#nearly done with the dex just need version exclusive stuff :

[adhdvane]

very happy about the dlc i'm glad i had the forethought to take this pic for my trainer id while i could

[askmerriauthor]

Pokemon SwSh Thoughts - Post Game

So I’ve finished Pokemon Sword’s primary content.  All that’s left is to finish up the PokeDex and drive myself insane trying to whip up all the variations of Alcremie.  That, and delaying buying an online subscription for as long as possible before I bother with trading to get the other game’s exclusives.  Here’s some thoughts on the game after the fact:

Pokemon SwSh really needed to come out in late 2020, period.  I’ve enjoyed the game so far, but I’ve played it for about a week without putting in too much time/effort grinding and I’ve already done pretty much everything there is to do.  I had my Starter leveled up to 100 before I even left the Wild Area for the very first time.  The pacing and content depth of this game are pretty much non-existent, whereas the majority of the effort has clearly been put toward refining the competitive combat development.  That’s great for those players who really like the battle system, but not so much for those of us who like story and broader gameplay elements.

Pro - Streamlined Gameplay One thing I’ve wanted in Pokemon for ages has been the ability to skip tutorials.  I understand the necessity of having them, as every game that comes out is going to be some player’s first and their presence is for that player.  But at least having the option to skip them for us old hats would be nice.  SwSh does that!  I was delighted to discover that the game allows you to bypass tutorials with a simple yes/no prompt when a new element is introduced.  How to catch Pokemon, type match-ups, how to heal at Pokemon Centers, and so forth - all the stuff previous games led us through by the nose has been made optional this time around.

I’ve seen some people saying that this game holds the player’s hand too much as it leads us from one gameplay element to the next and doesn’t let us progress at our own leisure.  To some degree this is true, but it’s far less egregious than in previous games, such as SuMo.  There’s yet to be a good balance between giving the player free reign and giving them enough guidance to ensure we never feel lost, but this has been an inoffensive example as far as I’m concerned.  The game does end up feeling rather railroaded, but I don’t necessarily consider that a fault of hand-holding. I’ll get to this matter later on.

Pro - The Style Galar is a very pretty region and the game makes good use of the Switch’s higher capacity to produce excellent backdrops for the player to explore.  Many of the Pokemon have charming animations (Falinks is my favorite on this respect).  The towns are all really well-designed in terms of visuals, especially compared to the bare-bones looks of older generations.  I feel like there could have been more, but what we got is still great.

Pro - Implications in Lore Those of you who know me know how much I love lore and world building.  Pokemon, as a franchise, is ripe with opportunity to examine its lore to the most tiny and obscure detail, so any new addition to the franchise is welcome on that front.  Galar has some pretty fascinating nuggets to contribute.

I love that the League in Galar, as well as competitive Pokemon Training in general, is treated like a career sport.  In specific, I love that this view and practice is exclusive to Galar - I wouldn’t like it at all if the entire franchise shifted to this angle, but it works great for a one-off region.  I like that Kabu specifically relocated himself from Hoenn to join the sports league as it doesn’t exist in his home region.  The Champion being a sort of major celebrity/superhero, the way Gym Leaders can recruit proteges or even inheritors of their rank from among contenders, the sort of clique all the Gym Leaders have with one another - it’s a really neat dynamic.  I also like the notion that actually completing the Gym Challenge isn’t something common and most Trainers who try rarely make it even halfway through.  That’s an interesting contrast to other regions where collecting Gym Badges seems almost as a given and the League itself is considered the real challenge, or where the whole endeavor is designed to be finished as a matter of course, like in Alola.

There’s also some really neat additions to the overall lore brought in from the Pokemon Masters mobile game.  While its place in canon is questionable, it does specifically mention Galar in a few places.  The idea that Pokemon who do not appear in the current Dex are banned from Galar by customs (perhaps identified as potentially dangerous/invasive species) is an interesting one.  So is the claim that Iris - the Champion of Unova in BW2 - is a cousin of Leon and Hop.  I love it when there are connections amid titles like that as it really helps build a more unified setting.

-Edit-: Darn, apparently those screenshots were fakes.  Strike that positive from the list, I suppose.

Mixed Pro/Con - The Availability of Pokemon and the Wild Area I’m not talking about Dexit - I have my own thoughts on that explained elsewhere and frankly don’t think it’s going to end up as bad as everyone is fretting over in the long run.  No, in this particular case I’m focused on the availability of Pokemon that are in the game itself.

To put it simply... it’s too easy.  I know that filling out the PokeDex isn’t supposed to be a huge challenge, but I’ve gotten the majority of it done - evolved forms, item-reliant forms, gender/size/color variations included - with pretty much no effort whatsoever.  I like the idea of the Wild Area in principle but what it ends up being in practice is lacking.  It’s too easy to just hoover up Pokemon at a breakneck pace, which leads to other zones and the Wild Area itself becoming pretty much immediately obsolete.  I have no need to return to them once I’ve gotten everything I need and there’s not enough general content to urge me to visit again.

