Spoilers Official Let's Go Pikachu/Let's Go Eevee Discussion Thread

[Silktree]

I've grown indifferent to Masuda's comments and the future of the series. I personally don't mind the new catching system at all, but the total disregard of veteran players who actually care about Kanto, pisses me off.

Parents only have time to glance at their kids' screens?

I can't help but giggle at the thought of young Shinji's mom watching him stare at Mother Beast and turning into one herself.

 

[Plubio]

Everything is entitled to their own opinions (and I even believe Masuda's reasoning is pretty dumb) but I just can't stop laughing thinking about "please add real time battles" but "oh don't remove wild battles in a GO-style game — is something core for Pokémon". Change is good, yet there're a lot of different perceptions of what's "good" or "valuable to test" here. Really makes you think.

I still believe removing them is a mistake, though.

EDIT: Do note by no mean I think wild Pokémon are hard to catch. I don't even get what's Masuda thinking this time.

 

[Muur]

And as if that weren't enough...

Junichi Masuda about Let's Go: capturing Pokémon was too difficult for some players, more


> "Masuda thinks that the classic catching mechanics may be too difficult for some players, so they wanted to simplify the captures by introducing the GO mechanics."

> "They intend to continue experimenting with new gameplay styles and some of them may also generate the same kind of controversial discussions."

:/

Pressing A to throw a Pokeball is too hard

Do Nintendo think their fans have no brain?

 

[Kallyle]

Pressing A to throw a Pokeball is too hard

Do Nintendo think their fans have no brain?

Yeah, it really makes it sound like Masuda has lost all respect for the target audience and underestimates what kids are really capable of.

 

[Cresselia92]

I think it's more a matter of having to deal with the whole mechanisms behind captures rather that the "press A" thing.

Like, there is the whole business with weakening the Pokémon without fainting it, making sure to not get unlucky critical hits (which Amie and Refresh greatly favor), using status stuff to increase the catch rate while praying to catch the Pokémon before poisoning / burns faint it, maybe consider using the weak False Swipe / Hold Back to keep the HP at 1, making sure to keep your Pokémon healed when facing legends and swarms, and throwing Pokéballs and above until you either run out of them or catch the Pokémon.

They may be obvious to us because we are used to all this mess, but it' can actually be a quite unintuitive and frustrating method for newer players, and I can see why the GO mechanism could help alleviate that, as it just involves throwing balls without dealing with all the other stuff.

I can see why this change is unwelcome for some people, though, but I can get the logic behind this decision.

 

[Bolt Strike]

Yeah, it really makes it sound like Masuda has lost all respect for the target audience and underestimates what kids are really capable of.

That's been evident since the infamous Battle Frontier interview. Masuda's been spouting this same nonsense for the past few years, it's just that he's been making things worse and worse. Again, I really have to question where the bottom is on this. Is there anything too simple for even Masuda or is he just going to keep simplifying and simplifying until the game plays itself?

 

[Silktree]

If a lot of kids prefer Go catching to regular catching, that is reason enough to add the new system. But as a replacement? No, as this is the sort of thing that can easily be toggled like shift/set style.

 

[KiranTheWitch]

I'm excited for these games, but Masuda should really quit trying to defend the games and explain why such and such was done. He's making moutains out of molehills with the fanbase, especially considering this is a new series in the core series, but also it's own subseries genre of Pokemon games, which will run synonymous with the regular core series games. This was information made public at Let's Go's Reveal.

I'll be getting these games, but I'm also heavily excited for the next games next year, and have high hopes for them.

 

[Muur]

He needs to just go tbh. Gen 7 has made over a billion dollars, that's a shit tonne of money. He doesn't need to turn the franchise into a glorified mobile game

 

[Cresselia92]

I’m still not all that bothered, tbh.

If all, I can see the Let’s Go series as an experimental series where they can try out new mechanisms different from the mainstream series without having to change the mainstream series itself. In this way, fans can try out a new way of playing the games, play the regular series without worries of extreme changes to the formula, or even enjoy both experiences.

