#gamefreak do better at writing your characters

[youhavethewrong]

My not-so-long, but hopefully comprehensive review of Pokemon Scarlet/Violet

So I’ve been playing this game a lot lately. As of the time of this writing, I have 15:45 hours of play time. And I’ve got a lot of thoughts, so I’m gonna go ahead and share them here, especially for people who are considering whether or not they should buy this game.

Overall thoughts: I’ve been really, really enjoying this game. I’ve had a ton of fun with it, and I’m loving most of the design choices they’ve made. In some ways, it feels like they took the best parts of Let’s Go, Sword and Shield, and Legends Arceus to make it. They took everything that worked, put it together, and added brand new features that all fit really nicely and are welcome additions.

However, I’d be willing to bet that’s not what you’re gonna hear/see from most people saying their thoughts. And with good reason. The game is riddled with noticeable, unavoidable, and sometimes even game-breaking glitches. In most games, you usually have to go out of your way to find such oversights. But in this one, any given casual playthrough will see them every 5 minutes. They’re everywhere, so it’s no wonder people are focusing on them.

Good aspects of the game: A lot of the mechanics are very enjoyable. The open world works really well, the game gives you a ton of options about what to do, and almost everything you do is gonna give you immediate, noticeable benefits, so you never feel like you’re wasting your time. The music is really good, and the graphics for the models are very nice too, in my opinion. Your trainer character emotes a whole lot. Obviously, whether the aesthetics of the game are appealing to you or not is the most subjective aspect of it, but the effort that went into giving each pokemon textures that reflect their body types is undeniable. I personally really love the way steel types look in this.

This is an opinion rather than an actual aspect of Scarlet and Violet, but at least from my perspective, it really seems like they were trying to make a good game here.

Bad aspects of the game: Some nitpicks here and there about how it would be better if the game had a scaling system regarding your pokemon levels, so you feel less forced to play it in a “right” order. And I wish there was a way to look at the pictures you get with the medals other than screenshotting, because they’re very cute. Also, I wish there was more stuff to do together in multiplayer, other than the usual battling and trading. Right now, you can only do the raids together, and that’s about it. You can also have picnics and take selfies with each other, but other than that it’s just each of you playing on your own while also standing next to each other. Not a lot of collaborative or competitive things to do.

Now that the nitpicks are out of the way, the Donphan in the room: the game has a plethora of graphical glitches that are too numerous to count. Entire areas getting deloaded, characters and pokemon in the distance being low poly and walking at 2 frames per second (which is common practice but it’s usually better hidden so the player doesn’t notice), the textures in the environment are very, very blurry, the shadows on the floor are barely rendered at all, you can go through buildings if you walk through the door funny, you can sequence break with a little bit of effort, glitches glitches glitches everywhere. They are a part of the experience that will follow you everywhere.

I want to be sympathetic with the developers who I’m sure crunched like hell to get this out on Gamefreak’s insane timeframe. And there’s no doubt in my mind a lot of them really did put a lot of care into the game. But the objective reality is that the game shipped out in this state, and it costs $60. Fans have to spend a pretty penny to get to play it, and they deserve a quality product. And at this point in time, that’s not what you get when you pop that cartridge into your switch.

Do I recommend buying it?: No, not really. It’s a good game underneath the glitches, but to enjoy it you have to overlook so, so much. And not everyone is willing to do that, nor should they have to be. If you’re a Pokemon fan that’s excited about this game, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. Just know what you’re getting into, and be prepared to deal with it for the foreseeable future. If you’re not a Pokemon fan and are just looking for a fun game to play in your free time, skip this one. In its current state, it’s not worth your hard-earned money.

If Gamefreak releases a patch, or patches, that fix all the framerate and graphical problems, this game will be an easy 8/10. Easy. But until that actually happens, I can’t in good faith recommend it. I hope this comes to pass eventually, because I really like it and wish it didn’t run so bad. But right now, I’d recommend to avoid unless you’re 100% aware that it’s broken in many regards, and are willing to put up with it.

[cubic-watermelon]

My big fat Pokemon rant:

Hey there lovelies, this is going to be a long rant about my thoughts on the state of the Pokemon games.

WARNING: Personal opinion ahead, proceed with caution!

I love Pokémon, if you can't tell, I'm basically a Poké-artist at this point. So it pains me to have to do this but I can't leave these feeling inside any longer. I feel like the last genuinely good Pokemon game was either Black and White 2 or X and Y. In gen 7 (Sun and Moon) the hand holding was absurd, I remember just wanting to play the games and was interrupted several times in the beginning of the games. But I could have excused that if not for the Ultra games... they're DLC for Sun and Moon at the full price of a new game and it bothers me that they did this...

this brings us to Scarlet and Violet, the broken, unfinished first open world games of Pokémon's history. Before this, gamefreak experimented with Legends Arceus, in my opinion the best recent pokémon experience. it has a lot of flaws, like not being able to play PVP matches, the lack of breeding and proper competitive training, the graphics, textures and, some times, lag.

It looked like a Gamecube game. People kept comparing it to TLOZ BOTW and why it couldn't look like it. Is the Switch too weak? NO! the switch showed time and time again that it can handle graphically complex and beautiful games, like monster hunter and dragon's dogma. So, is the Pokemon team this incompetent? Remember pokemon Let's go eevee and pikachu? say what you will about those games but they looked polished and beautiful!

Also, you could ride your own Pokemon. But yes, not the same type of game, so I can't compare. And hey, graphics aren't important and I had so much fun with Legends, I also never encountered any glitches besides the camera going through the floor.

Sword and shield are not amazing but at least they have some polish! no major glitches, fun game play, decent graphics... where they fail is in the areas we've learned to expect from pokemon, the character pop ins, the grass growing, the textures loading and in the animation department - If a character is going to do some "complicated" animations, the screen just fades to black, sound effects play, fades back with the character in a new place... It's 2023, those "animations" are inexcusable! Also the horrible and recycled character animations:

but that alone doesn't ruin the games, it's just that Pokemon is a BILLION dollar company! You'd think they could afford good animators. But I actually like Sword and Shield so let's talk about Scarlet and Violet. Man, where do I start with this. I mean, we've all seen the glitch compilations online, but I myself have only seen the regular going through the floor ones, but that's no excuse. the character animations are better (specially during cut scenes) but nothing to write home about. What really bugs me is the amount of lag that almost makes the game unplayable to me. if they weren't ready to make an open world game, they shouldn't have. if they needed more time, they should have delayed it.

the Pokemon and overworld characters keep popping in like in the previous games but it's somehow worse(?) you'd think Mesagoza wouldn't have lag because it´s closed off and has a loading screen but you'd be wrong. the towns and the ppl in them lost their souls, you can't go in the buildings and NPCs have nothing to say. The graphics are, somehow, worst than in sword, shield and legends! (legends had those texturing problems but was still very pretty).

Sure legends isn't a real open world game, but need I remind you BOTW runs on the same hardware?

And what other Open world and semi-open world games are there for the switch with much more complex graphics and textures that run without lag?

Meanwhile Scarlet and Violet here looking like a game from the 2000s

But one thing it did right was making the Pokemon textures better.

But if that's why the games are unfinished, I don't want them.

let's talk about the new gimmick now, the tera raid battles. they´re a mess, there´s nothing else to say.

The tera Pokemon are fine and a good addition but the raids are almost unplayable. I can't tell what's going on half the time! Sometimes my Pokemon disappears or goes through the floor. Sometimes no one moves for 5 minutes, the menu is gone, you can't input commands, everyone goes invisible, the tera mon is not there and then someone died 5 times, it's all over and I did nothing! WTF!

you know what I loved and was fun? Dynamax raids! Why not just do the same but with tera mons??? I´ll never know. who the fuck made these games? The B team? Probably the Z team!

If it sounds like I'm being too harsh, it's because I love Pokemon, but I hate this. I don't want this. I really like Scar/Vio's Story and characters but I could not enjoy this game the way I wanted. It's not a money issue! give your guys more time to make games!

And to finish things off, here's what I'dd add or fix:

- Let me mass release Pokemon in boxes! GOD!!! I do a lot of breeding! I need this! Pokemon Legends had it and it didn't had breeding WTF!!! - if your'e doing an open world RPG with a leveling system, please have level scaling! it's not hard to implement! I got lost, beat the gyms in the wrong order, the games overall was a cake walk. if your afraid it'll be too hard for the little babies just have - easy - medium - hard - difficulties! that should have been in the games by now! - Give me a reason to want to replay the league and play on the tournaments! by now I have full teams of competitive level 100 mons, but the tournaments keep the "high" levels of the late game and stops scaling them, so if I want to test out my teams, I can't. Also the prizes could be actually good! like battle items or mints or ability patches. Make the tournaments hard!!!! it's post game!!! it can be hard!!!! Also throw us a bone and add old characters participating in the tournaments like in Black and White 2! - why can't I see the meal power timer screen while camping? that's just weird! I want to know how much longer I have egg power on! why can't I see it!!! makes no sense! (also if you're making a sandwich beware of the tiny earthquakes that happen during the making of the sandwich... much polish) - for the shiny hunters: Legends did it right. There's an audible queue when a shiny spawns, a visual effect and they DO NOT despawn! Meanwhile here I am looking at a group of Flabébé like:

and if you look away for 3 seconds, it's GONE!!!

also can we talk about the random balls? yes, the ones that show up sometimes when you go inside rooms or during cut-scenes:

yeah, what's up with that???

What do I want for the future of Pokemon? Finished, polished fun games please. Also Megas, but Megas are controversial, I loved them. this is a minor thing but I'd like a proper character creator. Most of the ppl playing are adults and we can only play as 10 year olds... why cant I be a middle aged man with a full beard chasing pokemon around the world to be the very best?!

I'm done ranting! I think I said everything that was on my mind. I still love Pokemon, I'm gonna keep playing this broken ass game. Feel free to agree or disagree with me, and tell me how I cherry picked my examples XD I'd genuinely love to know your opinions on all of this.

Stop defending billion dollar corporations just because they give a product you love! sometimes they need to be called out on their bullshit.

Have a good one.

[thedreamyperidot]

Very much new to tumblr, so I'm not entirely sure how all this works yet. I don't exactly know how to respond to reblogs yet so bear with me. First off, your ramblings are totally fine, don't have a problem with it at all. The reason I'm responding to you is to explain my perspective on the game and how it was handled. This mostly concerns you calling the devs lazy. (Note: I don't fault you for thinking this, nor am I upset about it. Sorry if this ends up being a super long reply lol)

I'm not going to go deep into the details of my life and who I am, but I think it's important to know that I've been taking game development classes for about 2 years now. I'm not an employee of GameFreak, or the Pokemon company, so I can't give any definitive answers on why the game came out the way it did, but I am almost certain that it isn't because the people involved were being lazy.

I'm not exactly sure how to best explain this, but from my experience with the game, it seemed like the team behind it genuinely cared about the project. The art direction completely shifted, pokemon are much more detailed now, there is an overabundance of things to see and do, and the core game is actually really fun. Character designs are great, the writing is well done, and there are so many creative ideas at play here.

Now if that is the case, why is it such a mess from a technical perspective? There is the chance that their game engine needs an update, and there is also the fact that this is their first fully open world game, but I don't think either of those are the main culprit. The two potential reasons why I think the game ended up the way it did is either a lack of time, or a lack of money.

First off, let me explain my reasoning for time. Breath of the Wild was the first Zelda game to attempt an open world. It's development started not to long after the release of Skyward Sword in 2011 with a planned release date in 2015, but got delayed to 2017. This left that team with a development time of 6 years. The dev time for Scarlet and Violet was presumably 3 years, with SwSh dlc, and Legends Arceus being developed at the same time. When you are making an open world game that has a strict deadline, some corners are definitely going to have to be cut. This deadline is set by the Pokemon Company to keep sales up while pumping out more merchandise.

My second thought is that there is not enough money going around. Before anyone says that Pokemon is the largest franchise in the world, yes I am aware, however, Gamefreak doesn't get to decide how much these games are funded; the Pokemon Company does, and they also have to balance out things like the mobile games, merchandise, the card game, the anime etc. Gamefreak only gets a small small portion of that cut. Because of this, they can't just quadruple their team size just to pump out higher quality games quicker, because The Pokemon Company wants to turn a profit.

As unfortunate as it is, this stuff isn't completely in the hands of GameFreak, and as such they don't really have much control over it. This is mostly speculation on my part, but it is a fairly educated guess. Sorry for the long winded post, but I think that the devs get treated quite unfairly by fans who think that they are the sole reason that the games won't improve in quality.

I hope my own rambling at least gave you some insight on game development, and it's many challenges and I hope this helped you understand my point of view on the subject a little bit better!

oh my god! yeah maybe saying lazy wasnt the best way to go tbh, it was 2am when I made those tags so my word choice wasnt the best (Also why I mentioned how if you disliked the tags you could let me know sjdhjfj)

I think that the points you make are completely true! Game Freak mightve cared a lot for the game but due to factors out of their control the product ended...like that. It's honestly such a shame as someone who was a huge pokemon fan since they were 8, seeing the series suffer due to capitalism has been incredibly disheartening.

Thank you for this ask! I appreciate your thoughts in this and I understand my wording might not have been the best.

[torterragarden]

For character ask, forgive me if you've done this one already- uhhh how about Leon?

Surprisingly I don't think I have done this for him yet lol so thank you!

