Pokémon (Not-So) Griefing Thread - Scarlet and Violet Released with 10 Million Copies in First 3 Days in Buggy States

[Anonitolia]

This basically sums up every post gen 2 game. They add more mechanics and things to do, but fundamentally they screw up almost everything else. Gen 2 is the only one that feels like a true continuation of the series, and that's probably because it was actually conceived of as a direct sequel and finale.

Instead of having a vision and sticking to their roots, they just...add more stuff and screw things up here and there.

I kind of disagree, but only partially.

Gen 2 is the only one that feels like a proper sequel to Kanto- that I'll absolutely agree on.
It's for pretty obvious reasons: it's got a direct connection to the past game in multiple ways (instead of being almost entirely standalone like everything that came after), its structure is completely unique compared to the standard formula (at least after Ecruteak), new Pokemon are treated more as rare additions to the main Kanto cast instead of totally new replacements, and according to the designers a whole lot of the gen 2 mons are based off of shit scraped off the Kanto cutting-room floor. It also helps that Sugimori's style hadn't yet gone digital and retained its watercolor edginess throughout the generation (instead of switching to digital halfway through like with gen 3), alongside almost all of the marketing being very similar to Kanto's (that being: huge focus on the anime, corny shit was still the main vibe, Pikachu Canned Soup still littered store shelves) and Ash hardly changing in either costume or personality.

Everything else I'm pretty much against lol. Shit like the physical/special split, abilities, natures, weather, stage hazards, and direct continuations of the main campaign like the Battle Frontier or PWT are hardly just "more added stuff". I think they gave incredible depth to an already-deep combat system and were absolutely worth adding. I do think they made the systems a bit obtuse- natures and their function especially- but learning them is very very rewarding (in games that reward learning it- namely gens 2-5 as well as 6-8 to a lesser extent) and I don't think I've ever seen another game capture the immense amounts of strategy that Pokemon's great variety of moves and mons offers. It squanders that strategy, BIG time, but it's absolutely there if you want to engage with it and I believe that's a big reason why these games are such an enduring hit.

The screwing-things-up is also a more recent thing tbh.
...well, I say recent, but this arguably started with BW. Gen 5 was great enough that their flaws' effects on the series hadn't yet been noticed, but it was the start of a lot of modern Pokemon's problems:

• Somewhat random removal of series-staple features, some useful (Berry planting- yes I know this was in the Dream World but it still counts, Battle Frontier, trainer rematches) and some not (but still fun) (Secret Bases, (earning or viewing) Ribbons; would add stuff like walking with pokemon, the underground, and day/night music here but those were only in gen 4 so I wouldn't call them "series staples")
• Long introductions that say very little and often hold your hand just a little bit too much
• Prominent story aspect despite the story really not being that great- frequent interruptions of player-led gameplay as a result
• Difficulty slowly sliding from being "easy" to "a braindead toddler would have trouble losing" via constant feeding of healing items, healing spots scattered around "tough" dungeons; hardly applies to gen 5 because it will crush your balls with a sledgehammer if you're not paying attention, but I do find it easier to play through than Sinnoh and it is the beginning of out-of-Center healing and characters frequently aiding you specifically with healing items (instead of pokeballs, key items)
• Excessive reuse of previous assets leading to a stale visual aesthetic- not nearly as bad a problem in BW where you only see new Pokemon, but in BW2 you get to see those outside of the region and if you've ever played the gen 4 games then many of the sprites will look familiar to you. It's not nearly as big a problem here as the 3D model reuse is in gens 6+, and the new animations differentiate the reused sprites plenty, but again- worth taking note of.
• Third version shittery where either it's 2 games, not there at all, or scummy DLC instead of just a straightforward "best version"
• Excessive focus on online gameplay- not as big in BW+2 as everything after it (where they gimp the campaign to let the 1% interested in competitive rush to the Battle Tower), but locking berry farming and hidden abilities behind Dream World is inexcusable in retrospect even if I'm confident it was the coolest shit ever at launch

Black and White are truly the only games where I think the feature removal was done well. I think it genuinely trimmed fat that the series needed rid of and added enough genuinely interesting features to make up for all they'd removed. The only thing I'm salty about is Secret Bases and the associated side stuff- Musicals are dog shit and I miss tending to my berry trees.
The PWT is more than a worthy successor to the Frontier imo, the National Dex was still very available, post game was fucking great even in BW (which is very rare for a pair of base games, come to think of it- all I can think of for something even slightly substantial is Kanto in GS and the Battle Area in DP), and man it had such a strong direction that it's just fun to play. Nothing like the rushed messes that came after, save for maybe Alola (which I still think isn't even close, but it's a lot closer considering its heavy emphasis on Hawaiian theming and tropical vibes).

 

[Anonitolia]

(double-posting instead of editing-in since this is completely unrelated)

I'm a bit biased towards Meganium as Chikorita was the starter I picked for Silver way back in the day. I had a hard time choosing because I loved all three of the Gen 2 starter final evos, but in the end picked Chiko. Years later when I picked up a copy of SoulSilver when I was in college, I decided to pick Chiko again for nostalgia's sake, and while I'll be the first to admit it's not the greatest grass type in the series, it will always be a personal favorite.

Aw, fair enough. I picked Cyndaquil because I thought it looked cute but I ended up being disappointed with Typhlosion (I wish it kept the echidna thing it had going, that was way more unique than an angry badger even if I appreciate them both) and nowadays I'm sort of meh on the entire trio. Granted, I'm pretty meh on starters in general save for the Hoenn cast, but still.

