A Gen I Fan Plays USUM

[Gísli]

[I’m sorry in advance how long this post got. I’m currently on an 11-hour bus to London and got bored! It totally might not, but I hope my point of view might be of interest to some of you.]

So, I could probably get a paid job as the poster boy for the divisive factor in the fan base right now. I was born in a European country in 1991. My first Pokémon game was Yellow on the GBC. I watched the original anime on weekends and traded cards with my friends in school. Although I did play Crystal more than any other game when it came out, I lapsed afterwards. I tried Gen III a couple of times, but always ended up giving up. Never finished it. At the time, I thought Pokémon was getting sillier. In retrospect, I was likely just entering puberty with its accompanying complexes. Such is life.

Anyway, when Pokémon GO came out, I was bombarded by nostalgia. I went out and played. And played. And played. I would stay up entire nights walking, bicycling and driving around my city with my friends or on my own playing. It got me not only into Pokémon again, but my old love for video games as well. Consequently, I pre-ordered the Switch when it was announced and have been playing it regularly since day one. It's the first console I have bought/owned since my old GBA, which I got 15 years ago.

Obviously enough, I was stoked when Nintendo originally announced they would be releasing a Pokémon game for the Switch at E3 2017. I tried to read up and watch videos of generations IV - VII to get a sense of what the video games had been doing but did not play them myself. As the leak/rumour season started to get very loud this spring, I joined these forums and have been checking them regularly since. And I was absolutely stoked when LGPE were announced and am still very excited to play them as soon as they come out around my birthday!

But the way many people here talk about other fans of the series and the people who work on the series is a bit disconcerting to me. I know people become very passionate about the things that matter to them in life and that the passion displayed is nothing, if not a testament of how much the series matters to its fans. But the volatility always seems to be palpable just under the surface and I feel it must have a negative effect on people who want to partake in the community surrounding the franchise. As other people have pointed out this summer, if you do not like the concept for the LGPE games (which is fair, to each their own), it neither takes away from the games you do love or the main entry games that will be made.

But I digress. This summer, I was working on an archaeological excavation with no stable internet in Italy and decided to use the opportunity to do some catching up. In early June, I bought a used 3DSXL and a digital copy of US, and have clocked in some 70 hours of playtime since then. It’s the first Pokémon game I finish after Yellow and Crystal. And I thought I'd write down my thoughts on it, just in case some of the more consistent fans would be interested in seeing Gen VII through the eyes of someone from the LGPE target group.

So, I really like the game but it definitely has some drawbacks. I'll begin with my main points of criticism before moving on to the stuff that I like very much!

Negatives

Too easy. I've been wondering if this just stems from the fact that I am so much older, but I am pretty sure that everything has been made easier - and to a fault, at that. You get the EXP Share early on and it divides experience between all your party, not only the one holding it, so you can easily level up an entire party of low level Pokémon as long as you have one decent one. I am sure this is meant to make competitive training more streamlined and I have no objections to that, but in that case it should rather be a post-game feature. And yes, I know that I could make my own challenge by keeping it turned off but that is not intrinsic game difficulty, that is the player forcing a harder challenge upon themselves (cf. nuzlockes). In fact, I had to turn it off several times just so that my Pokémon would not exceed the level cap allowed by my grand trial completion status. And no, I did not grind at all. Still, I was always way above the level of the Pokémon that I was battling, which was oh so definitely not the case back in Nostalgia Land. Additionally, almost every trainer only had 1 Pokémon and in the few instances that there would be such a long string of them that they would start to dent my team's HP, a NPC would be just around the corner to heal my team up before I could be properly challenged. I have only blacked out once during my entire 70 hours of gameplay, and that was in the final fight of the post-game - but I will come to that later.

Lack of freedom. Alola feels like it's meant to be a grand adventure. Unfortunately, the execution fails to live up to the concept. I've seen many people complain about the hand-holding in the games and I second that whole-heartedly. What bugs me the most is the endless chopping up of the gameplay with unnecessary cut-scenes and inconsequential tasks. Because of this, you never truly feel like you are on a real adventure or testing out your own strength, wits or puzzle-solving in any capacity. You're just constantly going from cut-scene A to cut-scene B with Kukui, Rotom and the others telling you what to do. I know that Game Freak can do so, so much better. The answer does not need to be complicated: make the games less story-heavy. I don’t need to be saving the universe to enjoy Pokémon, and in a way I enjoyed the feel of the more story-relaxed old games better. Maybe it does not translate as well into today’s gaming market, but I would personally be happy with much less extensive and plain out simpler script-writing.