First impression: That is. a really ugly outfit. He's a bit obnoxious but hopefully he grows on me

Impression now: Well fuck he sure grew on me and now he's my favorite Champion lol. I just think what Leon represents in the story is really cool and he's definitely one of the better things about swsh as a whole. Having him be your rival/bestie's older brother adds a really interesting layer both to your relationship with Leon and your relationship with Hop, the way he parallels the player and is basically a different version of us, like the protag we never got to play as, the way he's almost the hero of the story but isn't actually, because his story is ending as yours is beginning. It's just really neat! I like how much build up he gets throughout the game so when you finally get to battle him it actually feels really cool, and whoever decided his battle theme should be a remix of the hall of fame theme has the biggest brain at Gamefreak it really elevates the whole event even more. And okay, his outfit isn't actually that bad, I actually like the shirt and I had my protag wear it a lot in the game, I've come to realize that the problem with Leon's outfit is really just the cape. I get that it's supposed to look tacky but god it's really ugly and clashes with everything else. When he takes the cape off the outfit is Fine. Not amazing but like it's Fine

Favorite moment: There's a lot of subtle moments with Leon that I like but my favorite is. a bit hard to explain. It's when you're supposed to fight him the first time, right before we get interrupted by Rose starting the apocalypse or whatever, and Leon says this to you: "The tense, still air on the pitch... And the exact opposite from the audience, cheering and yelling... They're both fantastic, wouldn't you say? But remember, the audience is also a bit cruel... They want nothing more than to see one of us lose, after all! It can fill you with fear knowing that, but I absolutely love pushing past the fear. I love giving it everything I've got as a Trainer and seeing my team give everything they've got to seize another victory! It's the greatest feeling in the world, and I can't get enough of it!" I really can't explain why even to myself, but it was reading these lines that really made Leon click into place for me and when I realized. Oh I do like him a lot actually. But yeah I couldn't tell you why

Idea for a story: One day I'm gonna write about his and Sonia's Gym Challenge. One day

Unpopular opinion: Leon's ace being Charizard does make sense. I didn't like it at first either but that's cause I didn't get it. Leon is meant to be us, and a lot of us started with gen 1 and Charizard was the most popular starter, so Leon has a Charizard. Yeah it's still pandering, but at least it's pandering with thematic purpose so I've come around on it. Let the man have his Charizard

Favorite relationship: Him and Hop are very sweet of course though a bit sad at the start of the game, also his relationship with Sonia is really interesting and leaves so much room for interpretation and headcanons, I really wish it had been explored more in the actual game but that's swsh for you I guess lol. Also applies to his relationships with Raihan and Nessa. At least we have Masters for all that

Favorite headcanon: Leon's Charizard knows Ancient Power, which is a move Charmander can only learn through breeding, so I like to think his Charmander was a gift from Sonia when they were kids, she bred it to know Ancient Power and Leon never replaced that move

[gen4grl]

Oh, speaking of the FRLG scientist. Did you know in one spin-off, Giovanni actually has a twin brother? Pretty crazy. Maybe that's where Red's features came from. I have a more long winded essay I wrote somewhere about this, but also in HGSS does it ever keep you up at night knowing the sheer existential crisis the Celebi event implies? Let me know if you want me to drop the essay into your ask box, it's the old version rather than the one I streamlined to be simpler and more to the better point bc that was in somebody's DMs somewhere I have no clue about right now. Anyways, going down your blog further and yo I love YOUR essays on these characters like 10/10 my kind of blog here. Very valid takes, and oh I'm right there with you on actually reading game dialogue like lore collecting is my favorite part of these games.

celebi event always makes me so sad, more from silvers perspective. i could write about silver for eons and how phenomenal a character he is - i have a (self proclaimed) doctorate in his character LMAO. i've talked about it before on here but making silver giovannis son is such a dope play by gamefreak, just forever upset about the treatment of johto + its cast >:(

thx u sm for the beautiful comments ahhhh also calling them essays makes me feel professional ... i am just an autistic girlie with too much time on her hands to write and maybe overanalyse details but i'm glad you've enjoyed what you've seen :ppp always suprises me how nice people are on here (compared to twitter which reduces my brain cells every scroll)

to your last point, i think reading game dialogue in terms of pokemon is something i'm ultra passionate about. from actual characters + their storylines to just npc's and interactable items, reading all of these things shows that pokemon from gen 1 to now has always had a skill for worldbuilding, even in the kanto + johto games before they attempted bigger overarching stories. the amount of 'theories' i see people make on twitter just make me go no... this is NOT a theory... its implied or outright stated in the games y'all just mash A.... lmao

and ofc you can send through ur essay! :3 if you do, would you prefer for me to read + post it privately or can i post it publicly to my page?

thx u for the ask :) i love talking heheh

[epicspheal]

Sonia Deserved Better

I’ve been thinking about Sonia’s arc and character in Sword and Shield and while I adore her character, after thinking about it, I feel she was also shafted in terms of development.

I’ll start with the good, Sonia has a very relatable backstory in being a young adult that has no idea what she wants to do with her life. And seeing her childhood friend Leon and her good friend Nessa go on to be successful household name also hits close to home in the age of social media when you can see people you grow up do great things while it seems like your own life is stalling. This setup I think I was really great and probably the best thing about her character. I can relate to her a lot as I’m sure many others can as well, it’s a backstory that makes people want to root for her character. She also actually does make a name for herself which is what she wanted in the end.

But that’s where in my opinon it ends as far as good things for Sonia in my opinion as the narrative tends to take away a lot from her in the story.

She doesn’t get to battle: Now there’s nothing wrong with having non-battlers in Pokemon be a part of the main narrative. But there is an issue when a narrative continuously makes a deal about Sonia being a former gym challenger and once-rival to the then unbeatable champion and not allow the player to battler her at least once. That information primes the player to expect a battle with her to see why she was Leon’s rival yet the fact that it never happens just ends up making this fact of her “telling rather than showing” (this is something that plagues many SwSh characters). She doesn’t have to have level 70+ Pokemon or anything, but her character would’ve benefitted greatly from this not to mention this could’ve helped Hop to in realizing just because you’re not the number one trainer in the region doesn’t mean your bad and that you can still have fun. What’s worse is that there has been evidence that she was supposed to be battleable based on datamined battle poses for her. 

She lacks agency in her goal: One thing that had bugged me is how in the end she only really starts her arc because she’s yelled at by her Grandma to do something because a couple of kids are starting their journey. Especially when if you talk to her again after her initial introduction in the Wedgehurst lab, you’ll know that Sonia herself has been feeling quite restless. Sonia’s overall arc would have in my opinion been a lot stronger if she herself had of decided to go out and do the research and not be yelled at by Magnolia (which realistically would’ve likely demoralized her rather than motivate her). We already know at this point in the story that there’s a lot to uncover about Dynamaxing, that Magnolia is old, and that Sonia is restless. Perfect moment to give Sonia a chance to say “You know what I want to prove to my gran that I can be her assistant so I’m going to finish up some loose threads on her research that I find interesting”

Her Flaw In Giving Up Too Easily is Never Exploited: Something that is brought up on Opal’s note is that Sonia has a tendency to give up too quickly. The type of person who instead of adapting to challenges, runs away. Again this is a flaw that lot of people can relate to. But this is never exploited to give Sonia meaningful character development. Unlike Bede who has a undying loyalty to Rose which backfires spectacularly and Hop who’s initial arrogance backfires spectacularly on him, Sonia being too quick to give up NEVER comes into play while she’s doing research which I call major BS on as a researcher myself.

I do research as a day job and let me tell you, research is hard. You make wrong hypotheses, your experiments flat out fail, you go weeks even months without making any headway. Everyone I know who has done research has had that moment where you want to quit even the most persistent of people. Sonia was not ever put in a position where her flaw comes to bite her in her butt. With the type of research she was doing in game, I could easily see a situation where she just doesn’t have leads for a long time making her discouraged (something that with the whole historical coverup thing would’ve fit easily). This could make her want to give up but she eventually finds her resolve to keep going because maybe her doing historical research rather than looking at the physics of Dynamax is more her thing, thus making her graduation into being a professor feel actually earned. Not only that it would show that she’s doing this research for herself and not just because her grandma asked her to.

Good Plot Points Go Nowhere: Sonia has three things that are mentioned in game that could’ve great aided her characters and others that is never expanded upon. The first is her soured Rivalry with Leon. It’s clear the Sonia/Leon rivalry is supposed to parallel the MC/Hop rivalry and show what could’ve happened if things went differently...except we never find out what happened that made it soured. It’s especially jarring when you consider that the first onscreen interaction between Leon and Sonia is kind of tense (again leading credence to the soured rivalry and friendship) but scenes afterwards gloss over it.  A cutscene or a bit of dialogue that explained it would’ve gone a long way in fleshing out Sonia’s backstory and also would’ve benefitted Leon’s character as well.

The second point is that she is under professor Magnolia’s shadow. It never really gets the attention it deserves which is a shame because this is a perfect way for her to bond with Hop who is also dealing with the same being in Leon’s shadow. This could’ve allowed the two to bond and give them both the chance to realize they don’t have to be exactly like their family members in order to be successful. 

The final point is the fact that when she was younger she wandered in the slumbering weald and came back “in a state”. Yet this is never brought up again. Considering that Sonia’s arc revolves around the history and mythology of Galar you would think this would be brought up again. This ties back to her lack of agency as her wanting to find out what happened during her time in the weald could’ve been added motivation for her to get out and travel herself, rather than have Magnolia yell at her to do something. Let her be motivated by her own experiences rather than being shoved out the door

So yeah that’s where Sonia’s arc just doesn’t do well for me. The sad part is I feel like the fixes are relatively simple. Just:

Give her a chance to battle to show why she was a trainer that could be Leon’s rival and earn Opal’s praise

Allow her more agency in choosing her direction rather than her being sent out by her grandma

Let her struggle with the research and her tendency to quit and let her find her resolve so she can show she’s not the same kid who gave up on her gym challenge

Explore her past rivalry with Leon, her dynamic with her grandmother and her experience in the weald to flesh out her character as well as other characters

All it would’ve taken were a maybe a couple of cutscenes or extra dialogue bits to really make her act the best that it could be. 

[minmos]

💎💢‼️

ty for the ask !!!!

💎 are there any fun facts or trivia that you would like to share?

toby fox did the battle tower music. thought that was cool

💢 what do you NOT like about your hyperfixation? is there something you would want to change about it?

Stop it's unironically among one of my least favorite mainline pokemon games i actually kind of hate it .. yet the characters keep me trapped here, cruelly.

this is going to sound very passionate and longwinded but the truth of the matter is: i like to think about why i like or don't like certain things in fiction so i can make my own writing better. alsao i use too many words. idc that much

im still a widdle bit mad about dexgate but also i hate the entire plotline bc it doesn't make a lot of sense and is kind of just a reskin of sun/moon plot-wise without any of the elements that made sun/moon a really good character-driven game. i guess it's supposed to just be a story about um. ceos are bad (again)? energy crises aren't a problem because it's not happening right now so trying to stop it is the REAL villain??

the main plotline just kind of sucks and doesnt really make any sense nor is any of it built up or even mentioned until the very end. rose's reveal as a villain is limp and forgettable because he never does anything that like, sets him up as a villain or establishes him as a threat. we're told "nvm he's evil now" and then he's immediately gotten rid of anyways

and ik the usual defense is "it's a kids game and it's not that deep" which yeah fair. but also i do feel like kids notice when something fuckin sucks and deserve to like, play video games that are actually good. id argue its fairly important to have well-written kids media because it's the way a lot of kids are introduced to new concepts or ways of looking at the world. if that makes sense. i wrote up a long thing about how pkmn black/white rocked my worldview when i was like 10 but i am tired now

anyways this got long the tl;dr is i hate the game i thought it was bad. Gamefreak stop relying on crunch challenge

[galarianace]

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⟡♛ If it’s been too long, I’m likely to consider a thread dropped NOT GOING TO LIE-- I’m not all that fast myself kdjfhkdsh but if it’s been like a month or two, I think it’s safe to say that a thread is dropped? In some cases I’ll still reply even after this ( mostly pre-plotted things ) but in most cases I’ll simply try for something new instead. Of course! Hit me up to continue an old thread, that’s absolutely NO problem! I’ll just have to uh, re-read to refresh my memory. ... Because YEAH, sometimes it’s not a lack of interest causing the massive delay, but a lack of tumblr actually notifying people--

⟡♛ I only ship chemistry, and platonic / familial ships are just as important as romantic ones. Before we check if our characters are romantically compatible, let’s see if they can tolerate being in the same room first, a’ight??

⟡♛ Multi-Ship and Multi-Verse Interactions all take care in their own verses, as do the ships. When it comes to ships with canon characters : just because Kira is shipped with someone’s version of the character, doesn’t mean she’ll be auto-shipped with yours! Everyone’s interpretation is different and, as such, so are her interactions. She might be madly in love with one person’s intepretation of the character, and break the nose of someone else’s. You’re all different from each other, and that’s great! So it’s only right for everyone to be treated as such, too!

⟡♛ I don’t enjoy writing out battle scenes So if I can avoid them? I will, and I’ll simply skip to the end, or pause here and there for the occasional comment between characters, rather than focus on the fight. Considering she’s rather OP in a fight, Kira tends fo finish battles fairly fast as well.

⟡♛ I have a hard time writing with muses belonging to fan games etc I haven’t played a whole lot of fangames, and while I truly do appreciate all the time and effort that people put into their fanregions as well ( omfg, some of u guys are a LOT better at coming up with things than gamefreak dkfsjhdksjfhsd ) there’s just a whole lack of information on my part that makes me a bit anxious about interacting with fanregions and stuff ( since, I don’t really want to get things wrong?? I really like knowing what I’m typing about most of the time omg ).

[smoldewott]

I’ve been having a lot of feelings.

TL;DR: Leon represents every kid who grew up playing Pokemon.

When I was ten years old, the Sinnoh games were the latest core series Pokémon games. I remember loving Dusknoir especially, thinking of it as “my partner” the way Ash had Pikachu. I loved the idea of Pokémon contests and watched every episode that had one. I loved the idea of being independent, of going on a journey.

I’m turning twenty-one next January. I still love Pokémon, but now I interact with the series differently.

Pokémon, first and foremost, is a game for children. It’s always going to have kid or teen protagonists. The coming of age story is designed for children. When you beat the champion in any game, a grownup character will tell you you’ve grown so much and how they’re proud of you. I bet a lot of us have some fond childhood memories about specific moments in the games.

As parts of the fan base grow up, though, there’s a question: what comes next?

What happens after you defeat the bad guys? What happens after you enter the Hall of Fame? What happens after you grow up?

The writers have been developing this (or at least trying to) ever since Gold and Silver. Because their protagonists are blank slates, though, it’s hard to write epilogues that get specific. Red becomes a silent recluse. Hilbert/Hilda disappear on a search for N. (I mean, mood, and probably what a lot of players themselves would have done, but it’s also kind of sad to see the world move on without you.) Red appears again to vacation with his rival in Alola. (Also a mood and also what I’d do if I spent three years on an ice mountain, but that doesn’t develop any story about him as a character.)

It’s hard to write about the player characters after they become champion.

Hence: Leon.

Leon is noted for becoming champion at the age of ten. That number is not an accident: it’s possibly the most common age given for when a kid can start their journey. (Note: I love Ash Ketchum. If you wanna make fun of him, make your own post.)

Leon is called unbeatable. He’s never lost an official match. From the outside, this might sound suspicious, but it’s pretty much the same as every player character in every other game. After all, if you lose in a prior game, you’re transported to a Pokémon center and everyone acts like the battle didn’t happen. Protagonists don’t lose, and Leon is no exception.

He’s even got a pair of rivals a la May/Brendan and Wally, Cheren and Bianca, or Hau and Gladion.

But there are two things that set Leon apart from any player character (aside from perhaps Elio/Selene, @Gamefreak you better let us know how the Alola league is doing —) ahem. The first part that sets Leon apart from any player character is that Leon becomes Champion, and he actually stays Champion.

He grows up. He stays strong. He becomes famous, beloved.

This could theoretically be what happened to any of the player characters, after their stories.

So. What kind of person is Leon?

He’s a strong trainer. A given.

He’s a showman, representing Galar’s football-esque league.

He’s responsible: when there’s trouble, he goes to fix it. He doesn’t ask the child protagonists to do the work for him. (Note, too, how his only ally during the game is his rival Sonia.)

But Leon’s most important role in the story of Sword and Shield isn’t that he’s the champion, or that he’s a responsible adult. I mean, sure, those are important, but every champion is important, and Gamefreak has been getting better about letting adults do things.

No, what makes Leon important is that he is our rival’s brother.

That’s the other thing that sets him apart. Our player characters never have siblings. (Yes, I know the character you don’t chose in the Hoenn games has a little brother, but he doesn’t count.) The minimalist family is another part of the blank-slate protagonist design. But Leon, a protagonist who gets to be a person, gets to be a big sibling.

