The Faults of Gen VII

[Kage-Pikachu]

True, Popplio was definitely the Bulbasaur of Gen 7 (with the exception of Totem Lurantis) in terms of difficulty.

 

[Mega Altaria]

True, Popplio was definitely the Bulbasaur of Gen 7 (with the exception of Totem Lurantis) in terms of difficulty.

Yeah. Also there was Totem Vikavolt and Togedemaru but they can be easily dealt with other Pokémon.

Z-Moves made the battles a lot easier and I even got through the main game until the Elite Four without using Z-Moves.

 

[Kage-Pikachu]

I wish there were more trial goers around which would have allowed more usage of Z-moves increasing the difficulty. Or at least giving held items to more trainers especially since so many of them had less than 3 Pokemon.

 

[Mega Altaria]

I wish there were more trial goers around which would have allowed more usage of Z-moves increasing the difficulty. Or at least giving held items to more trainers especially since so many of them had less than 3 Pokemon.

At least there were some Trainers who use Z-Moves. Maybe there could be a Trainer class called Trial Goer or have ordinary Trainers but they have Z-Rings. Anyway EXP scaling was quite sufficient for difficulty.

 

[KurashiDragon]

Gen 7 is the worst generation for me. S/M was enjoyable enough and US/UM I believe is better but the two being released so close together and US/UM pretty much copy pasting 80% of S/M over all but kills this generation for me. I know US/UM is essentially Platinum / Emerald / Crystal / Yellow but unlike all but Crystal / Yellow *Which I'm more forgiving of considering how old they are and what emerald did over them* US/UM has nothing going for it. It's just got a slightly different take on the story and the ability to capture every legendary which we could already do in OR/AS. There was nothing significant added in US/UM to make me say, "yea, totally worth essentially re-buying S/M" All of the games are fine on their own but overall, this generations main series games are a step down. There's alot of innovation, I'll give it that. The removal of HMs is cool. The story and challenges were different and did a fine job in spite of or, some might say, because of it. Otherwise though, it feels like little more than a stopgap between gen 6 and 8. An experimental phase where nothing really happens other than gamefreak seeing what it can get away with changing or doing differently. kind of a disappointing generation really.

We're getting Let's Go: Pikachu and Eevee too which is fine I suppose. I'd like it more if it weren't more Gen 1. I got tired of Gen 1 being shoved in my face constantly as soon as Red Blue and Yellow got re-released back in Gen 6 and it's been all downhill ever sense but now we're getting what's essentially an hd remake of Yellow with no wild battles. My enthusiasm couldn't be any further down the drain. I hold no high hopes for them. Oh yea and Pokemon Quest with it's........ exclusively gen 1 pok- ok gamefreak we need to talk about this Gen 1 obsession you seem to think we have. Like seriously, this has to stop.

 

[nel3]

@ KursahiDragon:

[QUOTE="KurashiDragon, post: 18570313, member: 139691" Otherwise though, it feels like little more than a stopgap between gen 6 and 8. An experimental phase where nothing really happens other than gamefreak seeing what it can get away with changing or doing differently. kind of a disappointing generation really.
[/QUOTE]

you really hammered the nail on the head there. yeah gen7 is a fun game when you see the new advantages of gen7 but like the new car smell they dont last too long. gen7 had some improvements and downfalls compared to gen6. i did feel like GF just put out a pkmn game just to honor the 20th anniversary/cash cow without puttting their 100% effort into gen7 (SM), USUM was a bit more complete but still wasnt up to par.

 

[c1234]

The only gripe that I have is that you couldn't skip the cutscenes. This was especially fun at the end of the game when you have that 20+ minute cutscene!

 

[Missingno.Fan]

These are all minor complaints:

• Unskippable cutscenes.
• Too few new Pokémon (if you exclude Alola forms)
• Only Alola forms for Gen I Pokemon. Come on, let’s give some other generations some love.

