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baconpal · 4 years

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pokemon rant time

this one’s about the 2 new things, and is at least slightly intended for people actually excited/interested in them, click keep reading or perish

Gonna try and keep stuff short cus there's a lot of topics this time and I've already gone off about how pokemon Isn't meant for me or meant to be a good video game anymore, but gamefreak is right back on their bullshit, so I feel I need to at least point it out.

I'd like to preface all this with, if you are a fan of pokemon still, please realize you can ask for more out of this series. Expect perfection, even if you don't think you'll get it anytime soon. Pokemon won't go anywhere, the old games won't go anywhere, and gaming is a hobby, not a necessity; don't accept low quality products from a company just because you feel like you're supposed to.

With this next wave of pokemon games, gamefreak is clearly testing how little they can put in to a $60 game while still keeping the 2 major audiences they've cultivated. By responding to the most obvious and vocal complaints from the community, gamefreak is aiming to make games that seems like what most players want, without having to put in the work on quality products.

GEN 4 REMAKES Pokemon BS (I am not calling this shit BDSP) is intended for the audience that put up with let's go and RS remakes. The most vocal and obvious complaints for these games is their failure as definitive versions of the games they are remakes of, such as missing features/content, or drastically changed story/dialogue/style. In a way, the recent remakes are inferior versions of incredibly old games, which shows a lack of improvement in pokemon as a whole.

To address these issues, BS is very, very, VERY clearly aiming for a more 1-to-1 recreation of the DS games, but with fully 3d graphics. Clearly the map layout has been transferred exactly, and gen 4 already had mostly 3d environments to begin with, and everyone knows about the future-proof pokemon models at this point, so the amount of effort required to create something like this is absolutely minimal. Assuming dialogue, trainer teams, move lists, etc. are also lifted directly from DP, then this game could be developed in basically no time at all, leaving the team time to ensure the product is of decent quality and includes ALL of the content of the originals, if not more, like the earlier pokemon remakes did to ensure they were truly definitive versions of the games. That being said, it is unlikely the team behind BS has been making use of this saved time to improve the game.

One failing already clear is that the quality is not very good, at least graphical quality. The footage we have shows environments lacking in color compared to the original, with messy, unpleasant textures that contrast poorly with the simplistic environments. The characters especially do not work. As cute and fun the fanart of tiny dawn has been, BS dawn and all other characters look awful. They have gorilla arms that reach down to the floor and lifeless faces, as well as incredibly stiff/simplistic animations. As it stands, BS is a visually inferior game to DP, though most consumers will simply see it as 3D>2D without any understanding of what an artstyle is, so this might not be a problem for many, but that doesn't mean you should accept it.

What remains to be seen is what content will be added/missing from pokemon BS. It is very possible that massive parts of the game, such as the underground, variety of online modes, postgame areas, and content from platinum could be missing entirely. We also do not know if pokemon from after gen 4 will be worked into the region, or even supported. Gen 8 still currently does not support a large number of pokemon, and the remakes may continue this limited dex trend.

Even assuming the remake includes everything from the DS games and doesn't add anything that slows down the story or harms the experience, it will still only be an exercise in forced obsolescence. The main reason people can't really play DP still is that the online isn't supported anymore. If BS turns out to be exactly the same as DP, then you're buying the same game for at a higher price, only to play it until the online service goes away again, or the next game comes out, if both don't happen at the same time.

Don't let yourself buy a 13 year old game at twice the original price.

GEN 4 NOT-REMAKE KIND OF NEW THING On to legends now, gamefreak is targeting the people who put up with sun/moon and sword/shield. The obvious problem with those games to most people was simply a lack of change from the standard pokemon formula. Even when changing the gyms to trials or stadiums, most people still understand that the format and story structures are mostly unchanged. Of course, this problem has seemingly been addressed by changing the game structure a fair bit, but almost entirely by removal.

Trainer battles, and by extension, gyms and tournaments/elite 4 have been confirmed to be absent, meaning all battles are only vs single pokemon, in spite of the player likely having a team of 6 pokemon. Even if battle difficulty is increased to compensate (doubtful), this will still drastically increase the simplicity of combat and make it even less likely for the game to include any meaningful challenge. Exploring towns and meeting NPCs is also seemingly missing, as the game is confirmed to have only a single village, which frankly looks incredibly boring and we've yet to see a single NPC inhabiting the village.

Battles now use an ATB format instead of a turn-based format (for those of you who don't know what that means, it basically means nothing, it's still turn based, it just means the speed state determines who gets more turns instead of who goes first, that's it), but beyond that there seems to be no noteworthy changes, pokemon learn 4 moves with limited PP, type advantage will still definitely be the most important aspect to battle, and the player being able to walk around during battle provides no meaningful impact. While the little dash the pokemon do to approach each other is cool, it is already a sign that gamefreak will not be addressing the issue of lacking animations for pokemon battles, as they can't even be assed to animate and program pokemon walking around the environment during combat, and lucario doing 1 kick for a move described as a series of punches isn't a great sign either.

On the topic of lacking animations, the new "pet simulator feature" for legends seems to be an advancement on the ride system from sun/moon, which presumably people missed from sword/shield. Being able to ride on your pokemon to do stuff sounds cool, but in all likelihood, this system will be limited to only a select few pokemon who will each do a select few actions, and is not a reasonable replacement for all the other pet raising features that have been removed in the past. Similar to BS, the total number of pokemon included may also be limited arbitrarily, in spite of the fact that no new pokemon need to be added, as these games are not claiming to be a new generation.

The largest issues I personally have with this new game is the horrible technical quality and gameplay quality shown in the initial trailer. Unfortunately, these types of problems seem to be difficult to explain to the average consumer, even though the issues seem incredibly obvious and inexcusable to people like me. Most people were able to understand the problem with the berry trees in gen 8, because it was easy to explain, "this tree doesn't look like the other trees, and it sticks out, isn't that weird?", and so gamefreak has eliminated any immediately obvious issues like that, sticking with a very consistent artstyle for legends, making it almost impossible to easily explain its faults to the average pokemon fan.

People have been really quick to compare legends to BoTW; the game that invented grass, trees, and mountains. In spite of these comparisons, nobody seems to point out that legends looks dramatically worse than that almost 5 year old game from the previous generation. Plants are stiff and lacking in energy, draw distances are poor, colors are drab, and textures are messy. Many parts of legends seems to ape BoTW on just the surface, essentially just following market trends. Even the controls seem to follow after modern 3rd person shooters/stealth games, including a seemingly pointless roll and a clunky looking ball lobbing arc that feels unfun before even getting to play it myself.

The largest issue, painfully obvious to some, and impossible to explain to others, is the framerate. The trailer clearly was ran on actual switch hardware, and not prerendered, which would be a good mark for gamefreak if it didn't result in a trailer that never once hit 30fps. Even with empty fields, with only 1 or 2 characters on screen, the game was incapable of meeting the target speed, and had to resort to optimizations like reducing the frame rate of pokemon only inches away from the player to stop-motion levels of choppy. If situations with almost nothing going on result in slow-down, how will the game perform during actual gameplay? Even though slow-down is something everyone can feel, many people aren't capable of identifying it.

The major things to wait and see for legends is if the removed aspects of the series are made up for by some additional systems or content, and definitely wait to see if the performance improves. As with BS, preordering a game like this only shows that gamefreak only has to market the game by saying it's different, not improved, like they've been doing for years now.

TL;DR FUCK GAMEFREAK One major thing of note is that gamefreak is releasing 2 games based on gen 4 at the nearly the same time, meaning they have no obligation to design new pokemon or even include pokemon not from sinnoh, and also that the sales of each game can be used as an indicator for which of their 2 audiences is more loyal to them. Both BS and Legends are in a position to be pushes aside if they fail, but if either succeeds, gamefreak can continue in the direction of the more successful game and reap the benefits, without any need to innovate, improve, or adapt to criticism.

The last thing I feel I have to remind people about is that gamefreak is a company; you don't need to be "grateful" to them. I've seen that word thrown around far too much by people who seem to buy pokemon games like its a tax, and not something they want to do. You don't have to suck up to a company that made games you liked as a kid if the games aren't what you want anymore. Pokemon is so wildly successful that it can't possible die, so don't buy the games out of pity, or out of some feeling of obligation. Buy the video games you want to play and nothing more.

Basically, if you are considering getting any of these new games, please wait until the games are out before purchasing them, and decide for yourself if they are worth your money, and more importantly, your time. Preordering these games only lets gamefreak know their audience will buy and put up with anything. They have no real competition at the moment, so the only thing the audience can do to encourage improvement is show some of restraint.

#juvenile rant #pokemon #if you read all that then good job cus jesus that got long #please just respect yourself #you deserve better games #you arent weird for wanting things to be good #anyway have a good night

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vaugarde · 3 years

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would you be open to posting your critique on swsh? im curious :0

sure! i'll go proper capitalization and punctuation mode just to make it more comprehensible. also i ramble so here's a readmore

To get to the point, SWSH is in my bottom three Pokemon games and if I didn't have a generational challenge run through all the Pokemon gens going on, I'd probably never start another file on it and let it collect dust like Ultra Moon.

I'd talk about what I liked and didn't like in full but idk if you want that exactly? And also this is gonna be long as hell anyways and I don't wanna fuel any "Wow you made this THIS long?? You care too much!!" thoughts. So I'm just gonna jump straight into what I think is definitely the main problem behind the scenes.

So. NatDex.

I'm just going to say that honestly? Cutting out the National Dex was a long time coming. We're up to over 800 Pokemon now, with their shinies and gender differences, all these different forms, and what, only 200 are gonna be used in a gen at a time? With everything else needed to be ported into the game? Yeah no, they had to pull the plug on that eventually. And honestly, I don't mind. I'm the type to replay old games constantly, so if I want Gliscor on my team, then I can just go boot up a Sinnoh game. Sure, I'll be sad if Gliscor continuously doesn't make the cut in future games, maybe even mad, but it's not the end of the world.

That's not to say there are no issues with how it was handled, the PR for it was awful. Saying it was for the sake of animation was a gigantamax mistake.

But here's what I absolutely hate when people put their two cents in. "Gamefreak fucked it up! Gamefreak was lazy! Gamefreak intentionally bastardized the game by taking out the National Dex because they don't care!"

Like... I'm not saying Gamefreak are completely innocent in every tedious thing about Pokemon, there's that disaster with the ORAS battle frontier, which iirc was totally them. But... think about it for more than two seconds.

Pokemon has had a yearly mainseries release for over a decade now, with one break for Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon, developed by Spike Chunsoft, to take the holiday release in 2015, and if you count the DLC being the unofficial "third version", then 2021 is the first time Gamefreak isn't releasing a new game, and that's debatable since Legends is coming out in Janurary 2022. While games with similar popularity like Mario and Zelda have years between their games, usually with spinoffs to keep people entertained. So basically, Gamefreak has been working nonstop on Pokemon, with the pressure of releasing an entire game in a year, with not many breaks I assume. And there are multiple reports of burnout and crunch time in order to get these games out, because god forbid we let an actual spinoff come out for people to take a breather on.

If anything, the problem is with TPCI, not Gamefreak. TPCI, which has everything on a tight schedule, and who has more money than DISNEY apparently, yet they still need to wring as much money out of people as possible, as soon as possible, and they clearly don't care about what it takes to get to that point.

