Is Pokémon... on a roll right now?

[WyndonCalling]

This was inspired by something I quickly rustled up for the Bulbagarden Twitter account:

Do you agree with this assessment? BDSP might be on there somewhat prematurely, but regardless of how exactly it's received we'll be getting a fairly typical Pokémon adventure this year alongside a wealth of other experiences. It strikes me that the variety of titles and genres on offer (as well as some excellent one-off animation) means that there's rarely been a better time to be a fan of the franchise.

 

[Welkamo]

The question whether it's on a sourdough or potato roll.

In all seriousness, there has been a lot of Pokémon stuff, very good Pokémon stuff, this year in both gaming and animation. New Pokémon Snap was a blast, the Pokétoons are incredible, Snorlax is in a pineapple suit, and two new big games are on the way. This might all be because of the 25th anniversary, but boy is it a good anniversary so far.

 

[WyndonCalling]

The question whether it's on a sourdough or potato roll.

In all seriousness, there has been a lot of Pokémon stuff, very good Pokémon stuff, this year in both gaming and animation. New Pokémon Snap was a blast, the Pokétoons are incredible, Snorlax is in a pineapple suit, and two new big games are on the way. This might all be because of the 25th anniversary, but boy is it a good anniversary so far.

Funnily enough, I found much of the explicit 25th anniversary content to be a dud (especially the tie-in songs) but the actual core products - games and animation - are excellent, without an overt anniversary link.

 

[Nicolas721]

On a roll of content? Probably. New Snap and Unite were released with enough distance of each other, and new Unite content along Galar in Go will fill in the gaps until BDSP arrives. More news about a new movie or Sleep wouldn't hurt though.

On a roll of quality? That's subjective. BDSP, Unite and specially Journeys (in spite of having character returns pretty much every month) all have their detractors and are waiting to be surprised and see something innovative.

 

[Silktree]

I'm satisfied with New Snap and some anime episodes (which is a lot more than I would have said about most past series), but that's about it. Legends is a 2022 title and we barely know anything about it. I barely remember that this is a special anniversary year.

 

[Chevywolf30]

If so I'm glad I chose now to join the fandom!

 

[FelipePR]

Pokémon Company is looking far and wide, with many new consumers to understand. And the money that's inside, the company gotta catch 'it all.


Jokes aside, this has been a great year for the fans. Despite the pandemic situation, this is a year with many releases and a lot of content about Pokémon.
It's always good to see the franchise expanding and experimenting new airs.

 

[Blast]

I gotta be honest, just the image of Snorlax dressed up as a Sitrus Berry was enough to satisfy me for the whole year.

 

[Welkamo]

I gotta be honest, just the image of Snorlax dressed up as a Sitrus Berry was enough to satisfy me for the whole year.

Ohhhh it's a Sitrus Berry. Didn't realize that until now.

 

[Neyo]

A Snotrus Berry, if you will.
I do think this will be a good year. Possibly not the best, but certainly above average.

 

[PinkIceFox]

^Hee hoo you said snot.

Ehh unless we get more pokemon snap content there's really not a whole lot I'm excited for coming up.

-BDSP has yet to wow me in any way, shape, or form and the eternal fetus character design pretty much guarantees that I won't be buying it unless I find it somewhere for crazy cheap.
-Not really interested in the anime since I preferred a plot progression where they walked around through a region and not jumping around like what they seem to do. The anime seems to have reached the equivalent of when you get fly in a game and proceed to jump around everywhere to find and fill up the pokedex near the end game.
-If you've been in the UNITE section you know how I feel about it and the... people who made it. Literally the only thing I like about it are costumes for the pokemon, but again that's got the grimy IN GAME PAY WITH REAL MONEY TO GET CURRENCY MUST BE SPENT HERE feeling to it. Plus its a multiplayer online phone game (yes its on the switch but lets face it it's a phone game on the switch). Good lord do I hate forced player interaction for content. And phone games!
-Music videos don't wow me. I either get to focus on the music or the visuals and the visuals tend to go by so fast I can't really take them in.
-Apparently there's a little video series with pokemon shorts on it going on? But it's Japanese only?? So any dialog is gonna go over my head. And subs don't help because as stated above... I only get to focus on one or the other. Hard to pay attention to the video itself when I don't understand the words, hard to focus on the video itself when I'm reading a line of text at the bottom of the screen. (That's right boys and girls, I'm a filthy Dubs>Subs person. <3)

So yeah for me this is basically 'same shit as always'. Actually, no, its worse because now that I finally have money I can spend on myself for things I like to do the universe has decided that no, I am not allowed to find very much pokemon merchandise in stores. Seriously the gamestop near me, meijer, and wal-mart have like no new plushes very often. Or figures. I remember when gamestop had pokemon figures that weren't those god awful funkopops. I bought a mew with a masterball a while back. But now they just have a tiny little display with pokemon stuff. And all the stores must be waiting to sell every. single. thing. they have at the moment before opening any new stock they get because there was literally 2 figure packs on the shelf and like 4000 of the same 5 plushies. When for hte past like 4 months they have had no plushies on that shelf like okay restock and maybe you'll get rid of them faster instead of waiting.