The Wild Area itself is a big open sandbox that you can roam around in, which is nice compared to more linear zones in past games.  Galar has its railroad routes, but they’re brief (aside from the obligatory overlong water route, which even then is still quite a lot smaller than other regions’ have been).  However, it’s just that - a big open sandbox.  You can wander through it very easily and even traipse into the “high level” zones without fear because you can see all the Pokemon coming and give them a wide berth to avoid them.  There aren’t any obstacles or challenges within the Wild Area itself, and the game makes it supremely easy to find Pokemon even under specific weather/time conditions, which I feel is a missed opportunity.  I would have rather the Wild Area been MUCH bigger and more involved, full of places to explore and puzzles to solve.  Similarly, I would rather that Pokemon were more difficult to come by as well - that a greater deal of effort would have been put toward tracking and discovering certain harder-to-find Pokemon, with more in-game detective work to find your prize.

Mixed Pro/Con - The Characters The ensemble cast of new Gym Leaders are great - I enjoy the majority of them and frankly want more interactions, more encounters, just more in general.  That’s sort of the problem though - I want more.  The game itself criminally under-utilizes these characters, especially compared to how much more involved and explored Gym Leaders have been in recent games.  There is precious little content using the Gym Leaders here in Galar as it stands and I constantly found myself wanting them to hang out longer and have the chance to learn more about them.  Their League Cards are a neat little addition full of interesting tidbits about their histories, natures, and relationships with each other, but I would MUCH rather have gotten to see all that play out in the game itself rather than read it as a flavor blurb.

On the con side of this, however, is the fact that all of the characters are extremely one-dimensional.  We’ve been seeing a steady increase in the depth and development of supporting characters in the games since BW onward, with SuMo arguably having the most to date.  The overall characterization in SwSh is incredibly lacking by comparison as we don’t get nearly enough time to be with the cast, nor is the cast given the chance to present more than one note per.  Nobody has any sort of emotional growth or development.  The closest thing to a character arc in the game is Hop’s acceptance of the idea that he’s not going to be the Champion, but it doesn’t have anywhere near as much punch as it could and is over in the blink of an eye compared to how he spends THE ENTIRE GAME repeating the same “I’m gonna be the Champion/Hokage/Pirate King!” spiel every time he’s on screen.

Con - Dynamaxing and Max Raid Battles I’m not really on board with the whole “Mega-Evolution is best! No more gimmicks!” train because that’s just silly to me.  Every game has its gimmick and the way Pokemon gradually picks up tricks and traits from its past versions to consolidate into newer titles is one of its strengths.  That said, Dynamaxing is worthless and a pointless addition to the game, both in presentation and practice.

The visual of a Pokemon going kaiju is a neat concept and one I was initially intrigued by, but in practice it falls flat because it’s as thin as cardboard.  It’s just Mega-Evolution and Z-Moves smooshed together with an additional 3 round time limit tacked on.  All it functionally does is buff your Pokemon’s HP pool and add additional weather/status effects to certain attacks, but in some cases the Dynamax versions of attacks are actually weaker/less useful than their base form.  In Gym Battles all the way through the final League fight with Leon, I didn’t bother with Dynamaxing because my Pokemon were strong enough to not need it.  I could one-shot Dynamaxed Pokemon with ease using a non-Dynamaxed Pokemon and that really shows a flaw in the design if ever there was one.  Dynamaxing doesn’t add or improve anything vital to gameplay - it’s just fluff.

Max Raid Battles as found in the Wild Area are even worse.  For those of you who don’t know, these are instanced battles against a Dynamaxed/Gigantamaxed wild Pokemon where you team up with three other players/NPCs.  If you win, you get a bunch of useful items and have the chance to catch the wild Pokemon as well, which is the only way you can get certain Gigantamax-capable Pokemon reliably.

The issue with these Max Raid Battles is that they’re an absolute slog.  In the early stages of the game they’re all super easy to the point that I could solo them and thus gathered mountains of EXP-boosting candies, which let me overlevel my Pokemon beyond reason.  Since the whole “your Pokemon is too high level and won’t listen to you” thing apparently doesn’t apply to Starters and special Event Pokemon, I was able to max-level and run rampant across all opposition with my Starter and my special “thanks for buying early” Meowth.  HOWEVER.  The difficulty scale of the Max Raid Battles increases with your game progress, so by the time I finished the game and went back into the Wild Area, the Max Raid Battles’ difficulty had ramped up.  That’s an okay compromise on its face, but the manner in which the difficulty has increased is poor game design.  The battles aren’t any harder, they just take longer - the wild Pokemon has more HP,  tosses up a few rounds of shields to soak damage at the start and again halfway through the fight, and purges stat boosts from the player and party throughout the battle.  It just makes the fights a pain in the ass to get through rather than making them more challenging or fun, and it’s gotten to the point that I don’t even bother with them anymore.  They’re just not worth the trouble, not even for the sake of trying to farm EXP candies because, at this point in the game, all Pokemon in the Wild Area scale up to level 60+ and thus are perfectly serviceable as EXP farming fodder themselves.

