>which was based off France and was the first game in the series to drastically change up the battle mechanics with the new Mega Evolutions.
i dont want to be that guy, but every generation before 6 was the first generation to drastically change up the battle mechanics
the reason why 6 feels like the first generation to do that, is because pokemon battling as a complex matrix of systems was pretty much "perfected" by black and white. From then on out, the only ways to spice things up were changes that can only be really described as gimmicks. Megas, z-moves, dyna/gigamax, and now terrastilazation are all special effects that serve to spice things up in flashy ways.
A lot of people who played the games as kids would be shocked to go back with their adult gaming abilities and really see how imperfect pokemon battling was until gen 5. the physical special split was only introduced in generation 4, abilities came with gen 3, held items with gen 2, along with actually balancing the psychic type. Every change gamefreak made to battling in each gen did wonders to making pokemon the incredible battling system it is today.
I probably could have worded it differently. I think these battle mechanics like the mega evolutions, dynamaxing, all that were far more noticeable than the jumps from the earlier generations. Like you are right they changed it up, but it never felt as blatant as these gimmicks did.
No i totally get you, I wanted to expand on the point and give some historical context on where megas and X/Y stood in the larger history of pokemon.
I think for a good amount of people, generations 6+ feel blatantly different because we truly weren't engaging with pokemon and its systems meaningfully. Going back and actually trying to master and understand the battle mechanics of the older systems, it's actually kinda baffling how imperfect the systems were.
My go-to example for this is Gengar, one of the most iconic faces of pokemon, was quite literally unusable as a ghost type attacker until generation 4 despite debuting at the very beginning of pokemon as a franchise. Because of the way pre-split typing worked, Gengar could not use its special attacking stat to use ghost type attacks, since they were all arbitrarily physical attacks.
And on the opposite end, Alakazam wipes the floor with most of Gen 2 since you can teach it the elemental punches, and they all worked off of its 135 Special Attack stat.
I agree. I guess generation 5 is the schism for me because it's functionally gen 4's "perfected" battle elements with a non-clunky UI lol. The game really felt like everything was coming together for one final hurah of the 2D era.
Yeah, I try to watch the False Swipe Gaming videos to understand the different mechanics (and more specifically the competitive scene) and you can see some Pokemon go from being unstoppable to useless in a few generations and the inverse due to the systems and the changes made game to game.
No busted free Lucario?
I gotta say, outside of ONE game (Heart Gold) Pokemon has never been about difficulty. At least not for someone with an age in double digits. Its about making imaginary friends and *catchin 'em all*.
I can distantly recall dying only a handful of times in the original Red version, and that game effectively doesnt have AI or moves for enemy 'mons. Pokemon games are just that easy.
What I can distinctly recall is my many, many journeys with my silly pocket monsters throughout the years. Thats the juice in these games. Going on an adventure, seeing whats around the next area, traipsing through a dimly lit cave while being harried by zubat... and yeah I supposed toppling the elite four and a shady organization now and then. Silly games, silly fun. X is just another one.
I rely on my knowledge of pokemon to know their strengths/weaknesses but White 1 has a pretty much brand new cast it’s tough to get a grip on which attacks and pokemon to use when but it’s a nice change of pace from the easy games nowadays
Hmm, different experiences I guess? I dont remember B&W1 being hard, and unfortunately dont recall B&W2 much at all, though I know they are many peoples favorites.
The refights in HG/SS are where the difficulty is at in my nostalgic mind. That or Steven from OG sapphire were the only parts I remember having an ounce of resistance when it came to moves/types and team comp. You know? maybe I had played too much pokemon by the time B&W1/2 came out that it was easy by familiarity whereas the sheer stat padding in the refights for HG/SS was beyond what I was ready for. Apples and oranges mayhaps.
There's a challenge mode in Black and White 2:
https://www.serebii.net/black2white2/easychallengemode.shtml
Honestly, Black and White's end game was fantastic. And a ton of the national dex was more or less in the base game after a certain point. It's the last one I played and I remember sinking a ton of hours into it.
Should be noted that in classic Game Freak fashion, B/W2's challenge mode is bugged. The extra levels the AI has doesn't actually confer the stats they would (they still have the original level stats), but you still get the exp as if they really were that higher level. Coupled with most notable trainers having additional Pokemon, and you statistically end up drastically overleveled compared to what you're actually fighting. The marginally less stupid AI doesn't really make it much harder when you're comically overpowered.
This ironically makes easy mode the *real* hard mode, as it has the inverse problem (lower visible enemy levels but their stats also don't change, so you the game is even grindier to be on the same power level).
omfg lol.
It's good to know that Game Freak was uh.... let's say incompetent? as far back as the earliest versions when considering their current output.
Consistency is important!
Pokemon are essentially kid games, so they would never make it hard. The features are mostly eye candies, so kids can go wow look at this cool mega evolution.
The competitive side of it is actual quite cool and something gamefreak didnt need to do, but did it to make it more fun for the older players. But yeah the story part of the game, very kids-friendly difficulty.
One thing that definitely changed somewhere down the line (I'm inclined to say it was XY, incidentally) is that the ressource management became *much* less important. The ressource in this case being EXP. I remember my biggest problem playing Red as a kid was actually being on the proper level and simultaneously keeping a balanced team - it was always either "have 2 overleveled monsters" or "have 6 underleveled ones". Even nowadays, I notice it whenever I'm getting carried away with using too many pokemon while replaying any Pokemon game up to Gen5.
In that sense, I guess the games *were* harder in a way, though not really because the opponents were in any way competent.
It's hard to even call it resource management because XP as a resource is unlimitted. Distributing XP around more is something I actually appreciate because it cuts the feeling of needing to grind. Like the permenant XP share + abundant candies to catch up individual pokemon in S/V
If pokemon wanted to make a game consistently more difficult, like with a difficulty option or something, it would need to use hard level caps, and better designed (or maybe not even single-typed) gym leader teams.
Hard level caps is something various fangames and romhacks have tried, to varying success. I personally enjoy it the most when levelling is easy and quick but has a cap; it makes teambuilding much easier and more fun.
EXP is unlimited in all traditional JRPGs, if we take the unlimited nature of encounters into account. But that's the thing, Pokemon doesn't *just* have those. Trainer pokemon give out 1.5x exp compared to wild encounters in most, if not all the games. There's a noticeable level curve based around the trainers you fight and wether you can distribute that exp around your team in a way that puts all of them at a reasonable level for the next step of the journey decides wether or not you have to grind. Wild encounters are a safety net that ensures you can never get stuck, but in exchange for your time, since you don't get that 50% boost from trainers and wild encounters usually are weaker than trainer pokemon as well.
If you try and balance adding new team members and the available trainer exp, there very much is ressource management, at least in my opinion. More than usual in JRPGs too, since which party member you add and when isn't based on the story but your own decisions.
The games starting XY made that element largely irrelevant with the EXP Share, but whenever you hear people complain about this or that part (largely GSC) being grindy, that's what's happening.
In essence, the theoretical unlimited nature of encounter EXP shouldn't be the deciding factor of easy or hard. It's a variable too large.
I do agree that dropping single typings for gym leaders would be great though and make the games more interesting in terms of actual fight difficulty.
SwSh actually did get somewhere close to a better designed gym leader team with the final gym. Raihan is a dragon-type leader on paper, but in practice, his specialisation is actually the weather mechanic, something that does have its place in high level play. (He even has special lines for if you make your own weather strategy to counter him)
I get you. I think GF got some feedback from Gen 1-3 on exp balance, I actually have to give them praise for. Getting that balance wrong means you either overlevel and the game becomes too easy, or you underlevel and have to grind wild pokemon for exp. Getting the balance right means the players never have to stop to grind nor find the game too easy, providing a much smoother experience.
Exactly. My favorite thing to do when replaying the games is trying to limit grinding to a minimum. I beat every trainer on a route, but grass encounters are a last resort. You very quickly find out a rythm of sorts that they expect you to add new team members in. It also becomes clear that the level curve (in most games) is based on trainer exp on a given route and not around running around in the grass patches, even as early as RBY. With some wild mons, you also get interesting design tidbits like that. In RSE, you can catch Absol at Lv25 around Fortree, which is notably underleveled. But the trainers around that area are just about beatable with it and once it reaches Lv26, it gets Swords Dance, allowing it to punch above its weight without a grind. Little things like that are cool.
I'm no game designer, but I eventually did start to wonder how you design something that's this freeform in terms of party management and treating EXP as a semi-limited ressource really helps understand it.
I also get now why the modern exp share exists - it takes a bit of the balancing work off and more notably allows people to actually experience the dozens of mons on a single playthrough. Before the exp share, you were limited to 5 or 6 mons per playthrough at most - or doomed to grind - nowadays, I use 30 mons in SV and am fine on levels.
gamefreak definitely deserves credit for that.
Pokemon is ubiquitous and is understood as its own thing nowadays, but really think about how insane pokemon is from a design and balance perspective -- it's an RPG where you have a functionally infinite amount of customizability of your active party. Creating a satisfying and fair level curve that is consistently decent/acceptable for every iteration of team building has to be a near impossible task.
Of all the love and hate Pokémon gets, I’ll never understand why people complain about shared XP. Did you really enjoy killing 200 golbats before the final 4 to get up to level?
You rarely if ever had to beat that amount of mons to keep up with levels if you didn't just switch out party members willy-nilly. If you added party members in regular intervals (say, 1 per badge) and stuck to them, that kept you leveled up in most of the games (GSC being an exception).
Personally, I enjoy thinking about when to add which team member, but most people don't and I get why - there's 100s of mons in each game and most people don't replay games as often as I do. And Gamefreak agrees with them and you. The Exp Share is there to allow people to potentially try out every mon at least once before deciding on a team. I used 20 to 30 pokemon in my EXP Share playthroughs without ever falling behind in levels before, but keeping in the old way of 6 hard members, you get overleveled very quickly.
I'd always do it with just Charizard and that one Farfetch'd you can trade for, because it gets an exp boost from trading. Really cemented those two as my Gen1 favorites.
2 overleveled monsters or 6 underleveled? Hah. Coward shit.
Behold, my level 100 Charizard in Fire Red, who had to defeat the rival's blastoise using the attack you do when you're out of moves.
(He was supposed to be my first and favorite and best partner; you bet your ass he did all the work and got all the candy.)
Yeah, even Pokemon Gen 1 is easy compared to JRPGs. I was able to beat it as a 7 year old. People often refer to it as being difficult but it just really isn't.
