6th Gen Would a third version really have benefitted X&Y?

I've had this conversation with a few other peeps that I know and it seems that some of them feel like it wouldn't have benefitted X&Y any, but I'm curious to know any of your thoughts!

EDIT: You can also discuss whether or not X&Y are really in need of third games.

What do you think was wrong with it? The games were fine on their own. Way better than gen 7.

Enpatsu Shakugan said:

What do you think was wrong with it? The games were fine on their own. Way better than gen 7.

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X&Y are largely seen as the red-headed stepchild of the Pokemon games. If you think SM was poorly received despite sales, X&Y was worse.

• The four rivals are a joke - Self-explanatory. None of them felt like any real rivals at all and Game Freak tried so hard to ship your character with Shauna that it was cringe-worthy. Rather than being rivals, it felt like playing through bad fanfiction where each rival is as an impressive as the other. Tierno, IMO is probably one of the least cringeworthy mostly because his dance aesthetic is... sort of interesting, but he doesn't really do anything interesting aside from just talking about dancing when you fight him. I doubt most people remember Trevor's existence because from the best of my recollection he shows up like three times talking about collecting Pokemon or whatever and... that's pretty much it.
  
  I think the biggest problem is that they're shoved in your face for... no good reason. These rivals aren't important to the narrative in any way aside from Calem and Serena (depending on which one you pick for the protag, I think?). They exist for the sake of existing, because Game Freak wanted to throw spaghetti at the wall with multiple rivals and see if that would leave a lasting impression, which turned out to be none of them.
  
  
• The plot was poorly presented - Okay, so AZ basically created a weapon that caused a mass scale war and because of this, his Floette left him. And then it transitions to Team Flare trying to cause genocide for... what reason now? It seems like they wanted to start a new world because humans and Pokemon are equally corrupt or something. All in all, the plot was confusing and poorly presented with a touching cinematic at the end with AZ reuniting with his Floette but you still don't understand the grander aspect of why Lysandre did what he did. It's pretty much the reason why people didn't like Gen 3's plot: if Archie and Maxie tried to drown and envelop the world in drought respectively... what now? Wouldn't they die as well? It just seemed all over the place and maybe I missed something but the plot just... was really, REALLY poorly presented.
  
  
• Team Flare was an absolute joke - Sure, make fun of Team Skull all you want; their whole point is to look ridiculous. But Team Flare, who's a team that's supposed to be more menacing than even Team Galactic, was presented in almost a comedic fashion in how they are, making it hard to take in the whole gravity of the fact that they're trying to commit world genocide.
  
  
• Battle Maison was absolutely terrible - Coming off the heels of B2W2 where everyone got hyped because of the inclusion of the Pokemon World Tournament, it makes perfect sense that there was an expectation of something just as good. Unfortunately, all we got is a watered down Battle Tower in the Battle Maison. "But colours" you might say, "Battle Tree in SM is basically the same thing!". I'd normally agree with you except the fact that in Maison, you see about a handful of cameos max while in Battle Tree in SM, the number of cameos and AIs that you can partner up with is significantly larger. Not only that, but the fact that you don't even fight past characters in Maison (at least, not to the best of my recollection) like you could in Battle Tree doesn't really make it engaging. But the point of this isn't to compare XY to SM, otherwise this entire thread would just be a flamewar of opinions.
  
  
• Battle Institute was included for absolutely no reason - no need to emphasize on this
  
  
• Zygarde being more relevant in Gen 7 than it was in Gen 6 - I think this is my biggest quipe of all. XY was basically the first generation to the best of my knowledge where the "third version mascot" didn't have any sort of remote importance until the subsequent generation -- even if it's a sidequest! I do wonder why Game Freak didn't make collecting Zygarde Cells a thing in Gen 6 because... it came from Gen 6. There's no excuse why there wasn't any sort of mini-side quest, or some sort of post-game lore about Zygarde in XY... literally anything! It has been a while since I've played XY myself so maybe I haven't come across any mentions of Zygarde in the games at all, but it's ridiculous to me that not even the relationship between it and Xerneas and Yveltal was explained or emphasized as traditional of past Pokemon games, pretty much leaving Zygarde in the dust and players left in complete mystery as to whether or not Zygarde has any sort of real importance in Kalos at all.

That's a list of my own personal gripes with X&Y. They are certainly not "fine on their own", because they're not perfect (no generation is), and I think there are a ton of things that Game Freak could improve on. But the point of this thread isn't to discuss my personal thoughts nor is it to discuss which generation is better, it's to discuss whether or not a third game to X&Y would really fix any of its faults, which do exist, whether you acknowledge them or not.

EDIT: if you wish to expand upon the topic, you can also discuss whether or not X&Y still do warrant a third game.

All that is personal opinion, hardly fact. Same as how I'm sure you disagree with the backlash on gen 7.

I will agree on most of it, apart from the Maison, which lasted the longest for me of any post game challenge and was the most rewarding to beat, and the plot being poorly represented. Welcome to Pokemon. That's every game. And I find it hard to fathom a SM supporter criticizing any other game's story... Hmm.

And yet despite those flaws, most still find it better than gen 7.

Enpatsu Shakugan said:

And I find it hard to fathom a SM supporter criticizing any other game's story... Hmm.

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i'll criticize any game's story if i have concerns, even SM/USUM itself. just because i like SM/USUM doesn't mean i'm blinded by its own faults. i think there's a ton that can be improved in SM and even USUM, but that's not the point of this thread.

but hey, you can believe what you'd like. just lay off the personal jabs because it makes you look rather silly.

And yet despite those flaws, most still find it better than gen 7.

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if you say so.

