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

[Retarded Weeb]

Half-True

Rayquaza pretty much stole the spotlight post-game like he did in (the later half of) Emerald. Otherwise yea, the whole "no frontier" thing was the REAL omission that practically killed those games from being replayed.

I wouldn't even count that since it's not directly from Emerald, it's just a new different thing they added so Rayquaza has some more relevance. The one thing off the top of my head they did take from Emerald is that when you fight Wallace during Delta Episode he uses his Emerald team. Oh yeah, and Prof. Birch gives you one of the Johto starters in the post-game, though the condition for it is different (just completing the main story, while in Emerald you had to complete the regional dex), and in ORAS it's part of him also giving you one of the Sinnoh and Unova starters too so everyone Pokemon could be natively obtained in Gen 6.

Otherwise yeah. There's none of the changes to the Gym Leader's teams from Emerald (especially bad for Liza & Tate), none of the small changes to various routes and the trainers within from Emerald, nothing from the Battle Frontier, none of the Emerald-exclusive characters like Juan. And y'know what, even if they weren't going to have fully customizable characters like XY, it would have been cool if you could unlock the original RS and Emerald outfits to wear.

 

[The Cum Beast]

I wouldn't even count that since it's not directly from Emerald, it's just a new different thing they added so Rayquaza has some more relevance. The one thing off the top of my head they did take from Emerald is that when you fight Wallace during Delta Episode he uses his Emerald team. Oh yeah, and Prof. Birch gives you one of the Johto starters in the post-game, though the condition for it is different (just completing the main story, while in Emerald you had to complete the regional dex), and in ORAS it's part of him also giving you one of the Sinnoh and Unova starters too so everyone Pokemon could be natively obtained in Gen 6.

Otherwise yeah. There's none of the changes to the Gym Leader's teams from Emerald (especially bad for Liza & Tate), none of the small changes to various routes and the trainers within from Emerald, nothing from the Battle Frontier, none of the Emerald-exclusive characters like Juan. And y'know what, even if they weren't going to have fully customizable characters like XY, it would have been cool if you could unlock the original RS and Emerald outfits to wear.

There is a timeline out there where ORAS released in 2015 with emerald content, and then pokemon Z released in 2016.

 

[Coldsteel the Hedgehog]

Since we're criticizing gen 5, the level curves in these games are kinda nuts with the way they changed the exp gain
I was doing a white 2 nuzlocke a few months ago, and at the second gym, I was having to grind just to match the roxie's level. For Burgh, it was even worse, I had to run around in that little park slapping audino for upwards of an hour just to keep up.

I think the only region I ever found frustrating to grind in was Johto, whose level curve is infamously bad. You ever do a nuzlocke in HGSS and wipe to Red? There's a reason even the purists admit hacking in rare candies is acceptable in the gen 2 games. I'd much rather spend 30 minutes grinding in-between gyms than have to train a bunch of pokemon from lv40 to lv60 off of lv32 golbat.

I've never had a problem with the few obvious Gen 1 parallels in Gen 5, but also there's really not that many of them unless you're reaching so hard that many Gen 3 Pokemon would also count as parallels to Gen 1 Pokemon.

There's been parallels in pretty much every generation: regional birds, regional rodents and the like. At least the parallels in Unova are pretty good with some fun gimmicks that make them stand out.

 

[McMitch]

Having created fakemon every once in a while over the past 27 years, I recently came up with the idea for a gimmick one:

Some sort of grasshopper-based mon, Bug/Flying (maybe Bug/Grass?). 500 base stats physical sweeper. Maybe named Batamori or something, hermitage elements to it. Pokédex emphasizes its tendency towards isolation. The gimmick is, when it levels up while the remaining party are also the same Pokémon, it evolves.

Evolution is a locust-based mon, heavy emphasis on eating and mouth parts a la Guzzlord. Bug/Dark. 500 base stats like the Scyther lines, this time focusing on HP and Defenses kind of filling a role like Snorlax.

The gimmick probably definitely sucks but it was a thought experiment.

 

[Registration]

I just beat Pryce in the Gold third gen romhack hat just came out. One of the things about this game is that they change the areas to have more johto pokemon and have better teams than the same one billion raticates and golbats, but overall is a very by the books romhack because the objective is to be a modified game to improve on it by being opensource.