If Gen 8 will be your typical bread-and-butter game without GO influence, then that shouldn’t be a big deal.

I mean, what’s stopping Let’s Go from being the new “Mario & Luigi” and ending up being its own thing without overshadowing the mainstream RPG (aka, the “Paper Mario”)?

 

[Muur]

I’m still not all that bothered, tbh.

If all, I can see the Let’s Go series as an experimental series where they can try out new mechanisms different from the mainstream series without having to change the mainstream series itself. In this way, fans can try out a new way of playing the games, play the regular series without worries of extreme changes to the formula, or even enjoy both experiences.

If Gen 8 will be your typical bread-and-butter game without GO influence, then that shouldn’t be a big deal.

I mean, what’s stopping Let’s Go from being the new “Mario & Luigi” and ending up being its own thing without overshadowing the mainstream RPG (aka, the “Paper Mario”)?

The worry is that if it sells really well, they'll put the stuff into the 'main' games as well

 

[Cresselia92]

The worry is that if it sells really well, they'll put the stuff into the 'main' games as well

Well, depends from what stuff is the most successful one. If all, popular features like following/riding Pokémon and a more developed co-op mode would be welcome standards for future titles in the main series.

 

[Aulos]

I mean, what’s stopping Let’s Go from being the new “Mario & Luigi” and ending up being its own thing without overshadowing the mainstream RPG (aka, the “Paper Mario”)?

Except that is exactly what happened. The Paper Mario series is now a shell of its former self and the direction of the series is disliked by a wide variety of people. It is no longer even in the same genre. Nintendo's justification? They have said there's only room for one Mario RPG and that is, in their minds, to be Mario & Luigi. (Note: if you look at modern Mario & Luigi games, they have gone off and done their own thing, too. Making this even worse.)

The comparison you made here actually perfectly illustrates how splitting a franchise into two series can totally go horribly wrong.

 

[~ Blazing White Yang]

The worry is that if it sells really well, they'll put the stuff into the 'main' games as well

Doesn't help that the regular games have been steering in this general direction, disappointing fans for the same reasons. They've talked about simplified gameplay and reaching the modern market since around XY, and Let's Go appears to be the culmination of all that.

With nothing concrete on 2019, it's hard to have faith in them.

 

[PkmnTrainerV]

Does Masuda realise that a $60 game should have more content and difficulty than a mobile game? It’s high time they realise it since they’re on a console now and we're paying more for these games.
A console game's content shouldn’t be made comparable to a mobile game's content just because they’re apparantly 'competing for attention'

And the main series catching style is complex? Wtf? Even considering the HP-lowering and status infliction it isn’t that difficult.
And if they’re considering that difficult, even GO's catching system isn’t easy since you could hit the ball out of the circle, the Pokemon could move around the screen, the ring might be red or the RNG might not be in the player's favour resulting in little Jimmy throwing away his copy of Let's Go Pikachu because he lost all his Pokeballs on a caterpie.

 

[Bolt Strike]

Doesn't help that the regular games have been steering in this general direction, disappointing fans for the same reasons. They've talked about simplified gameplay and the reaching modern market since around XY, and Let's Go appears to be the culmination of all that.

With nothing concrete on 2019, it's hard to have faith in them.

This. They say "Oh just wait for the 2019 game", but when XY and SM, the two games that the 2019 game are being compared to, have been doing the same things, how do we know that even the 2019 games are going to satisfy the segment of the fanbase that's sick of all of the handholding and the simplification? Game Freak hasn't really earned that kind of trust.

Does Masuda realise that a $60 game should have more content and difficulty than a mobile game? It’s high time they realise it since they’re on a console now and we're paying more for these games.
A console game's content shouldn’t be made comparable to a mobile game's content just because they’re apparantly 'competing for attention'

I don't think he really understands console gaming period, he just seems so blinded by mobile's popularity that he thinks nothing else matters. He thought the Switch would fail because of mobile, he's positioning a remake of a 1996 handheld game with mobile mechanics as Pokemon's take on a console game, and he's almost dismissive of the demand for large scale, open ended, content rich games like BotW while he has no problem making radical changes that bring the series closer to mobile games. His decisions and general game philosophy don't really imply a business savvy or a proper understanding of the market, it just seems to be blind copycatting.

