The 'right' Postgame

Ah, the postgame. Once the main story is over and you beat the Champion, there is usually no reason to backtrack your journey. Instead, you want more; you're itching to explore the region's deeper secrets, find new places, new facilities to battle, and in general, a newer and harsher challenge to face.

However, not every postgame is as satisfying as we wish to be. As I personally have not found a consensus yet on what is a good and bad postgame, I'm asking you guys!

Questions:

1. What do you consider a good postgame? What are its elements?
2. Which game(s) had, in your opinion, the best postgame?
3. Which game(s) had the worst postgame and how could it have been improved?

This goes for all games, by the way, not just the maingames. :)

Basically all the first pairs of a generation (except for G/S, though there's the question of if going to Kanto is the postgame or instead the second half of the game) have rather poor postgames, for the simple fact that they typically have little to do. It's always been the games that come afterwards that have, to varying degrees, better postgames because they actually bothered to do a bit more with those ones.

The best ones to me so far have Black2/White2 and ORAS's postgames, not including the Johto games. Not sure right now what exactly would be everything that would make the "perfect" Pokemon postgame for me though.

It'd be nice though if nearly non-existent postgames were not Game Freak's usual plan for the first pair of a generation....

What do you consider a good postgame? What are its elements? For me, a good post-game has plenty of legendary Pokemon to catch, a whole new area of a region to explore (asking for a second region is a bit much but if so even better) and additional story content.
Which game(s) had, in your opinion, the best postgame? Imo HGSS had the best post-game, it had everything I mentioned in response to the first question and a Battle Frontier which is even better.
Which game(s) had the worst postgame and how could it have been improved? It's gotta be XY, there's been some pretty dire post-games over the years but this was just awful, how I eclipsed over 200 hours on my copy I'll never know, there was almost nothing to do.

What do you consider a good postgame? What are its elements? Personnaly, I prefer more stories, areas, and Pokémon to catch. Completing the National Dex without having to reply so much on trading is nice, too.
Which game(s) had, in your opinion, the best postgame? Tie between ORAS and D/P/Pt. Those were my kind of Post Game.
Which game(s) had the worst postgame and how could it have been improved? Sun&Moon. I don't care for the Battle Tree thing, I'm not really a battler..and I dislike Ultra Beasts a lot, the characters or that story are fun, but I don't feel the motivation to go hunt those fugly Pokémon

What do you consider a good postgame? What are its elements?
Goes deeper into the game's lore by introducing new areas and legendaries relevant to the main story - by that second bit I mean not just cramming in tons of legendaries in portals like ORAS did, that was a little goofy.

A good postgame should have something for every type of player - an interesting and complex battle facility, some new areas to explore with at least one or two post-game quests (I really like DPPt's Stark Mountain quest as an example of this), legendaries to learn about and catch, and some kind of zone where lots of rare Pokémon can be obtained.

Which game(s) had, in your opinion, the best postgame?
All the Gen 4 games had excellent postgames. BW2 was also pretty awesome. I don't think going as far as HGSS is necessary to have a good postgame, (and indeed there were some things such as level curves that HGSS did not do well with its postgame), but having plenty of additional content to explore is essential.

Which game(s) had the worst postgame and how could it have been improved?
XY. You have like, one additional city you get to go to, and that city doesn't even have anything memorable or special about it. There's a single post-game quest which is the rather dull Looker mission. Besides that it's mostly just catching a few legendaries and collecting Mega Stones.

What do you consider a good postgame? What are its elements?
Basically, a lot of stuff to do after you beat the game and giving a reason to come back to a game; I tend to prefer more competitive stuff with a fair amount of variety and gimmicks (I'm thinking Battle Frontier). Also, catching some rare Pokemon later on as well as some cool Move Tutors.
Which game(s) had, in your opinion, the best postgame?
I really liked Emerald, Platinum, and BW2. The former two had Battle Frontier while the latter had PWT and a revamped version of Black City/White Forest. All of those games had a fair amount of legends to catch, which is nice to help complete the dex. BW2 also had Join Avenue and Pokestar Studios, game features I like to dabble about from time to time.
Which game(s) had the worst postgame and how could it have been improved?
XY, as mentioned it's really dry with not a whole lot of things to do. Battle Maison is a "been there, done that", I've never did the Looker missions, and while getting Mewtwo and one of the birds is cool, that's all there really is. I don't have much to say on how to improve it considering it's the first mainline 3DS game but maybe more areas to explore at least.

