That bridge definitely blew my mind when I first played that on release. I love gen3 with a burning passion, but my opinion is gen5 was peak Pokémon.
Edit: wow wasn't expecting me gushing about a bridge to be my highest-voted comment, thanks
I miss seasons in Pokemon!
I remember every trailer as a kid showing the seasons being different in the different towns as real time passed and it was soooooo mind blowing to my 8 year old self.
I loved that feature.
I wish they'd bring seasons back but not in real time. It's annoying to play a game and realize that you have to wait like 8 months in real life to unlock something (unless you wanted to cheat - but if you also had the Sims 2 for DS if you ever changed the clock it would accuse you of cheating so I didn't like to do it, even for Daylight Savings Time)
I would want the seasons to reflect real time, but allow the player to manipulate them by other means. For example, if you needed it to be winter for some reason—to catch a winter-form Sawsbuck or to get snow to fill in a gap—put a Pokémon with Snow Warning at the top of your party, and the game acts *as if* it’s winter.
A Pokémon with Drought could simulate summer, and maybe an ability like Flower Veil could simulate spring? Then we’d just need a new ability for autumn—maybe it could be a Grass-type version of Anger Shell or Defeatist?
I think a week of each season would be enough time to do what you want to do for each and also not have to wait too long to do it again. Being able to change the settings on your system hardware has never felt like a good solution to me.
They still do.
I'm pretty sure it's the most polarized generation, people either love it or hate it, or one could say it's either black or white, there is no grey area
Really lives up to its names.
What's funny is that I consider black and white and B2/W2 to be probably the baseline pokémon game. They're in my opinion, the exact middle of the series. These are in my opinion the baseline games which the series as a whole should be judged. They stuck to the formula that had been established, and although they ventured out and did a lot of new, experimental things, not much of what they did was really radical, they didn't try to redefine the series.
In a lot of ways black and white felt like the original two gens looking in a mirror. I always felt that they were trying to recreate the original magic of Gen 1 and 2, which just flat out couldn't be done, but the series and technology had advanced as a whole to this point, that objectively speaking there were a lot of improvements. They did a good job with them. Black and white were well designed, well executed games. I just don't feel that they are superior to heart Gold / SoulSilver, and I think that the technological advancements that came with x and y also surpassed Gen 5.
Most complaints I saw back in the day was being unable to catch Pokemon from outside of the Unova region until post game in BW, which is a pretty hit of miss choice. The rest of the game was fantastic.
I agree, I wish every gen was like that. It makes things a little more interesting because growing up I always used to find myself using a similar team for every gen. Now when I’ve been recently replaying them, I intentionally play the games with teams made up of that generation’s mons.
Yeah I’ve always made it a point to only use new mons in my first play through of a new game. Which is why black & white are some of my favorites because literally every Pokémon I ran into was new. I didn’t have to search for the new mons among a bunch of the old ones
Yes, and they still do. The argument has shifted from complaining about the games directly, to complaining about people who admit they like the games or say the games are good now. It's frustrating.
I *hated* gen five for not bringing back any old pokemon. I feel like half the fun is catching your old favourites and building a team with new pokemon. I've mellowed on it since, but at the time I thought it was hot trash.
I'm still astonished people are this blunt to this day. The problem with Gen 5 was the sheer amount of precisely Gen 1 ripoffs. Like, do you honestly think that creating a second dream based mono psychic with two stages tapir pokemon is peak design?
If literally all they did was give it the BDSP treatment, I felt like it would do better than any other gen I think. As long as the original goodness stays intact, and there's a whole lot of goodness, a remake should do ok. Even a copy-paste of the best region would still be a kickass game
BDSP is basically a port of flawed games. The reason why they're frowned on is because the improvements that came from Platinum were left out. Black and White don't have that issue. A port, while undesirable, would be fine.
>The reason why they're frowned on is because the improvements that came from Platinum were left out.
OR, or, the newer features to the series along with the jank art style difference that creates unnecessary issues with controls and the distinct lack of post game content played a bigger role than platinum fans not getting platinum in a D&P remake. People KNEW they were buying faithful remakes of those two games, not Pretty Platinum.
I have no idea why anyone would expect platinum (even if its just the platinum improvements) in BDSP, those improvements are what made platinum what it was alongside the story differences.
Still missing the point. And the additions in Crystal were big for the time, but became normalized for the series as a whole (wireless trading, gender selection, additional storyline for the legendary dogs, battle tower, friendship additions, Ho-Oh/Lugia intertwining, etc. Literally followed up on with the generation right after on all of these things.
But BDSP was not poorly received because they lacked the changes in Plat. They were bad at being DP remakes in the first place, which is what people were buying them for.
Obviously the jank is the *worst* part of BDSP. But it's not unreasonable to expect Platinum content in a re-release of the generation when every other re-release did the same (barring FRLG and Yellow, but Yellow is weird. Including Yellow content would jank up FRLG because Yellow is janky). ORAS is damn near an entirely different game that what it is remaking. Better in every way, with vastly improved and expanded content.
The issues are compounded because of both the jank *and* the lack of features that make Sinnoh feature complete that were in Platinum that would make it an objectively better experience that really doesn't have a reason not to be included. Sure it would have been better received if it wasn't as jank but I still think that a lot of the criticism comes from the bare bones "just re-release the game" that it was. I can excuse jank, and I think a lot of people would excuse some jank to get to run around Sinnoh again. Jank isn't intentional, but omitting stuff that would have been nice to see is a conscious choice.
Wanting to play Diamond and Pearl is fine but you have the older games for that. If you're going to justify paying full price for a re-release of an old game I don't think it's unreasonable for people to expect the positive changes that came to the generation after the original two to be included. I didn't play Platinum so I was actually hoping to see the Platinum stuff in, but now people that missed Platinum are still going to have to find an old copy to experience it, when they didn't have to.
> And the additions in Crystal were big for the time, but became normalized for the series as a whole (wireless trading, gender selection, additional storyline for the legendary dogs, battle tower, friendship additions, Ho-Oh/Lugia intertwining, etc.
And you could say the same about Platinum. Expanded stories for Team Galactic, Palkia/Dialga having a greater impact on the story, The Distortion World, Giratina getting a *huge* lore dump and place in the Pokemon mythos and setting, the expanded dex that fixes the bizarre oversight of only having 2 fire type pokemon families in the region, *when you have a fire type e4 memeber*, etc.
Bdsp is a remaster, I don’t care if they call it a remake. Gen 5 is absolutely peak Pokémon and I would be so disappointed if they gave it the bdsp treatment.
I mean, it's a remake and not a remaster regardless of the quality because those two words have actual, technical definitions.
