I’m not a big gamer. I played red/yellow/silver as a kid. After revisiting them as an adult I wanted to play some “newer” games so naturally I went into gen 3. I really enjoyed those games. So far they have been my favorite.
From there I bought a switch 2 thinking the newest and best would blow my mind. I started with Scarlett. I don’t consider it a ‘bad’ game but I’ll likely never play it again. I then played Shield and found it more enjoyable but still ‘meh’. At that point I kinda just decided the games weren’t for me. Different strokes for different folks.
Then my nephew got Let’s go Pikachu for Christmas. He couldn’t stop talking about it so I bought a copy to trade Pokemon and just interact with him in general. I’m really enjoying this game. Of course it’s a glorified remake of yellow with some tweaks but the world feels much more interactive and immersive even though it’s 10 yrs old.
For example, I know a lot of people are into competitive play so maybe the newer games are more focused on that? Or maybe I’m just crazy
Worse is a simple statement. They are getting easier as moveset doesn’t include mandatory HMs and TMs got reusable. So based on tougness index it’s getting worse. But if it is for plot and others NO. Games lore is increasing greatly and post game time is also rising so it’s getting better there.
i think the most recent games have clashed with what some people want the pokemon games to be. I dont think theyre worse. Im pretty much in acceptance that I wont see an emerald or platinum or hgss tier pokemon game that isnt a remake. Bitter pill to swallow for a lot of folks. I enjoy the games as they are versus as they are compared to past titles. That mindset helps me enjoy them more.
Worse is certainly up for interpretation. The voter can take all the positives aspects of the games and all the negative aspects of the games to form their net opinion
I would definitely argue against this. Most people’s perceptions of the difficulty of Pokemon games are based on when they were children and didn’t have type matchups memorized and their teams consisted of their starter and 5 Route 1 Pokemon. Lots of people also equate difficulty with the amount of grinding you have to do, so mandatory EXP Share and XP candies cuts down on that perception of difficulty. One-time-use TMs and HMs are just inconveniences for the player, not difficulties.
Objectively, new Pokemon games (Legends series especially) are the hardest out of all the series. Old Pokemon games had one variable which was Pokemon level. Maybe the Emerald Battle Frontier is the one area in old games where you need legit skill and luck in battling. New games are aimed at adults and have player health, environmental hazards, and challenging boss battles. In Legends ZA the DLC effectively requires that you have a balanced team of 6 Lv 100 Pokemon, and even then you need skill and strategy to beat the Rogue Megas.
I voted yes, but its due to the recent departure from turn based battling to real time action battling in Z-A. That huge shift is hard for me to stomach, which is perfectly fine. I can accept that it might only be getting worse for me, but in many cases it’s getting better for others.
Yeah now you mention it It became difficult as per the game toughness. I only went with the constirction of movepool in my comment and appreciated the flexibility recent games are giving. So yeah I made a direct statement for tougness there but it is difficult if not for the movepool..
They are objectively worse. This isn’t even a question.
They just got lazier over time due to the fact that nintendo was doing great in general for all the consoles they’ve been on. I’m curious to see how nintendo biffing the switch 2, and then gamefreak putting out the most greedy low effort game they’ve ever made to date compounding that will do to future efforts and overall sales numbers.
I suppose they won’t mind if it sells less. They put the same amount of money into it that french nepo babies and former ubisoft employees did and they churned out expedition 33. But look at the difference in sales numbers between the two games. Of course Game Freak is notorious for being a terrible company to work for.
So, looking at the way the votes are doing is exactly why Game Freak will not put in any effort. The Pokemon Company certainly makes sure of it if gamefreak started to show any passion. Game Freak did something impressive with the first two generations. Innovation was painfully slow from there, but they actively gave up after seeing how sword and shield did despite being the most controversial(ly bad) games they’d release at the time to date and increased game prices %50 from the previous games. The pokemon company tested the waters on that with BDSP and confirmed it doesn’t matter.
I’ve had these conversations for a decade now. And I only encounter more and more people making excuses for them. Its sort of pointless. You can ennumerate every flaw, every depreciated feature, and get some response by a hoard of apologists who see pokemon games as if it were their mother you just insulted. I’ll never forget Junichi Masuda in that one interview about Dexit straight up(later proveably) lie while looking like he was in a hostage situation(which he was as far as his job goes). Poor guy.
So I’m rather shocked to see a new player to the games who isn’t even a gamer immediately identify that the games started to take one step forward, two steps back. that’s when you know its cooked.