His brotherly instincts aren’t limited to Hop, either. He treats Victor/Gloria similarly: giving them their first Pokémon, teaching them how to catch Pokémon, looking out for them and encouraging them — 

How many of us have done the same when interacting with a child new to Pokémon?

(In 2017, I had a very pleasant conversation with a kindergartner telling me how strong his Wishiwashi was. I like to think we learned at least a little from each other.)

So, to recap: Leon reflects the protagonist archetype. He shows what might happen after a player becomes champion. Leon represents anyone who’s been a Pokémon Master since they were a kid.

And in the end, he steps aside when it’s time for the younger generation to take their place.

Nobody’s saying that adults shouldn’t play Pokémon. At a certain age, though, we have to remember that it’s not primarily for us anymore. As adults, we have influence, and we need to be mindful of how we act around younger players.

Are we being kind? Are we being helpful? Are we giving them a safe place to grow?

After all, that’s what being a champion is about, right?

[quartings]

How Pokemon could double the length of the games’ story without changing their writing style!

This will be quite a long post, so a lot of it will be under the cut!

Even though many Pokemon postgames can be really fun and fulfilling, it’s really only thanks to the battle facilities that some of them are blessed with. The postgame areas/story themselves usually feel very rushed and/or hollow. Meanwhile, Mystery Dungeon games have 20+ hour main stories that are followed up with even longer postgames adding up to over 50 hours of story! So how do the Mystery Dungeon games do it (Besides having a far superior programming and writing team)?

This is because among the three pillars of content in mainline Pokemon games, (Gym Leaders- aka distinct minibosses, new areas to explore with new Pokemon, and a b-plot) one or two of them always disappear in the postgame.

For example:

Johto: Has new gym leaders, but barely any b-plot to provide pacing, and the many new areas have barely any usable new Pokemon.

Sinnoh: Has a few new areas and a small b-plot, but no minibosses, explaining why the b-plot feels so small.

BW Unova: Has many new areas and new pokemon, but no minibosses and the Sage-finding b-plot barely counts

B2W2 Unova: The new areas are less new, the new Pokemon are less new, and none of the minibosses are mandatory. Outside of finding N again, there’s really not any b-plot.

Kalos/ORAS Hoenn/Alola/Galar: Barely any new areas, barely any new Pokemon, mostly a lot of backtracking in a condensed plot. Having more of a concrete story is nice but the lack of challenging fights makes it feel even shorter and less significant.

 IMPORTANT NOTE: This is only re-crafting the story based on using plot devices that Pokemon have already used to improve and lengthen the playthrough. If we were allowed to use plot points or creative ideas that Gamefreak hasn’t used before, then we might as well turn the story into a 200 hour Mystery Dungeon-style epic saga, haha.

So-! Let’s take a look at this reworked story, where the main and postgame both have all three pillars of storytelling!

 Main Game:

The main game will be based off Gen 5 (Stopping an evil team) and Gen 7 (Setting up a league)

Set in a region where the evil team has already won (not really post-apocalyptic and edgy, just roughed-up like anime Kanto) and is a gang that constantly terrorises the residents. Gyms have been dismantled by this evil team, and the now-jobless gym leaders are trying to protect their towns from the villains.

You get your starter from the professor to save them from a grunt.

Instead of gym leaders, you fight the evil team admins in their hideouts across the region. There’s still puzzles and the admins are type specialists, so these simulate gyms to teach type matchups.

I guess to prove that it’s still to teach type matchups, some townsfolk will say stuff like “Admin X scorched my poor Grass and Bug-types with his Fire-type Pokemon!” and “If only I still had my Water-type Pokemon with me- then I’d teach them a lesson!”

Reasons to stop individual admins can be very different to make fighting them not feel stale- Rescuing Pokemon, the Professor, unblocking routes, re-securing an important facility, protecting cargo/a VIP, obtaining an artifact, etc. One of the reasons the grunts challenge you is because they want your Pokedex. For some reason, even though it’s been a plot point in the manga and the anime, saving your mom from the evil team has never happened in the games, which I think is a big missed opportunity for creating an intense high-stakes conflict!

You learn history in this region from former gym leaders/elite four/champion maybe? Sometimes gym leaders may make you take on their old gyms to see if you’re good enough to help them stop the evil team.

Rivals:

You have two rivals. One is a happy and friendly rival who becomes morally swayed as the evil team affects them personally (They become evil for like one fight because Pokemon would never allow more than that) until you help redeem them. And the other starts out edgy and driven to stop the evil team, like a Silver or Gladion, but learns compassion and overcomes most of their trauma by the end of the main game.

Villainous Team Boss:

There’s a scripted unwinnable battle with the evil team boss (like with Zacian and Zamazenta) early on in the game. This’ll help you feel like the boss is real threat and a scummy person you want to beat later!

And since the best evil team bosses are shitty parents, let’s make them the parent of the edgy rival!

This villain would probably be using the box legendary you have to save in the final battle against them?

We’ve somehow never had a villain who HATES Pokemon as their motive, just ones who see them as tools, so maybe this villain or their family member was injured by Pokemon before and now they hate Pokemon and want them subjugated? And as the first trainer in a while who openly loves their Pokemon, you specifically pose a threat to this villain?

This idea mostly came from realising that you’re pretty much always a reactionary protagonist and not a proactive one. You’re not really out to change the status quo on most Pokemon games, but in this one, the status quo starts out as villainous and it’s up to you to change it! This also comes from the critique from SwSh and Borderlands 3 where your character has no personal reason to do anything and just gets dragged around by some arrogant adult giving you orders.

Postgame:

The postgame will then be what the main games are usually like (Beating the league, completing the dex, dealing with legendaries)

It’s been several weeks since you beat the villain, and many towns have been repaired. A proper league has been set up, and you, as the hero of the region, are invited to test it.

A handful of new Pokemon are now in old routes, and several new routes are unlocked too.

Most gyms are in towns you’ve been to before, but some are in all-new towns that were blocked off by the evil team before!

Some gym leaders are former gym leaders who have reclaimed their titles, some of them are all-new characters, and at least one of them is a redeemed evil team admin. All of them have teams of six, plus gimmicks like Raihan or many NPCs in prior games like triple battles, held items, special moves, etc, in addition to the type matchup stuff.

You get a third new rival who’s a champion from another region, wanting to try this league out. They’re friendly but really cocky like Leon- maybe they’re actually Leon, who knows?

Instead of just using the shiny charm to incentivize Dex completion, there are many NPCs who give sidequests wanting to see specific rare Pokemon, offering hints to their location, items, TMs, etc in exchange. Some of them are even mandatory mini-arcs to help space out the gyms. Think the Solaceon news people or the Unova Hip Waders. All the NPCs have names to distinguish them more.

Like in SwSh, the Elite Four is a rivals tournament with 1) Recurring Fan like SwSh’s Orbeetle Girl, 2) Edgy Rival, 3) Cocky rival, 4) Former Champion. And like in USUM, the champion challenger is your very first rival, as cliché as it may be.

Bonus Postgame:

The third bonus postgame thing mostly features what modern Pokemon postgames and DLCs are like (Short story arcs with new characters and Legendary Pokemon showcases)

You travel to a new island area where the remnants of the evil team have freed their boss and they’re trying to use Space Dragon Legendary #4 to eradicate everyone, and you and edgy rival have to stop them, with many other characters all playing a part. Maybe even Looker too!

Overall Rival Character Development:

Nice rival: Starts out nice, becomes conflicted, turns kinda evil for one fight, becomes good again and regrets it, gets closure at the Champion fight, becomes a gym leader or something.

Edgy rival: Starts out edgy, wants the sole responsibility to stopping the villains, but gets pummelled by the villains, gives up for a while, gets motivated by you, helps you stop themain villain, tries to understand how to be a normal trainer kid, tries out the league challenge, gets closure from fully helping stop the main villain in the bonus postgame.

Cocky rival: Starts out seeing you as a stepping stone, sees you as a challenge after a few defeats, sees you as a bully after a few more defeats, and becomes depressed after losing the league, finally recognizes you as a better person than them after you save the world again in the bonus postgame, and gets downgraded to both a rematch character and helpful postgame NPC in the end.

In a perfect world, there would be PMD Sky-style bonus stories to develop the rivals and other characters, but I’m trying to make a slightly plausible story so I’m not including it in the main pitch here.

[inikavulpixelreviews]

Let’s Talk About Pokemon - Toxel and Toxtricity

848: Toxel

Mmmmmm. I don't remember if I've ever said it in this review series, but I have a really bad repulsion to babies. Toxel isn't exactly being an exception here. Combination of the baby fat in the cheeks and lips and dumb little oversized head and its tongue and its bald-looking lightly misshapen head and AUGH. No sirree, Toxel had a snowball's chance in hell for falling into my good graces just from being so heavily baby-based alone.

It doesn't help that it has a diaper and... oh no... is that why it's Poison type? Please don't tell me that's why it's Poison type. Oh god I dreaded what this thing might turn into when it evolved, and I probably only would've evolved it because my own sister was insistent I keep this horrible little slime goblin around to see what it turns into.

Maybe, just MAYBE I'm being a little too harsh on Toxel, maybe not any of its features are inherently bad but that's just too bad for me I guess. I just had to be a kid in the 90s when a cartoon that was big at the time just happened to air an episode that highlighted all the gross things about babies all at once in a nightmarish context that gave me a goddang phobia of the friggin things as a child. While I don’t really have a crippling fear of them anymore I sure as hell don’t wanna go near one if I can help it. Maybe I'd be writing a very different review right now if a show like that didn't ruin babies forever for me but I guess we'll just never know. And I can’t say I’d ever be very affectionate to a Pokemon that instantly made me think of a scene that scared the ever-loving shit out of me as a kid thank you very much.

...Other than... ALL that... Toxel doesn't have anything going for it anyways. Poison/Electric is a neat typing that was feeling like it was going to waste because it's just some purple thing with a spark of electricity glued to its forehead I guess because they didn't think it looked “Electric” enough. I don't even like the grumpy face cause it's still very babyish. At least in this context... plant these grumpy eyes on literally anything else and I'd probably be all for it but euch. EUCH. The only advantage it really has going is that it’s fairly non-descript as an animal so it looks fairly solidly just-a-monster in a Gen 1 sorta way. But other than that...

Personal Score: 2/10

849: Toxtricity

...How the hell did one of my new least favorite Pokemon of all time suddenly become my top favorite in all of Galar???? Well, whatever. Be careful who you call ugly in preschool, I guess.

Gamefreak must've known they had a hit on their hands with this one, I'm surprised it was a Pokemon they kept secret until the game came out given how much it's skyrocketed into popularity (Striking number 2 in Gen 8 in the Pokemon of the Year polls, only just behind Galar's pseudo legendary). It's definitely at least pushed like one of the flagship Pokemon of Galar, with statues dedicated to it and its own G-Max form that they felt the need to keep further under wraps until very recently, only teasing its appearance as a hill figure. You're even handed a free Toxel at the Daycare. Frankly I'm alarmed no major character even has one on their team!

But this design in general totally is one of the stars of the show in Gen 8. While it definitely lifts aspects of salamanders and other amphibians into its design, it feels a lot like the classic “just a monster” type design from Pokemon's early days. The way they anthropomorphize it is neat too. It has an overall comical body structure with a long neck, lanky long arms and amusingly tiny legs.

Its face is also great. The tired, dreary eyes are cool and it thankfully turned that badly implemented bolt feature from Toxel into a full on electric mohawk! The head spikes are also neat, especially at the angle it holds its head back in its default pose ingame, it sorta evokes the look of the head of an electric guitar.

And that right there's the whole aesthetic of Toxtricity, of course! They're punk rockers! All covered in spikes and everything, even right down to having spiked belt. The little wart-like bulges on its chest are also doubling as guitar strings! There's plenty animations where it strums them to rock out, mohawk lighting up and everything. It strums these warts to generate electricity and make a ton of noise while it does so. That's such a cool way to incorporate an object into a naturalistic element on an animal. I like my objectmon and monsters with on the nose object motifs quite a bit myself, but it's cool that Toxtricity managed to fit an element as specific as an electric guitar's strings into an animal that would normally have no business having such an element but it just works.

And I can understand not everybody digs that color scheme; fairly bright purple and yellow is brave, to say the least, but I'd say it works! Even if I'm oddly enough, kind of a fan of color schemes other people might consider garish, you could say it just works because Toxtricity as a punk rocker is all about tearing down the norms, man. It also helps to make it look far more lively than its more mellowed out cousin.

Which, by the way, Toxtricity has a form gimmick too. A pretty unique one at that, and now that they've had it happen I'm surprised it's only happened just now, but what form your Toxel becomes depends on what Nature it is. The more excitable, energetic sounding natures will become the Amped form above, while the more chill or relaxed sounding natures will become the “Low Key” form.

At first, you'd wonder what that has to do with punk rock and why Toxtricity out of all the band-themed Pokemon we've already had up to this point, but a closer inspection highlights that Low Key is more of a bass as opposed to Amped as a guitar. They even have bumps mirroring their respective instruments! Amped has six just like an electric guitar has six strings, while Low Key has four, just like an electric bass has four strings! Low Key even seems to have a slightly longer neck than Amped form does, again, just like how basses have longer necks compared to guitars! It really is so much fun how much mileage they're getting out of the visual theming here. It’s really cool how we got a Pokemon that imitates an inanimate object in a way that’s totally organic and natural-looking way.

To tie all the theming up in a nice bow, they have a unique ability called Punk Rock, which increases the damage their sound-based moves do while halving the damage they take from the same kind of moves. Given that there's some Pokemon that are outright deaf with the ability Soundproof, it's easy to assume that Toxtricity unfortunately suffers from hearing loss. They can still hear, just not as well. Indeed, right under natural aging, the number 2 cause of hearing loss is listening to music too loudly. Much like punks are one to do. Turn down your music, kids!

That said, if I had to pick just one, I'd easily pick Amped just because it generally looks cooler and has a bolder color scheme. The only thing I'm less than sure on for these two is their “tails”... which rather than being tails are now just stiff extra-large spikes jutting out of their butt. And since I used a Toxtricity on my team, thus was looking at the backside of one for most of the game, yeah, hard to not notice. I would've much preferred a more normal tail that could've also had some spikes around the tip of it if you must carry the punk theming that far.

Also I'm not a fan of their name. “Toxtricity” is just toxic and electricity clumsily mashed together and it doesn't really roll off the tongue. Like, was that really the best localization could come up with?? If I had to take a crack at naming it, I would've called it Punkture or something similar.

Personal Score: 10/10

G-Max Toxtricity:

The two Toxtricities share a G-Max form that incorporates elements from them both. And hmm... I'm not as much of a fan of this G-Max, sadly. It's still cool, don't get me wrong, but the tesla coil look to the tail feels out of place and a bit more “generic electric type” imagery to me compared to all the electric guitar/bass theming the previous two had.

