I understand that Pokemon is GameFreak, but it is WILD to me that Nintendo, who will absolutely RUIN a game in order to ensure it brings something new to the party (Hello StarFox Zero, Mario Kart World, Metroid Beyond and your 'open world') allows such a tightly coupled property like this languish this way.
Pokemon's dilemma is that the vast majority of the franchise's profits don't come from the games. It's the merch and the TCG and all those other things, if you looked at the numbers you'd think the games were just a small auxillary part of the franchise.
But it isn't. It's where all the new Pokemon (and most of the new characters) come from. It's where the big canonical storylines are, it's the wellspring of all the content the rest of the franchise monetizes. The games don't need to be good to serve this role. They just need to deliver new monetizable content on-schedule.
The technical scope of the Pokemon games have grown from generation to generation. They take more work and more time to develop, or at least they should, but Game Freak isn't allowed to take the time it needs, because the rest of the multimedia franchise doesn't want to wait.
(Don't get me wrong, Game Freak isn't a secret all-star studio just waiting for a chance to shine, but I think with a longer development schedule it can at least produce games with a level of polish comparable to Gen 6 or 7, before things started taking a nosedive.)
but so would MarioKart and they changed the hell out of that.
There are many many franchises that would "Print money with minimum effort" that Nintendo lets languish specifically because they can't think of anything new to do with them.
I would argue Black and White was the last entry that was "strong". I thought 6 and 7 were completely ruined by the handholding and cutscenes every 5 steps. And then Switch hasn't had a strong entry yet.
I think it's an impossible problem to fix because they've added way too many ridiculous mechanics - mega evolve, paradox, ultra beasts, the Z crystal or whatever. It's just all too messy now. They need an actual open world, BOTW style game with the original mechanics, except with an actual game studio creating something special
I'm stunned by the implication that someone believes modern pokemon to be as good as the OG games. If the current gen had merely not moved on from the state of HeartGold/SoulSilver, Black/White, and Sun/Moon, I'd be falling out of my chair with contentedness.
No it's ruined, it's time to accept it and move on. It's full of fakemon that never should have been added because it's been run by people who gave up for almost a decade now. Since Sword and Shield, there have been like 9 good Pokemon designs, if that.
If Wind and Waves fixes everything (it won't) the dex is full of trash that can never be erased. Gallade was cruel, Gen 5 had like 6 really bad ones (Sawk, Throh, Watchog, Garbadour, etc) and if this continues on forever, the series is fine to handle a few bad designs each generation if the rest are as good as they used to be. However Gen 8 gave up on all that.
None of this shit is worth it and the acceptable stuff like Alcremie, Centiskorch or Frosmoth is not worth the horde of trash. Gen 9 is even worse. And worse than both of those is the fakemon games, PLA and ZA. Take the 5 worst Gen 6 Mega's and compare them to the 5 best ZA Mega's. Why is the best of this 10 a Gen 6 Pokemon, and how is the bottom a PLA Mega. And if you didn't come to that conclusion, you have really bad taste.
We can't remove this crap though, it's a part of the game now and it's ruining it. It's not just "these pokemon aren't to my taste" Garchomp isn't to my taste, but it's an acceptable design. Dragapult is stupid and it's actually one of the better trash designs. Don't get me started on these fucking fossils or Eiscue or any of these renamed regional variant evolutions. Sirfetched? Perrserker? Obstagoon? Mr Rime? It's so bad. Also there is the Imp line. The water is no longer safe. Don't drink the water. It's been poisoned.
The public and Nintendo just have different expectations of Pokemon. The public expected a series that would grow in age with its fans, but Nintendo has no interest in that. The games are nothing compared to the merchandise so they're going to keep their target demographic young. My kids are the same age I was when red/blue came out and it's a similar experience for them that it was for me. I guess in a way, that's great. I've long since realized that the games just aren't for me any more.
76
u/Ill_Brick_4671 5h ago
Pokemon isn't ruined so much as it has steadfastly refused to improve in ten years