Rotom Dex. Oh. Dear. Rotom makes Ocarina of Time’s Navi feel like the strong, silent type in comparison. It is fussing every few minutes and don’t tell me that you can just ignore it because nobody wants to play through an entire game with those sad, neglected eyes taking up half a screen on your console. The Roto Loto is a neat idea, but also greatly contributes to my problem above of the game’s intrinsic lack of difficulty. If the Rotom Dex could be implemented in a less clingy way for future instalments, it might work, but I don’t have any constructive ideas on that.

Technical limitations. This is probably self-explanatory. Even on a 3DSXL the framerate gets choppy at times, the more realistic design choices suffer from pixelation and so on. I love how much content is in the game but it’s obviously verging on being too big for the system. It takes up all my internal storage. It is obviously high time that the franchise makes the jump over to the Switch and I’m excited for the ... switch.

Uniformity. I am a bit torn on this one. I like the Alola region, I really do. And I’m not sure that the other regions are any better in this regard, maybe it just becomes more noticeable with the improved graphics. But I felt like most of the areas around the islands were too similar. This is probably the other side of the single biosphere concept that I really like in itself, but I was mostly progressing between very similar generic tropical beach/valley/mountainous areas that do not stand out from each other very distinctly in hindsight (besides Mount Lanakila and Wela). I will, however, say that the urban regions were unique from one another and I loved the different design choices e.g. between Seafolk Village, Po City, Malie City and Aether Paradise. Much improvement in terms of architectonic diversity from the towns of e.g. Kanto.

Ride Pokémon. Again, my beef is not with the concept but the execution. I used to dream about being able to ride sprites of my Pokémon instead of the generic old HM Surf/Fly sprites. But it really did break my immersion to ride Pokémon that I hadn’t even seen according to my Rotom Dex. I think the way that it looks like LGPE is handling this with Ride/Following Pokémon and then your partner as a HM slave substitute without taking up any move slots is a brilliant solution with no apparent loose ends, as it seems you do not even need them in your party to use their techniques. I’m excited to see if it the execution is good and, if so, hope it will carry on to Gen VIII.

Positives

Content. Wow. Just wow. The game is absolutely brimming with content. This does definitely play into my complaints about technical limitations but overall, I’m fine with it. 70 hours in, I have around 40% of the Dex completed and I’m sure there’s more post-game stuff waiting for me. Often when I finish Nintendo games, I have second thoughts about the amount of money I payed for the amount of content, but that is certainly not the case here. I will admit that that factor worries me about LGPE, but, from what they say, it does sound like they intend to keep up the content volume for Gen VIII!

Design. Alright, listen. I was very firmly on the classic “New Pokémon are stupidly designed” bandwagon after I lapsed. But I have come to terms with the absolutely correct argument that my childhood memories rose-tint my view of some of the stupid design choices for the original 151. While I do stand by some of my criticisms of designs and concepts for individual Pokémon throughout the years, I think the Gen VII Pokémon are mostly well designed and thought out. Not all of them, of course (my mind does not make the jump between Torracat and Incineroar or make sense of some of the UBs at all). But overwhelmingly. The Gen VII Pokémon are generally well designed, have interesting concepts and fit well into the tropical biosphere they draw inspiration from. I’ve had the principle since I was a kid to try not to pick favourite Pokémon (after all, a parent does not pick a favourite child!), but I will name Salazzle as a new Pokémon that I think serves as an excellent example of Gen VII design throughout. This point also extends to the region itself: Alola is very well designed and interesting, although I have already mentioned my reservations about my perceived sense of uniformity.