Same. I could care less about a Pokemon's competitive viability, the only thing that matters to me is if I like the design. Fortunately for me some of my favorite Pokemon have good/great stats (Swampert, Inicineroar, Hydreigon, Chandelure, Gengar, Heracross, Garchomp, and Crobat).

as someone who viciously hates Incineroar: please explain its appeal
I'm serious, I'm curious
The only appeal it has in my eyes is to furries or Smash players who liked its prescribed personality, so assuming you're neither I wanna know how narrow-minded I'm being

 

[Sundae]

as someone who viciously hates Incineroar: please explain its appeal
I'm serious, I'm curious
The only appeal it has in my eyes is to furries or Smash players who liked its prescribed personality, so assuming you're neither I wanna know how narrow-minded I'm being

Not gonna lie, I hated Incineroar when it's design was leaked. I mentioned earlier in the thread that I was hoping for a quadruped tiger, since they're my favorite animal. I still chose Litten for a few reasons:

-As much as I disliked Incineroar's design at the time, I still preferred it over Decidueye and Primarina (they've both grown on me as well)
-I like wresting (Lucha Libre in particular), so a wrestling themed 'mon, especially a Heel with a secret heart of gold, caught my interest. When I got my Litten in Moon I named it Macho Meow (would have named it Macho Meow Randy Cattage if the games let you give 'mons longer names)
-The memes. I'm a simple man, I enjoy memes. Seeing memes of Incineroar with the Jon Cena theme, for example cracked me up
-Like I mentioned above, tigers are my favorite animal, so I was pretty much biased towards it anyway, even if I wasn't too crazy about the design back then

I still say Incineroar should have been a quadruped, but over time it's design has grown on me, and it's become a personal favorite. That's just me, though, I can see why other don't like the design.

Also yes I do main him in Smash, I like his moveset.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

Shit like the physical/special split, abilities, natures, weather, stage hazards, and direct continuations of the main campaign like the Battle Frontier or PWT are hardly just "more added stuff". I think they gave incredible depth to an already-deep combat system and were absolutely worth adding. I do think they made the systems a bit obtuse- natures and their function especially- but learning them is very very rewarding (in games that reward learning it- namely gens 2-5 as well as 6-8 to a lesser extent) and I don't think I've ever seen another game capture the immense amounts of strategy that Pokemon's great variety of moves and mons offers.

I like a lot of what they added to the combat system, I thought from day 1 stuff like Fire Punch should be a physical attack. But not all of the additions were actually good or at least well implemented, Natures being a great example of that actually, but also dumb gimmicks like Megaevolution and Gigantimax. The former could have been good, but I didn't like how it was tied to items and restricted to one Pokemon (they could've nerfed the forms to allow multiple per team) while the latter just seemed stupid to me.

Somewhat random removal of series-staple features

That really stood out to me as early as gen 3, which I liked at the time, removing features. No female player character, no real-time night/day cycle, no connectivity to prior generations, etc? It was the start of their lazy bullshit and halfassed ideas, but was still a good enough generation overall that it was overlooked.

Long introductions that say very little and often hold your hand just a little bit too

I'd add to this the worse stories and the gutting of proper rivals, it all serves to hamper the single player experience greatly. They can refine the mechanics until they're perfect if they want, but it won't mean shit to me if the base experience is bad. Battles were only fun because the games were fun imo.

hardly applies to gen 5 because it will crush your balls with a sledgehammer if you're not paying attention, but I do find it easier to play through than Sinnoh

Maybe it's because I wasn't a kid anymore, but I rarely had any difficulty post gen 2 (and honestly gen 2 was only truly difficult itself because of Red, everyone probably lost to him as kids). Gen 6 is the last I played, but gens 3-6 were mind numbingly easy to me including gen 5, and I suspect that continued.

Third version shittery where either it's 2 games, not there at all, or scummy DLC instead of just a straightforward "best version"

Yeah, right when I started to wait for the 3rd version instead of playing right away they happened to start that shit.

Black and White are truly the only games where I think the feature removal was done well. I think it genuinely trimmed fat that the series needed rid of and added enough genuinely interesting features to make up for all they'd removed.

Gen 5 & 6 are an absolute blur to me, care to give me a refresher?

Nothing like the rushed messes that came after, save for maybe Alola (which I still think isn't even close, but it's a lot closer considering its heavy emphasis on Hawaiian theming and tropical vibes).

I remember that being the first game in the series I skipped, i remember hating everything i heard and seen about it aside from Alolan versions of old Pokemon. Now I'm thinking about playing it because it's looking good by comparison to what we've got and will probably scratch the Pokemon itch I've got. I bet gen 8 will look like a fucking masterpiece eventually at the rate they're going now.

Just to add some miscellaneous complaints here:

Lots of the time they didn't even add 100 new Pokemon with new generations, and then started REMOVING old ones. That's just retarded. Gen 2 added 100 new, good designs. That leads into the next complaint.

No matter what people say, the worst designs of gens 1 & 2 are leagues better than the vast majority of what came after. This was evident as early as gen 3, Blaziken always looked fucking retarded to me and I'll die on the hill. They fucked up STARTERS that early, holy shit. Swampert is just whatever, Sceptile carried them by being decent. Of course, the designs kept nosediving until gen 8 where they are just so bad, you can't even get worse, they hit rock-bottom and are apparently content with staying there, if not digging through to the core of the Earth.

You touched on this earlier, but Sugimori's art style got much worse, also as early as gen 3. Most bad shit can be tied to that beloved generation, and I can only assume it's loved because of nostalgia and/or people didn't play the generations in order.

One more to add to the list, and this isn't about the main games, but the spinoffs got much worse. I'll admit they were still pretty good up through gen 3 even though the quality was still waning, but nowadays it's mostly trash like Pokemon Go and Pokemon Sleep. They slit the series' throat.

