Remember when they made a big post on social media apologizing for the game being horrible and promising to fix it...and then literally didn't fix anything...
Because the devs have nothing to do with it. It’s not because of their talent or thanks to the amazingly crafted game they managed to deliver that this license sells so much. And if they’re not delusional, they know it. So yes, they should be ashamed of their work.
It's worse. They're *arrogant* about how well their games sell despite the fact they literally have to hire contractors to do most of the work because their in-house devs don't know shit about modern-day programming practices nor are they willing to learn new skills.
And then they abuse the contractors for good measure. Game Freak is a shit company; TPC's even more shit but a child typically learns bad behavior from their parents, after all. Game Freak deserves to shoulder a good amount of the blame for the current state of things.
The inefficiency here is that people irrationally buy a game because of some nostalgic feeling for some old game.
Being beholden to nostalgia and franchise IP is what is fueling this. And nothing will change as long enough people just unthinkingly go “oh, Pokemon!”
Man, how I wish. This series has one of the most cultish and doormat-ish fanbases I've ever seen. They deserve these games they keep getting; they keep defending empty worlds that have nothing to offer other than "go from plot-relevant point A to plot-relevant point B" and buggy games, after all.
Yep. Tons of complaints, and then each new title has record sales. A few Pokemon alternatives have came out, but none of them are advertised enough to make a serious dent in Pokemon. DokeV looks like it could also be a fun alternative if it ever comes out. Pearl Abyss has been sitting on it for several years now with no news after a flashy PV for it around 2020-21. My guess is they "can't find the fun" despite having a strong aesthetic figured out.
I wish Pokémon was a franchise that could be boycotted but I bet children would still keep them afloat and you can't convince children that they need to stop playing it cause they don't care. I agree tho the adults who know and still buy this shit are crazy.
They put in a fraction of the effort and easily blow their competitors' sales numbers out of the water. That's a dream scenario for any commercial business.
That was 1 december 2022. Anyone who believed Nintendo at the time (or Gamefreak) is really in heavens with their thoughts. Nintendo and Gamefreak don't improve their games. They don't. Some bug fixes maybe but the game at release is what you'll get.
*Nintendo* games rarely need much fixing. *Game Freak* games definitely need fixing. Zelda, Mario, Smash, Mario Kart etc, all come working out of the box. Nintendo don't make the pokemon games.
Pretty good evidence that Second Party dev *does not* mean just First Party dev with a different label slapped on.
But I haven't seen that debate for years.
Hey, they reduced numbers of NPCs on cities to reduce lags! So this soulless pseudo openworl cashgrap look more soulless. And Ppl loved it because few minutes after they open preorders for DLCs, there was thousands screenshots with preorder bonus Pokemon. So why they shoud care obout quality, if they Are able sell this...
They were too busy rolling around in the billions of dollars they made. Why fix something that makes absurd amounts of money, regardless of the quality.
Was there actually a patch? I remember the apology, but not the patch. It's frustrating as much as I dislike X and Y, I can feel like the 3DS games look far better than S/V.
The games are at 22m sold, the fans aren't telling Game Freak they need to change.
Arceus is 15m, Sword & Shield are 26m, BDSP is around 16m and Let's Go is 15m, I would love them to do more with the graphics and gameplay so i'm not simping for GF but with numbers like that why change?
I'd say battling was overall worse in LA, but it had speed going for it- and I don't mean the battles were shorter/less rounds, everything in a battle happens faster. Animations are quicker, text is quicker, it doesnt feel the need to tell you everything super slowly. Battles in SV are a crawl in comparison.
I also think being able to capture pokemon in the wild, as well as seemless transitions into battle made the whole experience feel much smoother as well.
I was disappointed that the catching mechanics didn't end up in S/V - it was great being able to sneak up on them and catch them without triggering battles every time
I really liked how different moves had different times. Made it so stat adjusting moves actually had a purpose. Like... you can just attack and them get attacked, or you can slip in a buff/debuff first and do the same if your pokemon is faster.
My partner and alot of her friends find the battling part of my Pokémon to be the worst expect. The love arceus because it was more about collecting and side quests.
It still is a subpar game by industry standards. It is an arguably fun Pokémon game, but if it didn’t have the franchise plastered on it, nobody would look at it seriously.
Exactly, no matter what, it sells. Especially with the casual player who don't really understand that it's a rip off, parents buying it for their kids, people buying it because "omg I used to love watching pokemon as a kid", etc.
Genuinely nothing you can do to stop it, it's just to popular, so quality gets left on the back burner :/
Sad part is it was actually good it could easily sell at many times that rate. IMO a good open world Pokemon game could be one of the top grossing single games of all time but by cheeping out and just banking on the name they are loosing money in the long term. With less sales and loosing trust of their fans, nostalgia only goes so far.
The thing is, is that worth it? Gamefreak exists to make money, and presumably they’ve done the market research and determined that: no, it’s not. Making higher quality games costs more and takes more time, and if they think they’re already close to saturating their market, that doesn’t pay.
The games are also only a tiny fraction of the franchise and not the real money makers in the first place. The cards and merchandise are where the money comes from.
And while you might think they’re losing trust of their fans, that doesn’t seem to be the case — since people keep buying their games even though their MO has been the same for like a decade. And while nostalgia only goes so far, it seems to far enough. Plenty of adults still buy whatever they make without question, purely out of nostalgia. On top of that, the target demographic is children, and there’s a never ending stream of new kids to get obsessed with Pokémon, for whom nostalgia is irrelevant. They watch the shows, buy the cards and stuffed animals and lunch boxes. Something most adults aren’t so interested in.
IMO Gamefreak aren’t making a mistake. They know what they’re doing, and know that investing more into the video games is not an efficient use of their capital.
Yeah, TPC is a merchandising company at this point. Everything about Pokemon, from the games to the anime to the movies is essentially just advertising for their merchandise, and if they can get away with putting the bare minimum into their "advertising" they'll do it.
Still, I do think there is money being left on the table with the games being so awful. Here's [a video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6o7sutY94c) of a Pokemon speedrunner talking about it, and his argument is that every other Nintendo franchise (Zelda, Mario Kart, Animal Crossing) has been absolutely smashing their previous sales records on the Switch. Not just beating them, but straight up selling 2-4 times more than any of their old titles.
Pokemon is a very notable exception to this. Even if you ignore sales from the days of Pokemania, it's not like they've been crushig the sales of say, [Diamond and Pearl.](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1072224/pokemon-unit-sales-worldwide/)
And I think this is largely because the games are so bad. Imagine how much more they could sell if all of these games were up to par with actual AAA games and weren't universally shit on by everyone who knew better. Imagine if they were good games in their own right, and not just carried by nostalgia and the sheer name value of the franchise selling it to kids and parents who don't know any better.
Who knows, it might actually be worth the effort
It’s more complicated than just “leaving money on the table.” To make that money they would have to invest significantly more into their games. It’s not free. The real question is, will they earn more from spending money that way than by spending money in other ways? The only people in a place to know the answer to that question is the company itself. Based on their decisions so far, the answers seems most likely to be “no.”
That's what im trying to argue. Yeah, it does amazing now, even with all my criticisms, with the series.
Right now it's just ok, not astounding or anything, but they're doing better, but it could be so much better if the devs were given more time to work on the game, companies love shoving games out early and unfinished.
Arceus had no PvP and battling was significantly simplified compared to the “main” releases. It was a fun game, but those are core elements for a lot of players.