On a lore side of things, Dynamaxing is really confusing.  There’s the whole visual aspect of the Pokemon growing to giant sizes and sometimes changing their appearances, and there’s these massive arenas built to facilitate the whole thing.  But the game itself goes out of its way to impress the fact that the Pokemon aren’t actually getting bigger.  They just appear to grow in size and haven’t actually physically changed themselves so Dynamaxing is more like a giant hard light holographic projection than anything else?  It’s just a really weird design choice to have made and I don’t understand why it was included.

Con - The Writing So, writing is very important to me.  It’s literally been my job for the past decade with various game studios.  I don’t consider myself any sort of literary snob as I feel there’s a place for schlock right alongside masterpieces - they all serve a specific purpose and fulfill a particular hunger the reader would like satisfied.

That said, SwSh’s writing is abysmal.

Right on the face, there’s not enough of it.  The game is criminally short and light on content, which directly impacts its pacing.  Remember earlier when I mentioned that things felt railroaded?  That’s because there’s not enough story to rest on - it all flies by as fast as can be, forcing the player along a very narrow and brief chain of events that don’t feel consequential at all.  Further, the player has no agency in events whatsoever.  It’s not the player’s story - it’s Hop’s story.  We’re the supporting role to his journey, shallow as that arc may be.  Hop is the one who initiates the events of the game without our input as a character and then we spend the entire game following him around, or being pushed into the next event by other characters who are facilitating Hop.  At no point is the player ever given the chance to express their own characterization, motivation, or even opinions.  Nearly every two-choice dialogue option that appears boils down to “Yes” or “Slightly More/Less Enthusiastic Yes”, which is a huge downgrade from the genuine negative responses and NPC reactions that were present in SuMo.

In terms of overall plot, SwSh has pretty much the same level of depth and complexity as the original Red/Blue titles, and that is as scathing a criticism in this modern age as I can possibly imagine.  The whole story is “run in a circle, collect badges, fight vaguely present villainous threat, fight league.”  We are actively forced from one gym fight to the next with no time to breathe, no story-focused events in between, and not even any chance to appreciate the gym, its leader, or even the towns they take place in.  It’s one and done - once you’ve got the badge there’s no reason to hang around and the story shuffles us along quickly as can be.  I mean that literally in some cases - there are hints of a greater plot at hand with Sonia investigating the history of Galar’s legends and the potential machinations of mega-corporate mogul Chairman Rose.  But each time those are broached in game play, the game pushes the player off-screen and says “Well, that’s not something you need to worry about.  Go get another badge!”  I mean, LITERALLY!  There’s a point where The Plot begins to kick in where Pokemon begin to spontaneously Dynamax and cause havoc, which is the narrative queue for the player to become involved and for the story to reveal a new facet.  But when that happens, Leon LITERALLY says “leave this to the adults, you just focus on your Gym Challenge” and runs off-screen to handle it himself.  It would be a good narrative subversion if it led up to things eventually getting out of hand and the player getting roped into things, or the player having the ability to defy such warnings and interject themselves into danger.  But that doesn’t happen - the game just forces us to focus on the Gym Challenge alone and keeps all the actual plot of the game off-screen away from us.  This is very poor narrative design and game design alike, and it all comes to nothing because we’re forced to clean up everything in the end anyway by battling the villain and legendaries as per usual.

Though I should also point out that there’s no villain in this game.

But what about Team Yell and Chairman Rose, I hear you ask?  They’re not villains, both literally and figuratively respectively.  Team Yell never really does anything other than act as brief gate locking elements throughout the game until you finish the Gym you’re at, then they bounce off to the next part of the route they’re set to block.  They don’t do anything bad and, as it’s later revealed, they’re actually just a bunch of Spikemuth Gym staffers who are posing as hooligans to support Marnie.  They’re literally not villains and, once you beat the Spikemuth Gym, they actually become supporting characters who cheer for the player character and help out against the actual supposed villain of the game.

The actual “villain” of the game is Chairman Rose and his assistant Oleana.  However, they’re only villains because the script says they are.  They don’t actually do anything bad throughout the entire game nor is there any indication that they have some sort of grand master plan.  The most we get is some unusual happenings like small quakes and explosions in the distance, but the game never allows us any chance to investigate - we’re just shoved off toward the next Gym each time.  So when Chairman Rose is finally revealed to be the Big Bad, it comes completely out of left field and seems to happen for no reason whatsoever.  Further, IT IS FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER.  Chairman Rose’s plan and goal is never explained in depth - all we get is the vague indication that he believes that Galar isn’t sustainable and there will be an inevitable energy crisis in about 1,000 years, and somehow his EVIL SCHEME will fix it.  But, like, even Leon flat-out says “I understand your concern but you’re being hasty, this doesn’t need to be rushed, chill out for five seconds and let’s figure this out reasonably”.  Instead Rose interrupts the Champion match and announces his EVIL SCHEME on global broadcast for literally no good reason.  There was no dire immediacy that required him to do it right then and there, or in that manner, but the plot needed to move us along so that’s how it goes.

