Same thing I was thinking, this obviously isn't going to be:
Hey, our quality was really shoddy in Arceus already, and then Scarlet/Violet looked even worse while running even worse, maybe we should take our time and really do a lot of perfectionist work next time.
It's going to be:
ROFLMAO! Pump out 14 games each year, these bumbling idiots are guzzling everything up we throw at them no matter how bad it is! Manager bonuses go brrrrrrrr
I will also say that as someone who both still had very fond memories of the really old 2D pokemon games and now played the absolutely stellar Cassette Beasts... yeah no, I already didn't buy the newest generation, and I can't see myself do so again until Pokemon can at least catch up to that tiny indie game in production quality and game design. It completely embarasses Pokemon.
Great to see cassette beasts getting tons of love. I've played Siralim and TemTem but cassette beasts really scratches the same itch as Pokemon while also doing some cool new stuff.
They should have had these conversations after the release of Black/White. But truth be told, they probably don't give a fuck. They make them, people buy them, they always sell out in record numbers, so they'll make another one again, that'll somehow be even worse than the previous one
@dinckelman@CosmicSploogeDrizzle Black/White were the best games that the series had. I still don't understand all the hate for these games to this day. The world was great, the postgame was good, and the Pokémon weren't designed as poorly as everyone says.
Because nostalgia is a driving force for this franchise and BW committed the sin to dare not to rely on that. Which is why even when they cut the National Dex in Sword and Shield, they made sure nobody would miss that Charizard was still there.
They are constantly testing how little they can offer and still have people buy out of sheer nostalgia. That Indigo Disk DLC with the Blueberry Academy looks like it will be very barebones, just an enclosed environment with some Elite 4-like fights, but they made sure to show that all the old starter buddies are back, because they know people will flock to that.
Enjoyment of something is completely subjective, but I personally just did not enjoy a lot of the design and style choices in these games. The Pokemon didn't feel very exciting, and it just felt like they were running out of ideas quickly. I can understand why people enjoyed B/W and the 2's, but unfortunately I did not
TBF those had to grow on me, especially the first ones. They were actually challenging, due to changes in how exp gain is scaled. Plethora of activities after the game ends is something that got me hooked for a long time in Black 2, which overall I think I enjoyed a lot more than 1
What excactly was so great about the postgame? The right side of unova didn't had that much to offer. Kyurem, Cynthia, the dive maze, the roaming genie and Looker are the only noteworthy things that come to mind.
It really seems like Gamefreak just can’t handle 3D games, but they’ve been forced to since the Switch is now the only main platform for Nintendo.
I feel like the games would really flourish if they were taken away from Gamefreak and given to a different studio to handle.
They get like 3 years between each major title, that doesn’t seem unreasonable. If they’re overwhelmed by remakes and side games then they need to outsource those parts, but maybe they’re worried about being shown up by another studio.
That's the thing. Ganefreak needs to up the bar because eventually if they ignore feedback long enough they will be hit with a disappointing release that doesnt sell gangbusters. At that point the IP will be given to a new studio and Ganefreak will be out of work and have a shit portfolio to get new work. These games sell because they are Pokemon games. Without the IP, Ganefreak will be up shits creek
Maybe the answer is not to do 3D games. Every indie monster collection clone that I can think of is 2D, isometric, or, at most, 2.5 D. AAA developers need to say that some games work fine in 2D, cut down the bloated graphics budget, and focus more on gameplay.
They were decently made games as far as I was aware. The main issue I was seeing brought up with them was that they were direct copies of the originals without any real improvements, so you might as well play the originals. I can't remember seeing any complaints that the ILCA games were made incompetently, just that what they ended up making was uninspired.
Violet/Scarlet is such a slog. Horrible performance, uninteresting boss battles and super annoying cutscenes sprinkled into everything. Some crap story about the “school” and “my dad died and is AI now” and a bunch of weird ass Chinese named Pokémon that look like shit. It’s been painful to get through just for the Pokédex entries and honestly I don’t know if I’ll finish my national dex, probably just find someone to trade me the ones I need still.
I honestly feel that the main story is the one thing they got right, it's not on gen 5s level, but much better than gen 6 - 8. The rest of the game was mediocre at best, and raids do really suck compared to gen 8 raids.
The open world part would be a lot better if the battles scaled to your level though. Hopefully gen 10 fixes this.
I went back to old games I was so disappointed in these. Has there been any improvements? I know dlc is about to come out, but I won’t hold my breath that will fix anything. I don’t want to give them more money anyway
I still play Crystal, FireRed, and SoulSilver somewhat frequently. Those games truly just felt like a complete adventure, and not a pre-alpha test for someone learning Unity at a university hackathon
I’m playing the romhack liquid crystal right now. It’s fun minus some sprite glitches and the fact that the phone/radio don’t seem to work. Can’t figure out if that’s a bug or if they’re story gated. Even with those issues I’m having more fun.
Lol conversations on performance when a new console is just on the horizon.They'll just use the additional horsepower to just ram bad optimization through.
Well gamefreak needs to hire some optimizers. I know this is a worn out argument but ToTK just show how much the switch and handle if you actually take the systems limitations into considered instead of just lowering the graphics.
I'd agree with this. From story and gameplay standpoints, Scarlet/Violet are among the best mainline games in the series, leagues above Sword/Shield (story wise, don't know if they beat Sun/Moon, though). They gave us an open world, a battle gimmick that's balanced well enough to at least not be broken, allowed us to ride the legendary pokemon (as goofy as the designs are) to get around that world, and let us do things in essentially any order. All things fans have been begging GF for for a long time. Unfortunately Pokemon is a huge franchise that relies on so much other media by design that it's tough to allow GF the time they need to give the games the optimization they need. You delay the main games, you then also have to delay the anime and anime movies, the card game, and all the events built around those things as well. It's a major part of how the franchise has become the #1 grossing media franchise in history. That money train can't wait.
Franchises like Mario and Zelda, on the other hand, don't have nearly as much other merchandise or other moving parts to their brands that would have to wait for the new game release, and even then, that other merchandise isn't nearly as big a share of their overall brand as in Pokemon; they don't have anime, Mario only has one movie (we acknowledge) that wasn't connected to a specific entry in the franchise, and so without all that other stuff tied to specific games or "generations", other franchises can much better afford delays. They're mainly about the video games, and when a new mainline Mario/Zelda/etc game comes out, it's an event in itself that may actually benefit from a delay to further build hype.
There's really no excuse for these pokemon games to look the way they do in 2024 when games like tears of the kingdom exist. It's not like the pokemon company and Nintendo don't have the budget to make a pokemon game of that level. They just don't want to. Same goes for other Japanese game properties that seem to be resistant to modernize and reinvent themselves
Gamefreak? Having 'conversations' about not releasing unfinished, unpolished garbage? Why would they? Pokemon fans have nonexistent standards and will buy it anyway no matter what. I wish I worked for these people, they really lucked into an infinite money printing machine.