what universe are you living in?a lot of people really liked X&Y
what universe are you living in?a lot of people really liked X&Y
A universe in which whenever I say how much I dislike X&Y I get a bunch of people telling me they were really good, actuallywhat universe are you living in?
To be fair, there is also the issue that ""remakes"" are now approaching gen 5, and the main idea of the remakes was to basically play "the old games but with modern graphics and systems".Game Freak is definitely in it to get more creative and take a variety of directions for future past gen revisits instead of the modernized reimaginings HGSS and ORAS were. But one thing's certain: FRLG, HGSS, and ORAS style "remakes" are a thing of the past now, and more original experiences set in the same region like PLA was are the future, even if they won't always manifest specifically as a Legends game.
they are the minority, i assure youA universe in which whenever I say how much I dislike X&Y I get a bunch of people telling me they were really good, actually
Well that might be true but it doesn't have much to do with what TCP and Game Freak judge to be good business decisions. People "really liking" a game doesn't have much bearing on reality unless it translates into actual sales and X&Y aren't even close to being the worst-selling original titles in the main series (it being a longstanding trend that remakes sell more poorly than original titles).they are the minority, i assure you
That and as I said some time ago, even before the likes of Gen 6 where they are already modern enough to begin with, we can see with Sinnoh already the shift in philosophy, and there's another reason for that: the games starting from Gen 4 onwards are modern enough as you said (unlike the first three generations), but also reimagining older regions in the modern engine with the Switch now commands a significantly higher amount of design effort to recreate old regions in the new engine. It made sense for HGSS and ORAS to be by-the-number remakes because HGSS in the DPP engine is still 2D, but more advanced and allows for creative expansion of the original. ORAS was on the 3DS but XY while 3D still conformed to several 2D design conventions so Hoenn in the 3DS engine still allowed for a recognizable reimagination of the original in the XY engine while also expanding on it.To be fair, there is also the issue that ""remakes"" are now approaching gen 5, and the main idea of the remakes was to basically play "the old games but with modern graphics and systems".
However, we're getting to the point where there's... not so much new anymore. Sure gen 5 would still have the update of modern combat system, but come gen 6, they're basically modern games with almost identical battle system.
At this point, it makes much more sense to start working on "alternative" instead.
Now I want "anti-Legends" games: taking Galar or Paldea and reimagining them back into the older map style I prefer.That and as I said some time ago, even before the likes of Gen 6 where they are already modern enough to begin with, we can see with Sinnoh already the shift in philosophy, and there's another reason for that: the games starting from Gen 4 onwards are modern enough as you said (unlike the first three generations), but also reimagining older regions in the modern engine with the Switch now commands a significantly higher amount of design effort to recreate old regions in the new engine. It made sense for HGSS and ORAS to be by-the-number remakes because HGSS in the DPP engine is still 2D, but more advanced and allows for creative expansion of the original. ORAS was on the 3DS but XY while 3D still conformed to several 2D design conventions so Hoenn in the 3DS engine still allowed for a recognizable reimagination of the original in the XY engine while also expanding on it.
Sinnoh or Unova in the SwSh or SV style and engine on the other hand requires way too much reconsideration of the original design to be worth it to the point where a Sinnoh or Unova in a console scale world design would be flat out unrecognizable, so it makes more sense to do alternative original experiences anyway. I think Game Freak doesn't want to force themselves to have to reconcile the faithfulness of a typical remake with modern graphics in that regard. It wouldn't be worth it for games like Gen 6 onwards where the difference is too insignificant, or in the case of the DS games, the aesthetic difference is on the other hand too significant from a world design standpoint and commands too much design effort to be worth it. If Sinnoh or Unova is gonna be borderline unrecognizable on the Switch and its style anyway, might as well go all the way with it, hence why we got PLA which was a "pre-make", set in the ancient past as an original story.
Legit I have wanted this for every game since BW ever since someone made an April Fool's trailer of a GBC version of those games.Now I want "anti-Legends" games: taking Galar or Paldea and reimagining them back into the older map style I prefer.
