Elite Overlord LeSabre™
On that 'Non stop road'
- 9,876
- Posts
- 16
- Years
- Age 98
- Shimoda City
- Seen Mar 30, 2024
30 Days: Final Reflections
I began this "30 Days" series, in part, to attempt to rekindle my interest in Pokemon, and this site. Looking back, it's hard to say how successful it ended up being. Right now, I'm about 90% sure I'll be playing the 6th gen games, which I'll be talking more about later. Still, I don't think I'll ever have the level of interest in Pokemon that I had during the FR/LG/D/P/Pt/Colo/XD days. The series has been stagnating for a while, only picking up a little bit of steam with B2/W2, and I've been growing more cynical of it. Evil teams have unrealistic and absurd goals. Rivals are too friendly and too spineless. And the emphasis on friendship with Pokemon has gotten to the point where every other NPC seems to drill the concept into your head (for the record I find it MUCH easier to form virtual "friendships" in RPG's where your party consists of other human characters since they have actual personalities and you actually converse with them).
Then I think it goes without saying that my opinions of the franchise are at odds with the majority of the fandom. It's tough to maintain interest in a series where your least liked elements are the most popular, and therefore are constantly in your face. And like I alluded to above, I'd rather have a team of human characters as opposed to a bunch of little critters. The trainers in the series are far more interesting to me than the Pokemon themselves, which in and of itself might be a rather unpopular opinion.
But like I said, at this point I'm still going to probably play the new games when they come out. Getting a 3DS is no longer an issue - I had to buy a used one anyway to play Fire Emblem Awakening. The female trainer, weird large pockets aside, is still very attractive, and the fully 3-D environment is looking to be the most radical change the franchise has seen since its inception. Even if the Pokemon are uninteresting and the plot as cookie-cutter than ever, at least the look and feel of the game will be different enough for me to give it a try - providing they don't announce something that totally messes the whole thing up or something.
But therein lies my problem. With the whole "global release" thing, I'm going into X/Y almost completely blind. I don't intend on getting both games, but I also don't want to be burned by the version exclusives (i.e., if I buy X but a Pokemon that I want to have on my party ends up only appearing in Y). So, here are my options:
1) Preorder both games. Find out which version has the better selection of Pokemon and return the other one unopened. I'll need to make sure I can receive a full refund for unopened merchandise from whoever I order the games from.
2) Don't preorder. This option is going to be totally dependent on whether people anticipate the games being sold out when they're released. I don't need to have it in my hands on release day, but I do want it before the end of October.
So, I guess it boils down to this: Do I need to preorder or will stores have sufficient stock? I can't for the life of me remember if B/W or B2/W2 had in-store shortages upon release, but I do know that there was an issue with Fire Emblem Awakening being out of stock at retailers for a while after the release date. And who has a good return policy because keeping both X and Y isn't going to be an option (buying the game is gonna cut into my anime convention budget, after all).
And I'll conclude this post with something not Pokemon related. I will be moving again, this time back to North Carolina, early next week. I am hoping that I can have internet installed quickly and painlessly but if it looks like I'm on an extended absence (past the 4th or 5th), it's all Time Warner Cable's fault.
I began this "30 Days" series, in part, to attempt to rekindle my interest in Pokemon, and this site. Looking back, it's hard to say how successful it ended up being. Right now, I'm about 90% sure I'll be playing the 6th gen games, which I'll be talking more about later. Still, I don't think I'll ever have the level of interest in Pokemon that I had during the FR/LG/D/P/Pt/Colo/XD days. The series has been stagnating for a while, only picking up a little bit of steam with B2/W2, and I've been growing more cynical of it. Evil teams have unrealistic and absurd goals. Rivals are too friendly and too spineless. And the emphasis on friendship with Pokemon has gotten to the point where every other NPC seems to drill the concept into your head (for the record I find it MUCH easier to form virtual "friendships" in RPG's where your party consists of other human characters since they have actual personalities and you actually converse with them).
Then I think it goes without saying that my opinions of the franchise are at odds with the majority of the fandom. It's tough to maintain interest in a series where your least liked elements are the most popular, and therefore are constantly in your face. And like I alluded to above, I'd rather have a team of human characters as opposed to a bunch of little critters. The trainers in the series are far more interesting to me than the Pokemon themselves, which in and of itself might be a rather unpopular opinion.
But like I said, at this point I'm still going to probably play the new games when they come out. Getting a 3DS is no longer an issue - I had to buy a used one anyway to play Fire Emblem Awakening. The female trainer, weird large pockets aside, is still very attractive, and the fully 3-D environment is looking to be the most radical change the franchise has seen since its inception. Even if the Pokemon are uninteresting and the plot as cookie-cutter than ever, at least the look and feel of the game will be different enough for me to give it a try - providing they don't announce something that totally messes the whole thing up or something.
But therein lies my problem. With the whole "global release" thing, I'm going into X/Y almost completely blind. I don't intend on getting both games, but I also don't want to be burned by the version exclusives (i.e., if I buy X but a Pokemon that I want to have on my party ends up only appearing in Y). So, here are my options:
1) Preorder both games. Find out which version has the better selection of Pokemon and return the other one unopened. I'll need to make sure I can receive a full refund for unopened merchandise from whoever I order the games from.
2) Don't preorder. This option is going to be totally dependent on whether people anticipate the games being sold out when they're released. I don't need to have it in my hands on release day, but I do want it before the end of October.
So, I guess it boils down to this: Do I need to preorder or will stores have sufficient stock? I can't for the life of me remember if B/W or B2/W2 had in-store shortages upon release, but I do know that there was an issue with Fire Emblem Awakening being out of stock at retailers for a while after the release date. And who has a good return policy because keeping both X and Y isn't going to be an option (buying the game is gonna cut into my anime convention budget, after all).
And I'll conclude this post with something not Pokemon related. I will be moving again, this time back to North Carolina, early next week. I am hoping that I can have internet installed quickly and painlessly but if it looks like I'm on an extended absence (past the 4th or 5th), it's all Time Warner Cable's fault.