So with all of that? I think it's insanely tone deaf to go "Gamefreak intentionally ruined my game because they're lazy bitches who can't be bothered". Because this is clearly the ultimate result of all the burnout.

Of course the game looks half finished in some areas. Of course the animations are mostly carried over and just touched up on. Of course they couldn't do a whole lot. Of course there was no National Dex. With that development time and crunch, they need to cut a TON of corners. All that stuff in the beta wasn't dropped because Gamefreak yawned and shoved it aside, it was because they literally could not feasibly put it all in and make it work as a fully functional game in time. This is the culmination of the past decade's burnout, and this is what I would expect from most Pokemon games from now on if this keeps up.

So yeah, I hate most Natdexxer takes on the game because they're incredibly tone deaf. But then I also hate when people smugly go "Well, SWSH sold MORE than most Pokemon games, so ACTUALLY it's sooooo much better than you think and it has no problems whatsoever, and pointing out any problems with it is an evil and awful thing you should hate yourself for :)" Like... first of all, ya don't think that maybe has something to do with the Game being worth $60-90 on a TV console as opposed to $40 on the 3ds? And second... it feels so dismissive of the actual problem. It almost feels like instead of "ugh gamefreak is so lazy", it's "um, there's nothing wrong with how SWSH was made and there's no problem with the yearly releases! They're all the same quality and there's nothing wrong behind the scenes whatsoever, silly!" And while yeah, there's not much WE can do about anything, I'm not trying to sound holier than thou or that you shouldnt buy the games for your kids or yourself or anything... it's just that it's not good to act like there's no issues either. Unfortunately, those seem to be the two opposing sides for the large part, and it's exhausting because the main problem is unaddressed.

tldr: i hate people calling gamefreak lazy and harassing them over it, or acting like people criticizing the game are evil and daring to pick apart perfection, when the game is Like That because of crunch time and poor work environments

#long post #mail #pkmn #bowserswife #if you want like. what i liked and didnt like like a proper critique then i can do that klfdsfjldskf idk

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synthaphone · 4 years

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i like pokemon games even when they’re mediocre, also i have heavy nostalgia for gen 4 since diamond was the first pokemon game i ever played, so even though i know there’s no way it’ll capture the Magic of the Original for me, i’m definitely gonna get the diamond and pearl remake if that rumor’s true. anyway here’s me speculating

i’m hoping that since they’ve had some experience working for the switch now, it’ll be a little more polished than sword and shield- it’ll be interesting to see how they adapt the unique features of those games for the switch though, since they were almost all designed around the DS’ touch screen. there’s good and bad ways it could go, but i’m mostly just hoping that they’re not gonna go the route of ‘leaving shit out completely’

here’s my speculation of how contests will be adapted: the rhythm game and appeal round aren’t really a problem (at least i hope), but instead of a dress up round, it’ll be like a ‘headshots’ thing, so you take a photo of your pokemon and then decorate it with stickers- that way they don’t have to worry about the fact that they’re not working off of flat sprites anymore. i’d obviously prefer if they came up with a system where 3D modeled accessories can snap onto specific spots on each monster model’s body, but i’m gonna set my expectations a little more realistic

hopefully poffin making doesn’t get its minigame removed the way that the pokeblock minigame was missing from ORAS- maybe its similar enough to the curry making that they can repurpose that? i wouldn’t mind if they did berries similar to ORAS though, where they’re mostly the same but there’s a specific garden area that makes it easier to keep track of where you’ve planted them (i think my favorite method for berry growing was the HGSS berry pots, but i mostly just want a way to cultivate berries and not just rely on daily random drops)

guessing the underground will be online now? hopefully??

also i’m a little concerned about the fact that these are remakes of games that had the entire dex up until their release programmed into the games (and a HUGE amount of them obtainable in game), so like... are we going to lose some of those in favor of including new pokemon, or... ??? its definitely not like i don’t want to see newer pokemon in sinnoh, i’m just wondering how that will work.

definitely want sinnoh regional variants but who knows if that will happen... i just love regional variants. also would love a more robust following pokemon mechanic and a return of a way to pet your pokemon, but these also feel like kind of a reach so i’m not gonna count on them

anyway even if the game sucks ass and is worse than the originals in basically every way, i WILL cry when i see the trailer, i love sinnoh

OH GOD: hopefully they won’t make the ORAS mistake again of not letting you customize the trainer’s skintone. bare minimum shit, even if we can’t dress up in different outfits there’s no excuse for not giving people darker skintone options for their trainer. but if they do give us customization i will be so thrilled to finally give dawn some pants, if i have to see her trudge through waist high snow in a miniskirt in 3D i will die

closing thoughts: will it be on a grid or will they adapt it more loosely... i hope if its looser it retains the feeling of finding secret areas and solving puzzles. free camera would be sick and its clearly an idea they were considering with SWSH, but then they’d have to model and texture everything to be seen from every angle so... guessing that’ll have to wait for the next generation. do you think they’ll bring back badge polishing? seals?????? have the giratina/distortion world stuff from platinum expanded for like, a DLC release or a delta episode style thing?? god imagine if they brought back that lost online lobby space and its minigames from platinum, i remember playing in there a ton as a kid and being so excited when i got the secret mew themed room

anyway, to jump the gun completely, i’m gonna pick turtwig again because i apparently can’t not pick turtwig, but maybe i’ll get pearl this time now that i’m not a kid who insists they don’t like pink. but also... dialga.... i like that guy

#pokemon #this is a long post with no structure which is why this is all under a cut. i love diamond and pearl #i need a text post tag

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rafespeaks · 5 years

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Pokémon Sword and Shield, From the Eyes of a Veteran (Critique)

I want to preface this by saying I have been playing Pokemon since before I can remember. It has been a staple of my childhood since day one and is an incredibly important franchise to me. I have nothing but love for it, and I wish the franchise success and a long life far into the future. That being said... I have some big issues with this latest generation. Big enough that I’m writing out my thoughts for everyone to see for the first time.

As a note, I am not a competitive player, nor do I think I ever will be. I don’t have the patience or technical mind to focus on all the finite mechanics and breed the statistical ‘very-best’ Pokemon out there. As such, I will not be focusing on those aspects (or at least not nearly as heavily as others might).

Now, let’s begin.

As a starting point, let’s start where Nintendo always does when introducing a new region and generation

The Pokémon

Every new generation of Pokemon comes with brand-new creatures for everyone to love. However, some generations just have... more than others. The original games had 151 Pokemon total to catch, collect, and love. And from there, more were added. Here’s the count:

Johto: 100 Hoenn: 135 Sinnoh: 107 Unova: 156 Kalos: 72 Alola: 88 Galar: 81

This is not accounting for the new Pokemon introduced in Galar’s DLC, as that has yet to come out, or old Pokemon that were given a Mega Evolution or regional variant. Kalos added 30 Mega Evolutions, plus an additional 20 from ORAS. Alola added 18 regional variants, and Galar added 13 of their own (not counting the DLC Slowpoke) plus 24 Gigantimax forms (25 if you count Flapple & Appletun as separate, and 26 with Melmetal).

Numbers-wise, Galar did... okay. Not great. But okay. It still passed up Kalos, at the very least, which was a huge point of contention among fans when gen 6 came out. However, if I had to sum up my feelings towards the new Pokemon I could do it easily with one phrase: they’re very ‘hit-or-miss’. And while new Pokemon that I don’t care for tend to grow on me over time, there’s just one problem with that. They can’t grow on me if I don’t ever see them.

Don’t get me wrong. I have no problem with old Pokemon being in the new games. In fact that’s something I love! But when you want the players to connect with the new being introduced, you have to give them a chance to do so.

This was the first region in what felt like ages where I went in without a plan of what I wanted on my team. Typically, I go with a simple, easy-to-follow formula. Grass, Fire, and Water take up three slots. Add in a Flying-type, as Water and Flying were highly important for transportation in earlier games. And for coverage, the last two spots go to Electric and Ground or Rock. Anything else, I try to cover for with getting as many dual-types as possible. Simple. Effective. Tried and true.

However, after choosing Scorbunny as my starter, I encountered a problem. There are only two Grass-types to choose from, and neither are particularly good for my strategy. Eldegoss, which I ended up going with, is a pure Grass-type and can ONLY learn Grass-type damaging attacks, unless you want to track down the single Bug-type TR it can learn, or use one of the few compatible Normal-type TMs/TRs.

The second Grass-type is Applin. And while both evolutions have better type coverage, there are still problems. One, Applin on its own is pretty bad. The only moves it knows when caught fresh from the wild are Withdraw and Astonish. While that isn’t too horrible in and of itself, the fact that its evolutionary item can only be obtained near the end of the game makes it a horrible choice. Since I was about to take on Nessa and had no access to this item, I was forced to either choose Eldegoss or something from a previous generation. And since I was trying to use all-new Pokemon, Eldegoss it was. (Though on the upside, I realized it had plenty of potential to be a competitive wall.) Now, if you are intent on getting a Flapple or Appletun, you can persevere and evolve one. Now you have your grass dragon! Great! Except... its level-up moveset is pretty bad to begin with... You will have to dedicate a lot of time to training or hunting down TMs and TRs to make up for this seemingly MASSIVE oversight.

This is just one example, of course. And while coverage isn’t particularly BAD considering all the old Pokemon included, it could be much better.

Continuing on from this topic is another that has had a lot of fans, including me, up in arms.

The Pokédex

Dexit.

Nearly 900 Pokemon, cut SEVERELY down to 400. It’s unprecedented. It’s unfair to the fans of cut Pokemon, completionists, and old players waiting on transferring all their partners from previous games. Frankly, it sucks. And I think every Pokemon fan can agree, no matter the reason.

While some similar things to this have happened before, it has never been this bad. Unova did it right - the only Pokemon available to the player through the main story of Black and White were the newly introduced ones. After defeating the Elite Four, finishing the game, and the credits are done rolling however, all previous Pokemon were welcome in the region once more. Alola didn’t exclude any older Pokemon, but for the first time in any Pokemon game, we did not get a National ‘Dex. Even so, the Pokemon unavailable natively in Alola were still transferable and usable in the new generation. And while it was a bit disappointing not to get any new entries for some old favorites, it was understandable. Coming up with new world lore is hard work!

Nintendo said that all these Pokemon were cut due to time constraints and limitations with the memory. Unfortunately, these are issues that could be fixed easily, which just... weren’t. Sword and Shield could have gone the same route that Zelda: Breath of the Wild did and simply extended production time. As Shigeru Miyamoto once said, “A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad.” And it shows in Sword and Shield in so many ways.

The memory limitations is, honestly, just a bad lie in my personal opinion. This opinion is only proven to me by the DLC reintroducing over 200 Pokemon from prior games. It’s not that Nintendo couldn’t - it’s that they didn’t give themselves the time. I had hoped for free updates in the future to remedy this, and that’s what’s happening. But not in a good way. (They also cut a plethora of Pokemon moves, which was also heavily disappointing, but the loss there couldn’t be felt nearly as much as over half of the total Pokemon being straight-up unavailable. Every one of those is someone’s favorite!)

Even if the memory WAS an issue, there are so many things that were, ultimately, unnecessary to me that they could have done without. But I’ll get to that in a minute.

