How do you feel about the current direction of the franchise?

[PoryKid575]

Pokemon is in a pretty interesting place right now, 2024 was a bit of an outlier in that no new mainline games released; and GF has seemed a lot more willing to be experimental, with games like Legends Arceus completely throwing out the traditional mainline game formula; and Ash getting booted from the anime as well. Though with arguably slopply execution a lot of the time (eg: L:A and SV's graphics and FPS). Do you like the direction the franchise's been heading over the past ~5 years or so? Why or why not?
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Personally, I feel mixed. I really like how GF's been shaking things up instead of continuing to reuse the same formula from a 25+yo Gameboy game; but it's incredibly obvious how rushed the studio is just from playing any of the recent games. Pokemon is the biggest media franchise on the planet, but SV runs like a student's project ported from Unity with 0 optimization. That's not to mention cuts in content like Dexit and the post games being lacking. They seem to be taking more time to polish their stuff, taking 2024 off is a promising sign on that front, we'll have to see how Z-A turns out. I think it has a lot of potential, but I'm definitely a little nervous considering GF's recent track record.

 

[Devalue]

A little negative. Put out a good number of spinoffs, as always. Has not been interested in any of the current ones (Legends: Arceus, Go, Masters, Cafe Remix, Sleep, Smile, Unite, kind of New Snap, Detective Pikachu, TCG Pocket). May be a sign of more entrenched tastes, though. Did not care for several other spinoffs in the older days either (Hey You Pikachu, Puzzle League, Mystery Dungeons, Ranger, Rumble...), to be fair.

Already knows full well about all the Scarlet/Violet issues. Will not bother going into them. Looks for signs of positive lessons by Generation 10's release date. Leans towards "no" if it comes out this year.

Still enjoyed Scarlet/Violet, however. Expects to have fun with Generation 10 too. Hopes for a better experience rather than "the best they could do in three years".

 

[SteCisGreendog]

Negativity? Hold my lemonade.

They seem to be playing with favourites among the thousand-plus monsters out there, which I couldn't care less for. Been there, done that, you know? From a consumer point of view, they seem to be doing a good job of selling me stuff that I don't personally want or need, just like Disney and their not-so eco friendly ways.

Case in point, I picked up the Sleep app a couple months ago just to have a certain metal boy in my collection. Couldn't it be simpler if my personal favourites get more coverage in other aspects of the franchise? Until they do, I'm keeping my money.

So yeah. So much for my belief that 'every Pokémon is valid.'

If I happen to ruffle feathers with my thoughts on Pokémon at this moment, remember it's not directed at you or anyone in particular. That's why I haven't been active on PC over winter.

 

[RMVNZ]

A main allure of the franchise is the variety of Pokémon—over a grand at this point!
They're not capitalizing on this fact by repeatedly focusing on the first 151.
And—furthermore—mainly focusing on a handful of Pokémon from that 151.
Eg: Kanto mons displacing Kalos mons in their own gen, the ace of the Gen 8 champion being a Charizard, etc.

 

[Elite Overlord LeSabre™]

The last time I was genuinely excited for anything related to Pokemon was when this was released:

Spoiler:

X/Y were the most recent games in the franchise to rise (somewhat) above mediocrity. The only Pokemon games I've played since have been Sw/Sh (great trainer dress-up game, frustrating outside of that) and BD/SP (decent, nothing more and nothing less) and I have zero interest in picking up any of the others.

Pokemon was my gaming obsession between 2nd and 6th gens. Since then, it's mostly been replaced by the likes of Fire Emblem and Atelier, and more recently, American Truck Simulator. The gameplay is simply more interesting and enjoyable in those games. Why should I waste time journeying through some bland, uninspired fictional world on foot, capturing equally uninspired critters, when I can deliver dangerous chemicals from Seattle to Denver behind the wheel of a gigantic 500 horsepower truck instead? Pokemon releases have become little more than a curiosity lately, and most of the time that curiosity has led me to the decision to not sink time and money into them.

The franchise's new obsessions with "super forms" and "regional forms" have been a major turn-off for me. The bias toward certain Pokemon and trainers has always been an issue, but has been more glaringly obvious with each gen, and they happen to mostly be ones I don't particularly like.

Legends Z-A may be the make-it-or-break-it point for me. I'm keeping an eye on it since Kalos is the "fashion" region, and hopefully that means some great outfits for my character. If that doesn't pan out, or if the game itself turns out to be a buggy, glitchy mess, it's going to be very hard to convince me to buy any Pokemon games going forward.

Spinoffs? I ignore all of them, and will continue to ignore them unless they announce a Pokemon trainer fashion game (like Sw/Sh but without the training/battling stuff attached) or a LeafxSerena visual novel/dating sim. And I'm not holding my breath for either.

In short, Pokemon in recent years has been one disappointment after another, and it's hard to get excited about any news from the franchise. Oh well, at least I have my memories (and a handful of attractive trainer designs) to fall back on.

 

[ReKoil]

The shift to open world has me mixed. Open world games can be fun when executed well. They can be vibrant worlds full of life with tons of things to do and stuff tucked away everywhere.
But so far they haven't really pulled it off that well in Pokemon. The games do feel more full of life as far as the Pokemon go. Seeing them walk around in the wild is a great improvement. What about the people though? The majority of them still just stand in place waiting for you to challenge them. Why do they not get to have a life?

SV just felt kinda felt empty to me, as far as things to do goes. You explore everywhere once and collect the stakes and then it's just 'eh, why bother'. What else is there to do? A couple repeatable gym challenges/trials and ogre oustin'? Meh. There's only so much raiding I can bring myself to do as well. It becomes boring fast.
PLA is a bit more vibrant due to how Pokemon can attack your character, but also less open world than SV was (which was also not fully open world).

What I mainly dislike in the more recent games is them having a rushed feel to them. Like if I let PLA run for too long consecutively, without rebooting manually, it's gonna crash (seems to be roughly 2-3 days). I also remember SV crashing, albeit more rarely. SwSh on the other hand I could just run for however long I want as I've yet to see it crash even once.
Crashes aside there's also stuff like Pokemon spawning inside of walls, outbreaks bugging out, raids and outbreaks randomly resetting when they're not supposed to etc, etc,

I'd love if they slowed their release schedule by a year or two so they can actually polish the game and not release it in a messy state... but that's unlikely to happen.
Additionally, they need to flesh out the game world more. Make those 2 improvements and the way the current games are heading we could actually have some awesome Pokemon games.

 

[nl4real]

Yeah, it feels like the games could benefit from another year or two in the oven.

 

[theclaw]

I'm burnt out by self-centered folks who act like "if it's not what I want, it's rubbish". Pokemon has a trove of characters, that lend themselves to myriad forms of media. No, there's no denying the technical shortcomings of Scarlet/Violet. Or the anime's polarizing drastic tone shift began in Sun & Moon.

Since it's already been mentioned, Dexit for example. It's just not a feature I personally care about. From the start back in 2000, I never expected or asked for the games to implement every Pokemon. (in general I'm sharply critical of the creative direction of Gold and Silver, but that's for another topic)

 

[Zeostar]

I kinda wish they would do a 'reset' and go back to what was working with the 2D games. The Legend of Zelda bounces between 2D and 3D games.

They jumped into the open world genre trend but they weren't ready for it. There are clear strengths such as the writing and characters which I think they usually do decently with anyways, but otherwise it almost functions like a prototype open world from 15 years ago.