During game, after game (small rant, I guess)

[neoshai]

WARNING:huge wall of text ahead!

When you watch the anime or read the manga, pok?mon feels like a journey.
However when I play the game, it really doesn't.
I even replayed Alpha sapphire in such way that it would be more ... my thing.
I restarted it with a pok?mon with which I'd love to start a journey in pok?mon if it'd be a real thing.
Started with Ralts because Gardevoir is one of my favorite pok?mon and I think having her as a journey partner would be really nice. I played very slowly, talked to a lot of npc's and actually read what they had to say, something I normally don't do. I normally rush through all my games. But even so I felt as if I was constantly being pushed. The game just doesn't feel free to me, it doesn't feel as if I can really explore and on top of that, it kind of feels like there's not a lot to explore to begin with. One of the reasons I love being able to control latias/latios in Oras when flying around and about. Still very limiting but at least somewhat nice.

Just curious but when you play pok?mon does it feel like a journey to you?

Then after finishing the game, beating all gyms/trials, elite four and becoming the champion, what do you do? Finishing the pokedex is mostly on my priority list but it has become quite easy (which I'm definitely not complaining about) by the pokebank. I always bring along all my pokemon from previous games, definitely those with whom I actually played the game through. I even made a pokedex from my boxes.
After that I tend to complete my ribbon collection on my Gardevoir whom has been with me since emerald, technically.
So I have to go through the entire battle resort, battle tree or whatever they have. That takes some time.
But after that and even during that, it feels rather empty to me.
Just to not completely lose interest in the game I started to "perfect" every single pokemon in my pokedex. Which takes a lot of time tbh.
But it really feels like it lacks content to keep me pumped up in the game.
If I were to be a complete kid about this and fantasize myself into the actual pok?mon world, I doubt it'd be boring at all.
Tbh I never really found turnbased games to be that fun to begin with and the only game that actually really stuck to me is pok?mon. Most likely because of the anime and what not when I was still a child, it stuck then and just never really left XD
I was pumped for Pokken tournament because it did give a twist to pok?mon and somewhat more direct input but just like every single game (mostly multiplayer games obviously) other players ruined it for me. I suppose it's mostly because I play for fun so going up against competitive people is rather unpleasant, to say the least, for some reason they try their best to find things that are almost broken.
The competitive side that I have is more wanting to be better with what I like rather than finding something broken. So back to the fantasy here, I'd start with a Ralts/Gardevoir and push her (and myself) beyond limits to become unbeatable, not by an exploit but by actual training.
Speaking of which, the difference between the pok?mon world in anime/manga is very different from the games. While somewhat understandable those are kind of the reasons why the games feel very empty to me.
Ignoring the reset button that Ash's Pikachu gets every region (or sometimes mids region), pok?mon have no limits, just like humans ... kind of at least. Experience is what counts, while experience doesn't really mean a lot in the games. If you spent 2min creating a pok?mon or completing several games with a pok?mon, it doesn't matter. Speaking of experience, the fact that battles are (sometimes) set to level 50 is the biggest bs I've seen. How is my level 100 Gardevoir suddenly level 50? Still no idea why they actually do this ... some people don't even try to train (use enough rarecandies, lets be honest here) to level 100 and stop on 50 or on what level they need (after 50) for a certain move.

Anyway, the entire wall of text here comes to a single question that has been asked before by other people on here ....
What do you do after finishing the game?
Do you really just repeat the battle tree over and over again? Cuz I've kind of finished it, got my ribbons and that's all I really wanted from it tbh XD

Speaking of which, it's annoying that I can't take certain pok?mon in there >.>

Hoping to see a "Pok?mon: breath of the wild" on the switch XD

 

[Zeostar]

I like the feeling of being at the top. Starting on the first route with a level 5 and no items, then the end of the game I'm pretty much king of the world and can do whatever I feel like.

Personally I don't care much about post game. I'm happy enough to bike around the routes, rematch trainers, and tear through everything.

 

[sater10]

i really enjoy every part of the Pokemon games and i can feel as if i was the protagonist of the story. imagination is also needed when you play a game and you will feel the excitement when you play it. IMO, what makes you feel empty when play the game is because you play it in rush just like what you do normally. play it with your heart, feel the story. if you do that, i believe you can see what you normally cannot see in the pokemon franchise.

here is some thought about why competitive pokemon battle is forced to level 50:
https://www.smogon.com/dp/articles/mechanics_level50

 

[pkmin3033]

Pokemon has felt less and less like a journey to me from Gen V onwards, because the narrative has framed it as being someone else's journey, and not mine. Since Black/White, the player has been a tiny cog in someone else's journey - this was especially prominent in Sun/Moon, which were entirely about Lillie - and the lack of character development for the player to match these still-faceless NPCs has made the whole thing feel rather stale. It's the journey of someone else that I can't get invested in. Despite the gameplay and progression of events not changing in any significant way, the narrative has changed dramatically for the poorer and now the games don't really feel like anything.

When I've finished the game I tend to put it down and forget about it. This could change with USUM, but the lack of noteworthy postgame content in the last two generations doesn't really encourage play time beyond accomplishing the main objective, at least to me.