Dexit aside, there’s another issue that needs to be addressed with the Pokedex that I’ve touched on already - distribution of Pokemon. There’s just... way too many, way too fast, and not enough of the new Galar Pokemon to go around. I am a Player who takes the famous tagline ‘gotta catch ‘em all’ fairly seriously. As I progress through the game, I am always compelled to search for every Pokemon on a route and catch, at the very least, the basic form of that Pokemon. While I haven’t managed to complete the Pokedex on my own or build a Living ‘Dex yet, those are both major goals I have.

However, shortly after first stepping into the Wild Area, I was overwhelmed. Too many Pokemon were coming my way, with too many variations in weather meaning it would take ages to catch all the Pokemon available to me in a route before moving forward in the story. While the Wild Area is a marvel, fun to explore, and an amazing way to experience Pokemon, it’s all just too much to throw at you in one huge chunk. Plus, there’s one very annoying, very artificial limitation that just feels completely out of place in a game that traditionally has had nothing quite like this. The Pokemon-catching level cap.

Now, level caps have been talked about among fans of the series, especially those that would like a sort of ‘hard mode’. This is not what they were talking about. Level caps have been used in previous games to prevent a player from transferring or trading overpowered Pokemon to the game and breezing through it as fast as possible. If you don’t have enough badges, the Pokemon will not listen to you, and you’ll be out of luck until you progress. Fans have suggested extending this level cap to all Pokemon, so that potentially even your starter will refuse to listen once it’s too strong. Personally, I wouldn’t enjoy such a change. But that’s why it’s only really suggested for a hard mode.

The way this level cap was implemented, however, was just... bad... I understand why it was done, but it can be put into practice SO much easier with one simple fix - utilizing Routes like previous generations did and closing off the higher-level areas to the player until they have progressed appropriately.

And that brings me to my next talking point.

Routes VS the Wild Area

Pokemon routes have always been included in every game, from the very beginning. They are the segue between towns, holding new Pokemon for you to battle and catch, the majority of free items to be found across the world, and a good few trainers to pit your team against once you’ve gotten past the first little chunk of story. To put it simply, routes are necessary. Without them, all the different towns would be one huge city, and specifically in Sword and Shield, there would be nowhere but the Wild Area to catch Pokemon.

That being said, the routes throughout Galar are... pretty tiny. I’d even say pitiful. What’s more, it seems that most of them have a short, straight path forward that discourages exploration and bettering yourself through battles with wild Pokemon and trainers. Sure, there’s the occasional arbitrary blockade that will force you to take the long way around, but once that’s done with, there’s nothing else to keep your interest. Glimwood Tangle in particular made me realize how far back they cut the routes. There was so much potential to make a sprawling forest out of it, and they just... didn’t. It was tiny. I wanted more, but they left it lacking in so much.

There’s an easy solution to this - making the Routes into mini Wild Areas. And, to accommodate all these huge routes, CUT BACK THE WILD AREA. Trust me - it needs to be smaller. This fixes the Pokemon distribution, the level cap issues, and the tiny routes all in one fell swoop. Instead of having one massive area with a bunch of sub-areas, have each route be bigger, with two to three sub-areas. The balance will make it much more impressive in the long run.

Speaking of balance, let’s talk about how this affected the pacing of the game. Even when I was taking my time, it felt like I was always rushing, rushing, rushing on to the next town. Not to mention, there are far too many options in the story to let you skip over backtracking through a route you’ve already been through. I’ve just finished taking on Milo. I blink. I’m standing in the Pokemon center the next town over, prepping for Nessa’s gym. I just defeated Bea. I blink. Now I’m about to take on Opal. The only time I got a little time to breathe was when I had to travel through the Wild Area to get to the next town. And then it was all just so expansive that I... didn’t want to go back to the story. There were items everywhere. There were Pokemon to catch. I wasn’t done here - I had to explore. I had to find everything. Do all I could. Because that’s what you do in a route, right? You explore and find all the goodies to help you on your journey. So what comes after...?

The Towns

While the towns are gorgeous and each have their own charm, they all feel... almost empty.

Compare to previous games, and it’s obvious to see. Many buildings don’t allow you to go inside and explore. There is a distinct lack of NPCs. And the ‘big’ cities are decidedly small as a result.

Just take a look at Castelia City and Lumiose City. Both are huge, compared to the rest of the locations in the games. They have many buildings, many NPCs to fill them... People needed a map to avoid getting lost in Lumiose! Even in cities that are smaller scale-wise, such as in Alola, they never feel empty. There are plenty of places to go, people to talk to, and things to explore or interact with. You find new things all the time.

Meanwhile in Galar, the only things that seem to give the towns any purpose are the Pokemon gyms. And that is a massive shame. Especially when in prior games, there have been places I will make my way to, just to sit there and take in every little detail of the location, or where I’ll talk to every NPC and soak up all the lore. I go back to murals and statues and unique buildings. I go back to puzzles and the homes of legendary Pokemon. I go back to enjoy the things I’ve seen in a new light and reminisce about my journey. But in Galar... there seems to be very little to reminisce about.

The Story

This is the biggest disappointment for me. If all the rest of the game were awful, as long as the story is good, I can overlook it. As long as the story is good, I can enjoy any game.

This story was not good.

As far as Pokemon stories go, they aren’t all complex, nuanced narratives. In the first games, you fight Team Rocket, who are just in it for the money. In Johto, it’s the same thing, with the addition of a rival that has a touching change of heart in the end. Things get a bit bigger in Hoenn, where the world-ending plots officially start in the form of weather crises caused by Team Aqua and Team Magma. In Sinnoh, the entire universe is threatened when Team Galactic aims to remake the world in their image. In Unova, the morals of you and the rest of the Pokemon world are called into question by PETA-- I mean Team Plasma. In Kalos... rich people want to kill the unworthy poor...? Yeah, I didn’t really get that story much either. And in Alola, you deal with alternate dimension aliens running amok. Safe to say things got quite a bit bigger as time went on.

Now we’re in Galar. Something’s going to happen. Something always happens. But when? How?

We get hints about the Darkest Day. Dynamaxing is still very new and not much is known about it. Sonia is looking into the legendary hero(s) that stopped the Darkest Day. But where’s the evil team? What’s their motivation? Where’s the action? The buildup?? Bede mentions he’s collecting Wishing Stars. Why??? We get to Hammerlocke and learn that the Wishing Stars are for the Chairman. But again, why? He mentions a problem has been bothering Rose concerning all Galar, but it’s such a brief moment that it’s easily dismissed. Where’s the action, or the stakes? Nothing has happened yet except we’re being pushed through the gym challenge as fast as possible.

Fourth gym. No sign of any real trouble yet. Except that jerk Bede just vandalized an ancient mural, just because... he wanted to? Yeah, he’s trying to find Wishing Stars, but literally NO ONE told him to make a spectacle of himself and ruin a piece of history in the process. We’re getting more hints about the past and Galar’s history, but nothing solid on what we’re supposed to be doing. Besides the gyms. EVERYTHING is about the gyms... Oh, and apparently Oleana is the one who asked Bede to collect Wishing Stars. Whatever. What does that have to do with anything?

Five gyms in now, and... Ka-BOOM!

FINALLY!!! Some ACTION!!! Something’s happening at the Power Plant, and Sonia’s detecting a Power Spot! Alright, let’s go! I’m finally going to be able to DO something! I’ll finally be able to see what’s going on and--

“You should leave the investigation on the quaking to the adults. Head to Circhester and get that Gym Badge!”

... What... No! No, I refuse! There must be something to see, even if it’s just Sonia, Leon, and the Chairman standing around after things have already been sorted out. I can talk to them and get a little dialogue on what’s going on! Except they aren’t anywhere to be found. No one around the gym, no one by the Power Plant door, nothing.

Sixth gym. More lore. Seventh gym. Heading out towards Raihan and BOOM! Trouble on Route 9! Leon’s here! NPC says I should go help! Heck yes, I will! It’s about time I got some action out here, it’s almost the end of the game!

Run outside, there’s Leon! And... he dismisses you. Again. Says ‘nope, I’ve got this, gym gym gym, see you!’

No way am I taking that laying down. I’m right on his heels - I should at least be able to see him battling or something, right? But no. In the seconds it takes to run after him, Leon has beaten the threat, he’s gone, and now Hop is waving a news article about the debacle in your face, complete with picture! How the hell did all that happen so fast?! It takes time to write something like that up, never mind the time it must have taken to battle the Dynamaxed Pokemon that Leon faced!

The game is almost over, and what little action you could have seen has been blocked from you because you are a child. And I understand, from a moral perspective, that this is what any sane adult would say to a child. But from a story perspective it is a horribly bad writing choice. It gives you a little taste of the story, a tiny hint at what’s going on, and yanks any real explanation away from you until the very end, where you’re floored by everything happening all at once. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Finally, Professor Magnolia mentions that the issue the Chairman is worried about is the future of Galar’s energy. But... why? We have seen no hints of a problem with that throughout the entire game. No mention of shortages. Nothing about global warming or sustainability. It seems there’s exactly zero reason for anyone to worry, much less turn this into a huge issue that needs to be addressed. It’s one thing if a crisis is there and people are ignoring it. It’s another matter entirely if there is no crisis whatsoever to be seen, even if you look for it. And even if there was any sort of issue, Leon once again tells you to do nothing. Nothing at all.

Eighth gym. On to the Championships. Blah blah, tiny snow route, nothing even remotely close to a Victory Road... In Wyndon now. Still bubcus about an evil team or anything that you can actually DO something about. The Semifinals happen. Leon goes missing.

Suddenly, you’re thrown into a situation you know nothing about to save this miserable dope. And when you get to him... he doesn’t even need any saving! He’s just having a pleasant chat with this jerk! Drag his butt out of there, then the Finals happen. Now you’re gearing up to face Leon himself. Only to be stopped by Rose SUMMONING ARMAGEDDON TO SOLVE A NONEXISTENT ENERGY CRISIS HE SEEMINGLY MADE UP.........

It makes no sense whatsoever. And unlike in Unova, where the interruption to your Elite Four challenge made sense, these TWO interruptions did not. Leon even promised to help Rose after he finished his Championship match against you! Why couldn’t Rose wait a single day? Or even a few hours? ... I digress.

Anyway, Rose awakens Eternatus, who is the source of Dynamax energy. (Necrozma & Totem Pokemon vibes much?) Leon goes up to capture it, just as Rose planned, and gets his butt kicked, not as planned. Meanwhile, the player and Hop made themselves useful for once, went to find the Sword and Shield from legend, and used them to call Zacian and Zamazenta. Together, all four of you defeat Eternatus! Yaaay for yooouuu!!!

...

Oh. And you finally have that Championship battle. Get that win squared away. Finally, but also way too soon, the credits role.

Perhaps I may have been a bit harsh about the story. But with very little to make up for it, I feel justified in everything I’ve said here. But I’m still not done. After all, a story can’t have no one helping the protagonist along. Or hindering them. Severely.

The Characters

Unfortunately, many of the characters were just as bad as the story. However, for the most part, it doesn’t entirely seem like their fault. There just wasn’t enough time spent on them, or the writers handled them poorly.

Let’s start from the beginning.

Hop

He’s a friendly rival. Okay, I can get behind that. But he’s also very self-absorbed throughout the entire story. Why are you even friends with him? He doesn’t once talk to you about anything other than how he’s going to be the next Champion. He cheers you on occasionally, but it’s always overshadowed by him harping on the same things over and over again - his brother is The Best and he will defeat him to become The New Best.

