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BDSP: Worst Pokemon game?

Bolt the Cat

Bringing the Thunder
But like, it’s fine overall, the good and the bad balance to make it just… fine. It’s no Emerald, it’s no Legends, it’s no Crystal, and it’s certainly no Sun or Moon. But it’s not truly down in the depths of the series like Let’s Go, Black and White, Sword and Shield, or FireRed and LeafGreen. Those are games I’d like to play far less than I like to play BDSP, some for different reasons than others. It’s more on the level of the original Diamond and Pearl than anything else, honestly, it just kind of looks gross and bad compared to them.

As with @GLTSRY your rankings confuse me as well (although I don't agree with them about BW being rated so low, but some level of disagreement is natural). The games you rate high and the games you rate low are rather eclectic mixes and I can't find any kind of correlation in what you like about the games you like and what you dislike about the games you dislike.
 
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DayQuil95

Well-Known Member
It’s no Emerald, it’s no Legends, it’s no Crystal, and it’s certainly no Sun or Moon. But it’s not truly down in the depths of the series like Let’s Go, Black and White, Sword and Shield, or FireRed and LeafGreen.
I agree with SWSH being extremely low, but why are FRLG so low? They improved on every aspect of RBY, updated everything to gen 3, and made things a million times more enjoyable, alongside having an enjoyable post-game with the Sevii Islands.
 

Miraidon

Blasting off at the speed of light!
They were literally Diamond and Pearl, and I think I just expected them to be a lot more than that.
 

GLTSRY

Sorry not sorry for my smugness
I wonder how they will handle any potential Gen 5 remake. Will it be again done like Gen 4, with ILCA creating a “fateful” remake and GF creating a new Legends game, or will they follow another strategy?

I think there’d be a drop in sales for any BDSP-esque remake of BW, especially if they don’t include BW2 content in it.
 

Miraidon

Blasting off at the speed of light!
I wonder how they will handle any potential Gen 5 remake. Will it be again done like Gen 4, with ILCA creating a “fateful” remake and GF creating a new Legends game, or will they follow another strategy?

I think there’d be a drop in sales for any BDSP-esque remake of BW, especially if they don’t include BW2 content in it.
Good point... I think this won't be the last time they outsource main game remakes to a 3rd party developer. My expectation is that it's going to be like you suggested: a ILCA remake and a Gamefreak Legends game.
 

Sαpphire

Johto Champion
I don’t know what surprises me more: The fact that you rate Sun/Moon so high, or that you rate Black/White so low
As with @GLTSRY your rankings confuse me as well (although I don't agree with them about BW being rated so low, but some level of disagreement is natural). The games you rate high and the games you rate low are rather eclectic mixes and I can't find any kind of correlation in what you like about the games you like and what you dislike about the games you dislike.
I agree with SWSH being extremely low, but why are FRLG so low? They improved on every aspect of RBY, updated everything to gen 3, and made things a million times more enjoyable, alongside having an enjoyable post-game with the Sevii Islands.

Honestly, it’s just a feeling. I’ve been playing this series for like 20 years now, and it’s hard for me to say that there’s any objective scale that I use. It’s all about how I felt when playing those games and how I feel when replaying them. I didn’t enjoy Black and White for example; that’s not to say they’re bad in an objective sense, because they’re certainly not. But subjectively, they’ve never evoked the same feelings as prior games in the series did, for me - I didn’t feel the same sense of wonder and excitement. I thought this might have been me growing out of the series, but then I did feel that again when I played titles like Moon, which became one of my favorite gaming experiences ever. A similar thing comes up when people talk about the quality of the story, specifically, of any given game in the series. There’s tons of praise for the Black and White story, but it’s not really for me, where Sun and Moon were my favorite narrative experience in the series. At the same time, I get why there was value in Black and White pushing forward with a deeper and more serious narrative than seen before.

So yeah, it’s hard to pin down a definitive quality or set of qualities that makes me feel the magic in a Pokémon game. I certainly can see why it makes little sense - especially to the large portion of the fanbase who really love Black and White, since I consider that one of my least favorite experiences.

