseparable". That last one I'll argue is stronger because L:A is also about how modern Sinnoh came to be, with the player character gaining the respect of the Galactic Corps and the Diamond and Pearl clans by not fearing Pokemon and considering them partners, which amazes most characters.
Pictured: Traditional Ainu headwear
I'll argue the bigger issue is the Celestic being a stereotypical precursor culture that disappeared except for Volo and Cogita, which sidesteps the whole issue of colonization by having Hisui be abandoned by people, which just flat out doesn't happen in real life. Either way, I don't think the devs are going to 1:1 mirror historical issues in a series with electric rodents. The Hisuian groups aren't even the only indigenous Japanese group to appear in a Pokemon game.
Remember the Draconids?
Basically, the whole plot of Arceus isn't going to delve deep into the complication relationship with how cultures evolve, assimilate, and migrate beyond "People should accept one another" and "People and Pokemon are inseparable". That last one I'll argue is stronger because L:A is also about how modern Sinnoh came to be, with the player character gaining the respect of the Galactic Corps and the Diamond and Pearl clans by not fearing Pokemon and considering them partners, which amazes most characters.
Last edited:
the draconids are pretty bad indigenous rep too tbh. while yes i dont expect pokemon to tackle racism/colonization as a topic, i also dont think that means the usage of indigenous cultures in pokemon isnt often at best shallow and at worst stereotypical and racist. are they doing this intentionaly? probably not. but it exists in the game regardless and should be pointed out
I'm not expecting Game Freak to come out with some crazy good writing about deeper topics, Sun and Moon used their one and only "Good Writing" Token (I'll talk about Gen 5 someday, just you wait) but I just think including it was weird. It's one of those things where you can't half-ass it, just don't.
Anywho, I wanna talk more about the game since I got my main thoughts out of the way, now.
Something I didn't touch on before is that to me, Legends Arceus feels like it was a tech demo for like a year and a half, and then they decided it had to be Sinnoh for the upcoming and newly decided "Year of Sinnoh". And what is the easiest way to do that?
Make 5 small areas with one hub world, and make most of the game a set of small repeatable tasks with little actual notable content. To me, Hisui in general feels like an excuse, and that's what bothers me further.
Hisui is just (from how I see it) an excuse to be able to make 5 barren lands with little shit going on with a plot that justifies it being a poor collectathon, and no one can convince me otherwise. Look at Hisui's maps and tell me that this shit could not have been made without it even being a Sinnoh-related game. The forest in the first area has Sinnoh music, sure, but also it is literally just a forest. Sure it has some Sinnoh Pokemon, but with a swap to say, Kalosian Pokemon, boom! This could be any forest in Kalos.
Not only are most Hisuian Pokemon not even from Sinnoh, meaning they probably could have been made before they decided the game would be Sinnoh themed, but also the game misses what makes Sinnoh, to me, Sinnoh. The Canalave Library, Mount Coronet connecting various biomes. I barely even think of beaches when I think of Sinnoh, the beaches it has feel like "it's a Pokemon game it has to have beaches". I really like exploring towns with history.
This may be weird, but I am really into urban exploration. My favorite bits of Pokemon lore are about how people live day-to-day with Pokemon, not really "what did the Gods do", though that is interesting to me sometimes as well. I think part of why people missed going into houses in Scarlet and Violet so much is you get to see how people live with Pokemon in various parts of the world, while in Hisui we get some of that learning, but I don't feel like I'm exploring urban environments, just small shacks.
I think this is going to really annoy some people: Pokemon are not supposed to be mindless monsters. Period. They are not supposed to be adversarial by nature as a collective. Period. Pokemon are not animals. Period.
Since, funnily enough, right around Sinnoh, Game Freak has moved into the direction of Pokemon sentience. They are people, not necessarily pets. I mean the dialogue has changed so much even in just a short time. It goes from early gens of stuff like "My Nidoran shit on the carpet!!! Let's battle!!!" to "My Blitzle helps me at work by bla bla bla, it really enjoys the activity."
I mean, if I am to mention Gen 5 writing again, the intro deadass has N speaking to your Pokemon, and getting verbal replies. Pokemon can speak. They may have more animal-esque traits and an ecosystem, but they are not monsters that will hunt you down mindlessly like Garchomp in Legends Arceus will do.
This was also around the time of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, and for the record the Pokemon that attack you in those games have reasons too, beyond just being feral monsters. For instance, in PMD1 there is a major territorial crisis and anxiety amongst the Pokemon because of these natural disasters literally destroying the world, Rattata does not care about who you are, it is trying to get the fuck out of Death's Door.