A Pokemon iteration of Breath of the Wild would be disastrous. Whilst the freedom offered by the world was highly appealing, there was absolutely nothing worth doing in it. It was massive expanses of nothing with four miniscule dungeons and even less narrative than usual, and for a Zelda title that is saying something. Whilst that may work better for Pokemon in theory - you can populate the world with Pokemon, after all - a literal translation of that would make the franchise even worse, because then it would lose the narrative focus it has pushing (which, for some bizarre reason I cannot fathom, a lot of people really seem to enjoy) and there would be a lot of empty space.

 

[colours]

whether or not pokemon games have felt less or more like a journey depends a lot on what you feel like your general perspective of a proper journey/adventure should be to begin with.

Meyneth has mentioned pokemon games feeling less like a journey from Gen V onwards, but really, it's not like Gens I-IV were super flawless perfect pokemon games in that aspect; the first two generations didn't have any sort of narrative to them at all. Whether or not you feel that's a good thing depends on your preferences in narrative in video games, though. In Gen III, the NPCs were insignificant and not really memorable aside from Team Magma and Aqua, so there was no one to really get attached to besides probably May/Brendan (depending on the protagonist you chose).

Heck, if you want to be really pedantic, other NPCs didn't get a chance to get so much of a background until Gen IV, not Gen V. While Gen IV didn't revolve around Cynthia nor Barry by any means, the generation was still the start of Game Freak deciding to give other NPCs more character and depth; Cynthia via her own background as a researcher and her grandmother, and Barry via his own father who is a Frontier Brain.

pokemon games, of course, have always been about the player's journey. that never changed regardless of what anyone with nostalgia goggles say about it. despite SM being "about Lillie", anyone who paid an iota of attention to details in the plot objectively would tell you that the player is a crucial part of the story. after all, who was it that got to take care of nebby at the end of the day, and beat Lusamine, upend Team Skull, and knock sense into Gladion? It wasn't Lillie, it was the player. who is it that becomes champion at the end after going through all they go through (and keeps the title to defend it)? hint: it's not lillie.

personally, recent generations have finally given me a reason to care about other NPCs, about the people who I'm going on a journey with and giving my journey some purpose. in early generations it was only about the player, and not in the good sense because every other character bar the rival and evil team leader were all faceless, forgettable npcs to begin with. no one with any backstory in the slightest until Gen IV/Gen V.

tl;dr what defines a satisfying pokemon journey to me isnt just what the player does; it's what the other characters do. if they're going to be a part of my journey, then what's the bigger reason? give them depth, fluidity, emotion, things like that. give me a reason to care.

ultimately making npcs more central to the player's journey is a hit or miss decision anyway because that relies entirely on whether or not the player would be fond of that npc's development and character to begin with and as such, it colours their view of the game as a result.

 

[Sawsbuck]

After finishing the game and the post game stuff I just catch Pokemon, never been really interested in the battle stuff

I would've loved to have been able to start out with a Deerling in Omega Ruby but I couldn't get one until later on in the game

 

[neoshai]

i really enjoy every part of the Pokemon games and i can feel as if i was the protagonist of the story. imagination is also needed when you play a game and you will feel the excitement when you play it. IMO, what makes you feel empty when play the game is because you play it in rush just like what you do normally. play it with your heart, feel the story. if you do that, i believe you can see what you normally cannot see in the pokemon franchise.

here is some thought about why competitive pokemon battle is forced to level 50:
https://www.smogon.com/dp/articles/mechanics_level50

Still doesn't really explain why your pok?mon suddenly go all "new region pikachu". I'm looking at it from a "real life" point of view tho. If you were to eat until you're 100kg, you won't suddenly drop to 50kg just by entering the vegetable isle in the grocery store ...

Anyway, I'm not really talking about the story tho. Lots of people seem to think so. I'm just talking about what I do from start to finish. It feels as if I'm just constantly getting forced to do this and that, without having a lot of free will to it. SuMo was a bit different tho because you had some side quests which honestly needed some sort of note so you didn't forget. But even so you were very limited if you didn't first follow the story line. Take something like Skyrim for example, you could explore everything, totally ignoring the main story and do side quests instead and you'd still be able to actually see everything. Bad explanation I know but I'm hoping I somewhat make sense XD

Pokemon has felt less and less like a journey to me from Gen V onwards, because the narrative has framed it as being someone else's journey, and not mine. Since Black/White, the player has been a tiny cog in someone else's journey - this was especially prominent in Sun/Moon, which were entirely about Lillie - and the lack of character development for the player to match these still-faceless NPCs has made the whole thing feel rather stale. It's the journey of someone else that I can't get invested in. Despite the gameplay and progression of events not changing in any significant way, the narrative has changed dramatically for the poorer and now the games don't really feel like anything.

When I've finished the game I tend to put it down and forget about it. This could change with USUM, but the lack of noteworthy postgame content in the last two generations doesn't really encourage play time beyond accomplishing the main objective, at least to me.