If I were to try really hard to be objective, I feel like BDSP still wouldn’t be worst (hello Let’s Go!) but it would probably be ranked lower than BW pretty easily. The latter tried to do new things, reinvent the series a bit, challenge our notions of what a Pokémon game is and should be. BDSP, on the other hand, willfully fail to do anything meaningfully new or unique, and they look visually terrible at the same time.

To expand on the FRLG mention specifically though - it’s more because of Kanto than anything else. I don’t like the visual style’s differences from RSE, I don’t enjoy much at all about Kanto, and I feel more inclined to be critical of FRLG than Gen 1 Kanto experiences because I feel they could have been far more ambitious in remaking the experience, whereas RGBY were the foundation of the series’ concept. I suppose, though, FRLG did literally give us the entire concept of a remake in a new generation, so I can be thankful for that.
 

Bolt the Cat

Bringing the Thunder
I wonder how they will handle any potential Gen 5 remake. Will it be again done like Gen 4, with ILCA creating a “fateful” remake and GF creating a new Legends game, or will they follow another strategy?

I think there’d be a drop in sales for any BDSP-esque remake of BW, especially if they don’t include BW2 content in it.

Probably just like Gen 4, although I'm not 100% sure if they'll do a second Legends game (I'd lean more towards yes though), but at the very least I think it'd be a spiritual successor to LA that similarly drastically overhauls Unova.

And no, I don't think BW remakes will have any BW2 content, the newer remakes seem to want to largely pretend the updated versions don't exist. We'll probably get basic ***** BW remakes with the BW2 forms thrown in and with the BW2 Unova Dex Pokemon thrown in to post game (or at best caught through Entree Forest or something comparable to Hideaways).
 

DayQuil95

Well-Known Member
Honestly, it’s just a feeling. I’ve been playing this series for like 20 years now, and it’s hard for me to say that there’s any objective scale that I use. It’s all about how I felt when playing those games and how I feel when replaying them. I didn’t enjoy Black and White for example; that’s not to say they’re bad in an objective sense, because they’re certainly not. But subjectively, they’ve never evoked the same feelings as prior games in the series did, for me - I didn’t feel the same sense of wonder and excitement. I thought this might have been me growing out of the series, but then I did feel that again when I played titles like Moon, which became one of my favorite gaming experiences ever. A similar thing comes up when people talk about the quality of the story, specifically, of any given game in the series. There’s tons of praise for the Black and White story, but it’s not really for me, where Sun and Moon were my favorite narrative experience in the series. At the same time, I get why there was value in Black and White pushing forward with a deeper and more serious narrative than seen before.

So yeah, it’s hard to pin down a definitive quality or set of qualities that makes me feel the magic in a Pokémon game. I certainly can see why it makes little sense - especially to the large portion of the fanbase who really love Black and White, since I consider that one of my least favorite experiences.

If I were to try really hard to be objective, I feel like BDSP still wouldn’t be worst (hello Let’s Go!) but it would probably be ranked lower than BW pretty easily. The latter tried to do new things, reinvent the series a bit, challenge our notions of what a Pokémon game is and should be. BDSP, on the other hand, willfully fail to do anything meaningfully new or unique, and they look visually terrible at the same time.

To expand on the FRLG mention specifically though - it’s more because of Kanto than anything else. I don’t like the visual style’s differences from RSE, I don’t enjoy much at all about Kanto, and I feel more inclined to be critical of FRLG than Gen 1 Kanto experiences because I feel they could have been far more ambitious in remaking the experience, whereas RGBY were the foundation of the series’ concept. I suppose, though, FRLG did literally give us the entire concept of a remake in a new generation, so I can be thankful for that.
Fair enough, I really respect your opinions on this.
 