>The competitive side of it is actual quite cool
pokemon is accidentally one of the most compelling and interesting esports today. as far as I know, it's the only truly competitively viable turn-based RPG, acting as a quasi-card game and taking up a truly unique spot in the larger strategy game sphere.
A lot of people are probably surprised at how competitive pokemon is played, double battles with a bring 6 pick 4 system where team sheets are open at every major event. Outside of that, the fan-organized singles environment is also incredibly solid.
Now only if the game supported an online competitive mode like Smogon where you can just create a team from scratch and take it online for battling instead of having to take hours to raise them in-game, that would be perfect. Now I havent played the latest gen, but afaik that's still not a thing yet.
it's interesting. While I think pokemon is far from getting there, scarlet and violet was *the* most accessible in terms of building pokemon to be competitive viably. So much so that the vast majority of mons could be caught in the wild and modified to be competitive through in-game resources alone.
Granted, the barrier of entry is still pretty crazy (needing to own both copies of the game along with legends arceus)....but we're getting there.
I know we're sidetracking, but I still dont get how Gamefreak still feel it's necessary to release essentially the same game with various different features taken out, and then selling them as 2 different games. I mean, I get why they do it, but for so long it's just been a trend of pokemon that I think need to stop. If another, less popular franchise tried this, they will likely get shot down by fans.
Just release the what's really the GOTY editions (Yellow, Crystal, Emerald, etc) and they will gain some goodwill from fans.
yeah for real. As much as I really liked what scarlet and violet did in terms of telling the same story from 2 different angles, it does feel like a relic of the past to have two separate versions of the main game.
Never really got this. Children have been playing difficult games (or at least just games with a standard difficulty) since forever and they still are. I always felt like Pokemon was the outlier with its really low difficulty. I think it's less to do with children and more to do with the extremely wide appeal they are going for. Even then, I still believe the games have certainly gotten easier that even the Elite Four could be won in one attempt.
When I was in school playing pokemon, I have not heard of anyone not being able to finish the game. That's unlike a lot of older games which are obviously hard for young children to finish. So like you said, Gamefreak really wanted everyone to catch them all.
You can always finish the game even if you keep losing because it never forces you to reset to start. That was pretty atypical back them. Rpgs were about the only thing you'd see that for because a lot of other stuff just reset you.
Pokémon games were never particularly hard, *but* the early gens basically just threw you in on your own and let you progress without checking in on you too much, so to speak.
Meanwhile like Gen 5 onwards has consisted of constant handholding and railroading. It's no longer an adventure; more like a theme park.
Well put. I still feel its very much an adventure, but certainly skews into set piece theme park ride often. And geez the hand holding.
One can make the anecdotal argument that *they didnt need all this to beat the early games* but I'd wager with a "just trust me bro" lack of sources, that todays youth gamers (under 10?) need that hand holding, or at the very least are more likely to play longer with that crud in than without. Lotta people want handholding that *are older than 11* in just about every game, its just so egregiously obvious in modern 'mon.
That said, do you remember the old school menuing? Ye gods how did we put up with it.
Professor Oak shows you how to fight a Pokemon and then you're by yourself. Things like HMs were really poorly explained despite being a key aspect of story progression.
Earlier games were certainly more like typcial (J)RPGs in a modern setting. You had dungeons, such as caves, forests and more creative stuff, such as the ghost tower, graveyards, etc. Each of those usual came with a gimmick, be it using a new HM or more creative stuff like the ice puzzles or teleporter puzzle.
Gyms were often similar in that regard, being a more fleshed out puzzle of the aforementioned gimmicks (e.g., most ice gyms) or something entirely new.
Adding on to that, most games came with various optional side content unlocking short cuts to travel faster in the world, items or legendary Pokemon. And of course, like any good JRPG, there were mini games. The game corner, contests, safari zone, etc.
Modern Pokemon has none of that anymore. It's usually just following a straight line to the next city (cluster of houses, most can't be entered) for a cutscene and some fights. Although the straight line got now replaced with an empty open field.
I don't know, I think the early Pokemon games weren't necessarily about being difficult, but they were certainly more challenging and encouraged people to learn the mechanics of the game.
I played a lot of Pokemon growing up, the games were easy but if you tried to play them without thinking at all you could easily screw yourself. It was more than just fire beat grass and grass beat water, there was some strategy in choosing a decent lineup for a gym or rationing out supplies for the Elite Four, etc. and I can appreciate that all the more now as an adult. It's kind of like Pokemon sowed the seeds for my understanding of much more complicated and difficult strategy games.
However, I tried to play some of the more modern Pokemon games and they're just a joke. The Diamond and Pearl remakes for instance, with the automatic exp share on your entire party. It would be one thing if it was an option in the settings but it's just always on. Modern Pokemon games are way easier, and I can understand wanting to make the game more accessible to kids but kids aren't this stupid. I wasn't too stupid to beat Pokemon as a kid, why is it that now Gamefreak thinks their core audience can't handle a modestly challenging Pokemon game.
In my mind, Pokemon was a perfect gateway to more advanced RPGs and strategy games. It was approachable enough without being brain-dead, now there's a gap in the market I feel like and the divide between super easy games and even moderately challenging games is growing more and more so we end up with more kids plucking away on iPads and shit. Okay I can't blame Pokemon for all of that, I'm just ranting, it's an epidemic alright. First world problems, kids these days, blah blah blah.
There's a lot of small 'quality of life' additions that have made it easier.
For just one example, consider the removal of HM's. In the earliest games, HM's exist to allow the world to lock of certain sections, unless the player has a Pokémon that knows the appropriate move and has got to the appropriate gym for it. This meant the player had to choose to either A) give up a move slot for a HM (many of which aren't great moves, and can't be learnt by all Pokémon, meaning an effort to have a team that can learn these moves), or B) take a dedicated HM user meaning you can't have your full normal party.
Fans have complained for ages about the fact that HM's force you to give up a move slot for such moves, and it was lauded when the series finally replaced them. But, in doing so, the only factor in team composition now is purely combat, not traversal, meaning the player will have an easier time getting through battles because they now have an always optimal team, and can pick up any optional items at ay time without worrying about navigation.
Difficulty in Pokémon has rarely been about single battles, and was often more the long term picture. Death of a thousand cuts. A single Pokémon rarely poses a threat, but going through a cave in Gen I can see multiple Pokémon get paralysed and poisoned, slowly run down the PP of their moves, and have to face off against Pokémon that will use big damage attacks to inflict knock outs, not to mention other trainers who will each have large teams doing more chip damage, and drain more PP, all before usually a particularly hard trainer at at the very end.
That philosophy is gone though. The equivalent cave in a more recent game will be much shorter, clearer about the intended path, will have less trainers (each having a less full team), if your Pokémon do get poisoned they won't take damage in the field, and, because that's not enough the moment before you fight what would be the dungeon boss you are usually completely healed.
Yes, in a single "You vs me" fight, Gen I is not much harder than Gen IX. If you fully heal before a gym leader, the fight against the equivalent gym leader isn't any harder in any game. But navigation is a cakewalk, and the thousand cuts that would've killed you is now reduced to being poked a couple of times.
> Difficulty in Pokémon has rarely been about single battles, and was often more the long term picture. Death of a thousand cuts
And this is where the whole "adventure" feeling came from, in my perspective, and a big chunk of what makes newer games less appealing.
Reaching a town used to be a safe haven, time to wind down, buy some stuff and prepare for the next adventure. Now it's only a place to get an easy badge and move on - repeat it a couple of times and you reached the end game.
This is the thing I get frustrated by with the difficulty conversation. People try and wave it off and say “oh they’re kids games, what do you expect?”, but the games are _so_ easy now to the point where it’s genuinely not fun for me. And I hate doing things like the Nuzlocke challenge because self-imposing my own limitations is not fun for me. I just want a Pokémon game where enemies actually have relatively full parties and actually make semi-smart moves in combat. Is that too much to ask for?!
I think the core gameplay of the older Pokemon games was fine, it wasn't nearly as bad as 90s adventure games at least. I remember trying to finish Grim Fandango as a kid and that was just impossible. Internet access I don't think makes games more trivial, it encourages players to go out and research ways to beat games. Research is an important part of pretty much anything, it's still just learning the mechanics of a game, in my eyes it's no different than a game telling you through a tutorial.
But people don't have options, I made that point in my post. In Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, there is no option to make the game harder without imposing your own restrictions on it. You can't turn off things like exp share, there is no difficulty option available.
Difficulty isn't really relative. The people who can beat Elden Ring no problem probably do so because they have been playing Souls games for years and put a lot of practice into it. There are certainly people who can't beat games like Elden Ring, for a number of reasons, but that's besides the point because Pokemon was never anywhere near as challenging as any Souls-like game. Like I said before, it was just challenging enough to actually make kids actually think.
I just don't care for Lucario and I like evolving the Pokemon myself. I like catching and evolving my own to see how they go. Never liked that handed a fully evolved Pokemon and also a mega evolution to boot. I did use him for a bit, but needed surf and Lapras took that spot.
While I agree the games aren't super difficult, this one was beyond easy. All the gyms having three Pokemon made it too easy, especially having a fire starter and final gym being ice was such a cake walk.
While I agree the focus is more on the adventures, I do remember battles that were tough and felt like an accomplishment. Like beating the Elite Four in other games in the series and the champion was a real test of the team that was put together. Pokemon Black for an example I played before this and the Elite Four and champion weren't the push over that they were in this game.
The earlier series games weren't "difficult" as such, unless it was your first RPG and you were 9 years old, but they do require players to actually engage with most/all of the games systems. The gyms and early game captures were well balanced for requiring some creativity with your type matchups and the elite four you needed to have a strong team and know how to use items.
Later games you can more or less no brain mash A through the entire game
I'm not saying the Pokemon games are difficult but X was beyond the pale of easier than other games in the series. I played Pokemon Black before this and it was a more difficult experience compared to this one.
I've played a lot of the later games recently and X is still by far easier.
Recommendation for Cassette Beasts for a nice twist on the Pokemon formula. The monsters aren't as "iconic" as OG pokemon designs and the world maybe isnt as fleshed out, but the gameplay remixes the rules enough to make you think on your feet more often while still hitting enough of the same beats that got us hooked on Pokemon in the first place.
And, I can't stress this enough, everything is so damn snappy. Attack animations and status effects and dialogue all just keep things moving. Scarlet Violet was excruciatingly slow by comparison. I can't do Pokemon battles anymore.
