What aspect of Pokemon games do you care about most?

[GhostLucario]

1. The Region. Including the pokémon that live in it and how explorable it is. I want it to have a sense of adventure, not a tourist guide (like Alola) or pretty but empty corridors (like Galar)

2. Mechanics. Things like Vs seeker, pokeradar, dexnav, PSS, stuff that is user-friendly and makes the game easier to play.

3. Post-game content. The story has never been great (both in quality and quantity) in pokemon games and it's subpar at best but at least give me tons of things to keep me entertained after I finish it that isn't online or competitive battling

 

[bluering8]

- Exploration! I want tons of places to explore, and long diversions, and flavour text, and dungeons and mazes and puzzles, and just in general a whole bunch of side-adventure nonsense which has nothing to do with the main plot and only exists to be fun, and also I want to be able to poke at all this stuff without being railroaded every step of the way.

- Quality of Life. nintendo please bring back the ability to store items in the PC i am Dying

- Plot. Or at least one specific aspect of the plot, which is to say I want it to be a plot about me and how cool and good at making my magical animals beat up other magical animals I am. I prefer my rivals to be rivals rather than friends, I loathe double battles with the stupid AI, and generally I am a dumb petty jerk who will constantly whine about having to share my thunder. (That said I... do actually like Hop a whole lot! Partly because I decided within the first five minutes that he was the protagonist and I was the asshole rival, which went a long way towards alleviating his sins. If Pokemon games will not give me a store-bought Gary, homemade is fine.)

 

[Gengarzilla]

Typically the battling, because a Pokémon's physical appearance doesn't mean squat there. In this field it's all about the innermost details that you can't see from the outside, like types, moves, base stats, abilities, all the stuff that truly makes up a Pokémon species. It always bothers me a great deal when people don't like certain Pokémon purely on a design basis.
Yes, Garbodor is literally a pile of garbage. Does that bother me? Not in the least. I enjoy looking past the skin and I'd devote gameplay time to almost anything if I could do good stuff with 'em. My tastes in Pokémon besides my all-time favourite Gengar tend to be quite varied because of that.

 

[prog rocker]

Typically the battling, because a Pokémon's physical appearance doesn't mean squat there. In this field it's all about the innermost details that you can't see from the outside, like types, moves, base stats, abilities, all the stuff that truly makes up a Pokémon species. It always bothers me a great deal when people don't like certain Pokémon purely on a design basis.
Yes, Garbodor is literally a pile of garbage. Does that bother me? Not in the least. I enjoy looking past the skin and I'd devote gameplay time to almost anything if I could do good stuff with 'em. My tastes in Pokémon besides my all-time favourite Gengar tend to be quite varied because of that.

This, more or less, I can like a Pokémon for its appearance, but if it's fun to use then to hell with the appearance.

 

[Rainfall]

(Like many others, I suppose, my care-abouts will be that typical 'shape'-- I'll care about most aspects to some degree, and a few considerably more. Overall, different elements will affect how one experiences the game.)

On the action and thinking side of things, I swing lopsidedly toward thinking. I have very little patience for shiny hunting, breeding for perfect IVs, EV training, and leveling up a team. Theorymon and strategic metagame are very interesting, but I'm not competitive and don't want to spend much time tinkering, mapping out pathways, and remembering how much a boosted attack from x pokemon under k conditions can 2HKO y pokemon under j conditions. I'd much rather look at the nominal structure of the core games as a whole, and check out the general shape and also specific superlatives of subcategories that each version (or across versions) has to offer. I'll stick with being annoying unsolicited trivia guy.

what Pokemon are available in this regional dex? how do the pokemon relate to each other, and to the fantasy-side of the web/tree of life? what location types are available? how are the marine pokemon distributed, for saltwater, freshwater, and delta habitats? what is the forest like, what are the ice regions like, where is the volcano, what shape is the desert, where can I travel to see the cascading waterfalls? what concepts do certain pokemon represent? What are the unique evolutions? where are the strongest wild pokemon located? what are the common pokemon found in this region that aren't found elsewhere? are there any rares that can only be found in a few places? what moves can only certain pokemon learn? what moves have unique effects, and how do they work? where are the strong trainers? where are the recurring type-enhancing items? why are some pokemon uncommon? who can change the terrain? who can set and remove the entry hazards?

where does the rain soak, the snow crush, the sun blaze, the sand raze?

