this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2023
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[–] dinckelman 45 points 1 year ago (2 children)

They should have had these conversations after the release of Black/White. But truth be told, they probably don't give a fuck. They make them, people buy them, they always sell out in record numbers, so they'll make another one again, that'll somehow be even worse than the previous one

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (6 children)

@dinckelman @CosmicSploogeDrizzle Black/White were the best games that the series had. I still don't understand all the hate for these games to this day. The world was great, the postgame was good, and the Pokémon weren't designed as poorly as everyone says.

[–] TwilightVulpine 11 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Because nostalgia is a driving force for this franchise and BW committed the sin to dare not to rely on that. Which is why even when they cut the National Dex in Sword and Shield, they made sure nobody would miss that Charizard was still there.

They are constantly testing how little they can offer and still have people buy out of sheer nostalgia. That Indigo Disk DLC with the Blueberry Academy looks like it will be very barebones, just an enclosed environment with some Elite 4-like fights, but they made sure to show that all the old starter buddies are back, because they know people will flock to that.

[–] dinckelman 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My issues are exactly as you've described. Selling a top shelf product with as little effort as possible, and with as little content as possible.

But the biggest issue I've had really consists of the content the games have now. It doesn't feel like an adventure anymore. There is not thrill from discovery, or going to a new area where things might beat you up, while you're exploring and trying to find a way forward. Your hand is held all the way through, you're being told exactly what to do, and even if you lose, the game still lets you go through. It's just plain not fun anymore, for me personally

[–] TwilightVulpine 4 points 1 year ago

Pokémon was never too challenging but one thing I think people overlooked is that the end of HMs killed a lot of exploration potential and puzzles.

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[–] dinckelman 2 points 1 year ago

Enjoyment of something is completely subjective, but I personally just did not enjoy a lot of the design and style choices in these games. The Pokemon didn't feel very exciting, and it just felt like they were running out of ideas quickly. I can understand why people enjoyed B/W and the 2's, but unfortunately I did not

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

What was wrong with Black and White? Did you mean Sun and Moon?

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (3 children)

It really seems like Gamefreak just can’t handle 3D games, but they’ve been forced to since the Switch is now the only main platform for Nintendo.

I feel like the games would really flourish if they were taken away from Gamefreak and given to a different studio to handle.

They get like 3 years between each major title, that doesn’t seem unreasonable. If they’re overwhelmed by remakes and side games then they need to outsource those parts, but maybe they’re worried about being shown up by another studio.

[–] CosmicSploogeDrizzle 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's the thing. Ganefreak needs to up the bar because eventually if they ignore feedback long enough they will be hit with a disappointing release that doesnt sell gangbusters. At that point the IP will be given to a new studio and Ganefreak will be out of work and have a shit portfolio to get new work. These games sell because they are Pokemon games. Without the IP, Ganefreak will be up shits creek

[–] Mithre 10 points 1 year ago (3 children)

That can't happen, as Gamefreak owns a partial share of Pokemon, along with Nintendo.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

They'll still have to work to improve things because it'll affect their bottom line enough.

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[–] TAG 10 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Maybe the answer is not to do 3D games. Every indie monster collection clone that I can think of is 2D, isometric, or, at most, 2.5 D. AAA developers need to say that some games work fine in 2D, cut down the bloated graphics budget, and focus more on gameplay.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Pretty sure diamond and pearl remakes were outsourced and still ass. The company just doesn't care enough.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

They were decently made games as far as I was aware. The main issue I was seeing brought up with them was that they were direct copies of the originals without any real improvements, so you might as well play the originals. I can't remember seeing any complaints that the ILCA games were made incompetently, just that what they ended up making was uninspired.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

That's what I've heard as well. I played the remakes without having played the originals and aside from some minor control things in the overworld and the E4 difficulty spike I had no problem with them. Most of the criticism I heard came from people who were expecting content from Platinum version to be included and basically boiled down to "WTF, this isn't a remake of Platinum". Most gameplay criticism outside of that comes from Diamond and Pearl themselves not being great, and the "not Platinum" argument applies there in that they didn't draw from Platinum to fix the problems Diamond and Pearl had. If, like me, you hadn't played gen 4 before playing these games, I doubt you'd likely have too many criticisms of the game. But it's the internet, so if it's not perfect it's the worst thing ever.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A common complaint I saw with them was they were Diamond/Pearl remakes, not a Platinum remake (since Platinum had so many improvements).

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Even then, every remake that came before it added something more to the originals than just a 2D sprite to 3D model conversion. Even if they had included the improvements from Platinum, it still would've felt lacking because they added nothing to justify buying and playing the remakes over the originals. Not even the National Pokedex was expanded beyond what already existed back in gen 4, so you couldn't even get the novelty of playing with your newer Pokemon in Sinnoh.

I guess I'm more upset about this than I realized, but to ILCA's credit, none of my complaints come from the perspective of the game being poorly coded or full of bugs.