Rainbow Rocket. The only time I blacked out in US? The final fight against Giovanni. Granted, using the multiverse excuse cliché to set up a gauntlet of previous team bosses is lazy script-writing at best, but I finally felt like I got some challenging fights! The puzzles also required at least some thought and anticipation and it was fun to see all the team bosses throughout the years, and I can imagine it will have been doubly so for the fans that were there for generations III-VI. If Game Freak can deliver more of this level of challenge (i.e. requiring some strategising without being too hard for younger audiences) throughout future games but drop the lazy script-writing stunts, it would take the games to a new level!

SOS Battles. Okay. Unpopular opinion alert. I’m just going to say it. Who in the world likes grinding in video games? Personally, I am more than okay with LGPE dropping wild battles (notwithstanding legendaries). If there is one thing I have never liked about Pokémon, it’s circling the same patch of grass for hours on end, repeatedly fighting the same 3-5 Pokémon at around the same level to be able to level up for the next challenge in your way; or to encounter a wild shiny (which I have never, of course, achieved); or in the hope for that one species with the very low spawn rate. SOS battles cut out a lot of the “intro/outro/walking a few more steps” repetition cycles from the older games when you need repeated encounters. I’m looking forward to seeing the Pokémon I want to battle in the overworld and being able to grind-level up my team (if needed) with Go features and save actual fighting action for trainers and legendaries. There, I said it. If you all want to hate me now, that’s okay, but I really predict we as a community will look at this differently down the road. Although it might be a very, very, very long way down that road.

GTS. Way back then, finishing the Pokédex seemed like an insurmountable challenge. Maybe not all of us had overly many friends who had the same enthusiasm for the video games as we did or would be ready to trade the Pokémon we needed, okay? I only had one friend as a kid who traded and battled with me regularly through the cable system. And she stopped playing the games after RBY. The GTS makes the Pokédex completion challenge much more plausible for everyone, and is a very welcome change.

Pokémon Refresh. What can I say? It’s cute and fun! It brings immersion to your relationship as a trainer with your Pokémon and the kid in me would have loved to be able to pet and feed my Pokémon. On the flip side, however, I feel like being able to heal status conditions after a battle makes a lot of the consumable items redundant. I bought 5x antidotes, paralyse heal, awakening etc. early on and I think I ended up using none of them throughout the entire game. Maybe, then, the healing effect of Refresh is a bit OP - but I do like the feature in general!

All in all, I have very much enjoyed my adventures in Alola. The franchise has come a long way from its beginnings and it’s fun to see how many features and improvements have been added along the way. I did, however, have some big issues with gaming fundamentals like difficulty, performance, story writing etc. It might not be a bad idea for Game Freak to take the focus off adding more features and embellishments and prioritise improving these fundamental factors for the next instalments. That being said, I’m excited to see our common passion take the next step and move on to the Switch and am gleefully anticipating both LGPE and Gen VIII!

 

[Dieter]

Heya, I'm glad to see you're enjoying your re-entrance to the franchise! And I think your sentiments are shared by a great many here.

That said, having started playing through the VGC release of Blue recently, it becomes really obvious how far the franchise has come.

And while I agree the games have gotten easier lately (and that's not just from being older and more experienced), I must say the Exp. Share is not really to blame here, I think. It's a tool you can choose to use, or not if you find yourself overleveling too easily. It's additional benefit of being introduced fairly early is that especially in regions with a larger dex it becomes easier to train a greater variety. Rather than having to painstakingly grind each interesting mon, one by one, you can now introduce a bunch of new Pokemon to your team and have them catch up pretty quickly. And I think that's pretty beneficial to play experience.

It's also true that Alola is pretty cut-scene heavy, but the Gen VI games aren't (and I think those are a fair comparison as previous instalment on the same device). It's kinda what makes the plot more cumbersome, even though I do think Lilie's arc was great and I wouldn't mind seeing more decent to good storytelling. BW and BW2 are probably the best so far, as they don't hinge on ultimate destruction of the world (though neither do the Alola games, if we're just talking recent examples), but still have a compelling plot, interesting characters, and make sure something is at stake. After all, the Kanto games had this too, though less obviously so I guess. There was an incredible crimewave going on, led by the leader of Team Rocket. So I reckon by defeating him you do bring peace to the region, cause you pretty much obliterate organised crime in the region.