 

[Anonitolia]

No female player character

tf are you on about May was more than playable
did you just rush through the player select or something?
(day/night also existed, it just wasn't shown in-game. It stuck to an invisible RTC that you needed to set in the first 10 minutes of playtime, mainly used to grow berries and reset Shoal Cave. I agree that not showing it was dumb.)

worse stories and the gutting of proper rivals

The stories were never good, just unobtrusive. BW is where they became both bad and obtrusive. Luckily, BW has the most thought put into its story so it's engaging enough for me to not mind the distraction until the sort of shitty plot twist at the end that makes sense but throws out a lot of the ambiguity that made it intriguing, but BW2's is dog shit and nothing that comes after is any better. SM gets close but the game itself is so hard to actually play due to it that I can't help but dislike the story by proxy.

"Gutting of proper rivals" makes no sense- Bianca and Cheren do more than a good job. If you mean "they're too friendly", I guess that's fair enough but I disagree. Friendly rivals have been a thing since GS's beta stages (and properly since gen 3); I'm not sure GF ever intended to make a "jerk-ass rival" past Blue in the first place. Even Hugh is mostly mad at Plasma instead of you, and Gladion + Bede are either more concerned with their immediate family's well-being than trash-talking you or made placid by the end of the game. (Also pretty sure that the latter two were derived from the fanbase complaining for OVER A DECADE about the friendlier rivals, especially considering that gen is where the weird tone-deaf fanbase pandering started getting a bit more obvious with all the random cameos and such).

They can refine the mechanics until they're perfect if they want, but it won't mean shit to me if the base experience is bad. Battles were only fun because the games were fun imo.

Based and Sensiblepilled

Maybe it's because I wasn't a kid anymore, but I rarely had any difficulty post gen 2 (and honestly gen 2 was only truly difficult itself because of Red, everyone probably lost to him as kids). Gen 6 is the last I played, but gens 3-6 were mind numbingly easy to me including gen 5, and I suspect that continued.

Yeah, it's because you weren't a kid anymore. Red is bullshit and I still think the fight is overrated as a result of that bullshit (see also: DP Cynthia), the rest of Johto is piss easy.
BW aren't super tough either, but there's some genuine thought put into the gym leaders' teams- enough to make you pay attention when battling them instead of just clicking A four times and being done (Elesa being mostly immune to Ground types, Lenora's Hypnosis + Retaliate combos and tough-for-the-area team members, Cilan/Chilli/Cress always countering your starter and being generally high-level with berries, Burgh having a fucking Leavanny that's a genuine threat unless you have a flying type or fire type which, unfortunately, you almost definitely do by that point).
Emerald also had some of that (what with Flannery's Overheat Torkoal, Winona's Dragon Dance Altaria, Wallace's asshole team, Wattson's Shock Wave Manectric, Norman's double Slakings, and the entirety of Tate and Liza being devastating without Swampert).
They're not hard games, though, and never were. They're just tougher than what came after because of multiple factors that I've already kinda mentioned in passing and don't have the time to elaborate on much now.

Gen 5 & 6 are an absolute blur to me, care to give me a refresher?

I'm not really sure how to put it, I just liked how gen 5 did things. It focused almost solely on the main campaign and it worked out really well. Route design was fun and interesting (even if the actual region itself was lacking), every single new feature was somehow relevant save for Musicals (which were supposed to be a Contest equivalent and not central to gameplay in the first place), most of the new things they tried worked out quite well imo, and the entire region has such a very strong and distinct identity compared to any other game in the series that you really can't help but admire its guts at the very very least.

Gen 6 is the Pokemon company going "SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT" very loudly and continuing their haphazard and overreactive backpedalling that began in BW2 with such a heavy emphasis on old mons that new ones are smothered, a confused identity that tries to be its own thing but spends so much time sucking previous games' cocks that it sort of loses itself, greater emphasis on competitive and online play to make up for a now-lacking postgame, and such a lack of confidence regarding their series' reputation that they reduce it to peddling gimmicks for sales.

Now I'm thinking about playing it because it's looking good by comparison to what we've got and will probably scratch the Pokemon itch I've got.

Holy shit, do not. You seem like a champion of the older style of games and I guaran-fucking-tee you that if you play Alola you will hate every second of it. I'm partial to both the newer style of play and the olden Sugimori stuff and I cannot stand gen 7 because it is just interruption after interruption after interruption after interruption
I've tried to replay it something like 5 times and I have never been able to get past Akala (the second island) because the ENTIRE FIRST ISLAND is nothing but tutorials and interruption. Even in the Ultra games, where those interruptions are (very very) slightly toned down, it is outright painful to play and you're hardly ever left alone to do your own thing for longer than maybe a half-hour.
That isn't even getting into the fact that every route is now a straight (or curved!) line, the game is practically locked to 20FPS, Z-Moves are boring BS and almost every added positive comes with a worse negative.
It makes Sword and Shield look playable in comparison just by virtue of the latter having a greater amount of time between its interruptions (in MOST cases). And I hate Sword and Shield.
(I'm only slightly exaggerating. The games really are quite bad. Gen 7 can be played once and then never again because once you've seen the story (which is very disconnected from your own journey, btw) there's almost nothing left to replay the game for.)

Lots of the time they didn't even add 100 new Pokemon with new generations, and then started REMOVING old ones. That's just retarded.

