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

[Robert James]

I "jumped the poke-ship" after Gen 6.

Alpha Sapphire is the latest pokeymanz game I have.

(How is X & Y?)

I'll give you a breakdown of the games you've missed.

X&Y
Your given a kanto starter with a win button after level 36 1 route after you get your original starter you are given a nearly perfect Lucario with it's win button, eevees are easily caught in the wild, and you are given a near perfect lapras early in game. There are barely any new pokemon and the ones that are new aren't designed to match together. The plot is stupid, the main villain want's to kill off all pokemon because some Pokemon suffer. Effectively N with half the brains, charisma, and without geist using it as an excuse to control the region. The only good that came from it was mega evolutions giving pokemon like Mawile some value and they made the first T-Rex fossil. They also had an easter egg of a tiki item to hint you as to where the next game would be based.

SM/USUM
Sun and Moon gets a lot of flack because it felt like a beta of ultra sun/ultra moon, if they would of delayed it a year I'm sure more people would of liked the games. They did introduce regional variants, probably one of the best ways to use old mons for nostalgia but make them different enough that they act like new Pokemon, ultra beast were a cool concept as invasive species and how pokemon would work if they weren't so friendly. The worlds you can travel to to catch them are beautifully designed and probably have some of the best scenery story telling I've seen. Legitimately the Dark/Dragon ultra beast let's you peak into a world that evolved into a consumerist hell hole focused on the newest thing since the monster literally never stops eating. The story is bog standard for pokemon but does show what a world would look like if Pokemon and humans didn't work together. The game can be surprisingly difficult at times I've seen many a cocky nuzlocker lose after fighting the first totem leaders and almost everyone dies against ultra necrozama unless they are properly prepared. The totem challenges are pretty unique and aren't just pure battling, but when they do your apponent will get stat boost so you don't just steamroll them. Also the elite four is neat because after you are declared the champion you get to be challanged by other trainers for your title instead of fighting the same people. Z moves were introduced to help you break stalls or set up a sweep quickly. USUM are actually pretty good since they do their best to incorporate new gimicks and old gimicks and like I said early if USUM was just SM it be a lot more popular. There's also the battle tree, a decent endgame, ridable pokemon, and four way battles.



Lets go
Pokemon follow behind you and you can ride certain pokemon, first game pokemon appear in the over world and they can appear shiny in the field, a feature SW/SH decided to drop. Catching is easy until your trying to catch high level mons then it get's frustrating since you can't weaken them or put them to sleep. The game is easy, you can literally give each mon a couple hundred extra stat points. If you pick pikachu you get 3 exclusive OP moves and if you picked eevee you get an exclusive OP move, with a dumb name, for each evolution. By OP i mean a stat change/status infliction on a 90 power attack. End game is pretty non existent but there are Pokemon masters that will challange you to a one on one their certain mon against the same mon that you own. Beat enough of them and you can fight red, who is somewhat challenging simply because his mons are fully powered and you can't just use your starter to power your way through.

Sword/Shield
Agressivley meh.


I still think Ultra moon/Ultra sun are worth buying and turning off the XP share but you aren't missing much by not playing any of the other games.

*edit

I'll admit I never payed close attention to the capture mechanics, but if I'm not mistaken Let's go introduced the mons breaking out after the third shake, this is it's greatest sin since it got brought into main line games.

 

[Pinochet Was Right]

I "jumped the poke-ship" after Gen 6.

Alpha Sapphire is the latest pokeymanz game I have.

(How is X & Y?)

XY is a glorified tech demo all the consoomers forgave because IT HAS FUKIN BLUE CHARIZARD TYEP DRAGANZZZ. I mean that's the only reason more people got X since Yveltal the evil bird is objectively better than Xerneas the goody deer. After hearing "genwunners" whine about Gen 5 all the time for daring to be different and feeling like Pokemon was growing up with its audience, Gen 6 was as basic as Red/Blue.

It was full of Gen 1 references and gifts, they fuckin' give you a starter from Gen 1. It holds your hand, the tutorial extends beyond the 1st gym and it removes the challenge of training a team by bringing back the exp.all from Gen 1 (because to avoid grinding let's make it easy to overlevel). Then it cheaps out on the lore about the new legends. They are just there... maybe a short blurb if you talk to a random NPC or got the download code, so to fill with late legend battles, they bring back the Gen 1 legends including Mewtwo in a small postgame one-room cave called "unknown dungeon". Member berries?

Also, postgame, what post game? You cannot refight ANYONE but the League, and the only other place to battle is the Battle Maison, which is just a crappier version of the Battle Tower. Therefore, to grind EXP in the post game means beating the League over and over again or fighting wild pokemon. I don't think when Genwunners miss Gen 1 they meant the lack of modern content. There's just two caves for Mewtwo and Zygarde, the Z legendary... Oh, about that...

