BDSP: Worst Pokemon game?

[Pyreon]

BDSP has so many glaring issues that could have been easily avoided. It is one of the worst Pokémon games I've ever played.

My take regarding it being low effort is simple though. Gamefreak did not want to make this game or thought it was worth it. They wanted to make Legends Arceus which they believed was the test run for the open world mechanics they wanted for Gen 9. But TPC wanted to milk the fanbase's constant begging for Sinnoh remakes and pushed the game just so they could make some quick money with low cost and effort.

Might be completely wrong. But this is what I felt after playing the games and after putting some thought into it.

 

[Tobunarimo]

The Switch is a hybrid console/handheld, but its games lean more towards console scale games. Part of the selling point of the hybrid model is that you can play console quality games on the go. If the games are just handheld quality that undermines its capabilities as a console.

This is especially the case with adventure games, where they've all trended towards being large scale open area game worlds and longer levels as opposed to some of the games on the 3DS which tended to be more bite sized and linear. And it's not just because of BotW, BotW took another step forward in this direction, but this has been what people have expected of console games for years and years. Pretty much all the way back to the N64 when gaming first went 3D, what kinds of games did they have? Sandbox platformers like Mario 64 and Banjo-Kazooie. Open adventure games like OoT. Console games have been like this for as long as Pokemon's been alive, it goes beyond just the Switch.

Additionally, the games are all being sold for $60 like a console. Remember that on the 3DS, the games were $40, so the 3DS games didn't quite have as high expectations. You were paying a cheaper price for a lower quality game. Now that the games are $20 more, the fanbase expects the games to be $20 better in quality. Indie games like Blossom Tales are not a good example because of this since those all tend to be cheaper than the full $60. As for Link's Awakening, that had the same complaints as LGPE and BDSP, the Zelda fanbase similarly felt the game wasn't enough of a leap from the GB original to justify a full $60 price tag. So overall there's still this expectation that if you're selling a game for $60, it needs to bring the goods. It needs to be a modernized, polished, grand experience that represents the very best of what the console is capable of.

So yeah, even though the Switch is a hybrid, the retail boxed games are all designed, sold, and treated as if they are console games and carry the same expectations of console games. So it's totally reasonable to have expected Pokemon to take a significant leap forward after all previous games were handhelds and they were making games that were largely considered to be console games. They're playing with the big boys now, and everyone wanted the games to act like it.

Like I stated earlier, because of the Switch being a hybrid Console/Handheld, many and I say MANY have undervalued the system as merely another portable - you get that sort of argument by people who dismiss the system as a console by its sheer gimmick.

As far as things go in terms of price VS expectations - the games are priced as such by the publisher. If you are trying to tell me that BDSP should be cheaper due to the quality of the game versus the expectations of the game then I'm sorry I don't think that's ever going to be the case.

Pretty sure the reason USM is disliked is because while it refined SM's battle system well, that was pretty much all it did, and it came at the cost of basically taking all the emotion out of the story. Plus, SM's ending was perfect sequel bait so it just felt like so much wasted potential.

The backlash against USUM that I've talked about occurred on the game's announcement, meaning it was months long before anyone managed to get their hands on the game. The fact that only a week after the Pokemon Presents at E3 2017 Ishihara publically announced Pokemon Switch games showcases that USUM's popularity, or lack there of wasn't due to any changes (or lack of) from the originals but rather that it didn't meet the expectations people had of an announced huge open-world Pokemon project sitting right on the Switch's first year.

Or am I the only one who remembers the swamps of "Pokemon Switch screenshots" showcasing Pokemon and Pokemon characters edited over Breath of the Wild screenshots?

 

[Bolt the Cat]

Like I stated earlier, because of the Switch being a hybrid Console/Handheld, many and I say MANY have undervalued the system as merely another portable - you get that sort of argument by people who dismiss the system as a console by its sheer gimmick.

I mean sales wise the Switch has had no issue selling, nor have the console scale games on the Switch had any issues, so this is all hearsay.

As far as things go in terms of price VS expectations - the games are priced as such by the publisher. If you are trying to tell me that BDSP should be cheaper due to the quality of the game versus the expectations of the game then I'm sorry I don't think that's ever going to be the case.