Er... On topic, I think that third version wouldn't have really benefited Kalos to all that different a degree than, say, Emerald benefited Hoenn. They always could've made it akin to Platinum, where it'd really improve on the base games, but I'd imagine that, like with nearly all the third versions, far more would simply remain more or less the same than would be made different.

Topaz Light said:

Er... On topic, I think that third version wouldn't have really benefited Kalos to all that different a degree than, say, Emerald benefited Hoenn. They always could've made it akin to Platinum, where it'd really improve on the base games, but I'd imagine that, like with nearly all the third versions, far more would simply remain more or less the same than would be made different.

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Yeah, I agree with this. :o I've just been giving this a lot of thought and I wondered if X&Y getting a "Z" version would've really changed a whole lot. I really don't think it will to a significant degree because third versions typically don't change a lot as a rule of thumb.

A 3rd version would've likely done for Kalos just what 3rd versions have always done: given it a larger/better post-game (that should've just been part of the original pair to begin with) and make a few tweaks to gameplay things. Which helps, but 3rd versions tend to not address the sorts of other problems that XY had, and we shouldn't really ever expect them to do more.

But something I've long been wondering is why there never was another Kalos game in any form. Every single other main series region has had another game taking place in it so far, in the same generation, except Kalos. And I can't really think of why.

At the very least, I think if a third game would have been introduced, the Zygarde stuff that happened in Sun and Moon would have happened in "Pokemon Z."

I also think that a third game would have provided an opportunity to go more in detail about the characters' backstories and actions. Concerning Az, in particular, my biggest gripe is that (despite being a giant man who's lived 3,000 years) he hardly appears before his reuniting scene at the end, which what should be a touching moment much less impactful. And yes, there are the documents in Team Flare's lab that explain Az's story, but showing is better than telling, and I think there are opportunities to do more with Az's character, either through expanding upon his existing backstory or placing him in a new scenario.

And there was always the hope for 3rd games having better battle facilities than the initiators of the new pokemon generation. That precedent was kinda set in place with Crystal and especially Emerald. However, unfortunately, since there are so many more and varied pokemon now, I imagine it's very difficult to make a unique battle facility that plays and scales very well. While I think fans would value such a novel facility existing, I don't expect Game Freak to create something that rises to the level of creativity as the Battle Frontier soon. At least Gen 7 got the Battle Agency.

The third game is always the most transparent to me. The blatant add on that they waited to release again. Literally what people are accusing the ultra games or Platinum of.

I'm not sure if Game Freak plans it ahead of time to short change the initial releases or gets better ideas to implement after the games are released (Emerald gave me this vibe), but the fact they didn't do it for XY is the best part about it. Finally a new region that's complete its first game. That's quite a rarity in this series.

I dunno. I suppose it depends on your definition of "complete", but a lot of hardcore defenders of XY felt shortchanged themselves when Game Freak didn't release a third game for that generation. Almost like they've felt cheated compared to Gen 3 and Gen 4 for that matter. As I mentioned, there were very legitimate concerns that some people (even if you liked the generation) had with XY that they would've liked to see rectified with a hypothetical third version, and at the very least it would've been interesting to see what changes a Pokemon Z would bring, however slight those changes may be.

Maybe because they had two remakes planned for that generation, they just didn't have time.

Or they just felt it was complete as is; without anything to add.

Yes and No.

Yes as in X and Y had so many problems to begin. So much issues with the pacing, plot progression, characters, layout. It would be really hard to fix all of that even with the bare minimum time of year(which USUM got). The game would at most need a few years to be better than before.

Some pacing issues could be addressed, the team flare situation could be managed a bit better, and some of the facilities could be reimagined, but other than that, it wouldn't have helped much. I think what people especially don't want to admit on this game is how it was rushed for the 3ds. There are cut corners on so many places such as the story being rushed together literally at the end with the AZ and Team Flare arc to the slow pacing the beginning with there being no plot progression for 2 towns only to speed up suddenly.

Then you'd have to address the difficulty which is a main problem for this game. Say what you want but it was clearly made with the EXP share in mind. Fine. But what if you don't want to use it? You're either too underleveled or too overleveled. And while it's ultimately a choice. I'd like to see it implemented better.

The characters also would need work. As there are waaaayyy too many characters for your friend group. The writers can barely write a decent rival in this game and then they write 3 other characters with barely any personality. They could've easily made Calem and Shauna the only characters in your group as they're the only ones that matter. They can't change that in a Z necessarily without a huge retcon.

Lysandre's relationship with Sycamore would need to be addressed (because seriously it was bullshit how Sycamore had NO FEELINGS ABOUT HIS FRIEND WHO MAY OR MAY NOT BE DEAD) The gym leaders could have a better role. All in all it's just so much to reconsider and depending on how much time they have, it'd probably not even be worth it.

So no, X and Y is not a game which needs a remaster. I'd argue a remaster would only make those problems more apparent. X and Y needs a dissection. This either by a sequel to have more freedom to do whatever they please or a Z version that retconned a lot of things, but considering how thirds usually go I doubt that.

The simple problem is that X and Y needed way more time in development than it got and it shows. So I guess as the saying goes, "a delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad". (Not to say X and Y is terrible, but you get my point)

From the standpoint of my opinion, I would have really liked one. I loved X. I loved it so much that if a third version had happened it would have been the first time I had gotten one since Crystal.

Honestly I'm a bit peeved that Sun/Moon got US/UM while X/Y were just quickly swept under the rug. I had 0% interest in playing another Sun/Moon game, so...

I've never liked the idea of having 3 games which are so similar, with one coming out less than a year after the others. I understand that they do it for sales reasons, as the die-hard fans will buy 2, or even 3 of the games, but really if they just made one game and took a little more time making it really good, instead of feeling the need to "add stuff to an existing game" a few months later, that would be better IMO.