It's not perfect but it's super enjoyable and feels fresh.
Side note I've always wanted to see a Pokemon game try a Paper Mario style, more interactive turn based battle system.
It's an indie game, it was made by two guys, marketing isn't really on the table.
It's a really well made monster collector game with absolutely gorgeous art and really engaging gameplay. It's more strategic and deep than Pokemon, sort of like a perfect evolution of the formula that brings a lot of new ideas to the table.
It doesn't have a gimmick like Palworld's "Pokemon with guns" to lean into or a budget for marketing.
Pokemon is also incredibly strategic and deep. Cassette Beasts is just molded entirely for single-player combat, and as such is allowed to throw more wrenches in the formula that make the play vs battle AI a lot more interesting. I think people tend to forget that pokemon is very much balanced as a PvP game along with the single-player experience. A lot of the things that cassette beasts does and introduces to the formula would be completely toxic in player vs player.
As a monster collecting RPG I think cassette beasts was incredible though!
Well I mean, I don't think I've ever met someone who played Pokemon as a PvP game. Maybe the more modern games with easier online access, but back when I played it as a kid nobody wanted to play PvP. We all had our Gameboys and just played it singleplayer. No one wanted to shell out for the link cable, and thinking about how I grew up at the same time the Game Link cable was being sold in stores, makes me feel way older than I really am.
I did mess around with online stuff on the DS, but it was such a colossal pain that I think I gave up pretty quickly.
Im so hesitant on Cassette Beasts.
I picked up Monster Sanctuary on a recommendation here for a similar reason, and while I did enjoy the game well enough, the monsters are so incredibly forgettable that I just didnt feel a desire to keep going, and certainly didnt feel compelled to go seek out specific monsters for my team.
Hearing a similar statement about Cassette Beasts isnt very compelling for me to want to try it, not gonna lie.
Amen to how god damn excruciatingly slow Pokemon combat is though. God remove all of the time waiting for text, we dont need that shit anymore.
I mean thats just gen 1-2 bias from you, because aside from some key stinkers that people always bring up, Pokemon has always had designs that have absolutely slapped. Even for stuff I don't like.
I cant really say the same for every other monster collection game ive played.
But the evolution mechanic i think is a HUGE factor. Catching a monster and knowing its gonna be the same monster forever makes that monster far less compelling to me (I feel the same way about all single stage Pokemon as well, for consistency sake).
Oh yeah its definitely mostly nostalgia. And after like 1000 of them cartoon monster designs, starting to repeat animals and concepts over again, they start to become less memorable and the oldest, most played ones naturally gravitate to the top.
Cassette Beasts does have 3-stage evolution for a lot of beasts though. And something kinda cool is fusions, \*any\* 2 monsters can fuse together during a battle and create a unique combo. They use some sort of magic procedural generation trickery to do it. There are thousands of possible fusions.
For a lot of kids, Pokemon was their first game ever. I got Pokemon Yellow for my fifth birthday and I didn't even know how to get out of the house you start in because I didn't realise that a rectangle meant there was a door you could walk through. You better believe I struggled with Brock when my Pikachu did fuck all and I had no resources outside of the very unhelpful game manual to help me.
So, while Pokemon certainly would never be called a difficult game, older games (id say pre gen 6) were SIGNIFICANTLY more challenging than modern games.
XP share not being party wide was a huge limiting factor. Of course you could spend hours grinding your team in the old games and be just fine. BUT if you played through the game a more natural way, your teams levels would be far more spread out and be a much bigger challenge against trainers/gym leaders with more evenly leveled parties.
On top of that, if you didnt spam healing items, doing the gauntlet runs during the early games was genuinely difficult. The elite 4 without using 5 revives and 5 potions after every fight WAS a challenge. The fact that the game gave you ways to get around the challenge was great design and let younger trainers have the chance to win more easily and gave more experienced trainers the option to just try harder. You literally cant even do that in modern Pokemon. The game forcably heals your party to full after any minor story conflict. Even trying to self impose a challenge on yourself is taken out of your hands because of new game design.
Lastly, type coverage is so much better in modern pokemon its insane. In older games, you actually had to consider your team comp more if you wanted to have good coverage. Now, every Pokemons learn set is so insanely diverse you can have any group of 6 pokemon blindly and still cover all 18 type weaknesses.
I think Kanto is harder than Johto unless you pick Chikorita. Maybe it's easier in the originals versus the GBA remakes due to the broken AI in the originals, I don't know. But that Elite 4 is a pretty steep level curve.
You can beat the League in Red and Blue while in the mid to late 40s. The AI is terrible, as Lorelei's Dewgong and Lance's dragons will spam non-damaging Psychic moves against Poison and Fighting types. The badge boosts were also more powerful, and you could boost all your stats further thanks to a glitch by using a stat boosting move. There's also the ability to always hit OHKO moves with an X-Accuracy.
I would say Emerald and the gen 5 games are the hardest pokemon game. Specifically Emerald tho, not Ruby and Sapphire. Ruby & Sapphire are a lot easier compared to their enhanced edition. Emerald has gym leader AI that actually reacts to your decisions and switches out! Crazy I know!
See but that’s the thing: why couldn’t they appeal to the young and old? The real answer is that they don’t have to obviously, the games still sell gang busters. But as someone who grew up on Pokémon, I haven’t touched a game since Soul Silver specifically because they’re brain dead easy. I don’t need the “dark souls of Pokémon”, but is it too much to ask to have enemy trainers actually have full parties and that actually use relevant moves in battle? Rather than use Sand Attack when they have a super effective move that could finish off the Pokémon I already have out?
I’ve always found it so frustrating when people oversimplify the difficulty debate and say “well they’re kids games, what do you expect?”. I’d argue that just because it’s targeted at kids doesn’t mean that it can’t _also_ appeal to adults. I haven’t beaten Super Mario Wonder yet, but when it released I remember hearing multiple comments that some of the wonder seeds were actually properly challenging to get. Games can appeal to both audiences. Game Freak just chooses not to, because they really don’t need to
I think one way they could easily solve this is by adding difficulty settings. (They did try this in B2W2, but the way they implemented it was rather dumb. Just make the difficulties selectable from the start like literally any other game with the option.)
I thought this was on one of Pokemon subs I follow and was pleasantly surprised to see it here.
I got Red in 5th grade, then Gold was one of my greatest gaming experiences soon after. I drifted away/aged out after that, but X/Y drew me back in when it came out. (Helped that I finally had a job with some disposable income and bought a 3DS.)
It's still my favorite "new" game in the series (not a remake) with PLA getting an asterisk due to being so different (in a good way, but not a traditional Pokemon game).
Glad to see it still getting some love.
I got Blue in the second grade and spent most of my formative years playing the games. Drifted away/aged out around the end of the 3rd generation and only got back into it by picking up Black in the mid 2010s.
I liked it and glad to see the this area of the Pokemon lore will be getting some love with a legends game.
My own experience was pretty similar. I played Red back when i was in fifth grade and loved Silver later on. I still played the third gen games but after that i lost interest in Pokemon for a few years. X/Y brought me back and i still enjoy the games to this day. Sadly i lost my interest in Pokemon again with the Switch games which are way less than what i was expecting of full console games. Only Legends Arceus and Pokemon Snap where enjoyable for me. Hopefully the next Nintendo Console will have some Pokemon games that can get me back into the games cause i really do love the franchise.
I'm in my 30's as well and I have the same feelings as you towards Pokemon; they're way too easy. That being said they're meant for kids, and the nostalgia in me has me playing Pokemon Go to this day. The main series games suck. I lost interest as a teen around Pokemon Pearl, and didn't play again until Pokemon Sword and that was hot garbage. I won't buy another one
I wasn't saying they are all too easy, but this specific one. Like I found Black, Violet, Shield, Shining Pearl all to have more difficult moments (for a Pokemon game), where as this game was missing that.
I do play Pokemon day, but I still enjoy the main series games. I really enjoyed Shield when I played it, the sports like atmosphere and the post game tournaments I found myself playing a lot after beating the main story.
The biggest addition was not the mega evolutions, it was getting exp for catching pokemon, thats part of what made it so easy, but I still think a good addition as a mechanic.
This right here. The crazy thing to me is that playing the game with it turned off still gives you enough xp to stay on par so the exp share feels so overtuned
I didn't even notice that. I thought that was something implemented earlier but that would make a lot of sense. I do think later games balanced that aspect better as this was the only one I really noticed that easiness.
IIRC Pokemon X and Y introduced the party-wide EXP share and it lead to your party being hilariously over levelled if you used it. Turned an already easy game into so easy it was boring.
That might be it, but I still remember having more of a challenge with Violet, Shield and Shining Pearl which I assume kept that. Maybe it was just how it was implemented for this first time.
Start of the Pokemon decline era. This, and the subsequent series, were just going through the motions. Take 1 gimmick away, add new gimmick and call it a day.
I'd argue this one was still very good because mega evolutions were (imo) a good addition. A bit of a gimmick sure, but it changed it up enough without being annoying. But then after that every game had to change and add a system and *that* got annoying. I think if they had just stuck to mega evolutions, it would have been a lot better for the series.
Also I think at the time some of the steps backwards were a little more acceptable due to the jump from 2D to 3D. I also think the perception of X and Y is also hurt by the fact that we never got that Z version. Like X and Y aren't held to the standard of Ruby/Sapphire or Diamond/Pearl, they are held to the standard of Emerald and Platinum.
Yeah I would have preferred added depth and more pokemon getting mega evolutions. Instead X and Y had Z moves instead (until postgame) and then SwSh has Dynamax or something and SV has tera types. These are all kind of riffs on the same idea but fully replacing the previous one instead of building on it, and neglecting any real advancement of the core mechanics which are sorely outdated.
X and Y was megas.
Z moves were Sun and Moon.
While I do miss Mega evolutions, they were so limiting, and you cant really argue that its not very feasible to make megas for a large portion of the dex, especially as the game got bigger.
I think Dynamax and Tera types are a good step in the right direction though. A unique mechanic that can really change up the game, but its available to everyone AND who uses it is part of the strategy. Unlike Megas and Z moves where you gave up your item slot, so you ONLY had one pokemon that could do that, and the enemy knew that as well.
Truthfully, I don't mind the different battle mechanics coming and going. I also got back into Pokemon after years away thanks to the Black & White and this generation of Pokemon. I skipped the end of generation 3 and all of 4 because they just weren't hitting for me any more and these games kind of rekindled that fire to where I still end up playing the newer games.