But here is the thing:

Gen 2 is fucking boring as fuck, even with these alterations, this game is so fucking boring. I think it is after Whitney, that every gym battle becomes muddled with each other since they are very samey and not memorable at all.

It becomes literally a checkpoint, almost half of it is the same shit then we got claire.

Playing this only makes me confirm that Scorched Silver is indeed the best Johto game ever made.

 

[Squawking Macaw]

but also there's really not that many of them unless you're reaching so hard that many Gen 3 Pokemon would also count as parallels to Gen 1 Pokemon.

This is my main issue with the comparisons between gens 1 and 5. Obviously there are parallels, but some people get so autistically obsessed with finding them that they end up inserting square pegs into round holes, like claiming Lillipup is a Growlithe clone because they're both dogs when that's the only thing they have in common.

I saw a video going over every possible parallel and the guy was reaching pretty hard for most of them. At some point he claimed Zoroark was a Ditto clone because Illusion allows it to "turn" into other Pokemon, when if anything, it's a Lucario clone, but Lucario isn't gen 1, so that was never brought up.

I think the only region I ever found frustrating to grind in was Johto, whose level curve is infamously bad.

I found out that you can rematch gym leaders in the Saffron dojo as many times as you wish in HGSS, I managed to get the event Entei to level 100 in an afternoon by repeatedly badgering Sabrina. It's still a pain in the ass as their levels average 55, but that's still better than the level 40 mons in Mt Silver (at least for a casual playthrough, their movesets make them quite dangerous for nuzlockes).

 

[Computer God Autism]

There is a timeline out there where ORAS released in 2015 with emerald content, and then pokemon Z released in 2016.

Gen VI could have been great, which is unfortunately the last generation that can reasonably be said about.

 

[Anti Snigger]

Gen VI could have been great, which is unfortunately the last generation that can reasonably be said about.

Scarlet and Violet would be S tier if it weren't for the performance issues IMO

 

[The Cum Beast]

Something really weird about gen 5 is that it was pretty poorly received at the time, people weren't really high on it until B2W2, and especially X&Y

Something interesting is that the 3ds era games were only really criticized a while after the release, so basically the opposite of gen 5's reception. I remember even seeing some VERY vocal minorities even saying that gen 6 was better than gen 5. But people became more critical of them later on, mainly with the lack of battle frontier, no pokemon z, and especially with how ultra games barely changed anything from base sm. However, criticism really started back during the dexit fiasco, which funnily enough is also when nostalgia for gen 5 really picked up (however, I've definitely seen people call gen 5 underrated as early as 2015).

Weirdly enough, reddit out of all places had a post that detailed this pretty well, of how gen 5's reception really was an exception rather than the rule. This is also why I don't think any of the gen 8 games or SV will get the same turn around in reception as gen 5 did, especially since there will be videos criticizing gens 8 and 9 that were created years in advance.

https://www.reddit.com/r/pokemon/comments/z5zrb3/gen_5s_reception_is_an_anomaly_and_we_have_to/

If you ever wanted to see what the community is like before dexit. This very thread is great for it, cuz the first few dozen pages are of the community before dexit.

Gen VI could have been great, which is unfortunately the last generation that can reasonably be said about.

Honestly, thinking about this, yeah I agree. This was before the over-monetization of pokemon and nintendo in general, before $60+ games or paid online and especially before the trend of pokemon gacha games post pokemon go's success. And like I said before, they clearly cared for XY and ORAS even if there was development issues (I'm sure individual devs care for even the switch games, but not as much as gen 6 got).

 

[Anti Snigger]

Scarlet and Violet would be S tier if it weren't for the performance issues IMO

Gonna add an asterisk here and clarify that my main enjoyment in a pokemon game is filling out the dex, which is probably why I like these so much

Something interesting is that the 3ds era games were only really criticized a while after the release, so basically the opposite of gen 5's reception. I remember even seeing some VERY vocal minorities even saying that gen 6 was better than gen 5. But people became more critical of them later on, mainly with the lack of battle frontier, no pokemon z, and especially with how ultra games barely changed anything from base sm. However, criticism really started back during the dexit fiasco, which funnily enough is also when nostalgia for gen 5 really picked up (however, I've definitely seen people call gen 5 underrated as early as 2015).

X&Y have a lot of problems, I think ORAS suffers from being a remake quite a bit.
I will always hold a special place in my heart for gen 6 though, as the 3DS era was the first time I was able to use online features due to the DS having compatibility issues with some routers.

