As someone who never played Sword/Shield I just think Nessa is hot.
There's definitely more darkskin humans in Pokémon games in recent years, but, as someone who hadn't played a Pokémon game since LeafGreen then resumed with Legends Arceus solely because "it looks like a refreshing new Pokémon game"...
I dunno did all the darkskin and tan humans become ugly in Scarlet/Violet?
Also my play time on Legends Arceus is only.. let me boot up my largely unused Switch and check... 6 hours and 1 minutes, last played August 8 of this year... but I often play and reset without saving, so i have played longer than 6 hours.
Okay time to get off the Internet. KotakuinAction just mostly tells me stuff I already know. geek media is being hijacked by pushy jerks that dumb stuff down to be more "inclusive".
A slight high jacking of this post as want to ask a question that I feel will determine your response to current pokemon:
What do you hold as the pinnacle of pokemon games?
For me, no hesitation, Silver and Gold are the apex of pokemon, the perfect sequel and feature additions like night and day cycles and making the previous region available to roam after beating the elite four.
So when you compare that to current day, you see the creative loss in quality even if they hide behind 3D.
HeartGold/SoulSilver to Black and White 2 were peak Pokemon to me. Gen 4.5 to 5.5, basically. You had GameFreak recreating Gold and Silver with incredible amounts of love and faithfulness while building on their foundations to make something genuinely impressive. So many features and functions added on top of an already rock-solid foundation. Then, Gen 5 had them innovating in so many ways. The stories were peak, with genuinely interesting and challenging ideas. The changing seasons added to the exploration of the region, and there was just so much creativity and passion in everything.
Of course, this was also the gen where sales dropped off, which probably taught Gamefreak all the wrong lessons about what people wanted in their Pokemon games....
Heartgold and Soulsilver allowed fighting the gym leaders again, with much stronger teams. It did a good job at presenting some challenges, keeping things fresh, even without taking the PvP aspect. It also had the fight against Red, that normally requires a team in the high 60 / low 70 range, at least.
I think most people agree the series peaked before gen 6.
Gen 5ers praise the post game content there, but I find it the breaking point for me where too many of the designs didn't "feel" like pokemon anymore. Though, they a stiil far better than all the furry bullshit that came after. I give people who consider it the best a pass.
For me gen 4 was the best. The physical/special split added a lot to the gameplay. On the other hand, the interface was the slowest it ever was and stealth rock and weather were overcentralizing. Still, I find these issues less severe than some that other gens had.
Gen 2 also stands out, due to its focus on refining the formula of Gen 1. It lets you experience the classic pokemon formula without the severe gen 1 jank. Some of the best experiences to be had on the original gameboy.
The fact of the matter is, no one thinks pokemon is at its best right now, except small children (and people so easily swayed by marketing they may as well be children.) We debate whether the game was last great 15 years ago, or 20. These days, the gameplay changes are gimmicks, the worlds feel smaller and smaller, and the increasingly humanoid pokemon designs feel like they're pandering to furries, and make the whole capturing and making them fight mechanic feel more unpleasant. Modern pokemon feels like a one of those monster catcher copycat games that were so popular in the 90s somehow got the official license.
My only complaint about Gold and Silver is that the battery that ran the clock burned out so I lost everything.
Other than that, I agree that they were the peak of what Pokemon had to offer. Still riding the high from the first games and not yet bogged down with an excess of baggage that would pile on over the years. Art direction was still extremely strong and mystery gifting was getting siblings and friends on the playground to interact with one another and bond over their shared pastime.
Dude, you're ten years too late to be complaining about Trubbish and Drifloon. And I'll take garbage golems and balloon ghosts in a heartbeat over the abominations that are the modern starters.
I'm fine with a lot of the newer pokemon, I like a lot of them. What I hate are how bad the legendary designs are. I get that you can't have 20 time lord pokemon, but surely you can make some interesting legendaries that aren't strange, right? Gen 8 was terrible at this, Gen 7 did a good job with it's trio, and Gen 9 has miserable legendaries aside from the two main ones.
Something that really sucks about this is that Scarlet/Violet really is a big improvement and big steps towards what pokemon could/should have been for years now.
Bigger world, non-linear path through the region, huge mix of different gens/forms of pokemon all over, them actually moving around the world and doing things within it, just tons of good improvements to the world itself.
But the characters are all amorphous, agender, ugly blobs. Every other NPC is some vague, ethnically ambiguous shade of brown. Most of them look like people you would make an active effort to avoid in public, just because they look like creepy freaks at a glance.
They had the design of characters and style down for like 20~ or so years, but the games were incredibly simple and basic forever. They got a step or two into the right direction and then sacrificed their appealing characters at the altar of diversity and making everyone ugly and mixed-race.
As someone who never played Sword/Shield I just think Nessa is hot.
There's definitely more darkskin humans in Pokémon games in recent years, but, as someone who hadn't played a Pokémon game since LeafGreen then resumed with Legends Arceus solely because "it looks like a refreshing new Pokémon game"...
I dunno did all the darkskin and tan humans become ugly in Scarlet/Violet?
Also my play time on Legends Arceus is only.. let me boot up my largely unused Switch and check... 6 hours and 1 minutes, last played August 8 of this year... but I often play and reset without saving, so i have played longer than 6 hours.
