Has Pokemon become just another game for kids?

[Child Amnesiac]

I'm going to be right to the point on this one, looking at it recently has Pokemon just become another game for kids?

Back in the 2D generations everything was crafted in such a way to even give older audiences challenge, not only in the battles but the stories.

Stories used to be darker, more mature. But still understandable by kids. Older audiences could think about and process someone like Cyrus or Ghestis and how evil they actually were. While kids could just think about the evil guy that wanted to take over the world.

The battles (Gym, Evil Team, etc.) used kick you into high gear and think of strategies outside of type advantages. Because those same bosses would have things like coverage moves and held items that made you think and made it tougher for you.

It seems that the general consensus about the later generations (6, 7, and 8) that the stories, and battles have been getting dumbed down a lot to keep the attention of the kids who play the game, as well as the casual GO market.

The stories have all but lost all complexity or thought according to a lot of fans, (except for S/M) and it just seems like they're pandering to mostly just kids and that casual GO audience with bland simple stories with one-dimensional characters and nothing interesting. Pokemon has essentially lost a lot of the story depth it had.

The battles have been oversimplified to the point that it's become too easy to snag victories, there's little to no strategy involved. All you have to do is have a type advantage, and you basically win.

It seems as though this once special series has been turned into just another game for kids to play.

It's like a TV show that's been on too long and is starting to suffer from seasonal rot. But here, it's generational rot.

So, what do you think? Has Pokemon become just another game for kids?

 

[Palamon]

Pokemon has ALWAYS been a kid's game at its core, and It always will be. Literally, the target audience for Pokemon has always been that, children. This will never change. Yes, Pokemon is also for older people, too. But, for the most part, it's made with children in mind, so. Also we're in a different generation of children now since the generation five.

 

[budube]

Basically what Palamon said, Pokémon has always been a kid's game and it's not as if that's changing ever.

I agree that the games are each time easier, and I'm not saying Pokémon was even hard to begin with, it has always been a moderately easy game, but it's as if the devs are each time making an effort on making it easier as years go by: Going from Single-Use TMs to Permanent TMs, Rare Candies to Exp. Candies, Single Pokémon Exp. Share to Whole Team Exp. Share to Whole Team Permanent Exp. Share, HM deletion (can't say I'm not glad this one happened though). There's also the fact that the games are shorter now, but that's more because of rushed development and short deadlines imo.

I don't agree that the stories are each time worse. They are less developed? Yes, but that's again because of deadlines and rushed development, not because the story is basic. I actually think S/M story is one of the best so far, it just had the bad luck of being written for a 3DS game.

 

[faf]

There's nothing wrong with kid's games at all and as mentioned, Pokemon has always been for kids. However, when you dumb down or water the experience as well as cut features, that's the problem. While there are some kids who would enjoy more simplified games, many others will much rather have a game that reflects a level of polish and have an absolute blast with it. Pokemon has constantly been cutting corners for years to the point where even some kids are getting bored of the games. Rushed timeframes, as mentioned, do not help flesh out the games to be enhanced at all. I genuinely wish the games have more baking time but sadly it's become a business of merchandising, anime, cards, etc.

If anything, just bring back the option to select difficulty.

 

[Nanusmightyena]

Pokémon has always been a kids game. However I disagree about gen 7 having a childish story because it certainly did not. In my opinion gen 7 had the most complex and adult themed story of any Pokémon game. As much as I'd love for them to make a game that's on the darker side and for the older crowd that plays it, it won't ever happen.

 

[Super Pokemon]

Pokemon has always been a title for kids from my experience. We just aged, or grew out of it to see it is truly a game for kids. I may have been 14-ish when I started playing gen I; I always felt like "This is some kiddie stuff, but it is fun nonetheless." Then everyone is middle school were trading the cards so I was like "Oh, I am a kid after-all...."

Nintendo has become a system for kids, but not all their systems were like that such as the SNES. They got back into the mature scene with the GC, but still are a platform designed for kids for the most part. Nothing wrong with that.

SEGA were always edgy by comparison. The secret character in Streets of Rage 3 for example, LOL......

 

[TepigLover101]

well I'm not too sure pokemon super dungeon was the last mystery dungeon created so far( And yes they remade the first one but I don't count it) And damn was it dark .Your character almost dies every 5 seconds , you find your teacher on the side of the beach umm ok?
you and a bunch of other pokemon get turned to stone and you get swallowed by a shadow blob and almost suffocate to death not to mention you're two 10 years olds that have to save the entire world which means that you can die at multiple times
and your father like figure turned out to be evil (spoilers) so while it can be a kids game it's also quite dark

 

[colours]

as a couple of people already mentioned, it's of no surprise that Pokemon is a kid's game. it is, and always has been since the beginning. i'd argue most people on this site got into Pokemon as kids, and that's why some of us stuck with it as adults. but aside from that... if it seems like recent games have pandered a bit too much to the GO market, well you only really have the success of Pokemon GO to blame, here. like it or hate it, it became a game-changer for TPCi and the Pokemon community as a whole, bringing back people who initially weren't into Pokemon for years and attracting new faces. it would only make sense that this would be capitalized on in order to bring those people over to the main series games with both LGPE as well as SwSh to some extent. bringing elements from GO is likely here to stay for the foreseeable future, at the very least.