It really doesn’t help that, prior to all this, there’s absolutely no indication at all that Rose nor Oleana are bad guys.  They’re just business folk who appear to have nothing but good intentions and support for Leon, with the other adults of the cast all happily trusting them.  There is nothing to make them seem suspicious in practice and they offer no reason to doubt them at all, so them suddenly being the bad guys is just confusing.  Further, how the player is first introduced to the concept of them being antagonists is easily the most ridiculous logic jump and overreaction I’ve seen since the old Adam West Batman television show.  So get this: after a battle, Leon says he’ll meet Player and Hop for dinner to celebrate.  Player and Hop wait for Leon, but he never shows up.  Another NPC explains that Leon was called in for a last-minute meeting by Chairman Rose (who is his boss and has made such requests of Leon’s time throughout the game, as I feel is important to point out) and apologizes for having to miss the dinner plans.  Simple enough sort of situation, right?  The sort of thing that any reasonable person would shrug and say “Well, that sucks but okay, let’s go eat on our own then” to, right?  So what happens here instead?

The Player, Hop, Marnie, and her Gym Leader brother GATHER A SMALL MOB AND STORM CHAIRMAN ROSE’S BUSINESS HQ, FIGHTING THEIR WAY THROUGH SECURITY.

I mean, escalation much?  We all have smartphones - just send Leon a text, for goodness’ sake.  I’m playing through these events constantly going “why the hell are we doing this and why is everyone acting like it’s some sort of dire emergency?”.  And do you know what happens when we finally kick down the doors to Chairman Rose’s office?  We find Chairman Rose and Leon quietly having a peaceful chat, after which Leon apologizes for having to cancel the dinner plans and we all walk out together like nothing happened.  It was just this huge, needless overreaction that has no consequence and that neither Rose nor Leon even bat an eye at.  We, as the players, learn absolutely nothing of importance and are back on the Gym Challenge immediately with no functional changes to the narrative.

Like... what was the point of that?!  How was that the best option to try and put Chairman Rose and his underlings into the role of antagonists for us to oppose?

So what is Chairman Rose’s EVIL SCHEME anyway?  Basically he wants to provide Galar with renewable clean energy which... uh... is bad?  Somehow?  Apparently he plans to use a Legendary Pokemon called Eternatus - apparently the source of Dynamaxing - which is literally never mentioned at any point in the game except precisely when it’s time to fight/capture it, nor does fighting/capturing it have any impact on the story or setting.  You would think that the player being in control of a massive Eldritch horror that has UNLIMITED POWER at its disposal would be something of a sticking point somewhere in the story, but no.  Eternatus and Rose’s plan are never mentioned until precisely the time you need to deal with them, and once that’s done they’re both never mentioned again.  Done and done all in one.  No gradual seeding of information, no hints and clues throughout the game, no development of lore - just wham, bam, thank you ma’am and off we go.

Y’know, call me silly but in a game that has undertones referencing climate change, extinction of animal species, and criticisms against capitalism run amok, is it really a good idea to depict the guy advocating for clean energy to be bad?  That feels like a missed mark to me.

The post-game plot, should one bother to call it that, is just inane.  It basically boils down to a pair of one-shot baddies who show up and say “Ha ha! We’re rich and that means we’re better than everyone! Watch as we cause trouble for vague reasons, get hoist by our own petard, and then fuck off forever! Byeeeee~!”  The post-game is completely pointless and doesn’t add anything of value at all.  Which, again, compare to older games like ORAS’ post-game expansion content and it’s nothing but a damn shame.

SwSh’s writing is shallow and limited at best, with one-dimensional characters, no genuine conflict or resolution, terrible pacing, and repetitive elements that boomerang around over and over and over again to the point of annoyance.  Compared to what we’ve seen Pokemon achieve in earlier titles like BW, ORAS, and SuMo, it makes it all the more obvious that SwSh was not given ANYWHERE near the time and love it needed in development and is a massive downgrade in that respect.

Con - Lots of Style, No Substance To wrap all this up - I enjoyed playing SwSh as much as I did any other early Pokemon game.  I think that, as a first installment on a new system, it’s fine.  That’s all - it’s just fine.  It’s serviceable as a means of establishing the franchise onto the Switch and completing its move off purely-mobile mediums like the Gameboy and 3DS.  It’s pretty to look at and has a superficial level of engagement, but its prettiness and level of content very quickly reveal themselves to be only skin deep.  Once you get past the initial gloss there’s really nothing to this game compared to the content, involvement, and writing quality displayed in past titles on lesser-powered systems.  The towns are all pretty but there’s nothing to do in any of them aside from a Gym battle - there’s no additional fun to be had in each location, making them little more than set pieces.  The characters have initial appeal and potential for more, but the game never explores them at all.  There’s room for a bigger narrative and interesting story with the elements presented, but no opportunity to actually see them fleshed out.  The Wild Area seems big and involved at first, but as soon as you’ve gone around its loop once or twice you suddenly realize how small and compartmentalized it really is, and it lacks any reason to revisit in the end game.  The major game play function - Dynamaxing/Gigantamaxing - is little more than a novelty that is basically irrelevant to gameplay itself and, in an absolutely baffling decision by the folk behind the official competitive scene, is actually somehow banned from being used in competitions?  Like, not even “we’ve disabled the Dynamax button in online” but rather “if the competitive Pokemon you’ve spent so much time perfectly constructing has a Gigantamax form, it will not even be allowed access at all, so you better have an identical non-Gigantamax version on hand if you want to play”.  So, what exactly is the point of even having Gigantamax Pokemon then?