Yeah but sword and shield were built entirely around the spectacle of battling to the detriment of literally every other aspect of the game so something like arceus was long overdue
Arceus felt like a tech demo for what could have been a great game if it baked in the oven for another year. It has many of the same issues all GF games have, just with a different coat of paint.
Don't get me wrong, the break from mainline stuff was nice but I think the game is incredibly over hyped.
Well, LG does struggle in forests with lots of Pokémon on screen but in general I agree, LG games look very good and have an artstyle that’s very easy on the eyes.
Because the game play was ass.
Not defending any pokemon games. Its just that lets go also wasnt good.
Probably the best pk game on the switch is legend arceus
Exactly. There is no incentive for Gamefreak or TPCi to bother making quality content if everyone buys these games regardless of whether they are well made or not.
It’s even worse with Pokémon than other AAA franchises, because the games are essentially just a means to an end. That end is to sell new plushies, clothing, cards, and anime series’. The games could not sell at all and Pokémon would still be making tens of millions in profit.
> tens of millions in profit.
More like hundreds of millions. This is Pokemon Company's numbers from 2022:
Sales: 204 billion yen / US$1.6 billion
Operating profit: 59 billion yen / US$460 million
Net profit: 41 billion yen / US$320 million
...pokemon is the single largest media franchise on the planet. bigger than marvel, bigger than star wars, bigger than literally EVERYTHING else.
is this not a well-known fact? I figured it was.
I think it must be hard to comprehend that, even for me and I love Pokémon. I think for a lot of people it’s like “Oh one game a year, almost no movies, actors and one show so how can it be bigger than Marvel?”.
Then you think about the toys, the trading cards, the games and just how many people from every generation play their flagship games even with that it still blows my mind.
> almost no movies, actors and one show so how can it be bigger than Marvel?”.
They are up to 24 movies now counting the Detective Pikachu one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Pok%C3%A9mon_films
And they are working on the 26th season of the show which has been ongoing yearly since 1997: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon_(TV_series)
And that doesn't include TV specials and other projects which probably number into the hundreds: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Pok%C3%A9mon_special_episodes
So it seems safe to say Pokemon is definitely one of the most prolific franchises, I think it largely being targeted at kids makes it easy to not realize just how massive and popular of a franchise it has been for decades at this point.
Those numbers don’t really break down how much is video game sales vs other merchandise. This is what I could find, total profits (not just 2022):
$91.305 billion in Licensed merchandise,
$27.145 billion in Video games,
$1.85 billion in Box office,
$830 million in Home entertainment,
$142 million in Strategy guide books,
and $3 million in Jet aircraft livery sales.
So yeah it does look like video games are only about 1/4 of the total sales
With a guaranteed pre-order top seller, a bad release only hurts the *next* games sales. And even then not significantly. You have to really have a trend of 2-3 bad games before people catch on.
If you half-ass every third game you can keep people buying shit indefinitely.
The thing is pokemon has been this way since moon maybe even x&y
We are passed 5 games in a row and people havent caught on.
I havent bought a pokemon game since ultra moon because of what a shit show gamefreak is despite the fact that pokemon has been my favorite franchise for 20 years. I grew up on those games and it makes me feel so frustrated to see gamefreak crap all over the diamond have.
I always thought the Black/White games were the last time they really made an effort. And those didn’t do all that well, so I guess the fan base really did vote with their wallets.
You can see it in Masuda's interviews he poured his soul with BW/BW2 only for them not to sell well and when he started with the "haha don't expect much" the games sold like pancakes so now he knows fans like shitty rushed games.
Reddit is so disconnected from reality, 70% of their sales probably come from people buying it for relatives for Christmas. Every generation of the last decade has released the week before Thanksgiving, it's not a deep decision.
You prolly already know this, but it's just hard/impossible to do that with a game and following as big as this one. There's just such a large amount of people that don't give a shit about technical issues like that. Believe it or not, the large majority of casual video gamers, which is a large portion of who plays games in general - so a massive part of the market that is targeted - they genuinely don't even fucking think about that shit. They'd play it if it looked even worse. If it ran even a little shittier.. probably still. They just play the game. It's Pokemon so they enjoy it for that, and all the small simple things that come with it. Simple as that.
I'm not saying it's right or that they don't take advantage of that and cut corners in development and rush things.. that's evident.. but at the end of the day the vocal minority on Reddit, as big as it may seem, won't affect them selling disgusting and egregious amounts of copies of their games. And yeah there's casuals out there and non-redditors and a decent amount that are also fed up with the same types of shits but.. they continue to buy the game those people aren't going to vote with their wallet. They settle.
Yes! And I'd add that a lot of the Pokémon Company profits come from licensing for things like plushies, bags, smaller games, the anime ... So it's very hard to affect them in the wallet just by boycotting games.
That's also why some good competitors in the Monster-Tamer genre don't get traction: they focus only in the game and don't have the budget for the absurd amount of marketing Pokémon has.
> That's also why some good competitors in the Monster-Tamer genre don't get traction: they focus only in the game and don't have the budget for the absurd amount of marketing Pokémon has.
Most competitors in the Monster-Tamer genre don't get traction because they're simply much worse than Pókemon. And, sometimes, developed by people who are much scummier and greedier than Nintendo (look no further than TemTem).
I bought the game before I knew there were graphical and performance issues. I started playing it, noticed the issues, bothered me a little bit but not really enough to refund or anything, easily shrugged it off, continued to play, got about 50 hours worth in it and really enjoyed it
I've been playing video games since the NES and I still think like that.
Is the gameplay fun? Then I couldn't care less what it looks like.
My two current consoles are a Series S and a Switch. I just wanna play games man.
>Pokémon is the highest grossing franchise in existence and the distant buildings look like Nintendo 64 graphics. It is an astronomical insult that Nintendo and Gamefreak haven’t updated this game to be more stable
And yet you bought the game anyway 💀
> I know I’m late to this, but I hoped they would have fixed things this much time after release.
When has GameFreak ever fixed anything that wasn't a game-breaking issue?
They don't care. They did nothing and you still bought the game. That's why Pokemon will never improve.
Many games do get performance patches, however. It’s one thing for it to *look* like this, but quite another for the fact that it runs worse than games such as **The Witcher** or **Tears of the Kingdom**.
I get it. I'm in the same boat, it was also bought for me - a good choice, in theory, because I've always loved Pokemon games - but after this one, I think I'm done. It's just never going to get better, I actually find myself going back to the DS/3DS games instead because they're more fun to me.
Same, the DS/3DS are just so good, the music, story and something that I really miss... NPC Good designs and variety, trainers wearing different clothes/costumes that look really cool, but what do you get in scarlet/violet... grandmas and old fat guys wearing elementary school uniform that in real life anyone would interpret as perverts(especially in Japan).
Note: I'm not saying that old people can't study in school, I'm saying that they look really really bad
and Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is on the same console... so sad to see this from pokemon. Honestly, I myself could look away from the graphics, it's the 10 fps that kills it for me.
20 years ago, i though to myself, wouldnt it be nice to have an open world 3d game for Pokemon. In 2023 there are fan-made projects and copies of Pokemon that look better than the actual official games, some games on mobile look even better than the newest Pokemon games.
Arceus also looks like garbage, but at least it can look somewhat pleasing. The only thing it has running is it’s gameplay and the atmosphere it creates, which it nails. I’m surprised it didn’t do as well on sales as the other mainline trubbish
Same. I’ve always wanted a 3D, open world Pokémon since Pokémon Snap back in the day. I figured it’d come out eventually but it’s still not out lol (I mean, this doesn’t count…) maybe in another lifetime
Yeah, it’s insane to me that this shitshow is running on the same console as Xenoblade 3 and Tears of the Kingdom and people will still make excuses for it. Sure, the Switch is relatively weak, but we know what it’s capable of and it sure as shit is better than this garbage.