Not sure what you're talking about here, the games added over 100 Pokemon per gen until 6, at which point they added maybe 60-70 regular Pokemon and then 40-50 new "forms". I only noticed it when making a spreadsheet for my retarded tier list of every mon ever (because my autism knows no limits apparently), but- including every form on the tier list, not of every mon in general, each generation has "over 100 mon". Gen 6 has 125, Gen 7 has 117, Gen 8 has 178(!! 10 more than Unova has using the same metric), and Gen 9 (currently) has 124.
This is of course including shit like the various Sawsbuck forms and all the gimmick forms so it's really really tenuous in terms of it being a valid method of calculation, but my point is that there's been less focus on individual mon over time and more on forms for these new mon/older ones. I don't like it, I think it's cheap and a lot of the forms are pretty lazy-looking, but that's where their focus seems to have gone.

Removing the old ones from the games is inexcusable.

No matter what people say, the worst designs of gens 1 & 2 are leagues better than the vast majority of what came after.

Subjective, but honestly i'm gonna agree. As much as I love gen 5 I have to admit its stinkers hit way harder than anything from Tohjo does. I think it's a combination of the Pokemon Machine giving less time for finalization (reminder: the Kanto cast took 7+ years simply to develop professionally. I say 7+ because Sugimori could've been working on these designs in private prior to that. Every other gen has had 4 years maximum, usually 3.), alongside the art style shift both due to Sugimori going digital and focusing more on simplification (over the semi-realism of gens 1-3), and the fact that gens 7-9 were almost certainly designed to be 3D models first and 2D designs second.

Returning to the aforementioned spreadsheet because I feel it's relevant.

I was wholly on board with almost every single new dex until gen 8. I very much like gens 3-7, even if 4 kind of sucks ass and 7 is definitely not as good as the rest, but look at that fucking drop-off. The second Sinnoh hits the percentage of designs in Negative tiers skyrockets and never goes back down. Positive tiers can only keep up until gen 7, and the two generations proceeding it have extremely comparable positive/negative percentage ratios. There was an undeniable shift somewhere down the line that became more and more noticeable as time has gone on, and I know that this comparison is done to death but just look at Roselia's design vs Roserade's.



These guys came one generation after the other, and yet

• Roselia's arms are immediately more detailed, with actual emphasis on the petals as opposed to Roserade's strange three-pronged amorphous bush
• Every part of Roselia fits together very clearly, whereas Roserade's mask is detached from any immediate appendage or grounding and its face seems to float in front of its hair (which is also somewhat ambiguous and undetailed, not made to be either flower petals or actual tufts of hair).
• Roselia has far less saturated colors; Roserade's green is noticeably more neon than Roselia's faded petals- despite them obviously sharing the same family- as is its yellow compared to Roselia's. This is not Dream World fuckery btw, you can see it when comparing their official art too.

These points don't make Roserade's design objectively worse- far from it- they're just examples of a shift in art style that occurred rather rapidly and made the series a bit more disconnected from its past.
It's also worth noting that Kanto had extremely strong visual motifs throughout its entire cast that made those designs very very cohesive (if a bit bland at points), as opposed to the more experimental approach taken with gens past it. (I'd give an archive link for that thread but it's very long and only a few tweets showed up when I tried to archive it so I won't clog the thread with the 7 separate links you'd need to read the whole thing.)

That's not to say other gens are completely incoherent, of course- I have so many fucking images demonstrating otherwise, if a bit simplistically- just that they're nowhere near as unified as gen 1 was and they don't fit too well together as a series.

I don't think any designs from gen 4 onward look especially "at home" when sat next to anything from the first few gens. Put a Carkol next to a Girafarig and tell me they came from the same series, and I'll believe you because I'm crazy obsessed with this stupid shit but no sane person would. My parents certainly didn't when I'd excitedly blab to them about an upcoming generation as a kid.

This was evident as early as gen 3, Blaziken always looked fucking retarded to me and I'll die on the hill.

I will fight you over it anyways. I LIKE THE FURRYBAIT CHICKEN HOW DARE YOU HAVE A DIFFERING OPINION

I can only assume it's loved because of nostalgia and/or people didn't play the generations in order.

nah nigga I like it because it has my favorite set of mon designs (if you ask me to explain why I'll only be able to reply with that one Marge potato reaction image) and Hoenn's region design is awesome (as are the gym leaders)
Also trumpets ))))

One more to add to the list, and this isn't about the main games, but the spinoffs got much worse. I'll admit they were still pretty good up through gen 3 even though the quality was still waning, but nowadays it's mostly trash like Pokemon Go and Pokemon Sleep. They slit the series' throat.

Haha, yeah, those died after gen 6.

I'm totally not salty over it.

I haven't been crying over it since I realized we'd gone 3 years without another Mystery Dungeon.

And then 5.

And then 8.

Haha.

Nope.

Not at all.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

tf are you on about May was more than playable
did you just rush through the player select or something?
(day/night also existed, it just wasn't shown in-game. It stuck to an invisible RTC that you needed to set in the first 10 minutes of playtime, mainly used to grow berries and reset Shoal Cave. I agree that not showing it was dumb.)

Oh shit, I guess I forgot, it's been a long time since I've played gen 3. My bad.

Yeah, not showing the time change was dumb, I don't even really count it just for having an internal clock.

The stories were never good, just unobtrusive. Luckily, BW has the most thought put into its story so it's engaging enough for me to not mind the distraction

I mean, it wasn't great, but it was simple and it worked. The first one was very self-insert, the story was largely the adventure you had, it's real "role-playing" game, you felt like a real Pokemon Trainer as a kid, catching and raising Pokemon to battle others with.

Once they overcomplicate things I just think the story is a big eyeroll. It gets way too anime, with flooding the Earth and shit. I much preferred the more relatively grounded setting and story they went with previously.

Was B&W the one with the story revolving around the ethics of Pokemon battling or something? People jack that one off a lot, but I found it kinda cringe tbh.