That's all to say, I think a brutal depiction of Pokemon just doesn't make sense anymore. Pokemon is fundamentally not edgy, as the Pokemon evolve in the games, they have evolved in the real world brand too. Hydreigon can go berserk! But that isn't because it's an apex predator, that's because Ghetsis harmed it, or it's going through actual, sentient body horror. If it was in Legends Arceus? Oh it's on the spot, it's rushing to fucking kill you.
What about the good old Wild Grass Gonna Kill Ya routine? For a few generations now, canonically the Pokemon you find are fighting you and found because they are willing to be, they stay by roads and want to test trainers via battle to test worthiness. Badda bing badda boom.
This just doesn't make sense to me, I would get if you are trying to catch it, or battling it. But Shinx just sees you and wants to throw hands, and it is mechanically annoying too, so... Pretty please?
To be fair, Legends Arceus actually has a fine reason, I guess. These Pokemon could maybe just have largely never interacted with humans, I guess. But it feels more like a strive to be edgy than to make sense.
Speaking of which, what if an action game only had basic attacks and you need to be hit like five times to actually die? Honestly the "action combat" aspects of Legends Arceus could be thrown out besides the actual bosses. I don't think I ever died due to actual Pokemon. I fell of a cliff like thrice, though. It was annoying.
ok I really gotta stop talking about this game that I don't even think is bad I just think it's mid and overrated
I'm not gonna get into that last thing lest I find another topic and write another two or three paragraphs about it
cyaa
An actual unpopular opinion, we love you for this queen. I share the same resentments as you and feel like this game is having its time to shine right now but in the coming years, this game will age the worst I feel. (Also a comment about the map structure of the PLA, they really gave the locations no thought and the homage locations for Sinnoh are so awful like the solaceon ruins being a single room and vast empty fields with sinnoh location namesakes....they really didn't gaf)
Oh we're talking about reasonably well-liked games we don't think are that good? Aight, ripe time for me to dump this.
It's something of a recurring gag that the PMD fanbase only actually likes Explorers so I'm not even sure how hot of a take this is but RB Rescue Team just doesn't hold up. I will confess that on my recent replay, the first in well over a decade, I did not finish the game. I gave up at Mt. Blaze. Why was this?
-Teambuilding, at least in the main story, is a waste of time. For a Pokemon game without a fixed roster i.e. Pokepark, this is about as fundamental of a failure as it gets. Your starters are buffed to high heaven and all the recruited Pokemon you get are weak. Level 13 Scyther should not have over 10 less HP than Level 15 Charmander, that's all there is to it. Frankly I could file this complaint under a broader one of this game's balancing being absolutely inscrutable at times: For example, considering this was pre-DP, why does Silent Chasm Yanma give more EXP when defeated than Ampharos in the same location and nearly as much as Arcanine later on in Mt. Blaze? And that's small fry stuff: If I had the energy I could devote an entire series of paragraphs to the absurdity of the power gaps between starters. Any Grass starter in this game is effectively a challenge run.
-Menuing is tedious as hell. Why do I have to re-assemble my team every time I complete a mission? Why can't I mass-withdraw stuff from storage? Why can't I just quickly have partners use items instead of having to waste time giving the item to them as a held one?
-Pokemon Square is a disappointingly empty hub. The benchmark of comparison I'm using here is Jubilife Village, and it's no contest. Jubilife does this cool thing, you see, where it actually evolves over the course of the game and you can talk to the joe schmoe villagers and do fun little sidequests that give you insight on this time period of the Pokemon world and how the commoners are adjusting to it. Meanwhile in Pokemon Square you can't even enter any of the houses. The whole appeal of PMD's world is seeing the Pokemon themselves be characters and how they run a society, so why not show more of that? Imagine being able to go into Lotad's house and its a big jacuzzi with lily pads, or Bellsprout's home being a greenhouse overgrowing with vines.
-And now the big dealbreaker that made me throw in the towel: This story is fuckin lame, dude. I was immensely caught off-guard by how fast you get to Great Canyon, and not in a good way: It feels like there are a whole 3 dungeons of setup cut with how abruptly the game pivots to the exiling of the player from the village. Gengar the known troublemaker who tried to extort a child tells the village that your existence will bring about the apocalypse and everyone just... Believes him unconditionally. Team ACT doesn't buy it, but they don't even try to use their fame and moral authority to stand up for you. There can be no adequate descriptor for this series of events other than "complete bullshit". If it's not at the Chairman Rose's heel turn tier of contrivance, it sure as hell ain't far behind. And yknow what? Normally, I wouldn't even care. My second and third favorite main series games have pretty nothing plots too. But after being inundated with years of hype about PMD being the spinoff with consistently great storytelling 95% of the core games' material can't even hold a candle to, my expectations were raised to a level that this junk doesn't come close to fulfilling.