The battles (Gym, Evil Team, etc.) used kick you into high gear and think of strategies outside of type advantages. Because those same bosses would have things like coverage moves and held items that made you think and made it tougher for you.

while i'm all for more challenges in Pokemon games, im afraid to say that evil teams have literally never been challenging in any sense of the word. starting back from Team Rocket from the old days, all they would bring is Ekans and Zubat, maybe the spare Koffing here and there. Poison-type Pokemon became the defacto monotype for evil teams in like Gen 4, and I think Gen 5? either way, i personally never really felt "kicked into high gear" from evil teams at any rate. perhaps if you were referring to the evil team leaders, but even back in Gen 3, Archie and Maxie weren't exactly difficult as long as you brought decent enough Pokemon.

as far as Gyms go, one's mileage may vary on how challenging Gyms have been throughout the generations. personally speaking, i never really felt a sense of challenging from any of them beyond like Gen 1 and 2, maybe Gen 3 with a few but not much beyond that.

tbh i'd personally argue 7th gen is a bit more challenging than some of the early generations because of the introduction of Totem Pokemon and how those Pokemon have competitive strategies (see: Totem Lurantis and I believe Mimikyu). gave me more of a challenge than most of the Gym Leaders.

but anyway, the tl;dr of this is that while i agree that certain aspects of Pokemon have simply gotten easier (i mean, in gen 8 you barely have to grind your own Pokemon with EXP candies around), there are certain aspects that are as much of a challenge as usual (see: dmax mewtwo raids).

 

[pkmin3033]

One thing I would hasten to point out for those who are saying that Pokemon has gotten easier is that you've been playing these games since the originals and you know what you're doing now where you didn't previously. For a newcomer to the series who has absolutely no idea how the games work, I imagine it's rather difficult. I mean, try playing a new game in a genre that you have absolutely no experience whatsoever with and see how you do. You'll pick it up faster than you did when you were a kid, because you're more intelligent now than you were then, but everyone has to learn how to do something. If you've already learned how, of course it's going to be easier for you. You cannot compare the experience you had as a child with one you have as an adult.

Furthermore, making something less time-consuming does not affect difficulty. If you grind up to level 50 in an old Pokemon game or whatever, you'll plough through it with ease. The only difference between the older titles and the newer ones is that it takes you less time with the newer titles. It just means you can achieve the same results faster and that it requires less patience, and whilst how patient you are with something might affect how difficult it is for you to do it, it does not mean that the game is designed to be easier or harder. The AI has remained more or less the same for the entire series, and the sole exception that I can think of where the player is favoured is in Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee where your partner won't faint sometimes when it receives a hit that should have otherwise done the job. I'd concede that the Let's Go series is designed to be easier (although how much easier that awful catching system is is up for debate) but that's a spinoff designed for a different audience, it's not a core title. But my point is that easier is not faster.

The rest of it is quality of life features that make the experience feel smoother, or offer alternative ways to play to make the game progress faster. Try turning off the EXP share in Gen 6, or not using EXP candies in Gen 8. It'll make the game take far longer. Does that make it more difficult? No, it does not. You're just taking longer to achieve the same results.

...and that's really not a bad thing, persay. I mean, Pokemon has always and will always be a series whose target audience is children, and even if the series has barely progressed, it HAS progressed. Video gaming wasn't as big of a thing back in those days as it is now, and the hardware certainly wasn't as advanced either. Let's be fair, old games weren't really designed with accessibility in mind, and whilst Game Freak have definitely made a few slip ups with accessibility with recent titles (not being able to turn EXP share off in Gen 8) there's nothing to say that you HAVE to use these features. They're there if you need them, but you can ignore them. If you use them, they can make the game take less time so that you don't have to spend hours grinding. If you don't use them, you can have a different experience. But whether you use these features or not, the core experience will remain the same.

The ONLY time Pokemon games have aspired to be more challenging is with Challenge Mode in B2W2, and even that was a rudimentary concession with higher levelled Pokemon with held items; as far as I'm aware (and please, correct me if I'm wrong here) it didn't make the AI smarter. It just meant that you had to take longer to grind - and that it became one hell of a chore over time, thanks to the diminishing returns EXP system Gen 5 adopted - and plan your strategy if you weren't prepared to.

If anything, for a newcomer I would say that Pokemon has actually gotten more difficult to get into, especially competitively. There are more Pokemon, more types, more moves, a greater visibility and emphasis on EV/IV training, Abilities, and Natures, and with the very well-established competitive player base, breaking into it will be very difficult for someone who hasn't. I would absolutely hate to be a child just getting into the franchise now, because it is much bigger beast than it was in the days of Red/Blue/Yellow. It also relies quite heavily on having existing knowledge, because the finer points of the gameplay are still not explained particularly well - if at all - in tutorials, and whilst you're given more guidance in-game about where to go, that too is a time-saver mechanic: old games just used roadblocks. Any other RPG of this size would give you extensive tutorials on what to do. Pokemon tells you how to catch Pokemon, and what facilities are available for use. That's about it. Honestly, without the time-saver features that later games have incorporated, I can't imagine how any child could play these games without an immense amount of frustration.

I'm sorry, but the idea that Pokemon games are getting easier is, in my opinion at least, a false perception brought about by frustration from older players who just play the games as they are presented and end up finishing in about 20 hours because they know what they're doing and how to further exploit the systems. Try not using them if you want it to take longer and be "harder" or whatever.

 

[scubied]

I liked the Kanto series but loved the games as well!