[–] thorbot 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Violet/Scarlet is such a slog. Horrible performance, uninteresting boss battles and super annoying cutscenes sprinkled into everything. Some crap story about the “school” and “my dad died and is AI now” and a bunch of weird ass Chinese named Pokémon that look like shit. It’s been painful to get through just for the Pokédex entries and honestly I don’t know if I’ll finish my national dex, probably just find someone to trade me the ones I need still.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I honestly feel that the main story is the one thing they got right, it's not on gen 5s level, but much better than gen 6 - 8. The rest of the game was mediocre at best, and raids do really suck compared to gen 8 raids.

The open world part would be a lot better if the battles scaled to your level though. Hopefully gen 10 fixes this.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

(Psst, S/V are the 9th gen)

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[–] CoolSouthpaw 16 points 1 year ago

These new games are so fucking dogshit that I cbf even pirating them. They can get fucked.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They need to have a talk with the Zelda team

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

The Zelda team reached out to Monolith (Xenoblade team) for help with world building for BotW and TotK, Gamefreak needs to suck it up and do the same.

[–] StupidFatRat 12 points 1 year ago

Good. The average AAA game takes at least 5 years to develop and they were working with barely 3

[–] NOT_RICK 10 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I went back to old games I was so disappointed in these. Has there been any improvements? I know dlc is about to come out, but I won’t hold my breath that will fix anything. I don’t want to give them more money anyway

[–] dinckelman 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I still play Crystal, FireRed, and SoulSilver somewhat frequently. Those games truly just felt like a complete adventure, and not a pre-alpha test for someone learning Unity at a university hackathon

[–] NOT_RICK 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’m playing the romhack liquid crystal right now. It’s fun minus some sprite glitches and the fact that the phone/radio don’t seem to work. Can’t figure out if that’s a bug or if they’re story gated. Even with those issues I’m having more fun.

[–] dinckelman 2 points 1 year ago

I was considering playing that too. Still deciding between that, and StormSilver. Both are supposedly pretty decent but unfortunately a bit buggy

[–] TheMinions 8 points 1 year ago

The crashing has lessened, but frame rate and render issues are still there.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

i just reverted to playing hacks

[–] NOT_RICK 3 points 1 year ago

Me too, playing Liquid Crystal now. Just have some issues with the poke gear not working right, but I’m still enjoying it.

[–] ClintSwift 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Lol conversations on performance when a new console is just on the horizon.They'll just use the additional horsepower to just ram bad optimization through.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Bad devs will make subpar games no matter how powerful the platform.

[–] shotgun_crab 7 points 1 year ago

If only they had the time, they could go back to the gen 4-5 days

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well gamefreak needs to hire some optimizers. I know this is a worn out argument but ToTK just show how much the switch and handle if you actually take the systems limitations into considered instead of just lowering the graphics.

[–] TwilightVulpine 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

GameFreak needs time. TotK had a lot of time to get polished.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I'd agree with this. From story and gameplay standpoints, Scarlet/Violet are among the best mainline games in the series, leagues above Sword/Shield (story wise, don't know if they beat Sun/Moon, though). They gave us an open world, a battle gimmick that's balanced well enough to at least not be broken, allowed us to ride the legendary pokemon (as goofy as the designs are) to get around that world, and let us do things in essentially any order. All things fans have been begging GF for for a long time. Unfortunately Pokemon is a huge franchise that relies on so much other media by design that it's tough to allow GF the time they need to give the games the optimization they need. You delay the main games, you then also have to delay the anime and anime movies, the card game, and all the events built around those things as well. It's a major part of how the franchise has become the #1 grossing media franchise in history. That money train can't wait.

Franchises like Mario and Zelda, on the other hand, don't have nearly as much other merchandise or other moving parts to their brands that would have to wait for the new game release, and even then, that other merchandise isn't nearly as big a share of their overall brand as in Pokemon; they don't have anime, Mario only has one movie (we acknowledge) that wasn't connected to a specific entry in the franchise, and so without all that other stuff tied to specific games or "generations", other franchises can much better afford delays. They're mainly about the video games, and when a new mainline Mario/Zelda/etc game comes out, it's an event in itself that may actually benefit from a delay to further build hype.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I wish they released Pokemon Emerald on GBA Online than I would be totally happy.

[–] Clown_Tempura 3 points 1 year ago

Gamefreak? Having 'conversations' about not releasing unfinished, unpolished garbage? Why would they? Pokemon fans have nonexistent standards and will buy it anyway no matter what. I wish I worked for these people, they really lucked into an infinite money printing machine.

[–] Son_of_dad 2 points 6 months ago

There's really no excuse for these pokemon games to look the way they do in 2024 when games like tears of the kingdom exist. It's not like the pokemon company and Nintendo don't have the budget to make a pokemon game of that level. They just don't want to. Same goes for other Japanese game properties that seem to be resistant to modernize and reinvent themselves

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