Another game I'm mentioning is not mainline but I felt Gates to Infinity's postgame's dry. The earlier games were quite rich with postgame but Gates took some steps backwards such as limiting the Pokemon roster to only Unova Pokemon + other older Pokemon and only taking on one mission at a time. The build a plaza was a neat feature but that's all there really is to the postgame and it got stale eventually.

What do you consider a good postgame? What are its elements?
Good constructive Events, not just inserted in just for the sake of it, Elite 4 Re-battles with increasing difficulty levels, a new region to explore.

Which game(s) had, in your opinion, the best postgame?
Since you mentioned not just the Main Series, I'd say the PMD Games had a good postgame Events, especially the ones involving Legendaries. As for the Main Series I'd say B2W2.

Which game(s) had the worst postgame and how could it have been improved?
I haven't played any Games after Gen V, so I would have said RBY, but then again, you can argue that there was no precedent for them to follow & they were extremely limited on cart space to add extra stuff. Otherwise I'm pretty okay with most.

Pika Pika :chu:

Legendary Events in all PMD Games were kewl xD.

Sunshine Moonlight said:

Legendary Events in all PMD Games were kewl xD.

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I think the PMD Games had some of the best Post Game Storyline Events & it was fun doing them. I also liked how most of the Events were linked to each other, instead of just being totally random. You complete one Event & it triggers off another one.

Pika Pika :chu:

Nice to read all of your replies! And thank you, Rainbow, for giving me the Thread of the Day-prefix. :)

I'll do one of my own:

What do you consider a good postgame? What are its elements?
I like a postgame that makes you wanna keep playing, improve your team and get the most out of them. Stuff like the Battle Frontier/Maison/Tree might be good for this, but the game then also is required to have something that makes training and grinding less tedious. Allow trainer and Gym Leader rematches, up the levels of all trainers and make things a lot more harder. One game does these things better than the other. Some of these facilities are also more challenging than the other.

Other things are an extended story, more areas to explore (with more challenges and some story attached), and quests for legendary or specific Pok?mon to catch. Though BW have an entire half of the map that can be explored in the postgame, there is no reason why you should. Aside from trainers and some items, you can essentially skip that entire place if you wanted. BW2 utilized the region map better to create a more interesting journey, and also added interesting stuff in different locations throughout the entire region for the postgame. That makes you wanna backtrack and keep playing the game longer.

I think it's also important to have specific events tied to the postgame, but that's not all a game can rely on after finishing the original story. While SM has the Ultra Beasts quest, there's virtually nothing else to do than the Battle Tree. That's a huge miss and I don't know why they kept the postgame so lackluster when the maingame is so extensive.

So, to sum up: new facilities, rematches with higher levels, new areas with an additional side story and multiple postgame events.

Which game(s) had, in your opinion, the best postgame?
I agree with Rainbow: all Gen IV games had amazing postgames. DP had the Areas, new Pok?mon to catch and a lot of things to do. Platinum even further improved this by creating a whole new Battle Frontier. I am not counting Kanto as the postgame but even without that HGSS have a lot to offer after you've gotten all 16 badges. I've never had the thought 'wow, I wish there was more to do' for any of these things. Even after 10 years I feel like I haven't explored every corner of Sinnoh yet - it just feels so big.

However, my personal favourite postgame is Pok?mon Emerald. I've never experienced a facility as fun as the original Battle Frontier and it made me want to train all my Pok?mon as extensively as possible so I could even begin to try going through all the facilities. Some of them are pretty easy, some are so hard that I never got a 7-win streak.

What makes Emerald so fun to play for me over all other installments with a similar battle facility is that it's insanely easy to level your Pok?mon up. There's Match Call, with which you can rematch both regular trainers and Gym Leaders (a feature I still wish to see return up to this day!!), and there's the League that even without level-upping is at a considerable enough level to be useful for training. There's less in the game in the department of postgame events or a new storyline, but for me the Battle Frontier is so challenging enough that I keep coming back to the game to try. Even after all these years, I have the most fun here.

Which game(s) had the worst postgame and how could it have been improved?
SM has a lackluster postgame and I honestly expected more to do. On top of that, grinding has become super hard due to the returned Gen V Exp. mechanics so a lot of times I don't even want to try making my Pok?mon stronger. Rematching the Elite Four is the most useful way, however you're considerably slowed down with the cutscenes, keeping you from grinding and grinding for hours. I am disappointed.