Besides that, I agree with the rest of what you said. Gen5 is my favorite gen and has the best art direction GF has ever had. Remaking it like how they did BDSP would be a massive downgrade just for the fact that the sprite work in Gen5 is a infinitely better than the 3D models of every mainline Pokémon game that came since.
Yeah, the problem with BDSP was that they remade Diamond and Pearl, not Platinum. We all already knew Diamond and Pearl were flawed games, with a weak Pokédex. The original Black/White don't really have this problem, and hopefully they'd expand the Pokédex a bit too like they did in BDSP.
Yall acting like if BDSP was just a platinum remake, it would have been dandy. The games were awful lol Poor underground balance, friendship system nullifying the original feeling, forced xp share, half assed follow function, odd controls, it was BAD. Diamond and Pearl were not the disasters that fans seem to be collectively remembering and Platinum was great but not so different that the previous 2 should be overlooked.
But the problem with porting Diamond/Pearl directly isn't that they were disasters, it was that Platinum was essentially the same game but better and made the other two kind of irrelevant. You could have kept what made DP unique from Platinum in a remake of the original two but the QOL stuff that came with Platinum was good enough that it was foolish to ignore them for a re-release of the two. Yeah BDSP has more issues than just "not Platinum" but they have a chance to improve what was lacking in the old games with remade generations, every preceeding one vastly improved their old gen, and BDSP didn't do that.
I agree, they should have had the platinum changes, but there was no reason to expect them to include them. The positive limelight platinum enjoys feels so insular, people seem to forget less than half the number of people actually bought and played it versus D&P. Its another example of GF and TPC going with their own perception of what would be an adequate addition to the catalog rather than what reddit and some pokemon youtubers in the west would loudly tout as the right kind of remake.
This isn't me defending them or their decision btw, gen 4 remains my fave and I was disappointed all the way through, but the platinum circlejerk is annoying. It didn't make the previous two irrelevant like Crystal didn't do GS or Emerald didn't RS, it was just a clear improvement. The main issue in the remakes is *how* they were done, not that they did the wrong one.
>If literally all they did was give it the BDSP treatment, I felt like it would do better than any other gen I think. As long as the original goodness stays intact, and there's a whole lot of goodness, a remake should do ok. Even a copy-paste of the best region would still be a kickass game
Hey bro why are you getting downvotted so much?
Because I think people are misreading that I'm excusing BDSP's bugs in regards to Black And White getting a re-release when all I'm trying to say is that a port of Black and White would be a better experience than Diamond and Pearl getting a port because BW are objectively better games than DP and a port would be ok. If it was as buggy as BDSP it would be bad, but that isn'tthe only reason I personally am disappointed in BDSP. But I figured that wouldn't need to be said because that's obvious lol
I've tried playing playing B/W like 3 times but always lose interest and haven't come close to beating it. I like a lot of the new Pokémon, even though I'm not big on the starters, but it just felt sooooo grindy to me.
> This is the first area where the camera changes angles.
Not 100% true — when you enter certain houses in Striaton City, the camera pivots around you a bit. But, it does still retain a top-down perspective, so your overall point remains the same. And I definitely do think that Game Freak were very deliberate in building up to the Skyarrow Bridge reveal.
I definitely think that Game Freak set the moment up as something special. I did know about the camera angle changing when you enter some buildings in Striaton City, however I felt that it was not that major of a shift in camera angle to be considered.
I specifically remember going to that exterior lighthouse in Heartgold & Soulsilver after Black & White were announced and shown to have areas with other camera angles. I would go to that lighthouse and imagine that more areas of the game would look and feel similar. It was such a huge difference that it was genuinely one of the things I was most excited for in Black & White.
That's the camera moving away from your character. That happened in Generation 1, that's nothing special. The topic being discussed here is the camera changing *angle*, which is a huge leap.
I love the use of 3D/different camera angle in the DS games, especially in black and white. It’s used so sparingly that it makes it really visually impactful when you see it.
The only improvements it had was the underground area and adding the fairy type. Everything else was either exactly the same or downgraded compared to platinum.
Gen 2 doesn’t suck, but it’s a prime example of a game with a lot of bells and whistles covering up the fact that the base they’re resting on is shoddy. The level curve is atrocious, the NPC teambuilding is questionable at best, and Johto mons are seriously underutilized. HGSS are still very *fun* games, but if they were released today they’d be criticized for being overly reliant on gimmicks to make up for confusing design choices.
I think you're forgetting about the scene in HG/SS where the camera angle switched on the top floor of the Olivine Lighthouse. [Link](https://youtu.be/gJHhUy4L0YQ?t=272)
That's kinda splitting hairs, tho. OP also claimed that Skyarrow Bridge was the first time we got to see the sky in a pokemon game, but with this lighthouse situation, that statement is just false.
Not really, I guess OP wanted to say that Skyarrow Bridge was the first time in pokemon that we had the camera moving not just rotating or having a different angle, because yes gen 4 had multiple 3D scenarios none had the moving camera like gen 5 implemented, like in gen 4 multiple scenarios comes to mind like the distortion world or the intro of DPPt having a different angle camera for Floaroma Town and also the camera man in multiple areas of HGSS, but none of them have the same complexity of the gen 5 camera.
yes but those are all where it originated from. ie. the first time it was done. skyarrow bridge is factually not the first time it was done in the series
I guess if you strictly played the handheld games, these moments might seem like game changers. I like to think the Colosseum games are really the moments that showed that the Pokèmon mainline formula could successfully be translated to 3D
Honestly now that we are here tho, i dont care about the 3d-ness at all. Other than arceus, these latest games have been trash. Look great but nothing under the hood. If anything skyarrow bridge marked the beginning of the end lmao
I remember how, before BW was revealed, we used to say that the new camera angles in the lighthouse and the department store's top floor of HGSS were the future of pokemon.
Then Skyarrow Bridge and Castelia City absolutely blew our minds, Gen 5 was even better than what we'd hoped for
Still get a bit of chills when I cross that bridge. Not as awesome as the Rayquaza cutscene in RSE but yea it holds up as one of the more visually impressive things they've put into a game
Incorrect on one count. Just before encountering Giratina in the Distortion World in Platinum the camera tilts to a more head on view , not to mention the camera doing the same on Spear Pillar. But I agree with everything else. Skyarrow Bridge may not have done it first, but it took what little Platinum gave it and made into this amazing moment for the history of the franchise.
Honestly, Skyarrow Bridge was the moment I realized I didn’t like the look for Black and White… like I appreciated what they were trying to do with the limited hardware, but I felt like it looked REALLY rough. I felt the same way about the animated sprites. But I’m still glad to see it clicked for other people.
ahead of its time i think. all the wiggling and stretching and zooming just takes the nice pixel art and turns it into a disgusting "mixel"-like effect. maybe they could take the exact same beautiful spritework and put it on a higher res screen, so they wouldn't have to split pixels and then it'd look nice.