Okay so I have some significant disagreement with the sentiment expressed in the USUM portion of this rant, in that I think it's just assuming that because it gave all these ties and answers to Necrozma that it is immediately preferable. I'm all for a culture or mythology with a lot to speculate on, but when everything has a concrete answer it kind of becomes a checked box instead of a source of wonder to me. Sometimes fantastic stuff or magic simply IS a thing in a setting and doesn't need to all tie back to a source, whether or not that source is fantastical. This is especially the case for me when half of Alola is drawing from a real world basis of Hawaii (which has a very rich culture and Mythology that didn't have to ascribe things to one Alien Dragon Shell) and the other half is based on extra-dimensional and borderline Lovecraftian Alien creatures (which by nature are most intriguing/intimidating because they're hard/impossible to comprehend). I would infact posit the opposite position that explaining so much of the world, and especially as a consequence of one Pokemon, makes the story and setting less intriguing when it's all answered questions with nothing to explore.Considering the flaws Pokemon games have especially nowadays, if the biggest flaw in a Pokemon game is that it's "too easy", I'd consider that a pretty dang good Pokemon game, especially since Pokemon games are incredibly flexible with how you can alter the difficulty through the usage of Pokemon, items, and EXP Share. I've heard too many arguments against "self-restriction" being a bad look but c'mon I've done it multiple times with several Pokemon games and created the best playthroughs I've ever had off it, plus you have a story to tell. "Hey, I completed ORAS only using Clamperl." or "Hey, I completed Ultra Sun only using NFE Pokemon." The Pokemon are the biggest determinant factor to the difficulty of a Pokemon game anyway, and all Pokemon games are incredibly easy if you use the right Pokemon and moves, regardless of whether you're aware of those Pokemon or not. The 3DS titles are especially flexible as you can just send Pokemon through Bank and have early access to daycare. You can complete a game and use virtually whatever upon resetting. Pokemon games are meant to be flexible. They're meant to be played through in an enormous variety of ways. This is part of why they've likely never established a real difficulty setting, because since the days of Red and Blue they've intended on the Pokemon TO BE that setting.
On the side note I've always seen people complaining about XY being incomplete and not having a Pokemon Z to finish it off but honestly Gen 5 is even worse in this aspect and it's sad because B2W2 exist and created one of the most redundant plotlines ever in the series. Instead of taking the direction of resolving Unova's lore and mysteries, they decided to have Team Plasma come back as terrorists and have Kyurem's only use be a superweapon. We needed this game to be about Kyurem. We needed the Unova sequels to flesh out further on Unova lore and try its best to complete it all the way. At the end of the day Zygarde by now got more fleshed out without ever having its own game than Kyurem ever did with two games. Kyurem is also still one of the most misunderstood Pokemon to this very day, and its involvement in B2W2 was nothing more than DLC-level. To put it this way, there's a reason why, despite Kyurem having two whole games to flesh it out, everyone is still asking for Kyurem to get a game that fleshes it out. Pokemon having sequels within its own generation is overrated especially as Black 2 White 2 failed to do it right and finalize Unova.
Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon were all about the backstory of Necrozma, how it influenced the Alola region, and how it was responsible for all of its culture, all of its traditions, everything they have that represents them. They were about how Necrozma got in some freak accident from getting betrayed by humanity, resulting in the Pokemon bleeding light out of ultra wormholes to Alola, creating totems, and sparkling stones to power up z-crystals, then heading to Alola to steal its light and getting defeated by Tapus, forcing it back over. Alola setting up a trial system to celebrate the defeat of Necrozma, you enter into the scene 500 years later to take on those trials and understand the mystery of Necrozma. Necrozma's out there held in a tower with artificial light given to it, but that tower is about to run out of light. These games taught us how totems were made, why z-moves were a thing, how its trial system got set up, how the people in Alola were worshipping a full blown deity without their knowledge, and we got to see the deity's original, most powerful forme. Necrozma shaped their entire culture, all of their traditions, what they do, through an incident. Necrozma gave out its trust to humanity, the people who worshipped it, only to get backstabbed and suffer a permanent injury off it, where it's constantly leaking out light, which is virtually its blood, and is in constant need of more to survive. It's a brutal injury giving it eternal pain and suffering for trusting humanity too much. Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon fleshed out on the history of Alola, gave an extraordinary role to its box art, and finalized the region within its own generation. Black 2 White 2 wishes it could be this. We WISH Black 2 White 2 were this.
Platinum also wishes to be this.
All the Platinum plot gave out was double the embarrassment on the creation trio, with a BS explanation as to how BOTH Palkia and Dialga were used and instead of lake trio making up for their own incompetencies, or the game really being about Giratina, Giratina was just shoehorned into the exact same climax just to save the day without an explanation at the time. Took us 13 years to get an explanation on this, and unlike with USUM, which was all about Necrozma's backstory and the impact it had on Alola, Giratina just showed up for the sake of showing up in its own game. The Distortion World was cool and such, but from a story standpoint they were really lazy in how they handled Giratina. Not to mention, while Gen 4's story was more complete than Gens 5 and 6, a complete story does not necessarily mean a good one at all.
