Real quick to get it out of the way, I'm new here, howdy all~
Now for the topic; This could just be me, but I've been finding myself growing bored of the Main Series of Pokemon, it heavily reminding me of CoD. By that, I mean the games hardly change from each iteration and perhaps I'm in the minority that think it got old since Diamond and Pearl, despite still purchasing the newer versions.
I am delighted to read someone else saying
1) They're tired of Pokemon.
2) They see its staleness as akin to
Call of Duty's.
I've been saying the same thing for years. Incidentally,
I also started getting tired with G4, although that's not a point I've dwelt upon.
It's really ironic, because I was there when Pokemon debuted in the US, when everyone else loved it too, and I still was big on it in High School, at which point some combination of hype-aversion and desire to look mature inspired many of my peers to disown it, but sometime around college, when it became cool for
adults to love Pokemon, I started to get bored of it. Yes; that mostly applies to the main series of games. After DP I felt I didn't need anymore of them; then when
Pokemon Conquest and
Pokemon Special got me back into the series, I was inspired to buy
Black...which I tired of in record time.
Just like how I feel in the minority for liking Pokken because I feel that's how Pokemon should be, an actual fight instead of a turned-based one. Not saying Pokken should be the new Pokemon, just that Pokemon needs something fresh in their games and Pokken is taking a step in the right direction (IMO) even though it's a spin-off game.
If the majority of people who have any opinion of
Pokken at all dislike it, that's news to me. It being a spin-off of a whole different genre obviously limits its appeal, but I don't think many people see it as bad for what it is.
I mean, each new Pokemon game from the main series has been selling less and less copies, so it would be safe to assume the game-play that has never changed has a part to play in this, right?
Decline of sales would
also be news to me, although I kind of like that, considering I want things to change.
As to the gameplay never changing, yes; that plays a part in it, but
only a part, because its gameplay
does change, with what seems like increasing frequency. New moves get added, as do new types, Mega-Evolution, Z-moves, etc etc.
The bigger problem, I think, is that for returning players, the gameplay is too
easy, predictable and padded. That applies mostly to story-mode, but I can't exactly accept the competitive battles with locked levels and house rules as a compensation when you have to sit through the story mode to get there. Once you get type effectiveness memorized, the fact that the games are consistently telegraphing upcoming challenges with "about to use" messages and "Hey; champ in the making" gymgoers and trainers themed according to which Pokemon they use, mean that a lot of the challenge goes away, and you're just killing time--and you
keep on killing time. New Pokemon are the main addition every game, but with many, what sets them apart from the older Pokemon isn't apparent until you do some grinding with them and learn a bunch of moves. When you first choose one of the new region's starters or catch the new region's obligatory small mammal or bird, you get moves that could belong to a whole bunch of other Pokemon. You get stats that could, too. While it's natural for games to throw in more and more things the further you get, in the case of Pokemon games it really feels like a lot of padding walls off the good the series has to offer, and I'm not convinced it's really that necessary. For example, the developers have said that they always go with the Fire-Grass-Water triad for starters because it's easy for new players to grasp as an example of type-effectiveness, but if that's their line of thinking, why don't they start with any moves that make their type effectiveness matter? Then there's the strong chance it will be someone's always-advancing levels, and not an actual exploitation of type effectiveness, that will get him or her through much of the story mode. At the very least, people will probably beat the Elite Four as an effect of the game's "Because I said so" allowance of them to gain levels from repeated tries, but never their opponents. Then, they might very well take their team raised to defeat the Elite Four over to the Battle Frontier or multiplayer or such, and find that, surprise surprise, they actually stink in that different world with different rules. Oh, and to top this all off, just about everyone I ask about new things like Mega Evolution have told me that the AI is too dumb to use it well, meaning the games go from too easy to
much too easy.
TLDR; while the turn-based RPG genre arguably feels regressive and can get old, it can still be exciting in the right circumstances; the problem with the bulk of a Pokemon RPG's length is that it puts you in the wrong circumstances.
How do you all feel about Pokemon? Do you like it the way it is, if so why?
As sad as it is to say this, moving on from gameplay I think there's more that I find bad about this series than good. I think its character design is beautiful; both the Pokemon and the humans, and I like the idea of celebrating the world of animals and to some extent folklore. However, the world design is dull, with natural terrain slave to grids and settlements and buildings being nakedly utilitarian for the players' purposes instead having the number, layout and size that actual ones would, although these bits are getting better. Still, it doesn't help one suspend disbelief and imagine it's a living, breathing world when every last bit of culture and
almost every last bit of dialogue relates to Pokemon; as if the whole world revolves around one child's quest 2BA Master...which it does, but it's just how dull that quest really is that makes it a problem.