Okay time to get off the Internet. KotakuinAction just mostly tells me stuff I already know. geek media is being hijacked by pushy jerks that dumb stuff down to be more "inclusive".
A slight high jacking of this post as want to ask a question that I feel will determine your response to current pokemon:
What do you hold as the pinnacle of pokemon games?
For me, no hesitation, Silver and Gold are the apex of pokemon, the perfect sequel and feature additions like night and day cycles and making the previous region available to roam after beating the elite four.
So when you compare that to current day, you see the creative loss in quality even if they hide behind 3D.
HeartGold/SoulSilver to Black and White 2 were peak Pokemon to me. Gen 4.5 to 5.5, basically. You had GameFreak recreating Gold and Silver with incredible amounts of love and faithfulness while building on their foundations to make something genuinely impressive. So many features and functions added on top of an already rock-solid foundation. Then, Gen 5 had them innovating in so many ways. The stories were peak, with genuinely interesting and challenging ideas. The changing seasons added to the exploration of the region, and there was just so much creativity and passion in everything.
Of course, this was also the gen where sales dropped off, which probably taught Gamefreak all the wrong lessons about what people wanted in their Pokemon games....
They spent one year making Diamond and Pearl.
They spent THREE years making HeartGold and SoulSilver--and boy, did it show. Still my favorites.
Heartgold and Soulsilver allowed fighting the gym leaders again, with much stronger teams. It did a good job at presenting some challenges, keeping things fresh, even without taking the PvP aspect. It also had the fight against Red, that normally requires a team in the high 60 / low 70 range, at least.
Based chudcel recognizes that Pokémon products have been boring and childish for well over a decade.
I think most people agree the series peaked before gen 6.
Gen 5ers praise the post game content there, but I find it the breaking point for me where too many of the designs didn't "feel" like pokemon anymore. Though, they a stiil far better than all the furry bullshit that came after. I give people who consider it the best a pass.
For me gen 4 was the best. The physical/special split added a lot to the gameplay. On the other hand, the interface was the slowest it ever was and stealth rock and weather were overcentralizing. Still, I find these issues less severe than some that other gens had.
Gen 2 also stands out, due to its focus on refining the formula of Gen 1. It lets you experience the classic pokemon formula without the severe gen 1 jank. Some of the best experiences to be had on the original gameboy.
The fact of the matter is, no one thinks pokemon is at its best right now, except small children (and people so easily swayed by marketing they may as well be children.) We debate whether the game was last great 15 years ago, or 20. These days, the gameplay changes are gimmicks, the worlds feel smaller and smaller, and the increasingly humanoid pokemon designs feel like they're pandering to furries, and make the whole capturing and making them fight mechanic feel more unpleasant. Modern pokemon feels like a one of those monster catcher copycat games that were so popular in the 90s somehow got the official license.
Diamond and Pearl is my favorite map of the entire series. So fantastically made.
My only complaint about Gold and Silver is that the battery that ran the clock burned out so I lost everything.
Other than that, I agree that they were the peak of what Pokemon had to offer. Still riding the high from the first games and not yet bogged down with an excess of baggage that would pile on over the years. Art direction was still extremely strong and mystery gifting was getting siblings and friends on the playground to interact with one another and bond over their shared pastime.
You don't need to look at these you can just look at pokemon designs.
Rayquaza, Entei, Groudon. Pokemon that evoke fierce images of power.
Now you have literal trash heaps and balloons as pokemon. The legendary and god ones even look like fluffy little piles of shit.
Dude, you're ten years too late to be complaining about Trubbish and Drifloon. And I'll take garbage golems and balloon ghosts in a heartbeat over the abominations that are the modern starters.
I'm fine with a lot of the newer pokemon, I like a lot of them. What I hate are how bad the legendary designs are. I get that you can't have 20 time lord pokemon, but surely you can make some interesting legendaries that aren't strange, right? Gen 8 was terrible at this, Gen 7 did a good job with it's trio, and Gen 9 has miserable legendaries aside from the two main ones.
Something that really sucks about this is that Scarlet/Violet really is a big improvement and big steps towards what pokemon could/should have been for years now.
Bigger world, non-linear path through the region, huge mix of different gens/forms of pokemon all over, them actually moving around the world and doing things within it, just tons of good improvements to the world itself.
But the characters are all amorphous, agender, ugly blobs. Every other NPC is some vague, ethnically ambiguous shade of brown. Most of them look like people you would make an active effort to avoid in public, just because they look like creepy freaks at a glance.
They had the design of characters and style down for like 20~ or so years, but the games were incredibly simple and basic forever. They got a step or two into the right direction and then sacrificed their appealing characters at the altar of diversity and making everyone ugly and mixed-race.
the downfall is they no longer have half-naked little girls?
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3_ug-IGBJY)
little enbies, in the vidya
little enbies, all them genderfluid
little enbies, in the vidya
little enbies just the same
There's a gay one, and a strong one
and a black one and a writer insert
and they're all built to be genderfluid
and they all look just the same
And the "people" who created them
all went to university
where they all turned into enbies
or trooned out, all the same
There's designers, and animators
and DEI executives
and they're all built to be genderfluid
and they all are just the same
it works fine for me?
I had to disable VPN and adblocker, or maybe just VPN.
Faggot.
Don't feed the trolls.
I'm upvoting you because you are funny.