Everything about SwSh seems half-baked.  The ideas are there but they aren’t finished.  It should have been given much more development time and, having been in the position of the creative/dev team under demands from the shareholders, I completely sympathize with Game Freak’s devs in all this.  SwSh is ultimately a weak product but one with a lot of good ideas that weren’t given the chance to really shine.  As such, I’ve got rather high hopes for the next installment to improve on the unfortunately thin foundation SwSh has set.  Game Freak’s team has given us some amazing Pokemon games in the past and, assuming they’re given sufficient time and resources to make a title to their satisfaction, I have every confidence they’ll do so again.

[thekingofwinterblog]

Game Freak, Stagnation, Luck and the Refusal to Change

Its Amazing how much fucking grief Game Freak could easily have avoided if they simply said it would take a few months post launch to impliment all pokemon.

No one would have given a shit, they would have gotten away with halfassing everything else, having the A Team working on a game no one asked for, they could take their time, and all the hype would have remained at the top of the world.

Then again if they did that, it would have required actual work, and maybe expanding the company. And God forbid they actually invest any of those billions of Dollars they have earned over the Years.

Amongst all of Nintendo’s teams and Secondary companies, Game Freak is the most stagnant, and that can in Large part be contributed to their immense success. they started with around 150 people, and they currently have around 150 people. They have Stubbornly refused to expand the rooster over the year, despite the fact that they Struck gold better than literarly any other Company in the Game industry.

This in turn Lead to the Company growing stagnant, not innovating, and in general not really going foreward nearly as much as other companies.

There is a question to be made though. Was it always this way? Before this whole debacle i used to think that Game Freak used to be this amazing innovative company, that managed to score an amazing hit and pushed that for all its worth.

However after digging deeper ive kinda begun to question that at all. or Rather ive come to realise that Game Freak is a good example of how a company needs input from other sources for it to not fall into decadence, and that sometimes you need someone to come along and give you a few suggestions. Or a kick in the ass, as they need in Newer times

----GENERATION 1----

Going back all the Way to Red and Green, Nintendo gave what was quite possibly the first Mandate it Ever gave for the Pokemon franchise. This demand? Add PVP to the Game. Thats right, originally Game Freak didnt want to add PVP whatsoever. Given how Game Freak now wishes to fuck over the competitive scene permanently, the fact that they never originally didnt want to have players battle at all should not come as a great suprise.

Withouth this one feature, it seems unlikely pokemon would have been as big a hit as it became. Maybe it would have been added in the Blue and yellow versions and have been in all international releases, but this is by no means certain. Player against players would have come eventually no doubt, but its fully possible that left entierly to their own devices, Game Freak would not have implemented this feature before Gold and Silver.

How big this would have impacted the franchise in both short and long term is impossible to say, but it certainly would have drastically reduced the long term gameplay of the first Game by quite a lot.

however, i should note that im not arguing that Game Freak did not work hard for Red and Green. they did, and they worked on it to the point that right before it was released, Mew was secretly added to the game under Nintendo’s noses. but it sets the Stage for Game Freak often not implimenting the obvious, or not going out of their way to add stuff beyond their original vision of the game.

Setting the stage, we get to the first truely innovative pokemon Game. Pokemon Stadium. And as we’ll see over the course of this retrospective, the Innovative games, is not the ones made by Game Freak themselves, but instead Other companies. In this case Nintendo themselves, Hal Labratory, and its Brilliant leader Satoru Iwata, a man who as we’ll see created half of Pokemon Gold and Silver singlehandedly.

Iwata began his involvement in Pokemon History in Great Style. By taking a look at the pokemon Battle system, and memorising it withouth Code or notes. that might not seem that impressive, but he then went on to create the entire Battle System of Pokemon Stadium exclusively from his own memories, and amazingly enough he would fix things which Game Freak had fucked up in its first outing, like Focus Energy actually working and a number of other smaller mistakes Game Freak had Made being fixed for Stadium.

Stadium Would Then go on to create Pokemon Models that would be used all the way to the third Generation, where the Orre Games would simply ugrade them.

Another innovative feature was to unlock a Game Mode which let you speed up your Game Boy Game while playing it on the stadium. An Amazing tool for anyone who wants to Grind, and a really good reward for anyone who put the effort into unlocking it.

Stadium is by no means a Perfect Game. but it Set the tone for it being the Other companies Nintendo Employes being the truely innovative game makers in regards to pokemon. Iwata in particular being a truly important figure for the second Generation of Pokemon Games.

So after the golden Ticket that Game Freak had in the Original Red and Green, you would expect them to heavily invest them into making sure that when the sequels rolled around, they would have everything in place, a bigger more experienced team, and all the resources they would need to get the Second Games rolling. If you had this expectation, the actual development is actually quite a sad affair.