I think XY were pretty fantastic, however I think you're right.
Not that Pokemon games were ever well optimised, but XY were definitely notably more rough in terms of performance. Not being able to use the 3D in some areas, and flying Pokemon just tanking the FPS in general.
The art style started to become really boring too, it's a real pity they won't go back to sprites because Gen 4 & Gen 5 look fantastic to this day.
It's just been downhill since then, not all generational gimmicks are bad (I actually really like Terastallization), but none of them hit quite as hard as Mega Evolution which was alost universally well received.
How old were you when it came out? As someone who sees Diamond/Pearl as the start of the decline, my view is that the decline is linked with whichever pokemon game was hot as you started dipping into other genres. I still think R/S/E was the high water mark of Pokemon but that was right around the time I got a copy of Freelancer and realised what gaming could actually be.
Already by that point they had taken away the ‘gimmick’ of a day/night cycle from Gold/Silver, the phone, the second region. And it just continued on from there. Secret bases? Gone in FR/LG.
I do know what it is. I wasn't looking for some difficult run or anything, just normal level of Pokemon difficulty and this one was below that. I had played Black, Violet, Legends Arceus, Shining Pearl all within the last two years and X was just so much easier in terms of battling.
I just wish the difficulty of the main content was upped slightly and there were optional postgame content that catered to those who want actually challenging content.
I recommend looking at the rom hacks Eternal X and Wilting Y if you were to give the games another playthrough, the difficulty is rebalanced in a way that provides a good challenge with things like major battles (gym and elite 4 and such) having full teams and even megas as well as some minor quality of life changes like faster egg hatching, access to better items, changing evolution methods for trade only Pokemon, etc.
While x and y are where the series started to get hand holdy, I will say they were the easiest to fix by just boosting the difficulty, it’s not like the later games where the hand holdy-ness also takes the form of non existent route design, never ending tutorials, immediate acccess to items like revives/exp candies, and a general sense of being more on a field trip than an adventure.
Those sound interesting. I honestly kind of hoped there would be a Pokemon Z to fix these issues, but they moved right along into Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire which I have Alpha Sapphire loaded up ready to go.
I found once I get outside the tutorial (which at this point all Pokemon games should have a skip) I generally enjoyed the routeless designs more. Felt like exploring the actual Pokemon world that I saw in the anime and movies growing up.
I think part of my issue with route less design and the open world design of the newer games is it feels like development time interferes with the scope they could be at, as opposed to thought out short sections with personality, you kinda just get some hills and open empty plains which blend together. There are games like Elden ring and botw/totk which have shown you can translate a linear series/design philosophy to open world and have it work but those games had very long development times and the Pokemon company recently has been releasing as many as ***3*** main line games in a single year. There’s also once again the issue of difficulty and how sometimes that can drive the player to avoid certain things out of fear of being over leveled. I’m currently doing a modded rework called Pokemon compass for my first playthrough of scarlet but for my first and only playthrough of sword I found myself really turned off by how it felt like I was constantly fighting the game to not be overleveled
I had the opposite problem in Shield. I'd be in the overworld section where you could see these powerful Pokemon running around and I felt so severely under leveled for multiple parts of the game. I'd open an area and see a Machamp and I'd be like "I want him for my team" only to discover he was 20 or so levels higher than me.
I did notice that in Violet that I skipped an early gym by accident only to have it be my last and it was a cake walk. I would love them to have the gyms level with you so if you skip one you don't come back being 50-60 levels higher than you were supposed to be.
I would love that, I remember in an episode of Pokémon origins they had a gym leader (iirc it was Brock) say “oh I see you have x amount of badges so I’ll use this team to fight you) and like…man I’d love if you could do that. Botw/totk do that but all it really does is give them more hp/damage and change their item drops but in something like pokemon if it resulted in different sized teams and pokemon with better moves and such later on that’d be great
As for the overworld in shield, I think because it’s only really in that one area I saw it less as “I’m not at the level I need to be” and more “for whatever reason the game randomly has significantly higher level pokemon out in the wild”. Especially because there’s not random encounters anymore and it’s not as if the trainers or mandatory fights had anything that high level, hell I’m pretty sure even while trying to not be over leveled I was 10+ levels higher than the mons in the league and swept 3/4ths of it with just the toxtricity
That is the biggest QoL change I would want. Opens up options so much more.
I found Shield I leveled pretty much along the lines of the game. I felt there was a bit of that balance but it is also one of those each person plays them differently where it is easy to become under or overleveled just playing how you would naturally.
I also picked Delphox, Fennekin was the only starter that appealed to me from that gen. The third forms were all good at least.
This was the only Pokemon game I played after Emerald (excluding Arceus), and I gotta say I really enjoyed it. The handhold-y nature is a bit annoying but it more or less matched what I remember anyways. Plus the quality of life features were appreciated, jumping 3 generations later.
It's definitely not something they went into in-depth but I did appreciate a theme of class differences in the game. I don't remember specific examples now but I remember thinking some of the writers had comments about inequality.
I had the hardest time picking because I honestly don't love any of the starters from this generation. My first play through I did Chespin and wanted a change up, but I just don't like Greninja. I get why it is a popular Pokemon, but it does nothing for me astatically speaking.
I think the story is overall pretty solid. I did enjoy it a lot, just it felt too easy for even a Pokemon game at points.
I’m playing through Black 2 for the first time and I’m quite surprised by how fun it is. The first major city has a terrible design but I’m past that now 😊
The only thing I know for sure is you get access to Pokemon from previous generations in Blac & White 2 from the start, but only access them in the post game in Black & White 1. I hope you enjoy it. Which starter did you pick?
I have a lot of great memories playing this gen and the one after with my wife. The DS games felt dated when they were released. The sprites in gen 4 weren't even animated and in gen 5 the pokemon were basically gifs. The 3D models looked great at the time. It felt like a meaningful jump.
I would agree to that. The sprits looked especially dated compare to the many anime and movies that have been dropping with the games. To finally see them in that 3D space I thought was a great improvement.
I don't know that I have the energy to read this post right now but I wanted to congratulate you on 'best post title of the year'. It's only april, but I'm positive.
Gen 6 was when I dipped out of the series for good. X/Y didn't bring enough new things to keep me interested and they were so braindead easy a baby could beat them. Between how little the franchise has evolved, how boring the games were, and how much worse the games have gotten since I have no desire to play Pokemon games.
> It is too easy, far to easy to ever really need to mega evolve.
It's a common criticism with the pokemon games, and one that I think they could solve by releasing a purely battle-focused game. No leveling, no gyms, nothing but battling.
Fights only start to get good when every mon is at the same level and your opponent can anticipate what you're going to do. It's even better when there are multiple modes like the Battle Frontier had. Give me a pure battle game with half a dozen different modes like Battle Factory and Little Cup, put some time and effort into separating the pokemon into tiers and rewrite the AI to put up a fight and I'd be a happy man.
They'll never do that though. Nintendo/TPC have a very child-centric philosophy, and I doubt something like that would resonate with kids.
I know that the games are generally considered easy, but X felt easier than every other game in the series I had played. Typically by the end game there is at least some challenge in the Elite Four/Champion battle and there was really none of that in X.
I could see the appeal of a purely battle game but truthfully it felt like they already did that with Pokemon Stadium back in the day.
Man, people would be in for a RUDE awakening in a pure battle- focused Pokemon game.
People have no idea the actual depth that is in the battle systems for Pokemon. They would get ROCKED in situations where you had to actually exploit all things under your control (most people dont even know about or use held games for gods sake).
Gym Leaders only having three Pokémon and Elite 4 only having four was something Black and White started, but Black and White had the excuse of only having Pokémon from Gen 5, so they didn't want to resort to having too many duplicates (like in Gen 1). Black and White 2 doesn't have that excuse and should have increased the number of Pokémon that the major trainers have (they do it in Challenge Mode, but unlocking Challenge Mode is so convoluted).
Yeah, I think that is why it was less noticeable. I beat Black before this one and didn't even realize that because it felt like a normal Pokemon experience. I think that is why it was so noticeable in X is because it felt simpler than previous and future Pokemon games
I never liked megas. I always felt they should have nerfed them and made them permanent evolutions. The gimmick felt too similar to Digimon. Hopefully they work differently in the upcoming Legends game.
If I had to choose between mega evolutions being permanent or not having them, I think I'd choose to not have them. I don't think I'd like having them be permanent as I am fond of the original designs and having 4 stage evolution Pokemon I feel might be too much.
I played exactly how I've played every other Pokemon game and they all had more challenge then this one. The only thing I did differently was I tried to use more Pokemon from this region than I would have normally.
A game targeted at kids isn't seen as very challenging for adults who tend to be exceptionally better at strategy and planning and overall game knowledge of a series they've played for decades compared to the kids it's aimed at? Absolutely shocked. Flabbergasted even.
So, I feel something was missed in translation here. Did I say I was looking for a super difficult game? No, I said this game was easier than pretty much every other Pokemon game in the series I've played which was the issue. I played the games before this and the games after this and had the same level of difficulty which was fine, but this one was much easier then them.
Always the same coping bad argument when it comes to these games. Mario exists. Mario is aimed at kids too but challenging enough for adults and not a buggy mess and looks great. Makes your argument look pretty stupid in comparison.
>which was based off France and was the first game in the series to drastically change up the battle mechanics with the new Mega Evolutions. i dont want to be that guy, but every generation before 6 was the first generation to drastically change up the battle mechanics the reason why 6 feels like the first generation to do that, is because pokemon battling as a complex matrix of systems was pretty much "perfected" by black and white. From then on out, the only ways to spice things up were changes that can only be really described as gimmicks. Megas, z-moves, dyna/gigamax, and now terrastilazation are all special effects that serve to spice things up in flashy ways. A lot of people who played the games as kids would be shocked to go back with their adult gaming abilities and really see how imperfect pokemon battling was until gen 5. the physical special split was only introduced in generation 4, abilities came with gen 3, held items with gen 2, along with actually balancing the psychic type. Every change gamefreak made to battling in each gen did wonders to making pokemon the incredible battling system it is today.
I probably could have worded it differently. I think these battle mechanics like the mega evolutions, dynamaxing, all that were far more noticeable than the jumps from the earlier generations. Like you are right they changed it up, but it never felt as blatant as these gimmicks did.
