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5th Gen BW is better than BW2

  • 1
    Posts
    4
    Years
    • Seen Dec 29, 2019
    Hi! Is it just me, or is it kinda sad to move on from a playthrough of BW to BW2, Cheren is gone, Bianca is uh, just there (is she old now?) and overall feels worse. Just wanna hear some thoughts from you guys.
     

    bobandbill

    one more time
  • 16,956
    Posts
    16
    Years
    Hi! Is it just me, or is it kinda sad to move on from a playthrough of BW to BW2, Cheren is gone, Bianca is uh, just there (is she old now?) and overall feels worse. Just wanna hear some thoughts from you guys.
    Depends. With the story - yes, it's worse imo. Not bad, but worse. The main rival was also for me very much of a step down from Cheren and BIanca. At least his battle theme was neat.

    Cheren and Bianca were still around, mind, they just had their new roles now, and that was a plus for me - seeing continued character development for the pair, and them living their best lives.

    Content wise, B2W2 was better than BW easily. Lots of neat new features like PWT, Join Avenue and Entralink Missions, polished other aspects (Pokedex is super neat imo), etc.
     

    Sydian

    fake your death.
  • 33,379
    Posts
    16
    Years
    i rather enjoy them both, mostly for their difficulty. they could be downright frustrating at times, but it made them all the more enjoyable to replay. gen V is probably the last gen that i really ran into the ground with replaying. i still know them fairly well. story wise, bw has more going for it than bw2, but post-game and even main story content wise, bw2 has it beat by a long shot. i was more intent on just bowling through the main story and for as many times as i've replayed bw2, i have never done the entire post game. lol

    but yeah if you were looking for a better story, i don't think you'll find that in bw2, but if you're looking for a good time and a good challenge, it's fantastic for that. in the long run though you just gotta enjoy the ride, i know it's impossible to say don't compare the two bc it's gonna happen, but just take it for what it is and have fun.
     
  • 8,973
    Posts
    19
    Years
    the Pokemon World Tournament and Join Avenue easily tops what BW had to offer, for me. it's actually kind of insulting in a way (sorry but i feel strongly about this) because B2W2's postgame is evident that Game Freak is very much capable of creating something engaging and super fun if they cared to, so why did they drop the ball in BW's postgame? why did they go from having the Battle Frontier in Gen 4, which had the player choose from all different sorts of conditions they'd like to battle in (which made things fun, imo) to... whatever the hell the Battle Subway was?? it really didn't make any sense.

    i also realize that BW had Black City/White Forest to make up for this somewhat, which is fair and honestly i enjoyed Black City for its aesthetics. but this is kind of the point im trying to get across in that it's really odd that Game Freak didn't put in as much effort as they could've in post-game batting areas/things to do while they instead focused instead on making Black City/White forest interesting. in that end, B2W2 felt a lot more... complete and more fun than BW did.

    i won't get into the story because i feel that's a much more subjective area. personally, i don't replay my pokemon games for the sake of experiencing the story multiple times, so content is far more important to me.
     
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    Nah

  • 15,974
    Posts
    10
    Years
    • Age 31
    • she/her, they/them
    • Seen today
    the Pokemon World Tournament and Join Avenue easily tops what BW had to offer, for me. it's actually kind of insulting in a way (sorry but i feel strongly about this) because B2W2's postgame is evident that Game Freak is very much capable of creating something engaging and super fun if they cared to, so why did they drop the ball in BW's postgame? why did they go from having the Battle Frontier in Gen 4, which had the player choose from all different sorts of conditions they'd like to battle in (which made things fun, imo) to... whatever the hell the Battle Subway was?? it really didn't make any sense.
    They dropped the ball with BW's postgame because they have always dropped the ball with the first pair of games for a generation. Would really love to see them stop this trend of putting out a barebones game every generation, since, as you say, they have proven that they can make some quality postgame content, but we both know that's not happening any time soon unfortunately.

    I'm pretty sure Battle Subway was just GF trying to give the Battle Tower a new coat of paint, it's functionally the same except they broke it up into chunks of 7 battles, for whatever reason.
     

    Flowerchild

    fleeting assembly
  • 8,709
    Posts
    14
    Years
    I prefer BW2 for the features and expansion of the world, but if you were really into BW's characters I can understand liking BW better! At least we can all agree they're both awesome games I hope.
     
  • 9,725
    Posts
    8
    Years
    By story yes, any attempt BW made to explore the ethics within the pokemon universe and question who is good and who is bad is thrown out window in the sequels to make room for join avenue, pokestar studios, the world tournament, the nature preserve and all of the other spiffy new post-game content. BW2 has by far the more innovative features, but BW has by far the more innovative story. The first BW will always be my favorite because of the way it portrayed character, even if the rest of the gameplay is barebones compared the sequels.

    Team Plasma had a charismatic and sympathetic figurehead previously with N, and the organization appealled to our compassion. Team Plasma used the very love for pokemon that draws us into the series against us by posing the argument that pokemon may be better off not living under the control of humans. There was a logical argument to be made that pokemon were living in an exploitative system. Team Plasma in BW2 instead is maniacally loud and clear that they just want to plunge Unova into a frozen wasteland now.

    In the first games you live out an ancient legend in the middle of what looks like modern day New York, becoming the hero of truth/ideals from the region's mythology. In the climax of the story you succeed where the champion has failed and stop the antagonist after tapping into a magic that had been long lost to the world, reviving the legendary dragon from stone in your hour of need through the power of your sense of ideals/truth, and defeat a character who is friend, rival and villain all in one, and your polar opposite.

    The first game is literally about the balance amount of yin and yang. That's about as thoughtful as a main series pokemon game is going to get. I think it's not just the better written of the Unova installments, but has the best writing of any generation as far as I have played.
     
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  • 19
    Posts
    4
    Years
    If you look at BW and BW2 separately, then yeah, you could argue that one of the two is better, BW for the story and BW2 for the features
    But in my opinion, you have to look at BW2 as BW's sequel, and in that regard, I think it is a really, really great game. Both entries form an experience together, and a superb one at that
     
  • 5,285
    Posts
    14
    Years
    • Seen May 7, 2024
    Story-wise BW really just upped the game, as has been said above more eloquently than I'm presently capable of putting it. B2W2 was the first time since Emerald that I didn't get a new Pokémon game on opening day, mostly due to the brilliance of Assassin's Creed: Black Flag keeping me entertained. I eventually got a pre-owned one, although I think it glitched a bit in the city that had the Cold Storage in Black / White. I never actually got to the Pokémon World Tournament or anything like that.
    Mostly I just found it really cool to see the passage of time on a region other than Kanto. As someone who probably should have taken Geology instead of Geography to degree level, I loved that Cinnabar Island blew up in the 3 years since Red became Champion, so seeing that Unova not only had inaccessible areas but whole new settlements? Brilliant!
    However, there was a frustration in getting the game too late to be able to access the Nature Preserve as I have no way of getting a Rufflet / Braviary into my game to be seen (I bought Black, then its direct sequel Black 2 - a logical thing, yet it feels like GF are punishing me for it?) ...and by the time I looked up what that location was even called I found out about the Key System and apparently I only get two game modes unless I violate lockdown to find someone with White 2? I'd never play on easy mode anyway, but still...not great. The lack of Rufflet / Braviary especially got to me as I was someone who would rather not have had the previous gens' Pokémon in the game before the end, even though it gave me a chance to finally train up a Zangoose.
    It is pleasing to see I can't remember every story beat of a game though!
     
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