Gaming

I have heard very positive reviews of Casette Beasts, which appears to cater to the Pokemon crowd. I’m not so much into that genre, but has anyone else tried it? It’s on Game Pass as well.

Honestly, this might be a bit of a hot take coming in. But I don't think the lengthy tutorial is the actual issue when it comes to modern Pokemon games. Plenty of games have very slow openings, monster hunter is the first that comes to mind.

I think the issue is that the game doesn't actually have any depth behind the initial tutorial. Once you know how to battle, catch, and level up, what more is there? Barring competitive play, the basic mechanics are the entire game.

Legends was a breath of fresh air, because you did have to explore and learn about the world and Pokemon in order to succeed. Even if it was incredibly minimal.

If anyone is still reading this, my recommendation for a game that scratches the deep mechanical and monster collecting itch would be Monster Sanctuary. The story is thin on the ground, and the designs themselves can lean on the simpler side. But my god, I haven't seen an equal when it comes to team building or strategy. Genuinely fantastic.

If you guys are interested in romhacks/fangames/Pokemon games with a little more meat and difficulty to them, I heartily recommend Pokemon Infinite Fusion. It's based on FR/LG, with a slightly different story (but it's still essentially Team Rocket doing Team Rocket things), with the big difference being that you can fuse Pokemon. Every Pokemon in the game is fuseable, giving you a MASSIVE possible amount of combinations. You can play it classic mode, like a regular Pokemon game, but there's even a randomised mode which changes it up so every wild encounter and trainer battle uses randomly fused Pokemon. It's great fun!

As for whether modern Pokemon games hold your hand too much, I dunno. I do recognise they're made explicitly for children, so I can't tell you how much is too much. In fact, I remember as a child being stumped enough that I quit playing Diamond halfway through because I thought the gyms were 'too hard'. I still enjoy the newer games (I don't care what anyone says, I loved SwSh) but I don't let their shortcomings get to me as I recognise they're children's games.

What ruined SV for me wasn't the hand-holding but rather how dead the game felt after endgame.

You cannot re-challenge the Elite Four and the only endgame activity is the Academy Ace Tournament where you'll stomp everybody.

A good tip for anybody going into Gen 9, don't pick Quaxly (the water starter) because their moveset sucks. Meowscarada literally gets Gen 1 Razor Leaf as their signature move while Skeledirge gets a fire move that scales in power on each use. Compare this to Quaquaval which only gets speed boosts...

Look I'm drunk I don't understand what you're talking about. I live in Japan, but pokemon has always been a mystery to me. There's the Pikachu, there's pokemon Go. It's just a game. I also don't understand this Lemmy business, I'm trying

For me, Pokemon has become more about romhacks/fangames than official releases. I still love the property, but the product Nintendo is providing at this point just isn't something I'm all that interested in.

...although credit where credit is due, Legends Arceus and Scarlett/Violet did attempt to innovate with the open world stuff. The results of that were also...not for me, but credit there.

Thread reminds me that I need to finish Pokemon Unbound. I have a bad tendency to start new hacks before finishing the ones I started haha.

I think issue is Pokémon games are still made primarily for children with age between 6 to 12. There are a lot of older people who grow up with it and some of them righteous feel like they are left behind.

It feels like Gamefreak has really struggled to appeal to the various different sets of fans post Gen 5, I wonder how much of the hand holding and other issues are a reaction to the backlash gen 5 sadly got.

I'd like a hard mode and a way to toggle exp share off.

When I was a kid I was super into pokemon. I loved playing the games and they stood out to me for one reason: they were challenging. My first game was Black, and I got stuck on the first gym leader for a few days, but when I figured it out it was immensely satisfying. I would hit roadblock, I would struggle, and eventually I overcame it. Then my friend introduced me to Pokemon Mystery Dungeon and it got even harder. I honestly think that the final dungeon of Explorers of Time made me smarter or something. It forced my dumbass child brain to think outside the box and find solutions on my own.

Then Pokemon X and Y released, and it was the most stupidly easy game ive ever played. And it kept getting easier after that. Add onto that the worsening quality and I stopped caring about Pokemon. My friend who is really into Pokemon hasnt bought a new game in years, he only plays Romhacks or replays the old games.

I personally lost interest in Pokémon after gen four. SoulSilver was my last game until a few years ago, so I'm kind of biased with that, but still. I think Pokémon designs started going downhill after gen five, plus all the over the top hand holding and tutorial stuff. The worst part to me however is the apparent lack of care and resources put into the newer games. A game like S/V is downright embarrassing as a modern game. Like hilariously bad.

I just started playing Violet for the first time last night. I noticed the opening "tutorials" of Sword/Shield took like 90 minutes to get through, and that hasn't changed much here. And I'm not looking forward to taking biology exams or whatever, I really hope that's optional content. I just want to battle my way to the Pokemon League!

I’m just replaying gens 1-5 over and over. I’ve had a few friends recommend RomHacks, and I’m thinking about trying some after finals.

Yeah, I was kind of enjoying it at first. I think I got 15 or 20 hours in before I just put it down and never came back to it. Not intentionally, I just never felt like it. That's saying something, because I wasn't that impressed with Sw/Sh either, but I 100%ed Sword.

They absolutely hold your hand too much. I wish Nintendo could make a Pokémon game instead of The Pokémon Company. I feel like Nintendo's first-party team would make something stellar with more of a challenge (without being unfair), a more engaging story, fun puzzles, a more curated world to explore, better graphics, and maybe even add something actually new to the series.

I've played both PLA and SV and my impression from both was that the tutorial dragged on for way too long. Even as a new player, that shit should not be lasting for over an hour. Also way too many text boxes that don't change anything based on what you pick. Just let me play the game please.

Pokemon Legends Arceus was a real breath of fresh air, but it doesn't seem like GF wants to learn anything from it. Repeating something I saw on Reddit: Pokemon deserves better developers

Gamefreak clearly isn't interested in evolving their formula very much. Each game is designed to be approachable for young children who are potentially playing Pokemon for the first time. So yeah, there is a lot of hand holding.

I've found myself hoping the same thing though, that maybe the franchise would grow up with me, but it doesn't look like it is going to happen. I expect that we'll have to mash the A button through the Pokemon catching tutorial until the end of time.

Knowing GameFreak/ the Pokemon Company, if they were to make that mode they'd have it unlock after completing the post-game and if you had both versions (kind of like Black and White 2 easy and hard mode)

Yeah, Pokemon in general is just far too easy. Either just go with the Kaizo hacks or play SMT. For me I just play SMT now. Similar enough and the difficulty is just perfect. Also Pokemon's story sucks ass. Never once been interested in any of their plots. Team Magma/Aqua was okay but pretty much make my own stories for it.

Man I was more bummed about the fact that the newest games don't let you change out of that god awful school uniform, or at least change the colors...

There are so many decent Pokemon clones out there that there's honestly little reason to buy the new ones. From what I've seen they are a total bore fest and way too easy, I think people just need to accept they're kids games and move on. I personally really enjoyed Monster Sanctuary. Even though it's a very different game it gave me the same enjoyment of catching monsters and building a team.

While on one hand I completely and totally agree that the games seem to always ignore the seasoned vets of the series. It’s also been very clear that their design choice is to always assume this is your first Pokémon and that you ARE a child since that’s the target audience always. So the hand holding is always a result of that design choice, now obviously there’s better ways to go about it, Pokémon is the only game that treats me like a child for the first 4 hours but then opens the system up and leaves me alone. But I also think it’s been getting better, look at the 3DS generation of games, those things were relentless with its constant “hey look over here and do this!” That it took a lot for me to finish those games.