 

[Ariki]

My only gripe with Gen 7 was the lack of a national dex in game. other than that, I was fine with everything else

 

[tyranitar.armaldo]

While not the worst games in the series, I don't rank Alola that highly. While it's good points were very good, it's fault were just as glaring as its strengths.


-Removal of quality-of-life features from gen 6 and earlier. Such as hordes, trainer rematches and super training.

-Biggest offense: Almost the entire pokedex was revealed officially beforehand. This is pretty bad; the entire POINT of pokemon is discovering new ones in the grass and being astonished by them. I got NONE of that this time around as GF revealed them all online beforehand.

-Small amount of new pokemon for a second time in a row.

-Alolan Forms were all gen 1. Aka, stopping.gen.1.pandering.

-Irritating S.O.S loops in the wild (Sun/Moon only).

-RotomDex wouldn't shut up.

-Excessive hand-holding in the beginning. Let me go dammit! If I want help, I will ask...

-USUM were pretty lacklustre additions. No new alolan forms, areas were barely built up, and it felt like they deliberately held stuff back in Sun/Moon to milk the fanbase more (empty lots in the cities).

 

[The Red Thunder]

As a leveler, I always take issue with scaling experience. It slows me down, and really dampens what I find enjoyable in the series. In Sun and Moon especially, I barely leveled any Pokemon. I do enjoy that it feels dialed back a bit compared to Fifth Gen, but scaling experience has always been a thorn in my side.

However, in Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon, this is another story entirely. Thanks to Roto Exp. Power and SOS Chansey/Blissey, I can easily grind Pokemon to level 100. I'd say it's even faster than the Restaurant Le Wow from X & Y. To put it in perspective, I've leveled more Pokemon to 100 in the last couple weeks using this method than I had in the rest of the entirety of Seventh Gen.

 

[PokeMaster366]

Main gripes with Gen 7 are the slow start and the alterations made to the story going into US/UM. Another issue is that the Battle Tree is essentially worthless now that we have Mantine Surfing. Unless it becomes more like the Frontier, there is no point to it.

 

[Rikazan]

Biggest issue is one that hits replayability: Too many tutorials and cutscenes.

I get that Gamefreak wants people to learn; especially with most sales these days being via the E-Shop and there no longer being manuals; but at least give us the option to skip the tutorials, we had those options in old games, why not now?

Especially in the origionally S/M; where it can take almost half an hour to even get your first pokemon. As someone who Nuzlockes, it's quite a pain with the extremely long introduction in Gen 7.

It's also really annoying because Gen 7 has quite a lot of pokemon variety; which; combined with the games generally being a challenge relative to normal, encourages replaying the story with different teams.

Also; US/UM were a bit too similar to S/M IMO. They are doubtlessly the superior versions, but I'd say they're less of a step up than some of the 3rd editions, such as Emerald [BF] and Platinum [Fixed almost all the issues of D/P]

Scaleing XP is also annoying. It made sense in Gen 5 because of Audino grinding, but here? Especially with the significantly tougher bosses? Things like Ultra Necrozma basically require either a cheese strategy or overleveling.

I can see it an an answer for the broken XP.Share... but maybe then you should just change the XP.Share back? And what about the people who don't use that broken thing? The game shouldn't be designed around an item that a player can just turn off.

 

[Mega Altaria]

I get that Gamefreak wants people to learn; especially with most sales these days being via the E-Shop and there no longer being manuals; but at least give us the option to skip the tutorials, we had those options in old games, why not now?

But manuals can be accessed electronically while the game cartridge is loaded or the software exists onto the 3DS. Maybe the reason tutorials are there in-game is because Game Freak doesn't expect every player to read these electronic game manuals.

 

[RileyXY1]

The cutscenes were too long and ruined the pace of the game. The fact that they are unskippable makes it worse.
If you chose Popplio, then the Kahunas are complete jokes, because it has the advantage over all of their specialty types.
Making clothes colors version exclusive was a very bad idea.
Too much Gen I pandering. It's even worse here than in XY.
The Battle Tree is just too difficult.