----GENERATION 2----

Now there was an obstacle which wasnt their fault at all, which was the game boy colour. Given its sudden and unexpected release, Game Freak now had to Port the second generation Games so they would work on both the original Game Boy and the New Version. that would have been a daunting task, but if the development was going well to begin with, they would propbably have pulled it off.

that however was not the case. Long story short, the Games were a complete Mess, they had a hundred ideas, but There seems to have been no hard leader who would wrangle them in line and decide what to cut and not cut. and as the first Release Date which they would delay another year began to creep closer, they had come to a point where they neared the end of the Capacity of the Game Boys Cartridge power to handle. yet they were only halfway through the development. It reads like an eerily similar Development which Anthem would go through around 2 decades later.

So, what happened? why did the Second Pokemon Generation not end up as a dysmal failure? the Answer is Satoru Iwata. at this Point the Brilliant Future president of Nintendo Stepped in to save the day, and he Decompressed the entire work the team had done, to such a degree that they unexpectedly had so much extra space that they decided to just port Kanto over to the newer Games.

To put it bluntly, Game Freak was about to Completely Blow it, and was only saved thanks to the genius of a single man they only had access to thanks to their bosses at nintendo.

in other words, Pure Luck and chance.

Between gold and silver, and the third generation there was Crystal and pokemon Stadium 2. Crystal very much reads like a game where game freak had more breathing room to just impliment the ideas they originally had for Gold and Silver, and while not the most expansive third Game, it certainly was a step in the Right Direction. Stadium 2, was not created by iwara, and feels more like a game where the team from the previous Game just polished up the old stuff and added more pokemon. and there is nothing wrong with that. at least they gave and delivered on the expansion of new pokemon which this update promised. i mean, its not like Game Freak would be forced to cut features from gold and Silver for their next games right?

----GENERATION 3----

Generation 3 was, and probably is the most divisive released generation of Pokemon at the time of this writing. there are a lot of Reasons for this. the first and most obvious reason, was that there was no way to port over all the pokemon from generation 1 and 2, but unlike the newest development in sword and shield, there was actual Mechanical reasons for it, as well as a generally overhaul of the way stats and mechanics worked. More Glaring is the the fact that this was the most difficult set of pokemon games Game Freak ever worked on. which shouldnt be a suprise. it was entierly now hardware after all.

Junichi Masuda famously worked himself to the abslute brink while doing work on the game, and up to the very release date he had nightmares about them completely failing and bombing. this did not happen of course. Ruby and Sapphire were great Games, even if they did miss a lot of pokemon, didnt have the day and night cycles(or at least not as obvious ones) and had completely scrapped the idea of Online capability which Crystal had dipped its toes in.

However commendable how much crunch and work the workstaff over at Game Freak were willing to put themselves through for Generation 3, one cannot help but wonder, if the entire Development hell couldnt simply have been avoided if they had hired maybe a hundred new people to work on the third generation. after all, the limited manpower undoubtedly contributed to the hell that was the development of Gold and Silver. surely they would have learned from those mistakes and prepared for the next round right? what with the billions they had made from all the pokemon sales, they surely could have afforded it. but they did not. in fact, not only did they not learn anything in regards to the limited manpower they had for Gold and Silver, but they would in fact not learn it from this debacle either. nor would they ever.

After the whole not all pokemon being a thing in Ruby and sapphire, the next few games entire role for existing would be to rectify this, and to game freaks credit, they laid the ground work for this from the beginning, by making sure that a national dex existed in the game which would be unlocked if you transferred over older pokemon that didnt exist in hoenn.

Game Freak themselves then did the remakes of Firered and Leafgreen, which are great games in their own right, but as far as innovation goes, i dont think anyone would argue that they were revolutionary in any way.

instead we turn our eye to another Game, Pokemon Colosseum for the Gamecube, the little Lunchbox that almost could. Pokemon Colosseum was made by Genius Sonority, a VERY small company owned by nintendo and The Pokemon Company. as of this writing, they have around 20 employees, dwarfed by even the modest 140-150 employees Game Freak has. they would be the first to actually challenge Game Freak as Makers of pokemon games.

Colosseum is a truly experimental pokemon game, from the way you catch pokemon, to its protagonist, to its actual difficulty. but in my opinion the thing that makes the game so much different than any other game in the franchise is its sense of idendity. its very different than any other game in the series, being in general rather dark in many ways, with a protagonist that used to be a thief which dealt with stolen pokemon, the mechanics of actually having to steal pokemon to save them from what was done to them, and an unfliching difficulty where the game was not afraid of not pulling its punches. all goes to make it a rather unique pokemon experience.

Sadly, Colosseum was not to reach true mainstream success. while it did the job of filling in the pokemon not covered by Either sapphire and ruby, nor Firered and Leafgreen, this limited array of pokemon had its price. while it was certainly not a failure by any means, and sold well, there is no denying that it simply didnt sell better, nor nearly as well as the regular pokemon games. thus Game Freak did not need to take notice of it. never the less, it was the first challenge to Game Freaks status as the main Creators of pokemon Games. it would take a while before a new contender would arise to credibly challenge them for the throne.

after colosseum, there was pokemon emerald and XD:Gale of Darkness, the sequel to collosseum. Emerald very much feels like crystal. A game where Game Freak got to take it a bit easier and add some stuff they had planned for Sapphire and Ruby, but had to scratch. the fact that they did not add day and night cycles, boggles the mind, but it would probably have been to much work. XD was a good game in its own right, but it simply lacked a lot of what made Colusseum work so well. it very much feels more like a mainstream pokemon game on the big screen, instead of a sequel to probably the game with the most unique idendity in the franchise. it also adds very little new gameplay vise.

after xd and emerald there were no other pokemon Games which werent spin offs in their own sub franchise, like Pokemon Mystery dungeon, before generation 4. which for once didnt have any major problems.

