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[Boss Doggie]

Unfortunately I see this all to often. People making complaints about Pokémon, valid ones, which have already been corrected or built upon in recent games. They just don't know as they haven't played them.

And if you try to reason or call them out you'd be called as a pokemon fanboy.

But as I said in SteamGAF - if you're not an irrational person who joins the mob crusade or if you don't subscribe to an e-celeb of some capacity, you're a fanboy.

 

[JoeM86]

And if you try to reason or call them out you'd be called as a pokemon fanboy.

I often get called an apologist or a shill just because I explain reasons behind things, even if I don't agree with the reasoning such as in a thread about the Battle Frontier exclusion recently.

 

[bizzarewars]

Pokemon Sun was the first game in the series where the region felt like an actual place with culture where people lived.

I agree one hundred percent.

That's probably why I consider Sun and/or Moon one of, if not my favorite, entries in the series. The Totem Pokemon boss fights were great in that they were A, challenging encounters for the most part, and B, fit perfectly into the story mechanically speaking. It really did feel like you were encountering these big, wild and ferocious monsters, especially with the Lurantis encounter.

 

[NaDannMaGoGo]

Yes, the world building is insultingly bad even for a game targeted at children; not like those should be of lower quality, to begin with, but fans love to use that excuse for everything.

That even the damned Pokedex entries are largely a mix of dumb and some strangely creepy stuff, even to this date, is just pathetic. It's like Gamefreak isn't even trying.

Spoiler

So,
par for the course for them.

 

[Firemind]

They changed the tower where people go to bury their Pokemon to a radio tower in G/S wtf

 

[brinstar]

Pokemon Sun was the first game in the series where the region felt like an actual place with culture where people lived.

That's why I found TheLamp's post kind of puzzling. S/M had schools, police station, malls, grocery stores, coffee shops, pretty fully detailed house interiors that actually have some sort of logic behind them, etc. I mean it's still a 3DS RPG so there's a limit to what they can do but I don't know how you could say Alola doesn't feel like a place where people live.

 

[Slamtastic]

We haven't had new evolutions or pre-evolutions since 2006.

another reason to hate game freak

 

[VegiHam]

They changed the tower where people go to bury their Pokemon to a radio tower in G/S wtf

But really, how does a graveyard tower even work that seems like a logistical nightmare smh at this worldbuilding plothole

 

[JoeM86]

another reason to hate game freak

How come? Because they rather put their efforts into new stuff?

 

[brinstar]

We haven't had new evolutions or pre-evolutions since 2006.

well... sylveon

 

[Crayolan]

It's impossible to be 100% consistent with 800+ pokemon across 20 years and several different forms of media.

 

[JoeM86]

well... sylveon

Eeveelutions don't count

 

[Finale Fireworker]

I really love Pokémon. I’m psyched for Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon and have a card collection that cost as much as a semester of my college education. Pokémon has a special place in my heart; it is my ultimate nostalgic opiate.

That said, very few of the things I imagined the series would bring when I was young player have actually come to fruition. I think the best shot the series has is the transition to Switch. I hope it will inspire Game Freak to do something “completely different”. Sun & Moon was a great start. But I’ve still never gotten the game I always wanted.

Honestly, my own biggest gripe with the direction of the series is that it’s really leaned into the sci-fi aspects of the franchise versus the environmental fantasy elements. There’s so much stuff involving time and space and continuity and another dimensions and stuff. I liked Pokémon more as a kid because it felt like something that happened, or could happen, in our own world. I like Pokémon that live in forests and caves more than Pokémon from other worlds or outer space.

I know the science fiction material has always been there, I’m not a revisionist, it was just so much more understated.

There was a certain... humbleness to older Pokémon games that newer games don’t have. Everything is so much larger and less intimate and more cataclysmic. I like Pokémon better when the world isn’t at stake.

 

[Slamtastic]

How come? Because they rather put their efforts into new stuff?

How is a Pokémon itself any less new just because it is in the same line as existing ones?

Is A.Meowth less new because it's a recolor?

And yes, because those new things always come at the expense of what came before.

Z moves mean no new megas. The gimmick of Gen 8 will mean no more Z moves. Regional variants? I'm not getting my hopes up. We've seen what happened to pre-evos form G2 and evolutions from G4.

 

[Saucestin_Roast]

Yes absolutely and it bothers me. These are games that I really enjoy but that doesn't mean they are anywhere close to flawless.

 

[RangerX]

No it doesn't bother me.

 

[PsionBolt]

No, I love Pokemon world-building just the way it is. It's full of wonder and imagination, and it isn't held back by trivialities. Every new game is able to impress me in some way of another, and they always allow me to relive the sense of discovery that pulled me into video games as a child all those years ago.

