What opinion are you defending like this? Pokémon edition

[Alex_Among_Foxes]

I'm curious, what do you mean by "story bloat"? Totally understand the grinding thing, from gen 3 to B/W it was a problem but they have gotten better at it since

I mean there was way too much added (in my opinion) unnecessary conversations with people and things beyond just 'go here beat bad guys/get Gym badge move on' like it was in Crystal. Crystal had an occasional chat with someone, yeah, but if you play the games one after the other you'll notice your run of Crystal finishing much sooner than your run of HG/SS. Those extra things might be fun the first time or two, but after that + the slow level grinding make replaying HG/SS a slog.

 

[Elite Overlord LeSabre™]

A lot of the things you mentioned seem to be more based on Crystal rather than original Gold and Silver.

I think Kris was the only aspect I mentioned that was Crystal exclusive. Everything else I brought up (barren Kanto, horrible level scaling, watered-down Team Rocket, etc.) were common issues in all three games, unless I'm forgetting something and Crystal actually fixed those things. It's been a long time since the internal battery went dead in our Crystal cart, though allegedly my brother still has it somewhere.

But yeah, I completely tossed Silver to the side once Crystal came out and never went back to it, except maybe to trade some exclusive mons over to my Crystal cart.

That and Giovanni was nowhere to be seen in gen 2 either. That one confuses me.

To be fair, I did offer this caveat:

But to answer the question, and honestly, a lot of these are holdover flaws from G/S/C:

Granted I think the whole Giovanni thing would be hard to correct without significantly changing the story of the games, but (at least for me) just because a problem was in the original game too doesn't mean I'm going to be more forgiving of it when it appears in the remake - it still negatively affects my gameplay experience, even if it "should have been expected because the originals had it." Just like all the water in Hoenn and its remakes. Speaking of which...

If HG/SS is mid and so is BD/SP then by default OR/AS and FR/LG are the superior remakes. Long live gen 3 the best generation.

I'd actually only say FR/LG since OR/AS were among those "later games that I skipped entirely" lol

I'd like to close this with another. and completely unrelated unpopular opinion:

Sword/Shield work better as trainer dress-up games than they do as actual Pokemon games.

 

[Rock_Salazar]

I'd like to close this with another. and completely unrelated unpopular opinion:

Sword/Shield work better as trainer dress-up games than they do as actual Pokemon games.

Even in the most unpopular opinions Sword and shield is still trashed. That's good.

And long live gen 3!

 

[PoryKid575]

Pokemon is a terrible competitive game / esport and I hate how GF's been pushing that aspect more and more in recent generations.

 

[WddB03]

Pokemon is a terrible competitive game / esport and I hate how GF's been pushing that aspect more and more in recent generations.

That, is the last thing I was expecting. You mind expanding on that a bit?

 

[RadEmpoleon]

That, is the last thing I was expecting. You mind expanding on that a bit?

I'm not OP, but I imagine a big reason for this is the insane power creep that's been happening in the past few generations. The new battle gimmicks since Megas have been getting increasingly more elaborate (and obnoxious). Stats have been getting more unbalanced (Zacian's base 170 (nerfed to 150 in SV) Attack, and a free +1 as soon as it enters battle, Regieleki's base 200 speed). Signature moves/abilities have become increasingly more broken (Dondozo + Tatsugiri, Rage Fist, Good as Gold blocking nearly EVERY status move, Population Bomb hitting up to TEN times, Dire Claw has a 50% chance to poison/paralyze/put to sleep). New battle items have very strong effects that can overpower a Pokémon if used properly (Booster Energy, Covert Cloak, Loaded Dice, Mirror Herb). Top threats on the majority of teams (Incineroar, Amoonguss, etc) make the meta very stale and don't let other mons have a chance to shine. Not to mention other annoying things that have always been prevalent (breeding for perfect IVs, the critical hit system, inaccurate moves, the RNG in general, etc).

(I played a bit of competitive in SwSh, but I hardly know anything about SV competitive. I'm sure this could be worded better by someone who is more familiar with the gen 8/9 meta)

EDIT: also worth mentioning that the existence of Pokémon Champions confirms that GF wants to lean in more on the competitive aspect of Pokémon

 

[bobandbill]

The one cool thing HG/SS did was have the Pokemon follow behind you, but even that was done pretty dang well in BD/SP and the games actually feel good to play.

Hmm, I disagree on this bit - the BDSP following feature, that is. I think it is substantially worse than HGSS's! It can hinder your movement, for one, and you also do not get the cool flavour text for interacting with them (e.g. Bellsprout in the Sprout Tower, Fire or Water types when it is raining, getting items from them, etc.)

I'm not OP, but I imagine a big reason for this is the insane power creep that's been happening in the past few generations. The new battle gimmicks since Megas have been getting increasingly more elaborate (and obnoxious). Stats have been getting more unbalanced (Zacian's base 170 (nerfed to 150 in SV) Attack, and a free +1 as soon as it enters battle, Regieleki's base 200 speed). Signature moves/abilities have become increasingly more broken (Dondozo + Tatsugiri, Rage Fist, Good as Gold blocking nearly EVERY status move, Population Bomb hitting up to TEN times, Dire Claw has a 50% chance to poison/paralyze/put to sleep). New battle items have very strong effects that can overpower a Pokémon if used properly (Booster Energy, Covert Cloak, Loaded Dice, Mirror Herb). Top threats on the majority of teams (Incineroar, Amoonguss, etc) make the meta very stale and don't let other mons have a chance to shine. Not to mention other annoying things that have always been prevalent (breeding for perfect IVs, the critical hit system, inaccurate moves, the RNG in general, etc).

(I played a bit of competitive in SwSh, but I hardly know anything about SV competitive. I'm sure this could be worded better by someone who is more familiar with the gen 8/9 meta)

EDIT: also worth mentioning that the existence of Pokémon Champions confirms that GF wants to lean in more on the competitive aspect of Pokémon

Adding to this, there's still issues when the same few pokes keep popping up across generations - look at Incineroar for instance.


Oh, I probably should make a hot take. Uhh... only played one of them (the Switch remake of the original), but the story of PMD is overrated. Not bad, but not nearly as good as I've heard some people describe it.

 

[PoryKid575]

That, is the last thing I was expecting. You mind expanding on that a bit?

I fully agree with what RadEmpoleon & bobandbill said, but the fundamental issue for me is that Pokemon is simultaneously too simple and too complicated. It's overly complicated in that you need to keep track of all these esoteric stats that aren't visible to the average player like EVs / IVs to create viable Pokemon, as well as spend hundreds of hours grinding for the items to equip them as well as possible. But you're typically incredibly limited once you actually get into a match. You only have 9 options max per move (4 attacks + 5 potential switches), and the fact that most Pokemon are fragile and will go down in <3 hits mean you usually only have 1-2 reasonable choices for what to do in a given turn. In addition, half the time games are essentially decided before they even begin because of team composition, and you're either gtg or screwed if both players know what they're doing. The battling system is perfectly servicable for PvP matches amongst friends, but GF trying to make Pokemon into an esport is like trying to reinforce a buckling foot bridge made of toothpicks by doubling the amount of columns in my opinion, the extra support doesn't fix the core issue, it just covers up some of the symptoms.