Beyond that focal point, the plots are either too simple or feel too pretentious. The frequently ridiculous feats described in Pokedex entries don't even gel with the games' own internal logic and it's only because of the oppressive amount of "but thou must" restrictions in the games that they don't break every bit of balance that's needed for good gameplay...but these restrictions also prevent the games from ever being as compelling as they could be. For example, as iconic as Lavender Town was, as shocking as people were to hear that Team Rocket actually killed a Pokemon instead of just fainted it, as much of a dissonance as this presents with the ineffectual (and frequently more sympathetic) Team Rocket of the anime, the flipside of all that is when the
player actually meets Team Rocket, they don't function any more like villains than the friendly trainers do. Rocket trainers never try to kill the
player's Pokemon, nor to kill the players
themselves, nor even
restrain them. Beating them just causes them to pay up and retreat, and losing to them just causes the same old player retreat to Pokemon centers, as always keeping the experience.
Unfortunately, neither Pokemon's world design, nor its straightforward, often painfully-serious writing, nor its take-our-word-for-it mythology, nor its dissonant, arbitrary gameplay mechanics, nor its consistent focus on the comparatively dull aspect of its world that is the officially sanctioned battles with Gym leaders and the Elite Four, lend themselves to compelling storytelling. A lack of compelling storytelling can usually be ignored, if the gameplay is still enjoyable, but for me that's a big if right now. It needs to feel like a challenge, instead of just a delay of the inevitable, if it's to feel exciting again.
If not, what would you do to change it up?
To put it in the simplest and most recognizable terms, I want
Grand Theft Pokemon/
Pokemon: Breath of the Wild. Not as a replacement for the core series, which instead should improve its gameplay by taking out a lot of the padding and cushioning of the sort I related above, but I want an open-world, real-time Pokemon game
in addition; joining map-based strategy and fighting games as spin-offs that should have existed over a decade earlier.
Going maybe more obscure,
ARK: Survival Evolved is really the closest I can find to my ideal Pokemon game. Now naturally, that game has many infamous, debilitating flaws and a developer that often seems to prefer adding more bells and whistles than fixing them (seriously; I know that Stegosauruses were supposed to be dumb, but I can't buy that even they were so dumb as to get stuck on trees much smaller than themselves and not think to break the trees to get loose), so something closer may well exist, and there's also plenty to it that wouldn't need to clutter up a Pokemon game, but the basic act of creating a living world with all that is wonderful about nature but also all that is horrifying, it gets right. You'd have to throw out a lot of the rulebook to fit Pokemon into this mold, but since its rules are so grotesquely inconsistent with themselves anyway, who cares?
My ideal Pokemon game would be open-world, open-ended, organically-shaped, and rooted in tight, well-planned physics. No more absurd Pokemon ability dissonance between "Chuck Norris Facts"-esque Pokedex entries and Wailords that somehow can't carry a trainer through the water until they learn Surf; no more HM-slavery period; everything would be instead centered into some ideal midpoint rooted in a physics engine that, while not necessarily realistic, would be
consistent. But while things would be consistent, they wouldn't be limiting because every problem would have multiple solutions. If a boulder was blocking something, maybe you could teach a Machop Strength to push it aside, or maybe you could just evolve it into Machamp to get strong enough to push it aside, or maybe you could just raise a Pokemon that could use Rock Smash and destroy it instead, or maybe you could raise a Water or Grass Pokemon that could destroy it instead, or maybe you could just get a Pokemon with the move Dig and just dig around the boulder, leaving it where it was forever. If it's a tree blocking your path, you could have a Zangoose cut it, but you could just as well have a Camerupt burn it down. And if it's water in your way, well; why even care whether your Pokemon knows a move? (I will soon provide a possible answer; bear with me.) If Misty and plenty other trainers can swim themselves, why shouldn't you?
So having described all of this free-roaming and sensibly-working, versatile physics, it's starting to sound like this getting through this game would be a total pushover; and it
would if everyone acted like they did in the core series. Instead, though, to compensate and cement the world-building, they would
take no mercy! The battles would take place in real time, and on the exact same map the trainer walks around, meaning that both human villains and wild Pokemon
could and would target the trainer in addition to his or her Pokemon. There'd be no choice but to fight back; both in toughening up the trainer to fight back as maybe the next Bruno or Maylene, or get some weapon, but mostly, the game would be about making sure you've got good Pokemon allies to save your butt from its many assailants! Your Pokemon would probably still just faint, but your human character actually would be able to
die, or something like it. It could be kept abstract, and it certainly wouldn't have any more sway than the deaths of most player-characters in video games, but it
would ideally have the penalty of erasing progress since last save. That means this would not be just another Pokemon game you could just keep losing until you were strong enough to win. You would win once you learned to do
different things than the ones that kept making you lose; not in a stupid, forced,
Dragon's Lair sort of way, but in a way that gelled with the better action games on the marker.
Thus, while you wouldn't have to deal with such garbage as not being able to get AppleBottom City because a rando arbitrarily blocked your path until you beat the Gym Leader of Weedhaze Town, you'd instead likely be prevented because the Mightyenas on the way would be too tough for you to handle until you toughened up or got a Pokemon that could fly you over them, or something.
So to capitalize on all of this, while there could still be gyms, an Elite Four, a Battle Frontier, and the like, they probably wouldn't be the focus of the plot this time around. Instead, the plot would be...you know what;
who cares?! The game would be more than awesome enough you'd be fine just exploring and fighting and fooling around!