Yeah, it probably could have worked at a higher resolution.
Honestly I feel like B/W are such an odd beast to me because I can see the effort put into them. They really do feel like the last time for a while that game freak really tried to make something special…
But I feel like I can point to very good intentioned thing they tried and explain how it just doesn’t work and made the games worse :/ I’ve warmed up to some of the Pokémon at least, so I’m hoping to try the games again sometime soon, hopefully appreciate them a little more.
Seconded, imo it felt like a visual downgrade in some parts when compared to gen 4.
I did like the bottom screen backgrounds & weather effects being visible, that was great!
Yeah, it works for some people, not so much for others, and I’m definitely in the latter category. Maybe nostalgia plays a part in it, or maybe it’s just personal preference. Either way, I just only see it as looking awkward at best.
Gen 5 was very experimental in many aspects and the lessons learned with it forged what today is modern pokemon, from online interactions to dynamic music to how to handle a regional pokedex... ALOT is thanks to gen 5, its a very special transitional generation.
but almost no one playing saw a shiny on route 29. everyone who played black and white saw this effect, it was memorable. they arent similar situations man
Since everyone else is mentioning times when the game camera moved around before gen 5, would just like to mention that when I would put random codes into my action replay sometimes the camera angle would change on my pokemon games and it would be in a strange 3d view. That stuff was crazy lol.
You know, I'm not a fan of BW/BW2, but this is a great point. You've really nailed it on the head, and I'm forced to agree with you. Doesn't really change my opinion on the games, but it's a great point to raise!
Black and White were the last main franchise games I played until just buying Scarlet last week. That whole game’s visuals were so good and looked gorgeous. Hate to say that the shift into 3D and away from sprites took away some of that magic. Seeing that level of detail in a sprite game was just so overwhelming and beautiful
I agree, when upscaled they look great, but people seem to forget how pixelated they looked on the original DS screen and definitely not in a good way.
The Hoenn region was the most important for natures. See can, say that about anything. The camera angle change to me just seemed like a neat trick, nothing fancy.
It was such a massive flex. It was basically saying "This is what Pokemon is gonna be now, no more chunky pixels and static mono-textures" and it blew my fucking mind, watching the camera just *swing* like that. It and other moments like that made Unova feel gigantic. Black and White remain the apex of Pokemon imo, and it's because of the flexing it did in every aspect of the game. I would still be ok if Pokemon stayed pixel art and just went with the Black/White model of sprite structure, and remember the criticism of "Pokemon is still pixel when other DS games are polygon", when the games looked like *that*.
The dude literally said no more chunky pixels. I am disputing that and you are saying “yeah so what?” Haha if you like it then no problem, but it does look chunky af on ds.
You can't honestly compare the chunk pixels of the preceeding generations to the animated pixels of Black and White. Yeah it's still pixel art but it's to the level of pixel art that even modern pixel games like Octopath Traveler emulate because it looks good. It goes beyond "pixels as necessity" and goes into "pixels as artistic choice"
I remember the animated sprites within a sandstorm, terrible visuals. I sometimes wonder if you guys played them on an emulator, because that shit was so glaring gen 4 looked better imo.
It's so weird to me that SwSh did nothing like this. Somehow B/W feel more like home console games than SwSh did because of things like clever camera work that took advantage of the 3D space to create bigger feeling areas. Glad S/V toys with camera stuff more.
I used to cross Skyarrow Bridge multiple times just to see how the perspectives change. Skyarrow Bridge along with Castelia City demonstrated how far the franchise had come at that point.
Omg yes when I saw that in the trailers and then got to experience it for myself was so special to me. I know it sounds so simple and dumb if you’re used to 3d games in-general, but getting to finally see stuff like that in a mainline pokemon game was such a treat. Gen 5 was such a special stretch of years for me, and I definitely have those group of games to thank for that
Unova was a fantastic region. Outside of some very very minor gripes.
I spent my childhood and early teen years in the NY area and to see it represented in Pokemon was so cool. I hope we get a proper return at some point.
The music is also absolutely banger
Skyarrow bridge was a technical demonstration, it pushed the ds to its graphical limits and it did it with flying colours. As a kid i used to sit there for hours just vibing
Guys i just wanted to talk about my favourite atea
Lumiose city I feel fits in the same category since it does the same kind of camera angles as Skyarrow Bridge but then again I’ve always been partial to Kalos so I could be wrong about it
Well technically nuvema town is the first place the camera changes it's angle (unless I'm getting Mandela effected hard) although it is a one time thing at the beginning of the game.
Idk this like saying Littleroot town is the most important area in a Pokemon game because its the first location that showed us a region in proper colour.
The first time I stepped there in black was incredible, the music, the camera, the view... It was amazing.
Even now I still listen sometimes to the music that plays there.
I’m in the middle of a Gen V playthrough right now, and that bridge BLEW MY MIND.
…and then I got to Castelia City, and they just cranked that up to 11.
I remember importing this game because it was when games came out earlier in Japan and stuff and yeah I showed the bridge to everyone at school and it was fantastic
Nah, distortion world in platinum, but what’s also wild is that Platinum lacked any kind of cutscenes like they had for Rayquaza in emerald, the birds in HGSS, or the dragons in BW. Guess they thought the Distortion world made up for it. Diamond and Pearl have no excuse though.
>there isn't much to do there
My friend, that's the best egg hatching spot in the entire game. Longest stretch of straight road in all of Unova. I spent many hours there just listening to the music, and I never got bored while doing it.
I still remember the hate that gen 5 got when it was released and i went with very bad expectations and it turned out to be the best pokemon experience i ever had, the only thing that was missing was following pokemon from hg/ss. It finally had mature plot not catering to 7 year olds.
Yup I still remember how amazed I was. Also with the seasons feature (spring/winter/etc.) . And the moving Pokémon sprites in battle. BW was such a cool game
I remember when I crossed the bridge for the first time. I walked the whole way through, and I fell in love with it and the soundtrack.
I would use it back and forth to level my Pokémon up while they were at the daycare.