Many people say Hop is very much like Hau. I say that’s an insult to Hau. Hau is a laid-back free spirit who’s only goal starting out is to have fun with his Pokemon. He supports you and gives you items along the way because that’s just his nature. He’s a true friend. And when things get a bit tougher, he realizes he needs to step up and take things seriously if he wants to protect the ones he cares about. So he does.

In my opinion, Hop is more like Green in his approach to you, except a bit more friendly. In fact... I’d say he’s MOST like the Diamond/Pearl/Platinum rival, Barry. They’re both braggarts, self-absorbed, and constantly, casually putting you down even though you’re clearly better than them. Long story short, Hop is infinitely annoying like Barry is annoying. I was shocked at myself for how eager I was to beat Hop evey time, and how uncaring I was when Bede crushed his spirit. Hop’s mopiness and woe-is-me attitude felt very forced, especially since he was always smiling and still constantly talked about how he was going to beat you and Leon both.

Not to mention how his story ultimately ended... But I’ll get to that a little later.

Leon

For as annoying as Hop is, Leon is ten times worse. I can see where Hop got all those self-absorbed tendencies. He strikes a dumb pose every five seconds, goes on about how great and undefeated he is, constantly basks in the attention of his fans... Not an ounce of humility or humbleness in this man. Not to mention, he pretty much abandoned Sonia during their journey together. I couldn’t wait to ruin his whole career. But if there’s one positive thing I can say about him, it’s that his team is legitimately tough. Mostly that demon Charizard.

Sonia

She’s nice enough, and it’s pretty neat to see her on her journey to becoming a full-fledged Professor. But her progression to that ultimate payoff seems pretty rushed, probably because the rest of the story is rushed. Also, she consults with you about many of the legends she digs up, and the dialogue choices ultimately mean YOU are drawing the conclusions while SHE just agrees with them. By all rights, I should be the Professor in this game!

Marnie

Honestly, I don’t have a strong reaction about Marnie either way. She just seems a bit subdued, we don’t see her very much, and there’s no real character arc that we get to see her go through. She’s the same as when we first saw her, only now she knows she’s not going to be the Champion, because you are.

Bede

He’s a little jerk. And honestly? I love little jerks. But only if they’re done right.

Green was a jerk rival that was done right. He didn’t see the error of his ways throughout the entire game. However, come the Johto arc, he is now a gym leader, realizes he was treating his Pokemon poorly, and it’s implied he regrets his harshness towards Red.

Silver was another done right. He was a jerk from the very start, and a thief to boot. He hated you, and Team Rocket, and... all the world really. But as the game progressed, he came to realize that he needed to be kind. And by the end of the game, he has a Crobat. While his abrasive personality is still there, he respects you, and realizes you were right.

Bede, on the other hand, was pushed through the plot. First, he was working his hardest for the sake of the Chairman. Then when he was forsaken, hurt, and lost for a purpose... he wasn’t allowed to find his way himself. Instead, Opal snatched him away and demanded that he become the next Fairy-type gym leader. She even went so far as to force him to change his type preference! What happened to Gothorita and Duosion?! (Don’t get me wrong, I love Opal as a character. She’s probably my favorite out of everyone. But still...)

Bede should have come into his own by his own choice. And since he didn’t, the change seems like it... wasn’t a change at all. He’s still harsh towards you and others, and the respect he says he has for you seems insincere.

Piers

Unlike the rest of the gym leaders, Piers takes a slightly more active role in the plot once the ball FINALLY gets rolling. So I figured I’d talk about him, too. Piers seems... a lot like Nanu. Like A LOT. And that doesn’t really seem to fit with his rocker look or job. He just seems depressed and like he doesn’t want to be here. At least he’s a fairly responsible brother, always making sure Marnie is safe. I never did get past that hair though... Never liked it. But I seem to be in the minority there.

Oleana

She’s just... She seems like a Rose-obsessed Lusamine, instead of Ultra Beast-obsessed. Except her manipulation of children is more subtle. Honestly, I can see her being a formidable villain, and actually a much bigger threat than Rose. If only she was given the opportunity to actually DO more things through the game.

Chairman Rose

Rose is... Well, he doesn’t feel like a villain, if that makes any sense? He’s too placid. Mild. Calm. There’s no anger or any kind of intense emotion. Even when he’s disappointed in Bede, I don’t really... believe it. It’s like he ordered an ice cream and realized it doesn’t come with sprinkles. “Oh. That’s very slightly disappointing. But it’s still ice cream so it doesn’t really matter. It’s fine.” Even if you want to do a villain without strong emotions, there are other ways to do it.

Cyrus, jokingly referred to as having depression by the Pokemon fanbase, is a big example of this. He is very non-expressive, with a flat, almost scary look. He always talks analytically, and philosophically. He even openly scorns emotions. But when he does finally get a bit more heated and unhinged towards the end of the game, it’s a serious business. He feels dangerous.

Rose, on the other hand... doesn’t. He has all this supposed passion for Galar and its future. So much so that he’s willing to risk putting people and Pokemon in imminent danger to fix this energy crisis he seems to have made up... So then where is that passion? Where is his anger and frustration towards Leon? Where is his desperation?

It seems to me that the only energy deficit in Galar is in Rose’s behavior.

We’ve covered a lot now, but still not everything. My main gripes are over, but like every Pokemon game, there’s just a bit more.

The Post-Game

Now the main plot is over, and you’re free to do as you please all across the region. Train up your Pokemon and catch newly available ones, explore places you didn’t go deeper in during the story, get a little extra tidbit of story sometimes... And to its credit, this game did deliver a decent post-game story to follow.

You saved the region. You met the legendary Pokemon. Now you have the Master Ball and it’s implied you can go off and get your featured legendary doggo. Fantastic! But once you make your way into the Slumbering Weald... these guys show up. Oh, and Hop is there moping. And Sonia shows up too, for some reason.

But these guys... These guys were arrogant little jerks from the beginning. And it makes sense once you learn they’re a part of Galar’s royal family - the descendants of the people who supposedly stopped the Darkest Day from happening and saved the region. Of course, now everyone knows that’s not true, and they’re pissed about what this means for them. Their family isn’t anything special. They aren’t anything special. Their status and positions have been taken away and given to Pokemon! It’s insulting to them! (Though they still have a loyal following.)

So what do they do? Pumping Zacian & Zamazenta full of Dynamax energy and causing them to wreak havoc will absolutely turn the people of Galar against them! And the cost? Eh, they don’t much care. As long as the legendary Pokemon look bad and they’re able to retain their status.

Of course, their plan backfires, and in true benevolent legendary fashion, the one legendary they do manage to overload with power does its absolute best to avoid hurting anyone. It’s a touching little story to go on. And what’s more? It actually makes sense! In fact, I would have greatly preferred this story as the main one focused on, rather than the hot garbage we got with Chairman Rose! My only gripe regarding the new story is how ridiculous these two princes are... Really Gamefreak? Swordward and Shieldbert? And that hair?? Do you have no subtlety anymore?

But as for wrapping up the old story... things still fall a bit flat. After the legendaries are calm again and you have your version’s pup, you go after Hop. And he is accepted by the other legendary in the duo. Considering everything he went through to try and get the sword/shield back just now, as well as his concern for and efforts to calm down the legendary, it’s understandable. He’s proven himself in their eyes. But then... he goes and decides to become Sonia’s assistant and work towards being a professor.

How did that happen? Why did it happen? There was no buildup in the slightest before this decision, and it seems very out of character for someone like Hop. He’s not technically minded. While he takes a mild interest in the legends of his home region (who wouldn’t when they’re that fun?), he doesn’t seem interested in doing any actual research. And now that he actually owns a legendary Pokemon, you would expect him to double down on his rivalry with you or at least aspire to do something more... heroic? Exciting? Why would a legendary Pokemon want to hang around when you’re not going to be utilizing them at all?

This extra little story is over very fast. Not only that, but everything you do pertaining to the story is done without having to struggle through a route or many other additional challenges. (Hey, a lot like the main story. Lack of travel/drawn-out struggle leads to pacing issues.)

Additionally, there are no new places to explore after the main story. Which really, REALLY sucks. Every Pokemon game has had more to see afterwards. Kanto had Cerulean Cave. Johto had an entire additional region, plus Mt Silver. Hoenn had lots of legendary Pokemon homes open up to you, plus the Battle Frontier in Emerald. Sinnoh had the entire Battle Zone. Unova had several towns and routes blocked off. Kalos had it’s own last town as well as a couple places you could go for legendaries, like Mewtwo. And Alola had an entire half of Poni Island. Galar has... nothing... Everywhere you can go in Galar, you will have access to before the Championship battle with Leon is over. And that’s a crying shame. They seem to be trying to remedy this with the DLC coming out, but that’s a whole ‘nother can of worms. I’ll get into that later. First, there still something else I want to talk about...

Dynamaxing and Gigantimaxing

I get why this exists. I really do. Every single region has something that shakes up the way battles are done. Whether it’s more technical, statistic-based changes or something much more obvious. Hold items, double battles, tag battles, triple and rotation battles, Mega Evolving, Z moves, blah blah blah. We all know about that stuff, right? Each of the newer regions has some gimmick to go along with it. This is the Galar version. But unfortunately... when they implemented this change, they decided to get rid of the much-beloved Mega Evolutions entirely.

Now I could understand why they would do this with Z-moves. Dynamaxing is essentially the same thing, with the addition of more HP and the flashy, massive size of Pokemon to go along with it. Though it is disappointing, it’s not really a net loss.

But Mega Evolutions on the other hand... Those were something special.

Mega Evolution could have, potentially, coexisted with Dynamaxing. All it is is making the Pokemon bigger after all, right? A bigger Mega Evolution is doable.

But then the Gigantimax Pokemon come in... and thing start to make less sense. Basically, they made more Mega Evolutions, but named them something different. Why couldn’t they simply be more Megas? People LOVE Mega Evolution Pokemon! No one would have been mad at this! Except the people who, rightfully, say Charizard gets far too much attention. Three Mega Evolutions is a bit much.

But even then, if you’re so insistent on Gigantimax Pokemon being a separate beast entirely, then there’s STILL a way you can make Mega Evolution work in tandem with the new system.

Simply make Gigantimaxed Pokemon a Dynamaxed form of a Mega Evolution.

Okay, I know that was a mouthful and possible hard to wrap your head around, but imagine with me: You’re in a battle. You Mega Evolve your Pokemon. It’s stronger now. But you’re also in the position where you can Dynamax. You do so, and... instead of getting a bigger Mega, your Pokemon changes form a second time. So for example, let’s say you have a Charizard. Mega Evolve it. It is now a Charizard X/Y. Now Dynamax it. It is now the unholy lava abomination you see when you battle Leon. If you had not Mega Evolved beforehand, then it would have grown into a normal, everyday Charizard, But Bigger.

This also takes away a completely arbitrary restriction - that not every Pokemon of a species can Gigantimax. I’m sure everyone knows by now, but let’s go over it again.

You have an Alcremie. You raised it from a Milcery, evolved it with your favorite Sweet, into your favorite flavor, whatever. Maybe it’s one of the strongest contributors to your team. But when you Dynamax it, it does nothing but get bigger. Then you see Opal’s Alcremie and wonder - how can I get my baby to do that? Is there a special item it needs to hold, or some other requirement?

Nope. Your Alcremie just isn’t good enough. It will never Gigantimax, because it was never capable of doing so in the first place.