Dialga is the embodiment of time. It is omnipresent throughout all planes of it. The literal nanosecond it was summoned by Cyrus it could have also "went back" to stop the bomb Galactic dropped on Lake Valor. Palkia could have erased Cyrus from existence for a bit within that same timeframe.
Another example is how the Red Chain was used to COMPLETELY control Palkia and Dialga despite nothing about the Lake Trio indicating they can't do this. Even Legends Arceus gave the Red Chain a completely contradictory effect. The Red Chain comes exclusively from their power and it's what they use to handle Palkia and Dialga. How the heck did it outright control them here when the Lake Trio were never shown to be able to do this? It doesn't even make sense that they could only handle one of the two at a time, since Palkia and Dialga are both infinite simultaneously... Uxie could have dismantled Team Galactic just by opening its eyes, and since it's the embodiment of knowledge, it could have quickly escaped somewhere and informed the other 2 lake trio members. Azelf could have bent Galactic's willpower and forced them to give up on their plan. It could even just use them as servants to clean up their mess. Mesprit could have instantly teleported somewhere far away just like every single time you first encounter it... In reality the lake trio had possibly billions of ways they could have avoided the situation they were put in, canonically, and not one was chosen.
Speaking of Cyrus, with the backstory they gave him, there were so many missed opportunities with how he could have been more developed. Uxie could have erased his bad memories or lead the way of Azelf and Mesprit, Mesprit could have manipulated Cyrus's emotions to have him see the good side of life since Galactic was backing him up with heavy respect, and Azelf could have given him the willpower to strive for a new, better life influenced by Mesprit. Not to mention, Galactic had his back this whole time. They respected Cyrus regardless of who he was and didn't even fully understand what he wanted until it was too late. Cyrus could have recognized the sheer respect he was being given despite his preference dissuading others, and could have used it to build a company on his own with them, in a happy ending. Man even had a Crobat that could've been used for how he changed under these scenarios.
Because this is to ascribe the following to the Unova games for this criticismTo put it this way, there's a reason why, despite Kyurem having two whole games to flesh it out, everyone is still asking for Kyurem to get a game that fleshes it out.
I hate that I feel the need to stand up here and point out that I was (barely) able to avoid difficulties with exp and affection during my own playthrough of BDSP. I hate that BDSP is my favourite mainline game on the Switch. I wish I could look at the copy-paste content, the questionable coding mistakes, the half-assed features and use "not representative of the other games" dismissively. But I can't escape that significant parts of my enjoyment of the series are only there in the one place they didn't have a chance to remove them.Permanent EXP Share has generally been handled alright in most of the Switch games barring BDSP itself, which is because BDSP is a shoddily designed copy-paste of Diamond and Pearl that very sloppily imbues Switch-era mechanics like baked-in EXP Share and Affection into it without actually adjusting to accomodate for them. This is in large part because BDSP was not developed by Game Freak (it was developed by ILCA), was likely created under strict creative control which is why 99% of the game is a copypaste of DP to the exact T, and was innately a secondary concern that was created in less than two years as a crutch for PLA which was the real Sinnoh revisit developed by Game Freak and the true follow-up Gen 8 game after Sword and Shield.
LGPE, SwSh, PLA, and SV handle permanent EXP Share pretty well for the most part, because their level curves are designed to work in tandem with the EXP All mechanic in mind, even if not perfectly, same with the scaled EXP formula. BDSP on the other hand uses the original Diamond and Pearl's level curve to the exact T with no changes, and DP's level curve was not designed around the modern EXP formula as Gen 4 was a no-EXP All game that also used the flat EXP gain formula as opposed to the modern scaled EXP gain formula.
Affection was very sloppily implemented as well, as they just threw in the mechanic without actually putting the cap on, as BDSP being a copypaste of DP uses the Gen 4 friendship method that goes all the way to 255, as opposed to the SwSh Friendship method of capping off at 179 and then needing Camp/Picnic to break it and go higher, and above 180 is where affection bonuses are implemented, which is how SwSh and SV handle affection. BDSP did not apply the cap and thus affection bonuses come automatically.