The game feels incomplete hinting that the world is even bigger, that the Kalos Region is actually just the northern half of it, and that Zygarde has actual importance, kinda like Diamond/Pearl feel incomplete without Platinum, but even more so, they feel unfinished -- the actual quantity of new pokemon is around 80, typings are uncreative, and then Pokemon Z was never made.

Aside from the features like refights, most of the polish added by Gen4 and 5 like variable remixes, animated trainers, the personality from the pokemon animations (poor Typhlosion, his flaming back is now forgotten), all of that was removed in favor of enemy trainers (even the final boss) being just cardboard cutouts that show up on screen in a way that feels like they do not exist in the same plane of existence as your trainer, the exception being just a couple of the important characters.

Oh, and it fails against Red/Blue in the character department because everyone except for 3 people (the main villain, one important NPC and one Elite 4 member) is a spineless Literally Who with no emotional impact. Your "friends" are a bunch of pussies and the final boss is a poor attempt at Cynthia 2.0 with none of the personality, just "I'm famous and the final boss and I have a Mega Gardevoir". Gone are the days of the Garys and Ns.

And the music? Just elevator music. The only objectively good innovations are the user interface (for example you no longer need to be in a pokecenter to connect with someone else, and can keep a handy list of contacts), the Fairy type and the metagame, and even that is debatable because back then it was dominated by the final stage of the common bird.

Then ORAS came out and despite being better because Ruby/Sapphire was better, it also feels underwhelming because it also holds your hand (they even GIVE you a Mega Latios/Latias after the 5th gym and you can ride it all over the map), they did not integrate the creative enhancements Emerald brought in especially the Battle Frontier (and they rub it in you face before giving you a copypasted Battle Maison in its place), they rewrite your rival into a lovesick puppy, the new music tracks that are supposed to be climactic and epic are just glorified prerendered MP3s that feels like a youtuber put its edgy rock tracks over the BGMs, they mellowed the leaders of Aqua and Magma, the Rayquaza and Deoxys postgame campaign feels like a DLC chapter written by fanfiction.net including a "suffering angsty marysue-ish" girl demanding sympathy for being a failure, and finally... NO TRUMPETS.

EDIT: And then later Masuda (longtime game director and composer) had the audacity of saying the games didn't have the battle frontier because kids nowadays want to finish their game quick and go back to their shovelware mobile games. Which explains the overall dumbing down of the games. They're so out of touch, Ishihara (CEO of The Pokemon Company) was a firm believer that the Switch would fail and the future was mobile shovelware, which explains the existence of Let's GO and their incompetence at understanding what a "home console game" entails.

 

[Disc]

And the music? Just elevator music.

eck-fucking-scuse me. I'll accept that most of your points are at least somewhat valid, but I refuse to let you shit on the music. Snowbelle City is my favourite city music bar none, and a LOT of the soundtrack is bangers.

Spoiler: Music Examples

It was also the first set of games to make EV training not a complete slog, with Super Training and Secret Training offering a fun minigame version and adding in the first easy reset button as well. Not to mention Pokemon Amie.

The Game's biggest flaw is that there are people who were sucked dry by vampires... who are still less anemic than XY's postgame and side content.

 

[Jeff Boomhauer]

They're so out of touch, Ishihara (CEO of The Pokemon Company) was a firm believer that the Switch would fail and the future was mobile shovelware, which explains the existence of Let's GO and their incompetence at understanding what a "home console game" entails.

I'm assuming Ishihara is still thinking this, judging by the past few years or so...

GO - Not nearly as popular as it was in 2016, where even normies were getting in on it. Still being updated, despite the playerbase being only a small fraction of what it used to be in the US. Presumably, Asian countries are still playing it heavily.

Quest - Lame "RPG" featuring only the first generation. Very obviously filled with means to make the player want to spend real money. No one plays this.

Shuffle - A failed attempt at aping Candy Crush with very few Pokemon. This one baffles me, as you can just buy Battle Trozei (its much better predecessor) for less than $10, which features all of the Pokemon up to Gen 6. and you can play as much as you want.

Pokemon Rumble Rush - Mediocre game based off of a mediocre sub-series. No one plays this.

Pokemon Masters - Watered down version of the battles from the main games. I'll give credit for giving some depth to the trainers, but I really don't know who plays this, save for those that want to collect their waifus/husbandos.

Pokemon Smile - Game for small children, fine, except I can only imagine kiddos getting their parents' phones covered in toothpaste and spit.

Pokemon Sleep - Vaporware.

Pokemon Unite - Most disliked Nintendo video of all time, and only known for 3 days. Need I say more?

Idk how Cafe Mix is, but I'm assuming the artstyle is all it has going for it.

