Underwater battles in ΩRαS are simultaneously hilarious and disappointing

[Red Knight]

This is because they are no different mechanically or (for the most part) visually from battles above water, in spite of how illogical this often is.

The humor comes not just from the sameness and the absurdity of the situation, but also from the few visual changes they did make to add flavor to underwater battles and being underwater in general. For instance, you get scuba gear, but apparently even Pokémon who aren't adapted to live underwater can breathe just fine. Or, the special Poké Ball throwing animation that plays when you send a Pokémon out, where the ball just kinda drifts forward for a second before releasing the Pokémon inside. Which then promptly falls to the seafloor as though buoyancy doesn't exist. Something like sending out my Gallade, watching it sink like a rock after the slow drift of the ball, then ordering it to use Close Combat and watching it run through the water like it's air to beat down the opponent is very funny to me. As is seeing a submerged bird Pokémon like Skarmory or Swellow casually flying around like nothing's different, or a Fire Pokémon just. Existing at all underwater and throwing out Fire Blasts like the ocean isn't even there.

On the other hand, I feel like there was a lot of missed potential for a special underwater battle format - especially considering that XY had introduced Sky Battles, another kind of battle in a novel environment with unusual constraints and interactions. And there seems to be evidence in the games that there were plans for such a specialized battle format: the aforementioned Poké Ball animation, possibly, but more convincingly, the fact that all of the underwater trainers will only battle you if you interact with them first, as though the game didn't want to force you to partake in underwater battles you weren't prepared or equipped for. This is somewhat similar to how Sky Battles were treated in XY; all of the Sky Trainers were off to the side and would ask you if you wanted to do a Sky Battle when you interacted with them. But if such plans existed, then clearly they were scrapped, either because of time constraints, technical constraints, or because the devs thought adding a whole other set of battle mechanics would overcomplicate the game too much (they're designing these games with young, inexperienced children in mind, remember), especially given that a) you need to go underwater at least twice in a normal playthrough (once to enter Sootopolis and once to enter the Seafloor Cavern) and there are both Trainers and wild Pokémon down there, and b) a semi realistic set of rules for how underwater battles would work would be far more involved and complicated than the relatively minor tweaks needed to make Sky Battles work. Moving through water and moving through air/on the ground are very different, after all. Or possibly, the devs decided that devoting resources to such a complicated thing that would only play a minor role in the game wouldn't be worth it.

 

[Zexy]

I did battle a Scuba Diver's Wailmer once with my Swellow. I used Fly. It used Dive... Assuming Swellow can somehow breathe and move freely underwater, Fly making it semi-invulnerable could make some sense. But Dive? Like, what, we are on the seafloor, how much deeper can you go to protect yourself?

In any case, I could see a format with only Water types plus a few exceptions (Dragalge comes to mind), but a few moves would still be mechanically weird to use in a way Sky Battles were not (except maybe Gravity or Smack Down or Terrains which just failed).

Consider Lanturn using an Electric type move underwater... Yeah, just nope.

 

[Red Knight]

I did battle a Scuba Diver's Wailmer once with my Swellow. I used Fly. It used Dive... Assuming Swellow can somehow breathe and move freely underwater, Fly making it semi-invulnerable could make some sense. But Dive? Like, what, we are on the seafloor, how much deeper can you go to protect yourself?

I'm guessing Dive takes on much the same role Fly does out of water? Or maybe it overlaps with Dig somewhat? I mean, Dive already operates on pretty shaky logic in standard battles on the ground anyway, so who knows. It's not like Surf where they just summon a wave of water to hit the opponent with; they're hiding underwater and travelling through it to strike in places where there may be no water to hide under or travel through, so clearly there's some wacky hydrogenesis shenanigans afoot here.

 

[Red Knight]

In any case, I could see a format with only Water types plus a few exceptions (Dragalge comes to mind), but a few moves would still be mechanically weird to use in a way Sky Battles were not (except maybe Gravity or Smack Down or Terrains which just failed).

I actually kinda came up with a concept for how this would work and even came up with a list of Pokémon who would be able to participate normally. I say "normally" because I also decided to create a held item called the Dive Helmet that would let Pokémon that ordinarily not be able to participate, participate, at the cost of their item slot.

It was part of a larger project I was cooking where it was an open world game that started in a region based on Spain and Portugal (you can imagine how I felt when Scarlet and Violet were revealed to be open world games set in a region based on the Iberian Peninsula) and also let you travel to Kalos and Hoenn.

 

[Eitarou]

Sky Battles were awful. I can't imagine an underwater equivalent being any better.

 

[Zexy]

Sky Battles were awful. I can't imagine an underwater equivalent being any better.

Unpopular opinion probably, I actually had fun with them. They may even have an interesting competitive metagame or so. Inverse are where I thought it went too far...

 

[Bolt Strike]

Unpopular opinion probably, I actually had fun with them. They may even have an interesting competitive metagame or so. Inverse are where I thought it went too far...

Oh that is a spicy take. That would be a good one for the Controversial Opinions thread for sure, I would think most people would have the opposite opinion.

I'm not really a fan of Sky Battles either. It's basically just single battles with Pokemon restrictions, they don't really add anything to make them interesting. I'd probably hate underwater battles for similar reasons.

Now Pokemon Reborn does have a field effect system where different environments (for example, grasslands, forests, caves, etc. all have different field types with different effects) have different effects such as buffing/debuffing types and moves, triggering abilities, etc.. Something like that might be a bit better, that opens up a whole new layer of strategy to the game, so something similar might be a great addition to the official games. But that system is quite complex and can sometimes throw off the type balance (if the field effect debuffs a type that's SE against a common type on that field... well good luck), so that might be difficult to implement.

Whatever the case, I think if they want to add more realism to battling in certain environment, it needs to be very carefully designed so that it adds something to the mechanics while balancing it to prevent certain types from being OP. And ultimately that might be more trouble than it's worth, so I suspect we won't see anything like Sky Battles again outside of XY remakes.

 

[Leaf_Ranger]

The way GF had underwater battles implemented makes sense as much as Misty being an expert on Water types but still sending Goldeen to fight on land in the anime. That ruined the experience for me.
The battles were kind of nice but they didn't stand out as they were very few and it wasn't even used to battle Wallace nor Team Aqua.

 

[Red Knight]

...it wasn't even used to battle Wallace nor Team Aqua.

Technically that was also true of RSE, but RSE a) made even less of an effort to make underwater battles feel more logical (no scuba gear, no special animations, etc.), thus making this missed opportunity stand out a bit less, and b) had more of an excuse because they were on more limited hardware. Also, ΩRαS being remakes means that there's a bit more of an expectation to add little details like that to make the original more polished.

 

[Norzan]

People being underwater and waiting for someone to pass by so that they can ask them for battle is ridiculously silly. I think just not having trainers underwater would have solved the issue.

 

[Bolt Strike]

People being underwater and waiting for someone to pass by so that they can ask them for battle is ridiculously silly. I think just not having trainers underwater would have solved the issue.

It's a gameplay and story segregation issue. The problem with underwater is that it's fairly empty, both visually and content wise. Adding trainers there was simply the easiest way to fix that.