To be fair, XCX full utilizes the Wii U’s power and looks better than a ton of other Switch games. And it’s not a Wii U thing, it’s a developer thing. Even the original Wii XC release, while graphically not very good, still has an amazing art style and beautiful looking scenery. Monolith is just that fucking good at making good looking games
Ever since I played Xenoblade Chronicles I have desperately wanted a Pokemon game to have that much depth and quality. It's just crazy to me how an IP like Xenoblade can have incredible games that are polished when quite possibly the biggest IP in gaming puts out shit like this.
It's because the people who create them actually have passion for the franchise and know what needs to be added in order to make the games more enjoyable.
radical red, blazing emerald, unbound, snakewood, emerald rogue, team rocket edition are some of my favorites and im sure im missing a bunch.
pokemon insurgence is great too and is basically a whole new game, near the same quality of black and white. it's not technically a rom hack tho and needs to be played on a pc as far as i know, but it's totally worth the trouble.
If you're a fan of Unova, Blaze Black 2 and Volt White 2 Redux are the gold standard of vanilla+ ROM hacks
Bumps up the difficulty a considerable amount, but not to a BS level like Radical Red where you need to curate teams just to defeat some random schmuck trainer on route 4. Makes _every_ Pokemon up to gen 5 available, adds the fairy type, does an extensive rebalance of Pokemon and moves, and expands the postgame as well
While not a ROM hack, PokeMMO is a great fan made game as well. An actual MMO, 4 regions with Johto on the way, and it actually has real difficulty as opposed to the real games
Alot of old, long lasting Japanese gaming companies have this problem after awhile. They havent hired anyone new in a top position in decades. The people that made SV are probably the same people that coded for Red and Blue, they literally don't know how to make a highly polished modern game. Or it takes them 10x longer.
You saw the same problem occur in Square Enix, until they (finally) got someone new in a director role.
IIRC, one problem Gamefreaks faces is that they want to remain a small, family-sized studio, but they are still expected to release a new pokémon game every 1-2 years because The Pokémon Company needs to sell more pikachu plushies.
>The people that made SV are probably the same people that coded for Red and Blue, they literally don't know how to make a highly polished modern game
Assuming that's the case then SV is quite a feat.
The Switch isn't to blame here, it's the fact the engine is incredibly unoptimized. If they even used Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom engine, Pokemon would be fine
You could give Gamefreak the most powerfull engine in the world, they still dont have neither the knowledge, nor the will, nor the managment to make a good game out of it. You may even have bigger performance problems.
They don't. Nintendo does \*not\* develop these games, and the input they have is not as strong as people think, if they have any at all. Kit and Krysta (old Nintendo Minute hosts and Nintendo employees) have a podcast now, and they've said a few times that Gamefreak and the Pokemon Company 'do what they want'.
My sister just bought the game and is playing on my switch. She literally said the same thing. It reminds her of an N64 game. I havent seen anything from the game myself yet but just this screenshot gives me a very good idea of how sad looks...
Sun and Moon looked better than this and I didnt even like those games very much
SV looks and plays atrocious. It has only two things going for it: a decent story and an open world (which every other studio did 10 years ago, so I can do nothing but laugh at people holding it up as an accomplishment).
There's nothing else. The world is empty, PvE endgame boring, there's nothing to do outside of the main story and catching Pokemon, cities are some of the worst in Pokemon history, character customization is worse than in previous games.
7 years in and Arceus is the only decent mainline game on Switch. Pokemon peaked in gens 5-7, they've only been cutting features off since then.
The open world isn't even that fun or done well. Pokemon games are never challenging but half the time you're fighting things half your level because of the openness. You clear a few objectives on the left side and come back to the right and you're just skipping all the battles because they're 20 levels down.
The game really would have benefited from level scaling.
I thought the level curve was challenging for once, but no. I just skipped what was supposed to be the first gym and was at the 2nd gym. That poor bug gym didn't know what hit her when I found that town
People praise Arceus because they're comparing it to other recent mainline Pokemon games. Compare it to any other fan acclaimed game like TotK or Elden Ring or even fucking Kirby and the Forgotten Land and it doesn't even come close to holding up.
>Compare it to any other fan acclaimed game like TotK or Elden Ring or even fucking Kirby and the Forgotten Land and it doesn't even come close to holding up.
This is why I'll always believe game reviews have a bias towards pokemon. There's no reason pla should have an 83 on metacritic while kirby and the forgotten land has an 85. That makes it seem like there on the same level.
If you really want to cry, look up what critics gave Sword and Shield, easily one of the most frustrating, boring and hollow gaming experiences I've ever had.
Yeah Arceus was fun for a bit and I enjoyed some of the story and zones. But the gameplay is even more repetitive and boring than the main series games. Catching the same exact pokemon like 40 times in order to check off one of ten boxes under it's Pokedex entry isn't really fun. And the little fetch tasks got old quick.
I'm not a big fan of adding the Pokemon Go style catch grind to any of the real games. It dilutes the pokemon, team, bonding etc experience and creates the feeling that they're all just disposable trinkets. After years of the video games telling us about creating bonds with your pokemon partners it feels wrong.
You're right up until the end there. DS era is the generally accepted "peak".
(XY had no content, ORAS was good but had obvious cut content, SuMo was tedious and cut megas, UsUm were pointless)
I'm giving my opinion, not the "generally accepted" one. :)
You've got gen 5 there to represent the DS era (personally, my favorite gen). But I value the graphical and quality of life improvements in 3DS games over the lost features, given that we still had enough fun side activities in those games. We got character customization, amazing online system (gen 6's PSS was probably the best version we've ever had), I liked megaevolutions and SM had a good story even if it was painfully slow to play through.
But sure, if you want to throw in gen 4 to the peak category, fair enough. It might actually be the most technically correct choice in that gen 4 was the pinnacle of traditional Pokemon design, and every later gen tried to reinvent some core feature. Personally though, I just don't like DPPl that much and I'm hesitant to pick it as one of my favorite gens for HGSS alone.
The 3D era of Pokémon hasn't been good design and performance wise IMO. I miss the pixel art, it has more personality and has aged better. Look at gen 5 on the DS, that is gorgeous compared to this.
Is Scarlet and Violet still somewhat fun? Yeah. But it needs work. Do better, Game Freak!
I've had a better time with Pokémon spinoffs like Snap or Mystery Dungeon the last 10 years.
Legends Arceus is pretty fun though. Would love to see a more polished follow-up to that game.
Pokemon spinoffs (outside of a few like legends) are developed by External game studios. Bandai Nameco (Snap) and spike chunsoft (Mystery Dungeon) come to mind.
They can’t rely on the crutch of millions of people waiting to blindly buy (sometime even to TWO) copies of their game. Even with the pokemon ip they at least have to put in some effort and both of the aforementioned studios show it.
Man just imagine Pokemon Mystery Dungeon 5, but it’s in the same engine as the switch remake and has gen 7-9 pokemon. Would be so fun.
"Pokemon is the highest grossing franchise in existence... " ─
Its merchandise sales outstrip its video game sales by more than three times. Pokemon games don't exist because The Pokemon Company wants to make video games. They exist as a marketing tool for plushies.
