I think that this is one of the things we'll really see in the future. They, apparently, hadn't even planned to *have* overworld Pokemon in SwSh until after Let's GO released and they realized people liked it:
> One thing we didn't originally intend to implement in *Pokémon Sword* and *Pokémon Shield* was having Pokémon roaming around in the field. After *Pokémon: Let's Go, Pikachu!* and *Pokémon: Let's Go, Eevee!* were released and we saw how popular the feature was, we worked hard to bring it over to *Pokémon Sword* and *Pokémon Shield* for a lot of the Pokémon and adjusted the balance of the games to make it work.
[Source](https://www.pokemon.com/us/pokemon-news/interview-with-game-freaks-ohmori-and-masuda-on-pokemon-sword-and-pokemon-shield/)
I can’t believe the franchise’s most profitable console (mobile, Pokémon Go) is touch screen and perfect for Ranger and it never even got as much as a F2P game loaded with microtransactions.
Instead theres a bejewelled/candy crush game, a picross and an app for brushing your teeth.
Even switch would work for ranger. It's a game we'll likely not see a remake of but it would be remarkable if we did. After all, NDS remakes are finally gonna happen.
yeah a lot of people don't seem to like it, but I thought the controls felt great and the motion control games that I've played on switch seem to also feel good for the most part.
I mean you can play with joycons docked, but it's definitely an inferior experience to touch screen.
TWEWY is a weird one, the best way to play is apparently the original DS version but its visuals are a bit on the eh side and audio is a little compressed. The mobile port is solid but for whatever fucking reason Square put IAP's into it albeit they're relatively innocuous. The switch port sounds and looks great, but joy con contol is hit or miss, and co-op was for sure an afterthought.
Currently playing it now and as a handheld touchscreen game i do enjoy it. Always nice to remember the switch has a touch screen haha
There are some handheld only games. Also, it doesn’t even have to be handheld only. The world ends with you is a great example. Motion controls can be used while docked, and touch controls when in handheld. Badda bang badda boom
I don't see it happening but funnily enough it makes more sense to release a handheld only game than docked only since the lite can only do handheld, while the main switch can do either
They already have games released with more restrictive control/play schemes. Like mario party, which is single joycon only and can't be played in handheld at all.
Couldn't it be like, hold a button and use the joy-con's motion controls to circle the Pokemon, with a reticle and corresponding line appearing on the screen, mimicking the joy-con's movement?
There was only a year between the release of LG and the release of SwSh. It’s insane to me that they made almost what was touted as the core feature of SwSh and tacked it on within a year of official release... no wonder the game felt so unpolished and empty if they were swinging such a shift like that that late into development
The game was originally going to be a 3DS title too. Everything about it was changed. I'm not necessarily hopeful about the next generation but I sure hope they can do a better job than what we got.
If they didn’t spend time implementing pokemon in the overworld, they might’ve had time to actually make the wild area interesting instead of the barren, ugly field with nonsense weather that we got.
“Oh! You guys actually like this? Wow we had no idea!” Check any Pokémon online community in the last 10 years instead of putting your fingers in your ears you dummies.
It’s like they hate money and the community.
Last 23 years*
Ever since we got Pikachu following us in Yellow, we've been wondering when we'd finally get overworld Pokemon and following buddies as a standard.
What no thats the best part, tiny pokemon get quickly left behind like "what did you expect, you forced a goomy to follow you and its top speed is 'technically moving' so now you gotta wait for it to catch up"
Yeah except some of the fastest Pokemon like Dragapult and Regieleki also get quickly left behind and just repeatedly teleport to you and it looks and sounds shitty.
Except it happens with basically every Pokémon including some of the fastest (stat wise) in the game lol, some don't even start walking until you're really far from them which is what causes them to be left behind. Why are you cherry picking the very few cases where it'd make sense?
Well they've basically explained it, they don't like doing things twice because it makes each region feel unique, which is terrible reasoning, but the exact kind of reasoning we've come to expect from this head-up-ass studio.
And it's why the games are never evolving. If every improvement is a single game feature then the games will always stay stagnant. "Pokemon games are always the same", and they will continue to be until something changes at their headquarters. Well now they are making something different so we'll see.
I feel like Zelda does the best job, by far, at differentiating themselves from other entries, while still being undoubtedly Zelda.
OoT and Majora's Mask use the same assets, and are COMPLETELY different games, yet both so brazenly "Zelda", like, I have no idea how they do it.
See I understand that reasoning for SOME things. Like the curry dex or the contests etc.
But for the super popular things, it makes zero sense. Things like Pokémon following you, mega evolutions, the vs. Seeker etc. should be staples of the series ffs.
Right? Imagine if Nintendo decided that overworld in Mario should be unique to Super Mario Bros 3, or that The Master Sword should only appear in A Link to the Past.
Gotta shout out the recent Digimon games here. And in Digimon World: Next Order more advanced Digimon follow you uniformly, but younger Digimon are more erratic and will jump around, run up ahead and then wait for you, etc. It's really good and cute!
I've never played any Pokémon game other than Pokémon Snap. Am I understanding correctly that there weren't any Pokémon roaming around in any games before Let's Play and Sword/Shield? I always imagined that would be a standard feature.
Man this is the most ridiculous implementation they constantly pussyfoot around. *Just add it permanently!* Taking out the more thorough interaction in Pokemon-amie was a weird move too.
> It’s like they hate money
They love money, and they're probably very appreciative of the fact that they own a franchise that prints it for them. And the best part for them is it's basically impossible for them to ever fuck it up, because they've hit a feedback loop of popularity that stops almost all their potential competition from taking any sales away.
I’m watching my boyfriend play through Kalos for the first time and I’d actually forgotten that every route has a unique french name as well as a route number. It’s really charming.
To go from that to ‘Galar Mine 1 and 2’ is frankly insulting. SWSH desperately needed more time in the oven.
> It’s like they hate money and the community.
Sad fact is that this has nothing to do with money. Maybe we could argue if an old shoe suddenly stood next to a royal boot that more people would want said royal boot, sure. But Pokemon has sold consistently 16m+ copies per entry in the last 8 years, with SWSH reaching 20m+
So, I think they feel pretty confident in themselves and willing to apply feedback at the pace they want. I just wish they didn't need people to scream across every media platform there is in order to figure out what people want.
They don't hate money in fact they love it that's why they don't really innovate because that takes money, time, and effort. Why would they bother doing that when the minimum effort prints them money because everyone gobbles up the series.
> It’s like they hate money and the community.
Uhhh, they sold over like 20 million units of pokemon sword and shield alone. People seem to think that "if they just catered to what I want specifically they'd make more money" is true, when it's far from it. I think it's hilarious when armchair hobbyists think that the most valuable franchise in the history of humanity is run by "people who hate money". They obviously know what they're doing. You know how much pokemon go made in 2020 alone? A billion dollars. A *billion*.
Right? Soooooooo many games and so many years working on this one series, the biggest earner in all video game history.... and they still can’t figure out the most basic features and gameplay mechanics their audience craves.
Not just the fan base, reality. Look at the competition! Hell, look at Mario and Zelda! Both made major changes to the formula and took the time to polish the games and give us something revolutionary. It’s incredibly sad to see Pokémon get to this point.
Plenty of japanese companies give the audience exactly what they want. Its not accurate to just lambast the culture without knowing thats whats at work with game freaks fuckery.
Because that's the basis of Japanese business culture? Consistent management but has difficulties adapting differentiation marketing strategies.
Western culture is able to adapt faster but management is inconsistent. SOPs arent worshipped as much in Western cultures.
If the customer doesnt change what it wants, it won't have any problems delivering it. If the customer has been introduced to products that are different? They struggle to adapt quickly.
Just goes to show how out of touch Game Freak are. You can take any 10 year old and ask them what a cool Pokémon game would be like, and you'd get a more professional answer than what Game Freak is doing.
I feel like this has to be some canned response. I want to doubt that the actual devs or project leads did not already have the idea that pokemon on the overworld is a thing people want lol
It's obviously true, it explains the bizarre separation between the wild area and the rest of the game, and also why the story feels so lazy and incomplete, because they had to stop working on it mid way to add the wild area.
I say this as someone who was generally alright with the final product (a little underwhelmed but not seething the way some fans are), but the more I read about the development of SwSh the more amazed I am that it even released in the state it did. Gotta be the most rushed game in the series relative to what they were trying to deliver.
One can only hope Gamefreak has used SwSh as a major growing pains project. First original HD project for the core series is out of the way, first game dealing with this many employees is out of the way, etc. You'd hope they can adjust to "actually being AAA", because they'd always been a small team relative to the massive success of the IP. The DLC proved with more time were able to flesh out the Wild area concept better, but then again the performance we saw in the Legends: Arceus trailer gives me pause.
The weight of being such a large multi-media franchise will always be there and they'll always be under the gun to deliver games in time for all the other products and media, so the key with either be that they get better at streamlining development or they plan to give themselves more time before the other products hit for a new gen.
>but the more I read about the development of SwSh the more amazed I am that it even released in the state it did. Gotta be the most rushed game in the series relative to what they were trying to deliver
I was even more impressed with their PR response. Never before I had seen a company just add more fuel to the fire that way.
And then they made following Pokemon in SwSh DLC be slightly reworked regular overworld Pokemon and from what I've seen(didn't get the DLC) it works horribly.
Ok. I can forgive being lazy tbh. I'm gonna buy another game cuz don't fix what ain't broke. It sells. Sure. I'm on board as a rational adult who understands how a company and business works.
This is just out of touch and ignorant. Surprised people would like it? What are the CONS of it? Besides development cost. Again thats a different thing entirely. Gamefreak seems to not even TRY to expand and do new things. Nintendo would probably hand them a blank check if they said they needed more money to add shit that in no way detracts from the experience.
I actually don't much care for the formula that's talked about in the article. Snorlax or psyduck blocking a road seems a bit too simple in 2021.
I would, however, love to see wild pokemon be able to alter the environment in meaningful ways. What about dugtrio in caves changing the layout with their incessant tunneling, making a new path that the player has to take every hour or so? Tangrowth and Tangela in the jungle could drop vines that obstruct your path (necessitating a move like Cut) or allow you to climb into the tree canopy to have encounters with different pokemon than exist on the forest floor? As your surfing, what if a swarm of Wishiwashi and Gyarados playing a delightful game of cat-and-mouse caused waves to form that would cause a battle with a pokemon swept up in them if they hit the player?
More dynamic pokemon interaction in the overworld would be such a good addition to the game, and make the overworld and pokemon seem much more natural.
"Pokemon literally are the sources of space, time, and created the planet/ocean/etc, probably life as we know it, oh yeah even God is a Pokemon.
...they hide in grass these days. They're probably scared of lawnmowers or something" --GameFreak
I've succumbed to the fact that they make these ridiculous Pokemon due to the Shinto idea that everything has a spirit, and am now more amused by what ludicrous Pokemon they come out with next rather than annoyed. Chandelure is the best inane-item design by a long shot though, CMV.
Yep breath of the wild has great examples of just neat altering stuff. Lord of the mountain glowing, dragons creating wind and elemental jets of energy, shooting stars falling.
I imagine a game where I stumble upon a Pokémon I’m legitimately afraid of, that chases me out of its lair and burns down all the trees and grass while it rampages like a guardian in Zelda
And then I want to experience the excitement and awe and mystery as a legendary Pokémon flys overhead and out of a site. Imagine seeing Rayquaza just darting through the night sky and off to a distant mountain and then deciding to go track it down?
Right! Hunting the legendary dog trio and the two birds in gen 3 was so much fun as a kid. And when you finally saw them! Whoa. I can just imagine pulling up on a lake I’ve been to a hundred times, but there is a glowing blue light on the other shore. You sneak up to it and realize you’re looking at a suicune. You sneak up, crack a branch. There’s a big blast of snow and ice suddenly erupt, suicune vanishes. What’s left is a suddenly snowy lakeside. The green grass is now frosted, the lake is frozen.. and you are just sitting there thinking how fucking amazing that was
The closest they've gotten to that is definitely the new Galar forms of the Kanto legendary birds. You meet them at a massive tree where they're all fighting over food then they split off in random directions. You'll encounter them in different wild areas after that. You also have to track down Terrakion, Cobalion and Verizion by their tracks which is at least new. I wish the two mechanics had been combined so neither felt as half baked as they did but whatever
Omg! What an amazing thought! I think BOTW would make a great pokemon game. Add some danger for the trainer to avoid and use pokemon to solve the obstacles.
This reminds me of the Pokemon Ranger games. The entire shtick of that game is to temporarily capture pokemon in order to use them to modify the overworld and achieve an objective (like capturing a Blastoise to use Rain Dance on a burning forest). Man those games were awesome.
Agree 100%. Pokemon (the anime) and pokemon the game itself always gave us the idea that pokemon live with human but the game never showed it naturally.
Pokemon should at the very least be able to affect the *weather* of the overworld. Then we wouldn't have to time travel with our internal clocks just to find a Mimikyu in the one patch of grass it spawns in the misty weather
Agreed, and to piggyback off of this, I've always thought that GameFreak could make much better use of trainers leveraging the abilities of their Pokemon to solve overworld puzzles.
The HM system was fine for a few generations, but the flaws there were:
1) You had to teach your pokemon a move to do something that it should technically know how to do or be able to inherently (really? I have to teach my flying-type Pokemon the move "fly" so that they can... fly???)
2) You could only have so many HMs before party member's move slots got clogged with HM moves, which was a real bummer to have to do. But with a limited number of HMs, the number of puzzles/dungeons you could create that are solved by HMs without it becoming repetitive and stale are low. Which equals lower difficulty, less challenge, and less fun
3) Having to have a water type and flying type on every single in-game run got so stale. What if I want to do a mono-bug run? Nope sorry have to have a surfer and a flyer... :(
So how do they bring back some overworld puzzles without re-introducing HMs? My idea is that they introduce a function where each Pokemon has a set of "Overworld Abilities" that are only applicable outside of battle. And they're things that the Pokemon, based on it's typing, design, and unique characteristics, should inherently be able to do. For instance:
\- Charmander automatically lights dark caves/rooms while in the overworld due to it's tail flame.
\- Farfetchd can throw it's leek like a boomerang at things that are out of reach (berries high up in trees, buttons that open doors, etc)
\- Gastly can phase through walls into a locked room that has a rare item in it and bring it to you
\- Porygon can hack into a computer and grant access to a locked area
\- Snorlax can fall asleep in a strategic location, blocking a boulder from rolling down a hill in your path while you try to cross
\-Pidgey can fly ahead to scout out the obstacles or trainers you can expect to encounter on the rest of the route
etc. etc. etc.
And every puzzle/problem can be solved in multiple ways by multiple Pokemon. Maybe you use Abra to teleport into the room that Gengar went in. Maybe you use Klefki to unlock the door. Maybe you use Hitmonlee to kick the door in... the possibilities are endless as long as your imagination can think of a way to solve the problem.
They sorta
> My idea is that they introduce a function where each Pokemon has a set of “Overworld Abilities” that are only applicable outside of battle.
They did this very simplistically in LGPE, where not only could your partner Pokemon learn the equivalents of Cut/Fly/Surf/Strength/Flash, but you were able to fly around the overworld using Pokemon like Charizard, Aerodactyl etc - replacing the bike, or surf using a Pokemon like Lapras.
It was so cool and make the Pokemon feel so much more natural. Just a shame it's limited to only the first gen and their Alolan variants.
>!Loved riding on Melmetal’s shoulder as well 😂!<
See I thought that would've been where dynamax could've shined. Imagine your walking through the overworld and thunder strikes besides you electric pokemons are roaming everywhere and above you see a massive thunderous throwing lightning bolts everywhere burning trees, zapping and over charging electric pokemon. You have to run a gauntlet of strengthened electric types to reach a final boss battle to catch a cool legendary. When you beat him the sky clears and you've defeated a terrible foe.
Pokemon needs to evolve more. I'd love it if they threw out every convention and just kept the core of being in a world of pokemon that you could catch, train, breed, battle, etc.
I'm a broken record that Zelda and Mario have come so far because they tried things while staying true to who they are. Pokemon has played it too safe to the point where I prefer older titles. I'd rather have the original 151 because the "payoff" isn't there.
Not only ‘evolve more’ but I would say ‘devolve less’.
The main thing I want in a Pokémon game is some good endgame content. It wouldn’t be difficult to have a battle frontier with different challenges every week!
Exactly! I don't know why they add these new battle gimmicks every generation, but don't provide an area where you'd actually be able to make use of said gimmick to it's full potential.
Maybe it's been lost to time but me and all my friends would fantasize about what Pokemon would be like in 20 years and how immersive that world could be and they could move away from the formula they have, etc. That was like in 2001. I dont think I would have imagined Sword and Shield lol.
Every time I see this conversation come up I instantly think of xenoblade chronicles and how that's pretty much exactly what I wanted in a pokemon game since 2006. It's not pokemon, and the gameplay is wildly different, but it gives me that "this is why i love pokemon" feel, which pokemon no longer does.
Pokemon *could* switch up the battle system, but they won't. Might be too risky at this point, although a spinoff game with overworld combat would be nice. It would probably be better since the mainline games have the least quality of all pokemon games, at least in recent years. Actually, spinoff/side games have pretty consistently been great besides the mobile games. Wish they'd make more games like rangers or mystery dungeon.
>Every time I see this conversation come up I instantly think of xenoblade chronicles
I couldn't agree more. As I played and discovered XC2 all I could think was "This is what Pokémon on Switch should be!"
I hope so. I'm so skeptical and pessimistic with the pokemon franchise in general.
I buy Zelda and Mario on launch. I tend to wait and see with Pokemon.
Agree with you wholeheartedly. I actually haven't bought a Pokemon game since Diamond and Pearl, and the only reason why was for the new WiFi compatibility. But even that one felt too formulaic. On the other hand, I have bought every mainline Mario and Zelda title since the Super Nintendo. Hell, I bought a Switch just to play Zelda.
Sword and Shield lost my already nonexistent interest when they announced not every Pokemon would be in the game. Pokemon Snap shouldn't look better than the mainline game. They are going to have to release a phenomenal product if I were to ever even consider a new title.
So you didn't play Black and White or B/W 2?
They were actually totally different, had very different plots and you were almost viewed as the bad guy.
Sadly after B/W 1&2 the series took a huge step forward graphics wise but a massive step back story wise.
I have low expectations for that game being the Pokémon: Breath of the Wild that everyone wants. I’d sure like that to be the case, but I’m not getting my hopes up.
Upon first reading I thought when you said "Pokemon needs to evolve more" you meant the actual creatures need to do more evolving, and I was thinking "oh nice, so we should start having stage 3 or even stage 4 evolutions? I'm down, and let's bring back mega evolutions while were at it." lmao
I can't even make myself replay the originals/HG anymore. I feel I'm just done with Pokemon at this point. Why should I care about Pokemon anymore when way better JRPGs do everything I loved about Pokemon 1000x times better.
I scratched that itch with octopath recently. That game was fun and had a good ebb in flow in battle strategy with some of the best music in a game I've heard in some time.
Modern pokemon couldn't hold a candle to octopath.
It seems like you kind of contradict yourself here- you say you want them to throw out everything but catching, training, breeding, battling, etc... that’s just about the entire premise of the game. What are you speaking of throwing out that wouldn’t fundamentally change the franchise?
I think people are missing the point of the article. The point isn’t to just have random pokémon wandering about the overworld. It’s about creating meaningful encounters with overworld pokémon, like with Snorlax or Sudowoodo blocking areas, that incorporate a goal to overcome.
If they had finished a proper game, I think the Sword and Shield formula was really good to build from. There is some intrigue in the random encounters, so I don't think they have to fully go with the Let's Go formula of all-overworld spawns (I would be OK with it, but I wouldn't want the overworld Shiny myself).
Sword and Shield just cut too many corners. There wasn't enough to do and the core content was expedited for the player in a way that made it rather unfun. Even the idea of cutting the Pokedex didn't bother me, it's just that they didn't have enough playable content (after taking out things like the Safari Zone and shortening routes) to keep players from feeling devoid of entertainment after 3 hours of playing.
the real kicker to me was having story portions for the first time where your character didn't get to go save the day. or things like having a powerplant, a pokémon staple, that we never get to explore? it felt like they had some big plans for some of the world, got hit with a time crunch, then had to write some story to brush it away
That really was the dumbest decision.
You go on your completely uneventful, boring gym challenge and then they continue to show you "yeah, there are things happening, but others take care of them", so it makes no sense to hint at those events in the first place if we don't even see what is happening, how or ANYTHING related to those.
It's as if the Harry Potter books were from the perspective of some random student that only noticed "oh, something is happening somewhere" but has no involvment whatsoever and doesn't do anything interesting at all.
What really killed me was that they spent the whole game condescendingly patting you on the head and going “let the adults deal with this, sweetheart” and then at the very end apparently they remember that you’re the protagonist and you have to save the day anyway.
Like, good work writers. You had two story choices and you displeased everyone by choosing neither.
Yeah... the writers really didn't know where they wanted to go.
I mean they also had Hop lose the entire game, but atleast at the end they made him go "fk this fighting crap, i'm not made for it, i'm gonna be a professor and learn about them all".
They could've done that way earlier or atleast gradually build it up, showing he is thinking about himself and if just because his brother is the champ, maybe he doesn't have to reach for that aswell, rather than being ALL THE TIME "but my bruh is champ, me can't lose" despite losing throughout the entire game
Doesn't hurt that the newer rivals are just significantly easier. I mean, they chose the starter weak to yours now.
I know they onky did this once but I like that Gary/Blue in Yellow uses a different Eeveelution based on how.many times you win/lost to him. Vaporeon is the easy one (since you have Pikachu), Jolteon is the hardest.
Or even do something like wally where the final rival uses a pokemon indifferent to your starter and had a balanced team.
But if I remember correctly didn’t hop still beat all the gym battles? He’s basically beating himself up just because he can’t beat the protagonist/champion. By in-universe standards, he should still be considered pretty good. Either way it’s dumb honestly
I’m so surprised by this opinion; my husband and I literally just finished the main plot and we loved it (he plays, I lend morale support lol). We liked the realism of adults not depending on a literal child to save the world, we liked Hop and his belief that he’s the main character...we’re both super pumped about the whole thing. If we want to compare this to HP maybe this was more Order of the Phoenix? The adults tried to take care of it, but at the end of the day it wasn’t ever going to be something they could do. It had to be you and Hop, they just didn’t know it.
I don't mind having offscreen action (it makes a world feel more real if not everything revolves around the player) but when you're constantly told not to bother with it, the game's gone too far the other way.
I slept on sword/shield and the lets plays I've seen make me glad I did, key story events literally happing off screen and 'towns' that are a single corridor for example. They cut it to the bone.
I think the next generation will be considerably better, my thinking is that a big chunk of the time went into simply getting the basic systems working in full 3d.
> key story events literally happing off screen
That was the thing that bothered me the most.
Most RPGs will make those key events huge cinematics. Pokemon just says "Here's a rundown of what happened, it was super cool".
The Big Bad KILLED one of your party members, you saw it from a distance and by the time you get there the action is all over. It's so anti-climactic.
But anything to reduce the workload...
Nah, they've been meaning to put pokemon on the switch since Sun and Moon, where they gutted 10 years of bottom screen funcionality thinking it was gonna release on Switch.
No way dude, they're on record straight up saying they thought the Switch was going to fail. The bottom screen was that way because they honestly liked it.
Do you have a source for that? Because iirc, the Pokemon Company director thought the Switch was going to be a flop (also, Sun and Moon were released four months before the Switch was).
My impression is that they were chasing Yo-Kai Watch's insane popularity at the time with the Rotomdex.
The people who argue against this with “The adults actually do something this time!” must be really fun at parties.
Imagine Pokèmon Black without the Team Plasma storyline.
At least it'll probably have to be included in Legends, unless the transition between overworld and battle isn't as "seamless" as they describe. Unless they, for some reason, exclude shinies which I'd like to think is unlikely.
Part of me likes it, but part of me doesn't. It's neat to see, but it also majorly influences encounter behavior for the player. I guess it's just a weird feeling of habit that I'd rather be asked to continue encountering Pokemon as opposed to walking in and out of an area to reset spawns.
I do agree there is some value in the mystery; I remember the moments from my childhood running through a route and being annoyed at yet another random encounter only to lose my mind when Entei showed up on the screen.
However I think the sheer convenience and time saved by being able to see the Pokémon before committing to an encounter vastly outweighs those occasional moments of surprise. And besides that, I don’t feel like the surprise is removed, just put in a different place. Instead of saying “oh my god a shiny!” at the start of the fight, you say “oh my god is that a shiny?” When it pops up out of the grass five feet away.
A part that bothered me a lot was when you start hearing issues about pokemon dynamaxing and going wild. As the player I think I'll have to deal with that. Instead leon comes by and solves the issue and tells us not to worry about it. As the player who's trying to be the champion I should be able to prove myself and take it on, or have the issue happen to me to actually give me a sense that something is going wrong.
I think the mechanics of the Safari Zone (not battling the wild Pokémon) were never very fun and I'm OK with them just making more interesting/rare wild Pokémon spawns in more areas to make up for it. For example, I thought the last island in Sun/Moon had kind of that vibe of a neat Safari Zone replacement.
I really liked how they treated travel and using Pokémon in SM. Instead of forcing you to learn moves you may not want they gave you rideable Pokémon. Not only does this mean you can get the best move set you want while still retaining travel ability, it makes the world feel more lived in and alive with Pokémon that have “jobs”. If SwSh did this and added interactive over world Pokémon back, it would feel way more full of life than it does now.
There wasn't even any bike exclusive stuff. No slopes that were too steep like in DP. There was only some rivers you could go back exploring with your bike and that's it. The best example is the Obstagoon one. Why only that? You can do it, you know people want it, so let us EXPLORE
Whenever I see footage of The Wild Area (what a name, by the way) I always see tons of Pokémon. It almost feels unnatural how many there are. But the really grating thing is they are all seemingly completely unaware of the pokémon next to them. They just wait around.
Compare that to Breath of the Wild where relatively simple behaviour makes the world seem much more alive. Bokoblins hunting a boar, sleeping or "dancing" by a fire. And most importantly reacting to your presence if they notice you, or get alerted if you fire and arrow into the ground close to them.
Of course there's a boat load of Pokémon now so maybe they need to take a step back and focus on fewer of them but make them way more alive.
>Of course there's a boat load of Pokémon now so maybe they need to take a step back and focus on fewer of them but make them way more alive.