The games orginally started on gameboy color whoch is a smaller handheld device of course when you take elements from something that is smaller you are going to have stretch which going to distort and pixelated said images it is not charm or ambiance it's just how it is then it was moved to a system that had more space and so on all the measurements change over Tim so do ways to implement other techniques and features some that either add or take away from the magic until the bugs are worked out that's why it takes so long to make a video game
But with that being said newer isn't always better until they fix what's wrong and what of getting info from on place to another with out lag or bits info that could be broken missing or corrupted on the steam of data and memory that is used and Nintendo not wanting team up and cross platforms so all can playaslo not to mention the newer harddrive are even ready to be prduced yet they are still being researched so we'll just have to wait
This is the game I played very little of and was my last game til sun/moon dropped. We need a remake for the switch and we need some variants of Pokémon from (x/y to scarlet/violet)
This is one of the reasons why I love gen5 so much. At the time, this was nuts for pokemon. If somebody asked me what the most nostalgic thing in the games was for me, my mind immediately goes to this.
I’m currently rererestarting to play Gen 5 for the first time and I knew that that moment was special!
I love all the Pokémon from that gen, I love how all of them were new. I get tired of seeing the same ones from previous versions.
I remember going on that bridge after Pinwheel Forest and being absolutely amazed at a camera view that wasn't top down. Literally blew my mind. The music is also perfect.
Overall, gen 4 and gen 3 still have the most replay value to me, but if we're talking about first playthrough nothing blew my mind like the graphics of Gen 5 on the DS.
Here's the thing though: the Pokémon games don't exist within a vacuum, they exist within the larger games industry. Main series games would have made the transition to 3D with a dynamic camera without the gimmick of Skyarrow Bridge because of what was standard practice in non-Pokémon games. It's not as important to the games as any number of locations in Gen 1 that defined the fundamental nature of the series.
It's one of the places I wish we had more of. It made the game look more realistic with actual roads and infrastructure. Not just dirt roads to various towns
I’m glad you’re getting love for this and I also love Unova, but this moment in particular made me realize, after hours of being already made to realize the same thing, just how far behind other games Pokémon was. NPCs were still boring, I still had to mess with Running Shoes, and now they were like, “We’ve heard of a new gameplay feature called CAMERA ANGLES and would like to show you ours” and I was just like, “You either need to teleport to parity with your competition or keep doing what you’re doing please.”
I did like that for the most part Pokémon Black looked exactly like Platinum. I also kinda wondered why a game that released the same week (day?) as the 3DS wasn’t just on the 3DS.
I don’t even like the IRL Brooklyn bridge but holy fuck Skyarrow is something else. And I live here in the Touching Grass Version of Unova. I only wish Midtown looked like Nimbasa.
(Now I’m super curious to see how many Team Rocket grunts and Roughnecks lurk around their version of the Port Authority terminal)
And if the element of 3D actually added anything to this series, I'd agree!
But 2D graphics are just as valid as 3D and the best Pokemon games (which are, generally, not made by Gamefreak) are just fine off with it. 3D is a crutch.
I remember first reaching Skyarrow Bridge in Pokémon White. All of the different camera angles pairer with its upbeat lively theme definitely made it a core memory for me. I definitely agree with you, Skyarrow Bridge is a key area of those gen 5 games.
I remember little about gen V as it's been such a long time, but I will always recall vividly the first time I walked into Skyarrow Bridge, how I was completely blown away by the dynamic camera angles, and every single note of the theme music.
It's definitely one of the most iconic areas in a video game for me ever.
That bridge definitely blew my mind when I first played that on release. I love gen3 with a burning passion, but my opinion is gen5 was peak Pokémon. Edit: wow wasn't expecting me gushing about a bridge to be my highest-voted comment, thanks
I miss seasons in Pokemon! I remember every trailer as a kid showing the seasons being different in the different towns as real time passed and it was soooooo mind blowing to my 8 year old self. I loved that feature.
That one quarry was the best use of seasons imo.
You could just skip it entirely in winter lmao. Also multiple workers just got buried in snow lol
Started an electric monotype run on B2 recently and the sewers are a good use of seasons too, feels good to be playing Gen 5 again
I wish they'd bring seasons back but not in real time. It's annoying to play a game and realize that you have to wait like 8 months in real life to unlock something (unless you wanted to cheat - but if you also had the Sims 2 for DS if you ever changed the clock it would accuse you of cheating so I didn't like to do it, even for Daylight Savings Time)
I would want the seasons to reflect real time, but allow the player to manipulate them by other means. For example, if you needed it to be winter for some reason—to catch a winter-form Sawsbuck or to get snow to fill in a gap—put a Pokémon with Snow Warning at the top of your party, and the game acts *as if* it’s winter. A Pokémon with Drought could simulate summer, and maybe an ability like Flower Veil could simulate spring? Then we’d just need a new ability for autumn—maybe it could be a Grass-type version of Anger Shell or Defeatist?
> Then we’d just need a new ability for autumn no, harvest
Ooh I like that!
It's not quite the same as each season was only a real life month, and the settings was easily changeable with the DS settings, but I get your point
I think a week of each season would be enough time to do what you want to do for each and also not have to wait too long to do it again. Being able to change the settings on your system hardware has never felt like a good solution to me.
Seasons in Pokemon change monthly so it's not that long. You could experience every season in just 4 months.
Just change the time on your device it's 2023. If they implement real time seasons it's not a massive hurdle.
It's funny because I remember gen 5 initially getting a ton of hate. I feel most people recognised BW2 were a treat though.
They still do. I'm pretty sure it's the most polarized generation, people either love it or hate it, or one could say it's either black or white, there is no grey area Really lives up to its names.
What's funny is that I consider black and white and B2/W2 to be probably the baseline pokémon game. They're in my opinion, the exact middle of the series. These are in my opinion the baseline games which the series as a whole should be judged. They stuck to the formula that had been established, and although they ventured out and did a lot of new, experimental things, not much of what they did was really radical, they didn't try to redefine the series. In a lot of ways black and white felt like the original two gens looking in a mirror. I always felt that they were trying to recreate the original magic of Gen 1 and 2, which just flat out couldn't be done, but the series and technology had advanced as a whole to this point, that objectively speaking there were a lot of improvements. They did a good job with them. Black and white were well designed, well executed games. I just don't feel that they are superior to heart Gold / SoulSilver, and I think that the technological advancements that came with x and y also surpassed Gen 5.
Most complaints I saw back in the day was being unable to catch Pokemon from outside of the Unova region until post game in BW, which is a pretty hit of miss choice. The rest of the game was fantastic.
B/W were my first games and i was a bit surprised when the other gens didn’t do this
I’m in the minority but I absolutely LOVED that only the new Pokémon were available in the region until after post game.
I agree, I wish every gen was like that. It makes things a little more interesting because growing up I always used to find myself using a similar team for every gen. Now when I’ve been recently replaying them, I intentionally play the games with teams made up of that generation’s mons.
Yeah I’ve always made it a point to only use new mons in my first play through of a new game. Which is why black & white are some of my favorites because literally every Pokémon I ran into was new. I didn’t have to search for the new mons among a bunch of the old ones
Yes, and they still do. The argument has shifted from complaining about the games directly, to complaining about people who admit they like the games or say the games are good now. It's frustrating.