It's also huddled down on all fours. I'm sure some are happy about that much, and it helps differentiate it from its normal-sized self, but I felt like being anthro was a little vital to the line's theming, given it needed some free hands to strum its bumps. The spark eyes are also neat but the tired look just looks more amusing to me. Eh. Just every feature here feels “It's neat and all but the basic forms did it better.”

Oh, wait, there is ONE thing!

Its attack animations sees it pulling a literal electric guitar out and smashing its opponents with it. Now THAT is wicked cool!!

Personal Score: 9.5/10

[Archive]

[fwns]

First time crying because of a pokemon game

Literally no one:

Me: I’m gonna write about pokemon shield because it’s a great game and i love it

Man the last time i got to review something was probably 7 years ago during high school english class. I am by no mean a writer, yet again a game reviewer. This is just my honest take on the game bc it saddens me to see that a lot of people are shitting on the game especially with the dexit, short game, lack of action and the paid DLCs just announced. I‘ve been playing pokemon for 10 years or so (my first game was saphire) and despite the flaws this game has, i truly enjoy it.

1.) First of all. dude u gotta appreciate the visuals of the game!! LOOK AT THOSE!!

The screenshots above are from some of my favourite areas in the game. The concept of wild area is really cool and it makes the pokemon journey more realistic like the ones we used to see in the anime or how we imagined it. That it would take days to reach a city and u need to set up a camp whenever you need to rest or fill your belly. Also getting chased by strong wild pokemon in the wild area really got my blood pumping lmao

2.) THE SOUNDTRACKS. THE FRIGGIN. MUSIC. I’m such an aficionado for great music whether it’s an album, movie scores, and even games like these. Seriously the gym leader battle theme is an absolute banger (especially the crowds’ chants!!). Like it makes my 12 yo character more fired up to kick a grown up’s ass in front of a packed stadium and live tv.  The last time i was this excited to kick a gym leader’s butt was when i was battling winona years ago bc my dumb ass haven’t quite figured out the concept of type advantages.

^more appreciation for the gym leader battle theme. From all the shits this game has received, i haven’t seen a single complaint about the music so explain this, science side.

3.) I love how in this game some of the NPCs have actual character like our rival hop, leon, piers, marnie and bede too. BUT ESPECIALLY OUR RIVAL HOP. SERIOUSLY HOP IS BEST BOI AND ONLY DESERVES THE BEST 😭😭😭. Hop is (i assume) childhood friend/neighbour who happens to be the little brother of the current champion leon. Now this may seem like a usual pokemon protag - rival trope, being the protag is a nobody who just stepped into the world of pokemon trainer and the rival being someone related to someone important in the region (like how green/blue, barry, and hau was). Being a champion’s little brother is quite a big deal for hop but hop isn’t the snarky arrogant rival like green was. Instead he’s just a happy kid who dreams of surpassing his brother and want to form a healthy rivalry/friendship with you (he’s kinda a mix of barry and hau imo). Throughout your journey, hop helps you with the ropes and just generally be there as a friend...a real good friend.

And just like the previous games, as the story progresses you get to battle hop quite frequently and in order to advance further in the game (and keep those pocket money to buy varsity jackets) you gotta beat him over and over again. The thing is, unlike some other rivals who were like ‘wow ur so strong! k i need to train more bye’ hop actually TALKS TO YOU. Sure he did acknowledge our strength, but after he would talk to you abt other things like the next city/gym leader or even abt his life atm. I really appreciate the developers for making details like this bc through the dialogues you can actually see the depth of the characters and it makes you actually think. Like for example from my battles and dialogues with hop, i can see that he’s quite pressured bc of his background as the champion’s brother and people have high expectations of him, yet he keeps on losing to you (his rival). There is even one point in the game in which hop fell through a downward spiral bc he keeps on losing to you (the protag) and another NPC rival. You can ACTUALLY FEEL the stirring of emotions through the battles with hop and the dialogues bc at one point he even said something like ‘i don’t wanna drag leon’s name through the mud bc i’m too weak’ and i was like NOOOOO WHO HURT YOU 😭😭😭😭 (but then i realized it was partly me oh god i’m so sorry hop). Never in all my experience playing pokemon game that i feel bad about beating a rival, i do hope in future games they would let the rival beat us....well probably during an offscreen battle :p

Also, for the longest time we finally have our champion doing actual champion duties (?) like protecting the region from catastrophe. Like i understand that this is probably where the ‘lack of action’ comes from because let’s face it, team yell isn’t actually a threat to you or the region, and whenever a ‘real threat’ comes up, leon would beat you to take care of it first. Tbh there are moments when i was like ‘damn leon let me in on the fun too!’ but then again i realized there are actual adults in this game with their actual jobs (champion, researchers, gym leaders) who can actually do their job without relying on a 12 yo to do everything for them which is pretty realistic if you think about it

but don’t worry, in the end we’ll get to play a big part in saving the region too :))

4.) THE GYM LEADERS AND GYM BATTLE IN THIS GAME ARE JUST *chef kiss* the developers really put all their effort in this. Although i admit some of the gym challenges are kinda ‘lazy’ like just pummel through these gym trainers before facing the leader (especially on the last gym???really????). But the battles against the leaders are never boring.

WE FINALLY GOT A DARK TYPE GYM LEADER WOOTTT!! Plus he’s that one dude from the pop punk band that we love during our middle school years.

God i wish i had a big brother like piers, not only he’s one of the most challenging gym leader in our journey but he also helps us not just once but twice. At one point he throws an impromptu concert to cause a riot for us to be able to get through a heavily guarded area

gOD i love that chaotic energy 👌🏻👌🏻👌🏻

Last but not least...man...MY BEST BOI RAIHAN!!! JUST BEST GYM LEADER, DRAGON TAMER (lol sorry lance), A GENIUS, 100% WILL TREAT YOU RIGHT, JUST 👌🏻👌🏻👌🏻💦💦💦 💕 💕 💕💯💯💯 

just thank you gamefreak for creating him 😭😭😭😭👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 

OH AND GYM BATTLE UTILIZING WEATHER EFFECTS??? that’s some solid strategy there. I’m not a really strategic pokemon trainer, so i usually just pummel through every opponent lmao so when i saw this man controlling dragons and the weather i just 😮

AND THE FRIGGIN SELFIE GAWD 😭😭😭😭 LIKE WHO THOUGHT SNAPPING A SELFIE IN THE MIDDLE OF A SANDSTORM HOLDING A GIANT ASS POKEBALL IS A GOOD IDEA??? BUT THIS MAN SOMEHOW MAKES IT WORK. Also pls give me that camera bc the quality is bomb.

Well this turns out to be longer than i expected but i really just pour out how i feel about this game. It’s true that it’s not perfect and there are some aspects that can be done better, but as a long time fan of pokemon I REALLY ENJOY THIS GAME. I can see that the developers really work hard for this game to be able to cater to both old and new fans, and we all know that it’s impossible to please everyone. And for those of you who begs to differ or have different opinion about this game it’s perfectly fine and i’m not hoping to change anyone’s opinion. But PLEASE STOP HARASSING THE DEVELOPERS AND NEW FANS ESPECIALLY YOUNGER ONES! because we all know people who shames others’ interest are the worst kind of people :))) And if you have the time and money i suggest you give this game a try.  Well that’s all i gotta say, have a good day/night everyone!!

[0poole]

The Best and Worst parts of past Pokemon games

I’ve watched ShayMay’s 7-hour analysis on Omega Ruby and as you’d expect it’s getting me to think about what are actually the best and worst parts of Pokemon in the past. I’m still glad he literally goes through the entire game going into both the good and the bad of the game, and I’m basically only bringing it up because of the sheer amount of effort put into it. Obviously the video was made before Sun and Moon came out so thankfully some of his quandaries have been solved, but still it’s interesting to see the on and off of certain things throughout the series. Most of the time it gets better as time goes on, but still, it feels like you could get an amazing Pokemon game just by piecing together the features of past games (even if you’d definitely need a few additions to get it perfect, if that’s even possible). 

To be honest I really am slowly falling out of favor with Sword and Shield, and it kind of makes me hope that Gamefreak can still get better. Even though the games sold like hotcakes, hopefully they have the heart to realize a ton of people didn’t really like the direction, even though it still isn’t “bad,” just worse than it feels like it should be. Even though bad direction can’t be remedied by other things, the fact that they are a multi-billion dollar franchise really makes it feel like they could afford to make it better, especially when past games did do what people wanted...

Since it’s the most relevant...

DLC/”Enhanced” Versions:

I will genuinely take DLC over “enhanced” versions any day. Even though you’d think a lot could be improved between the base versions and enhanced ones, that’s usually not the case. The only ones that truly changed the game were Black and White 2, since they were treated more like sequels. Even golden games like Platinum didn’t divert much, even if it is an objectively better version than Diamond and Pearl. Considering the games are now going to be a solid 60$ each, it would be even crazier to expect someone to buy the base and enhanced versions. Only paying 30$ for multiple expansions (at least two, could be more) with the content of said expansions being put out as a free update otherwise is a much better deal. The only people this hurts are the types who reasonably wait for the inevitable enhanced version and only buy that instead, since it’s always better, even if only a little. As far as I know, however, Pokemon is one of the only game franchises that releases enhanced versions of games soon after their release (as in, not years later when technology advances and they can profit off nostalgia), so really they’re just becoming more normal by doing this. 

Of course there’s the argument that there shouldn’t be any DLC or “enhanced” versions, and all the content of the game should be included in the base game. It would obviously be preferable to not pay for it, but as is painfully obvious, even the richest groups can still be money hungry. Considering they’re inevitably going to make one or the other, DLC is going to be the better choice overall because it’s much more expandable. You rarely got to see a substantial amount of content added on in the enhanced versions. If they made us pay 30$ for the Isle of Armor and Crown Tundra separately, that would be crazy. But, since it’s 30$ for both, they could easily insert more bits alongside the rest of the Expansion Pass, maybe allowing them to carry a game for multiple years under less resources on their part compared to trying to make a whole new game. That way, maybe they can devote even more resources to future generations and remakes. That’s all just speculation though. I’m kind of impatient, writing all this before the day it releases and when we get more info for the future, so basically just take this as my opinion the whole time before the DLC came out.

Honestly, though, I almost always fall into the camp of gamers completely misrepresenting the concept of DLC, saying they just cut off some of the content and made you pay extra for it. A few bad apples really soured the bunch in this case, because, even though Sword and Shield did feel kind of lacking in some places, saying the Isle of Armor or Crown Tundra would’ve been a seamless part of the game no matter what is just obviously wrong. The games felt “complete” in the sense that it is all they wanted it to be, and it has a clear start and end. Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean it’s unfinished. Again, obviously it would be better if it was free/included already, but that’s just a given. 

In a similar vein…

Remakes:

Basically, I love the usual formula for remakes. I actually really liked ORAS, and I feel like it improved on so much, making me actually like Hoenn as a region. Even though I played them closer to when they game out, RSE feel like a slog compared to modern stuff, especially with the lack of the physical/special split. I can definitely feel some nostalgia for the originals still, but 90% of the time I go back to those games looking for nostalgia, getting bored by the time I get to Rustburo, and turning it off. As mentioned by Shaymay, there’s still a ton wrong with it, but I’d much rather play them all the way through compared to the originals. I do still want to force myself through them eventually, though.

Heartgold and Soulsilver are widely considered to be the best games in the whole franchise, so I don’t have to say much. I’m not a Johto nut so I’m not the best at selling it, but I will say it feels so much more colorful and polished visually than the rest of Gen 4. 

Firered and Leafgreen have the same problems that make me dislike RSE, but Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee are the strange cases that make the future so uncertain. I liked them for what they were, but I swear God if they do that one more time it’s going to make the fanbase erupt. The Let’s Go formula worked for Kanto because a lot of the people playing Go are people who knew the original games but not the newer ones, making Let’s Go a good entry point with mostly familiar territory and slightly dumbed down gameplay. It may work again if they do a Let’s Go in Johto, but if they do it for Sinnoh, since it’s the next one on the chopping block, it’s going to fall insanely flat. Barely anyone who only loves Go also seriously wants to play through Sinnoh. There’s little nostalgia there, and the nostalgia with Sinnoh resides in everyone else who loves the games as they are/as they originally were. Plus, people say they’re some of the hardest games, so dumbing them down ruins part of the appeal more. Since remakes pretty much entirely profit off of nostalgia (and partially from people wanting to experience a region without the limitations of its origins) they really need to just, you know, remake the game. Same deal as any Pokemon game, just with better (if you’d call it that) graphics and modern sensibilities. Considering all remakes (IMO) look better than their originals, I don’t think we have to worry an insane amount about them looking as iffy as SwSh. I don’t think they look THAT bad already, but I definitely think they’re some of the ugliest in the series. 

I will say that I do still want remakes to happen. I’m a sucker for nostalgia, and I love seeing graphically enhanced versions of past regions. Also, my favorite region is up next, so I really just want to see what happens. I’m a shill so it can’t make me hate the originals more. Or, you know, maybe that just makes me a normal, reasonable person...

Graphics:

Obviously we just want texture quality, model quality, etc. But, I think there’s something to be talked about with the overall art style.

I’m not gonna lie, I was kinda into the chibi-esque models of X/Y and ORAS. It did feel like it trivialized the more serious characters, like the villains and major legendaries, as they looked too cute, so it’s probably for the best if we stick to “normal” proportions. It felt weird when I first saw Sun and Moon, but I got used to it. I always wanted to make my character look as cute as possible so the chibi style helped with that, but I have gotten some good results from Sword and Shield. 

For character customization (if it even counts as “graphics”) I think Sword and Shield really hit the nail on the head. I’m kinda biased, because Moon and Ultra Moon had a really shitty shade of purple as their designated “purple” clothing, and SwSh really got my favorite shade of it right. I do think it’s great to have one style of clothing under different, generally standardized colors. But, I definitely think we need more body types. Like, one of the main reasons I play as a girl in games like this is that the boy character doesn’t even look like me anyway, so there’s really no good reason to play either. Even if it’s just one separate character option for each gender, like a Skinny male/”Round” male/Skinny female/”Round” female I’d be fine. Obviously I’d want some character sliders at some point, like pretty much every other game with character customization does, but I can settle for one more generation. The alts could even be more shoehorned rivals like in X/Y, so they basically have the design cut out for them.

One weird graphical thing I want brought back is the little circular platform your Pokemon lands on in a battle. For some reason, I really liked that. It does make the battle feel more in tune with the overall environment without it, but sometimes the battle fields look really bland and flat without it. I’d at least want the floor to be designed in a way to look like there are devoted spots for each Pokemon to stand on, even if it’s not a separate thing like in X/Y. It just feels more satisfying. Not really a big deal though, since I’ve been able to ignore it for this long.