BW suffers from the big problem that a lot of its functionalities were tied to the WFC and now that that's gone, there's not much to do. Black City/White Forest are very nice ideas, but at this point everyone has either moved on from BW or sold their copies, so it's hard as hell to expand your city/forest. And like I said above, BW might have an entire half of the map to explore, there's no sidequest you're bound to so there's nothing to do there really. But what BW does better than SM is that its difficulty increases incredibly after beating N and that it's considerably easier to train Pok?mon due to the higher level of wild and trainer Pok?mon. Also Audino are the best thing BW could ever have. So BW has a lot of opportunities but lets down; BW2 improves this greatly.

Nah said:

It'd be nice though if nearly non-existent postgames were not Game Freak's usual plan for the first pair of a generation....

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Why do they do this? I understand RS and maybe BW having this problem, but XY and SM? I wonder if it's them not having any ideas for postgame or having specific motivations (like making the 'third' versions more attractive), but it takes away so much of the joy playing the game when such a good story like SM's is followed up by... Nothing really. If the UB don't interest you, there's nothing else to do because the Battle Tree isn't exactly entry-level IMO. You need to train a bit for that, and that has become very hard.

BlazingCobaltX said:

Why do they do this? I understand RS and maybe BW having this problem, but XY and SM? I wonder if it's them not having any ideas for postgame or having specific motivations (like making the 'third' versions more attractive), but it takes away so much of the joy playing the game when such a good story like SM's is followed up by... Nothing really. If the UB don't interest you, there's nothing else to do because the Battle Tree isn't exactly entry-level IMO. You need to train a bit for that, and that has become very hard.

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Some people would chalk it up to all the new stuff (new region design, new Pokemon, new story, new mechanics/features, programming, graphics updates, etc) consuming all their time/money/resources/energy so there was little of those left to pour into a postgame. 3rd versions then tend to turn out better since the majority of the work has already been done. "Oh but they had to work with new hardware and make everything in 3D now" was/is a common thing said in defense of how X/Y turned out. That kind of sounds like a weak excuse to me though, as we're talking about the company that makes the most integral part of one of the biggest franchises in the entire world.

Some days I feel like it's how you said in that they purposely do it to make the non-remake games that come after more attractive to people, garnering them more $$$$.

But I don't work for Game Freak, nor can I read the minds of its employees and executives, so I can't be certain about much.

BlazingCobaltX said:

Why do they do this? I understand RS and maybe BW having this problem, but XY and SM? I wonder if it's them not having any ideas for postgame or having specific motivations (like making the 'third' versions more attractive)

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Nah said:

x

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I was previously pinged because I work as a game developper (sorry about that Nah, check Discord for more info)


I had this same discussion earlier this week on Discord too. The actual reason for this is Publisher's constraints. We'll take X&Y as an example, but most of the Pok?mon main series apply.
Game Freak has a time constraint put by Nintendo: Ship the game mid-november so people will buy it for Christmas. Games can be made in parallel so I'm gonna take a wild guess and say they had 3 years for the whole X&Y Games. They had to redo the engine, because it was not on the same console. They had to redo sprites & animations for 721 Pok?mon, in 3D, the biggest and most animated sprites they ever made. They had to re-do every single attacks, FX, sound, etc. They had to re-balance the game because of the Fairy Type, and the Mega-Evolutions. They had to do server stuff because it's not the same online connections at all. Then, they had to make the whole game with story, characters, environments, progression, etc, etc. At that point, they maybe have one year or less to actually make that. So they cut content. Post-game content is the first thing that get the axe because a lot less people play it. I don't know the statistic for Pok?mon, but let's say your player spends about 30-40 hours in the game before moving on. That is the lenght of the game up to the league. It's enough. After that, a lot of people drop off and never come back, so all that nice post-game content will never be seen. If about 20% of the playerbase actually sees and play the post-game, there is no reason to keep it if you are extremely time-restricted.

Now, the reason why 3rd versions or remakes are so much better: most of the game is already made. ORAS, for example, had mapping, storyline, characters, Pok?mon/Trainers Locations, etc etc. It also had X&Y's assets, such as animations, models, balance, etc etc. So that leaves plenty of time to work on improvements and amazing post-games.