It's just strange to think that they'd rather develop mobile game after mobile game rather than focus on making the core series the best it can be.

 

[UntimelyDhelmise]

Just beat the Dragon gym in Black 2 with my mono-Bug run that I've been going about with at a slow pace. It's, definitely been a struggle. Not even getting the surprisingly early Volcarona encounter has made it all that much easier thanks to the poor thing having next to nothing to work with for a long time (Signal Beam from a tutor and that's about it until several gyms later). Crustle has been an absolute MVP out of sheer utility, who've thought Rock would be such a critical typing to have. Easy to forget that Pokemon games actually used to have this thing called "challenge" back in the day...

Another thing, to wrap around to earlier discussion about battle modes lost to time, I've forgotten how often the second Unova games spam you with triple and rotation battles (along with doubles) from random trainers. Definitely keeps you on your toes a lot more compared to the same tired single battles ad nauseam with the occasional doubles match.

 

[Pinochet Was Right]

GO - Not nearly as popular as it was in 2016, where even normies were getting in on it. Still being updated, despite the playerbase being only a small fraction of what it used to be in the US. Presumably, Asian countries are still playing it heavily.

For what is worth, the local GO scenes in each part of the world were smaller but faithful, at least until the coof was unleashed. Now it introduced a lot of quality of life features to play under quarantine.

 

[Rotollo]

eck-fucking-scuse me. I'll accept that most of your points are at least somewhat valid, but I refuse to let you shit on the music. Snowbelle City is my favourite city music bar none, and a LOT of the soundtrack is bangers.

agree with you on the the soundtrack For the most part but there is one track that sticks out as mediocre in my mind anyway the Gym battle theme

Not my least favorite gym battle in the series, but certainly the most forgettable which I think can sum up my thoughts on alot of Gen 6's issues for me, which pretty much excludes most of the soundtrack ironically enough.

Pokemon Masters - Watered down version of the battles from the main games. I'll give credit for giving some depth to the trainers, but I really don't know who plays this, save for those that want to collect their waifus/husbandos.

Masters also has the issue of being one of those games that needs higher end phones to use it to my knowledge, which leads to a reduction in potential users to play their shitty MOBAGE mobile game

 

[Be patient I have lurkism]

Therefore, to grind EXP in the post game means beating the League over and over again or fighting wild pokemon.

If you ever want to replay XY for some reason, there is actually a really fast way to level up. There is a "battle restaurant" in Lumiose where you fight meaningless trainers in different formats. I don't remember how much, but their level is very high despite being somewhat weak. They give you a shit ton of experience per fight and one of the trainers has Blisseys/Audinos. I don't recall a better method to level up in the postgame aside from swoosh, which made it more convenient to fill the National Dex (the only decent postgame content you're getting out of XY)

the Rayquaza and Deoxys postgame campaign feels like a DLC chapter written by fanfiction.net including a "suffering angsty marysue-ish" girl demanding sympathy for being a failure.

Zinnia is the worst character in the franchise, beating out the cunt in Sinnoh that trades you a Haunter with an Everstone

 

[Nauseated Courgi]

Zinnia is the worst character in the franchise, beating out the cunt in Sinnoh that trades you a Haunter with an Everstone

Now that's pushing it.

 

[Kari Kamiya]

tfw Y was your first proper jump into the series thanks to Satanic Panic parents.

I've been thinking off-and-on about what the parents' perspective must've been like during the Pokémon craze and all that money they spent for their kids lol. Looking back on it, it seemed like so many adults were just confused about the whole thing, the only ones who seemed to have fully understood its appeal were the game and comic book stores because, well, nerds. My parents saw it as a fad, but it made us kids happy and we were interacting with others instead of just playing with each other and I was making friends at at school, so they shrugged it off and would buy a pack of cards every couple weeks or something like that--we'd actually get Pokéemon cards in our stockings every Christmas for years even after popularity waned. It still took about a year before we were able to get the games, though, Yellow made my eighth birthday really special. That Christmas also was special because Dad had gotten Mom the 2.B.A. Master cassette tape and knew that if they played it, we'd hog the tape, and it turned out to have been the only thing besides food that could pull me away from Pokémon Puzzle League. I still have the entire album memorized.

I did find it to be weird that Mom was interested in it because she has never liked anime, and never cared about our cartoons. She found Sailor Moon to be creepy, and yet Pokémon was a-okay because it was a cute show that had an interesting world with magical creatures and a sense of adventure (yet she never stayed to watch Digimon with us ). So she was able to watch most of the first series with us kids though I think it really picked up for her with the Hypno episode because of Psyduck, and to this day she still adores Psyduck as her favorite Pokémon.