With Mega Evolution, there is no limitation. You simply need to give your Pokemon the matching Mega Stone for its species and it can Mega Evolve, simple as that. you don’t need to find that certain special creature, when you already have a perfectly good teammate you’re attached to.

What’s more, Mega Evolution could be performed any time, anywhere, in any battle. Dynamaxing and Gigantimaxing is extremely limited to the Power Spots. Keeping Mega Evolution in would have lessened the disappointment of not being able to use the new mechanic casually. This was something that was heavily advertised when the game was first released, and to find out it’s so limited... I think it left a bad taste in a lot of fans’ mouths.

The DLC

Now... on to this... I’ve touched on this before, and I’m sure everyone can tell.

I am not happy.

First, the financial aspect. If you are going to charge $30 for a two-part expansion, make it apply to both game versions. This may not mean much to casual players, since they likely bought only one copy of the game. But to people who bought both, or share the two copies with family, this is a massive slap in the face. You would have to pay double, for the same content, so both versions are updated. That is a low, low blow.

Now, the Pokemon. I’m glad they are introducing new Pokemon (most of which seem to be Galarian forms or new Gigantimax forms), but there seems to be little reason why they held off releasing them in the first place. Legendaries, I understand. Others, not so much. And the over-two-hundred Pokemon that are being reintroduced isn’t something that should get a pat on the back. They’re fixing their own mistake. They shot themselves in the foot and now they’re trying to say “Oh look! We’re improving things! This bloody hole is going to be healed now! How great are we?” The only saving grace to this for me is that the Pokemon being reintroduced will be available to everyone (to transfer or trade over) via the free update mentioned before. And even then, there are still Pokemon missing!

The new areas now. While we have seen snippets by now, there has been nothing really definitive to go on. These new areas will be in the style of the Wild Area - that much has been made clear. But that makes me exceedingly nervous. Will they be empty, devoid of NPCs? What will there be to do? Just how big are these areas? If they are, in fact, exactly like the Wild Area... I am going to be deeply disappointed. Aside from battling/catching wild Pokemon and gathering items, there is very, very little to do in the existing Wild Area. But at the same time, if the area the DLC gives us is too small, everything will feel sparse and rushed, just like the story of the game.

Speaking of story, we aren’t really given anything meaningful about the DLC’s story, either. We were vaguely told that the two separate locations will be focused on the themes of ‘Growth’ and ‘Exploration’, and we were introduced to a small handful of characters that will be central to the story, but that’s about it. You’re training in the Isle of Armor, and you’ve been enlisted to explore the Crown Tundra. That’s all we know. Literally anything could happen. And that, again, makes me very nervous.

Gamefreak have said these DLC are supposed to take the place of the story changes a third game would make. But in this instance, I seriously believe Sword and Shield would have benefited from a second pass. Much like Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon had the “Good Ending” over Sun and Moon, I think a follow-up game could have amended a lot of the issues I’ve laid out. Though I couldn’t say if Gamefreak would have actually committed...

The biggest thing to me here is that... this is not necessary. At all. I feel as though these new locations, as well as the new stories, should have been included from the get-go in the base game. For free. Of course, if the scope of these stories is on par with the main storylines of Pokemon games, I can understand. But if it’s much smaller... I just can’t condone this.

It is a blatant cash grab. One that I can find no excuse for whatsoever. This game, and most everything that has come of it, has been such a dumpster fire that it has drained my love of Pokemon and left me with nothing but anger and a deep, dark disappointment. Gamefreak can do better. Nintendo can do better. I know they can. And I am willing to wait for good content.

They’re just not willing to give their fanbase the time to make that happen.

And speaking of blatant cash grabs...

Pokemon Home

Pokemon fans have been wanting a cloud-based Pokemon storage system for years. At least, that’s what I’ve heard. But compared to Pokemon Bank’s YEARLY fee of $4.99, Pokemon Home’s premium fee for the same amount of time is quite shocking at $15.99 a pop.

So what in the world went wrong here? Why is that price justified? While others have tried to explain it away by listing off all the different features, I say it’s not justified at all. And I’ll detail why below.

You see these graphs? Both of these contain all the points I need to make. And I’ll explain exactly why.

I’ll start from the top of the list and move down.

Transferring Pokemon is only available if you pay money for it. That means that if you want to get the additional Pokemon returning with the DLC releases, you either have to pay for the DLC or you have to pay for Pokemon Home. While transfer between games used to be free, that changed when Pokemon Bank was released. And while many people were understandably upset, the low price and additional storage space that Bank provided was enough for me to accept the change. Pokemon Home, on the other hand, doesn’t deliver enough for its price. It doubles the storage capacity Pokemon Bank had, and it introduces Room Trades. Which, honestly... don’t sound very appealing.

The number of Pokemon that can be deposited for free is... thirty. A single measly box worth. This may be enough for some people, but this, plus the box space in a copy of Sword/Shield, is not even enough to make a Living ‘Dex (if you want to include every different form of Pokemon. Otherwise it’s just barely enough). Not that you could make a Living ‘Dex anyway, with so many Pokemon still cut out. But back to the box capacity. For transferring only, this number might have been okay. But for storage purposes, this is only half a percent of the 6,000 potential Pokemon you could store if you paid up. Not even 1%. It’s 0.5%. It’s outrageous.

Wonder Trades, GTS trades, and Room Trades I’ll do together. For these features, I have little problem with the way they’re set up. The additional slots for trading are actually useful, and it makes sense to put them behind a paywall. This, I would be willing to pay for. Just not pay so much. Especially when this feature was taken out of the base game in the first place. Since the GTS was first introduced in Gen 4 (Sinnoh), it has been a staple of the game and a vital tool for completing the Pokedex, especially if you have no one to trade with in person. Many people were surprised and upset to find that the only trading function left in the base Sword & Shield games was the Surprise Trade, which is essentially Wonder Trade with a new name. However, while it is a little reassuring to have these features free to use, there is still a major limitation. It can only be done on the mobile phone version of Home.

This is something that has never existed before. You have never needed any device other than your gaming console. And to not have trades available in the Switch version as well is completely absurd. How do they expect children to use this? While tablets and smartphones have become more and more common, I doubt the vast majority of children have a device that is purely their own. They will have to nag their parents to download the app, and then further pester them each time they want to trade. Why not have that a part of the Switch version in the first place? It would be much more streamlined. I understand the practicality of having a Home app - I really do. It makes moving from Go to Home easier, I’m sure, and you now have added mobile usage when your Switch is out of range of an internet connection. But blocking features from the Switch makes no sense whatsoever.

Continuing on to the Judge function. Again, this was a feature that was removed from the main game. Not only that, but this time it is locked completely behind the paywall. When this feature came out just last generation, many competitive breeders were ecstatic. They no longer had to jump through hoops to determine that there was a Perfect IV baby in the hundreds, sometimes thousands of eggs they just hatched - they could see it right on the screen. And as a casual player, it was cool to see how many breedjects I ended up with. But it seems Gamefreak gave us a taste of a very good thing, then yanked it away, like candy from a baby.

On to the second chart. I already talked about the trading limitations, so I’ll skip over that. And it makes sense that moving Pokemon from the Switch games would be Switch Home exclusive, in addition to receiving Battle Points. There is nothing on your phone that can make use of BP. However, there are more phone restrictions that make no sense. Why can’t you receive Mystery Gifts or check Battle Data/News on the Switch? It’s certainly capable of it. Mystery Gifts in particular are another frustrating problem on par with the trading issue. The other two features I wouldn’t mind being mobile exclusive.

All in all, Pokemon Home is another hot mess for Gamefreak and Nintendo.

Conclusion

I know I’ve been rough on this new generation. Arceus knows I was pretty brutal, especially where the story was concerned. But that’s only because I know they can do better. Up until this point, we’ve been given some games that were downright masterpieces. I am highly disappointed in the creators, and I hope with all my heart they listen to their fans and do better going forward. Even if that means we have to wait a little longer.

What’s more, I seriously hope they don’t continue to financially extort their market. Charging this much for something so rushed and poorly executed is an insult. And if it continues... I’m afraid of where the Pokemon franchise may be headed.

That’s all. I’m sorry if I stepped on some toes here, but these are all my honest opinions. I hope that some of these things have validated others’ feelings, too, and perhaps that people look at some of these issues in a new light.

PS, I’m sorry for any abrupt tonal shift that might be seen between the “Characters” and “Post-Game” sections. I had to stop writing to go to bed, but then I didn’t get around to finishing until nearly a month later.

#Pokemon swsh #swsh critical #Pokemon Home #swsh #isle of armor #crown tundra #pokemon #pokemon critical

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authoratmidnight · 5 years

Text

Maybe it’s just cause Im an old fart and I’ve been here since the beginning but like, the SwSh stuff-like not every pokemon being available at the beginning-doesn’t bother me?

Like, it was WAY worse in earlier gens.

When Gen 3 first came out you couldn’t complete the National Dex right away, the rest of the games that you needed, aside from the opposite core game hadn’t been released. And the first of those games, Fire Red and Leaf Green, wouldn’t be released until a year later!

Gen 4 was the same, you needed all the gen 4 games (for version exclusives, and again, they weren’t all released at the same time so you had to wait a bit for HG/SS to come out to get the rest of the Gen 2 pokemon) and anything remaining would need to be transferred forwards from the past games, which you needed to have.

Same thing with gen 5, needed all the gen 5s for version exclusives and needed to use the transfer function (thus requiring you to have the past games) to bring forward the remaining mons if you wanted a hope of finishing the Dexes. And let’s not forget that in Black and White they decided that Zorua and Zoroark were to be stuck behind events FROM THE PREVIOUS GENERATION (the Celebi event in HG/SS for Zorua and one of the Shiny Legendary beast events in HG/SS for Zoroark) so you couldn’t even complete the REGULAR pokedex unless you had a past gen game. Luckily B2/W2 fixed this by making them just straight up obtainable in game.

The Gen 6 games still required a fair number of games to complete the dex, but the inclusion of Wondertrading (and a more accessible internet and connectivity was hit or miss on regular DS games cause it just, wasn’t often compatible w/ the commonly used security settings) makes it easier to get shit.

Basically, we’ve been spoiled in that ever since Gen 4, every game has had some kind of backwards compatibility built into it allowing pokemon to move forward from old games to new (Gen 2 to 3 didn’t have that option b/c vastly different hardware systems + just how things were programmed into the games/the pokemon). We got away with it cause the DS/DS Lite hung around for a Long ass time and the 3DS was similar enough. Meanwhile the Switch and Switch Lite are *very* different systems so you can’t just, connect them up easily.

Making SwSh the first games since Gen 3 to NOT be backwards compatible right away.

And man, can you IMAGINE the shit storm that would have happened had Nintendo released Swsh, with a full National dex of all 800+ available pokemon, before Pokemon HOME was released, meaning that while yes a National Dex would be there it would be totally impossible to fill w/o backwards compatibility.

Like, people would have raked them over the coals worse than they did. Despite the fact that.

And frankly the lack of a National Dex doesn’t bother me. I mean, we didn’t have one in Sun/Moon either. Yes all currently released pokemon were available, but there was no National Dex, just the regional one. I don’t recall people bitching about there being no National Dex then. The lack of a National Dex means it’s actually relatively feasible to complete the Dex and get the Shiny Charm. Before it meant you need multiple games and systems (and in some cases games beyond core games) to do, and with over 800+ pokemon that’s uh, damn near impossible.