"Gutting of proper rivals" makes no sense- Bianca and Cheren do more than a good job. If you mean "they're too friendly", I guess that's fair enough but I disagree. Friendly rivals have been a thing since GS's beta stages (and properly since gen 3); I'm not sure GF ever intended to make a "jerk-ass rival" past Blue in the first place. Even Hugh is mostly mad at Plasma instead of you, and Gladion + Bede are either more concerned with their immediate family's well-being than trash-talking you or made placid by the end of the game. (Also pretty sure that the latter two were derived from the fanbase complaining for OVER A DECADE about the friendlier rivals, especially considering that gen is where the weird tone-deaf fanbase pandering started getting a bit more obvious with all the random cameos and such).

WAY too friendly, it feels like there's no rivalry at all between you and your rival. I don't need them to be an insulting or abusive per se, but I do not want them sucking my cock. They barely care about losing, there's no stakes. Later games they're praising you when they lose, like holy shit, stop, you lost. That's not good sportsmanship, it's cheerleading.

They definitely intended to make jerks past Blue, Silver literally assaults you when you first meet him. Rivals were getting more assholish, then they did a total 180. I don't know about the beta but those are just betas for a reason, they were quite different in every way, from terrain to monster designs, and probably characters too. If he was originally less of a jerk it may have been to switch things up and keep it fresh, which would be fine once in a while.

Yeah, it's because you weren't a kid anymore. Red is bullshit and I still think the fight is overrated as a result of that bullshit

You're probably right.

I think a big reason it's so well liked is that he's the main character you played as in the previous game, not just his challenge. It was immensely disappointing they didn't carry that on as a tradition.

I'm not really sure how to put it, I just liked how gen 5 did things. It focused almost solely on the main campaign and it worked out really well. Route design was fun and interesting (even if the actual region itself was lacking), every single new feature was somehow relevant save for Musicals (which were supposed to be a Contest equivalent and not central to gameplay in the first place), most of the new things they tried worked out quite well imo, and the entire region has such a very strong and distinct identity compared to any other game in the series that you really can't help but admire its guts at the very very least.

Idk, I don't remember a thing about the game, so must not be that distinct. It's probably just me being jaded though honestly. Most of the adult fanbase's criticisms are (not that they're not legitimate gripes, but kids won't notice or care about nost of the shit we complain about, or even the stuff we praise, it's just a colorful monster battling game and that's all they probably need it to be).

Not sure what you're talking about here, the games added over 100 Pokemon per gen until 6, at which point they added maybe 60-70 regular Pokemon and then 40-50 new "forms".

I guess if you count forms and stuff the number goes up, but I typically just consider how many actual new species they add. According to Wikipedia they say:

Each Generation is also marked by the addition of new Pokémon: 151 in Generation I in the Kanto region, 100 in Generation II in the Johto region, 135 in Generation III in the Hoenn region, 107 in Generation IV in the Sinnoh region, 156 in Generation V in the Unova region, 72 in Generation VI in the Kalos region, 88 in Generation VII in the Alola and Kanto regions, 96 in Generation VIII in the Galar and Hisui regions and 110 in Generation IX in the Paldea region.

So there's been a few times they dipped below 100. 135 is pretty impressive with gen 3, admittedly, that's getting kinda close to adding the entire amount of original Pokemon. 72 in gen 6 though? That's almost just half of what gen 3 added, they must've rushed that one out the door.

Admittedly, with how AWFUL the designs are getting I should actually be wishing they cut down how many they add drastically and focus on quality over quantity. A couple dozen good Pokemon will always be better than a billion shit ones.

Removing the old ones from the games is inexcusable.

To me it especially egregious to ditch any of the original 151, I'm more of a gen 2 guy but you gotta keep the classics at least. To me it's like removing the original SF2 cast, I hate it when they're not present in the sequels (and it's why SF4 is one of the best in the series imo, it's a good game and included the old cast).

Subjective, but honestly i'm gonna agree. As much as I love gen 5 I have to admit its stinkers hit way harder than anything from Tohjo does. I think it's a combination of the Pokemon Machine giving less time for finalization (reminder: the Kanto cast took 7+ years simply to develop professionally. I say 7+ because Sugimori could've been working on these designs in private prior to that. Every other gen has had 4 years maximum, usually 3.), alongside the art style shift both due to Sugimori going digital and focusing more on simplification (over the semi-realism of gens 1-3), and the fact that gens 7-9 were almost certainly designed to be 3D models first and 2D designs second.

I think that's a big point, but actually now that I think about, the shift in design might have started even as early as gen 3 for a similar reason--graphical improvements. The GBA was capable of 3D, it's technically a 32-bit system I think, it's closer to a 5th gen console in terms of graphical capabilities than the 3rd gen tech they were working with for 2 whole generations.

Once they were able to pack more colors, detail, and animation into the games...they did, and just went crazy over-designing things probably. Sometimes restrictions breed creativity, so the monsters had to be designed in ways to best be brought to life on a tiny, dim, blurry black & white screen. The design philosophy for that kind of process is definitely going to be different, and that difference has only grown, especially with the mainline series' jump to full 3D.

Maybe we should just force them to make 8-bit style games again lol. Dragon Quest 11 kinda did something similar, letting you jump into an 8/16-bit throwback mode if you chose to.

That's not to say other gens are completely incoherent, of course- I have so many fucking images demonstrating otherwise, if a bit simplistically- just that they're nowhere near as unified as gen 1 was and they don't fit too well together as a series.

Your images are pretty interesting, breaking down all the designs in detail makes me realize certain characteristics of generations I didn't really think about.