Putting it bluntly, BDSP was a horribly designed game because it was a copypaste of Diamond and Pearl to the exact T with Switch-era mechanics very shoddily implemented alongside them. The issues you highlighted are not with the mechanics themselves but the sloppy implementation owing to BDSP being a rushed and sloppily designed game that was innately an afterthought.
Sword and Shield, Legends: Arceus, and Scarlet and Violet work better with them because they are designed in tandem with the mechanics. Meanwhile BDSP implements Gen 4 mechanics in a way where the original DP aspects and the affection/EXP All are working antithetical to each other.
In short, BDSP is just a horrible blemish in the history of mainline games. SwSh, SV, and even PLA are by no means perfect but are still overall competently designed games, even if I find base SwSh to be on the underwhelming side. But BDSP is just the standout exception in an extremely bad way and not representative of everything else in the Switch era.
Sometimes those self-restrictions are things that make sense as a normal way to play the game in the mind of a child. For example, losing to Drake over and over because you value the thematic cohesion of Surf Muddy Water Earthquake Mud Shot too much to just teach your overleveled Swampert Blizzard and call it a day.wrt difficulty.
We always have to remember that Pokemon is generally marketed towards a much younger audience than the average age of members on this forum. Unlike say BotW and TotK which are marketed towards an older age group and have a much higher difficulty.
They have to go for a low difficulty level because their main demographic is kids. Its really not that hard to put on self restrictions and its just something we have to accept since we are in essence playing a game MAINLY designed for quite young children.
A challenge mode might be nice, but they tried that once and it didn’t do so well (I believe due to horrible implementation/unlock reqs). They just aren’t gonna go back to that.
Fun fact, this is actually acknowledged by Cynthia in Platinum if you visit the Celestic Ruins after entering the hall of fame.First and foremost: Nothing hard confirms the Sinnoh Legendaries as controlling masters of their themes.
Cynthia outrights states Dialga and Palkia are considered rulers of time and space because of people in the past interpreting their time and space power as holding dominion of the entire concept. Think like how Volcarona is seen as a sun god in myth even though it's "just" a powerful and rare Fire type. This is reflective of how real world myths develop, like how oak trees often being struck by lightning due to their height lead to oak trees being associated with storm gods in various cultures.May I say one last bit? A long time ago, I wonder what sort of person painted this? Dialga's Roar of Time...Palkia's Spacial Rend...To the people back then, those Pokémon really must have appeared to rule over time and space. Seeing them must have shaken the people to their very core. This painting represents those feelings of awe, wonder, and everything else. It passed that memory to countless people, eventually becoming a myth...
While I disagree with most of the rest of your post, this point cannot be emphasized enoughLegends Arceus' plot is also disrespectful to the real history it is based on. Essentially, we are playing as the direct equivalent to a real life group that actually aimed for genocide of the real life people's, who were religious, kinda like... hm....
View attachment 540800
(what the Galaxy Hall is based on)
to be FAIR to Game Freak, this building is the (former) Hokkaido Government Office building which was to my knowledge revamped after the Hokkaido Development Commission (Department of Colonization) was abolished after around 20ish years.
This Department of Colonization brutally colonized Hokkaido to the active detriment of the Ainu, people who lived there already, they lost their culture as they were assimilated (again, aggressively, trying to remove their culture and replace it) and Ainu have been discriminated for a long, long time. To my reading, and a frankly very direct correlation, the two opposing factions we see in Legends Arceus are these indigenous people, and we are the colonizers. And we are just "lol wow Pokemon amirite?" waltzing in and taking it over mostly willingly, we are such nice people just trying to slice our own piece of this land pie, right? (Every action done has to be approved by the colonizers in this game)
Look imma let you finish, but RT's plot is fine main game. Post game is awkward though with how they had to pile on legendaries, same with the player coming backpeople compare its plot to Pokemon Mystery Dungeon 1 (the PMD game with the dogshit plot that no one younger than 35 enjoys) but even that game at least makes more sense, and has interesting things. It answers questions like: Why is the player here? Why are these disasters happening? which isn't a lot but at least something I guess.
the draconids are pretty bad indigenous rep too tbh. while yes i dont expect pokemon to tackle racism/colonization as a topic, i also dont think that means the usage of indigenous cultures in pokemon isnt often at best shallow and at worst stereotypical and racist. are they doing this intentionaly? probably not. but it exists in the game regardless and should be pointed outRemember the Draconids?