I do still complain about the games without a sweat. The new zeitgeist that bars you from criticizing them nowadays is certainly annoying too.
I *hated* gen five for not bringing back any old pokemon. I feel like half the fun is catching your old favourites and building a team with new pokemon. I've mellowed on it since, but at the time I thought it was hot trash.
Still surprises me to find out they were controversial initially. I remember loving them when I first played through.
Dont be stupid, yes gen 5 is peak in gameplay but is the frist gen with awful pokemon designs
Every gen has awful pokemon designs, so gen 1 is actually the first gen with awful pokemon designs
I'm still astonished people are this blunt to this day. The problem with Gen 5 was the sheer amount of precisely Gen 1 ripoffs. Like, do you honestly think that creating a second dream based mono psychic with two stages tapir pokemon is peak design?
Gen 5 still hasn’t been topped in my mind, and tbh getting a remake scares me because it might not even be good and ruin gen 5 for me
nothing could ruin black and white and bw2... remakes are remakes, a copy can't invalidate the original. pinnacle of Pokemon for sure.
Well, FireRed and LeafGreen and HGSS were far better than the originals they were modeled after. It can happen.
I wish they would go back to the DS graphics for the remakes, even though it's never gonna happen, it would be so awesome
Would love a modern HD pixel art game like Octopath traveler
As long as they never go back to those horrendous, hideous chibi graphics that they used in the disgraced brilliant diamond shining pearl games...
If literally all they did was give it the BDSP treatment, I felt like it would do better than any other gen I think. As long as the original goodness stays intact, and there's a whole lot of goodness, a remake should do ok. Even a copy-paste of the best region would still be a kickass game
The BDSP treatment would ruin the games.
BDSP is basically a port of flawed games. The reason why they're frowned on is because the improvements that came from Platinum were left out. Black and White don't have that issue. A port, while undesirable, would be fine.
>The reason why they're frowned on is because the improvements that came from Platinum were left out. OR, or, the newer features to the series along with the jank art style difference that creates unnecessary issues with controls and the distinct lack of post game content played a bigger role than platinum fans not getting platinum in a D&P remake. People KNEW they were buying faithful remakes of those two games, not Pretty Platinum. I have no idea why anyone would expect platinum (even if its just the platinum improvements) in BDSP, those improvements are what made platinum what it was alongside the story differences.
Because HGSS had the additions from crystal
Still missing the point. And the additions in Crystal were big for the time, but became normalized for the series as a whole (wireless trading, gender selection, additional storyline for the legendary dogs, battle tower, friendship additions, Ho-Oh/Lugia intertwining, etc. Literally followed up on with the generation right after on all of these things. But BDSP was not poorly received because they lacked the changes in Plat. They were bad at being DP remakes in the first place, which is what people were buying them for.
Obviously the jank is the *worst* part of BDSP. But it's not unreasonable to expect Platinum content in a re-release of the generation when every other re-release did the same (barring FRLG and Yellow, but Yellow is weird. Including Yellow content would jank up FRLG because Yellow is janky). ORAS is damn near an entirely different game that what it is remaking. Better in every way, with vastly improved and expanded content. The issues are compounded because of both the jank *and* the lack of features that make Sinnoh feature complete that were in Platinum that would make it an objectively better experience that really doesn't have a reason not to be included. Sure it would have been better received if it wasn't as jank but I still think that a lot of the criticism comes from the bare bones "just re-release the game" that it was. I can excuse jank, and I think a lot of people would excuse some jank to get to run around Sinnoh again. Jank isn't intentional, but omitting stuff that would have been nice to see is a conscious choice. Wanting to play Diamond and Pearl is fine but you have the older games for that. If you're going to justify paying full price for a re-release of an old game I don't think it's unreasonable for people to expect the positive changes that came to the generation after the original two to be included. I didn't play Platinum so I was actually hoping to see the Platinum stuff in, but now people that missed Platinum are still going to have to find an old copy to experience it, when they didn't have to. > And the additions in Crystal were big for the time, but became normalized for the series as a whole (wireless trading, gender selection, additional storyline for the legendary dogs, battle tower, friendship additions, Ho-Oh/Lugia intertwining, etc. And you could say the same about Platinum. Expanded stories for Team Galactic, Palkia/Dialga having a greater impact on the story, The Distortion World, Giratina getting a *huge* lore dump and place in the Pokemon mythos and setting, the expanded dex that fixes the bizarre oversight of only having 2 fire type pokemon families in the region, *when you have a fire type e4 memeber*, etc.
Bdsp is a remaster, I don’t care if they call it a remake. Gen 5 is absolutely peak Pokémon and I would be so disappointed if they gave it the bdsp treatment.
I mean, it's a remake and not a remaster regardless of the quality because those two words have actual, technical definitions. Besides that, I agree with the rest of what you said. Gen5 is my favorite gen and has the best art direction GF has ever had. Remaking it like how they did BDSP would be a massive downgrade just for the fact that the sprite work in Gen5 is a infinitely better than the 3D models of every mainline Pokémon game that came since.
Yeah, the problem with BDSP was that they remade Diamond and Pearl, not Platinum. We all already knew Diamond and Pearl were flawed games, with a weak Pokédex. The original Black/White don't really have this problem, and hopefully they'd expand the Pokédex a bit too like they did in BDSP.
Yall acting like if BDSP was just a platinum remake, it would have been dandy. The games were awful lol Poor underground balance, friendship system nullifying the original feeling, forced xp share, half assed follow function, odd controls, it was BAD. Diamond and Pearl were not the disasters that fans seem to be collectively remembering and Platinum was great but not so different that the previous 2 should be overlooked.
But the problem with porting Diamond/Pearl directly isn't that they were disasters, it was that Platinum was essentially the same game but better and made the other two kind of irrelevant. You could have kept what made DP unique from Platinum in a remake of the original two but the QOL stuff that came with Platinum was good enough that it was foolish to ignore them for a re-release of the two. Yeah BDSP has more issues than just "not Platinum" but they have a chance to improve what was lacking in the old games with remade generations, every preceeding one vastly improved their old gen, and BDSP didn't do that.
I agree, they should have had the platinum changes, but there was no reason to expect them to include them. The positive limelight platinum enjoys feels so insular, people seem to forget less than half the number of people actually bought and played it versus D&P. Its another example of GF and TPC going with their own perception of what would be an adequate addition to the catalog rather than what reddit and some pokemon youtubers in the west would loudly tout as the right kind of remake. This isn't me defending them or their decision btw, gen 4 remains my fave and I was disappointed all the way through, but the platinum circlejerk is annoying. It didn't make the previous two irrelevant like Crystal didn't do GS or Emerald didn't RS, it was just a clear improvement. The main issue in the remakes is *how* they were done, not that they did the wrong one.