And they have like none of those megaconstrux pokeballs anymore. I love those. I have a bunch now.

I'm a 30 year old woman with aspergers just let me have more stuffed animals and toys to stare at universe please I'm begging you. Online shopping isn't fun and I don't want to give amazon my business right now. Plus there are scalpers on there and I hate them.

You know what I'd really like? Nature Documentary styled videos on the pokemon. A Harvest Moon style pokemon game, retiring Ash for god's sake please Go could have been his son or something or just a new protagonist yeesus, another hey you pikachu style game but without the microphone so I guess it'd kinda be like a Pokemon Petz game but you get to go actually do activities and explore with your pokemon pet as well as decorate your room and stuff.

Ooh or a book pokedex like that one that's been translated recently that gives interesting information on the pokemon. Or just lore-type artbooks in general and stuff...

 

[Aulos]

Hate to be a stick in the mud, but I'm not impressed with this year.

IMO, Pokemon Snap really needed to become a free exploration game instead of a set of on-rails courses. That's not to say there's no value to it, but as someone who got bored quickly with the original Pokemon Snap for this very reason back when I was 11/12, I can't say I'm eager to spend a whopping $60 on the same thing again.

I do appreciate the diversity of Pokemon shown in the game (at least from the advertisements). I liked the whole bucking of Gen I pandering trend.

The Pokemon D/P remakes are a major disappointment for me. After FR/LG, HG/SS, and OR/AS, I had formed a standard for the remake series. Stylistically, every Pokemon remake before had been updated to match the style of the generation it came from. But then we get BD/SP. They decided to not to update Sinnoh much at all. It's just the same old 2.5D that Pokemon already moved away from in Generation VII. And the graphics themselves are just so daft, so lackluster, I see absolutely no reason to pick these up. They aren't an improvement over the originals graphically, stylistically, they just look like the same games, just slightly updated graphically (aside from the 3D battles, but that's not enough) so what makes them worth it? And for $60? You've got to be kidding me. These are practically 3DS games.

I post this because it makes me sad.

Thankfully, Pokemon Legends Arceus is a thing. But it will be next year. This year had nothing to offer for me, I'm afraid. That seems to be a trend in gaming altogether, though. The only things I've been interested in this year are the Great Ace Attorney collection and the next FFXIV expansion pack.

 

[Chevywolf30]

IMO, Pokemon Snap really needed to become a free exploration game instead of a set of on-rails courses. That's not to say there's no value to it, but as someone who got bored quickly with the original Pokemon Snap for this very reason back when I was 11/12, I can't say I'm eager to spend a whopping $60 on the same thing again.

I agree 100%. I got it myself and I haven't finished it because it just got stale. After I finish the game I'm on, I'm gonna pick it back up because the update added Rockruffs, but it got stale in a big fat hurry.

 

[PinkIceFox]

I picked new snap back up a day or two ago and hadn't gotten to the content I unlocked after beating the main story. I was trying to do all the little request challenges but those are REALLY a pain in the ass. When you have to look up how to do this and it turns out you had to throw a glowy ball at a chinchou that shows up underneath you and by the time you'd notice it organically, it'd already be past the point where the 'scene' would unlock... its kinda really stupid how unintuitive that is. Now, picture that for over half of the challenges.

See that primarina waaaaaaay off in the distance? Hit it with a glowy ball. what? no you don't get breaks so you can actually stop and aim properly with your glowy ball. What? You missed it? Better restart the stage because she's not gonna swim to later in the stage to sing for that Zangoose now.

How many times have you reunited that deerling and sawsbuck? Wow that's a lot too bad you keep missing the specific animation frame you have to capture in order to get that request to count as fulfilled.

At least now there is a little symbol on a picture to let you know which one you took is filling a request. I don't remember that from before. Of course, you have to get the picture just right for it to count. Had to take a picture of a Primarina jumping out of the water. Not only did I have to throw a glowball at her right as she rounded the rock she had been sitting on (or her jump wouldn't even trigger) it took like 5 or 6 attempts because each time the target registering would end up being a driftblim, mantine, or something else in the background.