----GENERATION 4----

Generation 4 was a turning point in many ways, but not for the better. it was the first Generation which was developed withouth major problems, except a small delay to put the finishing touches on the game. some might say that is a big development mistep, but i would have said that in a vacum, this would be fine. if this had simply been the only time Game Freak had a bit of time problems, there would be nothing to complain about here. however, taken in context of the history of Game Freak as a whole, the major problem that Game Freak refuses to Expand, despite the fact that their situation very much demands they do so, rings very true here.

other than this small delay though, Generation 4 came along with no hickups. it was critically loved, it was a sales success, and in general was just a great sucess. the problem is that by now, Game Freak had discovered a way of doing things, and as far as they were concerned it worked. Diamond and Pearl being the first time they didnt have an existensial crisis developing a new generation. now the good about this is that they generally did a good job. Gen 4 is just good all around.

innovation vise though, its probably the least impressive of all the generations. unlike gen 2 and 3 it didnt introduce any new types, unlike gen 3 it didnt introduce entierly new ways of battling, and unlike generation 5 it didnt make a ridiculous leap in animation, very much sticking to the old way of doing sprites with just a bit more power.

this was in hindsight a very bad thing, because the great success of Gen 4 established a pattern that would repeat itself over time. namely the lack of innovation to things such as story, character, the way you progressed through the game. everything that was in gen 4 in this regard it had all been established in generation 1-3. The gym system was from gen 1. the evil team also dates back to gen 1, with their grandiose plans being a thing established in gen 3. the post game was established in gen 3 mostly and a bit in gen 2. safari zone from gen 1. casino from gen 1. the event pokemon system(probably the worst mechanic in the franchise) had also not changed much at all, with gen 1 being where it became a mix of pokemon you simply could not capture, and those you needed special items to capture.

in this Light gen 4 is where the pattern really established itself. it might not have been the ones who invented anything going foreward, but it was the ones that hammered out how things would work in almost all games going foreward.

after Diamond and pearl, the next non game freak game to try and contend with the mainstream ones was Battle Revolution, which was a failure of such proportions that it killed the very idea of ever there being more colosseum or stadium type games. the Game Freak Dominance stayed supreme.

following Diamond and Pearl, there was the third game, and remakes. pretty much the same story as the previous time, third game being the first two but better, while the remakes are great games in their own right, but not immensly innovative.

----GENERATION 5----

generation 5 was in many ways a geniune innovative attempt at remaking the franchise. it was also a game that unknowlingly or not, tried to establish itself as a type of successor to Colloseum, but which did not quite pull it off. while the game has an actually good story, it still didnt quite manage to divest itself from the regular pokemon formula the way Colosseum did. while the story was better well told, it was still when it came down to it, just the same beats as the two previous generations.

the big difference of course was N, the most compelling villain in the games so far. he managed to give the game a lot of grandiose which the two previous sets of leaders lacked. unfortunatly, him alone was not quite enough to make the story stand out from all the rest. it was however a great sign of innovation on Game Freaks Part, and it goes to show that at this point there was still a spark in actually wanting to improve the games fundamentals.

going along with a better story, there was also the jump to actually moving sprites, which in my opinion was the best the combat of Pokemon has ever looked. just having the sprites move and the camera being a bit more dynamic made the battles far more alive than any previous mainstream game.

not everything can be a sucess though, and as we see in the triple and rotation based battle, there were also some new concepts which simply didnt work nearly as well as intended. There was also the removal of Contests, which had always been a bit problematic, but rather than trying to fix it, Game Freak instead opted to remove it entierly. this fate would later befall the much better implemented mega Evolutions, but the pattern was already there.

after the Failure of battle revolution, no alternative to Game Freak created Games would arise this generation, which mean that the next games in the series would be the only other core RPG games for the generation. Black and White 2.

Much and more can be said of black and White 2. for one thing, it was a very good sequel to a very good game. it built upon the plot of the previous games, sold well, and while not that innovative in gameplay, none of the third games before it was such, so why should this one be critiqued for that when none of they were?

unfortunatly, this streak would not continue with the next games in the franchise. X and Y.