I voted yes for reasons stated above like how they are easier with xp all and such but for me, I personally like the graphics of GBA and DS (HGSS specifically) the best. I think it was a good balance and I am just getting old where the new graphics and camera dynamics limit how long of a gameplay session I can have. Also, this is more ZA specific related, but I cannot bring myself to finish the DLC. I find the wormhole grinding boring as hell and the payoff is a tough motivator to finish it.
As I mentioned I’m enjoying Let’s go Pikachu but off the top of my head I have a TM for Flamethrower, Earthquake, Thunderbolt, Dragon Pulse, Psychic, Shadow ball, Ice Beam and Ice punch. I can think of a nasty concoction of cycling these TMs through members of my team based on which member of the elite 4 I’m battling with zero consequence. And those are just the ones I’m recalling at the moment.
If I couldn’t do that the game would be more difficult no?
I’d just say that they started diverging from my personal taste after Gen 6. I haven’t played recent games but I have experienced them a bit through friends and gameplay videos.
I prefer old style RPGs where you’re free to explore and set your own pace, so I find the constant handholding or cut scenes kinda intrusive. When it comes to lore, regions, city design and content in general they all seem less polished than it was before: it’s probably because working for a portable console and with sprites was substantially easier, but still.
They had some kind of magic that’s hard to replicate nowadays, where the target is unclear (kids on paper, 30yo adults de-facto) and gaming is so mainstream.
This is all a matter of preference though, except one thing, the graphics. They look terrible even when compared to Pokemon Battle Revolution which is a Wii title. I’ve heard many people saying that you don’t play Pokemon for the graphics. Why not though?
Not saying they have to look hyper realistic but, at least, be on par with other Nintendo games.
Pokemon is a pretty visual franchise/hobby imho, so for me would be pretty hard to resonate with games where everything looks like stock assets, lifeless plastic mannequins and boring, muddy-colored environments. That surely isn’t what we were asking for as kids when we were dreaming about mainline Pokemon games for the home console.
This was said differently already, but I don’t think games have gotten worse, I think they’ve diverged from how fans wanted them to evolve. It’s always a bit curious to me what people want from the modern games that isn’t in them. Let’s put Z-A to the side since combat will never be that way again. What are SV missing that’s not in RSE?
I suppose, but to me difficulty and inconvenience are two different things. Difficulty is overcome by skill while inconvenience is overcome by time.
In most Pokemon games one-time-use TMs can be obtained multiple times, you just have to grind for money/materials to make them. That doesn’t take skill, although perhaps there is some skill in obtaining needed materials faster. Same with HMs, its an inconvenience to have a HM slave Bibarel on your team but you can just keep it in a box and spend time going to a PC to get it every time you need it.
If I’m in a rogue mega fight (especially postgame where everything is Lv 200), the amount of time I put into grinding is not the deciding factor. Instead, it’s my skills. Have I brought the right type matchup? Can I dodge the attacks at the right time? Do I use the right dodge style for the specific mega boss I’m fighting? Do I correctly time dodges and attacks?
Modern Pokemon games have cut out a lot of the inconveniences of the past like one-time-use TMs, HMs, boxes only accessible at PCs, EXP grinding, and so forth. I can understand how people might feel like that’s making Pokemon games different and “easier.” But to me the complaints sound like the age-old “kids these days have it too easy, back in my day we had it so much harder.”
I believe this is a Legends Z-A exclusive battle system, like the battle system from Arceus. We should see a return to the standard turn based combat with the next game whether it’s Gen 10 or a remake.
I voted no because I find myself enjoying Pokemon games just as much now as I did as a kid. I’ll admit that I’m extremely easy to please with Pokemon games since I’ve been playing them consistently over the last 25 years. With the move to 3D I do think we lost some of the visual charm from the series but I still have a lot of fun regardless.
One thing to consider is that there are multiple reasons people play Pokemon games. Exploration, battling, story, Pokedex completion, shiny hunting and the list goes on. The main draw of the games for me is Pokedex completion and the recent games have made that a lot of fun for me. Collecting Pokemon was so much fun in Z-A that I ended up catching all of the shiny Pokemon in the base game and the DLC. It’s so cool to go into my Pokedex. set all of the Pokemon to their shinies and look through them and see the fruits of my labor.
I do think there’s a lot that Nintendo/GameFreak can improve on to elevate these games but it doesn’t seem like they want to take the time to make them better since it sells a bajillion copies anyway.
I’ve played every mainline game and yet to find one I dislike. I voted worse for minor issues like games coming out and feeling rushed, unfinished and glitchy.
Also not a fan of the constant cutscenes and being on a leash for majority of the game.