If I had to rank it alongside the main series, I would put RB Rescue Team at C Tier, i.e. my second least favorite only beaten by DP. There's enough polish and care that I can't in good conscience call it an outright bad game but I wouldn't earnestly recommend it to anyone either. Honestly my big mistake was not replaying Explorers instead, I have no idea how many of my complaints are first game syndrome and how many are just endemic to PMD going forward.
It's something of a recurring gag that the PMD fanbase only actually likes Explorers so I'm not even sure how hot of a take this is but RB Rescue Team just doesn't hold up. I will confess that on my recent replay, the first in well over a decade, I did not finish the game. I gave up at Mt. Blaze. Why was this?
-Teambuilding, at least in the main story, is a waste of time. For a Pokemon game without a fixed roster i.e. Pokepark, this is about as fundamental of a failure as it gets. Your starters are buffed to high heaven and all the recruited Pokemon you get are weak. Level 13 Scyther should not have over 10 less HP than Level 15 Charmander, that's all there is to it. Frankly I could file this complaint under a broader one of this game's balancing being absolutely inscrutable at times: For example, considering this was pre-DP, why does Silent Chasm Yanma give more EXP when defeated than Ampharos in the same location and nearly as much as Arcanine later on in Mt. Blaze? And that's small fry stuff: If I had the energy I could devote an entire series of paragraphs to the absurdity of the power gaps between starters. Any Grass starter in this game is effectively a challenge run.
-Menuing is tedious as hell. Why do I have to re-assemble my team every time I complete a mission? Why can't I mass-withdraw stuff from storage? Why can't I just quickly have partners use items instead of having to waste time giving the item to them as a held one?
-Pokemon Square is a disappointingly empty hub. The benchmark of comparison I'm using here is Jubilife Village, and it's no contest. Jubilife does this cool thing, you see, where it actually evolves over the course of the game and you can talk to the joe schmoe villagers and do fun little sidequests that give you insight on this time period of the Pokemon world and how the commoners are adjusting to it. Meanwhile in Pokemon Square you can't even enter any of the houses. The whole appeal of PMD's world is seeing the Pokemon themselves be characters and how they run a society, so why not show more of that? Imagine being able to go into Lotad's house and its a big jacuzzi with lily pads, or Bellsprout's home being a greenhouse overgrowing with vines.
-And now the big dealbreaker that made me throw in the towel: This story is fuckin lame, dude. I was immensely caught off-guard by how fast you get to Great Canyon, and not in a good way: It feels like there are a whole 3 dungeons of setup cut with how abruptly the game pivots to the exiling of the player from the village. Gengar the known troublemaker who tried to extort a child tells the village that your existence will bring about the apocalypse and everyone just... Believes him unconditionally. Team ACT doesn't buy it, but they don't even try to use their fame and moral authority to stand up for you. There can be no adequate descriptor for this series of events other than "complete bullshit". If it's not at the Chairman Rose's heel turn tier of contrivance, it sure as hell ain't far behind. And yknow what? Normally, I wouldn't even care. My second and third favorite main series games have pretty nothing plots too. But after being inundated with years of hype about PMD being the spinoff with consistently great storytelling 95% of the core games' material can't even hold a candle to, my expectations were raised to a level that this junk doesn't come close to fulfilling.
If I had to rank it alongside the main series, I would put RB Rescue Team at C Tier, i.e. my second least favorite only beaten by DP. There's enough polish and care that I can't in good conscience call it an outright bad game but I wouldn't earnestly recommend it to anyone either. Honestly my big mistake was not replaying Explorers instead, I have no idea how many of my complaints are first game syndrome and how many are just endemic to PMD going forward.
Regarding Legends, I wouldn’t go as far as to say that the game sucked, but I agree that it is overrated and nowhere near as great as (a large chunk of?) the fandom claims it is. When it comes to Pokémon games for the Switch, I find S/S and ScaVio a lot more enjoyable. They have their flaws, but they are still very fun at the core. I haven’t played LGP/E or BD/SP so no opinion there.
The story in Legends wasn’t anything special, I don’t see what’s so great about it and it didn’t leave an impression on me, I don’t even remember that much from it. I find S/S and ScaVio to be way better in the story department. Yes, I liked the story of S/S, now that’s an unpopular opinion! Regarding the historical accuracy in Legends, that’s nothing I care for personally. But after reading posts by others on the subject, I can definitely understand why people are bothered by it.
As for me, my biggest issue with the history and lore is more from an in-game point of view. The game takes place in the past, but I don’t think it does a good job at explaining the history of Sinnoh. It feels like the game raises more questions than it gives answers. Yet at the same time, some of the historical events it actually showed were not as grand as I imagined them to be. The most notable was the Shaymin event and the creation of what later became Floaroma Town, it was a massive letdown compared to how I imagined it after the NPC dialogue in D/P/P.