I will fight you over it anyways. I LIKE THE FURRYBAIT CHICKEN HOW DARE YOU HAVE A DIFFERING OPINION

nah nigga I like it because it has my favorite set of mon designs (if you ask me to explain why I'll only be able to reply with that one Marge potato reaction image) and Hoenn's region design is awesome (as are the gym leaders)
Also trumpets ))))

There were still some respectable designs for sure. It started the "is this a Digimon?" trend, especially with most of the legendary Pokemon, but honestly there's still a lot to like. Spinda, Wingull, the Skitty line, Aggron, Sharpedo, Kecleon, and Jirachi could pass for gen 1 & 2 Pokemon. I wouldn't be surprised if a few them were leftover gen 2 designs, or reworked concepts, which likely not only accounts for the relatively high quality but also the high quantity.

Haha, yeah, those died after gen 6.

I'm totally not salty over it.

I haven't been crying over it since I realized we'd gone 3 years without another Mystery Dungeon.

And then 5.

And then 8.

Haha.

Nope.

Not at all.

At least they remastered one recently, I guess. The last Pokemon spinoff aside from New Snap that I can think of that was at least interesting was Pokken, before that was Conquest. They can still put out a few decent one, but gens 1 & 2 had the best by far. Gotta respect gen 3's two GC RPGs though, I liked those a lot.

I remember Revolution being so bare bones and the first time I really started to notice the cracks forming. Revolution was such a downgrade even from Stadium 1 that it was laughable, especially if you didn't have the DS games. Still a decent game all things considered, but you can see the downward trajectory.

Oh, and another complaint about post-gen 2, they didn't add new types until way later with Fairy, just 1 new type this whole time since gen 2. I'd also appreciate new Eevee evolutions each generation, damn it.

 

[Archeops]

More information about November’s TCG set, Scarlet & Violet - Paradox Rift, was dropped earlier today. Here are the specs:

Spoiler: Set info for Paradox Rift

• Over 180 cards (which isn’t too surprising since this set combines three Japanese sets, two structure decks, and assorted promos into one massive set)
• New Ancient and Future Pokémon (if you played the TCG during the BLW-era then Past and Future Pokémon are basically a retread of Team Plasma Pokémon)
• 13 Pokémon ex and seven Tera Pokémon ex (we know of 8 of the regular Pokémon ex and 4 of the Tera Pokémon ex)
• 34 illustration rare Pokémon (two of these, one for Brute Bonnet and another for Iron Moth, were revealed at Worlds)
• 15 special illustration rare Pokémon and Supporter cards (none are known right now but I assume Gholdengo ex, Iron Valiant ex, and Roaring Moon ex will get ‘em)
• Seven hyper rare gold etched cards (Gholdengo ex, Iron Valiant ex, and Roaring Moon ex will more than likely get these. Tera Garchomp is a possibility but it’s low. I also assume we’ll get gold Basic Psychic and Dark Energies in this set as well)
• More than 20 Trainer cards
• Technical Machines will also return, where they’ll appear as new Pokémon Tool cards that allow access to a new attack while attached. (TMs haven’t been in the TCG since Rising Rivals’ release back in 2009, some Tool card released after that time would give Pokémon a new attack but they weren’t explicitly labeled as such. Oh, and if the translations I’m seeing are true then the new TMs are discarded from a player’s Pokémon after their turn ends)

Oh, and a friend of mine warned me about a glitch that affects Area Zero and the hidden overworld items that normally spawn there. Apparently if you use the warp pad in the Zero Gate said hidden overworld items won’t spawn, you’ll either have to fall through the cloud cover in the Great Crater of Paldea or save in Area Zero and reset the game in order for them to spawn normally.

 

[NerdShamer]

I'm replaying Platinum on original hardware for the first time in a while (mainly so that I can use some mon I've never touched before like Pachirisu or Kricketune), and...
...was the music always this shrill?

It kind of was, especially with the synthesized violins and accordion.

But... the story is unusually bad for a series that already has very bad storylines

Hey, often do you get to fight an stoner in an kid's game?

Gen 6 is the last I played, but gens 3-6 were mind numbingly easy to me including gen 5, and I suspect that continued.

Well, you wouldn't be wrong; Sword was so easy that all it took for me to clear it was using around 4 mons in an given fight. Of course, there wasn't exactly an thrilling selection for me to find, in the first place.

 

[Squawking Macaw]

I see I'm the only one in here who doesn't find gen 1 designs anything special. The only gen 1 Pokemon I like are Ivysaur, Charmeleon, Raichu and Scyther, all others look like generic RPG enemies (which I guess they were supposed to be). I grew up with BW so I prefer the more complex designs of gens 4, 5 and 6. My favorite mons are mostly box art legendaries like Ho-Oh, White Kyurem, Zekrom, Yveltal, Lunala and Primal Groudon, and it's annoying how I can't use them in-game without destroying what little challenge is left.

Blaziken always looked fucking retarded to me and I'll die on the hill.

Blaziken is supposed to look retarded, Sugimori said in an interview that evolving Torchic was supposed to give the same disappointment as watching a painted easter chick grow up into a normal chicken. Unlucky for him, people actually liked the design.

I haven't been crying over it since I realized we'd gone 3 years without another Mystery Dungeon.

I miss Mystery Dungeon, the first two games were legitimately better than some mainline entries and they were chock-full of content. It’s a shame they never sold well. The team at Spike Chunsoft clearly has passion, but releasing an overpriced buggy remaster and leaving is not the way to go.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

I see I'm the only one in here who doesn't find gen 1 designs anything special. The only gen 1 Pokemon I like are Ivysaur, Charmeleon, Raichu and Scyther, all others look like generic RPG enemies

Meowth, Gengar, Snorlax, Mewtwo? You don't like them?