And absolutely agreed on the design. While I have my favourites and eh, less favourites, I do think the last two generations offered a lot of solid designs. Might be the upside of releasing less new Pokemon. Even the UBs are really cool I think, though odd. But that's their point. They're not quite Pokemon, maybe, so they look kinda off

 

[Gísli]

It's additional benefit of being introduced fairly early is that especially in regions with a larger dex it becomes easier to train a greater variety. Rather than having to painstakingly grind each interesting mon, one by one, you can now introduce a bunch of new Pokemon to your team and have them catch up pretty quickly. And I think that's pretty beneficial to play experience.

I had not thought about that, that is a great point. I suppose e.g. evolving all the Pokémon in the greatly expanded dex would take an absolute eternity if we had to rely on the old methods!

It's also true that Alola is pretty cut-scene heavy, but the Gen VI games aren't (and I think those are a fair comparison as previous instalment on the same device). It's kinda what makes the plot more cumbersome, even though I do think Lilie's arc was great and I wouldn't mind seeing more decent to good storytelling. BW and BW2 are probably the best so far, as they don't hinge on ultimate destruction of the world (though neither do the Alola games, if we're just talking recent examples), but still have a compelling plot, interesting characters, and make sure something is at stake. After all, the Kanto games had this too, though less obviously so I guess. There was an incredible crimewave going on, led by the leader of Team Rocket. So I reckon by defeating him you do bring peace to the region, cause you pretty much obliterate organised crime in the region.

I agree in that I thought Lillie’s arc was well written in a game that generally did not do great things for me in the storytelling department. I haven’t played generation V or VI games, although I’ve seen some videos on them - maybe I need to try them out for myself if the chance arrives! And I suppose you’re right about bringing peace to Kanto in Gen I - but taking down a criminal organisation in Yellow and Crystal somehow still does not quite feel as farfetched and thin as battling a Necrozma-Solgaleo fusion in another dimension. Not that I dislike advanced interdimensional sci-fi themes in general (I mean, I love Dr Who), I guess I perhaps just don’t feel they belong in the Pokémon universe? Although it might just be a matter of how it’s written into the story.

 

[TechSkylander1518]

Welcome back to Pokemon! It's awesome that you're still enjoying so much!

And it's fun to hear you got started on Yellow and Crystal! My first game was Crystal-I'm nine years younger than you, but my family started with older video games to save money-and my brother's first game was Yellow on the VC release!

But it really did break my immersion to ride Pokémon that I hadn’t even seen according to my Rotom Dex.

I'm curious as to why it broke immersion for you? Was it the Rotom Dex not registering them, or the lending?

Not all of them, of course (my mind does not make the jump between Torracat and Incineroar or make sense of some of the UBs at all).

Oh, Incineroar has one of my favorite design backstories! He's based on Tiger Mask, a popular manga character! He's a heel wrestler turned hero, which is why he's Dark-type!

And, honestly, I think that even the designs from Gen 1 that you don't like as much anymore might have some fun elements if you look into them again, like how Exeggcute is sort of a play on an "eggplant", or how Voltorb is designed as the Pokemon equivalent to mimic chests in other games. (Though I know not all of them have such depth, like Diglett-but even still, I think a funny design or two can be enjoyable)

Oh, and speaking of design elements-what do you think of stuff like the new types or how abilities factor into designs, or the new Eeveelutions?

Not that I dislike advanced interdimensional sci-fi themes in general (I mean, I love Dr Who), I guess I perhaps just don’t feel they belong in the Pokémon universe? Although it might just be a matter of how it’s written into the story.

Honestly, I agree pretty strongly with you. I personally love alternate universes in limited capacities, especially when they get lots weirder than the one you live in, and I really enjoyed stuff like the Ultra Beast's homes (minus Guzzlord) and the Distortion World. But infinite alternate realities (or just massive amounts of similar ones) just get too bizarre and complicated, not to mention depressing-why bother saving the world in one universe if it just guarantees you'll fail in another one?