...I hope that helps? It's not because they don't have ideas or are lazy, it's because they don't have time. (and Nintendo wants money so that why time constraints exist)

Soapyyy said:

I had this same discussion earlier this week on Discord too. The actual reason for this is Publisher's constraints. We'll take X&Y as an example, but most of the Pokémon main series apply.
Game Freak has a time constraint put by Nintendo: Ship the game mid-november so people will buy it for Christmas. Games can be made in parallel so I'm gonna take a wild guess and say they had 3 years for the whole X&Y Games. They had to redo the engine, because it was not on the same console. They had to redo sprites & animations for 721 Pokémon, in 3D, the biggest and most animated sprites they ever made. They had to re-do every single attacks, FX, sound, etc. They had to re-balance the game because of the Fairy Type, and the Mega-Evolutions. They had to do server stuff because it's not the same online connections at all. Then, they had to make the whole game with story, characters, environments, progression, etc, etc. At that point, they maybe have one year or less to actually make that. So they cut content. Post-game content is the first thing that get the axe because a lot less people play it. I don't know the statistic for Pokémon, but let's say your player spends about 30-40 hours in the game before moving on. That is the lenght of the game up to the league. It's enough. After that, a lot of people drop off and never come back, so all that nice post-game content will never be seen. If about 20% of the playerbase actually sees and play the post-game, there is no reason to keep it if you are extremely time-restricted.

Now, the reason why 3rd versions or remakes are so much better: most of the game is already made. ORAS, for example, had mapping, storyline, characters, Pokémon/Trainers Locations, etc etc. It also had X&Y's assets, such as animations, models, balance, etc etc. So that leaves plenty of time to work on improvements and amazing post-games.

...I hope that helps? It's not because they don't have ideas or are lazy, it's because they don't have time. (and Nintendo wants money so that why time constraints exist)

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Wow, there was a discussion about this on Discord? :O Too bad I missed it.

This makes a lot of sense tho. I feel bad about complaining about XY and SM now haha. Too bad Nintendo pushes these deadlines; I've always had the feeling the deadlines and time constraints were limiting the programmers of putting everything they wanted into the game. Take the following Pokémon feature that was planned to be put in SM: with more time they might have been able to make it work without considerable lag.

I wish they'd increase the three-year-gap between generations to four, so that the team could have more time to work on the games, but alas, I think chances of that happening are zero. :/

BlazingCobaltX said:

Take the following Pokémon feature that was planned to be put in SM: with more time they might have been able to make it work without considerable lag.

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That's a feature I'm not sure they would have put in the game, even with loads of time. Console limitation is the reason they cut the following Pokémon feature. They must have tested it out for a long time before realizing they could never optimize it , with our without time constraints. But if they were indeed able to optimize that, it would probably be implemented in USUM.

BlazingCobaltX said:

I wish they'd increase the three-year-gap between generations to four, so that the team could have more time to work on the games, but alas, I think chances of that happening are zero. :/

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Indeed, because look how much those games sold anyway. They sold over 14 Milion copies between November and January, imagine how much money that means! If they launched a year later, that's money Nintendo would also have later. They need each of their franchise to be profitable, and that year was Pokémon's turn to bring in the cash. It's not only Nintendo that does that, it's every AAA game companies. Even Indies have that problem, since most of the time their game gets funded by a client that also puts time contraints & other constraints. I would assume crowdfunded games too, since the gamers complain it's taking too long :P

What do you consider a good postgame? What are its elements?
For me it contains:
- Plenty of Pokémon to catch.
- (A) solid but also reasonably lengthy post-game arc(s).
- Good features that keep me stuck in.
- A good number of new areas for me to explore. Preferably an extra region. Maybe two :P
- A good number of events for Mythical Pokémon which are also really interesting to participate in.

Which game(s) had, in your opinion, the best postgame?
Emerald had really good post-game, with re-battling Gym Leaders, Battle Frontier, a solid amount of catchable Pokémon.

HGSS also had great post-game with a second region, 8 more Gyms and other nice features.

Which game(s) had the worst postgame and how could it have been improved?
Recent games have disappointing post-game. The one I disliked most:

- SM just felt way too short. The post-game story was okay but there was too little to keep me interested (I did not like the Arena and Battle Tree that much) and there were only about 380 Pokémon, the lowest amount in times, and of which only 301 count for the PokéDex.
I got bored pretty quickly.