I disagree with that, quality over quantity. I'm not gonna argue the validity of the reasons behind it. But the simple idea that they should not take games to another level of quality just to keep all of the pokemon, to me, is something i can't get behind. Games should always look to improve all their features as they go on. In some cases that's simply not possible. So one feature gets pulled back to allow all the rest to grow further. Especially when your audience is extremely varied and will almost never fully agree on what that most important feature is that should be kept/improved upon. This is my opinion on any game, not just pokemon.
Except aside from graphics (which just aren't that important to me) I don't see that improvement whatsoever. It's still the same eight gyms to trivially beat, the same league at the end, and so on. There's a bit of new fluff surrounding it like a background of NPCs cheering and so on, but that's not gameplay. That's decoration. The wild area doesn't interest me much, it seems like an overly complicated way of catching pokémon that seems just frustratingly hindered by matters beyond the player's control, namely weather availability, the whims and woes of multiplayer availability, or execution of NPC partners (which given GameFreak's history in making these support the player isn't exactly promising with the most recent Battle Agency being an absolute low where they're essentially useless). The Battle Spot being locked behind a paywall of Nintendo Switch Online is most likely going to reduce the availability of matches compared to what was available in Alola games.
The battle system, at least from what we know so far, doesn't seem more balanced than in Alola. Dynamaxing appears to be very skewed in which pokémon favour the boosts and to which ones they aren't useful, harking back to the gen 3 and before times where whether or not a pokémon type was physical or special and how that corresponded with the stats of the pokémon was fundamental in how useful a pokémon was. Gigantamaxing seems to be mega evolution repeated with the exact same mistake they made back then, only giving the buff to a select few pokémon and leaving the rest empty-handed, it's something Z-Moves just did way better overall.
So I ask you, where is the improved quality? I don't see it.
Not to mention, the shitstorm that would exist if we'd be getting new switch games that looked exactly like SM would be just as big. Gamefreak would be called lazy and greedy. They would still be targetted for thazt decision the same as they are for this one. And i'm 100% sure that if they did that, you would still be here saying the same things , the same criticism towards gamefreak, as you do for dexit.
Maybe it would be, maybe not. I don't know. I don't live in that timeline, and I presume neither do you. Also, that last sentence is completely wrong and unfair. You do not know me, you do not know how I would respond in that situation, and it is unfair to put me into a different fictional situation, pretend to know what I'd do there, and then attacking me over that fictional response.
Do I think their reasoning is the most sound ever for making this decision? no. I'm, also not gonna pretend to know the ins and outs of gamefreak as a company and how they work internally. And in the end I make my decision on the games based on the information i get, and what i see. And most importantly, what affects me personally when playing these games. In the end, the core themes and values of pokemon are still present. You set out on your journey meeting new and old pokemon along the way and work your way to be the strongest trainer in the region fighting along side your pokemon, even with dexit that is still the thing. Which is why , even though I wish dexit wasn't a thing, it's not a gamebreaker.
Depends on what you consider core themes and values of pokémon. Different people value different things in this franchise. The
official pokémon twitter account still has "catching 'em all" in their description, and it was part of the opening song and mottos for a long time, even as recent as
Kalos. And that portion is not in Galar. To me a large portion of what I like in the gameplay is finding solutions and puzzling out new movesets and strategies among hundreds of available pokémon, their stats, their abilities, their movesets, their hold items, and so on, and trying to make them work. I have over 1000 battles on the Battle Spot in Ultra Sun with various teams, and plenty of times when I needed a specific niche for my team there was only a single one among all 800+ that actually fit. Dexit is devastating for that puzzle element to me, much more than before I'll be faced with not being able to make a team at all because a pokémon I need isn't in the game.