Now, if you want to talk about the actual plots, the pacing, the postgame... There are things to complain about in Pokemon. But the world and the monsters are not among them.

 

[RionaaM]

You would be correct.

They even have a 3D model for the bathroom and garage but chose not to use it.

Also go into Guzma's house and read his diary to hear about how his father hit him.

There's a town in Black & White where stories of Kyurem coming out to eat people caused them to build walls and make it so nobody steps outside at night.

There's more world building than people actually take note of.

I don't recall this, where can I find his house and diary? That's pretty dark, reminds me of the Sea Mauville subplot in ORAS.

 

[JoeM86]

I don't recall this, where was his house and diary?

Route 2, though I may be conflating things a bit from memory but there's evidence of him being the man who lived there and things like a broken golf club and notes about beatings. We didn't realise it was Guzma until post-game when he can be found in that house.

 

[Flying Fish]

I don't recall this, where can I find his house and diary? That's pretty dark, reminds me of the Sea Mauville subplot in ORAS.

Somewhere in the second town I think.

 

[Black_Red]

Honestly I dont care, I only want more balance dor 1v1 with 6 pokemon each, easier breeding and more buffs/mega evos to make old pokemons relevant.

 

[Galava]

Maybe the games just need to feel more alive and believable. Put more side-quests on towns and routes, reading books and talking to people is not enough to make you feel that you are really travelling and getting to know them.

Examples:

The Slowpoke thing with the team rocket in GSE. It was like "ok, this town relies on slowpokes, there is this guy that makes balls, the forest in which they worship the guardian of the forest...

The Pokémon Tower with the ghosts and Marowak tells you the story about that town. That they have this graveyard and that it's a quite "sad" town, but there is this guy that takes care of orphan Pokémon (and people?) and so on.

There are quite a few of these towns across the games and I feel that they should be further worked on instead of just have you talk with some people in a town, visit the gym and keep going. There is so much potential for world-building stories.

Alola felt like if you went through a theme-park, doing four trials as attractions, with a main-story shoved-up in the middle, going to the league and then to some tree in a corner of an island away from civilization. And it's not as if there isn't a lot of potential for story-telling in all of the towns.

 

[JoeM86]

Honestly I dont care, I only want more balance dor 1v1 with 6 pokemon each, easier breeding and more buffs/mega evos to make old pokemons relevant.

Well we get new buffs with each gen it seems

Also, easier breeding is a thing in USUM due to Rotom Power

 

[Boss Doggie]

That's why I found TheLamp's post kind of puzzling. S/M had schools, police station, malls, grocery stores, coffee shops, pretty fully detailed house interiors that actually have some sort of logic behind them, etc. I mean it's still a 3DS RPG so there's a limit to what they can do but I don't know how you could say Alola doesn't feel like a place where people live.

Even XY had those, so it's a bit baffling too.

 

[GoldStarz]

It's not logical that an encyclopedia put together by professors is written by kids.

And no, the world doesn't have much logic or consistency compared to other fleshed out JRPGs. Why do major cities have like no residential areas? Why do towns have like 4 houses, and some with no door? Why can I barge into strangers homes and they don't mind at all, with no aware reaction to my presence other than a repeated dialogue segment? Where do citizens buy groceries, shit, go to college to become professors, deal with civic matters? What even is the government of a region? Does the police force even exist in half of these games? Why do gangs of criminals go unnoticed? Do the police have weapons or just Pokémon? Where are the crowds and routines and people (I'm not talking about isolated examples like that one city in Unova with 2-4 generic sprites moving back and forth, where is the commitment to consistent realistic world building?)? What are peoples jobs in Pokémon?

It's so lazy. The Pokémon Center is a perfect example. Its only function is to heal so of course they're not going to design multiple clients, a waiting room, healing Pokémon, or anything to add realistic ambience. No, the PC is a drive-thru where you insta-heal your creatures on a countertop in seconds.

It's inconsistent.

Can you imagine being so viscerally unpleasant that you ignore things that have actually been addressed in the games and pretend that standard RPG elements don't exist so that you can complain about Pokemon's lack of representation of the fucking suburbs?

 

[JoeM86]

Can you imagine being so viscerally unpleasant that you ignore things that have actually been addressed in the games and pretend that standard RPG elements don't exist so that you can complain about Pokemon's lack of representation of the fucking suburbs?

I didn't even notice the Pokémon Center bit when each Pokémon Center has chairs, a shop and a café in now

 

[JazzmanZ]

The only thing I want from Pokemon these days is something thats not just another battle tower, gimmie some unique gimmicky stuff like the frontier did

 

[RionaaM]

Route 2, though I may be conflating things a bit from memory but there's evidence of him being the man who lived there and things like a broken golf club and notes about beatings. We didn't realise it was Guzma until post-game when he can be found in that house.