Also, I’m seeing some complaints about ‘whaaa the rest of the pokemon are behind a paywall’. Pray tell, how is 30$ DLC for more pokemon/regions, any more of a paywall than them making a whole new game containing this stuff, that you’d have to buy? YOU WOULD STILL BE FORKING OUT MONEY. Hell, this DLC is cheaper than if you bought a whole other game.

Plus, they’re really not, while yes the expansion pack is dlc you need to pay for (as expansion packs always are), there IS a free patch you’ll be able to download that’ll allow you to obtain the new pokemon in your game (via trade and stuff). So you can still get them (it’s just that w/o the paid dlc you won’t be able to get to the new places and all that). Without paying. If you think people won’t be breeding and surprise trading stuff once it comes out you’re wrong.

But again, how is this any more of a paywall than dropping money to buy a third core series games like Emerald, or Platinum, or Black 2??? Ya’ll ain’t got a problem with dropping money for a whole new game, this ain’t that much different. Except that it’s *cheaper* and it’s adding on to the game you have.

Really what needs to happen is to let Nintendo and Game Freak go back to being allowed to take a couple years to make the goddamn games-cause it used to be the norm that we had a 3 or more year gap between core game releases, then suddenly it was every year a new game. You want a better game? Stop being fucking impatient and demanding new games every year and let them take a couple years to work on one. I know I’m fine waiting for new games, esp if it means 1) no time crunches 2) gives them the time to make it as good as possible.

#anyways im just really rambly right now #im hype for the new dlc stuff #looks awesome #and that remake of mystery dungeon #hell yeah!

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clearinz · 7 years

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Pokémon - Top 10 Favourite Ghost Type Pokémon.

It’s Halloween, which means the perfect time to make a new Halloween-themed list!

This shouldn’t need much of an introduction, they’re ghost pokémon, and this is my personal top 10 list. Let’s get straight into it below the break.

10. Trevenant

Trevenant uses the haunted tree theme that's so prevalent with horror films, thanks to the spookiness of dark woods. It's design is good, with the sparse leaves and cracked parts in the wood, revealing just blackness underneath. There's honestly not much more I can say about it. He fits the grass/ghost typing to a T.

9. Golurk

Golurk is just one of those Pokémon that looks absurdly powerful. It's tiny head making it's gigantic body look even more opposing. I do like the little details on this Poké, like how it's eyes aren't symmetrical, or how it has this massive crack across its chest that has been patched up. Perhaps best known for it's ability to learn fly by essentially turning itself into a rocket. It's not a signature move by a longshot, but using moves is always so much more fun when they're used by something that doesn't look like it should be able to use it.

8. Banette

Banette gets on this list soley through the inclusion of its mega evolution. I don't have a problem with regular Banette, but it definitely wouldn't have made the list without it's mega.

The mega evolution truly takes the creepy doll aspect up to 11. It gets multiple zips around it's body, some of which resemble stitching. It's definitely one of my top contenders for mega evolutions that should have been regular evolutions.

7. Cofagrigus

Pokémon that look like real things are a controversial topic in the Pokémon fandom, but I feel like Cofagrigius is definitely a strong argument for their inclusion. I absolutely love its design, with the 4 ghostly hands popping through its body. It gets a unique ability to, which disables the other abilities of any other pokémon that physically touch it, essentially cursing it. Signature abilities are always a plus, and this one goes an extra mile by having the "curse" transfer from one Pokémon to the next, so Cofagrigus can be affecting a battle long as it faints.

6. Alolan Marowak

I like Alolan forms, they allow us to get some re-imaginings of some classic Pokémon. Marowak being one of the better of those for me. I particularly like the green flames at the tips of its bone.

5. Gengar

Goold ol' Gengar. Unlike Banette, Gengar makes my list even without the mega, which is just icing on the cake. At one point the only example of a fully evolved ghost type Pokémon. It set the standard for what a ghost type Pokémon should be. It's design is simplistic and yet so just appealing to look at. Just an all around fun Pokémon to use.

4. Marshadow

Marshadow is just adorable, there I said it. Out of all those little legendaries ("Mythical Pokémon" I believe), it's definitely one of my top 3. I just like it's design, and it has one of those traits where it changes it's design (the little green hood thing) when its fighting spirit burns. I just love that. Also according to Bulbapedia, due to its unique typing (Ghost/Fighting), it may be based on "Shadowboxing". If that's true that is just an amazing pun.

3. Decidueye

Perhaps the least ghostly Pokémon on the list (I still remember when it was revealed to be a ghost type to everyones surprise), Decidueye quickly found itself as one of my favourite starters, and easily my favourite since gen 4. The archer aesthetic is awesome and the bow and arrow signature move is fun.

2. Sableye

Another Pokémon that easily makes the list without taking the mega evolution into account. Sableye is very similar to Gengar in that it has a simple design that's appealing to look at, but Sableye also gets the gem theme, which makes it look even better imo. I had it in my head that Sableye was a trickster-type Pokémon, but after reading the dex entries, it turns out that it's ghost type is played quite straight with talk about stealing spirits. I guess that having a cute little thing actually be dangerous is fun too.

1. Mimikyu

It's rare that the background information of a Pokémon has much effect on my opinion of said Pokémon, usually going by design and fun to use, but on top of just making you feel bad for it, Mimikyu's backstory is essential to understanding its design. For those who don't know, Mimikyu is a Pokémon that felt lonely, so it disguised itself as Pikachu, the most popular Pokémon, in order to make friends. How can you not love it based on that description alone? It does highlight my biggest issue with dex entires though; On one hand it makes it feel more like a real character rather than just an animal like a lot of other dex entires, but at the same time it makes you wonder how every single Mimikyu has such a specific backstory.

Okay now let's talk about the design itself. The disguise it uses it essentially like using a bed sheet to create a cheap ghost costume, which is both a nice nod at it's ghost typing and makes it seem more childish and makes it seem more sympathetic. Its face is drawn in crayon, and it's tail seems to just be a stick. It's tiny little eyes poke through eyeholes in the sheet and it's all just overall so damn adorable.

At the same time it's kind of creepy, since what's under the sheet plays on the fear of the unknown. I do love that the only thing we get to see of Mimikyu itself is its extremely long, sharp claw as it slashes opponents from under the sheet.

I don't want to drag this on too long, but the last thing I want to talk about is its ability. Another signature ability, and its one that's just so damn fun to use. It's a free substitute at the beginning of battle. It just feels good to have. Unlike a lot of abilities it's not situational, it'll always just be there to help you.

#Clearin Lists #Pokémon #Top 10 #Ghost type pokémon

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smarkey12 · 7 years

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A Commentary on the Prospect of New Pokémon Games

WHAT’S UP, MOTHER HECKERS. At the time of my writing this, it is May 15th, 2017. The Pokémon community is starving. We have not received any official hints or leads on what the next Pokémon game will be. It’s been nearly seven months since the release of Sun and Moon and we are becoming desperate for any new game info, since it seems recently that Pokémon games have a much higher peak in popularity, but that popularity wears off extremely quickly, like the lifespan of a normie meme.

I’ve got some things to say about this, so if you’re interested, continue below!!

For the next main series game, we’ve got two feasible options. You likely know what they are by now. The first is an Alola sequel, codenamed for now as “Pokémon Stars.” I can assure you that the next Alola game would not be a “revamp” of Sun and Moon, similar to what Crystal, Platinum, and Emerald were. So many loose ends were left at the end of Sun and Moon that some type of sequel would be the only logical course for the next game. We need to see how Lillie does in Kanto, We need to see what those empty lots all around the region are for. We need a new storyline for Necrozma.

For all those who want Kanto re-remakes, you could stretch as far as to say Alola sequels would include a trip to Kanto in order to see Lillie, but this is sadly unlikely. Gamefreak is about as likely to do this as they are to do “Pokémon Rainbow.” If the player could be brought to Kanto, they would expect to walk over to Johto as well. A game with three regions in one would be huge and way too complicated. Apart from that, and other than the whole Lillie thing, there’s really no reason to make a ANOTHER game that has Kanto in it…yet.

And now, what this post is all about…*drumroll please…*

SINNOH REMAKES.

Ahh yes. All of Sinnoh in the glory of 3D, Gen 7 style. Remastered music. Redesigned characters. New side missions. A possible “Distortion Episode” for Giratina, or ones for ALL of Sinnoh’s many legendaries. The hints for these games are big and well-known, including (but not limited to) the lack of Sinnoh Pokémon in the Alola Dex, the many references to Sinnoh in Alola’s dialogue, the colors on Team Skull’s battle screens, the fact that Cynthia already has a 3D model, the similarity between Ultra Beasts and Giratina, as well as between Type: Null and Arceus. I want these remakes so badly, and it seems as though the time has come, my friends. Sinnoh is next in line to be remade…!

However, there are a few problems.

Our hype is becoming too intimidating. I’ve been looking at some of the tweets from the Pokémon Company recently, and no matter what it’s about, there is always at least one reply that says something along the lines of “SINNOH CONFIRMED” or “CONFIRM POKEMON STARS, YOU COWARDS!” Now, I understand the enthusiasm. I have the same thoughts and it seems obvious at this point that Sinnoh remakes are next. The key, though, is that Gamefreak doesn’t LIKE to be predictable. They’ve shown this many, many times, a prime example being Black/White 2. So, by speculating on how May is the month for games to be announced and how Sinnoh remakes are next on the table and they’d better just be announced already, we may be digging our own graves.

There is also the point of how remakes are released every 5 years, and by that standard, Sinnoh remakes should happen in 2019. I personally don’t believe this, for the same reason–Gamefreak tends not to be predictable.

It seems that the next Pokémon game we’ll get will be the rumored “Pokémon Stars.” This is very vague, and could either mean the Alola sequels or Sinnoh remakes. It’s impossible to tell at this point (and don’t even get me started on what console it will be on. That’s a whole nother confusing debate).

Well, that’s it. I hope you enjoyed this spiel.

#pokemon #sinnoh #sinnoh remakes #pokemon stars #alola #kanto #necrozma #giratina #sinnoh confirmed

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estrelatzia · 5 years

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Ok, so as I said before, I wanted to post my thoughts about the SWSH games.

These are mostly thoughts I had on a whim during my first experience, and they might change with time or by playing the games a second time. So please don’t @ me, I am not here to argue, these thoughts are just for fun and somehow a way for me to go back and see if my thoughts on the games changed since they were released.

I categorized them as “things I liked”, “things I thought were meh” and “others” (Others are just interesting points I wanted to talk about, that I might have gave me mixed feelings about, but are not necessary bad).

Before the games were released, they gave me a lot of mixed feels that I never really experienced before with Pokemon games. From the start, I always get excited about new Pokemon games, it’s one of my favourite things since I was a kid. And even when games were not my cup of tea or I was going through a “I don’t like Pokemon anymore” phase, I would still get the game and play along with my sibling and cousins, It’s almost like a tradition.

But this time, during the period before the games got released, I felt nothing...like I was not really interested??? Like I was excited for new Pokemon, the games looked pretty and I loved the thought of exploring a new region in the pokeworld, but besides that, there was nothing more to it. And I got exhausted after all the conflicts and the bad news I saw in the last months, that I barely followed up on the SWSH news.

So I kinda started the news games kinda blind? I knew about the officially released Pokemon, but didn’t check the leaks, so many new gen8 pokemon were new to me as I played. I didn’t read much on the gym leaders, except for knowing what the ones officially revealed looked like, or other little features of the games (Like the wild zone, dynamax, raids etc). And it was an interesting experience to me.