Either that or give the games an appropriate amount of size, scale, and polish as a console quality game. BDSP is priced the same as BotW, but do they seem like they're equal in value? BotW is a highly ambitious, original AAA open world adventure game with (roughly at least) the highest quality graphics and content the Switch has to offer. BDSP, on the other hand, is a lazy remaster of a 15 year old handheld game with chibi graphics and a tile based, linear map design. BDSP doesn't even feel like it belongs in the same league as BotW, so why is it in the same price range? An experience like BDSP feels more appropriate as a $30 eShop title, not a $60 physical relase.

 

[GLTSRY]

I feel like USUM has been in a constant state of being criticized. Most people expected a sequel like BW2 for SM, with a new story and fixes to the countless mistakes the original had, ideally on the Switch.

First we learned that the games would be on the dying DS system. Well, it didn’t bother me that much because I never expected GF to make the console jump with a sequel.

Then we learned more and more about the content and things got really ugly. The sequel bait ending of SM was ignored and we got an “alternative story” that really was just a copy-paste without the good parts of the first story. Yellow, Crystal, Emerald and Platinum all did the 3rd version story better than USUM.

We didn’t even got a new postgame like the BF or the PWT in the last three third versions. Rainbow Rocket was a cool concept that was executed terribly, and it felt like a last second addition so that the games have something that the originals didn’t have.

You know, for all of BDSP’s faults - and there are many - it at least is a copy&paste version of a 15 year old game. Some didn’t get to enjoy DP, and people like me could at least enjoy the new soundtrack. USUM was a copy&paste version of a game that came out one year ago. It really felt like they were taking the piss with USUM.

 

[Tobunarimo]

I mean sales wise the Switch has had no issue selling, nor have the console scale games on the Switch had any issues, so this is all hearsay.

It's more a cultural thing. After all, the mobile market is widely considered by most "gamers" to be an inferior venue for video games, some even considering it a issue in the development of "proper" video games - as Konami's efforts to break into the mobile market has faced considerable backlash from fans of franchises like Metal Gear.

I mean, let's bring this back to Pokemon - how many people got royally mad and later dismissed Pokemon Let's Go Pikachu and Eevee for changing the wild Pokemon encounters from the traditional style to a more Pokemon Go inspired endeavor? Especially considering these were the first Pokemon games on the Switch (barring the port of Pokken of course) when the fanbase had high expectations for an evolution of the franchise akin to Breath of the Wild and Mario Odyssey?

I'm sure that sentiment against LGPE is still said even here: "Oh, if only they made a traditional Pokemon game, not some dumb brain-dead game inspired by a dumb mobile fad!"

How many people still go on to claim that Pokemon Go, despite everything pushed for it for the past number of years, is a "dead game" primarily for it being a mobile title?

How many people wanted the 3DS to die out completely once the Switch was announced only to backpedal and panic now that the eShop for said system is essentially gone? (and the only way to buy games is via download codes and having your Nintendo Network ID connected to your Switch profile)

I can certainly recall so many people dismissing handhelds entirely because they're not "real games"

Point is, people are still going to take the fact that the Switch can be played as a handheld, and use that specific attribute to say that the system doesn't deserve to be treated as a console like the Playstation or the Xbox.

It's a cultural thing.

Either that or give the games an appropriate amount of size, scale, and polish as a console quality game. BDSP is priced the same as BotW, but do they seem like they're equal in value? BotW is a highly ambitious, original AAA open world adventure game with (roughly at least) the highest quality graphics and content the Switch has to offer. BDSP, on the other hand, is a lazy remaster of a 15 year old handheld game with chibi graphics and a tile based, linear map design. BDSP doesn't even feel like it belongs in the same league as BotW, so why is it in the same price range? An experience like BDSP feels more appropriate as a $30 eShop title, not a $60 physical relase.

Well we're not the ones who decide the value of how a game gets sold, now do we? At least not in terms of initial pricing - when we jump into the market and decide prices is when we resell games, and considering how Pokemon games tend to end up as they are all connected to each other via transferring Pokemon - I do expect that in the next decade for BDSP to rise in price.

Fact is, BDSP are priced at $60 each, that's not a testament to their quality or lack there of, it's just how the market prices goods.