A Pokemon iteration of Breath of the Wild would be disastrous. Whilst the freedom offered by the world was highly appealing, there was absolutely nothing worth doing in it. It was massive expanses of nothing with four miniscule dungeons and even less narrative than usual, and for a Zelda title that is saying something. Whilst that may work better for Pokemon in theory - you can populate the world with Pokemon, after all - a literal translation of that would make the franchise even worse, because then it would lose the narrative focus it has pushing (which, for some bizarre reason I cannot fathom, a lot of people really seem to enjoy) and there would be a lot of empty space.

I'll say the same here, I kind of talked about it in response above. But I'm not to much about the story of pok?mon in general it pretty much has the basic setup of evil group that wants to use pok?mon as tools that you need to defeat and blablabla. It was interesting for the first 2-3 gens (I honestly see gen story 1-2 as 1) but after that I just started to go through the game not even paying attention to the actual story. For me it's more about exploring and such which has always been extremely limited until you finish main story at least once which most of the time leaves you without the will of going back to previously visited places.

I honestly like Breath of the wild, as a LoZ fan I gotta say that I loved the freedom. Then again, I'm also one of the people who really liked Hyrule warriors because I liked to not just be Link but also have some fun with other characters that I love from other LoZ games. I think having an open world with an improved battle system from Pokk?n would be really nice. Only problem I have there is that the thing I like in Pokk?n is the lack of stats/levels/weaknesses, it makes the game slightly more equal, but it's impossible to really put that into any other game because how do you go by evolutions?! What I was hoping for was a game that's somewhat closer to the anime and thus somewhat more "realistic" (not really the word I was looking for but it'll do XD)

whether or not pokemon games have felt less or more like a journey depends a lot on what you feel like your general perspective of a proper journey/adventure should be to begin with.

Meyneth has mentioned pokemon games feeling less like a journey from Gen V onwards, but really, it's not like Gens I-IV were super flawless perfect pokemon games in that aspect; the first two generations didn't have any sort of narrative to them at all. Whether or not you feel that's a good thing depends on your preferences in narrative in video games, though. In Gen III, the NPCs were insignificant and not really memorable aside from Team Magma and Aqua, so there was no one to really get attached to besides probably May/Brendan (depending on the protagonist you chose).

Heck, if you want to be really pedantic, other NPCs didn't get a chance to get so much of a background until Gen IV, not Gen V. While Gen IV didn't revolve around Cynthia nor Barry by any means, the generation was still the start of Game Freak deciding to give other NPCs more character and depth; Cynthia via her own background as a researcher and her grandmother, and Barry via his own father who is a Frontier Brain.

pokemon games, of course, have always been about the player's journey. that never changed regardless of what anyone with nostalgia goggles say about it. despite SM being "about Lillie", anyone who paid an iota of attention to details in the plot objectively would tell you that the player is a crucial part of the story. after all, who was it that got to take care of nebby at the end of the day, and beat Lusamine, upend Team Skull, and knock sense into Gladion? It wasn't Lillie, it was the player. who is it that becomes champion at the end after going through all they go through (and keeps the title to defend it)? hint: it's not lillie.

personally, recent generations have finally given me a reason to care about other NPCs, about the people who I'm going on a journey with and giving my journey some purpose. in early generations it was only about the player, and not in the good sense because every other character bar the rival and evil team leader were all faceless, forgettable npcs to begin with. no one with any backstory in the slightest until Gen IV/Gen V.

tl;dr what defines a satisfying pokemon journey to me isnt just what the player does; it's what the other characters do. if they're going to be a part of my journey, then what's the bigger reason? give them depth, fluidity, emotion, things like that. give me a reason to care.

ultimately making npcs more central to the player's journey is a hit or miss decision anyway because that relies entirely on whether or not the player would be fond of that npc's development and character to begin with and as such, it colours their view of the game as a result.

I mentioned a few things above so ... uhm, plz go read XD
Continuing on from there. I personally fell back "in-love" with pok?mon with OrAs because of how free it felt after part of the story. You got your Latias/Latios to freely roam, you got secret bases to share and explore ... but again that's where it stopped. Still, ever since gen one HM makes it all extremely limiting. Because of those you're forced to follow a narrow line. This again changed with SuMo but HM's now got replaced by ride pok?mon which is definitely better than having HM slaves but it still makes you follow a narrow path and doesn't allow you to do things at your own pace.
I'm glad to see that USUM has some more to offer with going through portals with Lunala/the lion thing (forgot his name) and Mantyne surfing but it won't affect you that much until you completed the main story and become champion ... again.

 

[colours]

But I'm not to much about the story of pok?mon in general it pretty much has the basic setup of evil group that wants to use pok?mon as tools that you need to defeat and blablabla.

aside from SM (somewhat), this is essentially the premise of every pokemon game ever, and unless pokemon games develop a new antagonist or deviate away from the whole "you are a 10 year old who's destiny is to defeat the evil team and save (region here)", this is pretty much how it's going to be.

perhaps something different might happen in the Switch versions of the main games, but don't hold your breath for anything less linear because Pokemon games were more or less always linear to the best of my knowledge.