Things that I really loved:

The scenery is gorgeous!! It really had amazing views and it give a beautiful atmosphere. I know many will laugh, but to me exploring the pokeworld is always one of the things I am the most looking forward too. It’s something I did since I was a kid. So all this to say that exploring the regions was really important to me, and I adored exploring Galar. My facourite towns were Wedgehurst, Ballonlea and Circhester.

The new Gen 8 Pokemon were great! They were cute and while some of them were “meh” to me I admit, in general I love the direction they were going with most of them. My faves of this region are Scorbunny, Raboot, Hattena, Galar Ponyta, Galar Meowth and the evolution family of Corviknight (My champ ;u;).

I was surprised to find many Galarian versions as well, and it was so nice to see their new takes on pokemon (bonus points, they were from other gens than gen1! yay!)

The clothing option was great! I love the options they gave to us early on, and even tho I have some comments about it, I really adored the customization options!

I like camping and the curry option, not gonna lie. At first I was joking about completing the Curry dex, but really I want to complete it! It was so fun to me! I always took my time to play in the camp and try different types of curry lol

The Gym Challenges were super fun for the most part. My fave was the first one lol I was disappointed by some, but in general they were interesting concepts and I hope they can keep challenges similar to these in future games.

Also really I loved all the Gym leaders in Galar. I thought the game really made them all memorable by giving them personalities and details. I only played Sword, so I cannot 100% say since I didn’t interact with them, but I love the design of Allister and Melony. Piers was kinda relatable to me lol and Opal was a fun concept for a Gym leader. All around, It was a really strong gang and they were fun to interact with. I loved the cards we get knowing more about them and their backgrounds.

The “rivals” are interesting. I feel like they gave us a little of every type of rival people like. Like you have your friendly neighbour/rival Hop, a friend you learn more about during the game Marnie, and the old fashion arrogant type of rival we all missed, Bede. My fave was Marnie! But I appreciate the arc Hop got and Bede as well.

Things that were meh to me:

First of all, when they introduce the Pokemon, the usual theme that would appear (Welcome to the world of pokemon segment), Is not there???? Blasphemy!! (This one is a joke, please don’t take this seriously. But it was weird not hearing the theme I was used to at the beginning lol)

The thing about GF being forced to release the game before the end of the year, and the fact that they were in a rush, kinda made me wonder when there were things in the game that didn’t settle with me. Like I was always wondering “Was it cut because of the lack of time?” or if it was just things they wanted to go with it, or if it was me being paranoid?” Because, not gonna lie, I kinda compared to the last games to try to figure out what was the reason being the things that made it meh for me.

I love the scenery and towns in Galar, and once again, idk if it was because of the lack of time, but sometimes the places in Galar feels empty...? Idk how to explain, because there is a lot to explore and I love what they did with like the routes (for the example, the two mines look so different and are so pretty! it’s not annoying to explore). But I kinda compare/think to USUM (or even SUMO), some places feel like something is missing?

For example the Budew Inn in Motostoke town. If you have the chance to go to the second floor and explore, you will find most of the rooms look empty? Like there is a lot of space, but nothing much to decorate or make the room feel less empty, compare to the hotels in Alola. I know it’s a weird nitpick, but like I said I love exploring, and remembered that this was something cool to me when I saw the details in Sun and Moon, so I felt a little like things were missing.

Another example are some towns have no homes to explore? Like the town of the first gym, it had no houses to explore and it was so strange? Our hometown had only two houses as well (Ours and Hop’s)...or the fact that Galar’s towns we get to explore are most of the time ones with Gym leaders in it (except for our hometown, the one where the professor is and the one with the champion battle), and it was strange to me not having just a town that is there to explore without having a major plot related thing? Idk if it was just me, but as someone who likes to explore the pokeworld, that’s my thougths.

About the clothing, I really super feel like they should have cabins to change your outfit in like every Pokemon center or something. Because you can only change in cabins at boutiques. But these are like available in about 5 towns. Sometimes you just want to change clothing or accessories after one town and have to wait until arriving to a town with a boutique to change (or go back to the last one). Idk why they removed this from SUMO honestly.

Also...as someone who choose a girl character, I was disappointed that I didn’t get option to wear many pants like the boy, since the girl’s option was mostly skirts :( Like I like the skirts, don’t get me wrong, but idk why it’s such a downgrade compared to SUMO in term of pants. Honestly, I just wish that all the clothing would be accessible to everyone regardless of the characters’ gender.

The rivals were great imo. But sometimes I wanted Hop to leave me for a few seconds ngl. Especially at the start, like he talks in a scene in every new town you arrive. I actually don’t have a problem with Hop, I enjoy these types of friendly rivals actually and his feelings during his arc were really relatable, but sometimes I just wish we could get a break from his scenes for a while lol But at the same time, I understand that maybe his arc would have seen less good if we would see less of it? On the other hand, I kinda wish we could have seen MORE of Bede’s arc honestly. He is the arrogant rival, then something happen that is a change in his life, and the next time we see him, he takes on this new challenge and has quite changed. We see what starts all the change, but it’s a shame we don’t see the change more.

I am not big on online stuff in general, but the way to interact online in the game is such a big meh to me! So I was trying to find my sibling in the online feature to participate in a raid battle. So I filtered by raids, don’t find them. Filtered by friends, still don’t find them. So I try to find them on the map to see if I can interact that way, fly to the other side of the map, and even if I am still connected to internet, the stamps are gone???? So I have to un-connect and reconnect to the internet again and STILL don’t find them! It’s just weird and annoying to me honestly. The fact they don’t have the GTS anymore is disappointing as well :( I know the GTS had issues, but they could easily fix the issues imo.

I could talk forever about the dex cut, but I won’t because we all heard about it. Instead, I will just mention, that I wish there was a way somehow to get alolan versions.

Other:

The music is so good and interesting but, I don’t know if it’s just me, but I feel like I got more like Final Fantasy vibes more than Pokemon sometimes. Like when we are exploring the Forest early game and our hometown really gave me adventure RPG vibes lol.

The Ex share all. *Inhales* SO I always somehow disliked the ex share all since XY. I just have some weird thing that I want all my pokes to be at the same lvl, but in prior games it was hard to do with ex share all, because my starter would always be more lvl, and when I capture a new poke at lower lvl it would be difficult for me to lvl it up to the same lvl as the others. It was such a turn off for me. But this game, I feel like they did a good job! The pokemon who battles gain more exp than the others and the poke you capture in the wild are definitely at a lvl that is closer to your team. I didn’t get really overleved like I did in prior gens as well and I am thankful for that. I feel like they balanced it very well and I hope they keep this type of thing in the future.

No night/day cycle: During the main game, the night/day cycle is scripted lol Like you arrive in a town and it is sunset and it’s supposed to give us an atmosphere and a feeling of time passing and I think it’s interesting. It took me a while to realise that the time in the Wild area actually corresponds to your time zone in the Switch tho lol

The curry and camp are neat, but a part of me is sad that I can’t give my pokemon pats like in Pokemon refresh/amie or feed them food directly especially when there are scripts ingame before battling where the pokemon says they want to be petted. ;;

The story is almost non-existent. The villain is kinda predictable (Lysandre you have competition!) and it seems all to happen in the very last part of the main game. The pacing was kinda weird, and honestly, I am not sure I got all of the point the villain was going for, so I will digress on talking more about it. I know some people wanted a briefer from the last games (SUMO was super plot-heavy). And it gives us the chance to enjoy the games for only the Pokemon journey, it’s just felt kinda like something was missing for me because I am so used to the plots in the games tbh. I am not sure where they were going with it.

There is a story post-game...but well...idk what to say. These recent gens seems like there are no much post-game content, so idk what to say here. It’s not super fun, but it adds to the story and is enjoyable? It’s interesting I suppose, but just like the main plot, I am not sure where they were going with this as well lol It was nice seeing Hop getting involved into it though!

In brief, It was a good experience. Not the best, but definitely not the worst. To me the worst game was Pokemon Let’s go, and I am so glad SWSH didn’t beat it as the worst lol I honestly feel like I would have missed a fun experience if I had skipped SWSH.

I just wish GF would have spent more time on it not gonna lie. Some parts really need to be more polished. And I hope in the future they will stop trying to produce a game a year and take more time to fully and comfortably polish their games, but maybe I am hoping for too much here.

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gesteckt1 · 6 years

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LENOVO ThinkPad T430si Battery all-laptopbattery.com

Despite the low-ish specs, there's no getting around the Surface Go's disappointing battery life. It clocks in at around seven hours of use and we've seen some figures banded about at six - although we think for real-world use that's a little bit on the harsh side. We did get oven seven hours out of it once.The Surface Go uses Windows 10, as you'd expect. But here it's in S Mode. This is a special mode of Windows that doesn't enable you to install desktop apps. Instead, you can only get your apps from the Windows Store.Now, it is easy to switch out of S Mode to install desktop apps (there's a special app in the Windows Store to perform the switch) but it is irreversible.Microsoft claims it is more secure to be in S Mode because dodgy applications can't be installed. However, if you consider yourself a relatively sensible user in terms of the apps you install, we'd recommend switching it out of S Mode right away.

That's for two reasons. The Windows Store is limited in terms of apps; firstly because all the apps have to be approved by Microsoft; secondly because developers don't see the advantage. Google Chrome isn't in there for example, while we found some apps like Paint.net which are free normally but are pay-for in the Store. Microsoft wants more devices to use S Mode and so developers may increasingly develop apps for the Store (mind you, we've been saying that for years) but at the moment support remains patchy.Additionally, S Mode restricts you to not only use Microsoft Edge but also to use Bing as your search engine. This is nothing short of ridiculous. Edge has become a really good browser and has enough features for many, but restricting it yet further simply doesn't make sense.

Elsewhere the Go has cameras front and rear, which is a welcome addition for Windows Hello. This enables you to log-in with your face and works well but you do need to be within a certain angle of the camera - it doesn't seem as wide-angled as Apple's Face ID, for example.The Surface Go isn't a do-anything device like the Surface Book 2 - and neither should you expect it to be given the price difference between the two. Instead, it's a super-portable machine for doing bits and pieces on the go. Emailing, taking notes in a meeting, and watching a bit of iPlayer on the train on the way home.It has all the successful hallmarks of Surface and, while the additional costs of the keyboard and pen are annoying for your bank balace, they're integral to how you should think about using this device (especially the former).

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Surface Go could have smaller bezels, it could have a lot better battery life, and it probably could be leaner with an ARM-based processor. But changing the chip would not only annoy Microsoft's great mate Intel, it would limit it in other ways: after all, this is a full PC you can install desktop apps on (if you take Windows 10 out of S Mode). And with this level of portability, that's certainly not to be sniffed at. Now with Apple Pencil support, the entry-level iPad is even more of a winner than before. In terms of pure tablets, this is the best. What the Surface Go brings to the party over and above this device is the ability to use Windows apps and work in the same way as any other laptop (well, if you buy the Type Cover keyboard).The Surface Pro 4 is getting on a bit and we're expecting it to be replaced soon. Even if there is a new one, that doesn't change the fact it's a rival to the Surface Go simply because it's more of a performance version.