 

[Cresselia92]

Except that is exactly what happened. The Paper Mario series is now a shell of its former self and the direction of the series is disliked by a wide variety of people. It is no longer even in the same genre. Nintendo's justification? They have said there's only room for one Mario RPG and that is, in their minds, to be Mario & Luigi. (Note: if you look at modern Mario & Luigi games, they have gone off and done their own thing, too. Making this even worse.)

The comparison you made here actually perfectly illustrates how splitting a franchise into two series can totally go horribly wrong.

While I agree with the whole series decay thing – as I, myself, am displeased with the direction taken with the Paper Mario series – the point I was trying to make is another one: similar genre and different mechanisms from the same franchise can still be successful and have their own playerbase, which is often seen with people praising The Thousands Year Door and Bowser’s Inside Story even if they are “rivals” and different in many aspects.

However, another thing that this upcoming game has in common with the aforementioned games involves also a bit of blind hatred: I’ve seen many people who thrashed the M&L games because they aren’t Paper Mario or Super Mario RPG. Basically, it boils down to “it’s different, so it sucks”, and this is a bit of what I’m seeing about Let’s Go as well.

Now, I understand why people are displeased and why they don’t like the casualization thing. I mean, I love some bit of challenge as well, and there are some things about Let’s Go that I don’t appreciate either. But there is something that must be taken in mind: Let’s Go is different. It can’t be truly compared with the mainstream series because it isn’t technically a mainstream game. It is labeled Pokémon and it is an RPG, sure, but this is where things end, in a way not too different from the Colosseum/XD series.

Perhaps it may be better to look at the game from another perspective. Let’s take for example Paper Mario Sticker Star and Color Splash, the accursed games that ruined the franchise. One of the main reasons they are constantly criticized is that they are labeled as “Paper Mario”, which feels insulting toward older fans who are used to the standard formula. However, taken by themselves, they aren’t even that bad as games, and I bet people wouldn’t hate on them that much if they weren’t “Paper Mario”. They simply are forced to fill shoes that they aren’t supposed to fill.

A similar approach should be taken with Let’s Go, as in judged by their own rather than comparing them constantly with the main games. If they still look bad even if judged by their own that’s fine, but we shouldn’t let previous standards affect the judgment of these games because they aren’t supposed to be “standard”. Too many times I’ve read “they did this differently, so instant dislike”, but at the end of the day they are their own thing with their own mechanisms, aka Let’s Go. No color, mineral or similar counterpart games. If we can judge Colosseum and XD by their own, why not Let’s Go?

 

[PkmnTrainerV]

If we can judge Colosseum and XD by their own, why not Let’s Go?

Because Colosseum and XD were not marketed as main series games and did not have as much influence over them as Let's GO does,

 

[Cresselia92]

Because Colosseum and XD were not marketed as main series games and did not have as much influence over them as Let's GO does,

So, you are saying that it was/is also fine to thrash on the Mario & Luigi series since it is marketed as a main Mario RPG and it’s an “offense” toward Super Mario RPG? I mean, they are different and did things differently, so they should be automatically bad, right?

 

[PkmnTrainerV]

So, you are saying that it was/is also fine to thrash on the Mario & Luigi series since it is marketed as a main Mario RPG and it’s an “offense” toward Super Mario RPG? I mean, they are different and did things differently, so they should be automatically bad, right?

I actually have never played the Mario and Luigi series and I don’t know much about it so I do not feel well informed enough to comment on that.

But we know that whether or not we consider LGPE main games, GameFreak does and that’s what matters in the long run.
No one's stopping them from realising that the Let's Go formula could work for the main series and bring these changes over to the actual main games.