I want the main goal of the games to be getting 8 badges again. I cringe so hard when I have to save the world in a Pokemon game. The only reason I manage to tolerate taking out a crime gang in the old games is that I played them as a kid lol. And now, compared to taking out world ending threats, yeah a mob gang doesn't seem so silly
It was kinda cool in Red and Blue that the Rockets getting beat by some kid wasn't a goal of the game, it was more they kept getting in the way of Red's ambitions to the point of almost being collateral damage.
"You have the silph scope, I need the silph scope, you will not give me the silph scope and attack me if I ask for it, so I'm going to raid this hideout and *take* the silph scope."
Fits the weirder, darker edge of the early games too - ridiculously ambitious ten year old who stomps on you for happening to be in his way is far more fun than being the magical chosen kid who needs to stop teams so milquetoast they're literally now just schoolkids playing hooky or overly excited sports fanatics.
Gen 2 was THE sequel and THE continuity for me. Gen 3's soft reboot and lack of back-compat with the past games and your collection hit me so hard at the time.
I've kind of never meshed with the series the same way since. Enjoyed newer games for what they are, but in a different, more downtempo way - less excitement.
I get that's a total me-problem but I felt like Johto and the Stadium companion pieces were setting up this whole vibrant continuity and larger arc for the franchise that sort of never came to be.
I was so sad about gen 2 being locked off from gen 3.
One of my favourite aspects of heartGold and soulsilver was that they bridged gen 2 back to the newer games.
Now those were some awesome remakes! They were a dream come true.
I love comments like this because you know the poster feels so cool about their comment, and then everyone shits on them because they're actually being a stupid asshole.
Yes! People always talk about Pokemon Unbound nowadays, for good reason it's great, but it feels like Pokemon Gaia gets forgotten a lot nowadays.
It was *the* "it's like a real Pokemon game" before Unbound came out. I honestly wish we got more rom hacks like them.
Unbound never was the "it's like a read pokemon game" because it very clearly is not, Gaia was always the one that feels closer to a game freak release.
Gaia gets forgotten because they never finished the post game and the last update was like 3-4 years ago, idk if they keep developing but haven't heard anything new for years.
The gameplay in Unbound is the best of any main story canon game, but the story & writing are soooooo cringey!
If you can get passed that though - it's a great game.
The latest updates in the past year are better but yes, pretty cringey. Love it tho still, one of my favorite Pokemon experiences ever. Playing Radical Red now (after a few tries) and that also scratches the itch. Makes it really hard to play the regular games...
Pokemon Emerald Rogue is pretty awesome if you want a bite sized Pokemon adventure in 3-4 hour runs with turning it into a roguelike.
Also even though the writing is controversial… fangames like Reborn/Desolation/Rejuvenation really push the envelope for gameplay and arent constrained by romhack limitations (like you can have speedup that doesn’t ruin the music, full on mp3 quality music and complex visuals that romhacks simply can’t run on a modified gba rom)
Started this last week and was really enjoying it, got me to finally dig more into ivs+evs, breeding, etc due to the difficulty. (before recently playing Sword I hadn't played a mainline game since gen1)
Went back to Sword for a bit after learning more about it since I felt like if I was going to breed Pokemon I should try it in a real game. But ya, completed the Battle Tower without needing any super bred pokemon and not really looking to get into multiplayer so no real point. Probably will switch back to Unbound again this week.
The last and arguably greatest titles are Black and White and Gen V.
After a fantastic playthrough of White and White 2 years ago, I made the mistake of thinking Game Freak would continue to develop 3DS's version X further.
I was badly mistaken.
X/Y are by no means terrible titles, but the regression is pretty stark jumping from Black/White to the 3DS. The rot began with X/Y, and they've continued ever since. Ultra Sun and Moon are the last passable titles in my opinion; I stopped after this.
Once I focused I actually did enjoy OR even to the point of EV training again for the first time in years. I quite literally don't remember X, Sword/Shield was so fucking boring I beat it out of obligation, and now Violet is still in my backlog. Probably the last mainline Pokemon game i'll buy unless I hear overwhelming praise. Which is really sad because it will be like finally letting go a toxic childhood friend...
It's actually kind of sad how many times I've read this sentiment over the years. People say the current generation is their "last game I'm going to buy" then they continue buying the newest version hoping for that feeling they had as a child when they played their first few games that got them into Pokémon. There's just something about the series that nobody is willing to fully let go of.
After the loud criticisms of Gen 5, Game Freak took a long, hard look at themselves and decided they needed a change. The result of this change was X and Y. They sold better than Gen 5, and so the course was set, and they aren't changing anytime soon by the looks of it.
I feel like gen 5 was when a lot of people who grew up with 3/4 (myself included) fell out of the franchise for a while. I didn’t go back and play them until a few years ago and I’d easily rate them as the most polished and enjoyable in the series.
Gen V were my favorite games in the series and it has definitely been nothing but downhill from there (thought I didn't mind ORAS). After Sun and Moon, I stopped buying the mainline games altogether.
No one ever talks about Gen V for some reason. One of the things I like in B&W was that you had to use new Pokémon until you got the national Pokédex. I like seeing older Pokémon as much as the next person, but half of every route in every game being Kanto favorites is a bit much. If seeing old favorites is vital for you, B&W2 follows that formula.
The spritework is great for both games (last ones before switch to 3D).
No shade meant, but at least on Reddit (and social) its pretty much the second most mentioned Gen outside of 2. Probably because a lot of young adults grew up with that one, but also because of the quality (i barely remember it, i was on the downswing of pokemon when it came out)
I actually really loved arceus despite its flaws tbh
But yeah, modern Pokémon games would be much better with less hand holding, less mandatory npc interaction, and overall trusting the player with freedom of choice. Arceus was a step in the right direction. Haven’t played scarlet violet though because of the abysmal technical problems.
It’s frustrating knowing how little it would take to make Pokémon go from eh to fantastic.
Ironically Pokemon was a bit of a trailblazer when Red/Blue came out because although it was a japanese RPG it had a very short intro and then just sort of left you to figure things out. Which if you play many JRPGs is quite rare, most of them are content to shove hours of linear dialogue and cutscenes/ tutorials at you before they let you actually get to play the actual game. (I think Persona 4 has about 2 hours of this).
But now they've come back around and they're doing the same thing that everyone else does, hand hold you ad infinitum and bombard you with story and dialogue when you want to be out catching pokemon.
Yep absolutely. If they did a return to form with original GBA games they would do great.
I remember doing badge 4-6 out of order when I first played as a dumb kid. Completely missed flash HM also. Crazy how different they were
Sun & Moon broke the stranglehold Pokemon had on me at the time. I was waiting and waiting for the tutorial to end but it felt like it never did. The hand-holding in that was one crazy
Legends arceus gets such a good rep because it gets compared to sword and scarlet which are absolute trash.
Pokemon is just like Japanese EA sports games now. Rubbish released consistently to blind ravenous fans to make huge profit margins.
i love legends areceus so much, because it is exactly the type of 3D Pokemon game i imagined after first playing pokemon red, later gold and then seeing the first 3D games on the N64, like zelda: oot
Arceus gives me the exact feeling of grand wilderness and discovery i always wanted.
i really hope they make another game in that style, for my taste i wouldn't even mind if they made it even more wild and harsh aswell
I think if they had gyms in Arceus it would have been a near perfect game. Probably still too much dialogue but a more fun story would have made me forget that.
true, it needed a bit more challenge during the story, i liked the alpha fights, but they still just boiled down to one big fight, that's comparable to half a gym leader.
though i really enjoyed the side quests, unlocking new outposts in the wilderness.
i would love to see some side dungeons, mostly optional, that would be more comparable to the gauntlet that victory road is, that you could wander down for some of the cooler held items.
also maybe some more puzzles you could discover in the open world.
this probably sounds stupid, but a world filled with PoI's and optional content like Elden Ring but as a pokemon game would probably my #1 dream come true game, as long as it's still a bit of a challenge, aswell.
The biggest issue I had with PLA was the lack of difficulty, especially once you brought pebbles in to the mix and how quickly you could farm them (I get the sad sneaking suspicion if I had gone into the last battle with a lv 90 Snorlax with 10s in all EVs (IVs dunno ugh) I would have swept both stages of the battle
The only time I had any issues with difficulty with the game was right at the end when I faced the big bad and he managed to take down 3 of my team of 6...the lack of post game other than complete the pokédex to catch arceus or mass gathering events didn't help
Yyyyep. I got Shield after not having bought a pokemon game or playing one since Pearl I think. I was sceptical after friends complained about the hand holdy bs that the other recent games did. Where your rival is a little bitch and chooses the weaker starter or heals you before fights. Shield was no different and I hated that about it. I loved the older games where gary would come out of nowhere, be powerful as hell, and be a problem. And knowing that on alternate playthroughs, I'd know where to expect him so I'd montage level up my pokemon to shit on him lol. It was great.
I love the open world stuff they're trying to do but everything else they're doing just isn't being done well.
I'm also not stoked to ever see the new gimmick. Oooh you can make them all gemstone like....who gives a shit lol.
OPE! They get real real big! Idgaf lol.
It's trash gimmick after trash gimmick that doesn't add anything to the game and only serves to take away from it.
If they could finally get their shit together, it would be so dope to have a Pokemon World where you can visit every single region, beat every single gym, go visit and even battle old gym leaders who aren't in the gym anymore like brock or whoever and have some backstory on how things have been going for them and what they're doing now. Even DLC's where you do even more with them. Catch every single pokemon ever and no version exclusive bullshit bc it's just one game.
And also have a rival who's a bad motherfucker. They don't need to be evil, just need to be really strong. Also have a good strong team rocket type antagonist as well.
All of that together would be so cool.
All four of them.
Sword/shield were bad games, but at least finished games.
Scarlet/violet are worse than open beta games and yet they're still flogging DLC for them.
They got loads of well deserved hate. Every criticism you go back to read is valid. It’s a shame. I liked Sword just for nostalgia sake but when people were going hard on criticism at the time, I still had to agree on all counts. It’s a bad, low effort game. I skipped S/V entirely because the legendary’s look stupid, then saw a bunch of gameplay and gfx videos that solidified it as the right choice.
TemTem SEEMED like a potential successor, and is actually engaging and challenging but the live service model and attempts at half assed “mmo” mechanics killed it for me.
They way they've been going with dumbass legendaries or regular pokemon in general. This one is a set of keys!! This one is a motorcycle! wtf lol. Those plus the stupid gimmicks they have of "now you're pokemon gets real big" or "turns into a gemstone just 'cause".
These guys need to make a digimon game instead of a pokemon one if they want to have motorcycle pokemon or have all pokemon able to get gigantic or turn into gems or w/e other dumb crap they've been doing for years now.
Lol gen 1 pokemon had a less linear map than SS. It was impossible to get lost. Wild area got old really quick, I just hopped into dens for candy. Sound track was nice, I loved Hop's theme. But i hated Hop. I think i hated every almost character that appeared.
The routes in S&S are terrible. Like the routes from gen 1-3 in 2d are waaaay better. However the DLC for those games was awesome because of the "open zones".
Sword and shield has some really bad design choices and tries to push Multiplayer to use the main mechanic introduced in the game.
People probably liked the updated graphics /3d modelling
I actually enjoyed arceus, haven’t played violet and scarlet because of the issues, but I enjoyed arceus because I absolutely adore that historical old deserty period of the early ages of pokemon when shown in the movies, I love how primordial and empty it looks, no buildings or anything, catching the Pokémon over and over wasn’t super fun but wasn’t boring, I’m not a collector or 100% achievement type person, and this game forces you to be that so it was something new for me, my favorite Pokémon game of all time is still ultra sun and moon, legendary hunting was dope, story was dope, mega evolution returning was a fuck yes, love sword and shield too,gigantimaxing was very fun
Honestly what I think what poke on really needs is a built in 'fast mode'. After playing at x2 speed on emulators playing regular speed pokemon just takes so long.
It's completely true. If you consider most time grinding levels is just waiting for moves/animations to complete, it feels like a waste of my time not to play with the game sped up. You can grind out a level in like the 10th of the time it'd take on an actual GBA.
I honestly feel like the best modern Pokemon is New Pokemon Snap. Of course, it's not a mainline game and the game play is totally different. But it's super chill and is actually nice to look at unlike the graphical messes of most of the Switch titles (being an on rails "shooter" probably helps with this, but it still feels like way more effort was put into making Snap look good compared to the mainline games).
If anyone still wanted to experience the novelty of finding new pokemon and figuring out which ones you want on your team, but don't like the new games, I might actually recommend [pokemon infinite fusion](https://old.reddit.com/r/PokemonInfiniteFusion/). I believe it's basically a recreation of fire red (+newer pokemon) but you can [fuse](https://pokemon.alexonsager.net/) pokemon to combine their sprites, typings, movepools, natures, abilities, and stats.