The best Android tablet we've seen yet, the Galaxy Tab S4 also has some PC-rivalling capabilities thanks to Samsung's DeX. It's not far off being as expensive as a Surface Pro even if the S Pen stylus is included (the keyboard isn't). MSI, the Taiwanese electronics manufacturer which forays into high-end gaming laptops has launched a new product for the Indian masses. The company has unveiled its first professional laptop in India which the company is calling as PS42. The professional will be available in two variants with the top-end variant featuring the latest 8th-gen Intel Core i7 processor which will be clubbed with a Nvidia GeForce MX150 graphics card. This would be enough to power the device through some basic graphics intensive software. The MSI PS42 sports a 14-inch full HD IPS-level display which is surrounded by narrow 5.7 mm bezels at all the sides. The screen-to-body ratio offered by the device is of 81 percent. MSI has used its own True Color 2.0 technology which gives the display an ability to provide almost perfect colors. In addition to this, the content creators will e able to calibrate their display as per their own requirements.

Under the hood, the MSI PS42 is backed by an 8th-gen Intel Core i7 processor which is paired with a Nvidia GeForce MX150 GPU graphic card to take care of the graphics. The MSI PS42 comes with 512GB NVMe PCIe SSD. The laptop features a slim frame measuring 15.9mm and weighs just 1.1kg making it an ideal to carry around. Ports and other hardware The PS42 comes with Nahimic 3 audio engine speakers which enables the laptop to produce an immersive 7.1 channel cinematic surround sound effect. The professional laptop features dual exhaust thermal design so that the device does not get overheated even with intensive usage. As for the ports, there are two USB Type-C ports, two full-sized USB ports, one 3.5mm combo jack, and one SD card reader. MSI is also claiming that the PS42 is backed by a powerful battery which can last up to 10 hours with a single charge. We would like to test the device before verifying the claims. Pricing and availability: As mentioned earlier, the PS42 will be available in two variants. The low-end variant with Core i5 processor will retail at Rs. 77,990 and the top-end variant with Core i7 processor will be available at Rs 99,990. Both the laptops will be available for sale at all leading online stores such as Amazon, Flipkart, and Paytm and also on MSI retail stores across the country.

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Plugging in the power -- or at least what you think is power -- to a USB-C powered laptop can connect your computer, and the valuable personal data on it, directly to hackers. Your personal financial information, passwords and documents stored on the laptop could help a cybercriminal steal your identity. The laptop may even be used to attack your employer’s computers and network.The European Union is already moving to require all smartphones be compatible with USB-C power adapters – itself a move that endangers users’ privacy. If the EU made a similar standard for laptop computers, it would threaten to make the problem worse, by increasing the number of people vulnerable to what is basically the digital equivalent of pick-pocketing.

Mobile phones have been hackers’ targets for years. Phones that are left behind or stolen can contain sensitive personal data that can let a criminal open a new bank account or take out a loan.However, a far more insidious way to get the data is to simply connect to the phone and steal everything it holds. As the phone is not lost, the user may be unaware that anything is wrong. Attackers try to get access to mobile phones via their internet connections and local wireless connection technologies like Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.But some attackers are finding a weakness in phone charging. Many newer phones use the same port – one of several types of USB – for both connecting to a computer and charging. A charger could be modified to attack your phone via that trusted connection. This has led some researchers to recommend never using public USB chargers for your smartphone.

Older mobile phones, including some smartphones, that used power-only connections didn’t have to worry about this issue. Users of these devices can plug in to public multi-device charging stations without worry, as there is no connection to the device’s data. For those with combined data and power ports, however, the same port that many people only use to power their phone is commonly used by hackers and even law enforcement to access the data on it.Until recently, laptop computers had enjoyed some protection, with most having a dedicated power port to connect their chargers to. Other purpose-specific ports allowed connections to desktop monitors, conference room projectors and other devices, without need for concern. USB-C changed this, with one high-speed port now able to provide and receive power, send video signals to projectors and monitors, and connect to USB thumb drives and numerous other peripheral devices.

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wisteriafield · 8 years

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Dark Souls

send me a tv show/book/fandom and i’ll say the top 5 things i’d change about it

Since each of the installments are vastly different, I’ll either assume that you’re just talking about the first one, or I could do one for all 3. Yeah lets do that I’ve got a lot on my mind and really want to talk about Dark Souls

As a sidenote, for DS1 and DS3 I’d like an arena much like the DS1 arena where you neither gain nor lose anything but you get to challenge whichever boss you want in their arena like you’re selecting a bonfire to warp to or w/e. Either found near the end of the game or a place you can access early but updates as you progress.

DS1

There’s not a whole lot I have a problem with in this game, but there are some glaring issues...

I miss the Dark Wood Grain Ring a lot, after playing lots of DS2 and 3. And easy ravioli steps, ones that have invul frames too.

Change backstab detection and confirmation

Have you heard of anyone that joins Princess’s Guard? Possibly consider reducing the FTH requirements to make the covenant-exclusive miracles more accessible, or at least make more useful rewards

Maybe actually confirm if joining Way of White helps you not get invaded

This is the only game I can reliably parry in but that’s also because it’s probably the easiest game to parry in and it’s kinda ridiculous, especially given how powerful criticals are in this game.

I personally dislike humanity mechanics and found it better handled in DS3, it’s necessary for what the game is, but it would be nice if it was less monotonous to farm the item version of it, compared to all of the fun ways (invading, cooping) that only get you “soft” humanity.

There’s nothing you can really do about how easy it is to twink a character in this game because of all of the core parts of the game design that make it so strong (the accessibility of the master key, invading with 99 humanity items, getting like +5 giants armor and a +5 chaos weapon and being invincible against new players, etc) You’d have to change a lot of things.

Also I wish I didn’t have to look ugly everytime I died but it’s the price I pay for being bad.

DS2

I don’t necessarily mind Soul Memory, but it feels like the inclusion of the Apage Ring makes the mechanic redundant and harder to manage than Soul Levels, but I do appreciate that twinks are much rarer just because of how much more effort you have to go through just to do it.

Both Aggro persistence and range are kinda ridiculous, while the game stresses stamina management much harder than DS1 or DS3, their reception to sound makes it so you’re often outnumbered 4:1. Maybe we could do with like 1 less Alonne Knight?? Just a suggestion.

Enemy animations just seem really stiff but also can be really subtle (like the way hollow bastard sword enemies can just suddenly charge into you like they’re using a spear, which is just weird). It’s like the worst of Monster Hunter’s animations (aka Gen 1 monsters with Raths doing their instant charge that sends you flying)

Make gear you can only get from killing one-time NPCs drop easier and not force people to use like 50 Ascetics

Hollowing is ugly but in a cartoonish way, the drastic change of your appearance over 5% of your max HP is ridiculous, in my personal opinion.

Also there’s questionable area design which I guess can’t be helped because of the game’s development circumstances, such as taking an elevator UP into a volcano/lava area after passing through a mining colony. or having to go through a special shrine that requires powerful souls because some chest high rocks are covering the proper path.

I do miss kicking though.

DS3

I could write a whole paper on Covenant reforms in particular

Sorcery Reform (and Miracles to a certain extent): Allow Sorcerers to hold off casting spells similar to Bow-users. In DS2, there’s enough variety of sorceries you can use to keep people guessing (even if everyone and their mother will have Homing Crystal Soulmass and Crystal Soul Spear, there’s still other spells you can and should attune to mix your game up). Change scaling of INT and FTH so builds don’t have to get 60 of either stat in order to see sufficient damage, they have to dump enough points in ATT as it is, this also drastically tends to limit the amount of weapons they have available to them. maybe I’d consider reducing FP costs too, having to split Ashen Estus Flasks with your regular flasks just makes life a lot harder in PvE than it does for Quality builds, and not even having access to spells makes up for that due to the way INT investment affects spell damage. Maybe the complaints are exaggerating (I wouldn’t be surprised). I’ll get back to you on this when I start my non-quality build characters.

Strengthen split damage weapons. This tends to cause Refined/Hollow infusions to be your choice of infusion for 90% of weapons. THAT in turn is also caused by many weapons being quality weapons in general, if you don’t run quality builds, too many weapons end up being underwhelming. This would also put less of a demand on STR/DEX points for INT and FTH builds and open up a lot more options for them.

Remove auto-summoning from Blades of the Darkmoon. Upon using the Red Eye Orb, to reinforce the lore of them having a feud with Aldritch Faithfuls, allow them to invade players with the Aldritch Faithful covenant in any area regardless if the area boss is dead or not; remove Proof of Concord Well Kept with this change. (Seriously why did they make the same covenant twice?)

Increase the lower bound of Blue Sentinel summon range; Move Way of Blue to become accessible in Firelink Shrine as opposed to the end of the first area (this is probably where low level embered players will run into invasions the most anyways). Allow their White Sign Soapstone to be used in invasions to create Signs Requesting Cooperation in Blue Sentinels’ worlds (this is something new they added in DS3 for NPC questlines that I find underused). They can interact with the sign and be summoned where it was placed. Way of Blue hosts can use this and then hold out until an answer arrives, or perhaps use it to lure an invader into a pincer attack. I’d also disable summon signs when you get invaded since hosts tend to run back to the bonfire for safety to summon more people, thus occupying slots that could be used on a Blue Sentinel. Blue Sentinels should always be able to locate the Host as well, and should be ignored by enemies and cannot hurt them either. Blue Sentinels are there to protect the host, but protecting them from enemies in the area is NOT what their concord tells them to do, they are there for the invader and the invader only. If there’s one thing I learned over the last few days: Equip Way of Blue when going through areas yourself.

There’s a recent glitch that allows people to invade AND enter boss fights as if they were a phantom. The main issue with this glitch is that the invader is not announced in the world, but can be sent back home with the Black Separation Crystal if the host is careful before entering the boss room. The most dickish thing I’ve seen done with it is someone invading the boss room and killing a questline NPC in a certain boss fight. I’d like to see this included since this is discovered to be how the Mound Makers covenant was originally supposed to work. DS3 needs to give incentives to summoning Mound Makers and there really aren’t any except for the fact that they’re probably better at fighting invaders than your sunbros are. The only thing is that once the Mound Maker enters the boss room, they have to land the finishing blow on the host or they get nothing, and can’t just sit there to let the boss kill them.

(Extra) Instead of weapon reinforcement checks permanently barring you from lower reinforced hosts, either scale down the reinforcement to their level or don’t count weapons in the Item Box.

(Extra... again) I have to admit that estus drinking and healing speed make invasions much longer and tiring than they should be (but not as long as Demon’s Souls pvp where apparently everyone has 99 dank). The fact that roll stamina cost is so low combined with the fact that you can turn which is more important than the fact that you can move in general while drinking makes estus really strong, I might change this for healing Estus but not for Ashen Estus.

I don’t know if it’s really that important, but it really bothers me that it’s literally impossible for you to learn the Proper Bow gesture by summoning Yellowfinger Heysel unless you want to end Sirris of the Sunless Realm’s questline (also, the amount of gestures you need to learn by summoning NPC phantoms is something I’m not very fond of) and thus possibly deny access to both the Mound Makers covenant AND Blades of the Darkmoon in a single NG.

I could make another note about broadening weapon diversity by changing their moveset, like how 90% of straightswords outside of DLC have the same Stance and how all of them swing the same for the most part. Only 2 Greatswords have unique R1s and one of them is complete shit thanks to said note about how Split Damage is in a really bad place in this game.

#long post #hatsuzookie

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