I know many titles that would like a word with anyone who thinks profits are a proper measure of a games quality. Pokemon will always sell well because GOTTA CATCH EM ALL even if the game the next 100 are added to is completely terrible. The ability to transfer your pokemon up across titles has enslaved a generation I think. *Looks at my complete (Well until this game) HA Living Dex and Shiny Dex* sitting pretty in Home alongside all my sentimental Teams and events from the last 20 years.
I ended up getting the games on Sunday after watching a bunch of gameplay footage.
Surprisingly, I still kept myself spoiler free for almost everything in the game, which is a new experience given I've spoiled myself on every Pokémon design and built a whole team previous to the games even launching since XY. This alone made it a great experience, though I have to say this is the weakest dex we've gotten by far. This gen has way too many creatures that are just cartoon animals or objects with nothing else to them.
Bramblin, Brambleghast and Flamigo are complete failures as designs in every concievable way. Why would you even put these in the game.
Flamigo is just a barely stylized bird that completely fails at pushing the idea of a living balloon animal. I wouldn't even know that was the point if the dex entry didn't say it. They didn't even texture it like a balloon, what??
The Bramblin line will be the new laughstock of object Pokémon designs. I understand why people might not like Vannilluxe and the gang but those have personality, they convey emotion. These two are literal tumbleweed with barely noticeable eyes, huh?????
More, less offensive desings I just didn't like:
Spoiler:
On the other hand Anihilape, Tadbulb, Toedscruel, Rabsca, Wugtrio, Revavroom, Veluza, Chi-Yu and quite a few of the paradox mons are incredible. Some of these are seriously peak Pokémon design.
I also love how hard they're pushing the unique gimmicks of each mon. This gen, more than any other, really makes each creature feel special. Between unique evolution conditions, super specific abilities, secret alternate-looking evolutions, color variation and signature moves, there's just so much to set each pokémon apart. I adore it.
Also, great bugs, which are the most important part of any dex. Tarountula, Nymble, Lokix, Rellor, Rabsca and Slither Wing all introduced in the same game? Holy shit.
Spidops sucks though I want my web ball buddy back.
Anyway... regarding the game itself. I liked it. Graphical issues are abhorrent but didn't affect my gameplay except in one specific area I didn't even spend much time in. This should be addressed and yada yada, not much I can add here beyond what's been said.
World design is surprisingly good, with good verticality in most of the map which is something I always look for in JRPGs since it's kinda rare.
Aesthetically it's really bad though. Even putting graphics aside, there's not a single memorable location in the entire game besides maybe the school. Even SS did great with the cities (as did every other game) despite dropping the ball with everything else. Not even the spoiler area is interesting, huge miss for a game focusing on open world and exploration.
Game flow is also attrocious, probably the worst in the entire franchise. Why is there such a huge delay to do anything. Changing pokémon, battle messages, checking the boxes holy fuck SPEED UP. I guess it's due to poor optimization.
I guess I should comment on the three storylines. I liked all three, pretty good story as far as Pokémon goes. The titan path managed to get me emotionally invested enough, Nemona is a decent rival that I had fun meeting throughout the game and the team star storyline is WAAYYY better than what I was expecting (not to say it's amazing or anything, it didn't manage to grab me, but I was interested in seeing more of the leaders and the conclusion was decently satisfying and had good comedy).
Most importantly though, these three stories built an actually endearing friend group by the end, which is astounding considering how spetacularly they failed in XY.
I guess I shouldn't be THIS surprised considering they also did fine in BW, SM and SS but... I don't know, this feels like an improvement on Kalos spefically in a way I can't put to words.
Also, as I said before I had absolutely no interest in the freedom to play in whichever order I wanted, so I just went to Nurse Joy after each challenge and asked her where to go next. Exploring on the way to these locations, going from one side of the map to the other and catching pokémon on the way was very fun. The level curve was pretty good too, though I did ignore every trainer. I was pretty much at the expected level for all challenges for most of the game, except for one gym and one titan. As I approached the end though, I was around 5 to 10 levels under the trainers which always makes the endgame much more fun to play.
Someone make sure they keep their heads above the money pool! We can't have someone choking on a hundred dollar bill, that's disgraceful. It needs to be a thousand at the least.Originally Posted by Nanaya
Binged All Of Gundam In 4 Years, 1 Week and All I Got Was This Stupid Mask
FF XIV: Walked to the End
Started Legend of the Galactic Heroes (14/07/23), pray for me.
I know that's the standard answer but this kind of embarrassement does hurt their brand, regardless of how much money they still made this time. The state of this game is so bad that even children are going to notice it, in fact I already saw a kid making fun of the NPCs flashing in and out of existence in the school.