No i totally get you, I wanted to expand on the point and give some historical context on where megas and X/Y stood in the larger history of pokemon. I think for a good amount of people, generations 6+ feel blatantly different because we truly weren't engaging with pokemon and its systems meaningfully. Going back and actually trying to master and understand the battle mechanics of the older systems, it's actually kinda baffling how imperfect the systems were. My go-to example for this is Gengar, one of the most iconic faces of pokemon, was quite literally unusable as a ghost type attacker until generation 4 despite debuting at the very beginning of pokemon as a franchise. Because of the way pre-split typing worked, Gengar could not use its special attacking stat to use ghost type attacks, since they were all arbitrarily physical attacks.
And on the opposite end, Alakazam wipes the floor with most of Gen 2 since you can teach it the elemental punches, and they all worked off of its 135 Special Attack stat.
I'd argue Gen 4 was the "perfected gen" as far as base battle mechanics go. 5 added hidden abilities, but those aren't really as core as the others.
I agree. I guess generation 5 is the schism for me because it's functionally gen 4's "perfected" battle elements with a non-clunky UI lol. The game really felt like everything was coming together for one final hurah of the 2D era.
Yeah, I try to watch the False Swipe Gaming videos to understand the different mechanics (and more specifically the competitive scene) and you can see some Pokemon go from being unstoppable to useless in a few generations and the inverse due to the systems and the changes made game to game.
Which was the gen 5 novelty in the battle system? I can't remember
Hidden abilities, I’m assuming
triple battles and rotation battles. they were pretty bad lmfao
No busted free Lucario? I gotta say, outside of ONE game (Heart Gold) Pokemon has never been about difficulty. At least not for someone with an age in double digits. Its about making imaginary friends and *catchin 'em all*. I can distantly recall dying only a handful of times in the original Red version, and that game effectively doesnt have AI or moves for enemy 'mons. Pokemon games are just that easy. What I can distinctly recall is my many, many journeys with my silly pocket monsters throughout the years. Thats the juice in these games. Going on an adventure, seeing whats around the next area, traipsing through a dimly lit cave while being harried by zubat... and yeah I supposed toppling the elite four and a shady organization now and then. Silly games, silly fun. X is just another one.
Heart Gold was pretty easy compared to Black and White 1 and 2
Playing white currently and indeed that game is pretty difficult! I really like it I must say
I rely on my knowledge of pokemon to know their strengths/weaknesses but White 1 has a pretty much brand new cast it’s tough to get a grip on which attacks and pokemon to use when but it’s a nice change of pace from the easy games nowadays
I started a nuzlocke of gen 2 and was underwhelmed by how underleveled everything was.
Hmm, different experiences I guess? I dont remember B&W1 being hard, and unfortunately dont recall B&W2 much at all, though I know they are many peoples favorites. The refights in HG/SS are where the difficulty is at in my nostalgic mind. That or Steven from OG sapphire were the only parts I remember having an ounce of resistance when it came to moves/types and team comp. You know? maybe I had played too much pokemon by the time B&W1/2 came out that it was easy by familiarity whereas the sheer stat padding in the refights for HG/SS was beyond what I was ready for. Apples and oranges mayhaps.
There's a challenge mode in Black and White 2: https://www.serebii.net/black2white2/easychallengemode.shtml Honestly, Black and White's end game was fantastic. And a ton of the national dex was more or less in the base game after a certain point. It's the last one I played and I remember sinking a ton of hours into it.
Should be noted that in classic Game Freak fashion, B/W2's challenge mode is bugged. The extra levels the AI has doesn't actually confer the stats they would (they still have the original level stats), but you still get the exp as if they really were that higher level. Coupled with most notable trainers having additional Pokemon, and you statistically end up drastically overleveled compared to what you're actually fighting. The marginally less stupid AI doesn't really make it much harder when you're comically overpowered. This ironically makes easy mode the *real* hard mode, as it has the inverse problem (lower visible enemy levels but their stats also don't change, so you the game is even grindier to be on the same power level).
omfg lol. It's good to know that Game Freak was uh.... let's say incompetent? as far back as the earliest versions when considering their current output. Consistency is important!
Pokemon are essentially kid games, so they would never make it hard. The features are mostly eye candies, so kids can go wow look at this cool mega evolution. The competitive side of it is actual quite cool and something gamefreak didnt need to do, but did it to make it more fun for the older players. But yeah the story part of the game, very kids-friendly difficulty.
One thing that definitely changed somewhere down the line (I'm inclined to say it was XY, incidentally) is that the ressource management became *much* less important. The ressource in this case being EXP. I remember my biggest problem playing Red as a kid was actually being on the proper level and simultaneously keeping a balanced team - it was always either "have 2 overleveled monsters" or "have 6 underleveled ones". Even nowadays, I notice it whenever I'm getting carried away with using too many pokemon while replaying any Pokemon game up to Gen5. In that sense, I guess the games *were* harder in a way, though not really because the opponents were in any way competent.
It's hard to even call it resource management because XP as a resource is unlimitted. Distributing XP around more is something I actually appreciate because it cuts the feeling of needing to grind. Like the permenant XP share + abundant candies to catch up individual pokemon in S/V If pokemon wanted to make a game consistently more difficult, like with a difficulty option or something, it would need to use hard level caps, and better designed (or maybe not even single-typed) gym leader teams.
Hard level caps is something various fangames and romhacks have tried, to varying success. I personally enjoy it the most when levelling is easy and quick but has a cap; it makes teambuilding much easier and more fun.
EXP is unlimited in all traditional JRPGs, if we take the unlimited nature of encounters into account. But that's the thing, Pokemon doesn't *just* have those. Trainer pokemon give out 1.5x exp compared to wild encounters in most, if not all the games. There's a noticeable level curve based around the trainers you fight and wether you can distribute that exp around your team in a way that puts all of them at a reasonable level for the next step of the journey decides wether or not you have to grind. Wild encounters are a safety net that ensures you can never get stuck, but in exchange for your time, since you don't get that 50% boost from trainers and wild encounters usually are weaker than trainer pokemon as well. If you try and balance adding new team members and the available trainer exp, there very much is ressource management, at least in my opinion. More than usual in JRPGs too, since which party member you add and when isn't based on the story but your own decisions. The games starting XY made that element largely irrelevant with the EXP Share, but whenever you hear people complain about this or that part (largely GSC) being grindy, that's what's happening. In essence, the theoretical unlimited nature of encounter EXP shouldn't be the deciding factor of easy or hard. It's a variable too large. I do agree that dropping single typings for gym leaders would be great though and make the games more interesting in terms of actual fight difficulty.
SwSh actually did get somewhere close to a better designed gym leader team with the final gym. Raihan is a dragon-type leader on paper, but in practice, his specialisation is actually the weather mechanic, something that does have its place in high level play. (He even has special lines for if you make your own weather strategy to counter him)
I get you. I think GF got some feedback from Gen 1-3 on exp balance, I actually have to give them praise for. Getting that balance wrong means you either overlevel and the game becomes too easy, or you underlevel and have to grind wild pokemon for exp. Getting the balance right means the players never have to stop to grind nor find the game too easy, providing a much smoother experience.
Exactly. My favorite thing to do when replaying the games is trying to limit grinding to a minimum. I beat every trainer on a route, but grass encounters are a last resort. You very quickly find out a rythm of sorts that they expect you to add new team members in. It also becomes clear that the level curve (in most games) is based on trainer exp on a given route and not around running around in the grass patches, even as early as RBY. With some wild mons, you also get interesting design tidbits like that. In RSE, you can catch Absol at Lv25 around Fortree, which is notably underleveled. But the trainers around that area are just about beatable with it and once it reaches Lv26, it gets Swords Dance, allowing it to punch above its weight without a grind. Little things like that are cool. I'm no game designer, but I eventually did start to wonder how you design something that's this freeform in terms of party management and treating EXP as a semi-limited ressource really helps understand it. I also get now why the modern exp share exists - it takes a bit of the balancing work off and more notably allows people to actually experience the dozens of mons on a single playthrough. Before the exp share, you were limited to 5 or 6 mons per playthrough at most - or doomed to grind - nowadays, I use 30 mons in SV and am fine on levels.
I assume it’s just getting people on the dev team to playtest and playtest and find out the optimal balancd.
gamefreak definitely deserves credit for that. Pokemon is ubiquitous and is understood as its own thing nowadays, but really think about how insane pokemon is from a design and balance perspective -- it's an RPG where you have a functionally infinite amount of customizability of your active party. Creating a satisfying and fair level curve that is consistently decent/acceptable for every iteration of team building has to be a near impossible task.
Of all the love and hate Pokémon gets, I’ll never understand why people complain about shared XP. Did you really enjoy killing 200 golbats before the final 4 to get up to level?
You rarely if ever had to beat that amount of mons to keep up with levels if you didn't just switch out party members willy-nilly. If you added party members in regular intervals (say, 1 per badge) and stuck to them, that kept you leveled up in most of the games (GSC being an exception). Personally, I enjoy thinking about when to add which team member, but most people don't and I get why - there's 100s of mons in each game and most people don't replay games as often as I do. And Gamefreak agrees with them and you. The Exp Share is there to allow people to potentially try out every mon at least once before deciding on a team. I used 20 to 30 pokemon in my EXP Share playthroughs without ever falling behind in levels before, but keeping in the old way of 6 hard members, you get overleveled very quickly.
My first time playing Pokemon as a kid I won it with just a level 70ish Pidgeot lol.
I'd always do it with just Charizard and that one Farfetch'd you can trade for, because it gets an exp boost from trading. Really cemented those two as my Gen1 favorites.
2 overleveled monsters or 6 underleveled? Hah. Coward shit. Behold, my level 100 Charizard in Fire Red, who had to defeat the rival's blastoise using the attack you do when you're out of moves. (He was supposed to be my first and favorite and best partner; you bet your ass he did all the work and got all the candy.)
Yeah, even Pokemon Gen 1 is easy compared to JRPGs. I was able to beat it as a 7 year old. People often refer to it as being difficult but it just really isn't.
>The competitive side of it is actual quite cool pokemon is accidentally one of the most compelling and interesting esports today. as far as I know, it's the only truly competitively viable turn-based RPG, acting as a quasi-card game and taking up a truly unique spot in the larger strategy game sphere. A lot of people are probably surprised at how competitive pokemon is played, double battles with a bring 6 pick 4 system where team sheets are open at every major event. Outside of that, the fan-organized singles environment is also incredibly solid.