 

[The Cum Beast]

Gonna add an asterisk here and clarify that my main enjoyment in a pokemon game is filling out the dex, which is probably why I like these so much

I'm someone who really enjoys the battling aspect of Pokemon, so I like SV's focus on battling. I haven't played the DLCs yet, but I know Indigo Disk focuses on double battles so I'm looking forward to that whenever I play SV again. Also I'm a Unovatard so I will definitely enjoy the references + soundtrack remixes in Indigo Disk.

 

[Anti Snigger]

I'm someone who really enjoys the battling aspect of Pokemon, so I like SV's focus on battling. I haven't played the DLCs yet, but I know Indigo Disk focuses on double battles so I'm looking forward to that whenever I play SV again. Also I'm a Unovatard so I will definitely enjoy the references + soundtrack remixes in Indigo Disk.

If you like doubles you'll love the indigo disk, one of the bosses forces you to use only pokemon you caught in the area, and there are some really easy to grab mons. I always end up with a sand team

 

[Squawking Macaw]

This is also why I don't think any of the gen 8 games or SV will get the same turn around in reception as gen 5 did, especially since there will be videos criticizing gens 8 and 9 that were created years in advance.
https://www.reddit.com/r/pokemon/comments/z5zrb3/gen_5s_reception_is_an_anomaly_and_we_have_to/

I get the logic behind that but I disagree. We will eventually see praise for these games, even if it comes from a minority. The TL;DR of it is that most people will defend what they grew up with, regardless of its quality.

Gen 5's reception didn't change because the people who hated it suddenly changed their minds, it changed because the children who grew up with it reached posting age and started defending their childhood game (I know because I'm one of them). The biggest criticism against Unova back then was that you couldn't use older Pokemon, but if you started with Unova as your first game, why would you care that you can't use Pokemon you don't even know exist? These are your original 151 (or 156) as far as you're concerned.

You may argue that gen 5 is better than the Switch games on a technical level, like having less glitches or not looking like an ugly muddy mess, and you'd be right, but nostalgia isn't logical. Children are playing the Switch games as their first Pokemon games, and they will grow up to be nostalgic for them regardless of how shit they may be for us oldfags.

I'm just saying, if I'm starting to see people in Youtube comment sections defending Shadow the Hedgehog of all games, then I certainly believe that the same will happen to SwSh and SV.

 

[Registration]

Gen 5's reception didn't change because the people who hated it suddenly changed their minds, it changed because the children who grew up with it reached posting age and started defending their childhood game

I disagree.

I am a third gen kid to boot, and I played the Gen 5 games for the first time last year and documented it in this very thread (albeit in a modified version of it by Drayano), the game fucking rules, those are indeed the best (official) Pokemon games from the first 5 gens and I played all of them multiple times. I do have problems with the linearity of BW that got fixed in BW2, but meanwhile BW2 story is worse. Those games are way better than the fourth gen for example.

And I have my personal rules when playing pokemon games that I must use pokemons that I never used before, so in this game I favored using the 5 gen ones even when I could use whatever I wanted (drayano hacks). And those pokemon are very cool indeed. It helps that I think pokemon are fucking MONSTERS and not animals like most fans (furries). They can be object based or theme based, the origin is just the starting point of it.

And I agree that people's perspective and opinion change as they grow up, there was a time that I choose Crystal as my favorite pokemon game because I could go to different regions, as I matured, I realized that Kanto was just a worse version of gen 1 in gen 2 games and that I never liked it anyway (and I played first gen so damn much). I changed, now I see emerald as obviously the best game of the initial third gens for various reasons.

The gen 5 games are indeed very good and it isn't a matter of pokemon designs at all, it never was. The games are just well made and fun to play.

 

[Coldsteel the Hedgehog]

Gen 5 managed to thread the needle of having good difficulty balance, some nice QoL features, excellent team variety and nice pacing. An underrated aspect is how many teams you could make and how many pokemon were available and actually worth using—how many Johto, Hoenn, and Sinnoh playthrougjs have you see that are all basically the exact same team? The Starter/Ampharos/Gyarados and Infernape/Staraptor/Luxray/Garchomp memes are memes for a reason. You could look at a dozen unova saves and the only pokemon they'll have in common is probably the starter.

