I have played Pokemon ever since RBY and never stopped playing and loving it.
However, if it was just about using a team of monsters, there are arguably way better options for that.
I have a similar stance on Pokemon that I do with Sonic the Hedgehog games especially one of my favorite games of all being the infamous Sonic 06.
Do I love Sonic with all my heart and soul?
Yes.
Do I think it's a good game?
Absolutely not. Go play some Mario or Freedom Planet if you want a good platformer.
Do I love Pokemon with all my heart and soul?
Yes.
Do I think it's a good game?
Absolutely not. Go play some Dragon Quest Monsters or Monster Sanctuary if you want a good monster collector.
Yo-Kai Watch 3 is a monster collector I sing nothing but the highest praises for especially in more recent days where main series Pokemon games having the most basic features it used to is something you have to "be grateful" for.
Yo-Kai Watch 3 has
- all past befriendable monsters in a single game.
- Hundreds of said monsters were introduced as completely free DLC.
- Animation quality is through the roof with how expressive it is, surpassing that of classics like Pokemon Stadium's high animation quality
- Monsters that all play uniquely from each other
- The game is challenging as Yo-Kai Watch games tend to be
- Tutorials and cutscenes are skippable, every monster has voice acted lines
- The battle system is fast paced and deep
- The devs actually changed things that allowed the competitive format to allow for far more creative team variety and skill in high ladder
- Putting together a competitive team is extremely easy and convenient once you get strong enough.
- Every monster can follow you and that feature is not locked behind a paywall
- The game is full of optional minigames
- The game is full of interesting stories and character development thanks to quests
- The game has another entire game packaged into it with Busters-T which is a challenging roguelike where you can play as any of your monsters with online and offline multiplayer
- Said roguelike uses a real time anime-esque action gameplay, which is something I've only ever dreamed about Pokemon having skmilar to its anime but in Yo-Kai Watch games, gameplay like that is a reality.
Something funny I realized as of late is for some reason, lots of people say Pokemon is like chess and I really can't say I see it that way.
Chess is not full of things that make it so you lose key pieces over no-skill luck elements that you have no control over such as crits and misses.
If anything, Yo-Kai Watch 3's battle system is far more chess-like than anything Pokemon does especially since you actually move your monsters (pieces) around a board in strategic ways and every monster (piece) can only really focus on one action at a time.
You can't exactly customize a low rank common piece like a pawn to do anything special. All they can do is move forward until an enemy is diagonal of them.
You CAN customize a low tier piece like Caterpie to try to fulfill particular roles but it's still going to suck at any of them which kinda goes against the mesaage Pokemon tries to sell of any monster being strong or unique and that "truly skilled Trainers win with their favorites" nonsense that Elite Four Karen spouts.
YKW monsters may not have customization but you get less overlap that way. Especially since it allows for far more control factors like using monsters like El Dorago, Whisper, Everfore and others that let you completely control elements like accuracy and evasion and turn it into a skill factor instead of it just being purely uncontrolled luck.
I bring all this up as an example for a simple reason.
Why would I continue to play and love Pokemon despite this other option being so easy to argue as better in every way?
For one, there's no rule or law that I can only play one game of a genre. Why should I? That's silly. Japan loves Pokemon more than any country yet never had an issue playing others of its genre as they still love Pokemon as well as Dragon Quest 5 which did monster collecting before it. I guess I'm just especially thankful to Yo-Kai Watch for breaking me out of a cultist Pokemon shill mindset where I was dumb enough to call other monster collectors "Pokemon clones" or "Pokemon ripoffs" and the like especially since the deeper I dig, the more I find how Pokemon arguably took most of its ideas from Dragon Quest games.
For another thing, you don't always need a special reason to love a game if it's something that's fun for you regardless of its quality.
Sonic 06 is a bad game but I still love it and have fun with it.
RBY has aged like milk and even then is full of questionable stuff like how they handled the physical/magic attack split other games didn't have an issue with. I'll still replay that any day just for fun.
I could easily claim nostalgia is a factor too but nostalgia just seems like a blinding drug that I try not to lean too much into cuz I'm not the "turn off your brain" type.
TLDR; I just love Pokemon and it's one of many options of fun for me.
you’re not fooling anyone with this weeb propaganda
Pokemon is a Japanese IP. The weebs have already conqured the world through its propaganda. Now bow before them.
Cute and nice franchise but I hate what GameFreak is doing to it with less and less effort into the games each gen.
At this point, I may as well high tail it and become a Demi-Shark at this point since I hear SMT has very good games and 5 really interests me.
Play both. Like I said, it's silly to limit yourself to one monster collector. I play both and SMT5 is amazing.
Love and hate it. The competitive is almost full of RNG, I dropped showdown out many times but there's something that attracts me. I don't know what is it about, but I'm still here, trying to improve day after day.
The last time I was in a ladder match, I recall I won alot of exchanges because my opponemt randomly missed while I got random crits. I did nothing to earn anything there. I don't think I've laddered ever since.