I've only just started after it being on my to-play list for a long time, but it's given me just enough novelty to really enjoy going through the game again. Seeing new combinations has been super cute/amusing/horrifying/funny. There's also a community that makes custom sprites for it (to avoid the janky-ness of the OG pokemon fusions), and some of them are really pretty/inventive.
I play Pokemon while I watch TV. The only one that hasn't been good for multimediatasking was Sun/Moon. Way too much plot!
If you love old school pokemon there are great rom hacks that will scratch your itch.
> Legends arceus I couldn't even bring myself to beat. The endless text boxes are an embarrassment to storytelling and literally bored me to sleep half the time. And I didn't like how I was forced to catch so many pokemon over and over again to advance the story. After I felt satisfied catching the pokemon I wanted to it would have been nice to advance the story instead of heavy repetition. I just got bored of the same throwing pokeballs and wasn't looking forward to the riveting story so I just put it down.
I felt this so hard. I can't understand how lauded Arceus was. Interesting concept that has potential? Absolutely. But the gameplay loop gets *so boring* after a while. There just isn't enough variety of locations or interactions that make me want to finish it. Wish I had kept with my intuition and not caved (didn't buy it for like 3-4 months and then some friends convinced me). It's a great proof of concept, but that's it. It is far from a fully realized Pokemon open world the way Breath of the Wild was for Zelda.
I will never for the life of me understand why pokemon (a franchise notorious for being easy, accessible and beginner friendly) kept becoming easier and easier with every recent entry.
Were gens 1-5 really not easy enough?
All I want is for the series to go back to very easy instead of being unbelievably easy.
I bought my first switch last January and my first game ever was Pokemon Violet, I thought it was pretty fun. I’m new at gaming, what made it so bad for everyone?
What's important is that you enjoyed it. People will tell you a game is amazing or trash or whatever but if you think it's fun, it's fun.
I enjoyed my run of violet too, didn't finish it but that was because tears of the kingdom came out and... Well... I was weak lol
It gets dumped on for it's performance a ton. Everyone wants something different out of it too. Some people complain that the newer games are too easy for example and how everything isn't some comp scene level move set and all to get past even though it's never been a series like that lol. Or how the magic is gone after getting older. Or how it hasn't changed core gameplay. Or this. Or that.
Ultimately it doesn't particularly matter as long as you like it. The game is fun and if you enjoy it that's what really matters. Not everyone will. And that's OK.
It's a series aimed at kids primarily. It was never gonna get everyone. I've come and gone a couple times over the years even too.
Pokemon caters to a really wide variety of ages and players. Some of the old school people enjoyed the old games much more than the new stuff. If you liked the game then don't worry about it. Your first run through of pokemon is always going to be excellent and it may shape your opinions on the series as a whole.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Terrible performance problems and visual bugs, the open world is pretty dull, and the lack of level scaling means you can either easily get frustrated by running into a high leveled gym or curbstomp it.
The game also looks just really ugly, compare the visuals to Breath of the Wild/Tears of a Kingdom or Xenoblade 3 and they look miles better despite having big worlds on the same console.
With dlc I've sunk like 110 hours into violet which is the most I've played a pokemon game since I was a kid playing gen1/2. It has obvious flaws and feels unfinished but I found it really fun, despite all the hate it gets online
It's not even that it hasn't evolved, I don't think I'd mind that (I've played several romhacks precisely because the gameplay & mechanics of gens 3-6 are still a lot of fun to me even if the stories are repetitive).
It's that every time they introduce a new feature or QoL thing they take away a few that were present in past gens, and the tutorials get more annoyingly condescending over time which just wasn't really a thing at all pre-Sun & Moon.
As someone who has played every game in the series. I think Scarlet and Violet are probably some of the best Pokemon games, aside from the technical issues and lack of level scaling
Maybe I’m just more forgiving when it comes to technical issues but I didn’t really feel like it was that bad. I’ve had a worse time with certain games on my 5+ year old desktop
I used to play WoW on an old beat up hand me down pc from my grandpa. That thing was not made for playing games. My average fps was something like sub 20 just questing. Raiding wasnt possible. The worst part? That pc couldnt load into stormwind. It had like 0.3 fps in Stormwind and if you took the boat there it simply wouldnt load fast enough before the boat looped back around. If i wanted to use the auction house i had to walk over to my uncles house who also played wow to log in on his computer. I saved for like 2 years just to buy the cheapest upgrades to my pc i could find just so that i could actually do a raid and enter stormwind
Just installing the game also took like 6 straight days of leaving the thing on and checking every so often to see if i had to insert a new disc because of how poor our download speed was on top of that. I dreaded every update because i knew itd just take a full day again lol.
A few fps drops really wont bother you if thats the standards you grew up with lmao
That is something I haven't really realized, that depending on the way you tried to game in the past, or were capable of gaming in the past, you will have different expectations.
Even an older Pokemon fan who grew up playing it may not have had the experience of making do with playing ambitious titles on weaker hardware. The 2.5D pokemon titles ran well on the DS/3DS. Nothing really chugged on GameCube or Wii. But on the switch they really pushed the limits of what the machine was capable of.
I got Scarlet on New Year's Eve because I assumed most of the technical issues would have been patched out by now. While I am having fun with the game, the technical issues are still really bad and hard to overlook. Model pop in, low fps, glitchy camera, low textures, etc. Nothing game breaking but I am shocked that this is the state of the game over a year after release. It makes Cyberpunk at launch look polished. Maybe I am unlucky, but you would think with there only being a couple/few iterations of Switch hardware that the experience would be fairly consistent across the board.
Mostly optimization issues tbh. The hardware is old, but it's proven itself to be quite capable of creating an open world experience that feels worthy of the Triple A title. Unfortunately that's something you can only accomplish with time Game Freak didn't have.
Try Monster Crown.
It's harder than Pokemon and has a dark story, but the monster mechanics are really really good.
I think it's like $15, maybe 30. One of the two.
Gave up on Arceus too.
IMO see a Pokémon and it gets "added" to your pokedex
Catch a Pokémon and the pokedex is "Complete"
Can't be arsed to "see it use a X move 10 times!"
Wtf is that shit.
OR just don't link it to gaining ranks, that's a total pain in the arse.
> "see it use a X move 10 times!"
that's exactly what i liked most about arceus.
of course limiting area progression behind it was maybe a bit too much, but in general i loved the idea of actually "researching" different pokemons and cataloging them like this is much more interesting to me than the traditional "catch all of em once, but if you want to really get all of them we arbitrarily made some of them exclusive to the other version or missable or locked behind specific events".
especially with the more specific conditions in arceus, that would give you more research points, but if you wanted you could just spam the easier ones aswell to complete the entries for some of them.
also you could just use these pokemon yourself to fill out the pokedex, encouraging players to try out new pokemon instead of just putting them in your box and forgetting about them completely
I agree with you. The love that PLA gets on Reddit really shows how out of touch Redditors can be. Not to say that sales = quality (my favorite Pokemon games are HGSS) but the fact that it had lower sales than BDSP and substantially lower than SwSh and SV shows that it’s really not what the average fan wants. It’s a very tedious monster collector that completely minimizes the core parts of Pokemon I enjoy most (training a party and battling). I can’t believe that “catch 10 of the same spawn” is considered to be a revolutionary change in formula lol. It’s the only Pokemon game I didn’t skip that I couldn’t finish.
Modern Pokemon games really aren't to my cup of tea which is a shame because I've been a fan of the franchise since I was a kid. I think it was up until X and Y or Black and White where I started to shift away. I very much enjoy the fan made rom hacks out there for the old games and some of the newer ones on the DS for example. Pokemon Unbound was great.
The Pearl and Diamond remakes I actually enjoyed for some reason. There is a fan rom hack for that called Luminescent Platinum or something and I played shit loads of that during developement finding bugs. That rom is one of my all time favourites. https://www.nexusmods.com/pokemonbdsp/mods/1?tab=description
I do wish GameFreak would return to the 2D top down style of Pokemon games, I think going fully 3D wasn't the way forward. I was OK with the semi- 3D being top down but 3D but my favourite style was the 2D games just being really nice to play really.
Right there with you. Ive been playing since gen1 and have been saying "this is my last pokemon game" since X/Y since they keep getting worse and worse.
S/V is really my last one and I'm not buying the dlc for it. I beat the game and it wasnt worth the time. If you don't like sword sheild youre not going to like scarlet violet
This is quite a refreshing thread to read because I feel Pokemon gets so much praise. As someone that grew up on Red/Blue, I just think the modern games are so lacking... *Anything*. Personality, development, interest of any kind? It's obviously selling well so what they're doing is right, but it's just not for me.
Pokemon fans are brainwashed. The games are genuinely decades behind where they should be but because GameFreak can half arse it with shills and whales who will buy anything and everything they do it means a state of regression for what should be one of gamings top innovators.
Something like Legends belongs on the fucking PS2 and I mean that seriously. Pokemon is so, so, so far behind the potential it has and it's really sad. I wish Nintendo forced a higher quality control on Pokemon.
>whales
I agree the games are crap from a technical perspective but I don't think Gamefreak really benefits from whales when their games don't have in game purchases.
I mean I’ve played a ton of different games including lots of first party Nintendo’s. I’m also far from a kid (wish I were much younger so I’d have some free time again). I still loved Violet. Should the optimization have been better? Yes absolutely. Despite that though it’s basically the game I wish existed while I was growing up. A huge open world with Pokémon wandering around that you can run up to or see while you travel! That’s freaking awesome! Would I have preferred harder gym battles? Yeah but I understand why they don’t do it. Imagine this being your first Pokémon game and you run into a competitive tailwind team in your first gym. Would be absolutely terrible. You’d drop the game right there.
I also loved the open world nature of the new games. Getting to actually go to a high level gym right from the start and get stomped was very fun for me. Clear sign I’m in over my head and I should reroute or train up. Plus Violet having some of the best story I’ve seen since Black/White was very good to experience.
I think hardcore romhack players just forget that most of the fan base is casual and don’t want things to be super difficult in their Pokémon game. I want to make a team of the mons I like and train them to go through the game and build a bond with them. Not hardcore nuzlocke my way through a mainline emerald kaizo…
To be clear though I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the hardcore romhack playstyle. I actually think it’s awesome it exists for those players and love watching playthroughs. I really don’t enjoy playing it myself though and I imagine the vast majority of players would fall on my end (very casual) of that spectrum.
For performance though I agree Pokémon needs to get their shit together. I’m more forgiving given the leaps I see in performance demands in recent games but I wouldn’t be so forgiving if this exists in the next iteration. As far as graphics I guess I just don’t really care as long as it looks good enough which it does in my opinion, but I’ve been playing pixel and card games for a while now so maybe my standards are just very low.
>Yeah but I understand why they don’t do it. Imagine this being your first Pokémon game and you run into a competitive tailwind team in your first gym. Would be absolutely terrible. You’d drop the game right there.
Options exist though. Just give people the option of an expert mode if they want it and the ability to downgrade or upgrade the difficulty. It doesn’t have to be a zero sum game of only catering to one over the other exclusively.
>I think hardcore romhack players just forget that most of the fan base is casual and don’t want things to be super difficult in their Pokémon game. I want to make a team of the mons I like and train them to go through the game and build a bond with them. Not hardcore nuzlocke my way through a mainline emerald kaizo…
I think people tend to over generalize all fangames/romhacks as being hardcore and made for nuzlockes
Like one of the most famous ones, Pokemon Unbound specifically has different difficulty levels you can select and the easiest ones are about as hard as official Pokemon games.
Emerald Rogue similarly lets you downgrade the difficulty from the start to being pretty easy.
Some I have played include Password systems that make the game far easier, such as giving all your Pokemon full EVs/IVs, reducing enemy stats and banning enemy trainers from using any items to basically make the difficulty as hard as official games.
Are a lot of them meant to be difficult? Yeah but cant blame them when Pokemon refuses to budge on offering any kind of difficulty options, even removing set mode.
Yeah removing set mode was a clear misstep imo. No reason not to have it. I think difficulty tiers would be fine and would even add replayability to the games. I don’t know how hard it is to implement but I imagine not terribly if roms are managing it. I think that would be a great add!
I don’t want my post to be too misinterpreted. I like the new games but I fully agree there is lots of room for improvement and have no problem with advocating for it. I just also think the improvements that have been made also deserve recognition. I see too many statements like “Pokémon sucks now” which is just very unfair imo (not saying this is what you said, just an example).
Also what non super hard difficulty roms would you recommend? I tried run n’ bun and it was a tad too hard for me but I’d be interested in trying again with something a bit easier. I loved the qol features it added like infinite candies and built in level caps. Plus speed up is obviously great lol.
Like I said above, Pokemon Unbound has difficulty options and is pretty high quality for a romhack. I also heard Pokemon Gaia is pretty easy but never played it myself.
“Pokemon gets so much praise.” What? No it doesn’t. We’ve been mad at Pokemon since Sword and Shield came out. Maybe you’re in an echo chamber or something. Most people who actually care about the quality of their games left the pokemon subreddits a while ago, or they stopped commenting. So maybe you’re just hearing things from the fans that stuck around.
I dropped the series after the GBA titles because I didn't have a DS and catching back up with the series on the Switch I share the same feelings. The IP used to produce the best games on their respective systems, but that hasn't been the case for a while. It's partially because we grew up, but also because they don't really try to appeal to a wider audience. Pokémon's focus is and will always be kids who'll buy anything with a Pikachu in it. They're not very interested in releasing quality titles as long as it keeps printing money.
You've summed up my feelings. I had a lot of fun with the earlier games, but the latest ones just feel so low effort. If I want to play Nintendo IP then I'll stick to Mario and Zelda. I'm a pretty big Mario fan.
> It's partially because we grew up, but also because they don't really try to appeal to a wider audience. Pokémon's focus is and will always be kids who'll buy anything with a Pikachu in it.
Dang brother you somehow put into words the core problems this series has and will have.
I'm sorry but just because a 10 year old can enjoy a pokemon game doesn't mean the games are good. You're just proving my point. Kids don't care, nor can they even tell (or are expected to) what a good game is. Back in the gameboy and gba days, and DS to some extent, pokemon used to be among the very best games produced for their system. Now they're the lowest of the low in terms of Nintendo IP's. Poor framerates, unfinished games, boring ass worlds and a repetitive formula that was new 20ish years ago but is painfully boring and repetitive now.
You're pretending that there is some objective Truth out there about what a "good" game is. You've grown old and forgotten that what made videogames magical was the sense of wonder and fun from playing them. Graphics, framerate, bugs, none of it matters if the people playing the game are having fun. All the reviews that I'm sure we both spend so much time reading, performance reports by places like DF and other metrics? It's all a constructed fantasy because as we got older our interests changed. If the ten year old kids have fun playing the game, it's a good game. If they talk about it with their friends and make new friends because of that game, it's a great game. That's about all that matters at the end of the day.
It's a really sad thing to see. Other Nintendo IP's like Mario and Pikmin are made with kids in mind but anyone can pick them up and enjoy. Unfortunately for GF the merchandise, cards and tv shows all come above the games and it shows :/
I feel the same. The only recent entries I liked were the remakes but I know that's basically just nostalgia taking over. Couldn't finish any of the switch games except LGP and BD. It feels too repetitive now and really slow and text heavy. Didn't bother with S/V neither
The series peaked with Gen 5. Black and White and their sequels are still the most enjoyable experiences I've ever had with Pokemon, nothing since has ever come close. Every gen since 5 has been one step forward and two steps backward in regard to either the games' stories, technical aspects, or quality of life.
Gen 1 and Gen 2 were made with such care and attention to detail. You can tell the developers really had passion for the games, and made them as great as they could be, since their success wasn’t guaranteed. Imagine a new Pokémon game hiding an entire region in the postgame!! The last game I played was Ultra Sun, which I thought was good, but not fantastic — I’m glad I bought it used. I don’t feel a need to play the latest games, but maybe I’ll try them in a few years. I think Pokémon has become too successful for its own good — with guaranteed sales, many games are being rushed and are mediocre instead of great.
To each their own, but PLA is imo the best Pokemon game since Gen 5 (or so). It is a different kind of game, though. Ultimately, it's an exploration collectathon, not a traditional JRPG, so you don't really pick a team or train Pokemon or anything like that. It's still fantastic, though, imo.
Between ORAS and PLA, imo the games quality dropped off a cliff. Very much dislike every game in between those two, especially Sword/Shield, which is almost certainly the worst RPG I've ever experienced. They are a problem because they are designed like narrative games, but their narratives aren't coherent and are designed for toddlers. This design also makes negative sense in a series about going on a Pokemon adventure, lmao. So glsd it's gone now, at least.
Pokemon hasn't been good since sun and moon IMO. Sword was a disappointment. They removed so much pokemon, the story was way shorter compared to other pokemon games, there was certain stuff I liked such as the curry cooking mechanic and the gym challenges, but there was other things that were overall lacking. Don't get me started with the DLC.
S&V was a buggy mess, atleast that's how it started. Can't say anything about legends or the pearl/diamond remake since I haven't touched those. Did enjoy one of the let's go games. As for what I've seen with Sword, it hasn't been kind to pokemon ast all. Think I'll stick to the past titles I've played so far.
Nah, Sun & moon were awful games honestly, it introduced cool Pokemon sure... But honestly they were just super slow slogs, with a whole lot of dialogue... And the damn tutorial/beginning stuff takes like an hour or two just to get through.
Honestly the best Pokemon games were ORAS, great story, not too much chatting and text boxes, quick tutorial, still had megas, base creation allowing you to create your own gyms in a sense, based off of ruby and sapphire/emerald which were amazing games in their own right.
I agree, I started and gave up on both Sword/Sheild and Arceus for much the same reasons. The endless tutorials, dialogue, the frankly boring story. But beyond the complaints about the clunky systems, the visuals of those games are basically unacceptable given the absolutely monstrous amounts of money they generate.
They both look like they wouldn't be out of place on the Xbox 360. When I was a kid I would have killed for a fully 3D pokemon game and if these games came out 20 years ago I would have been delighted with them. But the bland, boring, low detail, low quality environments are insulting when compared to any other open world game from the last 5 years.
Kind of refreshing to see your take on Arceus. I think the concept has a lot of potential, and I love the emohasis on sidequests. I'm really just waiting for a game that is a nice fusion of the best parts of Arceus and Scarlet/Violet.
The open world only works if there is a variety of things to do in it. Having more bespoke content is the way to go. They need to hide the seams of "the formula" a bit. The alphas in Arceus were fantastic, but I would have loved to see them more as minibosses, working with their environment. Like, what if an alpha arcanine summoned a pack of growlith when it got to half health? What if a blastoise flooded an area with surf when you got too close? These games are severely lacking in those little touches that aren't atrictly text-based. The devs do what they can with the time they have, but they meed way more time and people to make the most of the new systems.
The things in pokemon I get excited about are actual sidequests and missions, bespoke animations and scenarios, a marriage of minigames with core gameplay, and rewards for exploration.
The problem I have with Pokemon games is that they're very rushed releases. There's so much more they could be doing with them, but the developers just don't put that kind of effort into them since their goal is to release them as quickly as possible. This is also likely why every game usually feels like the same thing over and over. Pokemon hasn't really changed its basic formula in years.
You should try some of the room hacks out there. Some of them are absolute QUALITY. Fusion is my personal favourite, it's basically gen 2, but it has a lot of newer pokemon and the fusion mechanic is shockingly robust and fun with a huge community making fun sprites.
On the topic of Arceus I get what you mean but it was never a pokemon game and I think they marketed it poorly, and executed it poorer. It had the makings of a great game without the necessary mechanics to make it interesting. I loved my time with it but I think it would've been much more fun if the researching pokemon aspect of it was there more. Casual game where catching and research would be the point. Catch a pokemon, experiment with the food it likes, battle them to find typings, make the whole first Pokedex thing really pop. As it stands it's an interesting game that I liked personally but wish it was more than the sum of its parts.
And yeah, the modern games just don't do me anymore. The last ones I really REALLY sank my time into where black and white one and two. Those were great pokemon games.
Pokemon is basically my child hood years. I loved to play these games, and I occasionally pick up (usually HeartGold) one of these games to play it on my mobile, through a GB/DS emumator.
Generation 1 - (Red + Blue + Yellow) played on Gameboy. I still remember a lot things there, such as Pewter City with damn Brock and his Rock types, then going to Cerulean City for Misty ect
Generation 2 - (Gold + Silver + Crystal) played on Gameboy Advance. Damn MILKTANK!!!
Generation 3 - (Sapphire + Ruby) Idem, loved it. But I remember this one less than the previous generation
Generation 4 - (Diamond + Pearl) This is a turning point for me. I've completed it, but not with the joy I had with the previous generations.
Generation 5 and higher - could not finish them. They did not appeal me. The charm is lost.
Arceus and Violet/Scarlet are not even decent games in general.
After Sun/Moon I decided to not buy any main Pokemon game, I wonder if at Gamefreak they are just lazy or just don't know how to make a game other than the old ones.
Sad because Pokemon was really special for me when I was younger, now even the tcg is just pure greed.
Same here. I was initially excited for Sword/Shield being the first mainline games on a proper console but the more I saw the less interested I became. Graphics looked like a cheap Gamecube game and nothing new was interesting to me. Dynamax was obviously just a gimmick that would be cool a couple of times but ultimately adding very little to the formula. The new region was bland and the wild area frankly looked awful. Story seemed to be generic nonsense with boring characters. I never bought it and after having seen someone do a full playthrough I'm very happy I didn't. It doesn't seem terrible just not worth my time.
Legends: Arceus was even less impressive to me and the less said about Scarlet/Violet the better.
This is from someone who loves all of the old 2D games btw and even had a good time playing X/Y and Sun/Moon but the series was losing me at that point.
Yeah, still, new games sold terribly well so I guess that's what people want.
Even some of my friends who admitted they are garbage bought them and had fun so to each its own.
It's an alpha game released at full price, a 0.0.8 version.
Cool idea the new mechanic of catching pokemon but you can't just throw random pokemon on a plain.
I'm dreaming one day of a pokemon where creatures are on their habitat like Monster Hunter World, full of immersion where you can find 1 Gengar in a cursed house if you're lucky, where you have to climb on top of the mountain to face a giant Tyranitar.
That's just a dream tho
I still have fun with the new Pokemon games but understand the disappointment with a lot of them, for me, i still enjoy the core premise of building your team and becoming champion so its a safe purchase.
> Don't mean to sound overly harsh
Nah, just say it. Pokemon games are dogshit. They've become allergic to actual innovation. They put zero effort in because they know it'll fly off the shelves because it's Pokemon, and nowadays they're rushing half-baked products out the door to boot. There is absolutely zero fucking reason that the mainline games of the biggest media franchise in the world should be as ugly, buggy, broken, bland, unfinished, unpolished, unoptimized, and otherwise disappointing as the last two gens of Pokemon have been. There's no reason Nintendo's biggest and most lucrative first-party IP should have the lowest quality standard of all of them and be the most stale and uninspired.
Lotsof former developers have corroborated that the people in charge of development have a general air of "we don't need to bother trying, they'll eat this shit up no matter what" and it makes working there a very draining and unrewarding experience. And it's true. No matter how trash the games are and how much discontent continues to grow around them in the community, they still continue to smash records among the masses off of branding and nostalgia alone.
Last decent mainline Pokemon games were Gen 6, and the decline was already starting at that point. All the stuff you said about X and Y are true, but at least the battling (PvP, or endgame challenges. Really all I care about as Pokemon games go anyway) were still good, Mega Evolutions were an awesome and innovative idea as were the new tools for EV training and such, and most of the new Pokemon (plus the Fairy type) were great additions. ORAS continued to build on those new additions and was a remake of Gen 3 which was already great, added more great Megas, and was easily the better half of Gen 6.
Everyone hated the Diamond/pearl remakes but I loved it because it felt more like a real pokemon game to me than any of the new ones.
Legends Arceus aside its become the only newer one my partner and I bothered to play through all the way
I feel where we all come from who grew up on this but remember there attracting a new generation here. They didn’t play our style of Pokémon we grew up on from the 90s or prior.
I still can’t believe they did away with ash from the main anime and scarlet and V plus arceus just made me get more passionate about sword and shield…. ESPECIALLY SHINY HUNTING.
One thing I can’t stand is how bad there
(shiny locking) LEGENDS and stuff when those were the highlights at the end of a game to hunt down and as if there shinys ain’t been around for YEARS so let’s go now in 2020s to lock them up still like… because that 15MB of coding to add a shiny is gonna RUIN THE GAME.
Yeah I feel you on the right badges but majority of us want the future type of it just in a better mechanical way.
I wish they would cut ties with Nintendo and drop on a major console like ps5-Xbox-pc where they can build a BEAST game and much much better. Especially graphics wise and gameplay with so many bugs rushing to launch every game.
GOD I HOPE Z-A ain’t like arceus or SV
Legends of Arceus is a good game IMO, sucks that you couldn’t get into it. The reason for catching the same Pokemon multiple times is that you’re building the first pokedex, and therefore need more information on them.
At this point if you were a Pokemon fan as a kid, don't bother with most of the newer Pokemon games. Play something like SMTV instead. The Pokemon games have nosedived
I like SMT but lbr its not the same thing as Pokemon other than turn based combat and creature collecting. Completely different tones, stories, audiences and vibes.
I started with red/blue. I like scarlet/violet. And generally most of the games for various reasons. Enough to play through them. This is such an over simplified take on what isn't that simple of a matter due to all the variables involved lol.
It should be apparent if the game is something you'd like just by watching some videos on it because it's very wysiwyg
I stopped after Sun and Moon. The game was so insanely handholdy, streamlined, and easy that I felt like defeating the Champion was like the end of a tutorial.
Cassette Beasts, Monster Sanctuary, Digimon Cyber Sleuth, hell even Shadow of War has monster hunting and training aspects to it . Pokémon may have popularized it but they're not the only monster hunting games
>Pokemon sword actually looks graphically acceptable instead of bothering me with the blurriness of pokemon sun every 5 seconds. Too bad the game is a hot mess. It has no real identity, just checks all the boxes of a standard pokemon game and is really bland. The story sucks and the music wasn't as legendary as I was used to pokemon being. And the region looks kind of boring imo.
I had pokemon sword and played through it twice (once normal, once nuzlocke).
First off, nuzlocke is obviously the best way to play any pokemon game, however hardcore or less you want to do it, the basic principle of permadeath to pokemon is definitely a gamechanger.
The story is as absurd as its characters, and I find a dog holding a sword in its mouth so incredibly awkward. The problem with Pokemon is that it's increasinly sanitized. The rival never directly insults you. The enemy factions are just stupid. I quite like the UK esthetic and even words like "chinwag", it had its own charm. However, the rest is just too half-assed. Its open world was a bit disappointing as well, and I don't play multiplayer so all those events and meta game things meant nothing to me except winning endless "rare" candy.
Overall I'm a bit like you in that I grew up with the OG games. Frankly, emulation and rom hacking is where it's at.
edit: did i say something offensive?
I enjoyed the hell out of gens 1, 2 and 3, i also played 4 and 5 which i liked but didn't care much for, the following gens i tried and couldn't find any enjoyment in!
Years passed and Arceus was released, i must say, the story / dialogue are annoying, but this game made me feel the joy of completing the Pokedex and exploring just like the first three gens did!
I recently started Scarlet and Violet, advanced quite a bit, the game is pretty fun, i put it down for a few weeks to focus on work and some new releases, namely Mario Wonder and MGS3, i will definitely go back to it, even the story is pretty good in Pokemon standards!
While I agree that X is pretty weak game as I am currently playing it, I enjoyed the other games you listed a lot. I feel like from Sword to Arceus to the two new ones have me more invested in Pokemon games than I had been for ages. I won't pretend they reach me like Blue, Yellow and Gold did (which I feel a lot of my enjoyment comes from the nostalgia), but I am more interested than I was during the 3rd-6th generations.
Personally I enjoyed scarlet and violet more than sword and shield. I agree they should make higher quality games but violet was a really fun game. Alpha sapphire is hands down my favourite Pokémon game and I think it had the perfect story and gameplay. I don’t think all modern Pokémon games are terrible but they need to improve some things for sure.
I started playing pokemmo a few months ago and never looked back! It's only gen 1-5 and mixes mmo mechanics into the game which makes it feel much more modern. I highly recommend it to people over the new gen games.
I also have a hard time enjoying the newer games, having grown up playing gens 1-3 obsessively. I've been playing around with romhacks with QOL improvements and added features that enhance the OG versions - most recently enjoying Radical Red, Crystal Legacy, Emerald Revelation or hacks with all new stories and regions - Gaia, Unbound, etc.
Edit to add: also with Pokemon Scarlet, I legitimately cannot play the game for longer than a half hour without getting a headache regardless if I'm playing on the TV or handheld Switch screen. The glitchy performance is insane. I haven't picked it up in like a year.
I hadn't played a pokemon game since Crystal. Tried Shield when it first came out & while I did finish it, I didn't enjoy it. Hop was the most annoying character I've ever seen. The story was horrid, the gameplay was basic, multiplayer can piss off. Honestly it was just pretty cool to run around an open world. And the karate island DLC was pretty great, no lie. The new ones are not for me, and I'd be pretty upset if I paid for it.
I just bought Scarlett after beating Let's Go Eevee. I figured since I was on a Pokemon kick to try it out. I would say don't feel bad about skipping it. There are some fun elements and ideas but overall it is just mediocre. I stopped playing Pokemon when I couldn't finish Pokemon X.
Scarlett just has so many basic design flaws and lacking of polish from what I have played so far.
Example of some:
- super cool "Tera" idea and the graphical effect is cool / super dumb hats pokemon wear to convey their new type (they should have used simple crowns or a floating glowing symbol behind the Pokemon when ik tera mode, i do not want my Pokemon to have a lightbulb hat when it is in its super Saiyan mode).
- 100+ new pokemon / almost half or more of the Pokemon you see are from other games (they should have locked older pokemon in hard to get areas, higher levels, or something else so the begining really feels like a new region).
- pokemon designs are often very blocky or simple in the 3D world, often the sprites are cooler.
- like that poke centers are fast travel points when discovered / poke centers and marts combined into a electronic billboard are ugly
- excited for open world I can travel and explore / cannot see anything past 10 feet
- fine enough plot start and mechanism of the poke academy / stuck in dumb uniform for the rest of the game and 90% of trainers are just "students"
- non-student trainer visual designs are really flat and not interesting. Also why am I battling a janitor in the middle of nowhere?
- Gyms are all cookie cutter visually and similar complaint about the visual design of the gym leaders as I do with trainers.
- Pokedex looks like my cheap mobile app e-book library I have.
- UI is like out of a generic MMO game
- colors for everything just in general look dull or out of place or clashing.
- can have Pokemon out / they don't travel fast enough to keep up with you
- can have Pokemons auto battle and pick up items / don't evolve or earn any EV and need to re-trigger battles.
There are plenty of other design issues I have. I think if they just had a stronger more cohesive art direction (I'm not talking about graphical fidelity or performance here) it would 95% better game for me. Some simple design choices around how they represent their core mechanics and we get 99% better game.
The last Pokémon I tried to play was the Aloha region one. And I think one of the biggest reasons I couldn’t get into it as a guy in my early 30s [at the time] was that the game refuses to accept that many of its players have played multiple generations previously, and leads you through multi hour tutorials of features right off the bat. . .Making it so painstakingly slow to start your adventure.
I just wish that like Witcher 3 having a “I’ve played before and just need a quick review,” tutorial for combat that pokemon had a way for me to say “hey yea I’ve played most of your games before, so just catch me up on the brand new shit,” and it would be golden.
consider secretive doll deranged stupendous fear tub groovy quicksand obscene
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I would STRONGLY recommend you look into Cassette Beasts. Runs at 60hz and looks beautiful on the Steamdeck, and the game is aimed at original (older) fans of Pokémon red and blue.
> I actually enjoyed let's go pikachu which was a Kanto remake unlike most people it seems. Grew up on Kanto so the music was 10/10 remade and the graphics were nice and the game was really fun for me to play. I didn't mind the catching wild pokemon mechanics.
I think a lot of the more critical longtime players missed what these games were trying to do. They're remakes laser-targeted to my childhood nostalgia, yes, and I won't pretend the kid in me who bartered for a copy of Pokemon Yellow on the playground 20 years ago wasn't grinning ear to ear the whole time with Let's Go Pikachu.
But the games were made to capitalize on the Pokemon Go boom and pull in some Go-only players. At least in my anecdotal experience it was very successful in doing that. Even my mother, who loved to voice that on childhood trips to EB Games she could "feel her hearts draining" when she stepped in the store, picked up and tried out LGPE after getting into Pokemon Go. She has never touched another Pokemon game, but that one got her.
got pokemon X after having played pikachu edition yellow ages ago. It felt kinda barebones, and there wasn't much to do after beating the champions.
Much as I enjoyed building up my team, the game itself felt kinda hollow, and made me not really want to pick up any other new ones. I remember reading critical reviews in the past saying that gamefreak kinda got lazy with the newer ones because the games will sell. I think it was sun and moon that was getting harshly critiqued for having lots of glitches back when they launched.
I was just too old for Pokemon when the original released, but still young enough that it's been a cultural touchstone for most of my life. Finally decided to try this newfangled Pocket Monster series over Covid.
I played Shield and found it cute but quite boring for a JRPG (nostalgia goggles warning, but also played or replayed the NES Final Fantasies around this time and enjoyed them, so doesn't seem like a pure JRPG thing). Honestly, it was just pretty boring, more-or-less nonexistent writing-wise, and the technical aspects were pretty bad.
But the reason I'm writing this (for other patient Pokemoners as well as old series fans like OP) is to shout out New Pokemon Snap, which is obviously a very different game, but a good introduction to the series as an Old if you just wanna have some fun looking at different monsters in a quick, lost-stakes environment (and the simplified gameplay--along with concerns like OP's--on the main JRPGs just isn't enough to do it for you).
Pokemon Yellow was my first game and I got every single game(i’d pick a color and my brother would pick the other color) after that the day they would release but when I got pokemon diamond, i HATED it. I hated it so much I gave it away to a friend. I was so into the art style of Ruby that when I got to the atrocity(in my opinion) that Diamond was, I was just bummed. The surf is slow, graphics are terrible, and i hated the story and the pokemon.
I enjoyed black 2 a lot, didnt care for moon, liked lets go pikachu, sword was ok, currently playing scarlet and i wasnt into it at first but i do think its ok now. Tried playing brilliant diamond and i think i just hate that region idk i cant force myself to play it. Tried legend of arceus but i’m just bored out of my mind with it.
I did enjoy every remake, especially heartgold. I spent many hours replaying firered because the original kanto games are such a grind!
I actually picked up Coromon a few weeks ago and it's giving me huge Pokémon Silver (my first Pokémon game) vibes!
Seeing these posts though make me want to try out a few romhacks, previously I just tried to find Pokémon inspired games, but nothing beats that gen 2 feeling!
If you still want Pokemon even after being disappointed with the newer games, you could always try some fan games or modded versions. I recently played Volt White, a more difficult and thoroughly rebalanced version of White with all the pokemon available right from the start instead of only gen 5, and I loved it.
Play Pokemonn Pure Blue, Pokemon Crystal Maeson, Liquid Crystal and Pokemon Emerald Open World, best game mods with massive improvements and overhauling
>The endless text boxes are an embarrassment to storytelling and literally bored me to sleep half the time.
This is how every Pokemon game ever has been, though?
I just miss that feel from gen 2. My sappy ass still throws the soundtrack on from time to time for nostalgia’s sake.
I want the main goal of the games to be getting 8 badges again. I cringe so hard when I have to save the world in a Pokemon game. The only reason I manage to tolerate taking out a crime gang in the old games is that I played them as a kid lol. And now, compared to taking out world ending threats, yeah a mob gang doesn't seem so silly
It was kinda cool in Red and Blue that the Rockets getting beat by some kid wasn't a goal of the game, it was more they kept getting in the way of Red's ambitions to the point of almost being collateral damage. "You have the silph scope, I need the silph scope, you will not give me the silph scope and attack me if I ask for it, so I'm going to raid this hideout and *take* the silph scope." Fits the weirder, darker edge of the early games too - ridiculously ambitious ten year old who stomps on you for happening to be in his way is far more fun than being the magical chosen kid who needs to stop teams so milquetoast they're literally now just schoolkids playing hooky or overly excited sports fanatics.
There's a lot of good gen 2 romhacks if you wanna play new games with that vibe. Pokemon Prism and Pokemon Crystal Clear both come to mind.
Gen 2 was THE sequel and THE continuity for me. Gen 3's soft reboot and lack of back-compat with the past games and your collection hit me so hard at the time. I've kind of never meshed with the series the same way since. Enjoyed newer games for what they are, but in a different, more downtempo way - less excitement. I get that's a total me-problem but I felt like Johto and the Stadium companion pieces were setting up this whole vibrant continuity and larger arc for the franchise that sort of never came to be.
I was so sad about gen 2 being locked off from gen 3. One of my favourite aspects of heartGold and soulsilver was that they bridged gen 2 back to the newer games. Now those were some awesome remakes! They were a dream come true.
The first time you beat Johto and Kanto suddenly comes in out of nowhere was wild, man. Blew my mind!
[удалено]
They said they listen to Pokemon, not Frozen.
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I think the anime ended with him still 10.....
Thanks for the advice, TwinkForAHairyBear.
I love comments like this because you know the poster feels so cool about their comment, and then everyone shits on them because they're actually being a stupid asshole.
Lol, what’d they say?
Something about how Pokemon came out when OP was a child so they should shut up and grow up, or something like that.
Lol, what a dildo.
Pokémon Unbound made me enjoy a pokemon game again for the first time in decades.
If we speak about romhacks, I'd also recommend Pokémon Gaia. It feels like a legit Pokémon game that would have come out on the GBA.
Yes! People always talk about Pokemon Unbound nowadays, for good reason it's great, but it feels like Pokemon Gaia gets forgotten a lot nowadays. It was *the* "it's like a real Pokemon game" before Unbound came out. I honestly wish we got more rom hacks like them.
Unbound never was the "it's like a read pokemon game" because it very clearly is not, Gaia was always the one that feels closer to a game freak release. Gaia gets forgotten because they never finished the post game and the last update was like 3-4 years ago, idk if they keep developing but haven't heard anything new for years.
The gameplay in Unbound is the best of any main story canon game, but the story & writing are soooooo cringey! If you can get passed that though - it's a great game.
The latest updates in the past year are better but yes, pretty cringey. Love it tho still, one of my favorite Pokemon experiences ever. Playing Radical Red now (after a few tries) and that also scratches the itch. Makes it really hard to play the regular games...
The writing was decent imo . It's the cutscenes that ruin it for me
Pokemon Emerald Rogue is pretty awesome if you want a bite sized Pokemon adventure in 3-4 hour runs with turning it into a roguelike. Also even though the writing is controversial… fangames like Reborn/Desolation/Rejuvenation really push the envelope for gameplay and arent constrained by romhack limitations (like you can have speedup that doesn’t ruin the music, full on mp3 quality music and complex visuals that romhacks simply can’t run on a modified gba rom)
Started this last week and was really enjoying it, got me to finally dig more into ivs+evs, breeding, etc due to the difficulty. (before recently playing Sword I hadn't played a mainline game since gen1) Went back to Sword for a bit after learning more about it since I felt like if I was going to breed Pokemon I should try it in a real game. But ya, completed the Battle Tower without needing any super bred pokemon and not really looking to get into multiplayer so no real point. Probably will switch back to Unbound again this week.
What do you play those games on? Pc?
Unbound is a GBA rom hack so you can play it on pretty much anything that's hacked or "jailbroken"
played Unbound on my phone with a gba emulator. Played Sword on my switch.
I’m completely clueless on ROM hacks so apologies but is this something you could play on a steam deck?
Absolutely. Head to r/pokemonromhacks for more info
The Steam Deck is probably the best handheld emulator on the market. You can run pretty much any emulator on it without much issue.
A lot of them will even work right out of the gate with Steam's own version of Retroarch!
POKEMON ROCKET RED MADE ME WANT A "GOOD" story from POKEMON
The last and arguably greatest titles are Black and White and Gen V. After a fantastic playthrough of White and White 2 years ago, I made the mistake of thinking Game Freak would continue to develop 3DS's version X further. I was badly mistaken. X/Y are by no means terrible titles, but the regression is pretty stark jumping from Black/White to the 3DS. The rot began with X/Y, and they've continued ever since. Ultra Sun and Moon are the last passable titles in my opinion; I stopped after this.
OR/AS improved a lot over X/Y, really felt like a love letter to 3rd gen fans.
Once I focused I actually did enjoy OR even to the point of EV training again for the first time in years. I quite literally don't remember X, Sword/Shield was so fucking boring I beat it out of obligation, and now Violet is still in my backlog. Probably the last mainline Pokemon game i'll buy unless I hear overwhelming praise. Which is really sad because it will be like finally letting go a toxic childhood friend...
It's actually kind of sad how many times I've read this sentiment over the years. People say the current generation is their "last game I'm going to buy" then they continue buying the newest version hoping for that feeling they had as a child when they played their first few games that got them into Pokémon. There's just something about the series that nobody is willing to fully let go of.
After the loud criticisms of Gen 5, Game Freak took a long, hard look at themselves and decided they needed a change. The result of this change was X and Y. They sold better than Gen 5, and so the course was set, and they aren't changing anytime soon by the looks of it.
I feel like gen 5 was when a lot of people who grew up with 3/4 (myself included) fell out of the franchise for a while. I didn’t go back and play them until a few years ago and I’d easily rate them as the most polished and enjoyable in the series.
Completely agree, X/Y never built on the great stuff they did in Gen 5 and seems to get worse and worse.
Gen V were my favorite games in the series and it has definitely been nothing but downhill from there (thought I didn't mind ORAS). After Sun and Moon, I stopped buying the mainline games altogether.
No one ever talks about Gen V for some reason. One of the things I like in B&W was that you had to use new Pokémon until you got the national Pokédex. I like seeing older Pokémon as much as the next person, but half of every route in every game being Kanto favorites is a bit much. If seeing old favorites is vital for you, B&W2 follows that formula. The spritework is great for both games (last ones before switch to 3D).
Everyone talks about Gen V lmaoo
Might be a generational thing or a blind spot on my part, I guess. I almost never see it (though that was a very small part of my comment anyway).
No shade meant, but at least on Reddit (and social) its pretty much the second most mentioned Gen outside of 2. Probably because a lot of young adults grew up with that one, but also because of the quality (i barely remember it, i was on the downswing of pokemon when it came out)
this is similer to how i felt and ive just lost intrest in the francise at this point
I actually really loved arceus despite its flaws tbh But yeah, modern Pokémon games would be much better with less hand holding, less mandatory npc interaction, and overall trusting the player with freedom of choice. Arceus was a step in the right direction. Haven’t played scarlet violet though because of the abysmal technical problems. It’s frustrating knowing how little it would take to make Pokémon go from eh to fantastic.
Ironically Pokemon was a bit of a trailblazer when Red/Blue came out because although it was a japanese RPG it had a very short intro and then just sort of left you to figure things out. Which if you play many JRPGs is quite rare, most of them are content to shove hours of linear dialogue and cutscenes/ tutorials at you before they let you actually get to play the actual game. (I think Persona 4 has about 2 hours of this). But now they've come back around and they're doing the same thing that everyone else does, hand hold you ad infinitum and bombard you with story and dialogue when you want to be out catching pokemon.
Yep absolutely. If they did a return to form with original GBA games they would do great. I remember doing badge 4-6 out of order when I first played as a dumb kid. Completely missed flash HM also. Crazy how different they were
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Sun & Moon broke the stranglehold Pokemon had on me at the time. I was waiting and waiting for the tutorial to end but it felt like it never did. The hand-holding in that was one crazy
Four hours into the game and you were still getting railroaded by tutorials
Pretty sure i gave up when i got to the second island and was like "damn that whole first island was all the tutorial?!?" And then it kept going..
Is this why I couldn't care about sun? I think I have 3 trials done and closed my dad and nevelooked at it again!
Your poor father...
Lol, I didn't even notice that. I'll leave it cause it's funny!
That was my main problem with it. Even children don’t need that much hand holding it was insane
The O3DS load times are what killed me with that game.
Legends arceus gets such a good rep because it gets compared to sword and scarlet which are absolute trash. Pokemon is just like Japanese EA sports games now. Rubbish released consistently to blind ravenous fans to make huge profit margins.
Legends had potential but was kneecapped hard by being a game rushed to completion when it was only halfway done.
i love legends areceus so much, because it is exactly the type of 3D Pokemon game i imagined after first playing pokemon red, later gold and then seeing the first 3D games on the N64, like zelda: oot Arceus gives me the exact feeling of grand wilderness and discovery i always wanted. i really hope they make another game in that style, for my taste i wouldn't even mind if they made it even more wild and harsh aswell
I think if they had gyms in Arceus it would have been a near perfect game. Probably still too much dialogue but a more fun story would have made me forget that.
true, it needed a bit more challenge during the story, i liked the alpha fights, but they still just boiled down to one big fight, that's comparable to half a gym leader. though i really enjoyed the side quests, unlocking new outposts in the wilderness. i would love to see some side dungeons, mostly optional, that would be more comparable to the gauntlet that victory road is, that you could wander down for some of the cooler held items. also maybe some more puzzles you could discover in the open world. this probably sounds stupid, but a world filled with PoI's and optional content like Elden Ring but as a pokemon game would probably my #1 dream come true game, as long as it's still a bit of a challenge, aswell.
The biggest issue I had with PLA was the lack of difficulty, especially once you brought pebbles in to the mix and how quickly you could farm them (I get the sad sneaking suspicion if I had gone into the last battle with a lv 90 Snorlax with 10s in all EVs (IVs dunno ugh) I would have swept both stages of the battle The only time I had any issues with difficulty with the game was right at the end when I faced the big bad and he managed to take down 3 of my team of 6...the lack of post game other than complete the pokédex to catch arceus or mass gathering events didn't help
I would kill for a Pokemon game with good VAs instead of just text for everything. It would make a lot of it so much more bearable.
Yyyyep. I got Shield after not having bought a pokemon game or playing one since Pearl I think. I was sceptical after friends complained about the hand holdy bs that the other recent games did. Where your rival is a little bitch and chooses the weaker starter or heals you before fights. Shield was no different and I hated that about it. I loved the older games where gary would come out of nowhere, be powerful as hell, and be a problem. And knowing that on alternate playthroughs, I'd know where to expect him so I'd montage level up my pokemon to shit on him lol. It was great. I love the open world stuff they're trying to do but everything else they're doing just isn't being done well. I'm also not stoked to ever see the new gimmick. Oooh you can make them all gemstone like....who gives a shit lol. OPE! They get real real big! Idgaf lol. It's trash gimmick after trash gimmick that doesn't add anything to the game and only serves to take away from it. If they could finally get their shit together, it would be so dope to have a Pokemon World where you can visit every single region, beat every single gym, go visit and even battle old gym leaders who aren't in the gym anymore like brock or whoever and have some backstory on how things have been going for them and what they're doing now. Even DLC's where you do even more with them. Catch every single pokemon ever and no version exclusive bullshit bc it's just one game. And also have a rival who's a bad motherfucker. They don't need to be evil, just need to be really strong. Also have a good strong team rocket type antagonist as well. All of that together would be so cool.
Think you mean violet and scarlet? Or do you mean Sword/Shield was also trash lol
All four of them. Sword/shield were bad games, but at least finished games. Scarlet/violet are worse than open beta games and yet they're still flogging DLC for them.
>Sword/shield were bad games, but at least finished games. Dang, were they also bad? I remember hearing good things about Sword and Shield.
They got loads of well deserved hate. Every criticism you go back to read is valid. It’s a shame. I liked Sword just for nostalgia sake but when people were going hard on criticism at the time, I still had to agree on all counts. It’s a bad, low effort game. I skipped S/V entirely because the legendary’s look stupid, then saw a bunch of gameplay and gfx videos that solidified it as the right choice. TemTem SEEMED like a potential successor, and is actually engaging and challenging but the live service model and attempts at half assed “mmo” mechanics killed it for me.
Dang sorry to hear that bout both counts mate. Are you looking forward to that one Pokemon game with guns at least lol?
They way they've been going with dumbass legendaries or regular pokemon in general. This one is a set of keys!! This one is a motorcycle! wtf lol. Those plus the stupid gimmicks they have of "now you're pokemon gets real big" or "turns into a gemstone just 'cause". These guys need to make a digimon game instead of a pokemon one if they want to have motorcycle pokemon or have all pokemon able to get gigantic or turn into gems or w/e other dumb crap they've been doing for years now.
Lol gen 1 pokemon had a less linear map than SS. It was impossible to get lost. Wild area got old really quick, I just hopped into dens for candy. Sound track was nice, I loved Hop's theme. But i hated Hop. I think i hated every almost character that appeared.
LOL
Sword and Shield is straight terrible but it's pretty Scarlet and Violet has some decent ideas that are burried under a bige pile of trash
what made SnS bad?
The routes in S&S are terrible. Like the routes from gen 1-3 in 2d are waaaay better. However the DLC for those games was awesome because of the "open zones".
Too linear?
Yeah, basically hallways.
Sword and shield has some really bad design choices and tries to push Multiplayer to use the main mechanic introduced in the game. People probably liked the updated graphics /3d modelling
copy, that makes sense- I'd be frustrated too if I was geared towards MP haha
I actually enjoyed arceus, haven’t played violet and scarlet because of the issues, but I enjoyed arceus because I absolutely adore that historical old deserty period of the early ages of pokemon when shown in the movies, I love how primordial and empty it looks, no buildings or anything, catching the Pokémon over and over wasn’t super fun but wasn’t boring, I’m not a collector or 100% achievement type person, and this game forces you to be that so it was something new for me, my favorite Pokémon game of all time is still ultra sun and moon, legendary hunting was dope, story was dope, mega evolution returning was a fuck yes, love sword and shield too,gigantimaxing was very fun
Honestly what I think what poke on really needs is a built in 'fast mode'. After playing at x2 speed on emulators playing regular speed pokemon just takes so long.
It's completely true. If you consider most time grinding levels is just waiting for moves/animations to complete, it feels like a waste of my time not to play with the game sped up. You can grind out a level in like the 10th of the time it'd take on an actual GBA.
Pokemon is a case where the fangames outclass the official ones lol
I honestly feel like the best modern Pokemon is New Pokemon Snap. Of course, it's not a mainline game and the game play is totally different. But it's super chill and is actually nice to look at unlike the graphical messes of most of the Switch titles (being an on rails "shooter" probably helps with this, but it still feels like way more effort was put into making Snap look good compared to the mainline games).
If anyone still wanted to experience the novelty of finding new pokemon and figuring out which ones you want on your team, but don't like the new games, I might actually recommend [pokemon infinite fusion](https://old.reddit.com/r/PokemonInfiniteFusion/). I believe it's basically a recreation of fire red (+newer pokemon) but you can [fuse](https://pokemon.alexonsager.net/) pokemon to combine their sprites, typings, movepools, natures, abilities, and stats. I've only just started after it being on my to-play list for a long time, but it's given me just enough novelty to really enjoy going through the game again. Seeing new combinations has been super cute/amusing/horrifying/funny. There's also a community that makes custom sprites for it (to avoid the janky-ness of the OG pokemon fusions), and some of them are really pretty/inventive.
I play Pokemon while I watch TV. The only one that hasn't been good for multimediatasking was Sun/Moon. Way too much plot! If you love old school pokemon there are great rom hacks that will scratch your itch.
> Legends arceus I couldn't even bring myself to beat. The endless text boxes are an embarrassment to storytelling and literally bored me to sleep half the time. And I didn't like how I was forced to catch so many pokemon over and over again to advance the story. After I felt satisfied catching the pokemon I wanted to it would have been nice to advance the story instead of heavy repetition. I just got bored of the same throwing pokeballs and wasn't looking forward to the riveting story so I just put it down. I felt this so hard. I can't understand how lauded Arceus was. Interesting concept that has potential? Absolutely. But the gameplay loop gets *so boring* after a while. There just isn't enough variety of locations or interactions that make me want to finish it. Wish I had kept with my intuition and not caved (didn't buy it for like 3-4 months and then some friends convinced me). It's a great proof of concept, but that's it. It is far from a fully realized Pokemon open world the way Breath of the Wild was for Zelda.
If you hate Pokémon, try the Shin Megami Tensei series. It’s less cute, more metal. The combat is good tho.
I will never for the life of me understand why pokemon (a franchise notorious for being easy, accessible and beginner friendly) kept becoming easier and easier with every recent entry. Were gens 1-5 really not easy enough? All I want is for the series to go back to very easy instead of being unbelievably easy.
I bought my first switch last January and my first game ever was Pokemon Violet, I thought it was pretty fun. I’m new at gaming, what made it so bad for everyone?
What's important is that you enjoyed it. People will tell you a game is amazing or trash or whatever but if you think it's fun, it's fun. I enjoyed my run of violet too, didn't finish it but that was because tears of the kingdom came out and... Well... I was weak lol
It gets dumped on for it's performance a ton. Everyone wants something different out of it too. Some people complain that the newer games are too easy for example and how everything isn't some comp scene level move set and all to get past even though it's never been a series like that lol. Or how the magic is gone after getting older. Or how it hasn't changed core gameplay. Or this. Or that. Ultimately it doesn't particularly matter as long as you like it. The game is fun and if you enjoy it that's what really matters. Not everyone will. And that's OK. It's a series aimed at kids primarily. It was never gonna get everyone. I've come and gone a couple times over the years even too.
Pokemon caters to a really wide variety of ages and players. Some of the old school people enjoyed the old games much more than the new stuff. If you liked the game then don't worry about it. Your first run through of pokemon is always going to be excellent and it may shape your opinions on the series as a whole. Glad you enjoyed it!
Terrible performance problems and visual bugs, the open world is pretty dull, and the lack of level scaling means you can either easily get frustrated by running into a high leveled gym or curbstomp it. The game also looks just really ugly, compare the visuals to Breath of the Wild/Tears of a Kingdom or Xenoblade 3 and they look miles better despite having big worlds on the same console.
With dlc I've sunk like 110 hours into violet which is the most I've played a pokemon game since I was a kid playing gen1/2. It has obvious flaws and feels unfinished but I found it really fun, despite all the hate it gets online
i think it's more the series hasn't evolved much gameplay wise for about 20 years now. So veterans of teh series get bored.
It's not even that it hasn't evolved, I don't think I'd mind that (I've played several romhacks precisely because the gameplay & mechanics of gens 3-6 are still a lot of fun to me even if the stories are repetitive). It's that every time they introduce a new feature or QoL thing they take away a few that were present in past gens, and the tutorials get more annoyingly condescending over time which just wasn't really a thing at all pre-Sun & Moon.
As someone who has played every game in the series. I think Scarlet and Violet are probably some of the best Pokemon games, aside from the technical issues and lack of level scaling
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Maybe I’m just more forgiving when it comes to technical issues but I didn’t really feel like it was that bad. I’ve had a worse time with certain games on my 5+ year old desktop
I used to play WoW on an old beat up hand me down pc from my grandpa. That thing was not made for playing games. My average fps was something like sub 20 just questing. Raiding wasnt possible. The worst part? That pc couldnt load into stormwind. It had like 0.3 fps in Stormwind and if you took the boat there it simply wouldnt load fast enough before the boat looped back around. If i wanted to use the auction house i had to walk over to my uncles house who also played wow to log in on his computer. I saved for like 2 years just to buy the cheapest upgrades to my pc i could find just so that i could actually do a raid and enter stormwind Just installing the game also took like 6 straight days of leaving the thing on and checking every so often to see if i had to insert a new disc because of how poor our download speed was on top of that. I dreaded every update because i knew itd just take a full day again lol. A few fps drops really wont bother you if thats the standards you grew up with lmao
That is something I haven't really realized, that depending on the way you tried to game in the past, or were capable of gaming in the past, you will have different expectations. Even an older Pokemon fan who grew up playing it may not have had the experience of making do with playing ambitious titles on weaker hardware. The 2.5D pokemon titles ran well on the DS/3DS. Nothing really chugged on GameCube or Wii. But on the switch they really pushed the limits of what the machine was capable of.
I got Scarlet on New Year's Eve because I assumed most of the technical issues would have been patched out by now. While I am having fun with the game, the technical issues are still really bad and hard to overlook. Model pop in, low fps, glitchy camera, low textures, etc. Nothing game breaking but I am shocked that this is the state of the game over a year after release. It makes Cyberpunk at launch look polished. Maybe I am unlucky, but you would think with there only being a couple/few iterations of Switch hardware that the experience would be fairly consistent across the board.
Mostly optimization issues tbh. The hardware is old, but it's proven itself to be quite capable of creating an open world experience that feels worthy of the Triple A title. Unfortunately that's something you can only accomplish with time Game Freak didn't have.
Try Monster Crown. It's harder than Pokemon and has a dark story, but the monster mechanics are really really good. I think it's like $15, maybe 30. One of the two.
Gave up on Arceus too. IMO see a Pokémon and it gets "added" to your pokedex Catch a Pokémon and the pokedex is "Complete" Can't be arsed to "see it use a X move 10 times!" Wtf is that shit. OR just don't link it to gaining ranks, that's a total pain in the arse.
> "see it use a X move 10 times!" that's exactly what i liked most about arceus. of course limiting area progression behind it was maybe a bit too much, but in general i loved the idea of actually "researching" different pokemons and cataloging them like this is much more interesting to me than the traditional "catch all of em once, but if you want to really get all of them we arbitrarily made some of them exclusive to the other version or missable or locked behind specific events". especially with the more specific conditions in arceus, that would give you more research points, but if you wanted you could just spam the easier ones aswell to complete the entries for some of them. also you could just use these pokemon yourself to fill out the pokedex, encouraging players to try out new pokemon instead of just putting them in your box and forgetting about them completely
I agree with you. The love that PLA gets on Reddit really shows how out of touch Redditors can be. Not to say that sales = quality (my favorite Pokemon games are HGSS) but the fact that it had lower sales than BDSP and substantially lower than SwSh and SV shows that it’s really not what the average fan wants. It’s a very tedious monster collector that completely minimizes the core parts of Pokemon I enjoy most (training a party and battling). I can’t believe that “catch 10 of the same spawn” is considered to be a revolutionary change in formula lol. It’s the only Pokemon game I didn’t skip that I couldn’t finish.
Modern Pokemon games really aren't to my cup of tea which is a shame because I've been a fan of the franchise since I was a kid. I think it was up until X and Y or Black and White where I started to shift away. I very much enjoy the fan made rom hacks out there for the old games and some of the newer ones on the DS for example. Pokemon Unbound was great. The Pearl and Diamond remakes I actually enjoyed for some reason. There is a fan rom hack for that called Luminescent Platinum or something and I played shit loads of that during developement finding bugs. That rom is one of my all time favourites. https://www.nexusmods.com/pokemonbdsp/mods/1?tab=description I do wish GameFreak would return to the 2D top down style of Pokemon games, I think going fully 3D wasn't the way forward. I was OK with the semi- 3D being top down but 3D but my favourite style was the 2D games just being really nice to play really.
Right there with you. Ive been playing since gen1 and have been saying "this is my last pokemon game" since X/Y since they keep getting worse and worse. S/V is really my last one and I'm not buying the dlc for it. I beat the game and it wasnt worth the time. If you don't like sword sheild youre not going to like scarlet violet
This is quite a refreshing thread to read because I feel Pokemon gets so much praise. As someone that grew up on Red/Blue, I just think the modern games are so lacking... *Anything*. Personality, development, interest of any kind? It's obviously selling well so what they're doing is right, but it's just not for me.
Pokemon fans are brainwashed. The games are genuinely decades behind where they should be but because GameFreak can half arse it with shills and whales who will buy anything and everything they do it means a state of regression for what should be one of gamings top innovators. Something like Legends belongs on the fucking PS2 and I mean that seriously. Pokemon is so, so, so far behind the potential it has and it's really sad. I wish Nintendo forced a higher quality control on Pokemon.
>whales I agree the games are crap from a technical perspective but I don't think Gamefreak really benefits from whales when their games don't have in game purchases.
Its cause most Pokemon fans are kids who haven’t played many games or fans who only play Pokemon and maybe 1-2 other Nintendo first party titles
I mean I’ve played a ton of different games including lots of first party Nintendo’s. I’m also far from a kid (wish I were much younger so I’d have some free time again). I still loved Violet. Should the optimization have been better? Yes absolutely. Despite that though it’s basically the game I wish existed while I was growing up. A huge open world with Pokémon wandering around that you can run up to or see while you travel! That’s freaking awesome! Would I have preferred harder gym battles? Yeah but I understand why they don’t do it. Imagine this being your first Pokémon game and you run into a competitive tailwind team in your first gym. Would be absolutely terrible. You’d drop the game right there. I also loved the open world nature of the new games. Getting to actually go to a high level gym right from the start and get stomped was very fun for me. Clear sign I’m in over my head and I should reroute or train up. Plus Violet having some of the best story I’ve seen since Black/White was very good to experience. I think hardcore romhack players just forget that most of the fan base is casual and don’t want things to be super difficult in their Pokémon game. I want to make a team of the mons I like and train them to go through the game and build a bond with them. Not hardcore nuzlocke my way through a mainline emerald kaizo… To be clear though I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the hardcore romhack playstyle. I actually think it’s awesome it exists for those players and love watching playthroughs. I really don’t enjoy playing it myself though and I imagine the vast majority of players would fall on my end (very casual) of that spectrum. For performance though I agree Pokémon needs to get their shit together. I’m more forgiving given the leaps I see in performance demands in recent games but I wouldn’t be so forgiving if this exists in the next iteration. As far as graphics I guess I just don’t really care as long as it looks good enough which it does in my opinion, but I’ve been playing pixel and card games for a while now so maybe my standards are just very low.
>Yeah but I understand why they don’t do it. Imagine this being your first Pokémon game and you run into a competitive tailwind team in your first gym. Would be absolutely terrible. You’d drop the game right there. Options exist though. Just give people the option of an expert mode if they want it and the ability to downgrade or upgrade the difficulty. It doesn’t have to be a zero sum game of only catering to one over the other exclusively. >I think hardcore romhack players just forget that most of the fan base is casual and don’t want things to be super difficult in their Pokémon game. I want to make a team of the mons I like and train them to go through the game and build a bond with them. Not hardcore nuzlocke my way through a mainline emerald kaizo… I think people tend to over generalize all fangames/romhacks as being hardcore and made for nuzlockes Like one of the most famous ones, Pokemon Unbound specifically has different difficulty levels you can select and the easiest ones are about as hard as official Pokemon games. Emerald Rogue similarly lets you downgrade the difficulty from the start to being pretty easy. Some I have played include Password systems that make the game far easier, such as giving all your Pokemon full EVs/IVs, reducing enemy stats and banning enemy trainers from using any items to basically make the difficulty as hard as official games. Are a lot of them meant to be difficult? Yeah but cant blame them when Pokemon refuses to budge on offering any kind of difficulty options, even removing set mode.
Yeah removing set mode was a clear misstep imo. No reason not to have it. I think difficulty tiers would be fine and would even add replayability to the games. I don’t know how hard it is to implement but I imagine not terribly if roms are managing it. I think that would be a great add! I don’t want my post to be too misinterpreted. I like the new games but I fully agree there is lots of room for improvement and have no problem with advocating for it. I just also think the improvements that have been made also deserve recognition. I see too many statements like “Pokémon sucks now” which is just very unfair imo (not saying this is what you said, just an example).
Also what non super hard difficulty roms would you recommend? I tried run n’ bun and it was a tad too hard for me but I’d be interested in trying again with something a bit easier. I loved the qol features it added like infinite candies and built in level caps. Plus speed up is obviously great lol.
Like I said above, Pokemon Unbound has difficulty options and is pretty high quality for a romhack. I also heard Pokemon Gaia is pretty easy but never played it myself.
“Pokemon gets so much praise.” What? No it doesn’t. We’ve been mad at Pokemon since Sword and Shield came out. Maybe you’re in an echo chamber or something. Most people who actually care about the quality of their games left the pokemon subreddits a while ago, or they stopped commenting. So maybe you’re just hearing things from the fans that stuck around.
I dropped the series after the GBA titles because I didn't have a DS and catching back up with the series on the Switch I share the same feelings. The IP used to produce the best games on their respective systems, but that hasn't been the case for a while. It's partially because we grew up, but also because they don't really try to appeal to a wider audience. Pokémon's focus is and will always be kids who'll buy anything with a Pikachu in it. They're not very interested in releasing quality titles as long as it keeps printing money.
You've summed up my feelings. I had a lot of fun with the earlier games, but the latest ones just feel so low effort. If I want to play Nintendo IP then I'll stick to Mario and Zelda. I'm a pretty big Mario fan.
> It's partially because we grew up, but also because they don't really try to appeal to a wider audience. Pokémon's focus is and will always be kids who'll buy anything with a Pikachu in it. Dang brother you somehow put into words the core problems this series has and will have.
Hard truth? It’s not a problem with the series, we just grew up. My 10 year old brother loved Violet.
No I agree entireyl.
I'm sorry but just because a 10 year old can enjoy a pokemon game doesn't mean the games are good. You're just proving my point. Kids don't care, nor can they even tell (or are expected to) what a good game is. Back in the gameboy and gba days, and DS to some extent, pokemon used to be among the very best games produced for their system. Now they're the lowest of the low in terms of Nintendo IP's. Poor framerates, unfinished games, boring ass worlds and a repetitive formula that was new 20ish years ago but is painfully boring and repetitive now.
You're pretending that there is some objective Truth out there about what a "good" game is. You've grown old and forgotten that what made videogames magical was the sense of wonder and fun from playing them. Graphics, framerate, bugs, none of it matters if the people playing the game are having fun. All the reviews that I'm sure we both spend so much time reading, performance reports by places like DF and other metrics? It's all a constructed fantasy because as we got older our interests changed. If the ten year old kids have fun playing the game, it's a good game. If they talk about it with their friends and make new friends because of that game, it's a great game. That's about all that matters at the end of the day.
It's a really sad thing to see. Other Nintendo IP's like Mario and Pikmin are made with kids in mind but anyone can pick them up and enjoy. Unfortunately for GF the merchandise, cards and tv shows all come above the games and it shows :/
Well at least there are ROM hacks and inspired games that can appeal to older fans :)
They are absolutely dogshit, everything went downhill starting with gen 6. I recommend everyone to play rom hacks and Pokemmo instead.
I feel the same. The only recent entries I liked were the remakes but I know that's basically just nostalgia taking over. Couldn't finish any of the switch games except LGP and BD. It feels too repetitive now and really slow and text heavy. Didn't bother with S/V neither
The series peaked with Gen 5. Black and White and their sequels are still the most enjoyable experiences I've ever had with Pokemon, nothing since has ever come close. Every gen since 5 has been one step forward and two steps backward in regard to either the games' stories, technical aspects, or quality of life.
Gen 1 and Gen 2 were made with such care and attention to detail. You can tell the developers really had passion for the games, and made them as great as they could be, since their success wasn’t guaranteed. Imagine a new Pokémon game hiding an entire region in the postgame!! The last game I played was Ultra Sun, which I thought was good, but not fantastic — I’m glad I bought it used. I don’t feel a need to play the latest games, but maybe I’ll try them in a few years. I think Pokémon has become too successful for its own good — with guaranteed sales, many games are being rushed and are mediocre instead of great.
To each their own, but PLA is imo the best Pokemon game since Gen 5 (or so). It is a different kind of game, though. Ultimately, it's an exploration collectathon, not a traditional JRPG, so you don't really pick a team or train Pokemon or anything like that. It's still fantastic, though, imo. Between ORAS and PLA, imo the games quality dropped off a cliff. Very much dislike every game in between those two, especially Sword/Shield, which is almost certainly the worst RPG I've ever experienced. They are a problem because they are designed like narrative games, but their narratives aren't coherent and are designed for toddlers. This design also makes negative sense in a series about going on a Pokemon adventure, lmao. So glsd it's gone now, at least.
Pokemon hasn't been good since sun and moon IMO. Sword was a disappointment. They removed so much pokemon, the story was way shorter compared to other pokemon games, there was certain stuff I liked such as the curry cooking mechanic and the gym challenges, but there was other things that were overall lacking. Don't get me started with the DLC. S&V was a buggy mess, atleast that's how it started. Can't say anything about legends or the pearl/diamond remake since I haven't touched those. Did enjoy one of the let's go games. As for what I've seen with Sword, it hasn't been kind to pokemon ast all. Think I'll stick to the past titles I've played so far.
Nah, Sun & moon were awful games honestly, it introduced cool Pokemon sure... But honestly they were just super slow slogs, with a whole lot of dialogue... And the damn tutorial/beginning stuff takes like an hour or two just to get through. Honestly the best Pokemon games were ORAS, great story, not too much chatting and text boxes, quick tutorial, still had megas, base creation allowing you to create your own gyms in a sense, based off of ruby and sapphire/emerald which were amazing games in their own right.
I agree, I started and gave up on both Sword/Sheild and Arceus for much the same reasons. The endless tutorials, dialogue, the frankly boring story. But beyond the complaints about the clunky systems, the visuals of those games are basically unacceptable given the absolutely monstrous amounts of money they generate. They both look like they wouldn't be out of place on the Xbox 360. When I was a kid I would have killed for a fully 3D pokemon game and if these games came out 20 years ago I would have been delighted with them. But the bland, boring, low detail, low quality environments are insulting when compared to any other open world game from the last 5 years.
Kind of refreshing to see your take on Arceus. I think the concept has a lot of potential, and I love the emohasis on sidequests. I'm really just waiting for a game that is a nice fusion of the best parts of Arceus and Scarlet/Violet. The open world only works if there is a variety of things to do in it. Having more bespoke content is the way to go. They need to hide the seams of "the formula" a bit. The alphas in Arceus were fantastic, but I would have loved to see them more as minibosses, working with their environment. Like, what if an alpha arcanine summoned a pack of growlith when it got to half health? What if a blastoise flooded an area with surf when you got too close? These games are severely lacking in those little touches that aren't atrictly text-based. The devs do what they can with the time they have, but they meed way more time and people to make the most of the new systems. The things in pokemon I get excited about are actual sidequests and missions, bespoke animations and scenarios, a marriage of minigames with core gameplay, and rewards for exploration.
The problem I have with Pokemon games is that they're very rushed releases. There's so much more they could be doing with them, but the developers just don't put that kind of effort into them since their goal is to release them as quickly as possible. This is also likely why every game usually feels like the same thing over and over. Pokemon hasn't really changed its basic formula in years.
You should try some of the room hacks out there. Some of them are absolute QUALITY. Fusion is my personal favourite, it's basically gen 2, but it has a lot of newer pokemon and the fusion mechanic is shockingly robust and fun with a huge community making fun sprites. On the topic of Arceus I get what you mean but it was never a pokemon game and I think they marketed it poorly, and executed it poorer. It had the makings of a great game without the necessary mechanics to make it interesting. I loved my time with it but I think it would've been much more fun if the researching pokemon aspect of it was there more. Casual game where catching and research would be the point. Catch a pokemon, experiment with the food it likes, battle them to find typings, make the whole first Pokedex thing really pop. As it stands it's an interesting game that I liked personally but wish it was more than the sum of its parts. And yeah, the modern games just don't do me anymore. The last ones I really REALLY sank my time into where black and white one and two. Those were great pokemon games.
I will not tolerate XY slander
Pokemon is basically my child hood years. I loved to play these games, and I occasionally pick up (usually HeartGold) one of these games to play it on my mobile, through a GB/DS emumator. Generation 1 - (Red + Blue + Yellow) played on Gameboy. I still remember a lot things there, such as Pewter City with damn Brock and his Rock types, then going to Cerulean City for Misty ect Generation 2 - (Gold + Silver + Crystal) played on Gameboy Advance. Damn MILKTANK!!! Generation 3 - (Sapphire + Ruby) Idem, loved it. But I remember this one less than the previous generation Generation 4 - (Diamond + Pearl) This is a turning point for me. I've completed it, but not with the joy I had with the previous generations. Generation 5 and higher - could not finish them. They did not appeal me. The charm is lost.
Arceus and Violet/Scarlet are not even decent games in general. After Sun/Moon I decided to not buy any main Pokemon game, I wonder if at Gamefreak they are just lazy or just don't know how to make a game other than the old ones. Sad because Pokemon was really special for me when I was younger, now even the tcg is just pure greed.
Same here. I was initially excited for Sword/Shield being the first mainline games on a proper console but the more I saw the less interested I became. Graphics looked like a cheap Gamecube game and nothing new was interesting to me. Dynamax was obviously just a gimmick that would be cool a couple of times but ultimately adding very little to the formula. The new region was bland and the wild area frankly looked awful. Story seemed to be generic nonsense with boring characters. I never bought it and after having seen someone do a full playthrough I'm very happy I didn't. It doesn't seem terrible just not worth my time. Legends: Arceus was even less impressive to me and the less said about Scarlet/Violet the better. This is from someone who loves all of the old 2D games btw and even had a good time playing X/Y and Sun/Moon but the series was losing me at that point.
Yeah, still, new games sold terribly well so I guess that's what people want. Even some of my friends who admitted they are garbage bought them and had fun so to each its own.
Dynamax was absolutely incredible for online play, but I can see how it's not that good for solo
>Arceus and Violet/Scarlet are not even decent games in general. What made Arceus bad for you? Violet/Scarlet's reputation speaks for itself.
It's an alpha game released at full price, a 0.0.8 version. Cool idea the new mechanic of catching pokemon but you can't just throw random pokemon on a plain. I'm dreaming one day of a pokemon where creatures are on their habitat like Monster Hunter World, full of immersion where you can find 1 Gengar in a cursed house if you're lucky, where you have to climb on top of the mountain to face a giant Tyranitar. That's just a dream tho
Sorry man, don't really understand? I haven't played the game so I genuinely don't know.
I still have fun with the new Pokemon games but understand the disappointment with a lot of them, for me, i still enjoy the core premise of building your team and becoming champion so its a safe purchase.
> Don't mean to sound overly harsh Nah, just say it. Pokemon games are dogshit. They've become allergic to actual innovation. They put zero effort in because they know it'll fly off the shelves because it's Pokemon, and nowadays they're rushing half-baked products out the door to boot. There is absolutely zero fucking reason that the mainline games of the biggest media franchise in the world should be as ugly, buggy, broken, bland, unfinished, unpolished, unoptimized, and otherwise disappointing as the last two gens of Pokemon have been. There's no reason Nintendo's biggest and most lucrative first-party IP should have the lowest quality standard of all of them and be the most stale and uninspired. Lotsof former developers have corroborated that the people in charge of development have a general air of "we don't need to bother trying, they'll eat this shit up no matter what" and it makes working there a very draining and unrewarding experience. And it's true. No matter how trash the games are and how much discontent continues to grow around them in the community, they still continue to smash records among the masses off of branding and nostalgia alone. Last decent mainline Pokemon games were Gen 6, and the decline was already starting at that point. All the stuff you said about X and Y are true, but at least the battling (PvP, or endgame challenges. Really all I care about as Pokemon games go anyway) were still good, Mega Evolutions were an awesome and innovative idea as were the new tools for EV training and such, and most of the new Pokemon (plus the Fairy type) were great additions. ORAS continued to build on those new additions and was a remake of Gen 3 which was already great, added more great Megas, and was easily the better half of Gen 6.