It also wasn't afraid to actually throw out a few difficult fights. Cynthia is known for being one of the stronger champions, but Iris is no slouch if you're not prepared. Clay's Excadrill can be a challenge if you're not prepared, and a lot of other important battles have surprisingly competent teams. Because team variety is so high, you can also fuck yourself out of the obvious match ups and make things way harder.

 

[The Cum Beast]

Gen 5 managed to thread the needle of having good difficulty balance, some nice QoL features, excellent team variety and nice pacing. An underrated aspect is how many teams you could make and how many pokemon were available and actually worth using—how many Johto, Hoenn, and Sinnoh playthrougjs have you see that are all basically the exact same team? The Starter/Ampharos/Gyarados and Infernape/Staraptor/Luxray/Garchomp memes are memes for a reason. You could look at a dozen unova saves and the only pokemon they'll have in common is probably the starter.

It also wasn't afraid to actually throw out a few difficult fights. Cynthia is known for being one of the stronger champions, but Iris is no slouch if you're not prepared. Clay's Excadrill can be a challenge if you're not prepared, and a lot of other important battles have surprisingly competent teams. Because team variety is so high, you can also fuck yourself out of the obvious match ups and make things way harder.

100% agree with the team building aspect, even with the limited early selections in BW1. You can't think of a "generic unova team" like you could with johto or sinnoh (platinum isn't as bad), while every unovan team will at least have one difference

I remember having a tough time with clay in b2w2 in particular because I didn't have a water type and my fighting types were both weak to ground (pignite and lucario)

 

[Anti Snigger]

I didn't have a water type

Since you mention it, I do hate how BW hide fishing behind the postgame. It's really weird not having ready access to water types until you get surf

 

[Coldsteel the Hedgehog]

While I was thinking about team variety, I noticed something interesting that i think contributes a lot: Unovan pokemon really like to come in pairs.

Cottonee and Liligant, Lillipup and Patrat, Conkeldur and Sawk/Throh, Excadrill and Krookadile. Most areas where you can find a Pokémon to fill an archetype will usually contain two relatively similar options for that slot.

The games with the worst team variety, when you need xyz, there's only one option. Even if other ones become available later, the important part is that they're never in the same place. Chinchou doesn't matter if it comes six routes after Mareep, Misdreavus isn't competition with Ghastly when it's only on Mt. Silver, Quagsire and Gastrodon don't have meaningful competition when one is twenty minutes into the game and the other is locked behind the fifth badge.

Unova might not have a stronger overall pokedex than some other reasons, but I think it was much, much smarter about where it placed those pokemon.

 

[Computer God Autism]

I am a third gen kid to boot,

Can second this. Sapphire was my first game and I played every Gen as they came out until giving up after USUM. I didn't like BW when they first came out because they were half the games that Platinum and HGSS were, being basically only a story campaign, but I loved BW2. I wound up starting to really appreciate BW as I got older by replaying it on its terms as a story campaign. Experimenting with different team compositions, learning to really appreciate the Serperior line* when the past four generations always made me skeptical of grass types, and appreciating what Gamefreak did accomplish in BW's story focus compared to what they failed to do with Gens 6/7 made me like it a lot more.

*I also like the Serperior line for a minor aspect choosing it adds to the story; it means Juniper gives your rivals Pokemon based on their personality defects. Cheren needs to be more decisive, he gets the Fire/Fighting line. Bianca needs to be more level-headed, she gets the water samurai.

 

[Registration]

Beat the first pass on the E4 in Heart and Soul. This shit was intense as fuck, my team isn't very well balanced as I lack in some areas like dragon/fire/ice. So I had to revive/potion some pokemon that were being oneshot by two Dragonite with Bounce. It didn't help that he also outspeeded me. My last pokemon was my Gengar as I traded the final blow and I finally beat him.

This was my team in the E4, I had to leave some behind like the Kingler, Honchkrow and Azumarill.

I was quite behind the level curve of the E4 and managed to win a quite challenging fight. This is them at the end.

This game allows you to choose if you want fairy type or not and I chose it. Meganium had moonblast as a fairy move against the dragons but it was still weak. He only helped a lot against bruno when somehow slowking and Xatu were oneshoted. Even with unlimited usage TMs I still can't make a good moveset on him and have to use some level up moves (his moveset is magical leaf/ancient power/petal dance/moonblast)

This romhack proves that you can make a good level curve in Johto, to not make it piss easy and better movesets to fight against. Lets see how the Kanto section fares.