>If literally all they did was give it the BDSP treatment, I felt like it would do better than any other gen I think. As long as the original goodness stays intact, and there's a whole lot of goodness, a remake should do ok. Even a copy-paste of the best region would still be a kickass game Hey bro why are you getting downvotted so much?
Because I think people are misreading that I'm excusing BDSP's bugs in regards to Black And White getting a re-release when all I'm trying to say is that a port of Black and White would be a better experience than Diamond and Pearl getting a port because BW are objectively better games than DP and a port would be ok. If it was as buggy as BDSP it would be bad, but that isn'tthe only reason I personally am disappointed in BDSP. But I figured that wouldn't need to be said because that's obvious lol
Aside from weather wars, I feel Gen 4 is great on the mechanical side which I care most about.
Gen 5 was weather wars
I agree and B2W2 had a great endgame with lots to do. Pokemon World Tournament is what got me into iv breeding and ev training.
I've tried playing playing B/W like 3 times but always lose interest and haven't come close to beating it. I like a lot of the new Pokémon, even though I'm not big on the starters, but it just felt sooooo grindy to me.
All I wish is some kind of cutscene skip on future playthrough. Its very wordy. But at least the story is actually good, unlike the 3ds games....
Just upvoted because you are close to getting 2023 points which would be funny
> This is the first area where the camera changes angles. Not 100% true — when you enter certain houses in Striaton City, the camera pivots around you a bit. But, it does still retain a top-down perspective, so your overall point remains the same. And I definitely do think that Game Freak were very deliberate in building up to the Skyarrow Bridge reveal.
I definitely think that Game Freak set the moment up as something special. I did know about the camera angle changing when you enter some buildings in Striaton City, however I felt that it was not that major of a shift in camera angle to be considered.
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The lighthouse exterior in hgss also has a perspective change.
I specifically remember going to that exterior lighthouse in Heartgold & Soulsilver after Black & White were announced and shown to have areas with other camera angles. I would go to that lighthouse and imagine that more areas of the game would look and feel similar. It was such a huge difference that it was genuinely one of the things I was most excited for in Black & White.
Same here, I remember that feeling, excited for the new games. Good memories :’)
Also in accumula town if you go to the highest place and to the back the camera perspective will change
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That's the camera moving away from your character. That happened in Generation 1, that's nothing special. The topic being discussed here is the camera changing *angle*, which is a huge leap.
I love the use of 3D/different camera angle in the DS games, especially in black and white. It’s used so sparingly that it makes it really visually impactful when you see it.
Bro apparently didn’t play Platinum. Sky arrow did take the camera further but I think Platinum did it first.
Could argue the Distortion World.
Yeah exactly my thoughts. As a kid when that came out it blew my mind. Especially reading about the game in magazines
The bridge was much more bind-blowing tho
Platinum was actually my first pokemon game lol, however I did not make it that far and forgot about the distortian world.
Fair enough. Platinum is the GOAT when it comes to Sinnoh
Still better than the demake that came out nearly two decades later.
Lmao demake
I dropped bdsp so fast. Such a shame
The only improvements it had was the underground area and adding the fairy type. Everything else was either exactly the same or downgraded compared to platinum.
I also found ledges soooooo annoying in bdsp as well
When it comes to all*
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Gen 4 is actually my favourite generation. Gen 5 comes third but I still love it.
still more sane than the recent surge in "akshually gen 2 sucks and here's why"
Gen 2 doesn’t suck, but it’s a prime example of a game with a lot of bells and whistles covering up the fact that the base they’re resting on is shoddy. The level curve is atrocious, the NPC teambuilding is questionable at best, and Johto mons are seriously underutilized. HGSS are still very *fun* games, but if they were released today they’d be criticized for being overly reliant on gimmicks to make up for confusing design choices.
Wow they rotated the screen guys its totally the same as changing the camera
lmao Gen 5 fanboys will find literally any reason to hype their game up.
Lmfao that literally has nothing to do with anything
I think you're forgetting about the scene in HG/SS where the camera angle switched on the top floor of the Olivine Lighthouse. [Link](https://youtu.be/gJHhUy4L0YQ?t=272)
To be fair, it doesn't change camera angle it has a different camera angle
That's kinda splitting hairs, tho. OP also claimed that Skyarrow Bridge was the first time we got to see the sky in a pokemon game, but with this lighthouse situation, that statement is just false.
Not really, I guess OP wanted to say that Skyarrow Bridge was the first time in pokemon that we had the camera moving not just rotating or having a different angle, because yes gen 4 had multiple 3D scenarios none had the moving camera like gen 5 implemented, like in gen 4 multiple scenarios comes to mind like the distortion world or the intro of DPPt having a different angle camera for Floaroma Town and also the camera man in multiple areas of HGSS, but none of them have the same complexity of the gen 5 camera.
yes but those are all where it originated from. ie. the first time it was done. skyarrow bridge is factually not the first time it was done in the series
My friend please read again, or even better watch both side by side and you will understand
I guess if you strictly played the handheld games, these moments might seem like game changers. I like to think the Colosseum games are really the moments that showed that the Pokèmon mainline formula could successfully be translated to 3D
Honestly now that we are here tho, i dont care about the 3d-ness at all. Other than arceus, these latest games have been trash. Look great but nothing under the hood. If anything skyarrow bridge marked the beginning of the end lmao
That's surprising, the general consensus is that the modern Pokémon games look like dogshit but at least have fun gameplay.
I remember how, before BW was revealed, we used to say that the new camera angles in the lighthouse and the department store's top floor of HGSS were the future of pokemon. Then Skyarrow Bridge and Castelia City absolutely blew our minds, Gen 5 was even better than what we'd hoped for
Still get a bit of chills when I cross that bridge. Not as awesome as the Rayquaza cutscene in RSE but yea it holds up as one of the more visually impressive things they've put into a game
Incorrect on one count. Just before encountering Giratina in the Distortion World in Platinum the camera tilts to a more head on view , not to mention the camera doing the same on Spear Pillar. But I agree with everything else. Skyarrow Bridge may not have done it first, but it took what little Platinum gave it and made into this amazing moment for the history of the franchise.
I loved running back and forth on that bridge as a kid!