What I'm saying is that a release this bad only reinforces criticism that was already leveled at them after Sword and Shield, and they can't just keep doing it. I genuinely believe that the state this game is in is going to influence the quality of their future releases.
They can't keep a streak of embarrassing releases like this because they don't want Pokémon to be associated with poor quality products (and you could say "oh they already are" but they're really not, regardless of the actual quality of their latest games).
I thought Bramblin was one of the few cool (new) mons we got this gen.
Baxcalibur is literally a retexture of Duralodon's skeleton and I will never forgive the Japanese for that abomination of a signature move animation. (This is supposed to be this gen's paeudo-legendary, mind!)
Meanwhile the cry is amazing, the most Godzilla-like and generally monstrous cry we've had for years.
- - - Updated - - -
Rabsca is fucking horrifying though, holy shit.
shit BL says
Once and always and nevermore.
The sad part of it is that they have no real need to improve on the games. The lions share of the income from Pokemon comes from the merchandising, and all the games really need to do is introduce new characters. Sure people won't want to buy things from a game they gave up on after five minutes, but that's why the anime and manga exist.
(something else I just learned, the TCG is apparently responsible for around 10 bill in revenue)
Binged All Of Gundam In 4 Years, 1 Week and All I Got Was This Stupid Mask
FF XIV: Walked to the End
Started Legend of the Galactic Heroes (14/07/23), pray for me.
@Pinetree pretty much my sentiments on the games abysmal quality. And your review is pretty similar to my own feelings on the game. Out of the story characters I liked Arven the best. He kind of felt like the main character in a way.Spoiler:
For real.
Edit: Oh yeah, Tera Raids are kind of super wack. You can absolutely cheese them but I want to say that the experience of sitting there while an enemy timer scams you with shit like bullet seed is a certain kind of feels that should not exist.
Last edited by Nanaya; November 24th, 2022 at 04:09 AM.
I legit can't understand why, there's barely a pokemon there.
Also not to defend the massive animation downgrade from Arceus, but Baxcalibur's signature seems intentionally goofy to me. I think it's a reference to this:
https://youtu.be/JuEa6Hum0b4
They do though, you can't just give up on a significant share of your market, no matter how much bigger the others are.
I'm not saying we'll get a game with impressive textures, detailed world design, proper difficulty curves, etc because I don't think they are capable of it. Gamefreak has clearly shown it's not just the oppressive release schedule affecting the games. They are incompetent at developing in 3D and haven't improved since XY.
I'm saying we'll probably never get something as poorly optimized as this and that I believe they'll work to make things run better than previous, less embarrassing, releases too simply because they don't want to gradually erode the goodwill people still have towards the game regardless of recent fuckups.
Normal dude was great, as was Iono, though in her case it's mostly because of pre-release material setting her up.
I really like the Elite 4. That was a properly built up, funny, charismatic cast like we've never gotten before.
I'm annoyed there is no battle tower or equivalent. That was pretty fun in xy.
I'm sure you'll get a great battle tower for just $19,99!
It will probably be the shitty watered down version. I miss when one misplay wiped your entire streak.
Is that not the case in SS? I didn't play it much.
I legitimately don't see any reason they will work harder for a higher quality finished product for the next generation. They are never punished and the bar publicity lasts a few months while the sales continue to carry on for years.
Ya it was easier. Gholdengo is so fucking cool. He skates around on a gold snowboard. THE POWER OF GOLD.
Edit: So what Shiny did you all run into in your normal game? Without using anything to buff the encounter(and You can really break it) I ran into a Luxray, Maril, and Scatterbug which is about 3 more than normal haha. The shiny not giving off sparkles or anything when you're close makes it tough to identify some and easy to miss in general.
Last edited by Nanaya; November 25th, 2022 at 01:39 AM.
I dunno, "evil ghost tumbleweed" is just an interesting conceot. Kinda like Spiritomb without looking like a gramophone half the time. To be fair, haven't seen what Brambleghast looks like yet.
As for Godzilla- nah. Doesn't look similar at all, other than being similarly horribly animated.
- - - Updated - - -
The only one I found (and actually noticed) was a shiny Yungoos. Alas, it fucking died as I was trying to catch it (no big loss considering how much I hate that design).
shit BL says
Once and always and nevermore.
I got no shinies at all, sad.
Got a Lechonk and an Igglybuff (that shit looks the same as a regular one, especially at night, so thanks god I was randomly pressing R).
Huh, if you go online and check the news in game you can access the Eevee Tera Raids. Tons of easy Tera Eevee for anyone who cares.
Welp, just got a shiny Pawniard.
I did not realize how difficult it'd be to stop even the most obvious shinies without the sparkle and sound. I probably missed a ton throughout the game.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