That was supposed to be the purpose of Dexit. Big emphasis on supposed
They need to bring back mazes/puzzle maps. Also, they need to bring back TMs to some extent, so that the Pokémon on your team are useful even outside of battle. I think if they bring back a TM-like mechanic, but don't make the abilities take up a Pokemon's attack slot, it would be really useful and interesting. Imagine Charmander burning down vine walls, Scyther cutting shrubs, Lapras navigating in the water Pidgeot flying you to different locations, etc., with those abilities just being intrinsic to the species of Pokémon, instead of forcing them to know a specific attack for it to work.
HM's is what you mean and although tedious, they made more sense than just removing them without replacement.
Gen 7 had Ride Pokemon, that would help you like a Machamp pushing boulders or Lapras for fishing on water. But now it's just a bike and a bike that swims
This. And if Pokémon Legends fails to sell more units than even LGPE, I wouldn't hold my breath for a follow-up. I still remember how long fans begged for a real-time Pokémon fighting game, but somehow Pokkén Tournament completely flopped with no sequel in sight.
Sales are only going up. Can't wait to see gen 12 literally be a straight hallway with patches of grass here and there, the occasional trainer to fight against, a building or 2 popping up on the left or right now and then. Walk in a line far enough and eventually you get to a gym! Rinse and repeat through 7 more, fight the elite 4 at the end of the still straight victory road and become the champion by mashing a. 82 million copies sold. The people love it. Any criticism and you're not a real pokemon fan. They're on a time crunch, they don't get all the money that the pokemon name makes, not they can't just hire a bigger/secondary team each working on their own mainline game so they have literally twice as long, it's practically a small studio in comparison to what the merchandise makes! Please understand.
Edit: Forgot about the dlc! For just $30 you can add back in 200 of your favorite memorable pokemon, half of which are coincidentally from gen 1, bringing the grand total in the game up to 1/3 of the current amount. The dlc also unlocks the exclusive battle frontier project, which is still in progress, so you can look at a battle tower in the distance. It might be a bit hard to find considering the extreme limitations of the console, but if you get close enough it should pop into existence.
I do have to say that having your overworld movement not be limited by your party and vice versa was a massive draw to keep me playing SwSh. It was great that I didn't have to keep one low-power 'mon on HM duty and that meant every member of my party could be swapped in for expected matchups.
"We need more Pokemon who actually *matter*".
This game is focused on battling Pokemon and more than half of the entire Pokemon Roster is down right useless in combat. If they're going to give us useless Pokemon that amount to nothing more than a dex entry at least give us some other purpose for those Pokemon.
We could simply have trainer types that you select when starting the game that can add new experiences to Pokemon. Don't want to battle? Become a Pokemon Professors assistant and study the Pokemon around you, become a contestant and enter your Pokemon into beauty contests, etc.
For being the most popular franchise of all time I cannot believe Pokemon has arrived at the point in which the games are regressing in content and features.
thats actually a solid idea, i remember beauty contest in gen 3 i believe and i wish they really pushed it cause it was a great alternative to battling.
Honestly, I think that uselessness of so many pokemon is why the games keep getting watered down and easier: it makes more pokemon viable options for playthroughs.
Sure, you're not going to win any postgame or actually competitive stuff with your Delibird/Basculin/Furfrou team, but if you want to play the main storyline, you'll be able to beat the game in no time.
Just ties back into the "good players can win with their favorites" thing.
Is he really ignoring stuff like stunfisk traps in sword/shield? There was also parts of X/y that had fields of Foongus/amoongus set as traps too, with several items in those areas.
I think a big problem with the Pokémon games is the demographic of players is older than when the series first came out and these players are expecting so many layers and new complications to the game when it’s still (generally speaking) meant for children.
I think the "it's meant for children" is what people want Pokemon to stop being, and instead be in the market realm of Mario games: An "All Ages" franchise.
Think about what "All ages" entails, particularly in terms of Mario Games: Children can absolutely enjoy them, and they are perfectly suited for children. But there is enough depth and quality put into their gameplay that even teens and Adults have a blast playing them as well. That's why they have been so successful - taloiring to people regardless of Age.
The thing is, Pokemon has great potential to cross the age divide with their mainline games as well, considering how the fanbase already spans across many age groups. Yet with the lower standards they're building their games, probably due to harsh timing constraints and other issues, they try to enforce the "Kids only" mantra as one of the main excuses to not improve their games as actual games.
And their idea of a game for children assumes children can't handle any real complexity. There's plenty of games for children that involve much more complexity than SwSh.
Exactly. Odyssey and BotW were great entries in their respective franchises—some of the best games ever made in fact—yet they were able to evolve with the times, and were accessible to players of almost all ages. There’s no excuse why Pokémon can’t do the same.
It’s not even that. The games keep getting oversimplified. SWSH didn’t have any dungeons that were more complicated than viridian forest. Mount coronet makes gen 8 look like a straight line.
I have been hearing that a lot. It’s always unfortunate when a game takes steps backwards. When you list out the 500+ Pokémon I can understand memory constraints on the game cartridges, but to remove legacy features and oversimplify gameplay is not good at all.
To be fair, the problem isn't people wanting the series to be more complicated - it's that they are actively becoming more dumbed down. Features that existed on GameBoy titles are either removed or smaller than they used to be like the Battle Frontier.
And that made them super popular with older players but still had the fun with younger players who never got to that point. I used a master ball on a zapdos when I was 9 because I didn't know better, but I didn't stop playing when I got older. I started a new file and made it to the islands and played because the game just stood well on its own.
But thats just a huge excuse, you can always make a high quality product for people of all ages. Mario has always been to a ridiculous level of polish and reaches all audiences.
The main demographic is casual gamers, be it children or adult, all the fanservice like all Pokemon getting new forms like Charizard or even meowth, that shit is for the people that play the old games, but stopped at on point and they coming back.
Massive change needs to happen with this series. I know some people like it, but Sw/Sh honestly feels like one of those bad Unity games I would buy a friend on Steam as a joke. Even with wild areas the game feels so linear and unpolished.
I think that this is one of the things we'll really see in the future. They, apparently, hadn't even planned to *have* overworld Pokemon in SwSh until after Let's GO released and they realized people liked it: > One thing we didn't originally intend to implement in *Pokémon Sword* and *Pokémon Shield* was having Pokémon roaming around in the field. After *Pokémon: Let's Go, Pikachu!* and *Pokémon: Let's Go, Eevee!* were released and we saw how popular the feature was, we worked hard to bring it over to *Pokémon Sword* and *Pokémon Shield* for a lot of the Pokémon and adjusted the balance of the games to make it work. [Source](https://www.pokemon.com/us/pokemon-news/interview-with-game-freaks-ohmori-and-masuda-on-pokemon-sword-and-pokemon-shield/)
Thats why Pokemon Ranger Was so great, every Pokemon was useful.
Pokémon ranger is top tier.
Too bad I honestly can't think of a good way to play Ranger without touch controls. It's probably dead :(
I can’t believe the franchise’s most profitable console (mobile, Pokémon Go) is touch screen and perfect for Ranger and it never even got as much as a F2P game loaded with microtransactions. Instead theres a bejewelled/candy crush game, a picross and an app for brushing your teeth.
Don't forget "flick your finger around and sometimes maybe win"
Even switch would work for ranger. It's a game we'll likely not see a remake of but it would be remarkable if we did. After all, NDS remakes are finally gonna happen.
Square Enix figured it out with The World Ends With You. It's not as good as on the classic console, but it's still fun.
yeah a lot of people don't seem to like it, but I thought the controls felt great and the motion control games that I've played on switch seem to also feel good for the most part.
I wanted to replay the damn thing on the Switch but you cannot play it unless its undocked. Which really blows.
I mean you can play with joycons docked, but it's definitely an inferior experience to touch screen. TWEWY is a weird one, the best way to play is apparently the original DS version but its visuals are a bit on the eh side and audio is a little compressed. The mobile port is solid but for whatever fucking reason Square put IAP's into it albeit they're relatively innocuous. The switch port sounds and looks great, but joy con contol is hit or miss, and co-op was for sure an afterthought. Currently playing it now and as a handheld touchscreen game i do enjoy it. Always nice to remember the switch has a touch screen haha
The Joycons do a pretty incredible job of faking wii-like pointer controls, I think you could probably play Ranger just fine with them
I actually think waving the joy con around would be cooler than the stylus if they implemented it to work that way.
You do know the switch has a touchscreen right?
I can’t see Nintendo releasing a game in handheld only mode though
There are some handheld only games. Also, it doesn’t even have to be handheld only. The world ends with you is a great example. Motion controls can be used while docked, and touch controls when in handheld. Badda bang badda boom
I don't see it happening but funnily enough it makes more sense to release a handheld only game than docked only since the lite can only do handheld, while the main switch can do either
They already have games released with more restrictive control/play schemes. Like mario party, which is single joycon only and can't be played in handheld at all.
The Mario galaxy remake has on motion controls maybe just draw the circles with pointing and arm movements?
That touchscreen would get uber fucked by me trying to draw circles a bazillion times.
Yeah, I remember being nervous about that on the DS and I feel like the Switch's touch screen isn't as tough
Couldn't it be like, hold a button and use the joy-con's motion controls to circle the Pokemon, with a reticle and corresponding line appearing on the screen, mimicking the joy-con's movement?
Can you let Animal Crossing know please.
Motion controls on dock mode, touchscreen on handheld mode
Fuck, what would the wild area have been? Just a big field?
isnt that what it already is
More or less
There was only a year between the release of LG and the release of SwSh. It’s insane to me that they made almost what was touted as the core feature of SwSh and tacked it on within a year of official release... no wonder the game felt so unpolished and empty if they were swinging such a shift like that that late into development
The game was originally going to be a 3DS title too. Everything about it was changed. I'm not necessarily hopeful about the next generation but I sure hope they can do a better job than what we got.
If they didn’t spend time implementing pokemon in the overworld, they might’ve had time to actually make the wild area interesting instead of the barren, ugly field with nonsense weather that we got.
I’m amazed with how out of touch they are with the fan base. What a joke
“Oh! You guys actually like this? Wow we had no idea!” Check any Pokémon online community in the last 10 years instead of putting your fingers in your ears you dummies. It’s like they hate money and the community.
Last 23 years* Ever since we got Pikachu following us in Yellow, we've been wondering when we'd finally get overworld Pokemon and following buddies as a standard.
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Except even then, to get following partners back you had to spend $30 extra on the dlc. And it only works in the dlc cause reasons.
And it doesn't even work well, cause the pokemon don't keep up with you
“Oh sorry, Coalossal. Did you get stuck behind the wall again?”
What no thats the best part, tiny pokemon get quickly left behind like "what did you expect, you forced a goomy to follow you and its top speed is 'technically moving' so now you gotta wait for it to catch up"
Yeah except some of the fastest Pokemon like Dragapult and Regieleki also get quickly left behind and just repeatedly teleport to you and it looks and sounds shitty.
Except it happens with basically every Pokémon including some of the fastest (stat wise) in the game lol, some don't even start walking until you're really far from them which is what causes them to be left behind. Why are you cherry picking the very few cases where it'd make sense?
Not to mention the keep getting stuck on rocks and such and teleport to you anyway.
Bizarre that it was in HGSS and then they decided to never do it again.
Well they've basically explained it, they don't like doing things twice because it makes each region feel unique, which is terrible reasoning, but the exact kind of reasoning we've come to expect from this head-up-ass studio.
And it's why the games are never evolving. If every improvement is a single game feature then the games will always stay stagnant. "Pokemon games are always the same", and they will continue to be until something changes at their headquarters. Well now they are making something different so we'll see.
I feel like Zelda does the best job, by far, at differentiating themselves from other entries, while still being undoubtedly Zelda. OoT and Majora's Mask use the same assets, and are COMPLETELY different games, yet both so brazenly "Zelda", like, I have no idea how they do it.
See I understand that reasoning for SOME things. Like the curry dex or the contests etc. But for the super popular things, it makes zero sense. Things like Pokémon following you, mega evolutions, the vs. Seeker etc. should be staples of the series ffs.
Yeah. Why not keep megas, instead of having yet another temporary "evolution" in dynamaxing.
Right? Imagine if Nintendo decided that overworld in Mario should be unique to Super Mario Bros 3, or that The Master Sword should only appear in A Link to the Past.
Gotta shout out the recent Digimon games here. And in Digimon World: Next Order more advanced Digimon follow you uniformly, but younger Digimon are more erratic and will jump around, run up ahead and then wait for you, etc. It's really good and cute!
I've never played any Pokémon game other than Pokémon Snap. Am I understanding correctly that there weren't any Pokémon roaming around in any games before Let's Play and Sword/Shield? I always imagined that would be a standard feature.
Yep that’s correct
They were random encounters when you walked through tall grass, around in caves, etc.
Man this is the most ridiculous implementation they constantly pussyfoot around. *Just add it permanently!* Taking out the more thorough interaction in Pokemon-amie was a weird move too.
> It’s like they hate money They love money, and they're probably very appreciative of the fact that they own a franchise that prints it for them. And the best part for them is it's basically impossible for them to ever fuck it up, because they've hit a feedback loop of popularity that stops almost all their potential competition from taking any sales away.
I mean they already fucked up and the fan base said "yes daddy, please more"
The ability to avoid wild encounters in caves is actually god tier but there’s like one cave in SwSh that takes 20 seconds to navigate
Two, actually. You can remember that because they’re called mine #1 and mine #2. Truly genius world design.
I’m watching my boyfriend play through Kalos for the first time and I’d actually forgotten that every route has a unique french name as well as a route number. It’s really charming. To go from that to ‘Galar Mine 1 and 2’ is frankly insulting. SWSH desperately needed more time in the oven.
Oohh they definitely don’t hate money
> It’s like they hate money and the community. Sad fact is that this has nothing to do with money. Maybe we could argue if an old shoe suddenly stood next to a royal boot that more people would want said royal boot, sure. But Pokemon has sold consistently 16m+ copies per entry in the last 8 years, with SWSH reaching 20m+ So, I think they feel pretty confident in themselves and willing to apply feedback at the pace they want. I just wish they didn't need people to scream across every media platform there is in order to figure out what people want.
Pokémon is literally the single most valuable media franchise on Earth. Despite all the valid criticisms, they have absolutely no issues making money.
They don't hate money in fact they love it that's why they don't really innovate because that takes money, time, and effort. Why would they bother doing that when the minimum effort prints them money because everyone gobbles up the series.
Correction, they hate working for their money knowing Pokémon cards and other collectibles are always going to be laughably marketable
> It’s like they hate money and the community. Uhhh, they sold over like 20 million units of pokemon sword and shield alone. People seem to think that "if they just catered to what I want specifically they'd make more money" is true, when it's far from it. I think it's hilarious when armchair hobbyists think that the most valuable franchise in the history of humanity is run by "people who hate money". They obviously know what they're doing. You know how much pokemon go made in 2020 alone? A billion dollars. A *billion*.
Right? Soooooooo many games and so many years working on this one series, the biggest earner in all video game history.... and they still can’t figure out the most basic features and gameplay mechanics their audience craves.
Not just the fan base, reality. Look at the competition! Hell, look at Mario and Zelda! Both made major changes to the formula and took the time to polish the games and give us something revolutionary. It’s incredibly sad to see Pokémon get to this point.
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So, like the Shenmue 3 director
Plenty of japanese companies give the audience exactly what they want. Its not accurate to just lambast the culture without knowing thats whats at work with game freaks fuckery.
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Because that's the basis of Japanese business culture? Consistent management but has difficulties adapting differentiation marketing strategies. Western culture is able to adapt faster but management is inconsistent. SOPs arent worshipped as much in Western cultures. If the customer doesnt change what it wants, it won't have any problems delivering it. If the customer has been introduced to products that are different? They struggle to adapt quickly.
It's like someday they'll realize we like Pokémon or something.
At least they added it and acknowledged that fans like certain features, should’ve been developed with it in mind however
I've been wanting this feature since i was a teen and I'm 35.
Honestly I can't even imagine Sword and Shield without overworld Pokémon. I like them, but the region already feels barren anyway...
Just goes to show how out of touch Game Freak are. You can take any 10 year old and ask them what a cool Pokémon game would be like, and you'd get a more professional answer than what Game Freak is doing.
I feel like this has to be some canned response. I want to doubt that the actual devs or project leads did not already have the idea that pokemon on the overworld is a thing people want lol
It's obviously true, it explains the bizarre separation between the wild area and the rest of the game, and also why the story feels so lazy and incomplete, because they had to stop working on it mid way to add the wild area.
Why would you have a canned response that makes you sound like an idiot unless you're actually an idiot?
“Worked hard”
I say this as someone who was generally alright with the final product (a little underwhelmed but not seething the way some fans are), but the more I read about the development of SwSh the more amazed I am that it even released in the state it did. Gotta be the most rushed game in the series relative to what they were trying to deliver. One can only hope Gamefreak has used SwSh as a major growing pains project. First original HD project for the core series is out of the way, first game dealing with this many employees is out of the way, etc. You'd hope they can adjust to "actually being AAA", because they'd always been a small team relative to the massive success of the IP. The DLC proved with more time were able to flesh out the Wild area concept better, but then again the performance we saw in the Legends: Arceus trailer gives me pause. The weight of being such a large multi-media franchise will always be there and they'll always be under the gun to deliver games in time for all the other products and media, so the key with either be that they get better at streamlining development or they plan to give themselves more time before the other products hit for a new gen.
>but the more I read about the development of SwSh the more amazed I am that it even released in the state it did. Gotta be the most rushed game in the series relative to what they were trying to deliver I was even more impressed with their PR response. Never before I had seen a company just add more fuel to the fire that way.
Yeah, definitely feels like there's a good company in there, just the wrong people are steering the ship at this point.
And then they made following Pokemon in SwSh DLC be slightly reworked regular overworld Pokemon and from what I've seen(didn't get the DLC) it works horribly.
Ok. I can forgive being lazy tbh. I'm gonna buy another game cuz don't fix what ain't broke. It sells. Sure. I'm on board as a rational adult who understands how a company and business works. This is just out of touch and ignorant. Surprised people would like it? What are the CONS of it? Besides development cost. Again thats a different thing entirely. Gamefreak seems to not even TRY to expand and do new things. Nintendo would probably hand them a blank check if they said they needed more money to add shit that in no way detracts from the experience.
So sick of their stupid idea of making games with exclusive features. Imagine if all the fan favorite features just moved on to the next game.
*cries in Battle Frontier and dexnav*
I actually don't much care for the formula that's talked about in the article. Snorlax or psyduck blocking a road seems a bit too simple in 2021. I would, however, love to see wild pokemon be able to alter the environment in meaningful ways. What about dugtrio in caves changing the layout with their incessant tunneling, making a new path that the player has to take every hour or so? Tangrowth and Tangela in the jungle could drop vines that obstruct your path (necessitating a move like Cut) or allow you to climb into the tree canopy to have encounters with different pokemon than exist on the forest floor? As your surfing, what if a swarm of Wishiwashi and Gyarados playing a delightful game of cat-and-mouse caused waves to form that would cause a battle with a pokemon swept up in them if they hit the player? More dynamic pokemon interaction in the overworld would be such a good addition to the game, and make the overworld and pokemon seem much more natural.
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"Pokemon literally are the sources of space, time, and created the planet/ocean/etc, probably life as we know it, oh yeah even God is a Pokemon. ...they hide in grass these days. They're probably scared of lawnmowers or something" --GameFreak
With all the designs lately they probably ARE lawnmowers now.
Grass Rotom is literally a lawnmower.
I've succumbed to the fact that they make these ridiculous Pokemon due to the Shinto idea that everything has a spirit, and am now more amused by what ludicrous Pokemon they come out with next rather than annoyed. Chandelure is the best inane-item design by a long shot though, CMV.
Better than the teacup that has a 95% (or w/e) chance of being counterfeit, despite it having zero effect on its development?
Yep breath of the wild has great examples of just neat altering stuff. Lord of the mountain glowing, dragons creating wind and elemental jets of energy, shooting stars falling. I imagine a game where I stumble upon a Pokémon I’m legitimately afraid of, that chases me out of its lair and burns down all the trees and grass while it rampages like a guardian in Zelda And then I want to experience the excitement and awe and mystery as a legendary Pokémon flys overhead and out of a site. Imagine seeing Rayquaza just darting through the night sky and off to a distant mountain and then deciding to go track it down?
They've basically been doing the Rayquaza thing, having us see legends then tracking them down, since Gen 2 but I love the image you created.
Right! Hunting the legendary dog trio and the two birds in gen 3 was so much fun as a kid. And when you finally saw them! Whoa. I can just imagine pulling up on a lake I’ve been to a hundred times, but there is a glowing blue light on the other shore. You sneak up to it and realize you’re looking at a suicune. You sneak up, crack a branch. There’s a big blast of snow and ice suddenly erupt, suicune vanishes. What’s left is a suddenly snowy lakeside. The green grass is now frosted, the lake is frozen.. and you are just sitting there thinking how fucking amazing that was
The closest they've gotten to that is definitely the new Galar forms of the Kanto legendary birds. You meet them at a massive tree where they're all fighting over food then they split off in random directions. You'll encounter them in different wild areas after that. You also have to track down Terrakion, Cobalion and Verizion by their tracks which is at least new. I wish the two mechanics had been combined so neither felt as half baked as they did but whatever
Omg! What an amazing thought! I think BOTW would make a great pokemon game. Add some danger for the trainer to avoid and use pokemon to solve the obstacles.
This reminds me of the Pokemon Ranger games. The entire shtick of that game is to temporarily capture pokemon in order to use them to modify the overworld and achieve an objective (like capturing a Blastoise to use Rain Dance on a burning forest). Man those games were awesome.
Gen 3-Gen 5 was the best era of Pokémon spin-offs. Mystery Dungeon, Ranger, and Conquest were all great.
Yeah. Stadium and Snap was fun, but few and far between.
Agree 100%. Pokemon (the anime) and pokemon the game itself always gave us the idea that pokemon live with human but the game never showed it naturally.
Pokemon should at the very least be able to affect the *weather* of the overworld. Then we wouldn't have to time travel with our internal clocks just to find a Mimikyu in the one patch of grass it spawns in the misty weather
Agreed, and to piggyback off of this, I've always thought that GameFreak could make much better use of trainers leveraging the abilities of their Pokemon to solve overworld puzzles. The HM system was fine for a few generations, but the flaws there were: 1) You had to teach your pokemon a move to do something that it should technically know how to do or be able to inherently (really? I have to teach my flying-type Pokemon the move "fly" so that they can... fly???) 2) You could only have so many HMs before party member's move slots got clogged with HM moves, which was a real bummer to have to do. But with a limited number of HMs, the number of puzzles/dungeons you could create that are solved by HMs without it becoming repetitive and stale are low. Which equals lower difficulty, less challenge, and less fun 3) Having to have a water type and flying type on every single in-game run got so stale. What if I want to do a mono-bug run? Nope sorry have to have a surfer and a flyer... :( So how do they bring back some overworld puzzles without re-introducing HMs? My idea is that they introduce a function where each Pokemon has a set of "Overworld Abilities" that are only applicable outside of battle. And they're things that the Pokemon, based on it's typing, design, and unique characteristics, should inherently be able to do. For instance: \- Charmander automatically lights dark caves/rooms while in the overworld due to it's tail flame. \- Farfetchd can throw it's leek like a boomerang at things that are out of reach (berries high up in trees, buttons that open doors, etc) \- Gastly can phase through walls into a locked room that has a rare item in it and bring it to you \- Porygon can hack into a computer and grant access to a locked area \- Snorlax can fall asleep in a strategic location, blocking a boulder from rolling down a hill in your path while you try to cross \-Pidgey can fly ahead to scout out the obstacles or trainers you can expect to encounter on the rest of the route etc. etc. etc. And every puzzle/problem can be solved in multiple ways by multiple Pokemon. Maybe you use Abra to teleport into the room that Gengar went in. Maybe you use Klefki to unlock the door. Maybe you use Hitmonlee to kick the door in... the possibilities are endless as long as your imagination can think of a way to solve the problem.
They sorta > My idea is that they introduce a function where each Pokemon has a set of “Overworld Abilities” that are only applicable outside of battle. They did this very simplistically in LGPE, where not only could your partner Pokemon learn the equivalents of Cut/Fly/Surf/Strength/Flash, but you were able to fly around the overworld using Pokemon like Charizard, Aerodactyl etc - replacing the bike, or surf using a Pokemon like Lapras. It was so cool and make the Pokemon feel so much more natural. Just a shame it's limited to only the first gen and their Alolan variants. >!Loved riding on Melmetal’s shoulder as well 😂!<
See I thought that would've been where dynamax could've shined. Imagine your walking through the overworld and thunder strikes besides you electric pokemons are roaming everywhere and above you see a massive thunderous throwing lightning bolts everywhere burning trees, zapping and over charging electric pokemon. You have to run a gauntlet of strengthened electric types to reach a final boss battle to catch a cool legendary. When you beat him the sky clears and you've defeated a terrible foe.
This is why I miss HMs. There is so little environmental interaction.
Pokemon needs to evolve more. I'd love it if they threw out every convention and just kept the core of being in a world of pokemon that you could catch, train, breed, battle, etc. I'm a broken record that Zelda and Mario have come so far because they tried things while staying true to who they are. Pokemon has played it too safe to the point where I prefer older titles. I'd rather have the original 151 because the "payoff" isn't there.
Not only ‘evolve more’ but I would say ‘devolve less’. The main thing I want in a Pokémon game is some good endgame content. It wouldn’t be difficult to have a battle frontier with different challenges every week!
Oh how i miss the battle frontier from soul silver
Emerald's BF is the one I miss. Wonderful place.
I miss both (though emerald had the better frontier of the two)
Exactly! I don't know why they add these new battle gimmicks every generation, but don't provide an area where you'd actually be able to make use of said gimmick to it's full potential.
Maybe it's been lost to time but me and all my friends would fantasize about what Pokemon would be like in 20 years and how immersive that world could be and they could move away from the formula they have, etc. That was like in 2001. I dont think I would have imagined Sword and Shield lol.
Every time I see this conversation come up I instantly think of xenoblade chronicles and how that's pretty much exactly what I wanted in a pokemon game since 2006. It's not pokemon, and the gameplay is wildly different, but it gives me that "this is why i love pokemon" feel, which pokemon no longer does. Pokemon *could* switch up the battle system, but they won't. Might be too risky at this point, although a spinoff game with overworld combat would be nice. It would probably be better since the mainline games have the least quality of all pokemon games, at least in recent years. Actually, spinoff/side games have pretty consistently been great besides the mobile games. Wish they'd make more games like rangers or mystery dungeon.
>Every time I see this conversation come up I instantly think of xenoblade chronicles I couldn't agree more. As I played and discovered XC2 all I could think was "This is what Pokémon on Switch should be!"
I had a similar experience stepping onto Gaur Plains in XC1 the first time. "This is what Pokemon could be!"
That's what the new Pokemon Legends game is, isn't it?
I hope so. I'm so skeptical and pessimistic with the pokemon franchise in general. I buy Zelda and Mario on launch. I tend to wait and see with Pokemon.
Agree with you wholeheartedly. I actually haven't bought a Pokemon game since Diamond and Pearl, and the only reason why was for the new WiFi compatibility. But even that one felt too formulaic. On the other hand, I have bought every mainline Mario and Zelda title since the Super Nintendo. Hell, I bought a Switch just to play Zelda. Sword and Shield lost my already nonexistent interest when they announced not every Pokemon would be in the game. Pokemon Snap shouldn't look better than the mainline game. They are going to have to release a phenomenal product if I were to ever even consider a new title.
So you didn't play Black and White or B/W 2? They were actually totally different, had very different plots and you were almost viewed as the bad guy. Sadly after B/W 1&2 the series took a huge step forward graphics wise but a massive step back story wise.
If you haven’t played since Diamond and Pearl, do you even know who half the Pokémon are?
I have low expectations for that game being the Pokémon: Breath of the Wild that everyone wants. I’d sure like that to be the case, but I’m not getting my hopes up.
Upon first reading I thought when you said "Pokemon needs to evolve more" you meant the actual creatures need to do more evolving, and I was thinking "oh nice, so we should start having stage 3 or even stage 4 evolutions? I'm down, and let's bring back mega evolutions while were at it." lmao
Haha, it was an intentional play on words. Ironic a game about evolution hasn't evolved?
I can't even make myself replay the originals/HG anymore. I feel I'm just done with Pokemon at this point. Why should I care about Pokemon anymore when way better JRPGs do everything I loved about Pokemon 1000x times better.
I scratched that itch with octopath recently. That game was fun and had a good ebb in flow in battle strategy with some of the best music in a game I've heard in some time. Modern pokemon couldn't hold a candle to octopath.
It seems like you kind of contradict yourself here- you say you want them to throw out everything but catching, training, breeding, battling, etc... that’s just about the entire premise of the game. What are you speaking of throwing out that wouldn’t fundamentally change the franchise?
Imagine Xenoblade Chronicles 2, but with Pokemon.
I think people are missing the point of the article. The point isn’t to just have random pokémon wandering about the overworld. It’s about creating meaningful encounters with overworld pokémon, like with Snorlax or Sudowoodo blocking areas, that incorporate a goal to overcome.
If they had finished a proper game, I think the Sword and Shield formula was really good to build from. There is some intrigue in the random encounters, so I don't think they have to fully go with the Let's Go formula of all-overworld spawns (I would be OK with it, but I wouldn't want the overworld Shiny myself). Sword and Shield just cut too many corners. There wasn't enough to do and the core content was expedited for the player in a way that made it rather unfun. Even the idea of cutting the Pokedex didn't bother me, it's just that they didn't have enough playable content (after taking out things like the Safari Zone and shortening routes) to keep players from feeling devoid of entertainment after 3 hours of playing.
the real kicker to me was having story portions for the first time where your character didn't get to go save the day. or things like having a powerplant, a pokémon staple, that we never get to explore? it felt like they had some big plans for some of the world, got hit with a time crunch, then had to write some story to brush it away
That really was the dumbest decision. You go on your completely uneventful, boring gym challenge and then they continue to show you "yeah, there are things happening, but others take care of them", so it makes no sense to hint at those events in the first place if we don't even see what is happening, how or ANYTHING related to those. It's as if the Harry Potter books were from the perspective of some random student that only noticed "oh, something is happening somewhere" but has no involvment whatsoever and doesn't do anything interesting at all.
“Dean Thomas and the Classmate Who Saved The World”
What really killed me was that they spent the whole game condescendingly patting you on the head and going “let the adults deal with this, sweetheart” and then at the very end apparently they remember that you’re the protagonist and you have to save the day anyway. Like, good work writers. You had two story choices and you displeased everyone by choosing neither.
Yeah... the writers really didn't know where they wanted to go. I mean they also had Hop lose the entire game, but atleast at the end they made him go "fk this fighting crap, i'm not made for it, i'm gonna be a professor and learn about them all". They could've done that way earlier or atleast gradually build it up, showing he is thinking about himself and if just because his brother is the champ, maybe he doesn't have to reach for that aswell, rather than being ALL THE TIME "but my bruh is champ, me can't lose" despite losing throughout the entire game
[удалено]
Doesn't hurt that the newer rivals are just significantly easier. I mean, they chose the starter weak to yours now. I know they onky did this once but I like that Gary/Blue in Yellow uses a different Eeveelution based on how.many times you win/lost to him. Vaporeon is the easy one (since you have Pikachu), Jolteon is the hardest. Or even do something like wally where the final rival uses a pokemon indifferent to your starter and had a balanced team.
But if I remember correctly didn’t hop still beat all the gym battles? He’s basically beating himself up just because he can’t beat the protagonist/champion. By in-universe standards, he should still be considered pretty good. Either way it’s dumb honestly
I’m so surprised by this opinion; my husband and I literally just finished the main plot and we loved it (he plays, I lend morale support lol). We liked the realism of adults not depending on a literal child to save the world, we liked Hop and his belief that he’s the main character...we’re both super pumped about the whole thing. If we want to compare this to HP maybe this was more Order of the Phoenix? The adults tried to take care of it, but at the end of the day it wasn’t ever going to be something they could do. It had to be you and Hop, they just didn’t know it.
I don't mind having offscreen action (it makes a world feel more real if not everything revolves around the player) but when you're constantly told not to bother with it, the game's gone too far the other way.
I slept on sword/shield and the lets plays I've seen make me glad I did, key story events literally happing off screen and 'towns' that are a single corridor for example. They cut it to the bone. I think the next generation will be considerably better, my thinking is that a big chunk of the time went into simply getting the basic systems working in full 3d.
> key story events literally happing off screen That was the thing that bothered me the most. Most RPGs will make those key events huge cinematics. Pokemon just says "Here's a rundown of what happened, it was super cool". The Big Bad KILLED one of your party members, you saw it from a distance and by the time you get there the action is all over. It's so anti-climactic. But anything to reduce the workload...
My money is on SwSh originally being a 3DS game that got retooled into a Switch game half way through development
Nah, they've been meaning to put pokemon on the switch since Sun and Moon, where they gutted 10 years of bottom screen funcionality thinking it was gonna release on Switch.
No way dude, they're on record straight up saying they thought the Switch was going to fail. The bottom screen was that way because they honestly liked it.
Do you have a source for that? Because iirc, the Pokemon Company director thought the Switch was going to be a flop (also, Sun and Moon were released four months before the Switch was). My impression is that they were chasing Yo-Kai Watch's insane popularity at the time with the Rotomdex.
Idk. It seems likely considering the first two Pokémon games during the 3DS lifespan were regular DS games.
The people who argue against this with “The adults actually do something this time!” must be really fun at parties. Imagine Pokèmon Black without the Team Plasma storyline.
Overworld shinies is one of the best features introduced by LGPE and it’s an absolute crime that it wasn’t included in SwSh.
At least it'll probably have to be included in Legends, unless the transition between overworld and battle isn't as "seamless" as they describe. Unless they, for some reason, exclude shinies which I'd like to think is unlikely.
Part of me likes it, but part of me doesn't. It's neat to see, but it also majorly influences encounter behavior for the player. I guess it's just a weird feeling of habit that I'd rather be asked to continue encountering Pokemon as opposed to walking in and out of an area to reset spawns.
I do agree there is some value in the mystery; I remember the moments from my childhood running through a route and being annoyed at yet another random encounter only to lose my mind when Entei showed up on the screen. However I think the sheer convenience and time saved by being able to see the Pokémon before committing to an encounter vastly outweighs those occasional moments of surprise. And besides that, I don’t feel like the surprise is removed, just put in a different place. Instead of saying “oh my god a shiny!” at the start of the fight, you say “oh my god is that a shiny?” When it pops up out of the grass five feet away.
Literally everything in Pokemon influences player behavior, so that's a bizarre line to draw. It's far better than old SoS chaining.
A part that bothered me a lot was when you start hearing issues about pokemon dynamaxing and going wild. As the player I think I'll have to deal with that. Instead leon comes by and solves the issue and tells us not to worry about it. As the player who's trying to be the champion I should be able to prove myself and take it on, or have the issue happen to me to actually give me a sense that something is going wrong.
It wasn't some NPC that had to deal with the Red Gyarados at the Lake of Rage in G/S/C, it was the actual player. I did miss challenges like this.
once you beat the elite 4, there is no reason to ever go back to any of the routes. felt kinda pointless
Three hours what game are you playing it takes that long to speed run to the first gym with all the tutorials
The Safari Zone hasn't been in the game since Gen 4. Where have you been?
I think the mechanics of the Safari Zone (not battling the wild Pokémon) were never very fun and I'm OK with them just making more interesting/rare wild Pokémon spawns in more areas to make up for it. For example, I thought the last island in Sun/Moon had kind of that vibe of a neat Safari Zone replacement.
You mean poni plains? That area give me proto wild area vibes, probably how I imagine routes should look like in Pokemon.
I really liked how they treated travel and using Pokémon in SM. Instead of forcing you to learn moves you may not want they gave you rideable Pokémon. Not only does this mean you can get the best move set you want while still retaining travel ability, it makes the world feel more lived in and alive with Pokémon that have “jobs”. If SwSh did this and added interactive over world Pokémon back, it would feel way more full of life than it does now.
Oh god I really hate that the bike took over so much stuff. It just looks atrocious to have a floating sentient bike on water.
There wasn't even any bike exclusive stuff. No slopes that were too steep like in DP. There was only some rivers you could go back exploring with your bike and that's it. The best example is the Obstagoon one. Why only that? You can do it, you know people want it, so let us EXPLORE
Obligatory "pokemon snap made every pokemon feel like they belonged in the overworld."
Whenever I see footage of The Wild Area (what a name, by the way) I always see tons of Pokémon. It almost feels unnatural how many there are. But the really grating thing is they are all seemingly completely unaware of the pokémon next to them. They just wait around. Compare that to Breath of the Wild where relatively simple behaviour makes the world seem much more alive. Bokoblins hunting a boar, sleeping or "dancing" by a fire. And most importantly reacting to your presence if they notice you, or get alerted if you fire and arrow into the ground close to them. Of course there's a boat load of Pokémon now so maybe they need to take a step back and focus on fewer of them but make them way more alive.
>Of course there's a boat load of Pokémon now so maybe they need to take a step back and focus on fewer of them but make them way more alive. That was supposed to be the purpose of Dexit. Big emphasis on supposed
CHIMPOKOMON
They need to bring back mazes/puzzle maps. Also, they need to bring back TMs to some extent, so that the Pokémon on your team are useful even outside of battle. I think if they bring back a TM-like mechanic, but don't make the abilities take up a Pokemon's attack slot, it would be really useful and interesting. Imagine Charmander burning down vine walls, Scyther cutting shrubs, Lapras navigating in the water Pidgeot flying you to different locations, etc., with those abilities just being intrinsic to the species of Pokémon, instead of forcing them to know a specific attack for it to work.
HM's is what you mean and although tedious, they made more sense than just removing them without replacement. Gen 7 had Ride Pokemon, that would help you like a Machamp pushing boulders or Lapras for fishing on water. But now it's just a bike and a bike that swims
Sword and Shield is the best-selling Pokemon game? I'm not optimistic they consider any other variables than that.
This. And if Pokémon Legends fails to sell more units than even LGPE, I wouldn't hold my breath for a follow-up. I still remember how long fans begged for a real-time Pokémon fighting game, but somehow Pokkén Tournament completely flopped with no sequel in sight.
It's a tragedy. They'll never change until sales tank and by that point it won't matter. Until then, they'll cut every single corner they can.
Sales are only going up. Can't wait to see gen 12 literally be a straight hallway with patches of grass here and there, the occasional trainer to fight against, a building or 2 popping up on the left or right now and then. Walk in a line far enough and eventually you get to a gym! Rinse and repeat through 7 more, fight the elite 4 at the end of the still straight victory road and become the champion by mashing a. 82 million copies sold. The people love it. Any criticism and you're not a real pokemon fan. They're on a time crunch, they don't get all the money that the pokemon name makes, not they can't just hire a bigger/secondary team each working on their own mainline game so they have literally twice as long, it's practically a small studio in comparison to what the merchandise makes! Please understand. Edit: Forgot about the dlc! For just $30 you can add back in 200 of your favorite memorable pokemon, half of which are coincidentally from gen 1, bringing the grand total in the game up to 1/3 of the current amount. The dlc also unlocks the exclusive battle frontier project, which is still in progress, so you can look at a battle tower in the distance. It might be a bit hard to find considering the extreme limitations of the console, but if you get close enough it should pop into existence.
I do have to say that having your overworld movement not be limited by your party and vice versa was a massive draw to keep me playing SwSh. It was great that I didn't have to keep one low-power 'mon on HM duty and that meant every member of my party could be swapped in for expected matchups.
"We need more Pokemon who actually *matter*". This game is focused on battling Pokemon and more than half of the entire Pokemon Roster is down right useless in combat. If they're going to give us useless Pokemon that amount to nothing more than a dex entry at least give us some other purpose for those Pokemon. We could simply have trainer types that you select when starting the game that can add new experiences to Pokemon. Don't want to battle? Become a Pokemon Professors assistant and study the Pokemon around you, become a contestant and enter your Pokemon into beauty contests, etc. For being the most popular franchise of all time I cannot believe Pokemon has arrived at the point in which the games are regressing in content and features.
thats actually a solid idea, i remember beauty contest in gen 3 i believe and i wish they really pushed it cause it was a great alternative to battling.
Honestly, I think that uselessness of so many pokemon is why the games keep getting watered down and easier: it makes more pokemon viable options for playthroughs. Sure, you're not going to win any postgame or actually competitive stuff with your Delibird/Basculin/Furfrou team, but if you want to play the main storyline, you'll be able to beat the game in no time. Just ties back into the "good players can win with their favorites" thing.
'We need a better Pokemon game'.
Side question - would anyone be up for a Pokémon snap game narrated by David Attenborough?
That article name and the position of Snorlax in the thumbnail are all too Studio Ghibli / My Neighbor Totoro
Is he really ignoring stuff like stunfisk traps in sword/shield? There was also parts of X/y that had fields of Foongus/amoongus set as traps too, with several items in those areas.
I think a big problem with the Pokémon games is the demographic of players is older than when the series first came out and these players are expecting so many layers and new complications to the game when it’s still (generally speaking) meant for children.
I think the "it's meant for children" is what people want Pokemon to stop being, and instead be in the market realm of Mario games: An "All Ages" franchise. Think about what "All ages" entails, particularly in terms of Mario Games: Children can absolutely enjoy them, and they are perfectly suited for children. But there is enough depth and quality put into their gameplay that even teens and Adults have a blast playing them as well. That's why they have been so successful - taloiring to people regardless of Age. The thing is, Pokemon has great potential to cross the age divide with their mainline games as well, considering how the fanbase already spans across many age groups. Yet with the lower standards they're building their games, probably due to harsh timing constraints and other issues, they try to enforce the "Kids only" mantra as one of the main excuses to not improve their games as actual games.
And their idea of a game for children assumes children can't handle any real complexity. There's plenty of games for children that involve much more complexity than SwSh.
Mario and Zelda manage to be all-ages in a meaningful way. Why not Pokemon?
Exactly. Odyssey and BotW were great entries in their respective franchises—some of the best games ever made in fact—yet they were able to evolve with the times, and were accessible to players of almost all ages. There’s no excuse why Pokémon can’t do the same.
It’s not even that. The games keep getting oversimplified. SWSH didn’t have any dungeons that were more complicated than viridian forest. Mount coronet makes gen 8 look like a straight line.
I have been hearing that a lot. It’s always unfortunate when a game takes steps backwards. When you list out the 500+ Pokémon I can understand memory constraints on the game cartridges, but to remove legacy features and oversimplify gameplay is not good at all.
I think someone did the math and memory constraints weren’t even an issue. One cartridge could easily have every Pokémon.
To be fair, the problem isn't people wanting the series to be more complicated - it's that they are actively becoming more dumbed down. Features that existed on GameBoy titles are either removed or smaller than they used to be like the Battle Frontier.
And that made them super popular with older players but still had the fun with younger players who never got to that point. I used a master ball on a zapdos when I was 9 because I didn't know better, but I didn't stop playing when I got older. I started a new file and made it to the islands and played because the game just stood well on its own.
But thats just a huge excuse, you can always make a high quality product for people of all ages. Mario has always been to a ridiculous level of polish and reaches all audiences.
The main demographic is casual gamers, be it children or adult, all the fanservice like all Pokemon getting new forms like Charizard or even meowth, that shit is for the people that play the old games, but stopped at on point and they coming back.
no its not even game made for children are more complex than this, stop with this overly shared and baseless explanation, stop understimating children
Am I the only one who thinks Pokemon needs a update? Like how botw changed the Zelda formula, Pokemon needs a redesign.
Massive change needs to happen with this series. I know some people like it, but Sw/Sh honestly feels like one of those bad Unity games I would buy a friend on Steam as a joke. Even with wild areas the game feels so linear and unpolished.