GLTSRY

Sorry not sorry for my smugness
Probably just like Gen 4, although I'm not 100% sure if they'll do a second Legends game (I'd lean more towards yes though), but at the very least I think it'd be a spiritual successor to LA that similarly drastically overhauls Unova.
I think PLA is too successful to be abandoned, and GF seems to like the project too, considering how much effort went into it - so some sort of Legends game should definitely come.
And no, I don't think BW remakes will have any BW2 content, the newer remakes seem to want to largely pretend the updated versions don't exist. We'll probably get basic ***** BW remakes with the BW2 forms thrown in and with the BW2 Unova Dex Pokemon thrown in to post game (or at best caught through Entree Forest or something comparable to Hideaways).
I don’t think they can get away with this. BDSP had good sales, but a lot of people have buyers remorse. BW2, unlike the other third versions, also have a brand new story, characters and places instead of “just” focusing on creating a similar story like the first games for the third legendary. The PWT was also such a popular addition that any remake not having it will be crucified. This is not like Emerald or Platinum, where the BF was a very cool addition. The PWT is what most people think of first when they’re talking about BW2. A basic BW remake after the fiasco that was BDSP would be foolish and kill any faith the people have in GF after PLA.
 

Bolt the Cat

Bringing the Thunder
I don’t think they can get away with this. BDSP had good sales, but a lot of people have buyers remorse. BW2, unlike the other third versions, also have a brand new story, characters and places instead of “just” focusing on creating a similar story like the first games for the third legendary. The PWT was also such a popular addition that any remake not having it will be crucified. This is not like Emerald or Platinum, where the BF was a very cool addition. The PWT is what most people think of first when they’re talking about BW2. A basic BW remake after the fiasco that was BDSP would be foolish and kill any faith the people have in GF after PLA.

We keep saying this but people keep buying the games regardless of what happens. I just don't think this sharp decrease in sales is ever happening for any Pokemon game short of a Sonic 06-esque buggy mess (and that's more likely for a new generation, not a remake). There's probably enough younger fans that never played the original that don't care if it's the same.
 

GarchompTheAssassin

Water starter fan
I'm almost finished with the Gym Leader/E4/Champion rematches and while I feel this remake was pretty uninspiring/unambitious on the whole (and to be completely honest I never had big hopes for the Sinnoh remakes with present day Game Freak), I don't think they're the worst games by any stretch - for me, that title remains with Sun/Moon.
 

GLTSRY

Sorry not sorry for my smugness
We keep saying this but people keep buying the games regardless of what happens. I just don't think this sharp decrease in sales is ever happening for any Pokemon game short of a Sonic 06-esque buggy mess (and that's more likely for a new generation, not a remake). There's probably enough younger fans that never played the original that don't care if it's the same.
Eh, you’re probably right, but I just hope GF/ILCA learned their lessons from BDSP to create a good product. If not - my DS works and I still have the original BW cartridge, I can do better things with 60 bucks.
I'm almost finished with the Gym Leader/E4/Champion rematches and while I feel this remake was pretty uninspiring/unambitious on the whole (and to be completely honest I never had big hopes for the Sinnoh remakes with present day Game Freak), I don't think they're the worst games by any stretch - for me, that title remains with Sun/Moon.
Sun/Moon was too ambitious for its own sake in some places, but in areas it needed to be ambitious they were shockingly sloppy. I’d overall still rate them above USUM and BDSP though
 

Bolt the Cat

Bringing the Thunder
Sun/Moon was too ambitious for its own sake in some places, but in areas it needed to be ambitious they were shockingly sloppy. I’d overall still rate them above USUM and BDSP though

Wut? What parts of the game were those? I don't remember anything in SM that felt too ambitious, just the parts that were too sloppy.
 

Sαpphire

Johto Champion
I'm almost finished with the Gym Leader/E4/Champion rematches and while I feel this remake was pretty uninspiring/unambitious on the whole (and to be completely honest I never had big hopes for the Sinnoh remakes with present day Game Freak), I don't think they're the worst games by any stretch - for me, that title remains with Sun/Moon.

What about Sun and Moon do you find to be notably worse than what’s presented in BDSP?
 

GLTSRY

Sorry not sorry for my smugness
Wut? What parts of the game were those? I don't remember anything in SM that felt too ambitious, just the parts that were too sloppy.
The Battle Royal was a cool idea, but should‘ve been introduced on a Switch game - the 3DS couldn‘t handle it. They also added so many neat-yet-insignificant details like the coffee shops, photo club or even a goddamn QR scanning mechanic yet didn‘t think to add a “skip cutscene“ option. They also created this huge Wifi plaza or whatever it was called, when fans just wanted an easy to use mechanic like the PSS.