The big thing is animations. I am getting extremely tired of the X/Y models. That’s 3 generations so far that use them, and some of them aren’t even good. I’ll never hesitate to drive this point into the ground, but I really wish Pokemon like Xatu, Charizard, Dragonite, and Salamence are permanently floating/flying in air. If it isn’t obvious, this is the way it is because of Sky Battles in X/Y, since they didn’t want to do extra work for the Pokemon permanently suspended in air. The problem is that those four Pokemon (and probably many others) really don’t feel like they are supposed to be in the air 24/7. According to their official art and sprites, they’re all on the ground. Xatu especially was made to look super tall and stout with its geometric wings flatly put on his torso, like the totem pole it’s supposed to be. In the air, it basically just hovers with his wings out, and for some reason it looks like there’s a large gust of wind keeping it afloat. It looks really weird. Salamence is also in the same boat, since its wings are so weird and not wing-like that making it constantly fly just looks so unnatural. Mega Salamence was at least designed to look like it’s supposed to be flying, but normal Salamence really should just rest on the ground. He’s too fat to be permanently lifted by his weird wings. Charizard and Dragonite aren’t as severe, since both are clearly shown to be otherwise super capable of flight, but they do feel better on their feet. I remember watching TyranitarTube’s series on one of the Extreme Randomizer hacks of the game, and in there somehow they made a Dragonite use it’s Amie/Refresh animation of sitting still on its feet in battle. It seriously felt so much better to look at, instead of this giant, poofy dragon being carried by its comically small wings. Basically, the way you should tell whether to keep them on the ground is based on the official art/sprites. That is the way the designers intended them to be depicted, so that’s the way they should be. Some exceptions that I’m actually fine with are pretty much all the regional birds, except Unfezant. They all look pretty decent flying, since flying’s basically all they do… Even Swellow, who has the same strange gust of wind as Xatu, feels more fitting like that because it seems so much more aerodynamic. 

Apart from that, I just wish they were at least a little different. I’m not super against the muted colors they have compared to the sprites, but I wouldn’t be against more saturation. Considering how much work was put into all the different animations of the battles, Refresh, and both walking AND running animations, I unfortunately don’t think they’re going to change any time soon unless they explicitly say they’re going to change them for quality improvement. I would say the Pokemon from Gen 6 up are still pretty fine, since they were more meant for 3D.

As for battles, one of my favorite Pokemon games is, in fact, Pokemon Battle Revolution on the Wii. Not only was it super Sinnoh-focused, but it had multiple body types (even if I still look like none of them) with character customization for all, and great graphics for the time. People always look to it after citing the lacking Double Kick animation from SwSh, saying how animated the models were and how they liked the Pokemon actually running up to their target when using a physical attack. I will say that the model quality for a lot of them were still kind of iffy, and that some of the animations were a little too much. Specifically Pidgeotto, who was on one of the rental cards, was super energetic so as to seem a bit crazy, and felt a bit low-poly for the otherwise high quality of the environments and humans. However, going back to such a formula would be extremely welcome. I’m totally fine with the Pokemon not running up to their targets, but I wouldn’t be mad to see it put in, especially since the walking and running animations are already in the game. They would need to be balanced in terms of speed, though, since some of the animations in PBR felt really, really slow with that animation in there. Plus, some moves just need speed, like Quick Attack. 

In terms of the move animations themselves, I do think some of the water effects in PBR felt too realistic compared to the rest of everything. Also, people say Double Kick looked bad in SwSh (like it ever looked good), but a hell of a lot of Fighting type animations in PBR were literally just the Pokemon walking up to their target, smacking them with nondescript flashes, and that’s it. So many of them could hardly be pieced apart depending on whether they were kicks, punches, or whatever. It would’ve been better either way if they put the physical move attack animation in for Double Kick, but PBR has its fair share of shitty move animations too. Moves like Seismic Toss looked fucking insane though, and I loved it. Seismic Toss specifically is the true test of move animation quality. 

Also, it’s kinda irrelevant to anything, but I could totally get down with the Announcer from PBR returning for major battles like Gym battles or League battles. He was so much fun, even if a bit repetitive. All you need for that is a setting to turn him off, and bam. He’s a true classic.

More generally, though, I think Sword and Shield is a seriously mixed bag of graphical quality. I give the SwSh haters a lot of flack, but the one thing I 100% agree with is the texture of the trees from the Wild Area. They are god awful, even if it was in a game a decade ago. I seriously don’t know how they messed that up, since you can download better bark textures for free on the internet. Surely someone at Gamefreak could’ve done better there. If this was just a random tree in the background of some random route, then who cares, right? But no, this is practically every single tree in the Wild Area, the biggest selling point for the region and the game, where you would always spend the most time. You see so many of these trees everywhere, and they look horrible. I also hate the look of the berry trees, since they don’t seem to use the same lighting effects as everything else (just a guess though), but even apart from that the batch of lighter leaves on top of the bottom ones just looks so artificial. It looks as if they dumped a sphere of leaves on top of another sphere of leaves, like it was ice cream. Maybe some trees in the real world look like that, but sometimes it’s an artist’s job to take what sucks about reality to make it better for fiction. 

On the other hand, I think locations like Motostoke look genuinely amazing. The brick textures are pretty good (compared to the tree), and all the colors and shapes of the place look really good. Also, when they go into full-on cutscene mode, the models, scenery, and everything else really shine. Obviously I’m not the king of all visual media, but it’s just weird to see that. It’s hard to compare to past games, because everything else was either 2D or on the 3DS, which wasn’t as powerful. Even though the Wii is definitely less powerful than the Switch, it doesn’t really count since there’s infinitely less content to worry about in PBR. Much more of the work could’ve gone into the graphics. Really, there doesn’t feel like there’s any excuse unless crunching is involved on the business side of things, which I really hope isn’t an issue for their sake. I would honestly love to see them announce that they’re taking a year or two off to devote themselves fully to a new generation, instead of trying to keep a yearly schedule. Something something Miyamoto quote something something.

Stylistically, it’s also a mixed bag, but at least this time it’s all just subjective. It feels like a lot of the game is meant to be somewhat blobbed together in some ways, like its a painting meant to be looked at from afar. It feels like there aren’t major outlines for things. Specifically with the Pokemon, they don’t have that outline they’ve had for the 2 generations before. It’s never been a big deal, and I really hate how low quality the outline made the models feel, so I don’t really know which style I want. Even though it’s still decent, I feel like most 3D models made to have a super notable outline on them look a little funky sometimes with it, so I don’t know if I want that, but without it they just don’t feel as solid. I really just don’t know there. 

Music:

It feels like, even if a franchise is kinda iffy, the music is still consistently top tier. Like, no one thinks Sonic games have objectively bad music, even if they don’t like it. If they do, they’re just wrong. Pokemon’s the same, so thankfully this isn’t a test of which past game had the highest quality music. I do think the Wild Battle theme in SwSh does feel like it has a weird melody, but that is super outclassed by universally acclaimed bangers like the Slumbering Weald, and the battle themes of Marnie, Bede, Oleana, and the Battle Tower. Those aren’t just the best the generation has to offer, they’re seriously amazing themes. 

Back in Gen 7, we have the Kahuna Battle, all themes of Team Skull and the Aether Foundation, Lillie’s theme, the Ultra Beasts (which might be more contentious but I like it) and Hau’oli City at night. In Gen 6, I at least liked the themes of Laverre City, Team Flare, and ESPECIALLY the Xerneas/Yveltal battle theme. Don’t even get me started about Pokemon Battle Revolution. I could go on and on, but I at least want to spotlight ORAS here because they knocked it out of the park with Archie and Maxie’s battle theme. It was the perfect drop, because the intro felt super muted and boring, and I was afraid they completely snubbed it, but the drop completely blew me away, and absolutely perfected the theme with the crazy trumpets Hoenn is known for. Also, Zinnia’s theme is amazing, as well as many other themes that are just improvements over the originals. The one thing I’m semi-iffy on is the Regi theme, an amazing theme for my favorite trio, but I never think anyone really makes it feel as lumbering and deep as it should, considering what it’s supposed to represent. The beat is arranged as it should, but it never feels punchy enough for me. 

I’m really just praising the music here. Frankly, I see no reason to think the music is getting any worse.

Difficulty/EXP Share:

They’re basically the same thing, at least according to Gamefreak.

I always keep the EXP share on, but I do think that making it a permanent addition to the game was a major mistake. As explained in Shaymay’s video, it actually increases the overall experience you gain in battle, at least before. That seems absurd to make a permanent addition (although they likely changed it in SwSh because of that). I honestly just use it because I’m not into a challenge in games, but it should definitely be optional, if for no other reason than to be a bootleg difficulty slider. However, What about the difference between the Gen 6+ version and previous versions?

I think it’s easy. Make it like pre-Gen 6, but give you multiple shares. So, if you want to train up two underleveled Pokemon, make it so you don’t have to swap it between them. That way, if you really want to just spread the EXP thin, you can give one to everyone you have, and that’s that. Also, I think it should perfectly split the EXP, not adding anything onto it. If everyone on your team has one and you get 120 EXP, that’s 20 EXP for everyone. Of course, I do actually love the mechanic of being able to switch the share holder in to give them a disproportionately larger amount of EXP compared to everyone else. It just doubles the effectiveness of switch training, and makes it better for when you want to train them up but specifically not the higher level Pokemon you’re using to fight.

Some part of me wants to keep my precious easy mode in, but then I realize… Just make actual difficulty differences. Just give us a choice. Even if it’s just a “How well do you know the Pokemon world?” with a “I know all about it/I’m a bit unsure” text box in the beginning. In the harder variant, tutorials will be skipped automatically, trainers will have higher AI, and better teams. However, I don’t think higher levels is a perfect foil, because that can just be beat with grinding, and grinding is boring. Also, I’d have to guess the main reason why Gamefreak didn’t do this in the first place is that trading Pokemon would differ a bit between difficulties with different level curves, although apart from it just sounding like a bad thing I’m struggling to think of a genuine reason why it is. But, for the sake of playing, grinding sucks. It’s not fun, and I honestly think you shouldn’t just bump up levels and call it difficulty, because you don’t actually need skill to beat a higher level, just a better level and maybe RNG. But, if you actually had to effectively train a team of more than six, with Pokemon you swap out depending on your opponent, you would actually need to think of how you play the game. I think the main reason Pokemon games are so easy is that you can basically choose whatever you want and do almost whatever and still win. Some fights, as far as my playstyle goes, are still decently challenging because I just choose what Pokemon I like and not as much what’s good (unless something genuinely just sucks), and those battles, even though I would probably get annoyed at losing over and over, feel so much more rewarding to beat. And, of course, that’s only like a few major fights. I’ve never had any real trouble with trainers. I only think I’ve had a bit of trouble with the elite trainers in Let’s Go because I always try to use my lowest level Pokemon first to level them up, and keep my team at completely even levels. If I always just switched in the foil to my opponent, which I inevitably had, I would almost never lose a single Pokemon, mostly because of the “switch” battle setting.

But of course that begs the question of Pokemon being balanced for children and inexperienced players. I know way too much about this game, so obviously it’s a piece of cake for me no matter what, and what I want is supposedly what would frustrate everyone else. But… again, just put in the choice. People can choose whether they want to be challenged, or if they just want to play Pokemon, and if they choose wrong that’s on them, not anyone else. They could just reset the game and try again on an easier difficulty. It’s crazy to have to vouch for this, since it’s a staple in pretty much every other game in existence. Even in my casual state, I want to play a harder Pokemon. I want to test myself. Online competition is a bit much for me, but the AI is too little. Even in me replaying Pearl right now, I’m trying to use weirder and weaker Pokemon than I usually use for difficulty, and even that game was mostly a cakewalk. I’m only stuck at the Elite Four because I was somehow super underleveled. In the generation where I experience the AI switching out the most, they still just do that at random and keep in certain Pokemon that get completely walled by what I have out, only for me to stall them to death. AI definitely should switch out (and I honestly can’t remember it happening once since Gen 5, if even then) so if anything, just give them a more solid switching ability. Considering we have the opportunity to switch in whatever we want when they are about to send out something, they really need to take advantage of the power of switching.

Gyms are a big piece of difficulty that falls apart 90% of the time. The gym puzzles are rarely hard, with only a few notable exceptions requiring major thought, like the Circhester, Snowbelle, Snowpoint, and Sootopolis gyms. See a pattern? Why the heck to Ice types/themes get the worst resistances yet the best gym puzzles? Otherwise, if you’re not just fighting trainers (which you were going to do anyway) you’re bashing your head against a wall until something sticks. The Trials of SM/USUM were universally a joke, and were it not for the Totem fight they would’ve actually made me mad by how easy they are, considering they had the opportunity to revamp the whole system and knock it out of the park.

As for the Gym Leader, assuming we have to stick with the idea that they can only use one type still, they really have to cover their bases. Like, a Water gym leader would really have to have Flying type moves or Pokemon to counteract the easy Grass weakness, or something. You can’t get to the top with just one single type and nothing else. I do kind of think a master with no specific type speciality should only be reserved for the Champion, since it makes them more special, and because it seems like any old trainer can become one if they beat the last one, meaning it’s illogical for too many of them to have one special type. I can appreciate the choice philosophies of the Gyms like Raihan and Volkner, and Flint of the Elite Four, where they do specialize in one type, but they have a lot of different Pokemon involved who only have moves of that type. It still feels consistent, but also more varied. Also, I love the 1v2 dynamic of Totem fight. Not only does it blatantly put you at a disadvantage, but since the battles aren’t explicitly type based, they can put together some seriously unique strategies, like the Sunny Day Castform partner to the Totem Lurantis. It’s literally the most basic plan you can formulate, but it sure as hell made that one of the hardest early boss fights in the series, at least for me. It was pretty good stuff. Too bad other bosses like the Ultra Necrozma fight was just kind of cheap, with a +1 to all stats and super high level… Better than nothing though.

Versions:

I get that it’s a staple of the franchise, but I really hate version exclusives/differences. They’re just dumb. Specifically the differences of Black 2 and White 2 pissed me off the most, because guess what? They did have difficulty options! But… they were version exclusive. Like White Kyurem more than Black Kyurem? Or, maybe Reuniclus is your favorite Pokemon? (not bitter) Well, too bad. You’re only allowed the expressly easier mode of the game, which you only unlock after beating it normally????? That’s just stupid. I’d sort of be okay with it if you unlocked easy mode after normal mode, then unlocking hard mode after beating easy mode (like how I thought it was before I looked it up), but limiting stuff like that is just ridiculous. I mean, it’s dumb to have to unlock an easy mode after beating the normal game to begin with. I’m honestly considering trying to beat easy mode without evolving any Pokemon though. Self-imposed difficulty is fun sometimes, but yeah…

Also, the differences of Sun and Moon also are dumb. Like playing in the day, but like Lunala more? Maybe Purple is your all-time favorite color and you want to wear it? Well, too bad. Go ahead and flip your 3DS’s internal clock around, messing up all other time based games you play. It’s a gimmick that transcends Mega Evolution, Z-Moves, and Dynamax.

Now, there’s a completely new problem: Some people bought the wrong expansion pass for their game. Because there were two versions, people literally just wasted money on absolutely nothing. To be fair, those people are blind idiots, but still. I really just want one version. Please.

The whole semi-in-grouping that happens when the version exclusive Pokemon are first revealed is kinda fun, but 90% of the time people have to settle for a few Pokemon they like and a few they don’t. For example, I bought Sword specifically because I like Zacian more, and the legendaries would be much harder to come by than other version exclusives. In the meanwhile, I preferred practically every other version exclusive over Sword’s, including but not limited to my boy Reuniclus. I don’t use old Pokemon in newer generations anyway, but it still sucks to have to choose like that.