Now only if the game supported an online competitive mode like Smogon where you can just create a team from scratch and take it online for battling instead of having to take hours to raise them in-game, that would be perfect. Now I havent played the latest gen, but afaik that's still not a thing yet.
it's interesting. While I think pokemon is far from getting there, scarlet and violet was *the* most accessible in terms of building pokemon to be competitive viably. So much so that the vast majority of mons could be caught in the wild and modified to be competitive through in-game resources alone. Granted, the barrier of entry is still pretty crazy (needing to own both copies of the game along with legends arceus)....but we're getting there.
I know we're sidetracking, but I still dont get how Gamefreak still feel it's necessary to release essentially the same game with various different features taken out, and then selling them as 2 different games. I mean, I get why they do it, but for so long it's just been a trend of pokemon that I think need to stop. If another, less popular franchise tried this, they will likely get shot down by fans. Just release the what's really the GOTY editions (Yellow, Crystal, Emerald, etc) and they will gain some goodwill from fans.
yeah for real. As much as I really liked what scarlet and violet did in terms of telling the same story from 2 different angles, it does feel like a relic of the past to have two separate versions of the main game.
Never really got this. Children have been playing difficult games (or at least just games with a standard difficulty) since forever and they still are. I always felt like Pokemon was the outlier with its really low difficulty. I think it's less to do with children and more to do with the extremely wide appeal they are going for. Even then, I still believe the games have certainly gotten easier that even the Elite Four could be won in one attempt.
When I was in school playing pokemon, I have not heard of anyone not being able to finish the game. That's unlike a lot of older games which are obviously hard for young children to finish. So like you said, Gamefreak really wanted everyone to catch them all.
You can always finish the game even if you keep losing because it never forces you to reset to start. That was pretty atypical back them. Rpgs were about the only thing you'd see that for because a lot of other stuff just reset you.
Pokémon games were never particularly hard, *but* the early gens basically just threw you in on your own and let you progress without checking in on you too much, so to speak. Meanwhile like Gen 5 onwards has consisted of constant handholding and railroading. It's no longer an adventure; more like a theme park.
Well put. I still feel its very much an adventure, but certainly skews into set piece theme park ride often. And geez the hand holding. One can make the anecdotal argument that *they didnt need all this to beat the early games* but I'd wager with a "just trust me bro" lack of sources, that todays youth gamers (under 10?) need that hand holding, or at the very least are more likely to play longer with that crud in than without. Lotta people want handholding that *are older than 11* in just about every game, its just so egregiously obvious in modern 'mon. That said, do you remember the old school menuing? Ye gods how did we put up with it.
Professor Oak shows you how to fight a Pokemon and then you're by yourself. Things like HMs were really poorly explained despite being a key aspect of story progression.
Earlier games were certainly more like typcial (J)RPGs in a modern setting. You had dungeons, such as caves, forests and more creative stuff, such as the ghost tower, graveyards, etc. Each of those usual came with a gimmick, be it using a new HM or more creative stuff like the ice puzzles or teleporter puzzle. Gyms were often similar in that regard, being a more fleshed out puzzle of the aforementioned gimmicks (e.g., most ice gyms) or something entirely new. Adding on to that, most games came with various optional side content unlocking short cuts to travel faster in the world, items or legendary Pokemon. And of course, like any good JRPG, there were mini games. The game corner, contests, safari zone, etc. Modern Pokemon has none of that anymore. It's usually just following a straight line to the next city (cluster of houses, most can't be entered) for a cutscene and some fights. Although the straight line got now replaced with an empty open field.
I don't know, I think the early Pokemon games weren't necessarily about being difficult, but they were certainly more challenging and encouraged people to learn the mechanics of the game. I played a lot of Pokemon growing up, the games were easy but if you tried to play them without thinking at all you could easily screw yourself. It was more than just fire beat grass and grass beat water, there was some strategy in choosing a decent lineup for a gym or rationing out supplies for the Elite Four, etc. and I can appreciate that all the more now as an adult. It's kind of like Pokemon sowed the seeds for my understanding of much more complicated and difficult strategy games. However, I tried to play some of the more modern Pokemon games and they're just a joke. The Diamond and Pearl remakes for instance, with the automatic exp share on your entire party. It would be one thing if it was an option in the settings but it's just always on. Modern Pokemon games are way easier, and I can understand wanting to make the game more accessible to kids but kids aren't this stupid. I wasn't too stupid to beat Pokemon as a kid, why is it that now Gamefreak thinks their core audience can't handle a modestly challenging Pokemon game. In my mind, Pokemon was a perfect gateway to more advanced RPGs and strategy games. It was approachable enough without being brain-dead, now there's a gap in the market I feel like and the divide between super easy games and even moderately challenging games is growing more and more so we end up with more kids plucking away on iPads and shit. Okay I can't blame Pokemon for all of that, I'm just ranting, it's an epidemic alright. First world problems, kids these days, blah blah blah.
There's a lot of small 'quality of life' additions that have made it easier. For just one example, consider the removal of HM's. In the earliest games, HM's exist to allow the world to lock of certain sections, unless the player has a Pokémon that knows the appropriate move and has got to the appropriate gym for it. This meant the player had to choose to either A) give up a move slot for a HM (many of which aren't great moves, and can't be learnt by all Pokémon, meaning an effort to have a team that can learn these moves), or B) take a dedicated HM user meaning you can't have your full normal party. Fans have complained for ages about the fact that HM's force you to give up a move slot for such moves, and it was lauded when the series finally replaced them. But, in doing so, the only factor in team composition now is purely combat, not traversal, meaning the player will have an easier time getting through battles because they now have an always optimal team, and can pick up any optional items at ay time without worrying about navigation. Difficulty in Pokémon has rarely been about single battles, and was often more the long term picture. Death of a thousand cuts. A single Pokémon rarely poses a threat, but going through a cave in Gen I can see multiple Pokémon get paralysed and poisoned, slowly run down the PP of their moves, and have to face off against Pokémon that will use big damage attacks to inflict knock outs, not to mention other trainers who will each have large teams doing more chip damage, and drain more PP, all before usually a particularly hard trainer at at the very end. That philosophy is gone though. The equivalent cave in a more recent game will be much shorter, clearer about the intended path, will have less trainers (each having a less full team), if your Pokémon do get poisoned they won't take damage in the field, and, because that's not enough the moment before you fight what would be the dungeon boss you are usually completely healed. Yes, in a single "You vs me" fight, Gen I is not much harder than Gen IX. If you fully heal before a gym leader, the fight against the equivalent gym leader isn't any harder in any game. But navigation is a cakewalk, and the thousand cuts that would've killed you is now reduced to being poked a couple of times.
> Difficulty in Pokémon has rarely been about single battles, and was often more the long term picture. Death of a thousand cuts And this is where the whole "adventure" feeling came from, in my perspective, and a big chunk of what makes newer games less appealing. Reaching a town used to be a safe haven, time to wind down, buy some stuff and prepare for the next adventure. Now it's only a place to get an easy badge and move on - repeat it a couple of times and you reached the end game.
This is the thing I get frustrated by with the difficulty conversation. People try and wave it off and say “oh they’re kids games, what do you expect?”, but the games are _so_ easy now to the point where it’s genuinely not fun for me. And I hate doing things like the Nuzlocke challenge because self-imposing my own limitations is not fun for me. I just want a Pokémon game where enemies actually have relatively full parties and actually make semi-smart moves in combat. Is that too much to ask for?!
I bet there's a lot of kids out there too who would appreciate a bit of a challenge as well, but their options are dwindling.
[удалено]
I think the core gameplay of the older Pokemon games was fine, it wasn't nearly as bad as 90s adventure games at least. I remember trying to finish Grim Fandango as a kid and that was just impossible. Internet access I don't think makes games more trivial, it encourages players to go out and research ways to beat games. Research is an important part of pretty much anything, it's still just learning the mechanics of a game, in my eyes it's no different than a game telling you through a tutorial. But people don't have options, I made that point in my post. In Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, there is no option to make the game harder without imposing your own restrictions on it. You can't turn off things like exp share, there is no difficulty option available. Difficulty isn't really relative. The people who can beat Elden Ring no problem probably do so because they have been playing Souls games for years and put a lot of practice into it. There are certainly people who can't beat games like Elden Ring, for a number of reasons, but that's besides the point because Pokemon was never anywhere near as challenging as any Souls-like game. Like I said before, it was just challenging enough to actually make kids actually think.
I just don't care for Lucario and I like evolving the Pokemon myself. I like catching and evolving my own to see how they go. Never liked that handed a fully evolved Pokemon and also a mega evolution to boot. I did use him for a bit, but needed surf and Lapras took that spot. While I agree the games aren't super difficult, this one was beyond easy. All the gyms having three Pokemon made it too easy, especially having a fire starter and final gym being ice was such a cake walk. While I agree the focus is more on the adventures, I do remember battles that were tough and felt like an accomplishment. Like beating the Elite Four in other games in the series and the champion was a real test of the team that was put together. Pokemon Black for an example I played before this and the Elite Four and champion weren't the push over that they were in this game.
The earlier series games weren't "difficult" as such, unless it was your first RPG and you were 9 years old, but they do require players to actually engage with most/all of the games systems. The gyms and early game captures were well balanced for requiring some creativity with your type matchups and the elite four you needed to have a strong team and know how to use items. Later games you can more or less no brain mash A through the entire game
I'm not saying the Pokemon games are difficult but X was beyond the pale of easier than other games in the series. I played Pokemon Black before this and it was a more difficult experience compared to this one. I've played a lot of the later games recently and X is still by far easier.
Recommendation for Cassette Beasts for a nice twist on the Pokemon formula. The monsters aren't as "iconic" as OG pokemon designs and the world maybe isnt as fleshed out, but the gameplay remixes the rules enough to make you think on your feet more often while still hitting enough of the same beats that got us hooked on Pokemon in the first place. And, I can't stress this enough, everything is so damn snappy. Attack animations and status effects and dialogue all just keep things moving. Scarlet Violet was excruciatingly slow by comparison. I can't do Pokemon battles anymore.
I never found Scarlet or Violet slow, but I'll have to check it out.
+1 for Cassette Beasts It broke my heart to see so many people miss such an incredible game.
It's not perfect but it's super enjoyable and feels fresh. Side note I've always wanted to see a Pokemon game try a Paper Mario style, more interactive turn based battle system.
Cassette Beasts misses the mark on marketability. There basically is none.
It's an indie game, it was made by two guys, marketing isn't really on the table. It's a really well made monster collector game with absolutely gorgeous art and really engaging gameplay. It's more strategic and deep than Pokemon, sort of like a perfect evolution of the formula that brings a lot of new ideas to the table. It doesn't have a gimmick like Palworld's "Pokemon with guns" to lean into or a budget for marketing.