For me, the biggest sin of SM was the uninspiring way the cameos were handled - everyone was expecting a PWT deluxe and all we got was the stupid Battle Tree and returning characters which felt like they were literally scraping the bottom of the barrel.
 

Bolt the Cat

Bringing the Thunder
What about Sun and Moon do you find to be notably worse than what’s presented in BDSP?

I know this question wasn't directed at me, but there is something that sticks out as being noticeably worse about SM than BDSP and that's the region design. SM has an extremely linear, "follow the Yellow Brick Road" sort of region design. The overworld areas don't really have much in the way of detours to explore (and every time they do, it's something quick and small) and there's a rigid order in which you visit the areas. They outright block areas they don't want you exploring with NPCs. Meanwhile DPPtBDSP has some level of linearity, but not to the degree of SM. There's entire swaths of routes or areas that are optional or detours so the progression isn't as straightforward. You even get to choose whether to fight Maylene or Crasher Wake first, whereas you get to a similar situation with Akala Island in SM and might think "I want to go fight Lana, Kiawe, and Mallow in whatever order I want" but nope, the game has you fight Lana, then Kiawe, then Mallow and has you take a roundabout path through Akala again constantly blocked by NPCs to force you to fight them in that order. And there's a lot more mazelike design, especially in the dungeons and gym puzzles. It just makes it all much more satisfying to navigate and explore and feels more realistic than SM's system of "okay, you're going to go to A, then B, then C and no other order".

The Battle Royal was a cool idea, but should‘ve been introduced on a Switch game - the 3DS couldn‘t handle it. They also added so many neat-yet-insignificant details like the coffee shops, photo club or even a goddamn QR scanning mechanic yet didn‘t think to add a “skip cutscene“ option. They also created this huge Wifi plaza or whatever it was called, when fans just wanted an easy to use mechanic like the PSS.

For me, the biggest sin of SM was the uninspiring way the cameos were handled - everyone was expecting a PWT deluxe and all we got was the stupid Battle Tree and returning characters which felt like they were literally scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Meh, I don't think "neat-yet-insignificant" details are really a sign that they want to be ambitious, if anything it's the opposite. They'd rather give us scraps than anything substantial that would make the game worth coming back to. And I think it's intentionally done this way because they were obsessed with making everything like a mobile game at that time.

Similarly, the cameos didn't really feel like a sign that they had greater ambitions. They just wanted to throw in a few popular characters. The only sign of ambition I've really seen out of SM were wanting to shift away from grid based map design and wanting to shake up conventions like HMs and gyms. But there's nothing in the final product that really feels unpolished or above their ability, SM's shortcomings feel like intentional design decisions that just didn't feel like they were the right ones for the series.
 

GarchompTheAssassin

Water starter fan
What about Sun and Moon do you find to be notably worse than what’s presented in BDSP?
Pokemon Sun was the first and only time I ever got to the end credits of a Pokemon game and felt absolutely zero emotion whatsoever - the game just failed to be an immersive gameplay experience for me and ended up turning me off an entire generation. IIRC some of the things that factored into this were the excessive levels of handholding and linearity (like, I remember quite a few of the routes were basically empty corridors), and this was a big deal for someone who values exploration in these sorts of games (@Bolt the Cat covered this issue nicely in the above post). As well as this, there were all those unskippable cutscenes for a story that (IMO) was nowhere near good enough to 'intrude' the way it did, and this also made the Melemele Island section very tedious to play through.

BDSP could be a chore to play, I won't lie, but at the end of the day they're still remakes of my favorite generation and I'm deeply fond of Sinnoh - so even when it was a slog, I attribute it more to my disappointment at the underwhelming direction they took this remake and that I had literally played this (almost) exact same game multiple times before - the music and the locations and the Pokemon that I loved were still there and the rematches were genuinely pretty fun to go into blind.

By the way, I should mention that when I say SM are the worst games, I'm referring only the games that I've completed - I haven't finished LGPE, SwSh or PLA (former two I probably never will) and I never bought USUM.
 

wildcaml

re: member
i don't like sun and moon all that much but, you have to admit, some of those battle backgrounds are pretty freaking gorgeous
 
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