It was obviously meant to give people much more to look for, since they physically can’t get some Pokemon, and have them interact with others to get them. The only problem is that we just have the Internet now. It doesn’t help to just ask someone online for a trade for a version exclusive. It’s just an extra stepping stone that really isn’t that fun to deal with.

I was originally going to say that the games/console cost more so less people would buy them, but considering SwSh absolutely knocked it out of the park, overselling even the highest selling games from the past, that’s clearly not an issue. My sister even bought Let’s Go Pikachu after buying Let’s Go Eevee for herself, since we both initially got Eevee. Thankfully she seems relatively into buying the games now, so we can coordinate and get different versions. That’s how I was able to complete my Pokedex for the first time in Sword (although obviously there’s less Pokemon to find). I think she even bought a separate Sword version for herself too… Is this what the average consumer is like?

Honestly all of this is just sort of subjective because really it’s not a big deal, but it would be so much less of a deal and make the games much more perfect and reasonable story wise if they just used one version. For example, Circhester is clearly an Ice-themed location, but in Sword you face a Rock gym leader, instead of the Ice one. And, the opposite is true in Stow-on-side, because Sword has the more logical gym with the boxing gloves punching you around and the tough city that feels as Fighting as Fighting could be without being a literal dojo. But, in Shield you face some Ghost kid. To be fair, I do like that version exclusivity is bleeding into some of the characters too, so if there is to be version exclusives at all let there be version exclusive characters, but it would just feel so much better to have it all sorted into one place. Also, to consider past installments, Ho-oh is clearly more important to the overall plot of the world than Lugia is, as shown by Ho-oh always being an important, mystical lore figure in the Anime and such, while Lugia is just like “Wow, there’s Lugia! So powerful!” Thankfully the plot didn’t entirely revolve around them, but it could’ve if they just focused on Ho-oh. 

Story:

Pokemon has definitely had its fair share of dumb stories, which is excusable because it’s not actually the focus of the game, but it doesn’t hurt to have.

You obviously can’t talk story without talking about Black and White. Also, you really can’t talk a Pokemon story without talking about the evil Team in each game, because they’re basically the entire motor for plot. Still, though, Team Plasma is easily the best Team in the franchise for story purposes. The biggest thing is that they seem like the most reasonable team, making them seem like people who are just so into their ideals that it looks like a cult. Also, in B2W2, they actually split up into the friendly division of Plasma, where they actually carry out their goals of wanting Pokemon to be happy and free, while Neo-Plasma does all the Team Rocket-level shenanigans that mess everything up. Not only is it just reasonable, but it answers a question that comes with the overall concept of the franchise: How can Pokemon want to battle for the sake of humans, etc? It doesn’t make sense, and naturally someone in the world would take that to the extreme when they realized it. It also makes sense why the grunts are so hellbent on wreaking havoc around Unova, because they are each led to truly believe what they are doing is right for the world. Other villains like Archie and Cyrus are just like “humans are bad, let’s destroy them” which is like a lite version of this idea, but it feels almost too supervillain-y to take seriously, and the grunts just feel like henchmen. Plasma feels just real enough, with somewhat level-headed people like N making it seem like they’re almost not crazy. 

People always say Team Rocket is the best, but even though their motives are so simple enough so as to seem real and good story-wise, they do feel like they don’t really add anything to the overall idea of Pokemon. At the time it was just “Pokemon are strong so bad people can use strong Pokemon for bad” which makes sense, but really doesn’t feel like it extends beyond that. Don’t get me wrong, I would say they’re objectively second best (because subjectively Galactic is my #1) but I do think Plasma is better.

Since they’re the most recent, Team Yell is the most nothing out of this list. That only makes them second worst, above Team Flare, who felt like they were trying to do something big but fell flat. Team Yell as the resident “evil Team” feels weird, because they do almost nothing. They are only similar to Skull on the surface, that being all rough-and-tumble teenager types, as underneath them being a toxic fanbase is somewhat interesting, but they, again… just felt like nothing. The plot wasn’t even close by to them, like with Skull was, being tied in with the Aether Foundation. They’re just there to be goons and go away. At least they did lead to the first Dark type gym leader, but again… their leader is a Gym leader. We would’ve seen him no matter what he did, so it feels less interesting. I do want the Team to actually do something.

The problem is that, since Plasma already did good, how do you do something that’s original but still good? To be honest, I want it to involve Foundations, like a morally good alternative archetype to the evil Team. Our first run-in with a Foundation was led astray by a crazy leader, but it seems like they’re still good overall, so I at least want to see more of them. Maybe instead of the Team searching for world domination by using the box legendary, maybe you and the Foundation have to search for the box legendary so they can help you defeat the Team, who may or may not have the third/another legendary on their side, and you have to prove yourself to it to get it to trust you. Sort of like Sword and Shield, but more involved. Zacian and Zamazenta just sort of appear when things go bad, and that’s it. You just hear stories about them before that. That’s at least better structure-wise, although the motives and themes would still have to be dealt with. There are so many possibilities there it’s hard to choose. 

One thing, though: I definitely believe that Pokemon was never even close to an open world game, and people thinking the new games are too linear compared to the old ones just have rose tinted glasses on. Kanto had bad crossing over, where you’d sometimes find yourself severely overleveled when interacting with a story event, and beyond that all other games were pretty linear too, with only a few slight special, optional areas that aren’t involved with the plot. Of course, I still think the game would benefit from being open world. Some games don’t have to be open world, and that makes them feel sort of empty, but Pokemon as an idea is exactly perfect for that. They were toying with the idea a bit with the Wild Area, and I do think if they really went crazy with that idea it could be fun. Everyone always wants to compare it to Breath of the Wild, but I do love how seamless everything is in that game. Even with the enemies popping up out of the grass/flying down from the air/just romping in a set area like Pokemon would. Gym leaders could just use different teams based on how many badges you have, like how they imply it works in that Pokemon Origins series. Then, you might be able to scale up the Pokemon you can find too that way, like with the Wild Area. BotW’s story was very light, but if you just either use a quest system/map markers you can still manage a decent story in an open world. Plus, Pokemon has a ton of side quests anyways, like all the ghost quests they always seem to put in. You can literally “get” the quest, get distracted, and completely forget you were even doing any sort of quest because they don’t remind you in any way. Side quests could even get you extra doses of EXP for your team, giving them a use.

The Gimmick:

I don’t want every generation to have a gimmick. Ideas are severely limited in that front, and when everyone’s special, no one is. 

Mega Evolution was kinda cool, as it improved on old Pokemon without making them another part of an evolutionary chain. Also, it lets some Pokemon get different forms with entirely different strategies to them (even if they’re version exclusive…) But, as someone who plays Pokemon for the monster designs themselves, I actually kinda don’t like it. No, not because Mega designs are bad, but because they completely trump the designs they evolve from. For example, Mawile isn’t just “Mawile” anymore. It’s more of a “Not-mega Mawile.” It feels so much less complete now that it has a form on top of it that isn’t permanent. Same goes for starters like Sceptile, who feels kind of boring compared to its Mega. It always sucks when a Pokemon you like evolves into something you don’t like (Popplio for me) and you have to deal with the fact that, even if you like a Pokemon, you aren’t supposed to keep it like that, and it’s brought down because of it. I mean, I guess this is all just personal. Obviously it’s easy to like an early evolution, but it feels so much better to like a final evolution. Since Megas are both temporary in battle, not available outside of battle, and limited to the very late game usually, liking a Mega feels kinda pointless for in-game purposes, where you interact with your Pokemon the most. Plus, for Pokemon like Mawile, you’re using an “incomplete” Pokemon for as long as you don’t have the right Mega stone. It’s obviously fine when all your other Pokemon are incomplete as well, but yeah… Just kinda sucks sometimes. Plus, anything achieved by Mega Evolutions could just as easily be achieved by normal evolutions. The only issue is Pokemon like Beedrill not being able to evolve again, and Pokemon like the starters or legendaries who are already too good to get another stage. I feel like weak, 3rd stage Pokemon like Beedrill deserve that kind of treatment the most, but no one else. If they can evolve normally, evolve them normally, and if they’re already too good, just let them be.

Then there’s Z-moves, which solves one problem of Mega-Evolution: All Pokemon can get involved. No matter what, your Pokemon can unleash super cool but sometimes questionably named moves. And, apart from new animations, the special Z-moves aren’t so insanely preferable to the normal ones. It’s cool, but if every Pokemon gets to use them, it kinda gets old after a while. Also, it’s a one-time use, so if you fuck it up it’s wasted. It’s definitely not perfect, but I will say I love the special Z-move animations, mainly because it’s not just Pokemon doing stock animations for a quick little attack. They animated that Pokemon specifically for this attack, which is basically a cutscene, and it always looks better. It is a bit strange, though, that even though Z-moves are seemingly named after Zygarde, it doesn’t even get a special Z-move of its own. That dude really got the shaft when it comes to 3rd legend attention...

Now we have Dynamax and Gigantamax. I just want to say that, when it first was revealed that you can turn your Pokemon into Kaiju I was extremely hyped. More hyped than I had any right to be. Considering nothing else, Dynamax definitely is the winner in terms of visual concept. Not only does it just look cool, but I love how Gym stadiums are designed specifically to accommodate them. It’s a nice touch of worldbuilding (even though it’s basically necessary). Unfortunately… It’s easily the Jack of all trades, master of none in terms of gameplay. It’s like Mega Evolution in how you change the appearance and power of your Pokemon, and it’s like Z-moves because they have super powerful moves with special effects. Sounds alright I guess, but I really just wish they kept the previous two gimmicks instead of just making a new one that checks them both off. Also, Gigantamax actually annoys me. They try to make it seem like your Pokemon changes, but the vast majority of them either look worse or hardly change at all. Specifically, Copperaja looks like an absolute joke, even though normal Copperaja is one of my favorites of the region. But, ones like Hatterene, Corviknight, Garbodor, and Grimmsnarl hardly look any different at all. Even Appultun and Flapple have the exact same Gigantamax. Who cares? Even their moves have almost exactly the same animations as their type’s counterparts, with a slightly different particle effect. It’s so much less interesting than they make it seem, and it has all the problems of liking Megas over their base, but worse, since they’re more temporary and only allowed in certain areas. Plus, Gigantamax isn’t even a thing possible with all members of a single species. Obviously now they’re introducing a way to change that, but at that point why not just do it Mega style? It’s not even that much better, but there’s so much more work in it. It’s like less rare shinies. It did bring about a decent event in the games, those being the Max Raid Battles, which both have good rewards and good challenge to them. I don’t have friends so they suck for me, but with friends it looks awesome.

I feel like the worst part is that they probably are just going to retcon these gimmicks in the future, like they did with the Pokedex. It makes sense, but each thing was made to be such a massive deal in their respective regions, it feels lame that they’re just gone now. 

But, oh my god. You have no idea. Regional Variants are the best thing to happen to Pokemon since, I dunno, whatever. They’re amazing, and something that should never leave the franchise ever. Like a Kantonian form more than an Alolan form? Sure. It’s still there with all its power, it just has a different style in this region. That is not only biologically logical, but it brings back interest in a Pokemon without outclassing the classics. Plus, now it feels like every single Pokemon has a possibility to shine that is both permanent and preserving of the original. I just can’t get enough of it. Then Sword and Shield introduced the idea of Regional Evolutions, which can be both plain evolutions and split evolutions from the normal form like with Cofagrigus and Runerigus, meaning the possibilities are endless. Then, even further, regional LEGENDARIES. It doesn’t make sense lore-wise but who cares, the new birds look awesome as all hell and I actually like them now. It’s so perfect, I don’t want anything more than this in future games. I would kill for some Sinnoh variants of post-gen 4 Pokemon in the remakes. Hell, I hope Sinnoh gets revamped with a ton of different options across the later generations so it feels significantly different from the originals. 

As for things like Primal Reversion, I honestly don’t even know. It’s even less significant than Gigantamax, but since it has more interesting lore I’m sort of fine with it. I do hope they use it for other legends too, especially since Palkia and Dialga are just asking for it, with their respective orbs, and Dialga already having the “Primal” title elsewhere. And yes, I know he’s called “Dark Dialga” in Japanese. 

If I may be so bold, I think a neat gimmick that can be both unique, interesting, and completely alter the strategies of battle, would be some sort of temporary type inversion. That is, everything going out of and coming into the inverted Pokemon will have reverse effectiveness. It’s like the fringe little Inverse battle you can go through in X/Y, but turned into a mechanic that’s inserted into normal battles. Visually, it would give the Pokemon a negative look, as in inverting their colors and shading. I don’t see how this could single out certain Pokemon in a special way, like with a form change or anything, but maybe there could be one specific Pokemon that has an ability that does something special when it inverts. Maybe items could be made for a special use too. I was sort of half-using it for a fan region I’m half-devoted to that will likely not be a full fledged idea, but I do like it.

Roadblocks/HMs:

I’m entirely fine with the way things are now, where you just get the HMs as key items you use whenever you want, but I can sympathize with the small contingent of people who like using their Pokemon to traverse the world, instead of anything else. I definitely think anyone who prefers HMs beyond that reason is an absolute lunatic, but I think there is some sort of a point to be made, and I think a combo of Let's Go and Sun and Moon have the answer. It is so much more fun to ride your Pokemon around than it is to get a bike (and put on some seriously ugly clothing, mind you), and I think Let's Go with giving you the option to ride your Pokemon instead of using a bike is seriously fun. I used a Rapidash almost exclusively for that purpose in my run of that game. Who the hell wouldn’t want to ride a Rapidash, assuming you weren’t going to catch fire? Plus, it’s YOUR Rapidash. Ride Pokemon in Sun and Moon were still pretty good, because they served functions you wouldn’t normally expect from HMs, like Tauros being both your bike replacement and Rock Smash, while Stoutland is a dowsing rod. It does get a bit weird when you “ride” a Machamp just so it can push rocks for you, but it’s better than forcing you to teach one of your team members a normal type move at the very end of the game since you absolutely need it to move on, and having to keep it until you can fly back to the move deleter. Honestly, if you could just delete HMs on the fly, they would be so much more acceptable. Still would be worse than what we have now tho.

Basically, I think Pokemon should have inherent HM abilities in them. That is, every single Tauros you catch can smash rocks, and every single Machamp you catch can push rocks. Each Pokemon would either be capable or incapable of a task, and you only need that species to go through it. That way, you’re both using your own Pokemon, while also not limiting their moves. It also makes it easy to tell why birds like Starly shouldn’t be able to carry you and fly you around, while birds like Staraptor can. I also think any road blocks using Rock Smash or Cut should be entirely optional, and for secrets only. In order to make Fly a limited option, maybe only fully evolved Fly-logical Pokemon can use it, so you can’t just fly somewhere in the early game. But, another thing: if you can fly early, so what? It’s not like you get extra options, you only can go back to places you’ve already been to. Even though it doesn’t make sense logically, it’s a very fair piece of game design that really doesn’t have a super obvious reason why it’s limited to the middle few gyms. If you have a strong bird that can pick you up, you obviously worked enough to get some convenience. 

But then, what would be a roadblock to keep you from going too far? A horde of dancing men? Honestly, that’s just one of those things fixed by my open world idea. Maybe some areas can be super strong so as to tell you that you shouldn’t be there, and maybe implement the idea of the Wild Area where you can’t catch the strong-looking Pokemon, but apart from that make most of the world scale up with you. Surely some areas would be slightly higher leveled then the rest, though, for the sake of variety. The Wild area does get a bit stale when literally everything you encounter is exactly lvl 60. Obviously there could be some pointless story-focused roadblocks that only clear when you progress, because that is how it is in real life. You can’t just walk into some business’ office unless you have business there. Of course, you can’t exactly walk into random strangers’ houses either, but still. 

I do want to praise ORAS again because the Soar feature with the Latis was extremely cool. It was like Ride Pokemon but using the objectively coolest possible HM to control. If they sort of nerfed the Fly mechanic and made it so you did have to ride your Pokemon and fly them there like the Latis I wouldn't mind that at all. Although, surely some other people would...

Other Bits:

- I still think that, even though having every Pokemon in the game would be great, I think if it can improve the game elsewhere I wouldn’t mind them saving some space. The problem is that Sword and Shield really wasn’t the best way to suggest it would vastly improve anything. I’ve gone on ad nauseam elsewhere about that so bleh

- I love seeing Pokemon in the overworld. I do think it would benefit from the Let’s Go treatment, where you can at least see if a Pokemon is shiny or not. Either way, it gives them so much more personality, like how some charge head-first at you while some walk up and casually examine you.

- I don’t really care too much about Pokemon following you to be honest. It would obviously be preferred over the alternative, but I’m not gonna riot if it doesn’t happen. It did give a lot of personality I didn’t expect in Lets Go, like Bellsprout being so darn speedy.

- I could probably make a whole nother giant rant about the overall designs of Pokemon but needless to say I’m fine with it overall. I do sort of wish they’d do something else with the starters though, since I haven’t genuinely loved a starter since Gen 4. Honestly Chesnaught was pretty close, but I still get the urge to replace him with something more interesting. Outside of them, though, I think things are going good. Some are duds, but some are bangers like Corvinight, Grimmsnarl, Hatterene, Frosmoth, and a bunch of others which I could easily list but this is supposed to be succinct comments so

- There definitely has to be some sort of endgame content, but everyone already knows that. Seriously though, what if the colosseums from PBR become the replacement Battle Frontier? That would be dope. Although the normal Battle Frontier would be fine too, I guess…

- PBR PBR PBR. PBR is great for it’s realistic sizes of Pokemon. If you’re going to use full-size models of humans, the Pokemon should match. Or, at least make it a little more true to reality. Yes, Wailord is too damn small.

[stardustwink]

I wanted to talk about swsh bc I’m almost done with post game and I needed to write down my thoughts somewhere so. Here we are. Story spoilers ahead btw. Also a lot of gushing abt the rivals bc they’re my children now

I have. So many feelings about this game. tbh the story could have been so much better (and there was potential for something great. But I think it’s mostly bc I disliked how they built Rose’s character as the main villain, more about that later) but the characters... they’re really good.

First bc they gave us Hop and his insecurities as the rival that always loses even though it’s his dream to be champion too - something I’ve always wanted to see in a rival ever since Blue left me hanging (though I understand, as he was the very first rival and we couldn’t have a full plot heavy pkmn game back then), and that I felt was touched upon in Cheren but not really worked with? Anyway. I’m glad they took the time to add his insecurities and his need to keep up w/ Leon to his character and how he grows past it later, it made me actually feel bad for having to take his dream away from him at the end (though!!!! I’m really glad he’s training to be a professor now, bc it really does fit him better! Making his own path and all that) A very good character imo, definitely going into my fav list. The fact that he takes his Wooloo off the team when he’s conflicted abt his fighting style and puts him back in after making up his mind still makes me a bit emotional if I’m going to be honest :’’)

And then there’s Bede. God he’s!!!!! Such a good character!!!!!! How I missed having a rude rival like that! I loved the way his story was handled (though I did wish he’d appear a bit more...but that’s just bc I like him way too much;;), from starting out as a stuck up jerk to getting tricked and then finding a place to belong after Opal took him in. I have so many thoughts abt him. About how he speaks so politely even though he’s a stuck up brat, about how he wears a watch that is way too big for him bc it was a present from Rose (and how much it fits his character as someone trying desperately to fit into a role he’s been given by a man who didn’t even care to get his wrist size right), how after he turns into the fairy gym leader the watch is nowhere to be seen bc, as Opal says, he doesn’t have to follow anyone’s whims anymore and- at the very end! How he hijacks the competition to battle you bc his disqualification was unfair and he deserved to stand there! The way he looks so much happier and smiles as he accepts defeat! I love this kid so much. also bc his entire color scheme and pkmn choices are my complete aesthetic, the fairy fam is literally A+ (also god will we ever know what happened to his parents??? What’s “ran into some trouble”?? Did they die, or did they abandon him bc of money issues??? @/gamefreak I NEED ANSWERS)

Marnie was adorable too, her slight accent is a very charming addition to her character and the slight foreshadowing of her ties to the last gym were great! Also she’s so cute. I wanna become a team Yell member after seeing her smile. She’s a dark type specialist man!!!!! That’s so cool!!! Why are the rivals so cool!!!! And her relationship with Piers is so cute too, they’re great siblings. I loved that when Piers asked her to become the next gym leader she was like “thanks brother, but I refuse. Im gonna be champion! :)” . Her cheering made the end fights so much better. I just wish we had some more interactions between the three rivals bc hop and bede’s fight was great but I wish marnie interacted more with them ):

Sonia and Leon were also very good. Watching Sonia find herself in her research and become a proper professor during my travels was SO SATISFYING YALL HAVE NO IDEA. Her interactions with Leon were so great too, and I’m very happy that she’s good friends with Nessa! Leon is a dork and I also love him, and I kinda enjoy that they both took the role of investigators and let the kids continue w/ the gym challenge by themselves (finally some responsible adults not leaving all the problems for 10-13 yr olds to solve am I right!). Also, LEON PLEASE TELL YOUR BROTHER YOURE PROUD OF HIM HE REALLY NEEDS TO HEAR IT!!!!

but I’ve praised swsh long enough so let’s talk about Rose. I felt like he was an attempt by nintendo at first to try and portray a corrupt businessman but they ended up not following through w/ it and the end result was....that. Don’t get me wrong; there are some points abt him that I enjoy, like the terrible fact that he basically ‘adopted’ a kid to use for his own benefit and couldn’t even remember his name properly, and that he wears dorky clothes off work. But they tried making his motives sympathetic and they didn’t make any sense??? What’s up with “being worried about the future of Galar” when he LITERALLY ALMOST CAUSED THE APOCALYPSE?? Being worried about not having enough energy for the country to survive after like 10000 years ain’t a good motivation for putting everyone in danger, chief.

 And here’s what they could have done: show just how corrupted by his own mentality and power Rose was; show him charismatic on the outside but completely apathetic to the people and justifying his actions by wanting Eternatus’ energy to keep modernizing Galar at the expense of some casualties bc hey! As long as the country will live on and keep progressing, what’s the problem with some lives being lost along the way if its for the greater good? Show him as the evil rich businessman he was meant to be! One that can’t understand that giving a pokemon and a golden watch to an orphan and “saving” him doesn’t give Rose the right to use him and discard him like a tool, one that tries to manipulate the Champion to do what he wants bc he’s given him the fights he wants and promised his family would be safe; just give me a character I can properly hate without feeling disappointed! You’ve done it with Ghetsis and Lusamine, you can do it with Rose too! Commit to your evil rich apathetic businessman plans, nintendo!

I felt both Oleana and the weird hair twins were better antagonists in this front. I even thought like SHE was the true villain and was using Rose’s apparent naïveté as a well intentioned but stupid rich guy and her position as his secretary to get what she wanted at the beginning; alas, that’s not what happened unfortunately ): but she had a proper motivation and enough foreshadowing for me to suspect her and still think she’s cool (her backstory is great for example. I was so surprised when she used a Garbodoor after all those cool lady pokemon!) the twins are both stupid looking and Swordward and Shieldbert are TERRIBLE names, but I feel like they’d be more iconic as main villains too.

I think that’s all for now, ive written way too much already djdflgjf if anyone managed to read all of this then thanks for reading my rambles 

[red-sterling]

thanks for answering!! i hope you don't mind if i send more charas...how about green and/or lillie?

fhgjkfdg aw yea thank u!! hopefully this doesn’t publish before i’m done typing lol

also this definitely needs a readmore bc i got emotional abt Green oops

Green

favorite thing about them

first of all: the fact that Green canonically has a rivals to best friends arc with Red fills me with so much joy and YES they are on their alolan honeymoon you cannot convince me otherwise

okay like. gen 1 Green just perfectly encompasses what it’s like to be a ten year old in a way? like ofc he’s written like a kid bc he is a kid, but i feel like the writing on him just feels so genuine as compared to some of the other 10 yr old rivals you get in other regions. even though he’s kinda a brat at the start, he kinda eases up a bit as you go along your journey and starts giving you progressively nicer/more praise-y end lines when you beat him (going from “i picked the wrong pokémon!” to “so, you are ready for boss rocket!”) but still retains this childlike rivalry and competitiveness and i love that about him

and like. fucking beating him at the Indigo League still completely breaks my heart because even after he did become the champion at age 10 the first thing that happens is you beat him and Prof Oak just yells at him for being bad at things and like. ow. 

this is why i headcanon that Red actually took awhile longer to get to Green like please. please give my boy a chance to be happy and proud

also Red was caught up with Team Rocket anyway so i imagine he must’ve fallen a little behind at some point? anyway

the development on him across regions is so choice!!! he’s so much more mellow and even kinda melancholic when you find him in gsc/hgss, like he’s calmed down over a few years and he obviously misses Red so much but like, it’s clear that Red is kinda the reason Green does settle down and he seems to have worked on his character and become a nicer person - and he still has that sassy flair to him! he’s just got that gradual slope from asshole rival to kinda aloof gym leader to friendly/sassy battle legend and aaaaa i love my boy so MUCH

also huge point: he’s so fucking driven??? he’s got the most drive and the most passion for battles/pokémon in general out of all the rivals i feel. he’s only closely matched by Silver, but Silver seems to be more aggressive than passionate, and somewhat out of necessity too (like, Giovanni abandoned him what was he to do), whereas Green just really like. he genuinely just cares so much about battles and about pokémon in general! he literally calls you in hgss and just rants about how many different kinds of pokémon there are in the world!!!

also in Alola he’s like???? just so sweet?????? he congratulates you and is like hey you’re really strong lets battle like!!!!!!!!! supportive boy!!!!! he has come so far over so many generations and i cry

also on Four Island when you play frlg he legitimately says “Be smelling ya!” when he leaves and how do you not love this idiot

least favorite thing about them

i mean. while i get that you beat Green right after he becomes the champion in the kanto games i feel like there should’ve been more pomp and circumstance for him and i’ll never forgive gamefreak for giving this boy his dream, then making you rip it away from him, and then watching his own gramps yell at him for fucking up like. again it’s that drive, i get why Red keeps such good pace w Green but i just feel like he worked so hard and he deserved so much better than that

also while i’m very biased towards him bc Big Emotions, i feel like if i knew this boy irl who was constantly i’m so great and you’re a loser i would probably punch him eventually lmao. in theory it’s kinda endearing but as a real person that’d be grating 

favorite line

on one hand, “smell ya later” is so fucking iconic, but on the other - 

“I’m Blue. Man, this guy called Red brought me down in a heartbeat. I haven’t seen him in a long time…I wonder where he is and what he’s up to… Come to think of it, you look a little bit like Red. Yeah, you do. Just…Just a little bit. Whatever…”

my namelessshipping heart

ALSO NOT CANON BUT GREEN RANTING TO YOU ABOUT RED AND GETTING SO DISTRACTED THAT HE FORGETS TO GIVE YOU THE POKÉDEX????? BIG GAY

brOTP

for long elaborate headcanon reasons, i see him as being a good brotp with Kris - i headcanon her as also being really driven the way Green is, but more quiet about it, she’s kinda a good balance to him and they probably do pokemon research together. i also feel like she kept him sane while Red was still missing/before they found him on a fuckin mountain

OTP

do i really need to tell you that i’m 100% namelessshipping

like they perfectly balance each other. Green has all this energy and all this spunk and Red is just like… so opposite of him y'know? he’s quiet and he’s more measured in his behavior i feel, he doesn’t really rush into things as much, and yet they both really just took Kanto by storm when they were kids, and i like how they have this foil dynamic and are both still so successful? they’re so different and they complement each other in that way, and they both find success in their own ways

like one of the reasons i hate that Green’s championship gets undersold so much is that he did beat you to the punch, and he has been one step ahead of you, and there’s so much passion there and it’s so loud - and yet you as Red are just as driven, you take down Team Rocket, you’re always right on his tail, so close but not quite there, you’re the only one who can keep up with him and you’re the only one he cares enough about to slow down for

so like. idk with even all my headcanons about namelessshipping aside (and i can infodump those another day lol), i feel like the in-game representation of them just works. they just work so well together, they balance each other without ever holding each other back, and there’s something really beautiful about that in a relationship y'know

…..i feel bad abt not putting as much infodump about isshushipping now but oh well

nOTP

i don’t really have a notp with him? i kinda like. i basically just do namelessshipping, but i don’t get a visceral eugh when i see other ships with him, just kinda a well it’s not nameless so i’ll be on my way. idek what other ships w him are popular?? i’ve been in nameless hell since 2012 so 

random headcanon

while Red is still living on Mount Silver, Green is not coping well with having him so far away, and so Green massively overworks himself to the point that he keeps just not being in his gym sometimes bc he’s bouncing between the gym, training multiple teams, pokémon research, and ofc going to visit Red whenever he can. this leads him to be kinda temperamental after he’s been working on 2 hours of sleep a day for like a week until he just has an emotional meltdown and crashes, and then he gets right back into it because he has no self preservation

…….. nicer headcanon; Red can only cook two (2) foods, so Green cooks all the food for them when they move in together. he has attempted to teach Red how to cook, but Red pretends not to understand so Green will keep making him food. Green knows Red is faking it and doesn’t call him out bc he thinks it’s cute

unpopular opinion

look i’ve played through classic red version a few times and when i say he wasn’t that much of a jerk, i do genuinely mean he was not that much of a jerk. he’s like ten. ten year olds are just Like That. i guess this isn’t too unpopular anymore but it was Back In The Day and in some parts of the fandom he’s still seen as a jerk and like Bro He Is Ten In RGB/FRLG cut him some slack

also genuinely unpopular - Green is taller than Red. i know namelessshipping has fallen into the bara Red and twink Green trope but i refuse to let go of tall Green/short Red fuckin fight me why dont you

song i associate with them

a lot of the Pray For The Wicked album by Panic! at the Disco gives me Green vibes, more for the sound than for lyrics necessarily, but for some reason Roaring 20s just like. has the sound of Green to me. it’s somewhere between flamboyant pride and underlying insecurity that i think really encapsulates Green (or at least his subtext)

favorite picture of them

i genuinely love his let’s go concept art he’s such a sweet good boy?? 

and for the life of me i cannot find the op source on this but this is my fave pic of Green/namelessshipping in general that i’ve had saved since like 2012 maybe???

yeah if anyone can help me source that i’d appreciate it bc reverse image search only brings me to pinterest and random wattpad links :/

update: source seems to be the artist くる (pixiv id=982894) on pixiv, even though the original post got taken down (ty anon!)

Lillie

favorite thing about them

by now i guess you know im a sucker for character development, but i think they did a really good job with her!! i feel like her turn is a bit more in moments than it is with Green, who gradually evolves (lol) over the course of Kanto/all the gens overall. you see more discrete moments where Lillie starts to shift and gain confidence in herself and i am so proud of her ???? like the way she gets excited when she sees Olivia doin’ her z-move stuff, she starts buying her own clothes and getting ahead of you, etc etc

and like, she still has moments where she’s scared, there’s still some fundamental Lillie in there yknow? you don’t lose any of that softness that characterizes Lillie, she just like… she gets better, she develops without losing her Lillie vibe and i love that abt her. she overcomes a lot of the shit she had to deal with when she was stuck with Lusamine, she stands up to Lusamine eventually, and ghfdkjsg gah she’s a sweet gorl i love and appreciate her

also like. the writing on her backstory is so subtle in-universe. like yeah she literally looks like Lusamine’s daughter and you see her in the opening cutscene leaving Aether, but as the protagonist - like as Selene lets say, there’s little hints about where Lillie came from, and if you suspend your disbelief and put yourself in the pc’s shoes, there’s subtly to her character arc that i like 

also like. when she changes her outfit and starts being more protagonist-y, like more confident and kinda bubbly instead of shy??? love that shit it’s so cute can i have custody of this child pls

least favorite thing about them

i like. sometimes feel like she’s too soft of a character for me to really get into? like i love her and Hau, they’re sweet good friends, but i tend to personally gravitate towards characters that create a little more tension (ie Green and N)

(though on that note, Hau can be kinda savage. he just calls Faba out and sarcastically calls Gladion “a ray of sunshine” at some point i think?? Lillie is just very tender and i will support her forever, but i think that also makes her almost too soft to keep me fixated on her yknow. it’s not even a flaw in her character but just not something i fawn over as much)

favorite line

“I’m so glad I got to meet everyone. I’m so glad I got to meet you.”

like that ending kills me but that line almost feels like. I Feel That So Much like i feel so happy to have met all these new characters and to have played these games, and i feel like some of the player’s energy and enjoyment of the game is channeled into this last line of hers 

also GET IN THE BAG

brOTP

probably her and Hau?? idk, i don’t have a specific brotp for her but i like her just hangin around w the other Alola kids, so like her, Hau, Gladion, and the protag kids. they’d raise hell together and Lillie continues to be the only one with some impulse control

(Gladion also has some impulse control but keeps getting annoyed by Hau and so he gets dragged into their nonsense anyway)

OTP

Selene and Lillie is. Good. idk what the ship name is but it’s canon

nOTP

i dont even know if people ship her with Gladion but incest is a big no-no in my house

random headcanon

when she goes to Kanto, i bet she’d pick Bulbasaur as a starter if she was given the opportunity - and if not, she’d probably catch a wild Vulpix 

unpopular opinion

idk if have any unpopular opinions for her?? 

song i associate with them

i have no reason to associate this with her but the Rainy Day theme from acgc just. has a vibe about it. i think a lot of ac music feels like it suits her

favorite picture of them

i found this art of her through a lofi remix of her theme awhile back and it’s so pleasing to look at? her hair is nice and the colors are so warm n happy gjhkfdgf

if you read this far, congratulations!!! and i’m sorry

[zrbillings]

Pokemon Sword & Shield - Review

So it’s been a long time since I’ve reviewed anything (years in fact) and since video reviews take such an exorbitant amount of time and COPPA has made Youtube this very scary place right now; I figured why not do what I know and write a review.

So with that out of the way, let's talk about Pokemon Sword & Shield. These games appear to be super devicieve you’re either in #gamefreaklied #bringbackthenationaldex camp or you’re a ‘defender’. I find that I have a bit of a unique perspective on the game so I wanted to share my thoughts. I’ve just completed Pokemon Sword, and just so you out there in internet land know my qualifications because to Pokemon fans that seems they only real way to justify having a different opinion.

I was born in ‘91

Pokemon Blue was my literal first GB game.

If point 2 wasn’t enough I collected everything Pokemon and grew up watching the show, often playing the games while I did.

I’ve completed the National Dex

I’ve completed the Kanto Dex like 3x over.

And I’ve played various other spin-off games i.e. Colosseum, Stadium, Gale of Darkness, Trozie? Trozae?

And if you couldn’t put it together I’ve played through nearly every mainline game the only exceptions being. Alpha Sapphire, Diamond, Fire Red, Let’s Go Pikachu, Sun, Ultra Moon. Basically at some point if I owned one version that’s all I needed.

Okay! So with all that out of the way, let’s talk about these games. Plain and simple if you just want to know if it is actually bad, no it’s not, it’s good, one could argue great, I wouldn’t, but you could. If you like Pokemon, get over the National Dex and “It ShOuLD LoOk BEtTeR” and play it, it’s fun it’s Pokemon with some new gimmicks. 3 out of 5 I guess if you want to be critical. Okay so for the rest of you, the ones who are more critical and want to know what SUCKS, and what ROCKS. Keep in mind going forward I’m not addressing the whole stupid delemma of cut Pokemon or graphics, at least not in depth, you want to talk that crap just @ me I’ve got the time. So graphically it is undoubtedly the best looking in the series you literally cannot argue that, should it look better? Well, I don’t know, I think to expect it to makes you look stupid no matter what reasoning you want to bring to the table. Pokemon has literally NEVER shown interest in pushing graphics, they’ve almost never made massive leaps forward, the amount of times they have can be counted on one had, so to have expected more that’s on you, not them. I find them to be gorgeous, yeah there’s things here and there that could be better, but if you go looking for a problem in anything you’ll find it, you could find ugly stuff in Skyrim too, or even Final Fantasy 15. Characters are definitely more expressive than they’ve ever been, the towns are stunning and I feel unlike some of the more recent games definitely come off as more memorable even if you can’t name them, you can instantly picture them. Animations, while I totally agree should be better, shouldn’t have been expected to be more than they are, again this is Gamefreak they literally improve at a snail’s pace justified or not. That being said, while Pokemon aren’t particularly animated in battle, the game overall is the most animated in the series, and here’s why. Again characters are far more expressive, and are constantly moving even in battles when a Pokemon attacks the trainer makes an action, you have overworld Pokemon, you have each and every Pokemon able to do a handful of different animations in Pokemon Camp. You have the world itself that is filled with movement i.e. NPCs, scenery here and there, a good example being the town Ballonlea the Fairy-Type gym location in case the name doesn’t sound familiar. So yes while the animations aren’t particularly impressive, I would say they’re still the best in the series AS A WHOLE (can’t believe I need to specify that). The big draw of this game is the open are called The Wild, this is sort of what people who hate these games wanted an entire game to be like, but better. And I think while they could be bigger, they feel the right size in correlation to the size of the rest of the map, there’s plenty to explore and it is genuinely fun to roam around in especially online. That being said, the game definitely (at least for me) chugs a bit while online, but I wouldn’t say it ruined the experience at all for me. It was so cool to see other players setting up camps and running around, I will say however that while these things are cool, they could have been developed further. You can’t interact with these players if you engage with one they just give you a stock response and then hand you some sort of cooking item, which okay getting cooking items this way fantastic! But why not let trainers customize their greetings? A little especially while in camps? There’s just more they could have done here, I can understand not wanting to create a system where interacting with someone dead stops them in place in order to trade or whatever, that could get really annoying. But I find, there’s not enough here that really push this feeling of a shared space, like why not have brought back Secret Bases again? And had your friend’s bases show up that way if you did want to hang out and chat (through the terrible Nintendo App, or whatever superior option) you could! Like can you imagine? Instead of just having to camp outside and hang out with friends having like your own space to hang out, battle, trade. You could have made this space like an area where if you interact with a trainer a menu for those sort of things could be triggered. The Wilds overall are fun and they’re cool to explore for new Pokemon, I just feel they could have been experimented a little more with. I won’t prattle on any further, but just saying I’d love to see Gamefreak take this and push it harder next game. As an ending note I do fine the placement of The Wilds fine, at first it looks odd, but once you start playing given it’s function it makes sense, I think if the whole game were The Wilds like some people desperately want, you’d run into a lot more problems, with things like trainer placement, and how to limit progression, not saying it can’t be done, just that we’re a ways off from anything like that happening yet. I will say this though (sorry last thing I swear) I DO NOT like how the progression system of The Wilds works, the moment you enter it you can explore 90% of it, which fine, EXCEPT! The problem becomes that while you can explore nearly every nook and cranny of it you can only catch Pokemon in designated areas because if a Pokemon is over a certain level and you don’t have enough badges you just straight up can’t catch it. Which okay I can understand, but then I SHOULDN’T EVEN BE ALLOWED THERE! For example (and why I’m bringing this up) there is an area where you must cross a bridge to get into the next section of the lands, cool I think this is great it visually queues us, “hey this is a different section so logically the Pokemon will be stronger here.” The problem! Is while we in theory can piece this together literally nothing stops us from crossing, the reason this bothers me is because on the literal otherside of the bridge is I SHIT YOU NOT a MF Snorlax! Just chillin, doesn’t wander just stands there, while okay this is a great reference to other games. WHY WOULD YOU NOT! Just put him sleeping on the bridge like in every other game in this scenario, it bars the pass and players don’t waste their time exploring an area before they can get the most out of it. Plus! This game rewards you special Acorn Balls at each Gym, if you don’t know what these are they were in Gold and Silver they’re special Pokeballs that in this game are one of a kind that have awesome effects, the one I want to reference specifically here is the Heavy Ball which works better the heavier a Pokemon is i.e. “this ball was invented for catching Snorlax.” So it baffles me how Gamefreak didn’t do something like the last Gym before you’re able to wake up Snorlax and pass the bridge allows you to get a Heavy Ball thusly not only letting you finally progress into this new area, but also gives you an item as a sort of reward. Wow, sorry moving on. I find where this game really misses the mark is the story and the characters, outside Hop (who is insufferable early on) are really bland and sort of lackluster. I feel like this is a bigger thing to be upset about than animations and Pokemon count. Hop is one of the only rivals to truly go through a character arch which is amazing! He goes from this arrogant, insufferable, condescending, ass, to someone who just wants to be the best, but doesn’t act like he already is, he knows where he’s at and strives to be more. This huge development really, really shows how poor the rest of the cast is, the professor this time is boring, not even a professor really at least not like were used to. The champion is fine, but lacks any real charisma like the game wants you to believe he has. The other rival Bede is...under utilized? Like he comes around and it’s like, “finally! Gary Oak 2.0!” and he just sort of disappears about half way through the game and then pops up at the end. I’m not going to go through the whole cast, but everyone is more or less this same sort of doesn’t bring much to the table. As dumb as Team Yell are I actually like that they’re not the evil baddies of the game, they’re not even Team Skull level, they’re just kind of a bit of inconsiderate fanboys, they work well as a level progression block? System? Their use for impeding your progress until you’ve done the right thing works well is what I’m saying. The big thing with this game is it really lacks an evil team, it’s like The Aether Foundation all over again, except infinitely worse, while The Aether Foundation sort of slowly unravels at some point, the ‘evil team’ or in this case just two baddies, kind of feels like it comes completely out of left field and only happens because Gamefreak wanted a cool way to introduce the legendaries. It just felt super random and unsatisfying and that the motivations really didn’t make sense and happens right in the middle of the Pokemon League so it kills all momentum, and any tension the league did have. Which is another thing the league is shit, it’s bad, the idea is really good, it’s inspired by the show it feels like a proper tournament, but since you can heal and swap out Pokemon between each match there is 0 tension, and since the story just decides to interrupt it, it just doesn’t feel satisfying. Beating the champion doesn’t feel like an accomplishment because you’ve already beaten the big baddie just before him, and all the other trainers before him in two different sessions, it doesn’t feel like you went through this gauntlet of really tough trainers to reach him and prove yourself, it feels like no matter what you were always going to beat him, the game did literally everything it could to make sure you beat him! I felt fucking bad beating him, because it was so easy, I literally gave him a handicap, I used 0 healing items and beat him with two Pokemon to spare and that was also because I gave him another handicap where I didn’t switch out once I threw out a Pokemon! Gyms are back, but they kind of feel like they belong in Sun and Moon because you have to do ‘missions’ before each one before you face the leader which is fine, but I personally could have done without them, for the most part they're just glorified obstacle courses. I guess they feel like the same old stuff, but I think it’s the nature in which they’re handled that actually bother me and less of having to do them myself. I think in a way given how this Pokemon League is set up it would have made more sense to just completely do away with them, maybe put something else there in its place. The gym leaders are all really colorful and actually really well designed, they all have their own very defined personalities which is cool, It would have been cool to have actually seen more of them somehow. The last thing I’ll talk about as this review is already overly long is Dynamaxing. It’s fine, I will say that if it were up to me I would have changed how it’s handled, I think the raid battles are great, they’re really fun they make grinding for levels a fucking joke and I love it, it helps you find really cool Pokemon and strong Pokemon for your team it makes Online feel like there are actually other trainers out there in the world taking on this gym challenge besides just you, it’s cool, but I feel outside of the raids there really pointless. Each Gym Leader uses it always with their last Pokemon, and it never feels like it matters so long as you Dynamax yours at the same time and have type advantage it’ll feel like KO-ing any other old Pokemon except it’s big af.If it were me I would have changed it to Mega Evolutions, because they actually feel like they matter and then they could have introduced new megas and I’ll do you one even better! What about when after you beat the Gym leader they gave you the same kind of mega stone that they used! Maybe in place of TMs, or in conjunction with them rather than them giving you Gym uniforms you’re never going to wear. That’s more short and sweet two cents on the Dynamax system, it’s great for raids pointless for everything else. Kind of like the clothing in this game, and that’s all I’ll say about the clothing that and I think the uniform thing was dumb and should have only been used for the Pokemon League rather than every single Gym battle. And that’s it! That’s my very thorough review of Pokemon Sword & Shield. Like I said at the beginning, these games are fun no doubt, but they definitely aren’t even in the top 5. I think there’s a lot of wasted potential or cooler directions they could have taken these. There are definitely cool things like the different gyms for the two versions, The Wilds are fun to hang out in and run around, the new Pokemon are actually really cool, I love that they added more regional variants and not just for Kanto Pokemon, the towns are very visually memorable. But outside that, I’m kind of hard-pressed to think of much else, I can’t speak on the post-game either, but it doesn’t seem like there’s any if at all. This game simultaneously feels like the largest Pokemon game to date as well as one of the smallest.