Also one time I took a picture of a luvdisc and somehow it registered as the finneon right behind it, who's tail was only peeking out from behind it.

That said I love a lot of the pokemon in this game. Like I cant go through that illusionary woods level without nearly crying at how precious and pure Espurr is. Their little baby meow squeaks and happy bouncing fills me with so much serotonin I could die of an overdose. I coo and squee loudly every single time. One time I even triggered my very clingy crybaby cat to hop up and sit on my desk because he was getting jealous lol

 

[nickdt]

Pokemon used Rollout

It was Super Effective

 

[R1ke]

• New Pokemon Snap: Haven’t played it but it seems good
• BDSP: Not a fan
• Legends Arceus: Pretty promising and exciting
• Master Journeys: Actually enjoy it and think it’s good nowadays but that’s fairly controversial around here. Imo after the director change especially it’s gone up.

Looks like a good year overall. I wouldn’t say it’s the best, but there’s a lot to look forward to. They’ve definitely been branching out with the games which allows for more innovative ideas and released better spin off titles. The anime as well has been experimental which matches this tone. Feels like a breath of fresh air to a franchise that’s been notoriously stagnant, really hope it pays off.

 

[Phosphene]

For me personally, no. New Snap never really caught my attention, ditto for UNITE, BDSP is kind of disappointing to me, I don't really watch the anime nor shorts anymore so I have no opinion there, I'm not into music videos, etc. The bulk of content just hasn't interested me as I find it lackluster, or it isn't the type of stuff I'm into. The only content I'm really excited about is Legends, and there hasn't been much information about it beyond its release trailer and the possibility of more info in next week's Presents. Like Nicolas721 said, Pokémon may be on a content roll but whether that content measures is a difference of opinion.

 

[colours]

i honestly forgot it was still the whole ~* 25th year celebration *~ sort of thing, as i thought the music videos would more or less be it. x: i only really care about the games though, which so far looks good to me!

 

[Maniacal Engineer]

Pokémon is releasing far more content at a pace faster than they ever have before.
In some sense, you could say that means they’re “on a roll.”

On the other hand, quantity is not the same as quality.

While I am looking forward to BDSP, I am a little hesitant to get too excited given that I feel like game quality has gone down recently.

Don’t get me wrong, Sword is a good game, and I’m glad I ultimately bought a Switch and got it, but, for such a large and impressive looking world it feels…empty. To me, Dynamaxing is an uninspired game mechanic, compared to the introduction of Double Battles, Triple Battles, Rotation Battles, and Inverse Battles. Or the introduction of regional variants.
Heck, even compared to other “over the top” gimmicks, like Mega Evolution and Z-Moves, it feels unoriginal.
Hell “Dynamax moves” and “G-Max” moves are just barely tweaked Z-Moves.

The main story of the game is very short, and the post game isn’t particularly inspired, unless you happen to spend extra and get the DLC.

I’ve said it before, and my opinion still remains consistent on this. Pokémon’s “Golden Age” was Emerald through B2W2. Every single main series game (and many of the spin-off games, too) were great.

Even outside of just the games, I personally feel like the anime has taken a decline.
For me, the Advanced era and the Diamond and Pearl era (specifically Galactic Battles) were the highest point of the anime…until the end of the Diamond and Pearl era, where they introduced the McGuffin that was Tobias, since they were running out of reasons (even back then) for why Ash couldn’t win at the League.

Now, I admit, I stopped watching the anime with the beginning of the Best Wishes era, and never really got back into it, but, even then, from what I’ve seen, it never really took back off after that.

So yeah, Pokémon is releasing more and more content faster than ever.
For me, that’s a bad thing, but, in reality, they’ll never slow down again because they make too much money doing this.

 

[Daren]

I mostly agree with Maniacal Engineer (except I have a low opinion of Sword and don't consider it good ).
Sure, lots of stuff is coming out but I find it hard to get excited for BD/SP when I already own Platinum and OR/AS showed the remakes almost certainly won't be a definitive releases like Johto got with HG/SS, and Arceus looks interesting but I can't ignore my disappointments with recent mainline entries when it comes to pre-release hopes.

Now, I admit, I stopped watching the anime with the beginning of the Best Wishes era, and never really got back into it, but, even then, from what I’ve seen, it never really took back off after that.

Sort of depends what you mean by taking off. XY was super popular on the internet while it was running--more than I can remember any previous series being--but it's popularity dropped afterwards and DP has seemingly overtaken it.