The changes to the battle system is definitely my biggest issue with Legends. Battles are my favorite part of Pokémon, and Legends ruined them by turning every battle into a luck-based revenge kill fest. Speed is the one stat that matters the most, because if you don’t get to move first, you lose. And if you don’t hit hard enough, you lose, making everything that isn’t a fast attacker completely useless. Being ganged up by four wild Pokémon that can move an absurd amount of turns in a row is also a really horrible way to make the game “difficult”. In fact, it is even worse than the SOS mechanics in Gen 7 (which is another of my least favorite features in the series).
Another issue with the game is that it doesn’t do a good job at encouraging exploration. The aggressive wild Pokémon is the biggest hinderance to this because once they spot you, you either have to battle them or run across half the map to get away from them. There’s no good way to get rid of them quickly (the Let’s Go feature from ScaVio would have been perfect for this), nor can you catch them without battling them first once their aggro has started. And they will always be aggressive, no matter your progress. Wild Shinx at level 3 will still target you even if you have beaten the whole game, reached rank 10 in the Pokédex and have a whole team at level 100. The fact that you are unable to travel directly between the wild areas and forced to do a "middle landing" in Jubilife every single time also makes exploration a lot less convenient. In comparison, I think ScaVio did the exploration aspect much better. It isn’t perfect, but it is miles above Legends.
I’m not going to say that much more about Legends, I think other people summarized my thoughts on it quite well and I have posted some more in-depth thoughts regarding my issues with the game in the past. The more I think back on Legends, the less fond I grow of it. My opinion of it has gotten lower and lower as time has gone by. I don’t dislike the game, but I find it very average on the whole. In fact, it is the most average Pokémon game I have ever played. There are many better action RPGs out there. In the end, Legends is my least favorite modern Pokémon game, my least favorite game of 2022, and my least favorite Switch game.
The story in Legends wasn’t anything special, I don’t see what’s so great about it and it didn’t leave an impression on me, I don’t even remember that much from it. I find S/S and ScaVio to be way better in the story department. Yes, I liked the story of S/S, now that’s an unpopular opinion! Regarding the historical accuracy in Legends, that’s nothing I care for personally. But after reading posts by others on the subject, I can definitely understand why people are bothered by it.
As for me, my biggest issue with the history and lore is more from an in-game point of view. The game takes place in the past, but I don’t think it does a good job at explaining the history of Sinnoh. It feels like the game raises more questions than it gives answers. Yet at the same time, some of the historical events it actually showed were not as grand as I imagined them to be. The most notable was the Shaymin event and the creation of what later became Floaroma Town, it was a massive letdown compared to how I imagined it after the NPC dialogue in D/P/P.
The changes to the battle system is definitely my biggest issue with Legends. Battles are my favorite part of Pokémon, and Legends ruined them by turning every battle into a luck-based revenge kill fest. Speed is the one stat that matters the most, because if you don’t get to move first, you lose. And if you don’t hit hard enough, you lose, making everything that isn’t a fast attacker completely useless. Being ganged up by four wild Pokémon that can move an absurd amount of turns in a row is also a really horrible way to make the game “difficult”. In fact, it is even worse than the SOS mechanics in Gen 7 (which is another of my least favorite features in the series).
Another issue with the game is that it doesn’t do a good job at encouraging exploration. The aggressive wild Pokémon is the biggest hinderance to this because once they spot you, you either have to battle them or run across half the map to get away from them. There’s no good way to get rid of them quickly (the Let’s Go feature from ScaVio would have been perfect for this), nor can you catch them without battling them first once their aggro has started. And they will always be aggressive, no matter your progress. Wild Shinx at level 3 will still target you even if you have beaten the whole game, reached rank 10 in the Pokédex and have a whole team at level 100. The fact that you are unable to travel directly between the wild areas and forced to do a "middle landing" in Jubilife every single time also makes exploration a lot less convenient. In comparison, I think ScaVio did the exploration aspect much better. It isn’t perfect, but it is miles above Legends.
I’m not going to say that much more about Legends, I think other people summarized my thoughts on it quite well and I have posted some more in-depth thoughts regarding my issues with the game in the past. The more I think back on Legends, the less fond I grow of it. My opinion of it has gotten lower and lower as time has gone by. I don’t dislike the game, but I find it very average on the whole. In fact, it is the most average Pokémon game I have ever played. There are many better action RPGs out there. In the end, Legends is my least favorite modern Pokémon game, my least favorite game of 2022, and my least favorite Switch game.
Last edited: