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

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See, I find this hilarious because Masuda's stuff is so fucking esoteric that it loops back around into looking almost generic. Generation 3 might have been based off of a real-life Japanese political happening from the time yes, I know, Poketuber, but Tama explains it more succinctly than any other place on the web so I'm recommending her anyways. If you're not interested in anything but the happening, close the video after like 15 minutes, Generation 4 had THIS schizophrenic shit to its name:

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Generation 5 named characters after fucking music notes and tried to say something with its story, but in generation 6 and beyond I suppose I can agree. Masuda's soul seems to have broken after BW's bad reception, to the point where he cut Generation 5 short to get it over with and cut Generation 6 off at the knees to rush Sun and Moon for the 20th anniversary, whereupon he would step down as series director. Ohmori never seems to have given much of a shit, he just wanted an outlet to complain about his parents and fap to cute girls and Pokémon just happened to be there.
The behind the scenes stuff Masuda and other GF staff wrote for Gen 3 to 6 do get pretty crazy, but that kind of just makes it all the more frustrating. Like in the Tajiri era they were just wanting to make some simple game capturing the feeling of being a kid going off exploring the woods and shit, and they did that pretty well. Then Masuda takes over and they start going all in on shit like gods, aliens, ancient civilizations, conspiracies, cults, or whatever, but then when they actually make the game it all gets filtered through some marketability filter until the final result feels like totally toothless kiddy shit that you have autistically examine to squeeze any thematic substance out of. The only reason we know any of these games could've been a lot weirder is because of someone hacked their server and leaked a bunch of stuff we weren't supposed to see, like them writing much more grand plots than what made it into the actual game or writing legends about teenage girls getting raped and knocked up by Pokemon.

The guy who made the original pokemon designs seem to have a real love and understanding of nature, much like Hayao Miyazaki.
A lot of people think Sugimori designed all the old Pokemon because their final designs were all filtered through his drawings, but even Gen 1 there were four different people designing Pokemon. Something to keep in mind about Pokemon designs is that the early ones were very much influenced by technical limitations, and when those limitations were removed it affected how they went about designing Pokemon, whether for better or worse.
They've made it very clear in multiple interviews that the original Gen 1 Pokemon were drawn directly into the game and never went through any design process on paper. That's why any unusued Pokemon from that era that have ever been shown off or leaked were all in unfinished sprite form and not sketches or anything. No sketches were ever made. A big thing this influenced is that since the game was in black and white, many Pokemon didn't have any sort of color scheme in mind. That's why most Gen 1 Pokemon have a very simple color schemes with often a single prominent color, because the colors were only designed as Sugimori was drawing up the official art for them near the game's release, and most colors are based on what color palatte the Super Game Boy would display them in. Because of this, the Gen 1 Pokemon ended up having fairly simple designs, though their final look was filtered through Sugimori's artstyle since he was in charge of drawing up the official art.

Gen 2 was the same except they were on Game Boy Color now, so they used more colors, but it was still relatively limited and the Pokemon were drawn directly into the game before Sugimori ever drew up official art for them. Starting with with Gen 3, the GBA was now advanced enough that the number of colors displayed on the screen was no longer a real concern. That meant that the designers started going crazier with the designs, you can see how they designed the Gen 3 Pokemon to have more colors and more garish colors at that. And because less limitations, they started designing the Pokemon on paper first, and although Sugimori still drew the final official art for them all, I believe he was no longer changing up the designs as much from how the other artists drew them, which means if other artists don't draw Pokemon as naturalistic looking as Sugimori does, then Pokemon in general are going to look less naturalistic.
 
It does have some inspiration. Its beak is shaped like a trident and it's clearly inspired by Napoleon Bonaparte, both in design and in name.
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Yeah I know it's inspired by Napoleon but my point is that it looks bad and it does not appeal to me. Do you look at this Empoleon thing and think, "oh it's inspired by Napoleon, I understand this and therefore I like it". Maybe they should have made Hitlerion instead.
They weren't all that good. Design-wise, most bug types were just cartoony versions of real bugs.
Pokemons are cartoony versions of real animals. That's what I think makes them interesting. The fact is, as time went by they became less and less interesting.
Most bug Pokemon were stupidly weak as a result of evolving early, and for the first three gens the only good bug move was Megahorn.
Bug types weren't meant to be strong, there was something satisfying in seeing them get decimated only to shit out more of these aberrations. Maybe that's just me

even Gen 1 there were four different people designing Pokemon. Something to keep in mind about Pokemon designs is that the early ones were very much influenced by technical limitations, and when those limitations were removed it affected how they went about designing Pokemon, whether for better or worse.
They've made it very clear in multiple interviews that the original Gen 1 Pokemon were drawn directly into the game and never went through any design process on paper. That's why any unusued Pokemon from that era that have ever been shown off or leaked were all in unfinished sprite form and not sketches or anything. No sketches were ever made. A big thing this influenced is that since the game was in black and white, many Pokemon didn't have any sort of color scheme in mind. That's why most Gen 1 Pokemon have a very simple color schemes with often a single prominent color, because the colors were only designed as Sugimori was drawing up the official art for them near the game's release, and most colors are based on what color palatte the Super Game Boy would display them in. Because of this, the Gen 1 Pokemon ended up having fairly simple designs, though their final look was filtered through Sugimori's artstyle since he was in charge of drawing up the official art.
That is a good point, it's a bit like the star wars prequel effect: how many people think sci-fi movies looked better without the CGI when directors had to use matte painting and practical effects etc. However, I think it's only part of the picture. The style of Pokemon in the 90's was also a bit more old school. Things used to look a bit cleaner and simpler back then. Charmander today would have a bunch of cool stuff added to the design, like a fire cut and maybe ears and a cape

Ultimately, I think it goes beyond style. It's the mere repetition, the fact that they had to come up with hundreds of new designs just to get new games out. It's just not sustainable from an artistic pov.
 
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the main folly of pokemon has always been that there's like 10,000 different creatures but everyone's party ends up looking the same in most playthroughs. create insane scarcity, region lock your options based on where you're physically playing from, make shitty mons more viable, force people to get creative.
dude you have no idea. The worst of this was in gen 4 to the point where it became a meme. Starter, Staraptor, Luxray, Roserade, Buizel, Garchomp was EVERYONE'S team.
 
"Modern pokemon still look co-"
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I might as well mention the unhealthy hatred I have for Baxcalibur
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Look at this fucking thing. This looks like a plastic bath toy with metal plates glued to it. The single back fin looks ugly as hell and why the fuck does it have red ribbons coming out of its hands? It doesn't have a single hint of red anywhere else on the design, it's distracting.
"But it's a Godzilla reference!" Add it to the pile along with Rhydon, Tyranitar and Groudon. They were Godzilla references and they looked good. The only smart thing about it is its reference to an ancient handaxe, and that doesn't even show through in its design. Where's the axe? Is it the back fin? The red spikes? It doesn't seem like it.

It's only made worse by the fact that it looks like a naked Duraludon, which doesn't look all that great either.
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They're even in the same pose ffs.
 
Pokemon were never meant to just be animals tho. If you look back and read all the Gen 1 material and the script to Red/Blue, it's pretty clear the original vision of them by the developers was that they were like cryptids and youkai. That's why the Pokedex gives them classifications like "Mouse Pokemon", because those normal animals were meant to exist in the Pokemon world and the Pokemon were just like mutated or supernatural versions of those animals. Considering cryptids can include aliens and other weird shit, and youaki include inanimate objects coming to life, having a few weirdos like Voltorb, Magnemite, and Grimer fit right in.
Real animals in Pokemon universe are cursed. I'm glad they nipped that one in the bud, if they wanted to seriously elaborate on this point they should have expanded on it in the original games.
i fucking despise it. i'm supposed to believe these are natural animals that are born and evolve, what evolutionary advantage does being an ice cream cone have? if a human eats him, does he inject a load of parasite brood into his bowels that rip out of their abdomen? if not, it's fucking retarded.
If I remember correctly, it's just a floating piece of sentient ice that turns water around it into violent blizzards. The snow falls on top of it and makes it look like an ice cream cone, so it's a stylistic choice/coincidence. This isn't even the only evolutionary line where the idea is that it's just a floating piece of ice that generation.
Gen 3 had this too btw
 
which means if other artists don't draw Pokemon as naturalistic looking as Sugimori does, then Pokemon in general are going to look less naturalistic.
While I understand your point that there is a noticeable shift in design philosophy between the Tajiri and Masuda eras, frankly a lot of your arguments feel like old man talking about 'back in my day'. Gen I is full of mons that aren't naturalistic. Literally in the sense that it has the highest concentration of objectmons of the original 4 gens, and that many of the good designs are intentionally uncanny valley (Eevee most famously) because Gamefreak couldn't make up their mind as to whether normal animals coexisted with Pokemon. Garish colors are also very naturalistic - animals use them to ward off predators or attract mates, and if you asked me whether Dragonite or Flygon looked more 'natural' I'd pick Flygon in a heartbeat.