Blaziken is supposed to look retarded, Sugimori said in an interview that evolving Torchic was supposed to give the same disappointment as watching a painted easter chick grow up into a normal chicken. Unlucky for him, people actually liked the design.

He definitely succeeded then. If anything his original bizarre design that seemed blended with Latias seemed a bit better.

 

[Squawking Macaw]

Meowth, Gengar, Snorlax, Mewtwo? You don't like them?

Mewtwo is fine, it's got that coolness factor that Scyther has, but Gengar and Snorlax are very simple-looking. Meowth just looks silly, but I like it more when it's more catlike:

 

[Anonitolia]

(everything I haven't quoted here is something I either agree with or have nothing more to say about)

Was B&W the one with the story revolving around the ethics of Pokemon battling or something? People jack that one off a lot, but I found it kinda cringe tbh.

Yeah, it was. It's very good compared to every single other story in the series, but it sort of shoots itself in the foot by making the PETA-equivalent unequivocally the bad guy by the end and kind of crushing the main conflict that kept my interest alive throughout the story (mainly the clash between both sides and which one is "right", if either). Even despite that I appreciate the fact that it actually attempted some character growth outside of "spaz stops being annoying after being abused" and "painfully flat edgelord learns to stop being an edgelord 99% of the way into the game". Cheren's tunnel vision prompting him to change course after meeting his idol and having his life goal brought into question was interesting (and his promotion to Gym Leader in BW2 was a great end to the arc), whereas Bianca's acceptance that she has differing interests from those closest to her and that it'd be a better use of her time to simply pursue what she's better at and enjoys rather than give in to (unintentional) peer pressure and keep doing what they're doing actually stuck with me for quite a while and she's one of my favorite rivals as a result.

It's doubly impressive considering that all this shit needed to be translated from Japanese by a translation team that'd only done a single game prior (HGSS). You can kind of tell that it's not Nob due to how stilted some of the NPC dialogue is, but the actual story itself is pretty damn decent and I truly believe it's one of Black and White's strengths as opposed to the hindrance it is in most other games.

Idk, I don't remember a thing about the game, so must not be that distinct. It's probably just me being jaded though honestly. Most of the adult fanbase's criticisms are (not that they're not legitimate gripes, but kids won't notice or care about nost of the shit we complain about, or even the stuff we praise, it's just a colorful monster battling game and that's all they probably need it to be).

It is probably being jaded. I can absolutely see how someone who'd been playing the series since its NA release (or prior) would be feeling burnt out and insulted by what gen 5 did on its debut. Coming from someone who didn't have much of that past experience (outside of hearing snippets of it from my aunt), though, the game holds up very very well on its own and truly does feel like a passion project. The fact that you only see the new dex's mons, all of which have custom sprites- the unique mix of 3D and 2D for the visuals- that weird aesthetic where they made everything neon and black for some reason and it was kind of tryhard but also the exact type of shit I thought was super super cool as a kid- the distinct soundfont even in comparison to DPPt/HGSS... all of it fits together to make something really really cohesive that you can tell had a lot of passion behind it.

The game kind of starts falling apart when you delve into previous gens in the post game due to the aforementioned recycled sprites, as well as some weird one-offs like Cynthia's Undella Town rematch or other various references to the franchise's history since they kind of remind you of the series' history instead of making the game its own thing like the rest of the campaign tries to, which is a big reason why I don't like BW2 nearly as much as the base pair even if I do consider them "objectively" better. That reliance on the series' past reminds you of the bloat that BW tried to be rid of and the much campier, less serious mood that it was known for, and due to how much BW stand out it feels like a total mismatch and kind of takes you out of things lol.

the shift in design might have started even as early as gen 3 for a similar reason--graphical improvements. The GBA was capable of 3D, it's technically a 32-bit system I think, it's closer to a 5th gen console in terms of graphical capabilities than the 3rd gen tech they were working with for 2 whole generations.

Once they were able to pack more colors, detail, and animation into the games...they did, and just went crazy over-designing things probably. Sometimes restrictions breed creativity, so the monsters had to be designed in ways to best be brought to life on a tiny, dim, blurry black & white screen. The design philosophy for that kind of process is definitely going to be different, and that difference has only grown, especially with the mainline series' jump to full 3D.

If I'm not mistaken, I think we have evidence of them doing sprites before 2D designs from as recently as gen 4 in the form of unfinished designs as sprites with off-model colors first and Sugimori artworks with their more well-known palettes second.

The GBA was also absolutely not capable of 3D- just Starfox-esque pseudo-3D that ran at like 10FPS. I'm not sure more than a small handful of games ever utilized it. I know Pokemon sure as fuck didn't lol. Definitely closer to a SNES than a NES though, you're right on that front.

I actually doubt they've ever left the "game image first model art second" way of doing things. I'm more than sure that the newer designs are 3D models before all else because they had to rush Gen 9's Sugimori artworks and decided to do so by blatantly tracing over the 3D models, and as I mentioned before they've been doing sprites first until at the VERY least Gen 4.

Pretty sure that's why designs had been getting increasingly more complex up until gen 6ish, where they started slowly decreasing in excessive complexity as simple 3D modelling became the priority (and Creatures Inc are atrocious 3D modellers, so they have to make the designs comprehensible to someone stuck in the 90s when thinking about CGI).

At least they remastered one recently, I guess. The last Pokemon spinoff aside from New Snap that I can think of that was at least interesting was Pokken, before that was Conquest. They can still put out a few decent one, but gens 1 & 2 had the best by far. Gotta respect gen 3's two GC RPGs though, I liked those a lot.