 

[Bolt the Cat]

It's more a cultural thing. After all, the mobile market is widely considered by most "gamers" to be an inferior venue for video games, some even considering it a issue in the development of "proper" video games - as Konami's efforts to break into the mobile market has faced considerable backlash from fans of franchises like Metal Gear.

I mean, let's bring this back to Pokemon - how many people got royally mad and later dismissed Pokemon Let's Go Pikachu and Eevee for changing the wild Pokemon encounters from the traditional style to a more Pokemon Go inspired endeavor? Especially considering these were the first Pokemon games on the Switch (barring the port of Pokken of course) when the fanbase had high expectations for an evolution of the franchise akin to Breath of the Wild and Mario Odyssey?

I'm sure that sentiment against LGPE is still said even here: "Oh, if only they made a traditional Pokemon game, not some dumb brain-dead game inspired by a dumb mobile fad!"

How many people still go on to claim that Pokemon Go, despite everything pushed for it for the past number of years, is a "dead game" primarily for it being a mobile title?

How many people wanted the 3DS to die out completely once the Switch was announced only to backpedal and panic now that the eShop for said system is essentially gone? (and the only way to buy games is via download codes and having your Nintendo Network ID connected to your Switch profile)

I can certainly recall so many people dismissing handhelds entirely because they're not "real games"

Point is, people are still going to take the fact that the Switch can be played as a handheld, and use that specific attribute to say that the system doesn't deserve to be treated as a console like the Playstation or the Xbox.

It's a cultural thing.

You're confusing handheld and mobile. Handheld still operates like the console market, just with cheaper hardware that you can take with you out and about. The games are designed with relatively similar design philosophies, just at different price points. That's what the Switch merged console with, handheld games were already getting pretty advanced and expensive and Nintendo didn't want a console quite as expensive as Microsoft and Sony's (although it's not far off in performance), so it wasn't hard to combine those two markets into one. Mobile, on the other hand, is more of a blue ocean market that targets non-gamers. Mobile players just consider gaming as part of a general entertainment package (along with other media such as movies, TV, music, social media, etc.) and aren't really interested in spending hours at a time or $60 (although they can end up getting tricked into spending that plus more) on an individual game. That's why mobile games tend to cut content or use predatory pricing models using microtransactions, gacha mechanics, etc. Most of the complaints you're highlighting here are characteristic of mobile games specifically and not handhelds. Again, the Switch being part handheld did not diminish fan expectations. Pure handhelds could not run a game as large and complex as BotW or Odyssey, those types of experiences were previously exclusive to consoles so that set a precedent that we could expect the hybrid console to lean more towards the console side of thing when it comes to scale and pricing.

Well we're not the ones who decide the value of how a game gets sold, now do we? At least not in terms of initial pricing - when we jump into the market and decide prices is when we resell games, and considering how Pokemon games tend to end up as they are all connected to each other via transferring Pokemon - I do expect that in the next decade for BDSP to rise in price.

Fact is, BDSP are priced at $60 each, that's not a testament to their quality or lack there of, it's just how the market prices goods.

The value and quality of the product is supposed to play a part in the pricing, that's Economics 101. We pay $60 for something if we think the product provides $60 worth of value. Providing dramatically less value than games like BotW makes the value proposition for BDSP seem poor.

 

[amoebo]

It was outsourced, but I don’t think it was rushed.

As I said above, BDSP was built using a completely different game engine than the other mainline games. They couldn’t really reuse any of Game Freak’s existing codebase for the game engine. That’s not something that can be slapped together in a rush job.

The coding for BDSP is almost symbol for symbol the exact same as D/P

 

[masdog]

The coding for BDSP is almost symbol for symbol the exact same as D/P

Citation needed…

 

[DannyDark]

Speaking of coding, I just ran into an issue I wasn't aware about that was really the nail in the coffin for BDSP for me, personally.. So my favourite Pokemon is Spinda, and I was lucky enough for it to be the horde pokemon yesterday.. so I caught one, and then also decided to chain it for a shiny which I got.. but then when I went to move them to HOME, it wouldn't let me, and apparently this is because they coded Spinda's spots to work/be read in the opposite way to normal.. so it can't be moved from the game, because anything else would read the code in the opposite way and change the spot positions?