Somewhere in the second town I think.

Thanks, gonna check that when I play Ultra Sun. Or, if he's not there in the new games, when I play old Sun to get its exclusive mons... eventually.

 

[WaterAstro]

Nintendo cares about story when you look at the Zelda timeline.

Spoiler

They don't care.

 

[JoeM86]

Nintendo cares about story when you look at the Zelda timeline.

Spoiler

They don't care.

Good thing Nintendo don't develop Pokémon then

 

[The Lamp]

Unfortunately I see this all to often. People making complaints about Pokémon, valid ones, which have already been corrected or built upon in recent games. They just don't know as they haven't played them.



We haven't had new evolutions or pre-evolutions since 2006.

"A correction" is not one instance in one game. Unova's or Kalos' one big city (that was actually pretty bad) does not make for consistent urban or suburban world building. A few buildings having bathrooms does not make for consistent building design. One NPC having a diary of how their father beat them does not make for consistent design of NPCs with lives or schedules. Your standards of evolution in world building are rock bottom. Alola got away with a lot of its lazy city and town design by virtue of them being small, boring/lazy island life.

 

[Toxi]

Nintendo cares about story when you look at the Zelda timeline.

Spoiler

They don't care.

Have you played the recent Pokemon games? Gamefreak cares about story too much if anything. Even if the story is complete garbage like X and Y.

 

[Galava]

Nintendo cares about story when you look at the Zelda timeline.

Spoiler

They don't care.

They do care, they just aren't explicit about it. If they didn't care Zelda timeline wouldn't even exist in the first place, the same with the Pokémon chronology of the games.

 

[JoeM86]

"A correction" is not one instance in one game. Unova's or Kalos' one big city (that was actually pretty bad) does not make for consistent urban or suburban world building. A few buildings having bathrooms does not make for consistent building design. One NPC having a diary of how their father beat them does not make for consistent design of NPCs with lives or schedules. Your standards of evolution in world building are rock bottom.

What was the last Pokémon game you played? Almost all of your complaints were dealt with in X & Y and then even more in Sun & Moon.

 

[Complistic]

I don't and never will play pokemon for it's story.

 

[Shadow Broker]

You would be correct.

They even have a 3D model for the bathroom and garage but chose not to use it.

Also go into Guzma's house and read his diary to hear about how his father hit him.

There's a town in Black & White where stories of Kyurem coming out to eat people caused them to build walls and make it so nobody steps outside at night.

There's more world building than people actually take note of.

Whoa! I played through Sun six times and never saw that entry.

 

[The Lamp]

What was the last Pokémon game you played?

Sun

 

[Black_Red]

Well we get new buffs with each gen it seems

Also, easier breeding is a thing in USUM due to Rotom Power

I know, what I mean is, while is good that they improve the campaign and world building, it's not what I care about this games when I play for hundreds of hours.
As long as they keep improving the gameplay and hopefully balance singles (I really dont like doubles) I'm cool.

 

[Boss Doggie]

Sun

were you intentionally skipping out the NPC houses

like even your own house is fully furnished, the starter town has huge housing

 

[Neko Godot]

I never understood how powerful the Pokemon League is supposed to be. In Black and White they're pretty much implied to be the government of Unova and even though Drayden is the only gym leader that's a mayor, the other gym leaders all act like mayors of their town pretty much anyway. Then you have something like X and Y where none of the gym leaders have anything to do with the plot. And then Alola only just got a Pokemon League but they were obviously still functioning as a society. Interesting stuff...

 

[RionaaM]

Have you played the recent Pokemon games? Gamefreak cares about story too much if anything. Even if the story is complete garbage like X and Y.

Yup, in SM they cared so much that the pacing suffered as a result. I hope cutscenes and exposition are milder in USUM, because while the story wasn't bad, the constant cutscenes during the first two islands were incredibly annoying.

 

[JoeM86]

Sun

I'm not saying I don't believe you but

It's so lazy. The Pokémon Center is a perfect example. Its only function is to heal so of course they're not going to design multiple clients, a waiting room, healing Pokémon, or anything to add realistic ambience. No, the PC is a drive-thru where you insta-heal your creatures on a countertop in seconds.

Then other things like which counter other complaints you raised.

And so much more like Po Town's inhabitants, sharing rooms, having in-fights etc.

Unless you want Pokémon Centers to be giant pointless hospitals when technology exists to instant heal...