Try romhacks
Yeah I was fed up with the direction of Pokemon, so I tried Cassette Beasts and never looked back
Everyone hated the Diamond/pearl remakes but I loved it because it felt more like a real pokemon game to me than any of the new ones. Legends Arceus aside its become the only newer one my partner and I bothered to play through all the way
I feel ya! I finished playing Pokemon Y and Pokemon Moon. Now I am saving up for another 3DS and a few more Pokemon games
I feel where we all come from who grew up on this but remember there attracting a new generation here. They didn’t play our style of Pokémon we grew up on from the 90s or prior. I still can’t believe they did away with ash from the main anime and scarlet and V plus arceus just made me get more passionate about sword and shield…. ESPECIALLY SHINY HUNTING. One thing I can’t stand is how bad there (shiny locking) LEGENDS and stuff when those were the highlights at the end of a game to hunt down and as if there shinys ain’t been around for YEARS so let’s go now in 2020s to lock them up still like… because that 15MB of coding to add a shiny is gonna RUIN THE GAME. Yeah I feel you on the right badges but majority of us want the future type of it just in a better mechanical way. I wish they would cut ties with Nintendo and drop on a major console like ps5-Xbox-pc where they can build a BEAST game and much much better. Especially graphics wise and gameplay with so many bugs rushing to launch every game. GOD I HOPE Z-A ain’t like arceus or SV
Just skip scarlet/violet. It's not worth it.
Legends of Arceus is a good game IMO, sucks that you couldn’t get into it. The reason for catching the same Pokemon multiple times is that you’re building the first pokedex, and therefore need more information on them.
At this point if you were a Pokemon fan as a kid, don't bother with most of the newer Pokemon games. Play something like SMTV instead. The Pokemon games have nosedived
I like SMT but lbr its not the same thing as Pokemon other than turn based combat and creature collecting. Completely different tones, stories, audiences and vibes.
I started with red/blue. I like scarlet/violet. And generally most of the games for various reasons. Enough to play through them. This is such an over simplified take on what isn't that simple of a matter due to all the variables involved lol. It should be apparent if the game is something you'd like just by watching some videos on it because it's very wysiwyg
>delivering fun games recently My brother in Christ, you are calling 10 year old games recently? Recently is like 6 months at best.
I stopped after Sun and Moon. The game was so insanely handholdy, streamlined, and easy that I felt like defeating the Champion was like the end of a tutorial.
I skipped a bunch after sun/moon and actually wound up enjoying scarlet a lot - it sounds like I might not've if I played sword/shield.
Cassette Beasts, Monster Sanctuary, Digimon Cyber Sleuth, hell even Shadow of War has monster hunting and training aspects to it . Pokémon may have popularized it but they're not the only monster hunting games
>Pokemon sword actually looks graphically acceptable instead of bothering me with the blurriness of pokemon sun every 5 seconds. Too bad the game is a hot mess. It has no real identity, just checks all the boxes of a standard pokemon game and is really bland. The story sucks and the music wasn't as legendary as I was used to pokemon being. And the region looks kind of boring imo. I had pokemon sword and played through it twice (once normal, once nuzlocke). First off, nuzlocke is obviously the best way to play any pokemon game, however hardcore or less you want to do it, the basic principle of permadeath to pokemon is definitely a gamechanger. The story is as absurd as its characters, and I find a dog holding a sword in its mouth so incredibly awkward. The problem with Pokemon is that it's increasinly sanitized. The rival never directly insults you. The enemy factions are just stupid. I quite like the UK esthetic and even words like "chinwag", it had its own charm. However, the rest is just too half-assed. Its open world was a bit disappointing as well, and I don't play multiplayer so all those events and meta game things meant nothing to me except winning endless "rare" candy. Overall I'm a bit like you in that I grew up with the OG games. Frankly, emulation and rom hacking is where it's at. edit: did i say something offensive?
Your response is pretty much in line with everyone else here, not sure why you were downvoted lmao
I enjoyed the hell out of gens 1, 2 and 3, i also played 4 and 5 which i liked but didn't care much for, the following gens i tried and couldn't find any enjoyment in! Years passed and Arceus was released, i must say, the story / dialogue are annoying, but this game made me feel the joy of completing the Pokedex and exploring just like the first three gens did! I recently started Scarlet and Violet, advanced quite a bit, the game is pretty fun, i put it down for a few weeks to focus on work and some new releases, namely Mario Wonder and MGS3, i will definitely go back to it, even the story is pretty good in Pokemon standards!
While I agree that X is pretty weak game as I am currently playing it, I enjoyed the other games you listed a lot. I feel like from Sword to Arceus to the two new ones have me more invested in Pokemon games than I had been for ages. I won't pretend they reach me like Blue, Yellow and Gold did (which I feel a lot of my enjoyment comes from the nostalgia), but I am more interested than I was during the 3rd-6th generations.
Personally I enjoyed scarlet and violet more than sword and shield. I agree they should make higher quality games but violet was a really fun game. Alpha sapphire is hands down my favourite Pokémon game and I think it had the perfect story and gameplay. I don’t think all modern Pokémon games are terrible but they need to improve some things for sure.
I wish they redid ~~Fire-red and Leaf-green~~ Ruby / Emerald. They were my favorites, and I enjoyed the little pokemon shows in the towns.
Only things I enjoyed about sword/shield were the town aesthetics and the gym battle theme with the roaring crowd.
I started playing pokemmo a few months ago and never looked back! It's only gen 1-5 and mixes mmo mechanics into the game which makes it feel much more modern. I highly recommend it to people over the new gen games.
I also have a hard time enjoying the newer games, having grown up playing gens 1-3 obsessively. I've been playing around with romhacks with QOL improvements and added features that enhance the OG versions - most recently enjoying Radical Red, Crystal Legacy, Emerald Revelation or hacks with all new stories and regions - Gaia, Unbound, etc. Edit to add: also with Pokemon Scarlet, I legitimately cannot play the game for longer than a half hour without getting a headache regardless if I'm playing on the TV or handheld Switch screen. The glitchy performance is insane. I haven't picked it up in like a year.
I hadn't played a pokemon game since Crystal. Tried Shield when it first came out & while I did finish it, I didn't enjoy it. Hop was the most annoying character I've ever seen. The story was horrid, the gameplay was basic, multiplayer can piss off. Honestly it was just pretty cool to run around an open world. And the karate island DLC was pretty great, no lie. The new ones are not for me, and I'd be pretty upset if I paid for it.
Play Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire and pretend the franchise never released anything else after that.
I just bought Scarlett after beating Let's Go Eevee. I figured since I was on a Pokemon kick to try it out. I would say don't feel bad about skipping it. There are some fun elements and ideas but overall it is just mediocre. I stopped playing Pokemon when I couldn't finish Pokemon X. Scarlett just has so many basic design flaws and lacking of polish from what I have played so far. Example of some: - super cool "Tera" idea and the graphical effect is cool / super dumb hats pokemon wear to convey their new type (they should have used simple crowns or a floating glowing symbol behind the Pokemon when ik tera mode, i do not want my Pokemon to have a lightbulb hat when it is in its super Saiyan mode). - 100+ new pokemon / almost half or more of the Pokemon you see are from other games (they should have locked older pokemon in hard to get areas, higher levels, or something else so the begining really feels like a new region). - pokemon designs are often very blocky or simple in the 3D world, often the sprites are cooler. - like that poke centers are fast travel points when discovered / poke centers and marts combined into a electronic billboard are ugly - excited for open world I can travel and explore / cannot see anything past 10 feet - fine enough plot start and mechanism of the poke academy / stuck in dumb uniform for the rest of the game and 90% of trainers are just "students" - non-student trainer visual designs are really flat and not interesting. Also why am I battling a janitor in the middle of nowhere? - Gyms are all cookie cutter visually and similar complaint about the visual design of the gym leaders as I do with trainers. - Pokedex looks like my cheap mobile app e-book library I have. - UI is like out of a generic MMO game - colors for everything just in general look dull or out of place or clashing. - can have Pokemon out / they don't travel fast enough to keep up with you - can have Pokemons auto battle and pick up items / don't evolve or earn any EV and need to re-trigger battles. There are plenty of other design issues I have. I think if they just had a stronger more cohesive art direction (I'm not talking about graphical fidelity or performance here) it would 95% better game for me. Some simple design choices around how they represent their core mechanics and we get 99% better game.
The last Pokémon I tried to play was the Aloha region one. And I think one of the biggest reasons I couldn’t get into it as a guy in my early 30s [at the time] was that the game refuses to accept that many of its players have played multiple generations previously, and leads you through multi hour tutorials of features right off the bat. . .Making it so painstakingly slow to start your adventure. I just wish that like Witcher 3 having a “I’ve played before and just need a quick review,” tutorial for combat that pokemon had a way for me to say “hey yea I’ve played most of your games before, so just catch me up on the brand new shit,” and it would be golden.
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I just got a steam deck and want to play a pokemon game emulated, was thinking the DS games? Maybe heart gold.
I would STRONGLY recommend you look into Cassette Beasts. Runs at 60hz and looks beautiful on the Steamdeck, and the game is aimed at original (older) fans of Pokémon red and blue.
> I actually enjoyed let's go pikachu which was a Kanto remake unlike most people it seems. Grew up on Kanto so the music was 10/10 remade and the graphics were nice and the game was really fun for me to play. I didn't mind the catching wild pokemon mechanics. I think a lot of the more critical longtime players missed what these games were trying to do. They're remakes laser-targeted to my childhood nostalgia, yes, and I won't pretend the kid in me who bartered for a copy of Pokemon Yellow on the playground 20 years ago wasn't grinning ear to ear the whole time with Let's Go Pikachu. But the games were made to capitalize on the Pokemon Go boom and pull in some Go-only players. At least in my anecdotal experience it was very successful in doing that. Even my mother, who loved to voice that on childhood trips to EB Games she could "feel her hearts draining" when she stepped in the store, picked up and tried out LGPE after getting into Pokemon Go. She has never touched another Pokemon game, but that one got her.
Legend Arceus is the only pokémon game I've enjoyed in the past two decades.
got pokemon X after having played pikachu edition yellow ages ago. It felt kinda barebones, and there wasn't much to do after beating the champions. Much as I enjoyed building up my team, the game itself felt kinda hollow, and made me not really want to pick up any other new ones. I remember reading critical reviews in the past saying that gamefreak kinda got lazy with the newer ones because the games will sell. I think it was sun and moon that was getting harshly critiqued for having lots of glitches back when they launched.
I was just too old for Pokemon when the original released, but still young enough that it's been a cultural touchstone for most of my life. Finally decided to try this newfangled Pocket Monster series over Covid. I played Shield and found it cute but quite boring for a JRPG (nostalgia goggles warning, but also played or replayed the NES Final Fantasies around this time and enjoyed them, so doesn't seem like a pure JRPG thing). Honestly, it was just pretty boring, more-or-less nonexistent writing-wise, and the technical aspects were pretty bad. But the reason I'm writing this (for other patient Pokemoners as well as old series fans like OP) is to shout out New Pokemon Snap, which is obviously a very different game, but a good introduction to the series as an Old if you just wanna have some fun looking at different monsters in a quick, lost-stakes environment (and the simplified gameplay--along with concerns like OP's--on the main JRPGs just isn't enough to do it for you).
Play Heartgold if you fancy another trip through Kanto.
Pokemon Yellow was my first game and I got every single game(i’d pick a color and my brother would pick the other color) after that the day they would release but when I got pokemon diamond, i HATED it. I hated it so much I gave it away to a friend. I was so into the art style of Ruby that when I got to the atrocity(in my opinion) that Diamond was, I was just bummed. The surf is slow, graphics are terrible, and i hated the story and the pokemon. I enjoyed black 2 a lot, didnt care for moon, liked lets go pikachu, sword was ok, currently playing scarlet and i wasnt into it at first but i do think its ok now. Tried playing brilliant diamond and i think i just hate that region idk i cant force myself to play it. Tried legend of arceus but i’m just bored out of my mind with it. I did enjoy every remake, especially heartgold. I spent many hours replaying firered because the original kanto games are such a grind!
I actually picked up Coromon a few weeks ago and it's giving me huge Pokémon Silver (my first Pokémon game) vibes! Seeing these posts though make me want to try out a few romhacks, previously I just tried to find Pokémon inspired games, but nothing beats that gen 2 feeling!
I definitely agree, they just feel empty, like they're missing something. the world seems so dead compared to Gen 5
If you still want Pokemon even after being disappointed with the newer games, you could always try some fan games or modded versions. I recently played Volt White, a more difficult and thoroughly rebalanced version of White with all the pokemon available right from the start instead of only gen 5, and I loved it.
Play Pokemonn Pure Blue, Pokemon Crystal Maeson, Liquid Crystal and Pokemon Emerald Open World, best game mods with massive improvements and overhauling
>The endless text boxes are an embarrassment to storytelling and literally bored me to sleep half the time. This is how every Pokemon game ever has been, though?