 

[PsychoKing47]

I haven't played Ultra yet, but from regular Sun I have the following issues with these games:

Too many unskippable cutscenes, with too much dialogue that really bogs the game down, especially at the start. And even then, I still didn't find myself particularly caring about any of the characters much at all, so it was all worthless in the end.
The pacing of the plot in general is really weird, with virtually nothing happening on that front until the end of the 3rd Island, at which point the plot flies by in little more than a hour; it's just poorly spaced out, and that further reduces the impact of the plot.
The game is way too hand-holding on the first - and, to a lesser extent, second - island and, in general, there is very little scope for freedom or exploration in the Alola region. It just feels so small, and at times feels like you're on a perpetual guided safari rather than actually being free to explore anything.

Many Alolan Pokemon - other than Yungoos, Pikipek, Crabrawler and a couple of others - are way too hard to find and it makes it harder to use new Pokemon if you don't want to resort to Wonder Trade and GTS. For one example, I've spent at various points four or more hours in Lush Jungle, and I've still never seen a single Passimian; I stayed there for 2 hours after Mallow's trial to get one, but just had to give up eventually.
The new Fishing mechanics are terrible, and make it nigh-impossible to get anything that isn't Magikarp. And that's not just because you're lucky if you even get anything to bite half the time.
SOS battles were a terrible idea, much worse than Hordes for EV training/Shinies and vastly inferior to Dexnav in terms of Hidden Abilities and good IVs. If you don't have something that can inflict status conditions in your party at all times, it becomes infuriating trying to capture certain Pokemon (e.g. Magby), and when you actually want to trigger them it just doesn't seem to happen.

The Rotom Pokedex is extremely irritating and completely superfluous, especially because its presence seems to be a large part behind why they got rid of Player Search System, and why we got the utterly useless Festival Plaza in its place. Seriously, I now actually dislike Rotom when I used to really like it, and all because of how annoying it is as my Pokedex. No National Pokedex is also a cardinal sin, and frankly completely unacceptable and idiotic.
Speaking of Festival Plaza, it is truly an abomination that is utterly baffling to try to use, even if all you want to do is trade with someone. They vastly and needlessly overcomplicated what was an extremely simple system in Generation 6 for no real reason, other than to seemingly make room for the awful Rotom Pokedex.

Grinding in these games is horrible, as you can't rematch trainers and wild Pokemon don't even give good Exp anymore thanks to the return to Gen 5 Exp mechanics. This is made worse by the fact that, unlike Gen 5, there are no Audino you can grind against, and getting a Chansey to appear via SOS for the same purposes isn't the easiest task either. And the issue of grinding being so bad is made worse by the fact that you need your Pokemon to be Level 100 to be able to fix their IVs with Bottle Caps.
I get what they were going for with the Island Trials, but they felt hollow because of the limits to exploration in these games, and I just generally didn't enjoy them as much as gyms, but I do feel there is at least some potential in the concept (particularly the idea of Totem Pokemon, which I actually quite enjoyed the challenge of).