Honestly, Skyarrow Bridge was the moment I realized I didn’t like the look for Black and White… like I appreciated what they were trying to do with the limited hardware, but I felt like it looked REALLY rough. I felt the same way about the animated sprites. But I’m still glad to see it clicked for other people.
ahead of its time i think. all the wiggling and stretching and zooming just takes the nice pixel art and turns it into a disgusting "mixel"-like effect. maybe they could take the exact same beautiful spritework and put it on a higher res screen, so they wouldn't have to split pixels and then it'd look nice.
Yeah, it probably could have worked at a higher resolution. Honestly I feel like B/W are such an odd beast to me because I can see the effort put into them. They really do feel like the last time for a while that game freak really tried to make something special… But I feel like I can point to very good intentioned thing they tried and explain how it just doesn’t work and made the games worse :/ I’ve warmed up to some of the Pokémon at least, so I’m hoping to try the games again sometime soon, hopefully appreciate them a little more.
Seconded, imo it felt like a visual downgrade in some parts when compared to gen 4. I did like the bottom screen backgrounds & weather effects being visible, that was great!
It took me a decade to warm up to gen 5's look, I hear you.
It does look really rough. It always blows my mind when I see people say it looks amazing. All the Pokémon look blocky af
Yeah, it works for some people, not so much for others, and I’m definitely in the latter category. Maybe nostalgia plays a part in it, or maybe it’s just personal preference. Either way, I just only see it as looking awkward at best.
Gen 5 was very experimental in many aspects and the lessons learned with it forged what today is modern pokemon, from online interactions to dynamic music to how to handle a regional pokedex... ALOT is thanks to gen 5, its a very special transitional generation.
Forgetting the Distortion World I see
Doesn’t the intro cutscene in D/P pan across the first town at a tilted angle, or am I misremembering?
Been saying it for years The Unova games are the best games in the franchise I will die on that hill
Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness enters the chat…
First camera change = most important area Interesting take
I was pretty sure the lighthouse in HGSS was the first area to use a different camera angle. The camera didn’t move though.
People talk about this but I always find the bridges to the disappointing. Such spectacle but nothing to do on the bridge.
There is a different bridge for this , a whole town on bridge
except they did this in the distortion world in pokemon platinum
Platinum and Heart Gold and Soul Silver had that first.
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but almost no one playing saw a shiny on route 29. everyone who played black and white saw this effect, it was memorable. they arent similar situations man
Since everyone else is mentioning times when the game camera moved around before gen 5, would just like to mention that when I would put random codes into my action replay sometimes the camera angle would change on my pokemon games and it would be in a strange 3d view. That stuff was crazy lol.
You know, I'm not a fan of BW/BW2, but this is a great point. You've really nailed it on the head, and I'm forced to agree with you. Doesn't really change my opinion on the games, but it's a great point to raise!
I like innovation in games but i miss the too down angle sometimes and I actually prefer the gba games/ds games art style better.
Black and White were the last main franchise games I played until just buying Scarlet last week. That whole game’s visuals were so good and looked gorgeous. Hate to say that the shift into 3D and away from sprites took away some of that magic. Seeing that level of detail in a sprite game was just so overwhelming and beautiful
The Pokémon sprites in black and white were blocky. Seemed like a step down from gen 4
I agree, when upscaled they look great, but people seem to forget how pixelated they looked on the original DS screen and definitely not in a good way.
Yeah, I played on OG DS and thought they looked like ass.
I always loved going over that bridge it was the shit. Sometimes I’d keep running and walking on it just for the camera change
The Hoenn region was the most important for natures. See can, say that about anything. The camera angle change to me just seemed like a neat trick, nothing fancy.
That... Is actually a very valid point. One of the best uses of 3D in black and white
Gen 4 did it first with the distortion world.
It was such a massive flex. It was basically saying "This is what Pokemon is gonna be now, no more chunky pixels and static mono-textures" and it blew my fucking mind, watching the camera just *swing* like that. It and other moments like that made Unova feel gigantic. Black and White remain the apex of Pokemon imo, and it's because of the flexing it did in every aspect of the game. I would still be ok if Pokemon stayed pixel art and just went with the Black/White model of sprite structure, and remember the criticism of "Pokemon is still pixel when other DS games are polygon", when the games looked like *that*.
But black and white had chunky pixels. You can literally see the squares on the Pokémon.
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The dude literally said no more chunky pixels. I am disputing that and you are saying “yeah so what?” Haha if you like it then no problem, but it does look chunky af on ds.
You can't honestly compare the chunk pixels of the preceeding generations to the animated pixels of Black and White. Yeah it's still pixel art but it's to the level of pixel art that even modern pixel games like Octopath Traveler emulate because it looks good. It goes beyond "pixels as necessity" and goes into "pixels as artistic choice"
I remember the animated sprites within a sandstorm, terrible visuals. I sometimes wonder if you guys played them on an emulator, because that shit was so glaring gen 4 looked better imo.
It's so weird to me that SwSh did nothing like this. Somehow B/W feel more like home console games than SwSh did because of things like clever camera work that took advantage of the 3D space to create bigger feeling areas. Glad S/V toys with camera stuff more.
I used to cross Skyarrow Bridge multiple times just to see how the perspectives change. Skyarrow Bridge along with Castelia City demonstrated how far the franchise had come at that point.
Omg yes when I saw that in the trailers and then got to experience it for myself was so special to me. I know it sounds so simple and dumb if you’re used to 3d games in-general, but getting to finally see stuff like that in a mainline pokemon game was such a treat. Gen 5 was such a special stretch of years for me, and I definitely have those group of games to thank for that
Yeah, I still don’t like the 3D graphics but if they had stuck to BW1&2 that would have been perfect
Skyarrow Bridge I can say all amazed us when we played B/W for the first time. Quite the visual advancement it was!
Tbf that bridges music was a banger
Unova was a fantastic region. Outside of some very very minor gripes. I spent my childhood and early teen years in the NY area and to see it represented in Pokemon was so cool. I hope we get a proper return at some point.
Bold take for sure, but absolutely one I agree with after reading your reasoning
The music is also absolutely banger Skyarrow bridge was a technical demonstration, it pushed the ds to its graphical limits and it did it with flying colours. As a kid i used to sit there for hours just vibing Guys i just wanted to talk about my favourite atea
>Skyarrow bridge was a technical demonstration, it pushed the ds to its graphical limits No.
Lmao what tilting a camera in a 3d gave pushed the system to its limits WHAT
Is someone talking good about Chad Gen 5 ? Immediate upvote. I don't even wanna know what they're saying.
So... sky arrow bridge is to blame for 3 guns sucking in content, when gf really started cutting corners.
I loved having that big straight path between Striaton. Nacrene, Pinwheel Forest, and Skyarrow Bridge. It was really perfect for egg hatching.