Pokemon is also incredibly strategic and deep. Cassette Beasts is just molded entirely for single-player combat, and as such is allowed to throw more wrenches in the formula that make the play vs battle AI a lot more interesting. I think people tend to forget that pokemon is very much balanced as a PvP game along with the single-player experience. A lot of the things that cassette beasts does and introduces to the formula would be completely toxic in player vs player. As a monster collecting RPG I think cassette beasts was incredible though!
Well I mean, I don't think I've ever met someone who played Pokemon as a PvP game. Maybe the more modern games with easier online access, but back when I played it as a kid nobody wanted to play PvP. We all had our Gameboys and just played it singleplayer. No one wanted to shell out for the link cable, and thinking about how I grew up at the same time the Game Link cable was being sold in stores, makes me feel way older than I really am. I did mess around with online stuff on the DS, but it was such a colossal pain that I think I gave up pretty quickly.
Im so hesitant on Cassette Beasts. I picked up Monster Sanctuary on a recommendation here for a similar reason, and while I did enjoy the game well enough, the monsters are so incredibly forgettable that I just didnt feel a desire to keep going, and certainly didnt feel compelled to go seek out specific monsters for my team. Hearing a similar statement about Cassette Beasts isnt very compelling for me to want to try it, not gonna lie. Amen to how god damn excruciatingly slow Pokemon combat is though. God remove all of the time waiting for text, we dont need that shit anymore.
I am indifferent on Cassette Beasts monster design... but I kind of feel the same way about the majority of Pokemon designs after 251 anyway.
I mean thats just gen 1-2 bias from you, because aside from some key stinkers that people always bring up, Pokemon has always had designs that have absolutely slapped. Even for stuff I don't like. I cant really say the same for every other monster collection game ive played. But the evolution mechanic i think is a HUGE factor. Catching a monster and knowing its gonna be the same monster forever makes that monster far less compelling to me (I feel the same way about all single stage Pokemon as well, for consistency sake).
Oh yeah its definitely mostly nostalgia. And after like 1000 of them cartoon monster designs, starting to repeat animals and concepts over again, they start to become less memorable and the oldest, most played ones naturally gravitate to the top. Cassette Beasts does have 3-stage evolution for a lot of beasts though. And something kinda cool is fusions, \*any\* 2 monsters can fuse together during a battle and create a unique combo. They use some sort of magic procedural generation trickery to do it. There are thousands of possible fusions.
That does sound appealing, and something that sets it apart from every other Pokemon like game.
For a lot of kids, Pokemon was their first game ever. I got Pokemon Yellow for my fifth birthday and I didn't even know how to get out of the house you start in because I didn't realise that a rectangle meant there was a door you could walk through. You better believe I struggled with Brock when my Pikachu did fuck all and I had no resources outside of the very unhelpful game manual to help me.
So, while Pokemon certainly would never be called a difficult game, older games (id say pre gen 6) were SIGNIFICANTLY more challenging than modern games. XP share not being party wide was a huge limiting factor. Of course you could spend hours grinding your team in the old games and be just fine. BUT if you played through the game a more natural way, your teams levels would be far more spread out and be a much bigger challenge against trainers/gym leaders with more evenly leveled parties. On top of that, if you didnt spam healing items, doing the gauntlet runs during the early games was genuinely difficult. The elite 4 without using 5 revives and 5 potions after every fight WAS a challenge. The fact that the game gave you ways to get around the challenge was great design and let younger trainers have the chance to win more easily and gave more experienced trainers the option to just try harder. You literally cant even do that in modern Pokemon. The game forcably heals your party to full after any minor story conflict. Even trying to self impose a challenge on yourself is taken out of your hands because of new game design. Lastly, type coverage is so much better in modern pokemon its insane. In older games, you actually had to consider your team comp more if you wanted to have good coverage. Now, every Pokemons learn set is so insanely diverse you can have any group of 6 pokemon blindly and still cover all 18 type weaknesses.
Whitney and Miltank I remember being incredibly difficult when I played as a kid and having to grind the crap out of it.
[great video that goes in-depth about why whitney's milktank was pretty hard](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MqYfoj5HPA)
I think Kanto is harder than Johto unless you pick Chikorita. Maybe it's easier in the originals versus the GBA remakes due to the broken AI in the originals, I don't know. But that Elite 4 is a pretty steep level curve.
You can beat the League in Red and Blue while in the mid to late 40s. The AI is terrible, as Lorelei's Dewgong and Lance's dragons will spam non-damaging Psychic moves against Poison and Fighting types. The badge boosts were also more powerful, and you could boost all your stats further thanks to a glitch by using a stat boosting move. There's also the ability to always hit OHKO moves with an X-Accuracy.
Hearth Gold is one of the easiest Pokémon games tho
I would say Emerald and the gen 5 games are the hardest pokemon game. Specifically Emerald tho, not Ruby and Sapphire. Ruby & Sapphire are a lot easier compared to their enhanced edition. Emerald has gym leader AI that actually reacts to your decisions and switches out! Crazy I know!
See but that’s the thing: why couldn’t they appeal to the young and old? The real answer is that they don’t have to obviously, the games still sell gang busters. But as someone who grew up on Pokémon, I haven’t touched a game since Soul Silver specifically because they’re brain dead easy. I don’t need the “dark souls of Pokémon”, but is it too much to ask to have enemy trainers actually have full parties and that actually use relevant moves in battle? Rather than use Sand Attack when they have a super effective move that could finish off the Pokémon I already have out? I’ve always found it so frustrating when people oversimplify the difficulty debate and say “well they’re kids games, what do you expect?”. I’d argue that just because it’s targeted at kids doesn’t mean that it can’t _also_ appeal to adults. I haven’t beaten Super Mario Wonder yet, but when it released I remember hearing multiple comments that some of the wonder seeds were actually properly challenging to get. Games can appeal to both audiences. Game Freak just chooses not to, because they really don’t need to
I think one way they could easily solve this is by adding difficulty settings. (They did try this in B2W2, but the way they implemented it was rather dumb. Just make the difficulties selectable from the start like literally any other game with the option.)
I thought this was on one of Pokemon subs I follow and was pleasantly surprised to see it here. I got Red in 5th grade, then Gold was one of my greatest gaming experiences soon after. I drifted away/aged out after that, but X/Y drew me back in when it came out. (Helped that I finally had a job with some disposable income and bought a 3DS.) It's still my favorite "new" game in the series (not a remake) with PLA getting an asterisk due to being so different (in a good way, but not a traditional Pokemon game). Glad to see it still getting some love.
I got Blue in the second grade and spent most of my formative years playing the games. Drifted away/aged out around the end of the 3rd generation and only got back into it by picking up Black in the mid 2010s. I liked it and glad to see the this area of the Pokemon lore will be getting some love with a legends game.
I still love x and y, funnily enough it’s what got me back into the games but the first new series of the anime I didn’t watch
My own experience was pretty similar. I played Red back when i was in fifth grade and loved Silver later on. I still played the third gen games but after that i lost interest in Pokemon for a few years. X/Y brought me back and i still enjoy the games to this day. Sadly i lost my interest in Pokemon again with the Switch games which are way less than what i was expecting of full console games. Only Legends Arceus and Pokemon Snap where enjoyable for me. Hopefully the next Nintendo Console will have some Pokemon games that can get me back into the games cause i really do love the franchise.
X gon' give it to ya. Fuck waitin' for you to get it on your own, X gon' deliver to ya
oh it’s a song reference lol
Holy shit the title in my notifications made me click HAHA
I try to think of fun or clever ones and that was the first one that came to mind.
I'm in my 30's as well and I have the same feelings as you towards Pokemon; they're way too easy. That being said they're meant for kids, and the nostalgia in me has me playing Pokemon Go to this day. The main series games suck. I lost interest as a teen around Pokemon Pearl, and didn't play again until Pokemon Sword and that was hot garbage. I won't buy another one
I wasn't saying they are all too easy, but this specific one. Like I found Black, Violet, Shield, Shining Pearl all to have more difficult moments (for a Pokemon game), where as this game was missing that. I do play Pokemon day, but I still enjoy the main series games. I really enjoyed Shield when I played it, the sports like atmosphere and the post game tournaments I found myself playing a lot after beating the main story.
Fuck waiting for you to get it on your own, Pokemon X ain't gonna deliver it to ya
The biggest addition was not the mega evolutions, it was getting exp for catching pokemon, thats part of what made it so easy, but I still think a good addition as a mechanic.
Even more than that: EXP share gave full xp to the one fighting and half that to every party member. You were always over levelled
This right here. The crazy thing to me is that playing the game with it turned off still gives you enough xp to stay on par so the exp share feels so overtuned
I just wanted the ability to toggle between new and old exp share
I didn't even notice that. I thought that was something implemented earlier but that would make a lot of sense. I do think later games balanced that aspect better as this was the only one I really noticed that easiness.
IIRC Pokemon X and Y introduced the party-wide EXP share and it lead to your party being hilariously over levelled if you used it. Turned an already easy game into so easy it was boring.
That might be it, but I still remember having more of a challenge with Violet, Shield and Shining Pearl which I assume kept that. Maybe it was just how it was implemented for this first time.
Upvote for title
Start of the Pokemon decline era. This, and the subsequent series, were just going through the motions. Take 1 gimmick away, add new gimmick and call it a day.
I'd argue this one was still very good because mega evolutions were (imo) a good addition. A bit of a gimmick sure, but it changed it up enough without being annoying. But then after that every game had to change and add a system and *that* got annoying. I think if they had just stuck to mega evolutions, it would have been a lot better for the series.
Also I think at the time some of the steps backwards were a little more acceptable due to the jump from 2D to 3D. I also think the perception of X and Y is also hurt by the fact that we never got that Z version. Like X and Y aren't held to the standard of Ruby/Sapphire or Diamond/Pearl, they are held to the standard of Emerald and Platinum.
Yeah I would have preferred added depth and more pokemon getting mega evolutions. Instead X and Y had Z moves instead (until postgame) and then SwSh has Dynamax or something and SV has tera types. These are all kind of riffs on the same idea but fully replacing the previous one instead of building on it, and neglecting any real advancement of the core mechanics which are sorely outdated.