 

[The Lamp]

were you intentionally skipping out the NPC houses

like even your own house is fully furnished, the starter town has huge housing

Your own house is the home with the most detail in the game, from what I remember. And it took until 2017 to get that kind of effort. And it's not even remotely consistent throughout the game.

That's why I found TheLamp's post kind of puzzling. S/M had schools, police station, malls, grocery stores, coffee shops, pretty fully detailed house interiors that actually have some sort of logic behind them, etc. I mean it's still a 3DS RPG so there's a limit to what they can do but I don't know how you could say Alola doesn't feel like a place where people live.

Inconsistency. You're telling me that everyone on 4 islands goes to one pokemon academy? Who trains the nurses? Where do people become professors? There's a limit to how much logic you can put in; I'm not saying design a DMV and a congressional building. But the effort is really low in Pokémon. The world is incohesive and hard to immerse into. There are streets with hardly any pedestrians walking or cars driving or parked on them, like ever. So why even have paved streets?

 

[Boss Doggie]

I never understood how powerful the Pokemon League is supposed to be. In Black and White they're pretty much implied to be the government of Unova and even though Drayden is the only gym leader that's a mayor, the other gym leaders all act like mayors of their town pretty much anyway. Then you have something like X and Y where none of the gym leaders have anything to do with the plot. And then Alola only just got a Pokemon League but they were obviously still functioning as a society. Interesting stuff...

Each region is their own thing. It's fine too because besides Kanto and Johto, they're all far apart from each other. Also Gym leaders being part of the plot is only a BW thing.

Your own house is the home with the most detail in the game, from what I remember. And it took until 2017 to get that kind of effort. And it's not even remotely consistent throughout the game.

Inconsistency. You're telling me that everyone on 4 islands goes to one pokemon academy? Who trains the nurses? Where do people become professors? There's a limit to how much logic you can put in; I'm not saying design a DMV and a congressional building. But the effort is really low in Pokémon. The world is incohesive and hard to immerse into. There are streets with hardly any pedestrians walking or cars driving or parked on them, like ever. So why even have paved streets?

How is it inconsistent? Also what, in XY your house is also fully furnished. Hell, even your mom has her own room and bed there.

Seems more like you're complaining for the sake of complaining, basically inconsequential things. And you haven't lived in a small archipelago have you? Because believe me, let me tell you that yes, there are people who go to another island for education - it happens in real life.

 

[JoeM86]

Inconsistency. You're telling me that everyone on 4 islands goes to one pokemon academy? Who trains the nurses? Where do people become professors? There's a limit to how much logic you can put in; I'm not saying design a DMV and a congressional building. But the effort is really low in Pokémon. The world is incohesive and hard to immerse into. There are streets with hardly any pedestrians walking or cars driving or parked on them, like ever. So why even have paved streets?

No, instead you want a nursing school, a professor school and so forth.

You're kind of clutching at straws here.

 

[The Lamp]

I'm not saying I don't believe you but

That doesn't address what I raised, that doesn't look like any real clinic. There are no doctors, no staff, no ambulances. That was them combining the function of a pokemart and a Pokémon center.

Then other things like which counter other complaints you raised.

And so much more like Po Town's inhabitants, sharing rooms, having in-fights etc.

Not high enough for me, not consistent enough for me. A couple of examples of a coat rack or a kitchen doesn't impres me. It's an improvement but it's still way below immersive or realistic world design for a modern RPG.

 

[Common Knowledge]

I don't and never will play pokemon for it's story.

It's not even really about the literal story of the games, though, as my OP touched upon. There's a main plotline for each of the games, some of them quite exposition and cutscene heavy, judging by some of the posts in this thread. World-building to me, though, is almost entirely separate from story. Even game series that are very light on story can, and usually do, benefit from building a consistent universe that operates on a cohesive level to make everything "flow" better and feel like a true virtual world.

 

[Boss Doggie]

Yeah at this point I'm gonna ignore those complaints (literally complaining about "facilities" of clinic... in a game that has magic healing machine). At some point it becomes goal-posting for the sake of what is essentially nit picking to the pointless iota.

 

[hemo memo]

NPCs that don't just stand around for you to talk to them/get forced to have a fight would go a long way. (Problem is it would make just not fighting to go to the next Pokecenter too easy) When the first game came out there were obvious reasons fgor the NPCs to be like they were, but nowadays you'd think they would be a bit more ambitious with those.

Running into people on different spots, and just getting ask if you want to have a fight instead of forcing you, maybe just missing some because they are somewhere else by the time you walk somewhere would help the world building immensly.

Also not everything NPCs say the entire game have to be about Pokemon or how the game plays.

 

[JazzmanZ]

Hey how come Yoshi's are born with saddles and shoes? Who elected King dedede? Why are there so few bathrooms in Earthbound?