3 ms·

I kinda think the Pokemon games are badly designed. I haven't played the last few generations, but my experience was that it was constant grinding, exploring wa

I kinda think the Pokemon games are badly designed. I haven't played the last few generations, but my experience was that it was constant grinding, exploring was tiresome because you were constantly dealing with wild pokemon and trainers, the combat isn't interesting enough to carry the game, and there is no real progression. The trainers go from being total pushovers the entire game, to suddenly being quite difficult. When I think of Pokemon I think of feeling powerful because my starter Pokemon could defeat any team in the game on it's own - to getting to the end and suddenly needing a well rounded team. It felt like a bait and switch. "You thought you were good at this game? No! You suck! Go grind forever to level the rest of your team!" It feels like a game of rock paper scissors grafted onto a grinding simulator. It feels like they add more Pokemon and more ways to grind, but what I would want from it is keeping the same Pokemon I grew up with and am emotionally invested in, with less grind and more ways to feel like I am Ash Ketchum. But I'm an RPG fan, so maybe these games just aren't for me, and there's a different personality which enjoys minmaxing and novel Pokemon who are the right audience. (I really liked Pokemon Stadium.)

tnecniv 3y ago
I find it interesting that you dislike the combat in the originals but like Pokemon Stadium which only features combat (and horrid mini games). Also I’m not really sure what exploring you’d want to do in those early games. I guess if you wanted to explore, I’d be annoyed by the constant fights, but that never occurred to me. The point of leaving a town was to get into a fight for one reason or another. That style of random fights outside of towns was also a staple of a lot of top down RPGs at the time. I haven’t played a pokemon game in 20 years, but I think you might have been barking up the wrong tree a bit. Outside of the combat, there isn’t much to do. If you don’t like the combat, then it’s just not your game.
- maxbond 3y ago
  I mentioned exploring because I had a similar conversation a few weeks ago, and a friend mentioned they liked the exploration in the game. Maybe what I should have said was that moving around the game world was painful, but moving around the game world should be exciting and interesting (in my subjective view - again, totally possible that this just isn't the game for me, I mean no disrespect). Eg, the caves full of puzzles and such felt like a chore. But the puzzles should have felt intriguing and challenging. But I didn't feel like I was moving the pieces of a puzzle around, I felt like I was moving through molasses made of Zubats. The fights in RPGs don't take you to another UI, play a long animation, just so you can try to run away from the fight. The wild pokemon are just constant. Way too constant to be interesting. It just felt like the game was trying to slow my progression with busy work - there's no challenge in pretty much anything expect the final fights, so why I should I bother? RPGs drop you right into the combat, so it doesn't break the flow and feels exciting. Pokemon Stadium was more fun for two reasons. There wasn't any grind, you could get right into the combat. (I don't recall if there was a campaign and I don't recall the mini games, I just played free play.) And I wasn't fighting brain dead trainers who had no strategy, or yet another level one Pidgey; I was fighting my friends and family members. When I won it was because I played well, when I lost it was because they played well. It felt more like Smash Bros. If there weren't so many wild pokemon and if the trainers steadily gained in strength instead of being totally flat until the difficulty rose like a brick wall, the game would be much better, in my opinion. Maybe instead of a model where you're constantly assaulted and need to be repel, you could be lightly peppered with wild pokemon unless you used an expendable to attract them. That's just my game design criticism, if someone is enjoying Pokemon I wouldn't want to rain on their parade.
PaulHoule 3y ago
I liked Pokemon Sun and Moon and not just because I moed hard for Lusamine. I thought it struck a good balance of story and gameplay and I like the way characters were revealed. I thought it was a huge missed opportunity that it didn’t take advantage of stereoscopy on the 3DS but I guess they didn’t want the 3DS to upstage the switch or maybe they couldn’t decide if Lusamine’s hair formed a cone or a sheet. I have some software that works like Disney’s multi plane camera and have wanted to cut up some art from that game and make some stereo dioramas but had the excuse that I could only make lousy anaglyph images but now that I have the MQ3 I’d really better do it.

tnecniv 3y ago

I find it interesting that you dislike the combat in the originals but like Pokemon Stadium which only features combat (and horrid mini games). Also I’m not really sure what exploring you’d want to do in those early games. I guess if you wanted to explore, I’d be annoyed by the constant fights, but that never occurred to me. The point of leaving a town was to get into a fight for one reason or another. That style of random fights outside of towns was also a staple of a lot of top down RPGs at the time. I haven’t played a pokemon game in 20 years, but I think you might have been barking up the wrong tree a bit. Outside of the combat, there isn’t much to do. If you don’t like the combat, then it’s just not your game.

maxbond 3y ago
I mentioned exploring because I had a similar conversation a few weeks ago, and a friend mentioned they liked the exploration in the game. Maybe what I should have said was that moving around the game world was painful, but moving around the game world should be exciting and interesting (in my subjective view - again, totally possible that this just isn't the game for me, I mean no disrespect). Eg, the caves full of puzzles and such felt like a chore. But the puzzles should have felt intriguing and challenging. But I didn't feel like I was moving the pieces of a puzzle around, I felt like I was moving through molasses made of Zubats. The fights in RPGs don't take you to another UI, play a long animation, just so you can try to run away from the fight. The wild pokemon are just constant. Way too constant to be interesting. It just felt like the game was trying to slow my progression with busy work - there's no challenge in pretty much anything expect the final fights, so why I should I bother? RPGs drop you right into the combat, so it doesn't break the flow and feels exciting. Pokemon Stadium was more fun for two reasons. There wasn't any grind, you could get right into the combat. (I don't recall if there was a campaign and I don't recall the mini games, I just played free play.) And I wasn't fighting brain dead trainers who had no strategy, or yet another level one Pidgey; I was fighting my friends and family members. When I won it was because I played well, when I lost it was because they played well. It felt more like Smash Bros. If there weren't so many wild pokemon and if the trainers steadily gained in strength instead of being totally flat until the difficulty rose like a brick wall, the game would be much better, in my opinion. Maybe instead of a model where you're constantly assaulted and need to be repel, you could be lightly peppered with wild pokemon unless you used an expendable to attract them. That's just my game design criticism, if someone is enjoying Pokemon I wouldn't want to rain on their parade.

PaulHoule 3y ago

I liked Pokemon Sun and Moon and not just because I moed hard for Lusamine. I thought it struck a good balance of story and gameplay and I like the way characters were revealed. I thought it was a huge missed opportunity that it didn’t take advantage of stereoscopy on the 3DS but I guess they didn’t want the 3DS to upstage the switch or maybe they couldn’t decide if Lusamine’s hair formed a cone or a sheet. I have some software that works like Disney’s multi plane camera and have wanted to cut up some art from that game and make some stereo dioramas but had the excuse that I could only make lousy anaglyph images but now that I have the MQ3 I’d really better do it.