I think it's also incredibly unfair to say that Pokemon lost its ambition with Gen 3 in one breath and then use them not building on Gen 2 as an example. If they had just done what they did in Gen 2 with Hoenn people would still call that lazy and say they're still making the same game, and Hoenn would have been worse for it. Gamefreak has been trying to court those people for the last decade by hacking away at what was a very refined formula with Gen 4 to the point where we're left with something that is actually unrecognizable from the games they had been making.
 
While I understand your point that there is a noticeable shift in design philosophy between the Tajiri and Masuda eras, frankly a lot of your arguments feel like old man talking about 'back in my day'. Gen I is full of mons that aren't naturalistic. Literally in the sense that it has the highest concentration of objectmons of the original 4 gens, and that many of the good designs are intentionally uncanny valley (Eevee most famously) because Gamefreak couldn't make up their mind as to whether normal animals coexisted with Pokemon. Garish colors are also very naturalistic - animals use them to ward off predators or attract mates, and if you asked me whether Dragonite or Flygon looked more 'natural' I'd pick Flygon in a heartbeat.
I don't think you quite got what I was getting at. By "naturalistic" I didn't mean that in the sense that there were more animal-based Pokemon in Gen 1. I just meant it in the sense that the animal-based Pokemon that were there tended to be drawn with more well-defined anatomy than later gens on average. Later gen Pokemon more often have parts of their body that don't clearly connect in a totally realistic way, or have exaggerated anatomy like super big kawaii heads with tiny undetailed feet. And this wasn't meant to be some major criticism of later gen designs, I actually think most designs up through Gen 7 are good and will defend Gen 5 as having a lot of great designs. Gen 8 is the only gen where I look over it and it feels like half the designs suck. It's also not like Gen 1 art was super realistic, Pokemon art has always been bad at conveying texture - like is the Nido line furry, scaly, or bare skin? Hell if I know! (and see also people being shocked at live-action Jigglypuff being fluffy despite it having a clear tuft of hair) I was just trying to reason out an explanation as why the designs way have shifted in such a way that other people - including others in this thread - dislike post-Gen 2 designs as much as they do.

As for the garish colors comment, that also wasn't meant to be a criticism nor an extension of the "naturalistic" comment. It's just a statement of fact that Gen 3 Pokemon tend to have a lot of saturated colors on them. Especially if you're comparing them to the old watercolor art of the Gen 1 & 2 Pokemon that many people were attached to at the time. And really, it was probably another thing influenced by hardware limitations at the time, specifically the GBA's shitty unlit screen. Most GBA games have overly saturated colors when played on any actually decent screen because of that. The Gen 1 & 2 Pokemon can also look pretty garish in RSE and FRLG, and I'm pretty sure a lot of Gen 3 Pokemon colors were toned down a little in later games with better screens.

I think it's also incredibly unfair to say that Pokemon lost its ambition with Gen 3 in one breath and then use them not building on Gen 2 as an example. If they had just done what they did in Gen 2 with Hoenn people would still call that lazy and say they're still making the same game, and Hoenn would have been worse for it. Gamefreak has been trying to court those people for the last decade by hacking away at what was a very refined formula with Gen 4 to the point where we're left with something that is actually unrecognizable from the games they had been making.
I'm not sure what you think I meant by my comments. I wasn't implying that Gen 3 should have also had two regions or something. And while I said RS was too derivative of Gen 1, you could say it was too derivative of both Gen 1 & 2 since GSC was the first start the pattern of having the evil team plot climax between badges 7 and 8, and to have the rival be fought just outside the Pokemon League. RSE shouldn't have copied either Gens 1 or 2 as heavily as it did. It should have done something even more different.
What exactly? No clue, and really I'm not sure how much it matters since Emerald, Platinum, BW, and B2W2 were all decent to good games at the end of the day and the series only started slipping with XY. I just feel like RS and DP were unambitious enough in their execution that it sort of signaled Game Freak eventual just not giving a shit anymore when they jumped to 3D graphics.
 
If Pokemon lost its ambition in gen 3, then what the fuck were they doing in gen 5?
I don't think Gamefreak lost their ambition in Gen 3, it was definitely Gen 5. You could tell that they had plenty of ideas they wanted to execute during Gen 3 and 4, even if a lot of it never came to fruition. Problem came from the higher ups refusing to put anything but the most palatable generic content into the game for most mass appeal, hence why we never got the elaboration of what the lost civilization hinted at in Hoenn was until Gen 6(where they were revealed to be dragon tamers, originally Gamefreak intended the plot twist to be Atlantis, hence the city in the middle of the ocean with Greek architecture). Then you have the insane schizo shit that was revealed during the leaks for Gen 4 that only somewhat partially came to be in Arceus game over 10 years later.
Somebody tried, it's just that not enough people higher up did. Hence why HGSS was packed to brim with content, then two generations later when Gamefreak truly gave up we got ORAS.
 
They weren't all that good. Design-wise, most bug types were just cartoony versions of real bugs. Of the first two gens, only the Scyther line, Parasect line and Shuckle stand out. And competitive-wise, the bug type has always been the worst. Most bug Pokemon were stupidly weak as a result of evolving early, and for the first three gens the only good bug move was Megahorn. It took until gen 4 for it to get more good moves in U-turn, Bug Buzz and X-Scissor, and it took until gen 5 to get actually strong bug types like Scolipede, Volcarona, and the only mythical bug, Genesect.
You don't get to talk about bug types for the first three gens and completely ignore Heracross.
 
In regards of "based on inanimate objects", I've grown to like Magnemite over the years. I dunno, something about it is just charming.
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It's kinda similar to the Unown in being a floating eyeball, though I took to the Unown better due to lore and the third movie and I would allow Unown into the house long before any Magnemite. But damn it all, I just can't hate the little guy.
 
I think the main reason gamefreak stopped trying as hard, at least their leadership did is because they went with a more mobile game style format (insert masuda's oras interview about how "kids prefer to play games on their phone"). They started to make the games either less difficult wise like gen 6 as the older ones or packed them with less post game content and more handholding like gen 7.

This became especially apparent when sword and shield released, which also unintentionally caused the player-base to be more critical of the 3ds era, as all the major videos that criticize XY for example were made after SwSh released. Before SwSh most critizisms towards gen 6 and gen 7 weren't as prevalent and i'd aruge gens 6 and 7 had their peak in reception at their respective launches. Back when XY and ORAS came out, I remember people saying that gen 6 was better then gen 5 or any of the previous gens aside from maybe gen 4. Which might sound insane in retrospects, but the reception was super positive, probably because people assumed there would be a pokemon Z.

I also think gamefreak is trying to emulate what shooter games like COD does and have multiplayer replace the lack of content elsewhere. This could be why obtaining competitive ready pokemon has became so easy (still a good thing tho, as to not force comp players to play pokemon full time).

I actually don't think GF stopped trying because of gen 5's reception, since apparently gen 5's reception was mostly positive in japan. Most of the people who produce japanese media only care about what the japanese audience thinks, even if the product performs better outside of japan. Also I don't think lack of sales played a factor either and i'd argue that gen 5 sold really well despite being released at the end of the DS' lifecycle. BW1 sold about 15 million which is about as much as ruby and sapphire and X and Y did, both selling about 16 million. A game on a "dead" platform selling about as much as launch titles is still pretty impresive, and black 2 white 2 actually sold BETTER than platinum or emerald. B2W2 sold about 8 million while platinum and emerald both sold about 7 million.
it's just that not enough people higher up did. Hence why HGSS was packed to brim with content, then two generations later when Gamefreak truly gave up we got ORAS.
Honestly ORAS is the game with the most missed potential in the entire series. If it added emerald content like better gym leader teams, gym leader rematches, and the battle frontier or at the very least more battle facilities like what b2w2 does It could have been a top 5 pokemon game material. ORAS, unlike BDSP, included tons of new additions like new character designs, soring, the dex nav, giving access to cross-gen evos and a lot of other things to make up for no emerald content, but they should have added those things alongside emerald content. I personally still consider ORAS to be a great game despite it's flaws. I also consider it the best 3d pokemon game and the last truly great pokemon game (which is kinda sad since it came out a decade ago). It's just missing that one thing to make it even better to make it on pair with games like HGSS or B2W2.
 
Honestly ORAS is the game with the most missed potential in the entire series. If it added emerald content like better gym leader teams, gym leader rematches, and the battle frontier or at the very least more battle facilities like what b2w2 does It could have been a top 5 pokemon game. ORAS added in new character designs, soring, the dex nav, giving access to cross-gen evos and a lot of other things to make up for no emerald content, but they should have added those things alongside emerald content. I personally still consider ORAS to be a great game, the best 3d pokemon game and the last truly great pokemon game (which is kinda sad since it came out a decade ago). It's just missing that one thing to make it even better to make it on pair with games like HGSS or B2W2.

The exclusion of female Triathletes in ORAS was a very weird omission for me.
 
I think the main reason gamefreak stopped trying as hard, at least their leadership did is because they went with a more mobile game style format (insert masuda's oras interview about how "kids prefer to play games on their phone"). They started to make the games either less difficult wise like gen 6 as the older ones or packed them with less post game content and more handholding like gen 7.
I played Pokemon Let's go Pikajew on the Switch and it the laziness of it made me genuinely angry. They removed combat mechanics with wild pokemons and replaced it with a catching system designed to replicate that of Pokemon Go on mobile. So basically, you cannot fight wild Pokemons anymore and so you cannot weaken wild pokemons by fighting them. Instead, you have to use the motion control thing to throw your pokeball at a specific spot on your screen and your accuracy determines your chances of catching the monster. Like with all things Nintendo, the motion control system is broken which makes it completely random whether you will succeed or not. You can increase your success rate by repeatedly catching a specific Pokemon which serves little purpose (why would you want to have 40 Magnemites in your PC).
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You probably wonder how you train and level up your Pokemons then given that trainer encounters and gyms are the same as in the original games? Well, when you successfully catch a wild Pokemon, the Pokemons sitting in your team will automatically gain XPs, which makes no sense. You still need to do it though because they retained the traditional fight encounters with other trainers (which also give you XPs). I can see why they went in this direction given how successful Pokemon Go was on mobile but trying to emulate that on a console was a bad idea. The game was slightly less fun than the original red and blue versions that it's based on and nostalgia aside, red and blue are now pretty limited and repetitive in term of game design and mechanics. The whole thing made me lose faith in Game Freaks because of the missed opportunity it represents.

In terms of graphics, it looks awful and blend, they didn't even bother including a day/night cycle. Even though it's not part of the main series, it was a major release and it felt like it had been put together in one month by a team of three interns working very hard. It wasn't awful but it was a lame cash grab. There is zero challenge in the game, it's just an endless grind but it's not even a satisfying grind like red and blue used to be.

You wanna know what's worse? The game was released at full price (around 60 dollars) but you still don't have access to the full content, they paid-wall the Safari!! In order to access the Safari (now aptly renamed the "Go Park") you need to connect your game to your Pokemon Go account on your mobile which include a paid subscription fee. If you don't do that, you don't have access to the Safari. And as far as I'm aware, you can't even create a sock account on your mobile because they want you to have the paid subscription to have get access to the zone. I literally went through 70% of the game and put up with all the bs because I was looking forward to the safari zone just to get c0ckblocked by game freaks.
(screenshots below from a random youtube video)
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It really makes me wonder whether the japs are completely f-ing stupid. The thing people (mobile fags) liked about Pokemon Go on mobile, was the fact that you could see Pokemons in your real life environment and the exploration aspect that it implied, almost like a virtual reality thing. It wasn't the stupid game mechanics of throwing a pokeball at a moving object on your screen by wiggling your device around like a Rtard...
 
If it makes you feel any better it’s been over 6 years since their release and neither Game Freak or TPC have mentioned that they plan on releasing new Let’s Go games. As to why they made the games in the first place I have my suspicions that they did so to try and move GO players onto the main line games and patterns they observed during release and the years after said that making future LG titles wouldn’t cause that number to increase.
 
If it makes you feel any better it’s been over 6 years since their release and neither Game Freak or TPC have mentioned that they plan on releasing new Let’s Go games. As to why they made the games in the first place I have my suspicions that they did so to try and move GO players onto the main line games and patterns they observed during release and the years after said that making future LG titles wouldn’t cause that number to increase.
Yeah I agree about the logic behind it and I can tell they did some big thunk about the player base and drew a bunch of diagrams on a white board but the game itself wasn't good. In general, Nintendo & co does that a lot, they try to move players around like cattle by doing all sort of strategic thinking and they forget that the quality of the games is what determines the success of the product. It's almost like the games themselves are an after-thought and they spend most of their energy thinking about who will buy what and in what format. Of course it's a business but good marketing is what makes good games even more successful. Anyway, I'm not mad, I'm just PISSED OFF, man!
 
So I've been completely out of the loop on Pokemon ZA but I just saw this and just have to ask; why did they design a pokemon with a gem buttplug?
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I also think gamefreak is trying to emulate what shooter games like COD does and have multiplayer replace the lack of content elsewhere. This could be why obtaining competitive ready pokemon has became so easy (still a good thing tho, as to not force comp players to play pokemon full time).
On this specifically, it's totally fine but there is one MAJOR difference. Multiplayer on mobile or even PC is fundamentally free. GF and Nintendo are trying to emulate that while also ripping you off. I have nothing against multiplayer versions of their franchise but you have to PAY to access the multiplayer. You don't need to pay to play a battle royal game on your mobile, the game itself is free and access to multiplayer is also free. Nintendo and GF make you pay for the game and for the multiplayer on top of the game. I'm not going to pay a monthly fee to battle pokemons with other people. I'm paying for my internet connection, the console, the game, I think that's enough. I'm not a cash cow
 
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