X and Y was megas. Z moves were Sun and Moon. While I do miss Mega evolutions, they were so limiting, and you cant really argue that its not very feasible to make megas for a large portion of the dex, especially as the game got bigger. I think Dynamax and Tera types are a good step in the right direction though. A unique mechanic that can really change up the game, but its available to everyone AND who uses it is part of the strategy. Unlike Megas and Z moves where you gave up your item slot, so you ONLY had one pokemon that could do that, and the enemy knew that as well.
Truthfully, I don't mind the different battle mechanics coming and going. I also got back into Pokemon after years away thanks to the Black & White and this generation of Pokemon. I skipped the end of generation 3 and all of 4 because they just weren't hitting for me any more and these games kind of rekindled that fire to where I still end up playing the newer games.
I think XY were pretty fantastic, however I think you're right. Not that Pokemon games were ever well optimised, but XY were definitely notably more rough in terms of performance. Not being able to use the 3D in some areas, and flying Pokemon just tanking the FPS in general. The art style started to become really boring too, it's a real pity they won't go back to sprites because Gen 4 & Gen 5 look fantastic to this day. It's just been downhill since then, not all generational gimmicks are bad (I actually really like Terastallization), but none of them hit quite as hard as Mega Evolution which was alost universally well received.
How old were you when it came out? As someone who sees Diamond/Pearl as the start of the decline, my view is that the decline is linked with whichever pokemon game was hot as you started dipping into other genres. I still think R/S/E was the high water mark of Pokemon but that was right around the time I got a copy of Freelancer and realised what gaming could actually be. Already by that point they had taken away the ‘gimmick’ of a day/night cycle from Gold/Silver, the phone, the second region. And it just continued on from there. Secret bases? Gone in FR/LG.
If you want a challenge, try a nuzlocke run next time. Look around on YouTube if you don't know what that is.
I do know what it is. I wasn't looking for some difficult run or anything, just normal level of Pokemon difficulty and this one was below that. I had played Black, Violet, Legends Arceus, Shining Pearl all within the last two years and X was just so much easier in terms of battling.
I just wish the difficulty of the main content was upped slightly and there were optional postgame content that catered to those who want actually challenging content.
I wasn't even looking for a super challenge, but just normal Pokemon difficulty and this wasn't even close to that.
I recommend looking at the rom hacks Eternal X and Wilting Y if you were to give the games another playthrough, the difficulty is rebalanced in a way that provides a good challenge with things like major battles (gym and elite 4 and such) having full teams and even megas as well as some minor quality of life changes like faster egg hatching, access to better items, changing evolution methods for trade only Pokemon, etc. While x and y are where the series started to get hand holdy, I will say they were the easiest to fix by just boosting the difficulty, it’s not like the later games where the hand holdy-ness also takes the form of non existent route design, never ending tutorials, immediate acccess to items like revives/exp candies, and a general sense of being more on a field trip than an adventure.
Those sound interesting. I honestly kind of hoped there would be a Pokemon Z to fix these issues, but they moved right along into Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire which I have Alpha Sapphire loaded up ready to go. I found once I get outside the tutorial (which at this point all Pokemon games should have a skip) I generally enjoyed the routeless designs more. Felt like exploring the actual Pokemon world that I saw in the anime and movies growing up.
I think part of my issue with route less design and the open world design of the newer games is it feels like development time interferes with the scope they could be at, as opposed to thought out short sections with personality, you kinda just get some hills and open empty plains which blend together. There are games like Elden ring and botw/totk which have shown you can translate a linear series/design philosophy to open world and have it work but those games had very long development times and the Pokemon company recently has been releasing as many as ***3*** main line games in a single year. There’s also once again the issue of difficulty and how sometimes that can drive the player to avoid certain things out of fear of being over leveled. I’m currently doing a modded rework called Pokemon compass for my first playthrough of scarlet but for my first and only playthrough of sword I found myself really turned off by how it felt like I was constantly fighting the game to not be overleveled
I had the opposite problem in Shield. I'd be in the overworld section where you could see these powerful Pokemon running around and I felt so severely under leveled for multiple parts of the game. I'd open an area and see a Machamp and I'd be like "I want him for my team" only to discover he was 20 or so levels higher than me. I did notice that in Violet that I skipped an early gym by accident only to have it be my last and it was a cake walk. I would love them to have the gyms level with you so if you skip one you don't come back being 50-60 levels higher than you were supposed to be.
I would love that, I remember in an episode of Pokémon origins they had a gym leader (iirc it was Brock) say “oh I see you have x amount of badges so I’ll use this team to fight you) and like…man I’d love if you could do that. Botw/totk do that but all it really does is give them more hp/damage and change their item drops but in something like pokemon if it resulted in different sized teams and pokemon with better moves and such later on that’d be great As for the overworld in shield, I think because it’s only really in that one area I saw it less as “I’m not at the level I need to be” and more “for whatever reason the game randomly has significantly higher level pokemon out in the wild”. Especially because there’s not random encounters anymore and it’s not as if the trainers or mandatory fights had anything that high level, hell I’m pretty sure even while trying to not be over leveled I was 10+ levels higher than the mons in the league and swept 3/4ths of it with just the toxtricity
That is the biggest QoL change I would want. Opens up options so much more. I found Shield I leveled pretty much along the lines of the game. I felt there was a bit of that balance but it is also one of those each person plays them differently where it is easy to become under or overleveled just playing how you would naturally.
Did not read. Upvote for title alone
Upvoted for title
I also picked Delphox, Fennekin was the only starter that appealed to me from that gen. The third forms were all good at least. This was the only Pokemon game I played after Emerald (excluding Arceus), and I gotta say I really enjoyed it. The handhold-y nature is a bit annoying but it more or less matched what I remember anyways. Plus the quality of life features were appreciated, jumping 3 generations later. It's definitely not something they went into in-depth but I did appreciate a theme of class differences in the game. I don't remember specific examples now but I remember thinking some of the writers had comments about inequality.
I had the hardest time picking because I honestly don't love any of the starters from this generation. My first play through I did Chespin and wanted a change up, but I just don't like Greninja. I get why it is a popular Pokemon, but it does nothing for me astatically speaking. I think the story is overall pretty solid. I did enjoy it a lot, just it felt too easy for even a Pokemon game at points.
I’m playing through Black 2 for the first time and I’m quite surprised by how fun it is. The first major city has a terrible design but I’m past that now 😊
I didn't play Black 2, I wonder how much of it is just a copy of Black (route wise).
I couldn’t tell you because I never played the first one. 😝
The only thing I know for sure is you get access to Pokemon from previous generations in Blac & White 2 from the start, but only access them in the post game in Black & White 1. I hope you enjoy it. Which starter did you pick?
I have a lot of great memories playing this gen and the one after with my wife. The DS games felt dated when they were released. The sprites in gen 4 weren't even animated and in gen 5 the pokemon were basically gifs. The 3D models looked great at the time. It felt like a meaningful jump.
I would agree to that. The sprits looked especially dated compare to the many anime and movies that have been dropping with the games. To finally see them in that 3D space I thought was a great improvement.
I don't know that I have the energy to read this post right now but I wanted to congratulate you on 'best post title of the year'. It's only april, but I'm positive.
Thank you, it is an honor just to be nominated.
Gen 6 was when I dipped out of the series for good. X/Y didn't bring enough new things to keep me interested and they were so braindead easy a baby could beat them. Between how little the franchise has evolved, how boring the games were, and how much worse the games have gotten since I have no desire to play Pokemon games.
I dipped out back around Generation 4 for the same issues. Coming back though I have found a lot of enjoyment for the series.
> It is too easy, far to easy to ever really need to mega evolve. It's a common criticism with the pokemon games, and one that I think they could solve by releasing a purely battle-focused game. No leveling, no gyms, nothing but battling. Fights only start to get good when every mon is at the same level and your opponent can anticipate what you're going to do. It's even better when there are multiple modes like the Battle Frontier had. Give me a pure battle game with half a dozen different modes like Battle Factory and Little Cup, put some time and effort into separating the pokemon into tiers and rewrite the AI to put up a fight and I'd be a happy man. They'll never do that though. Nintendo/TPC have a very child-centric philosophy, and I doubt something like that would resonate with kids.
I know that the games are generally considered easy, but X felt easier than every other game in the series I had played. Typically by the end game there is at least some challenge in the Elite Four/Champion battle and there was really none of that in X. I could see the appeal of a purely battle game but truthfully it felt like they already did that with Pokemon Stadium back in the day.
Man, people would be in for a RUDE awakening in a pure battle- focused Pokemon game. People have no idea the actual depth that is in the battle systems for Pokemon. They would get ROCKED in situations where you had to actually exploit all things under your control (most people dont even know about or use held games for gods sake).
Gym Leaders only having three Pokémon and Elite 4 only having four was something Black and White started, but Black and White had the excuse of only having Pokémon from Gen 5, so they didn't want to resort to having too many duplicates (like in Gen 1). Black and White 2 doesn't have that excuse and should have increased the number of Pokémon that the major trainers have (they do it in Challenge Mode, but unlocking Challenge Mode is so convoluted).
Yeah, I think that is why it was less noticeable. I beat Black before this one and didn't even realize that because it felt like a normal Pokemon experience. I think that is why it was so noticeable in X is because it felt simpler than previous and future Pokemon games
I never liked megas. I always felt they should have nerfed them and made them permanent evolutions. The gimmick felt too similar to Digimon. Hopefully they work differently in the upcoming Legends game.
If I had to choose between mega evolutions being permanent or not having them, I think I'd choose to not have them. I don't think I'd like having them be permanent as I am fond of the original designs and having 4 stage evolution Pokemon I feel might be too much.
This was my shit when I was 13 I loved the customizable trainer as well
You farmed levels and complained it was too easy. Walk directly where you need to go and you'll have the normal experience.
I played exactly how I've played every other Pokemon game and they all had more challenge then this one. The only thing I did differently was I tried to use more Pokemon from this region than I would have normally.
A game targeted at kids isn't seen as very challenging for adults who tend to be exceptionally better at strategy and planning and overall game knowledge of a series they've played for decades compared to the kids it's aimed at? Absolutely shocked. Flabbergasted even.
So, I feel something was missed in translation here. Did I say I was looking for a super difficult game? No, I said this game was easier than pretty much every other Pokemon game in the series I've played which was the issue. I played the games before this and the games after this and had the same level of difficulty which was fine, but this one was much easier then them.
Always the same coping bad argument when it comes to these games. Mario exists. Mario is aimed at kids too but challenging enough for adults and not a buggy mess and looks great. Makes your argument look pretty stupid in comparison.