----GENERATION 6----

now i want to make some things clear. i like X and Y. but other than one single element, and a graphical update, it was probably the generation with the least innovation in story, character, plot and general idendity.

the biggest change was of course Mega Evolution, probably the biggest and best change since double battles. it was a game play mechanic which completely altered the way the game played, both in singles and doubles, as well as breathing new life into many old pokemon.

other than that, there was the jump to full 3d, which was okay, and the game looked nice, as well as being the first game to let you customize your trainer(though not to insane degrees, generally only clothes, hairstyles and color) made the game look far better overall(though i still prefere gen 5′s more dynamic combat.

unfortunatly, that is where the innovation ends. because pretty much everything else is pretty much rehash of older games. 

the evil team is as generic as possible. the main villain is the same as gen 3′s villains, just with a different solution. the plot is pretty much the same as gen 3 and 4. the league mechanics arent different at all from what had come before. the Game traded the 2 interesting rivals from gen 5 for a whole entourage of generic characters who all supposedly served as your rival. the only truly interesting part of the plot was  AZ, a character that was criminally underused, despite a really interesting backstory.

all in all, despite a huge change in gameplay generation 6 is probably as “standard” a pokemon game as there has ever been. following afte X and Y, there would be no third version, a first in pokemon(if one counts white and black 2) but there would be remakes, which as ive said about its predessesors, were good games in their own right, but not terribly innovative(other than having better flying than any game that came before it.). after that however, there were no other major games until the seventh generation.

----GENERATION 7 and Onwards----

there is so much good to say about generation 7 that im generally not gonna delve into it here. what i will focus on, is that what made generation 7 so innovative, was that it pretty much just took the standard pokemon guidebook, and threw it out the window, for better or worse. this has lead to a game that is truely different than the previous games, but also not quite a true successor to them. this is probably best shown in that generation 8 didnt want to follow up on the direction 7 put foreward, and instead went back to the older style.

this is not to say that generation 8 was bad by any means, but that it was never going to be the next step. it was an experiment to see how far you could stretch the boundary of the mainstream pokemon games away fromt he standard, and while it had elements that should have carried on over, it was never gonna be the definite way pokemon games would go foreward.

so after such a drastic change of pace, we only have to ask one simple question. WHAT. THE. HELL. HAPPENED?

after Sun and moon was released, the follow up was Ultra sun and moon, which was just the previous game with slight changes. it was for all intents and purposes a reskin. no third version even comes close to how much a cash grab it was.

so what the hell happened after the release of sun and moon? two words. Pokemon GO.

Pokemon Go was the first real challenge to Game Freaks exclusivity over the mainstream Pokemon RPG experience since colosseum way over a decade ago, and to say it was a bit more successful, would be like saying the mongol empire killed a few people.

Pokemon GO, or rather the way Game Freak has reacted to it, completely changed the way the pokemon franchsie would go foreward. At the time of this Writing, Pokemon GO is responsible for around 5% of the entire pokemon franchise earnings. it is to put it simply, a massive and insane success.

which is what has lead to a massive problem for Game Freak, as they have come to the rather disturbing conclusion that they can be replaced. the success of Pokemon GO has killed the myth that Pokemon Needs game freak to succed going foreward, and the stark realisation that there is literarly nothign stopping nintendo and the Pokemon Company from handing the franchise over to the hands of some other team.

the ownership of pokemon is a complicated mess between nintendo, Creatures INC, the pokemon Company and Game Freak, but the base line, is that nintendo owns it. they can hand over the franchise to any company they want if they so desire.

this is why when the time came for a sequel to sun and moon, the absolute cheapest alternative was taken. because Game Freak needed to move on to other projects.

One would think that this would mean that they would pump all their effort into making the newest Pokemon Games. alas, that is not the case, instead they sent the A Team of Game Freak over to work at an entierly new Game called The Town. this is an insane move, as they are at a critical point in regards to pokemon games going foreward. but when taken from Game Freaks point of view it makes sense. as they are desperate to prove to nintendo that they can in fact make other games than pokemon, and that even if they dont get to make more of them, they are still a valuable company under their umbrella.

again, from a purely business perspective this makes sense. from every other perspective its insane. having an already miniscule manpower pool to draw from, Game Freak cannot afford to majorly split their resources for any single major release. yet that is exactly what they are doing. 

Every bad decision taken by game freak in regards to Sword and Shield, every corner cut, every single decision, is to make this game as playable as it can be, with the miniscule amount of probably 70 or so people working on it. hence the lackluster animation, primitive looking trees, load times, the cutting of around 60% of the total amount of pokemon from previous games, the removal of mega evolutions in favor of the much simplier Dynamax.

all to get this game out knowing from experience that as long as its a standard Pokemon Game it will probably be a great success.

this hole however, is entierly their own fault. the one big release a year, could easily have been made drastically easier, if they hired a hundred people and made them exclusively devoted to the extra releases while Game Freak as a whole could focus exclusively on their big games. instead, they dug in their heels, and refused to expand on their business, even though it was clear all the way back in generation 2, that change needed to happen. that their current way of doing things simply didnt work.

the rest of the industry changed to cope with the changing market. some embraced DLC, some decided that mmo style was the only way to go, Even Nintendo themselves is finally embracing the concept of DLC, Patches, online multiplayer in large scale and so on.

Game Freak however is still operating like its the early 1990′s and they are still a small studio with no big demands on them, which they can handle on their own. they purposefully ignored the lessons that they should have learned in generation 2 and 3, namely that they needed to expand and build better infrastructure. instead they have stubbornly refused to change, until now when they fully willing to cleave their own franchise into pieces, when simply embracing the concept of a Patch or Two would have solved all their problems.