 

[amoebo]

Citation needed…

On a quick search I can't find a GitHub repository or something like that, but mods made for Pokemon Platinum did not need any further modification to run smoothly on BDSP, implying the base code needed to allow the mods to function are the exact same. Additionally, exploits present in the base games of DPP are still present 1-to-1 with new glitches (i.e early Sunyshore) having functionality based on the lack of a forced grid system within the games. To top it off, the same goes for the inverse: glitches for any content shared between both base and remake versions have been found in BDSP first and then applied to DPP to get the same effect.

In the end, there's no developer confirmation or a code dump to back it up that I could find. But almost everything else suggests that this is the case, as the level of transferability that errors have between a DS game from prior to 2010 and a switch game that came out in 2021 is unheard of unless the game in specific areas functions the exact same.

 

[masdog]

On a quick search I can't find a GitHub repository or something like that, but mods made for Pokemon Platinum did not need any further modification to run smoothly on BDSP, implying the base code needed to allow the mods to function are the exact same. Additionally, exploits present in the base games of DPP are still present 1-to-1 with new glitches (i.e early Sunyshore) having functionality based on the lack of a forced grid system within the games. To top it off, the same goes for the inverse: glitches for any content shared between both base and remake versions have been found in BDSP first and then applied to DPP to get the same effect.

In the end, there's no developer confirmation or a code dump to back it up that I could find. But almost everything else suggests that this is the case, as the level of transferability that errors have between a DS game from prior to 2010 and a switch game that came out in 2021 is unheard of unless the game in specific areas functions the exact same.

OK. Fair enough.

There is plenty of evidence that ILCA used Unity for the engine. Dataminers have found a lot of unobfuscated Unity elements after pulling apart BDSP shortly after getting their hands on it.

Here are two tweets from Kurt (@Kaphotics) and Matt (@mattyoukhana_) that give some details.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1457939764368216066

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1457940306255654916

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1457939766024888321

The original DP code wouldn’t have supported 3D graphics or run on a Switch, so what I’m guessing ILCA did was build the game in Unity and just reuse/reimplement whatever code GameFreak gave them. IIRC, DP was originally written in C, so ILCA would have had to rewrite that code in C#.

 

[Espeonite]

Honestly yes, the game was a waste of money and is ugly and glitchy, the only good thing I got was mew.

 

[janejane6178]

I didn’t like how some places had lags
Like the bottom part of the water gym town

 

[Pokegirl Fan~]

I didn’t like how some places had lags
Like the bottom part of the water gym town

It lags? I haven't really noticed this at all tbh.

 

[Det. Viper]

It lags? I haven't really noticed this at all tbh.

The game does not lag. Although the game is lacking in areas what it does do well is load each map 1000x better than the original games. There’s no lagging at all.

 

[vondecayle]

Definitely the weakest remake/remaster or whatever that was.

 

[Det. Viper]

Definitely the weakest remake/remaster or whatever that was.

LGPE as a remake of Yellow is by far the worst remake. BDSP doesn’t hold up against the added features and stories of FRLG, HGSS or ORAS but it holds up in gameplay much better than LGPE.

 

[Boss1991]

I think both BDSP and LGPE are underrated games. Neither of them is near the bottom in my opinion.

Worst Pokemon games imo are clearly RGB and Yellow. I would also rank SM near them.

 

[underuined]

if anything, think it's just seriously untapped potential
besides being surprisingly glitchy and not including specific fixes from platinum
the grand underground is pretty cool, though

 

[Pokefan_1987]

No. From what I've seen from dataminers, each Pokemon generation uses an updated and enhanced version of the previous generation's engine.

BDSP was built on Unity. This was discovered when Kurt and the other main dataminers got their hands on the game and started pulling it apart. All of the other games, including PLA, use a proprietary engine that Game Freak developed. I think PLA is built on a modified version of the Sw/Sh engine from what I've read, and that was built on a modified version of the LGPE engine.

That would explain the paintbrush effects and evolution scenes "wouldn't look right" on other engines.

if anything, think it's just seriously untapped potential
besides being surprisingly glitchy and not including specific fixes from platinum
the grand underground is pretty cool, though

Yep easy place to find starters from Gen 1 to Gen 4. Great for hoping a TINY chance to find a good nature or shiny hunt if lucky. But they mostly have low 3% in the correct environment. Also every environment can be found all over Sinnoh and you need luck before "you were too late"