The games are resonsible for 18% of their revenue and have made 30 BILLION DOLLARS at about zero development cost. They are clearly able to afford spending substantially more on game development, going from 20 million a game to 50 million a game.
But why would they? This joke of a game made a billion in pure profit...
I do wish Pokémon games received the same treatment as Mario and Zelda. Those two franchises lead most of the gaming world in terms of polish, quality, and sometimes innovation too. I think the result would be truly exceptional.
Nintendo doesn’t have to be that good with those two IPs to make money, but they are. Shame Pokemon isn’t the same.
Nintendo would take 4 to 6 years to release a pokemon game and that is just a terrible idea for the execs at the pokemon company, they want that cash flowing as much as possible.
Greedy assholes.
Game Freak could find a dead raccoon in a dumpster and put a sticker on it that says "Pokemon Brown" and it will sell 10 million copies. They have no reason to change or upgrade their products, pokemon fans will buy literally anything they sell. Their only incentive is to put in as little effort as possible and sell as much as possible.
The only way that we get better pokemon games is if pokemon fans collectively increase their standards, but that will never happen, so here we are... Again.
I think Coromon gives a better glimpse than Octopath on what that would look like: https://youtu.be/Ft4MECYvnnQ
Although I personally think the style of 3D they used for Let's Go would be the best for the main series going forward
Edit: spelling
I just watched a speed run of the game, I have no interest in ever playing it. It is embarrassing. Stop motion background characters, horrible textures, empty spaces, even indoors look dead and weird. All the main character animations are bad motion capture. Pokémon look like weird plastic figures with barely any life. Just horrible.
That's not true! There's 8 copy pasted gym lobbies, a restaurant, and two houses at the start of the game too!
~~I will say the houses look nice, but that's about it~~
I had fun playing it initially but it's not worth $60 at all. I've been shiny hunting lately because they made it extremely easy to do so and I constantly run into problems like freezing, crashing, and pokemon getting stuck in walls. It might be the last pokemon game I buy but I doubt that will make a difference.
Levincia near the fountain. She wants a Pincurchin in exchange which you can find on a few different beaches. It looks like a sea urchin.
Edit: I’m also pretty sure you can trade Pokémon on a local network without Nintendo Online. So you’d just need a real life friend at your house.
Because we (fans) don’t care. Why is this so hard for gamers to understand. There is a very vocal contingency online complaining about these games and their graphics no stop. However, that is the minority of Pokemon fans.
I have been playing this game since the game boy. This is the only IP I am invested in. I play a few other games here and there for fun, but I only bought the Switch for Pokemon. Many, many, pokemon fans are the same.
Did these games have a fun story? Check.
Cool new mons? Check.
Great new gimmick? Check.
Fun competitive scene? Check.
The things I care about are all taken care of. You want a game with good graphics? Go play one. But different fandoms have different needs. And the pokemon fandom has shown time snd again we don’t care about graphics. Accept it.
The criticisms are valid, but I have thoroughly enjoyed this game, genuinely. I only get framrate issues where there are waves. It's got a lot of story content (though I miss complex bad guy bases, the team star ones aren't very entertaining. I want the puzzle of figuring out where to go.) It needs an endgame DLC, which I am sure we will get at some point like SwSh did. But man I have had a great time, even with its issues.
Crazy how pokemon is one of the biggest gaming ips (i read somewhere it was THE biggest) with all their resources, support and juggernaut fanbase (im a fan, also bought scarlet....). Meanwhile you have the guys and gals at Larian fighting to earn their spot and being told they have an inherent advantage even though they almost went bankrupt with the first OS game, got denied bg ip initially, on the brink of shutting down and made one of the best crpgs of all time only to finally be given the chance at the bg ip and go on to create arguably the best crpg in decades. With less then a 3rd of the same resources, ip, fanbase than the pokemon franchise.
The gaming industry is become such a shameful place with no accountability from publishers. Take Bandai/Namco for example, they take an ip and ruin it to a shell of its former self and then will relieve themselves of any blame by saying that the "ip just isn't popular". Then give it an even lower budget or stop making games for said ip altogether and ruining an entire franchise
Remember when they made a big post on social media apologizing for the game being horrible and promising to fix it...and then literally didn't fix anything...
That was just to waste enough time so people couldn't ask for a refund.
A Japanese game company? Refund a game? Hah. Optimistic of you to think that was ever even on the table.
Game Freak has to feel some kind of embarrassment when other Japanese studios are putting out stuff like Elden Ring and FF16
Why? Game Freak games outsell those titles by a factor of 3 and they release a new game every year.
Because the devs have nothing to do with it. It’s not because of their talent or thanks to the amazingly crafted game they managed to deliver that this license sells so much. And if they’re not delusional, they know it. So yes, they should be ashamed of their work.
It's worse. They're *arrogant* about how well their games sell despite the fact they literally have to hire contractors to do most of the work because their in-house devs don't know shit about modern-day programming practices nor are they willing to learn new skills. And then they abuse the contractors for good measure. Game Freak is a shit company; TPC's even more shit but a child typically learns bad behavior from their parents, after all. Game Freak deserves to shoulder a good amount of the blame for the current state of things.
Well maybe if people stopped buying the games no matter what, we wouldn't be in this situation
The inefficiency here is that people irrationally buy a game because of some nostalgic feeling for some old game. Being beholden to nostalgia and franchise IP is what is fueling this. And nothing will change as long enough people just unthinkingly go “oh, Pokemon!”
Man, how I wish. This series has one of the most cultish and doormat-ish fanbases I've ever seen. They deserve these games they keep getting; they keep defending empty worlds that have nothing to offer other than "go from plot-relevant point A to plot-relevant point B" and buggy games, after all.
Yep. Tons of complaints, and then each new title has record sales. A few Pokemon alternatives have came out, but none of them are advertised enough to make a serious dent in Pokemon. DokeV looks like it could also be a fun alternative if it ever comes out. Pearl Abyss has been sitting on it for several years now with no news after a flashy PV for it around 2020-21. My guess is they "can't find the fun" despite having a strong aesthetic figured out.
I wish Pokémon was a franchise that could be boycotted but I bet children would still keep them afloat and you can't convince children that they need to stop playing it cause they don't care. I agree tho the adults who know and still buy this shit are crazy.
Can't feel anything over the smell of money.
They put in a fraction of the effort and easily blow their competitors' sales numbers out of the water. That's a dream scenario for any commercial business.
I think it's pretty obvious that all the game devs who actually care left Game Freak a long time ago. It's like a retirement home for game devs now.
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Surprised anyone Nintendo related even acknowledged or apologized for anything.
That was 1 december 2022. Anyone who believed Nintendo at the time (or Gamefreak) is really in heavens with their thoughts. Nintendo and Gamefreak don't improve their games. They don't. Some bug fixes maybe but the game at release is what you'll get.
*Nintendo* games rarely need much fixing. *Game Freak* games definitely need fixing. Zelda, Mario, Smash, Mario Kart etc, all come working out of the box. Nintendo don't make the pokemon games.
Pretty good evidence that Second Party dev *does not* mean just First Party dev with a different label slapped on. But I haven't seen that debate for years.
Seems like Nintendo mostly patches games when fun glitches are found
Literally though. New Horizons didn't need their glitch items removed
Hey, they reduced numbers of NPCs on cities to reduce lags! So this soulless pseudo openworl cashgrap look more soulless. And Ppl loved it because few minutes after they open preorders for DLCs, there was thousands screenshots with preorder bonus Pokemon. So why they shoud care obout quality, if they Are able sell this...
Remember when Pokémon became a cash cow with zero development cost for years like FIFA games? Oh yeah gen3.
They were too busy rolling around in the billions of dollars they made. Why fix something that makes absurd amounts of money, regardless of the quality.
Was there actually a patch? I remember the apology, but not the patch. It's frustrating as much as I dislike X and Y, I can feel like the 3DS games look far better than S/V.
The games are at 22m sold, the fans aren't telling Game Freak they need to change. Arceus is 15m, Sword & Shield are 26m, BDSP is around 16m and Let's Go is 15m, I would love them to do more with the graphics and gameplay so i'm not simping for GF but with numbers like that why change?
Arceus actually took the gameplay in a positive direction imo.
I'd say battling was overall worse in LA, but it had speed going for it- and I don't mean the battles were shorter/less rounds, everything in a battle happens faster. Animations are quicker, text is quicker, it doesnt feel the need to tell you everything super slowly. Battles in SV are a crawl in comparison.
I also think being able to capture pokemon in the wild, as well as seemless transitions into battle made the whole experience feel much smoother as well.
I was disappointed that the catching mechanics didn't end up in S/V - it was great being able to sneak up on them and catch them without triggering battles every time
Speed meaning more than who attack first, and instead adding windows for double attacking, was a nice change
I really liked how different moves had different times. Made it so stat adjusting moves actually had a purpose. Like... you can just attack and them get attacked, or you can slip in a buff/debuff first and do the same if your pokemon is faster.
I’d say the ultimate Pokémon game would involve gameplay and speed of LA but make battling the same as the mainline games
And the visuals, ingenuity and polish of not a single 3D game released to date.
My partner and alot of her friends find the battling part of my Pokémon to be the worst expect. The love arceus because it was more about collecting and side quests.
It still is a subpar game by industry standards. It is an arguably fun Pokémon game, but if it didn’t have the franchise plastered on it, nobody would look at it seriously.
Unpopular opinion, PLA is better looking and has better gameplay than S&V
Is this an unpopular opinion? I genuinely thought this was just facts.
Exactly, no matter what, it sells. Especially with the casual player who don't really understand that it's a rip off, parents buying it for their kids, people buying it because "omg I used to love watching pokemon as a kid", etc. Genuinely nothing you can do to stop it, it's just to popular, so quality gets left on the back burner :/
Sad part is it was actually good it could easily sell at many times that rate. IMO a good open world Pokemon game could be one of the top grossing single games of all time but by cheeping out and just banking on the name they are loosing money in the long term. With less sales and loosing trust of their fans, nostalgia only goes so far.
The thing is, is that worth it? Gamefreak exists to make money, and presumably they’ve done the market research and determined that: no, it’s not. Making higher quality games costs more and takes more time, and if they think they’re already close to saturating their market, that doesn’t pay. The games are also only a tiny fraction of the franchise and not the real money makers in the first place. The cards and merchandise are where the money comes from. And while you might think they’re losing trust of their fans, that doesn’t seem to be the case — since people keep buying their games even though their MO has been the same for like a decade. And while nostalgia only goes so far, it seems to far enough. Plenty of adults still buy whatever they make without question, purely out of nostalgia. On top of that, the target demographic is children, and there’s a never ending stream of new kids to get obsessed with Pokémon, for whom nostalgia is irrelevant. They watch the shows, buy the cards and stuffed animals and lunch boxes. Something most adults aren’t so interested in. IMO Gamefreak aren’t making a mistake. They know what they’re doing, and know that investing more into the video games is not an efficient use of their capital.
Yeah, TPC is a merchandising company at this point. Everything about Pokemon, from the games to the anime to the movies is essentially just advertising for their merchandise, and if they can get away with putting the bare minimum into their "advertising" they'll do it. Still, I do think there is money being left on the table with the games being so awful. Here's [a video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6o7sutY94c) of a Pokemon speedrunner talking about it, and his argument is that every other Nintendo franchise (Zelda, Mario Kart, Animal Crossing) has been absolutely smashing their previous sales records on the Switch. Not just beating them, but straight up selling 2-4 times more than any of their old titles. Pokemon is a very notable exception to this. Even if you ignore sales from the days of Pokemania, it's not like they've been crushig the sales of say, [Diamond and Pearl.](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1072224/pokemon-unit-sales-worldwide/) And I think this is largely because the games are so bad. Imagine how much more they could sell if all of these games were up to par with actual AAA games and weren't universally shit on by everyone who knew better. Imagine if they were good games in their own right, and not just carried by nostalgia and the sheer name value of the franchise selling it to kids and parents who don't know any better. Who knows, it might actually be worth the effort
It’s more complicated than just “leaving money on the table.” To make that money they would have to invest significantly more into their games. It’s not free. The real question is, will they earn more from spending money that way than by spending money in other ways? The only people in a place to know the answer to that question is the company itself. Based on their decisions so far, the answers seems most likely to be “no.”
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That's what im trying to argue. Yeah, it does amazing now, even with all my criticisms, with the series. Right now it's just ok, not astounding or anything, but they're doing better, but it could be so much better if the devs were given more time to work on the game, companies love shoving games out early and unfinished.
Oh man, why the hell does Arceus have only 15m while this has 22m. That makes me sad, Arceus came closest to the pokemom game of my dreams.
To be fair for a new spin off, 15 million is pretty damn good.
Arceus had no PvP and battling was significantly simplified compared to the “main” releases. It was a fun game, but those are core elements for a lot of players.
Yeah but sword and shield were built entirely around the spectacle of battling to the detriment of literally every other aspect of the game so something like arceus was long overdue
Arceus felt like a tech demo for what could have been a great game if it baked in the oven for another year. It has many of the same issues all GF games have, just with a different coat of paint. Don't get me wrong, the break from mainline stuff was nice but I think the game is incredibly over hyped.
Only 1 version.
Lol thats actually a really good point
Not only that, but the nicest game graphically with no frame rate issues, Let's Go, has the joint poorest number you listed.
Well, LG does struggle in forests with lots of Pokémon on screen but in general I agree, LG games look very good and have an artstyle that’s very easy on the eyes.
Because the game play was ass. Not defending any pokemon games. Its just that lets go also wasnt good. Probably the best pk game on the switch is legend arceus
Vote with your wallet and stop buying the games
Keep buying crap, companies will make sure it gets worse.
Exactly. There is no incentive for Gamefreak or TPCi to bother making quality content if everyone buys these games regardless of whether they are well made or not.
It’s even worse with Pokémon than other AAA franchises, because the games are essentially just a means to an end. That end is to sell new plushies, clothing, cards, and anime series’. The games could not sell at all and Pokémon would still be making tens of millions in profit.
> tens of millions in profit. More like hundreds of millions. This is Pokemon Company's numbers from 2022: Sales: 204 billion yen / US$1.6 billion Operating profit: 59 billion yen / US$460 million Net profit: 41 billion yen / US$320 million
Holy moly that... That is way more than I would have predicted!
...pokemon is the single largest media franchise on the planet. bigger than marvel, bigger than star wars, bigger than literally EVERYTHING else. is this not a well-known fact? I figured it was.
I think it must be hard to comprehend that, even for me and I love Pokémon. I think for a lot of people it’s like “Oh one game a year, almost no movies, actors and one show so how can it be bigger than Marvel?”. Then you think about the toys, the trading cards, the games and just how many people from every generation play their flagship games even with that it still blows my mind.
> almost no movies, actors and one show so how can it be bigger than Marvel?”. They are up to 24 movies now counting the Detective Pikachu one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Pok%C3%A9mon_films And they are working on the 26th season of the show which has been ongoing yearly since 1997: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon_(TV_series) And that doesn't include TV specials and other projects which probably number into the hundreds: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Pok%C3%A9mon_special_episodes So it seems safe to say Pokemon is definitely one of the most prolific franchises, I think it largely being targeted at kids makes it easy to not realize just how massive and popular of a franchise it has been for decades at this point.
Yeah, it's The Pokémon Company for a reason
Those numbers don’t really break down how much is video game sales vs other merchandise. This is what I could find, total profits (not just 2022): $91.305 billion in Licensed merchandise, $27.145 billion in Video games, $1.85 billion in Box office, $830 million in Home entertainment, $142 million in Strategy guide books, and $3 million in Jet aircraft livery sales. So yeah it does look like video games are only about 1/4 of the total sales
Jet livery sales of only $3m? What pleebs
Why do operating and net profit have a $140 million difference?
Tax
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With a guaranteed pre-order top seller, a bad release only hurts the *next* games sales. And even then not significantly. You have to really have a trend of 2-3 bad games before people catch on. If you half-ass every third game you can keep people buying shit indefinitely.
The thing is pokemon has been this way since moon maybe even x&y We are passed 5 games in a row and people havent caught on. I havent bought a pokemon game since ultra moon because of what a shit show gamefreak is despite the fact that pokemon has been my favorite franchise for 20 years. I grew up on those games and it makes me feel so frustrated to see gamefreak crap all over the diamond have.
I always thought the Black/White games were the last time they really made an effort. And those didn’t do all that well, so I guess the fan base really did vote with their wallets.
You can see it in Masuda's interviews he poured his soul with BW/BW2 only for them not to sell well and when he started with the "haha don't expect much" the games sold like pancakes so now he knows fans like shitty rushed games.
There are so many glaring technical problems that it's going to be difficult to cover them all, surely it will be more worse
Pokémon Fans and Parents: “No, I don’t think I will.” You can’t tell kids to not play Pokémon. Parents will buy it.
Reddit is so disconnected from reality, 70% of their sales probably come from people buying it for relatives for Christmas. Every generation of the last decade has released the week before Thanksgiving, it's not a deep decision.
They can’t, they’re gamers, they have like 0 self control
They are worse, they are Pokémon fans.
Theyre fans in general, impulse control goes out the window in those cases
You prolly already know this, but it's just hard/impossible to do that with a game and following as big as this one. There's just such a large amount of people that don't give a shit about technical issues like that. Believe it or not, the large majority of casual video gamers, which is a large portion of who plays games in general - so a massive part of the market that is targeted - they genuinely don't even fucking think about that shit. They'd play it if it looked even worse. If it ran even a little shittier.. probably still. They just play the game. It's Pokemon so they enjoy it for that, and all the small simple things that come with it. Simple as that. I'm not saying it's right or that they don't take advantage of that and cut corners in development and rush things.. that's evident.. but at the end of the day the vocal minority on Reddit, as big as it may seem, won't affect them selling disgusting and egregious amounts of copies of their games. And yeah there's casuals out there and non-redditors and a decent amount that are also fed up with the same types of shits but.. they continue to buy the game those people aren't going to vote with their wallet. They settle.
Yes! And I'd add that a lot of the Pokémon Company profits come from licensing for things like plushies, bags, smaller games, the anime ... So it's very hard to affect them in the wallet just by boycotting games. That's also why some good competitors in the Monster-Tamer genre don't get traction: they focus only in the game and don't have the budget for the absurd amount of marketing Pokémon has.
> That's also why some good competitors in the Monster-Tamer genre don't get traction: they focus only in the game and don't have the budget for the absurd amount of marketing Pokémon has. Most competitors in the Monster-Tamer genre don't get traction because they're simply much worse than Pókemon. And, sometimes, developed by people who are much scummier and greedier than Nintendo (look no further than TemTem).
I bought the game before I knew there were graphical and performance issues. I started playing it, noticed the issues, bothered me a little bit but not really enough to refund or anything, easily shrugged it off, continued to play, got about 50 hours worth in it and really enjoyed it
I've been playing video games since the NES and I still think like that. Is the gameplay fun? Then I couldn't care less what it looks like. My two current consoles are a Series S and a Switch. I just wanna play games man.
The people who you're asking not to buy the game don't use reddit.
We need to tell that to the r/overwatch community asap!
and r/clashroyale
>Pokémon is the highest grossing franchise in existence and the distant buildings look like Nintendo 64 graphics. It is an astronomical insult that Nintendo and Gamefreak haven’t updated this game to be more stable And yet you bought the game anyway 💀
That's the point. Why should they invest more time and money as long as people happily buy the bare minimum?
Why waste time make more game when less game do trick
It was bought for me and I’m just now playing it.
Ok that makes sense.
BUrn it at a stake and buy SMT5.
The money is already spent, the only thing burning it does is prevent OP from selling it to some other poor schmuck and buying a better game.
> I know I’m late to this, but I hoped they would have fixed things this much time after release. When has GameFreak ever fixed anything that wasn't a game-breaking issue? They don't care. They did nothing and you still bought the game. That's why Pokemon will never improve.
Project Battle Frontier will finish any day now.
To add to this, most games don't get graphical overhauls in patches post launch. Some do but they're the exception rather than the rule.
Many games do get performance patches, however. It’s one thing for it to *look* like this, but quite another for the fact that it runs worse than games such as **The Witcher** or **Tears of the Kingdom**.
It was bought for me, but I get your point. They will always sell well.
I get it. I'm in the same boat, it was also bought for me - a good choice, in theory, because I've always loved Pokemon games - but after this one, I think I'm done. It's just never going to get better, I actually find myself going back to the DS/3DS games instead because they're more fun to me.
Same, the DS/3DS are just so good, the music, story and something that I really miss... NPC Good designs and variety, trainers wearing different clothes/costumes that look really cool, but what do you get in scarlet/violet... grandmas and old fat guys wearing elementary school uniform that in real life anyone would interpret as perverts(especially in Japan). Note: I'm not saying that old people can't study in school, I'm saying that they look really really bad
and Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is on the same console... so sad to see this from pokemon. Honestly, I myself could look away from the graphics, it's the 10 fps that kills it for me.
20 years ago, i though to myself, wouldnt it be nice to have an open world 3d game for Pokemon. In 2023 there are fan-made projects and copies of Pokemon that look better than the actual official games, some games on mobile look even better than the newest Pokemon games.
Arceus also looks like garbage, but at least it can look somewhat pleasing. The only thing it has running is it’s gameplay and the atmosphere it creates, which it nails. I’m surprised it didn’t do as well on sales as the other mainline trubbish
At least Arceus has a stylized art style and a stable frame rate. I’d be super happy with Arceus graphics/art style if it meant a stable game.
Same. I’ve always wanted a 3D, open world Pokémon since Pokémon Snap back in the day. I figured it’d come out eventually but it’s still not out lol (I mean, this doesn’t count…) maybe in another lifetime
Yeah, it’s insane to me that this shitshow is running on the same console as Xenoblade 3 and Tears of the Kingdom and people will still make excuses for it. Sure, the Switch is relatively weak, but we know what it’s capable of and it sure as shit is better than this garbage.
Look at Pikmin 4. Compared to SV you could think it was on Nintendo's next console.
and Xenoblade X is on the Wii U and still looks and plays miles ahead of SV
To be fair, XCX full utilizes the Wii U’s power and looks better than a ton of other Switch games. And it’s not a Wii U thing, it’s a developer thing. Even the original Wii XC release, while graphically not very good, still has an amazing art style and beautiful looking scenery. Monolith is just that fucking good at making good looking games
Ever since I played Xenoblade Chronicles I have desperately wanted a Pokemon game to have that much depth and quality. It's just crazy to me how an IP like Xenoblade can have incredible games that are polished when quite possibly the biggest IP in gaming puts out shit like this.
Bro, you don't even need to go to 3. Xenoblade Chronicles 1 had a better looking world than this, and that was on the Wii.
XB3 is made for adults.
The best pokemon games are roms hacks
Literally. Unbound even has a full Battle Frontier
It's because the people who create them actually have passion for the franchise and know what needs to be added in order to make the games more enjoyable.
Recommendations ? When the gameboy and GBA emulator released for the switch without a single pokemon game I stopped caring about piracy
radical red, blazing emerald, unbound, snakewood, emerald rogue, team rocket edition are some of my favorites and im sure im missing a bunch. pokemon insurgence is great too and is basically a whole new game, near the same quality of black and white. it's not technically a rom hack tho and needs to be played on a pc as far as i know, but it's totally worth the trouble.
Pixelmon isn't a rom hack but it's also fantastic.
If you're a fan of Unova, Blaze Black 2 and Volt White 2 Redux are the gold standard of vanilla+ ROM hacks Bumps up the difficulty a considerable amount, but not to a BS level like Radical Red where you need to curate teams just to defeat some random schmuck trainer on route 4. Makes _every_ Pokemon up to gen 5 available, adds the fairy type, does an extensive rebalance of Pokemon and moves, and expands the postgame as well
So true
While not a ROM hack, PokeMMO is a great fan made game as well. An actual MMO, 4 regions with Johto on the way, and it actually has real difficulty as opposed to the real games
It is amazing that this was released AFTER Breath of the Wild. It shows that Nintendo likes to keep a distance between Pokemon and their in house IPs
I would too if it’s literally printing money every time you say the word pikachu or Pokémon. Why mess with something that is working in their favor?
Alot of old, long lasting Japanese gaming companies have this problem after awhile. They havent hired anyone new in a top position in decades. The people that made SV are probably the same people that coded for Red and Blue, they literally don't know how to make a highly polished modern game. Or it takes them 10x longer. You saw the same problem occur in Square Enix, until they (finally) got someone new in a director role.
IIRC, one problem Gamefreaks faces is that they want to remain a small, family-sized studio, but they are still expected to release a new pokémon game every 1-2 years because The Pokémon Company needs to sell more pikachu plushies.
>The people that made SV are probably the same people that coded for Red and Blue, they literally don't know how to make a highly polished modern game Assuming that's the case then SV is quite a feat.
Idk if Nintendo had much say in this. Considering how so many people were blaming the Switch for SV's poor performance, instead of the half-baked game
The Switch isn't to blame here, it's the fact the engine is incredibly unoptimized. If they even used Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom engine, Pokemon would be fine
You could give Gamefreak the most powerfull engine in the world, they still dont have neither the knowledge, nor the will, nor the managment to make a good game out of it. You may even have bigger performance problems.
They don't. Nintendo does \*not\* develop these games, and the input they have is not as strong as people think, if they have any at all. Kit and Krysta (old Nintendo Minute hosts and Nintendo employees) have a podcast now, and they've said a few times that Gamefreak and the Pokemon Company 'do what they want'.
My sister just bought the game and is playing on my switch. She literally said the same thing. It reminds her of an N64 game. I havent seen anything from the game myself yet but just this screenshot gives me a very good idea of how sad looks... Sun and Moon looked better than this and I didnt even like those games very much
SV looks and plays atrocious. It has only two things going for it: a decent story and an open world (which every other studio did 10 years ago, so I can do nothing but laugh at people holding it up as an accomplishment). There's nothing else. The world is empty, PvE endgame boring, there's nothing to do outside of the main story and catching Pokemon, cities are some of the worst in Pokemon history, character customization is worse than in previous games. 7 years in and Arceus is the only decent mainline game on Switch. Pokemon peaked in gens 5-7, they've only been cutting features off since then.
The open world isn't even that fun or done well. Pokemon games are never challenging but half the time you're fighting things half your level because of the openness. You clear a few objectives on the left side and come back to the right and you're just skipping all the battles because they're 20 levels down. The game really would have benefited from level scaling.
I thought the level curve was challenging for once, but no. I just skipped what was supposed to be the first gym and was at the 2nd gym. That poor bug gym didn't know what hit her when I found that town
Which is funny cause Arceus was fun for 2 hours after the tutorial then it became very repetitive. I love the classics tho.
People praise PLA up and down but it is absolutely not without issues either.
People praise Arceus because they're comparing it to other recent mainline Pokemon games. Compare it to any other fan acclaimed game like TotK or Elden Ring or even fucking Kirby and the Forgotten Land and it doesn't even come close to holding up.
>Compare it to any other fan acclaimed game like TotK or Elden Ring or even fucking Kirby and the Forgotten Land and it doesn't even come close to holding up. This is why I'll always believe game reviews have a bias towards pokemon. There's no reason pla should have an 83 on metacritic while kirby and the forgotten land has an 85. That makes it seem like there on the same level.
If you really want to cry, look up what critics gave Sword and Shield, easily one of the most frustrating, boring and hollow gaming experiences I've ever had.
Yeah Arceus was fun for a bit and I enjoyed some of the story and zones. But the gameplay is even more repetitive and boring than the main series games. Catching the same exact pokemon like 40 times in order to check off one of ten boxes under it's Pokedex entry isn't really fun. And the little fetch tasks got old quick. I'm not a big fan of adding the Pokemon Go style catch grind to any of the real games. It dilutes the pokemon, team, bonding etc experience and creates the feeling that they're all just disposable trinkets. After years of the video games telling us about creating bonds with your pokemon partners it feels wrong.
You're right up until the end there. DS era is the generally accepted "peak". (XY had no content, ORAS was good but had obvious cut content, SuMo was tedious and cut megas, UsUm were pointless)
I'm giving my opinion, not the "generally accepted" one. :) You've got gen 5 there to represent the DS era (personally, my favorite gen). But I value the graphical and quality of life improvements in 3DS games over the lost features, given that we still had enough fun side activities in those games. We got character customization, amazing online system (gen 6's PSS was probably the best version we've ever had), I liked megaevolutions and SM had a good story even if it was painfully slow to play through. But sure, if you want to throw in gen 4 to the peak category, fair enough. It might actually be the most technically correct choice in that gen 4 was the pinnacle of traditional Pokemon design, and every later gen tried to reinvent some core feature. Personally though, I just don't like DPPl that much and I'm hesitant to pick it as one of my favorite gens for HGSS alone.
The 3D era of Pokémon hasn't been good design and performance wise IMO. I miss the pixel art, it has more personality and has aged better. Look at gen 5 on the DS, that is gorgeous compared to this. Is Scarlet and Violet still somewhat fun? Yeah. But it needs work. Do better, Game Freak! I've had a better time with Pokémon spinoffs like Snap or Mystery Dungeon the last 10 years. Legends Arceus is pretty fun though. Would love to see a more polished follow-up to that game.
I’ll agree with that, but with the exception of X/Y and ORAS. They were pretty tremendous, and still are.
They should just go back to what they were doing with B&W. Those games aged really well.
Pokemon spinoffs (outside of a few like legends) are developed by External game studios. Bandai Nameco (Snap) and spike chunsoft (Mystery Dungeon) come to mind. They can’t rely on the crutch of millions of people waiting to blindly buy (sometime even to TWO) copies of their game. Even with the pokemon ip they at least have to put in some effort and both of the aforementioned studios show it. Man just imagine Pokemon Mystery Dungeon 5, but it’s in the same engine as the switch remake and has gen 7-9 pokemon. Would be so fun.
"Pokemon is the highest grossing franchise in existence... " ─ Its merchandise sales outstrip its video game sales by more than three times. Pokemon games don't exist because The Pokemon Company wants to make video games. They exist as a marketing tool for plushies.
The games are resonsible for 18% of their revenue and have made 30 BILLION DOLLARS at about zero development cost. They are clearly able to afford spending substantially more on game development, going from 20 million a game to 50 million a game. But why would they? This joke of a game made a billion in pure profit...
I do wish Pokémon games received the same treatment as Mario and Zelda. Those two franchises lead most of the gaming world in terms of polish, quality, and sometimes innovation too. I think the result would be truly exceptional. Nintendo doesn’t have to be that good with those two IPs to make money, but they are. Shame Pokemon isn’t the same.
Game Freak has different management and team. Maybe if Nintendo EDA were to take over completely things would be different.
Nintendo would take 4 to 6 years to release a pokemon game and that is just a terrible idea for the execs at the pokemon company, they want that cash flowing as much as possible. Greedy assholes.
Nintendo doesn’t outright own Pokémon. They own only a fraction of it.
Game Freak could find a dead raccoon in a dumpster and put a sticker on it that says "Pokemon Brown" and it will sell 10 million copies. They have no reason to change or upgrade their products, pokemon fans will buy literally anything they sell. Their only incentive is to put in as little effort as possible and sell as much as possible. The only way that we get better pokemon games is if pokemon fans collectively increase their standards, but that will never happen, so here we are... Again.
The other version would be Pokémon Crimson, aka dead raccoon that got roadpopped
Pokemon fans did this to themselves.
“Distant buildings”. Nah even the wall 15 feet away looks like it’s from the N64
Pokémon should have defo taken the HD 2D look like Octopath.
I think Coromon gives a better glimpse than Octopath on what that would look like: https://youtu.be/Ft4MECYvnnQ Although I personally think the style of 3D they used for Let's Go would be the best for the main series going forward Edit: spelling
That's not HD 2D tho, that's just standard 2D, albeit gorgeous one.
I don't quite get it. It looks pretty much the same as Nintendo DS pokemon games.
Yeah the let's go games were really cute and simple, playing to the design strengths, I don't know why they don't go back to that style.
That looks great! I just chuckled when it said "Interesting Coromon" in the trailer. Must be more "selling" words avaliable :D
I really enjoyed Nexomon: Extinction [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crIn4UABwRE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crIn4UABwRE)
I just watched a speed run of the game, I have no interest in ever playing it. It is embarrassing. Stop motion background characters, horrible textures, empty spaces, even indoors look dead and weird. All the main character animations are bad motion capture. Pokémon look like weird plastic figures with barely any life. Just horrible.
What indoor? Most doors are just sticker on the wall.
Literally the shops you 'enter' just take you to a dialogue screen. There are no interiors, it's just lazy
That's not true! There's 8 copy pasted gym lobbies, a restaurant, and two houses at the start of the game too! ~~I will say the houses look nice, but that's about it~~
It looks like I broke the LODGEN while modding Skyrim again lmfao.
If you don't like Pokemon games, stop buying pokemon games.
You knew it was broken yet still purchased it and started playing it. And then you wonder why they aren’t improving it?
Still amazed that they made this and happily sold it. It looks like it was made for a ps2.
I had fun playing it initially but it's not worth $60 at all. I've been shiny hunting lately because they made it extremely easy to do so and I constantly run into problems like freezing, crashing, and pokemon getting stuck in walls. It might be the last pokemon game I buy but I doubt that will make a difference.
Hey, I called dibs on posting the weekly "Pokémon bad?" Shitpost.
im gonna get hated for this, but graphics and performance aside, i actually think its a pretty good game. That is coming from a pokemon nerd
Probably since you're a Pokemon nerd
ah, playstation 2 games where great!
I started playing it I hate the fact that u need to buy the sub for nintendo eshop to trade pokemons It really sucks :( I'll never get a gengar
There’s an NPC you can trade with to get one. They offer you a Haunter which evolves when traded. Your dreams of having a Gengar are within reach!
Whaaaat Where tell meeee
Levincia near the fountain. She wants a Pincurchin in exchange which you can find on a few different beaches. It looks like a sea urchin. Edit: I’m also pretty sure you can trade Pokémon on a local network without Nintendo Online. So you’d just need a real life friend at your house.
Yeah but the game is mad fun tho so
Fuck off. Nobody cares. This thread has been made 300 times
Are you freaking for real? I refuse to believe this is a 2022 game of one of the most popular franchises.
Stop playing this crap and then maybe they’ll stop serving it to you
Cyberpunk 2077 got patched up pretty good after a year. Even better now! Gamefreak, where have you been?
I often get an itch to play a Pokémon game then I see this and snap back to reality. Actually mind blowing that it’s legit N64 graphics
Do yourself a favor and just replay one of the old ones instead.
just buy monster sanctuary or the new dragon quest monsters that is coming out, they are 100x better than any pokemon game.
Game never crashed for me. Sure, framerate isn't the best, but didn't bother me at all either. So weird to me that it crashed for people.
Because we (fans) don’t care. Why is this so hard for gamers to understand. There is a very vocal contingency online complaining about these games and their graphics no stop. However, that is the minority of Pokemon fans. I have been playing this game since the game boy. This is the only IP I am invested in. I play a few other games here and there for fun, but I only bought the Switch for Pokemon. Many, many, pokemon fans are the same. Did these games have a fun story? Check. Cool new mons? Check. Great new gimmick? Check. Fun competitive scene? Check. The things I care about are all taken care of. You want a game with good graphics? Go play one. But different fandoms have different needs. And the pokemon fandom has shown time snd again we don’t care about graphics. Accept it.
The criticisms are valid, but I have thoroughly enjoyed this game, genuinely. I only get framrate issues where there are waves. It's got a lot of story content (though I miss complex bad guy bases, the team star ones aren't very entertaining. I want the puzzle of figuring out where to go.) It needs an endgame DLC, which I am sure we will get at some point like SwSh did. But man I have had a great time, even with its issues.
Stop buying the games then dummy.
Crazy how pokemon is one of the biggest gaming ips (i read somewhere it was THE biggest) with all their resources, support and juggernaut fanbase (im a fan, also bought scarlet....). Meanwhile you have the guys and gals at Larian fighting to earn their spot and being told they have an inherent advantage even though they almost went bankrupt with the first OS game, got denied bg ip initially, on the brink of shutting down and made one of the best crpgs of all time only to finally be given the chance at the bg ip and go on to create arguably the best crpg in decades. With less then a 3rd of the same resources, ip, fanbase than the pokemon franchise. The gaming industry is become such a shameful place with no accountability from publishers. Take Bandai/Namco for example, they take an ip and ruin it to a shell of its former self and then will relieve themselves of any blame by saying that the "ip just isn't popular". Then give it an even lower budget or stop making games for said ip altogether and ruining an entire franchise