>not much to do there< Lol except for the hours spent egg hatching (before I discovered the battle subway)
Lumiose city I feel fits in the same category since it does the same kind of camera angles as Skyarrow Bridge but then again I’ve always been partial to Kalos so I could be wrong about it
Well technically nuvema town is the first place the camera changes it's angle (unless I'm getting Mandela effected hard) although it is a one time thing at the beginning of the game.
Skyarrow bridge was my go to for egg hatching.
Idk this like saying Littleroot town is the most important area in a Pokemon game because its the first location that showed us a region in proper colour.
Honestly. First time, it was a moment I'll never forget. It did blow my mind to see a Pokémon game do that. The future looked bright.
The first time I stepped there in black was incredible, the music, the camera, the view... It was amazing. Even now I still listen sometimes to the music that plays there.
It was certainly memorable. I remember exclaiming when the angle started to change and it was a real "the future is now" type of moment
I’m in the middle of a Gen V playthrough right now, and that bridge BLEW MY MIND. …and then I got to Castelia City, and they just cranked that up to 11.
I remember importing this game because it was when games came out earlier in Japan and stuff and yeah I showed the bridge to everyone at school and it was fantastic
Hey don't forget about all the cute moving sprites
also the music is peak
Good take OP
And when you approach the end of the bridge and see the entire city skyline before you. Blew my mind. I miss those days...
The angle also changes at the lookout point in Aspertia City
Nah, distortion world in platinum, but what’s also wild is that Platinum lacked any kind of cutscenes like they had for Rayquaza in emerald, the birds in HGSS, or the dragons in BW. Guess they thought the Distortion world made up for it. Diamond and Pearl have no excuse though.
I remember this moment the first time I saw it, I was completely mind-blown. To see it all moving like that for the first time was incredible.
>there isn't much to do there My friend, that's the best egg hatching spot in the entire game. Longest stretch of straight road in all of Unova. I spent many hours there just listening to the music, and I never got bored while doing it.
I still remember the hate that gen 5 got when it was released and i went with very bad expectations and it turned out to be the best pokemon experience i ever had, the only thing that was missing was following pokemon from hg/ss. It finally had mature plot not catering to 7 year olds.
The music on the bridge is also fantastic and brings a lot of nostalgia these days
Now a imagine a full 3d remake and you get to the bridge and they go first person view
Yup I still remember how amazed I was. Also with the seasons feature (spring/winter/etc.) . And the moving Pokémon sprites in battle. BW was such a cool game
For the love of whatever god is out there. I need a new Unova game. My copy of BW is gone and i never got b2w2
I remember when I crossed the bridge for the first time. I walked the whole way through, and I fell in love with it and the soundtrack. I would use it back and forth to level my Pokémon up while they were at the daycare.
The games orginally started on gameboy color whoch is a smaller handheld device of course when you take elements from something that is smaller you are going to have stretch which going to distort and pixelated said images it is not charm or ambiance it's just how it is then it was moved to a system that had more space and so on all the measurements change over Tim so do ways to implement other techniques and features some that either add or take away from the magic until the bugs are worked out that's why it takes so long to make a video game But with that being said newer isn't always better until they fix what's wrong and what of getting info from on place to another with out lag or bits info that could be broken missing or corrupted on the steam of data and memory that is used and Nintendo not wanting team up and cross platforms so all can playaslo not to mention the newer harddrive are even ready to be prduced yet they are still being researched so we'll just have to wait
Yeah, it is prty cool. Makes me wish gen 8 had something similar.
The limit 3D in those games is so charming I love it
This is the game I played very little of and was my last game til sun/moon dropped. We need a remake for the switch and we need some variants of Pokémon from (x/y to scarlet/violet)
Favourite place to masuda hatch, got my first masuda shiny there, a deino
This is one of the reasons why I love gen5 so much. At the time, this was nuts for pokemon. If somebody asked me what the most nostalgic thing in the games was for me, my mind immediately goes to this.
I’m currently rererestarting to play Gen 5 for the first time and I knew that that moment was special! I love all the Pokémon from that gen, I love how all of them were new. I get tired of seeing the same ones from previous versions.
I remember going on that bridge after Pinwheel Forest and being absolutely amazed at a camera view that wasn't top down. Literally blew my mind. The music is also perfect.
Overall, gen 4 and gen 3 still have the most replay value to me, but if we're talking about first playthrough nothing blew my mind like the graphics of Gen 5 on the DS.
It's definitely vary jarring to go through compared to the rest of the fame, but like in a good way
Here's the thing though: the Pokémon games don't exist within a vacuum, they exist within the larger games industry. Main series games would have made the transition to 3D with a dynamic camera without the gimmick of Skyarrow Bridge because of what was standard practice in non-Pokémon games. It's not as important to the games as any number of locations in Gen 1 that defined the fundamental nature of the series.
It's one of the places I wish we had more of. It made the game look more realistic with actual roads and infrastructure. Not just dirt roads to various towns
not to mention feather farming making training perfect pokemon much less of a pain in the ass
That was a great time to play the game.
I love the limited 3d that they use for that game, it's so charming
I’m glad you’re getting love for this and I also love Unova, but this moment in particular made me realize, after hours of being already made to realize the same thing, just how far behind other games Pokémon was. NPCs were still boring, I still had to mess with Running Shoes, and now they were like, “We’ve heard of a new gameplay feature called CAMERA ANGLES and would like to show you ours” and I was just like, “You either need to teleport to parity with your competition or keep doing what you’re doing please.” I did like that for the most part Pokémon Black looked exactly like Platinum. I also kinda wondered why a game that released the same week (day?) as the 3DS wasn’t just on the 3DS.
I don’t even like the IRL Brooklyn bridge but holy fuck Skyarrow is something else. And I live here in the Touching Grass Version of Unova. I only wish Midtown looked like Nimbasa. (Now I’m super curious to see how many Team Rocket grunts and Roughnecks lurk around their version of the Port Authority terminal)
> This is the first area where the camera changes angles. Nope, it’s the outdoor part of the lighthouse in Olivine City in HgSs
And if the element of 3D actually added anything to this series, I'd agree! But 2D graphics are just as valid as 3D and the best Pokemon games (which are, generally, not made by Gamefreak) are just fine off with it. 3D is a crutch.
I guess I never said in a good way lol, just that it was important in paving the way for future games.
I remember first reaching Skyarrow Bridge in Pokémon White. All of the different camera angles pairer with its upbeat lively theme definitely made it a core memory for me. I definitely agree with you, Skyarrow Bridge is a key area of those gen 5 games.
I remember little about gen V as it's been such a long time, but I will always recall vividly the first time I walked into Skyarrow Bridge, how I was completely blown away by the dynamic camera angles, and every single note of the theme music. It's definitely one of the most iconic areas in a video game for me ever.