She stopped caring for it by the time Ash was hitting Johto because she realized it wasn't just a fad like she originally believed, it was gonna be a whole series, and she had better things to do lol. But she never hated Pokémon, never got suckered into the Satanic angle of it despite us being religious (we like Harry Potter and she and Dad grew up having played D&D, so I don't think Mom ever believed the hype), but she did hope that us kids would outgrow it eventually. Maybe. One day. If ever.

Okay, reminiscing over. What were other kids' experiences like back then?

 

[Jeff Boomhauer]

My mom decided to humor me and play Pokemon Red with me when I was young. I spent some birthday money on used copies of both Red and Yellow. At the time, my mom thought it was a dumb idea having two games that were essentially the same, but decided to watch me play Red anyway.

She ended up playing through the whole game without me, using only Blastoise, Lapras, Pidgeot, and Graveler. She even told me about Missingno from some instructions that she had found online. Thank God I had Yellow, because I never got to play Red past Brock.

She hasn't played a Pokemon game since.

 

[Jean Lafitte 1812]

Another thing, to wrap around to earlier discussion about battle modes lost to time, I've forgotten how often the second Unova games spam you with triple and rotation battles (along with doubles) from random trainers. Definitely keeps you on your toes a lot more compared to the same tired single battles ad nauseam with the occasional doubles match.

The one battle facility that I forgot about until now, and one of the few non Battle Tower style facilities since Platinum/HG/SS's Frontier, is the Pokemon World Tournament where you get to do competitive battles against every leader and champion from the first 5 gens in any format, barring Iris and Koga. Why was this never a thing again? The closest we've gotten is the post-game battles in Ultra Sun and Moon. Even just the champions would be fine with me: an 8 battle gauntlet with each champion in turn.

Luckily my parents never bought into moral panics, so my entire younger childhood was Pokemon and Harry Potter. Pokemon stuck until now, Potter didn't as much. Moral panics are weird though, I've heard stories of Pokemon being considered Satanic but YuGiOh with its Egyptian magic and demons somehow wasn't.

 

[Bunny Tracks]

My dad had gone through the same thing with my brother with DBZ and hated every moment of it. When it came to me and Pokemon, my mom tried to convince him that it was just a fad and that I would soon grow out of it.

I never did and he's never gotten over it.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

It was my first region, so it holds a special place in my heart.

I started pokeymanz with Blue Version and a Charmander, but I still like Hoenn better. Kanto and Johto are kind of dull.

 

[Love Machine]

Platnium, hgss, b2w2 are the holy Trinity of Pokemon games.

 

[Jeff Boomhauer]

I personally would replace Platinum with Emerald, but that's just me. Platinum was great, too.

I just remembered that they also copy and pasted the Battle Frontier from Platinum to HGSS, but IIRC they at least updated the random trainer sprites to be the ones from Johto.

Plus, unlike XY and ORAS, there was lots to do in HGSS.

 

[Vapewizard]

For me the interesting parts about SuMo's story were the subplots about dealing with abusive parents. I found it a nice change of pace to have the plot involve something more personal this time compared to the usual threat of a world ending apocalypse.

 

[Love Machine]

I personally would replace Platinum with Emerald, but that's just me. Platinum was great, too.

I just remembered that they also copy and pasted the Battle Frontier from Platinum to HGSS, but IIRC they at least updated the random trainer sprites to be the ones from Johto.

Plus, unlike XY and ORAS, there was lots to do in HGSS.

Emerald? More like... Dumberald.

 

[Rotollo]

Emerald? More like... Dumberald.

I never laughed so hard at such a nonsense pun in my life

For me the interesting parts about SuMo's story were the subplots about dealing with abusive parents. I found it a nice change of pace to have the plot involve something more personal this time compared to the usual threat of a world ending apocalypse.

Honestly thats issue for me, the down to earth character stuff is always the most interesting part of pokemon post gen 7, but they always have to crow bar in the END OF THE WORLD plot into the game that it diminishes the focus on the character interactions for me.
It's not like they are bad concepts, but badly executed
Gen 5 is the only one to really balance those aspects of the story for me while not feeling bloated or underdeveloped

 

[Kari Kamiya]

For me the interesting parts about SuMo's story were the subplots about dealing with abusive parents. I found it a nice change of pace to have the plot involve something more personal this time compared to the usual threat of a world ending apocalypse.

Lusamine being our first big bad female antagonist in the Pokémon games was what sold it for me. When Lillie was first shown, I was under the impression she would be our female rival who's not the other playable character (Bianca was good, but she's too nice, and I can barely remember Shauna without looking her up) who's kind of a rich bitch, and that got my hopes up. I still like her, especially since I love her design, but I was hoping she'd have more going for her as a Pokémon trainer and be similar to Silver in a sense.

I just miss asshole rivals, really. Bede wasn't doing it for me, and I don't know if he really is an asshole.