For the second generation running, we didn't even get 100 new Pokemon and, in fact, even though we got more Pokemon overall than Gen 6 (86 compared to 72, if you include the new ones introduced for USUM), we actually got fewer non-legendary/UB Pokemon this time around due to there being an absurd 23 legendaries/UBs. It also doesn't help that, in my opinion, the quality of the designs is significantly lower in Gen 7 than in Gen 6, with very few designs I find especially notable at all.
Also, Alolan forms are 90% terrible or pointless design-wise. Alolan Vulpix, Ninetales and Exeggutor make sense and are perfectly fine designs to me, but that's it. Alolan Sandshrew and Sandslash have explanations, but it's dumb for Pokemon with SAND in there names (at least over here) to become Ice types, rather than just designing new Ice types. Alolan Marowak is decent, but it's a tryhard design that doesn't really make sense, other than the Ghost typing being a Gen 1 reference. Alolan Raichu makes no sense whatsoever and is just blatant fanservice, while the rest are just insulting designs: Alolan Rattata and Raticate are so similar to the originals as to be redundant, Alolan Meowth is pointless and vastly inferior to the original, Alolan Persian is dumb and looks like it's been stung in the face by a bee, while Alolan Diglett and Dugtrio are even more lazy and insulting designs than those two Pokemon already are. Seriously, we got these rather than actual new Pokemon? Then there's the issue of how this is yet more blatant Gen 1 pandering in games that continue to pander to Gen 1 above all else way too much (I thought it was bad in Gen 6, but Gen 7 took it to another level): there's now six other regions GameFreak could use for nostalgia, yet time and time and time again it's Gen 1 above all others, and it's massively out of hand now.

I would comment on the difficulty of the Battle Tree, but I'm fairly new to actually building competitive teams for the Battle facilities so I'm not sure it's fair for me to do so.

On the whole, from all the main-series Pokemon games I've played, Sun was probably as bad as it's ever been, and I'm genuinely hoping to enjoy Ultra Moon more. These games do have some positives, so I'm just hoping those can shine through a little more and, if not, I can always just go back to previous generations instead until Gen 8 next year.

 

[SubtleVVeirdoh]

Used to say Gen 6 is one I loathe playing, even the most perhaps, not so much since Gen 7; Mmm...

• Alola itself was a bland region. Not one place was memorable to me, though, this can be a personal preference.
• As said before, the hand-holding was annoying. Awful really. Optional tutorials are needed; I feel no need for every tidbit of battle info to be displayed as well.
• Trials < Gyms. We can debate this.
• Join Ave > Whatever else > Festival Plaza. We can debate this, too.
• HM’s being gone was fine but Poke Ride was no better. Since when do we need safety gear? Really? Oh, Charizard to fly me around? Why not a Pokémon that appears naturally in Alola? Or just NOT that weak wanna be dragon.
• Never disliked Rotom till last year...Dex was INCESSANT.

Besides being Pokémon games, these games in my opinion, have next to no redeeming qualities. Maybe USUM with Mantine Surf. The anime, when I had time to watch the Sub, was stellar. Loved the artwork.

 

[windwakemeup]

Why did you hate gen 6? Team Flare perhaps or the ease of the games?

It just felt so bare-bones and rushed to me. I've gone back to play ORAS and SM/USUM multiple times, but never x/y because of how barebones it feels.

 

[Minedreigon]

. An experimental phase where nothing really happens other than gamefreak seeing what it can get away with changing or doing differently. kind of a disappointing generation really.

Have we gotten to the stage where we don’t want Gamefreak to take risks in its game design? I’m very happy that SM/USUM was an attempt at a change in the formula in more than 1 way. It’s refreshing and shows Gamefreak coming out of their comfort zone. When they stay safe, we get trash like XY.

I’d say a lot more happens than that, and that you’re totally underselling what new things it tried (there’s a lot of them and at least 2 of them are very different which makes Gen 7 feel like a very different experience to some of the other games) so I really don’t understand this point. Trials are a lovely edition, ride pager makes for a more enjoyable experience, Alolan formes, while minor pandering, are much more tame than megas and a needed upate to most of the gen 1 designs, USUM shouldn’t be penalised for doing the same things other games did just because it’s newer, the world building is fantastic as usual in these games, the Ultra Beasts were a good idea...

As for my least favourite thing about gen 7, I’d say Festival Plaza. The online service is perhaps the only step down from last generation imo, and it’s a big one because the PSS was extremely convenient and the Festival Plaza is just a disaster.

 

[SubtleVVeirdoh]

If we’re to get another S/M as the result.....yes.

Have we gotten to the stage where we don’t want Gamefreak to take risks in its game design?