Ooh, and some things you might want to know about in regards to your last statements about gaming fundamentals:

• Game Freak is so bad at difficulty that it is actually hilarious. The one time they implemented a difficulty setting, you had to beat the main story to unlock it-and then, one version got easy mode, the other version got hard mode, and you'd have to communicate with the other game to unlock the other setting. (This was in BW2)
• But speaking of Gen 5, I strongly second Dieter's suggestion of playing through them for the story! I think you might also enjoy them graphically-they're not as great as the 3DS games, but they were still quite impressive for DS graphics!
• The constant tutorials are probably the most common complaint I see and while I don't have any words of comfort on that front I do know of a hilarious Awkward Zombie comic on it

 

[Gísli]

Thanks for the input and points! It seems like I will have to try getting myself the Gen V games - but I kind of want to play through all the generations I missed at some point anyway. I hope IV - VI will be remade in the future as I-III have been, or that they will be re-released on future VC equivalents (the upcoming Nintendo Switch Online seems rather limited to NES games for the time being, I’m afraid). It’s also so fun to see how my childhood games still live on through all kinds of ways, including stuff like the VC! My youngest sibling is thirteen years younger than me and his first Pokémon games were Yellow and Crystal too, as I let him have my old GBC and games several years back!

I'm curious as to why it broke immersion for you? Was it the Rotom Dex not registering them, or the lending?

I guess it was the lack of registration. So, what I think was out there for me was having access to Ride Pokémon that I had no contact with whatsoever outside of the Ride system. I was not their trainer, according to the Pokédex I hadn’t even encountered some of them, let alone caught them, but I still was riding them around. It didn’t affect the gameplay in any way, it just broke the immersion of “Within this game, I’m a kid who must catch Pokémon to befriend them and cooperate with them and this tech right here will track what Pokémon I’ve seen and caught.”

Oh, and speaking of design elements-what do you think of stuff like the new types or how abilities factor into designs, or the new Eeveelutions?

I love the new types - as well as the amount of dual types! It was fun having to factor in all typings when battling and learning how the new types interact with all typings. It really added to and built upon the original gameplay experience. I think the abilities and their relation to design are generally good too, I hope abilities make a return for Gen VIII. I love Leafeon and Glaceon is cool too! But somehow Sylveon does not appeal to me. It’s not the Fairy typing (which I like!) or any specific design feature (I went over the designs of the Eeveelutions again to try and see what puts me off). If I had to put my finger on it, I feel like the design is maybe trying too hard to be cute? But maybe it’ll grow on me too!

 

[Dieter]

I guess it was the lack of registration. So, what I think was out there for me was having access to Ride Pokémon that I had no contact with whatsoever outside of the Ride system. I was not their trainer, according to the Pokédex I hadn’t even encountered some of them, let alone caught them, but I still was riding them around. It didn’t affect the gameplay in any way, it just broke the immersion of “Within this game, I’m a kid who must catch Pokémon to befriend them and cooperate with them and this tech right here will track what Pokémon I’ve seen and caught.”

Same. I no longer feel like I'm on a grand adventure, traversing the region with help from my Pokemon, but rather I'm on a carefully guided excursion. Not that I necessarily mind that, I like that the Island Trial is such an important part of Alolan life and culture that there are even volunteers to check on trial goers and test them all over the island. It feels fitting in the setting? That said, maybe they should have dropped that halfway through, because by then you should have proven yourself to be capable. Or something along those lines. Back to the point, ideally they combine ride Pokemon with HG/SS's following Pokemon feature and give them field abilities you gradually unlock. Still, I'm glad GF went and tried something new in the place of HM's.

I love the new types - as well as the amount of dual types! It was fun having to factor in all typings when battling and learning how the new types interact with all typings. It really added to and built upon the original gameplay experience. I think the abilities and their relation to design are generally good too, I hope abilities make a return for Gen VIII. I love Leafeon and Glaceon is cool too! But somehow Sylveon does not appeal to me. It’s not the Fairy typing (which I like!) or any specific design feature (I went over the designs of the Eeveelutions again to try and see what puts me off). If I had to put my finger on it, I feel like the design is maybe trying too hard to be cute? But maybe it’ll grow on me too!

It's uh, very pink. Which is not an issue to me exactly, give me all the pink Pokemon. But I found I prefer its shiny colouration, which feels a bit less 'exploded cupcake', and more like a cute fairy type.

And I'd absolutely recommend playing through the Gen V games, though I must warn you that physical copies might be a bit pricey, even though they'll be secondhand