"Remastered". I honestly don't know if DX counts as a remaster. Getting rid of features like typeless attacking and Friend Areas was a huge kick to the nuts and the fact that the graphics looked like shit and the gameplay still had that post-GTi sluggishness to it really didn't help matters. I've heard it's still fun, though, and I appreciate stuff like the portraits for every single mon and the scarves on your partners.

I'm also gonna politely disagree with that "gens 1-2 had the best spin-offs" comment. Those two gens were full to the brim of "[insert established franchise or gameplay method here] but Pokemon!" like Puzzle Attack, Pinball, Puzzle Challenge and GBTCG- which is fine, and I don't think a single generation since hasn't had that type of gameplay- but it didn't have any good experimental titles to compensate (Stadium was just straightforward battling from mainline on a bigger screen, Hey You Pikachu was more frustrating than fun, and Snap- while great- was like an hour long) so it kind of felt weak in comparison to what comes after.

I'd actually argue that gens 3-4 were peak in terms of spin-offs: Gen 3 started up a bunch of actual spin-off franchises with much more substantial gameplay than the previous batch of spin-offs (Mystery Dungeon was more like Puzzle Attack in terms of originality but it added plenty of new things to the formula and spawned 3 sequels, Ranger was completely unique and also got 2 sequels, Trozei sucked ass and went on for way too long but also got plenty of sequels)
and Gen 4 improved on those immensely with the best entries in those series by far (Explorers of Sky, Shadows of Almia) as well as experimental titles that were still deeper than the older ones despite mostly sucking ass (Rumble and Pokepark come to mind),
until Gen 5 came in with nothing but trash (save for Conquest which is my favorite spin-off in general) and Gen 6 began the death spiral by shitting out mostly mobile games and super mediocre portable releases.

Oh, and another complaint about post-gen 2, they didn't add new types until way later with Fairy, just 1 new type this whole time since gen 2. I'd also appreciate new Eevee evolutions each generation, damn it.

Honestly that's a good thing. Imagine needing to take into account 20+ types on a chart and every single combination of those. The complexity of each individual mon makes calculations enough of a headache as-is; adding even one or two more typings would be sadistic at this point.

Agree on the eeveelutions though, that would've been fun- if overdone. I think they should've stuck to that weird "every even generation gets a new one" pattern they had going for a while- would've made the occasion still rare enough to be celebrated and not overdone but frequent enough to be beneficial and demonstrate shifts in design philosophy.

I see I'm the only one in here who doesn't find gen 1 designs anything special. The only gen 1 Pokemon I like are Ivysaur, Charmeleon, Raichu and Scyther, all others look like generic RPG enemies (which I guess they were supposed to be). I grew up with BW so I prefer the more complex designs of gens 4, 5 and 6. My favorite mons are mostly box art legendaries like Ho-Oh, White Kyurem, Zekrom, Yveltal, Lunala and Primal Groudon, and it's annoying how I can't use them in-game without destroying what little challenge is left.

Haha, don't worry, there are lots of people out there like you. We're just old farts who like yelling at the sky and wishing for days gone by, ignore us.
Cannot understand the appeal of a lot of the box legendaries though, most of them look really garish imo.

Meowth, Gengar, Snorlax, Mewtwo? You don't like them?

I'm not sure mentioning some of the most overexposed and tired designs in Kanto's entire roster is going to do much to change his mind.

 

[Friendly Primarina]

The GBA was also absolutely not capable of 3D- just Starfox-esque pseudo-3D that ran at like 10FPS. I'm not sure more than a small handful of games ever utilized it. I know Pokemon sure as fuck didn't lol. Definitely closer to a SNES than a NES though, you're right on that front.

Um ackshualy sweaty the GBA was perfectly capable of "true" 3D. It's just there's a very good reason most of them didn't do it.

 

[Anonitolia]

Um ackshualy sweaty the GBA was perfectly capable of "true" 3D. It's just there's a very good reason most of them didn't do it.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=5o2jK3D60OE

I wish I'd been right

 

[Friendly Primarina]

This is too autistic to go in Cursed Images so it's going here instead:

 

[NerdShamer]

This is too autistic to go in Cursed Images so it's going here instead:
View attachment 5279722

Yeah, that's more or less why I hated that trio

 

[Executive Petrel]

This basically sums up every post gen 2 game. They add more mechanics and things to do, but fundamentally they screw up almost everything else. Gen 2 is the only one that feels like a true continuation of the series, and that's probably because it was actually conceived of as a direct sequel and finale.

Instead of having a vision and sticking to their roots, they just...add more stuff and screw things up here and there.

Gen 4 is an inofficial sequel to Gen 2, change my mind. HGSS is the perfect game with the added mechanics and evolutions like Togekiss, Weavile or Yanmega. Johto and Sinnoh fit together so well. Lore wise Gen 4 is peak.

Gen 3, feels out of place. Masuda not even once. No hate for RSE tho. They're just lacking continuity.

The way this dude pronounces "Ecruteak" offends me something fierce.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=aDl8IfVwsN0:471

To be fair Youngster Joey never left Route 30.

 

[Anonitolia]

Gen 4 is peak.

Masuda not even once.

 

[Executive Petrel]

Yes. The OG Sinnoh Dex in DP had to include exactly 151 PKMN or else

 

[Anonitolia]

I do find it easier to play through than Sinnoh

on second thought this might've been partially biased by the fact that I am currently using a team made up of exclusively shitmons and am getting my ass kicked
my fucking Cherubi is level 18 after Fantina without a grass move and nobody else on the team has a BST higher than like 400 without being single-stage or fully evolved please god send help