There's a whole set of ecosystems out there waiting to be studied, processed, and relished. Let's go discover.

 

[mikechuu]

I think exploration is the biggest for me. I like large regions with a lot of different places to explore. Give me that and I am good!

 

[Emmy]

Hmm...this might sound a little wishy-washy but I'd go with "Adventure" which I realise is a super nebulous term but I can't think to put it any other way. The feeling of exploring a big new Region, meeting and catching new Pokémon, interacting with a colourful cast of characters and most of all - the feeling that you're on a journey. Battling Leon at the end of the League and then double-teaming Eternatus with Hop really felt like you had come so far from humble beginnings.

 

[Daenerys]

Collecting and exploration are the things that I love most about the games. I don't like battling that much because I suck at competitive battling and don't even see the point of it. :/

 

[SlowGinFizzzz]

The most important thing for me is the region the game takes place in. I love well-designed routes and locations that offer a lot to explore and discover, hidden paths and secret caves and lonely islands. I love locations that you are not required to visit, that in fact nobody even tells you about – that you just stumble upon by surfing a bit too far, or by fighting your way up a huge waterfall, or even through a hidden underwater path (shoutout to Hoenn). I actually don't even mind it when some places don't really serve a purpose (think Scorched Slab in gen. 3 Hoenn, or Outcast Island and Pattern Bush in Sevii), I like the mystery and unexplained nature surrounding them.

Of course, a great region to me is more than just the plain map; it also encompasses the history, culture and lore, the ecosystem, the way the people living there are depicted, and of course the Pokémon. I think Sevii, Johto, Hoenn, Sinnoh, and Unova all did a great job in creating this kind of thematic cohesion throughout the world you play in.

Other important aspects to me are, as I have already alluded to, the story and the selection of Pokémon available. And I love variety in gameplay! I'm a sucker for side activities like secret bases, contests, the Pokéathlon, the Trick House, Join Avenue, the underground, growing berries etc. This also includes alternative battle facilities such as my beloved Battle Frontier (RIP buddy) and the PWT. I don't care enough about competitive battles to go through the hassle of breeding the perfect 'mons, so I pretty much depend on what the game itself has to offer.

 

[Yami-no-Game]

Regions and exploration are my favorite things about the games. Pokemon are the cornerstone too obviously but I prefer the freedom to visit different places. Like for example when I play B/W I like to pretend that I'm actually in NYC.

 

[WyndonCalling]

It was always the Pokémon themselves. I was heavily engaged with the franchise for years before I actually played one of the titles and given that I didn't know how to play the TCG and didn't actually much like the characters of the anime, it must have almost solely been the designs that hooked me in and kept there (along with some of the elements wrapped in with them, such as evolution and the typing system).

This said, the thing that the games do better than any other aspect of the franchise is self-expression. With other aspects of Pokémon media, having a favourite species, type or other theme doesn't really mean anything; your top picks might not even exist in the TCG's current rotation (and are almost certainly guaranteed to be close to literally unusable if you want to play a decent match) and the anime and manga offer no form of self-expression at all. The main series titles are pretty much alone in letting you make your mark in how your approach the story's challenges; if you're the kind of person who wants to do a five-Koffing-and-a-Lumineon run, you do you! I dread to think just how many unique combinations of teams exist, and how many times those zeroes would lap around the world.

The other ingredient that's super-important to a meaningful sense of agency is world-building - if I'm going to carve out my own little chunk of this world, I need to believe that it's not just going to disappear the moment I turn the power off and that it's not a place constructed entirely for my own easy convenience. It's why I love exploration, regional themes, character interactions and all that other 'stuff' around the party and battle mechanics.

The species designs are vitally important here, too; the fact that most of them are merely stylised animals rather than individual personalities means that you can believe they live and breathe in a setting that carries on just as normal without you. With blank-slate personalities, you also get the opportunity to imprint your own approach on them, without being ‘dictated’ to – I’m not into wrestling, so I’m just never going to ‘get’ Incinerorar. Equally, while I adore Galar’s theming it also became slightly inevitable that at least one of the region’s signature species was going to make it onto my top team, because that’s my cultural vibe.

 

[Greninjaman]

I enjoy the story more than anything.

 

[PinkIceFox]

1. The Pokemon themselves. Can't really have a pokemon game without the pokemon, yeah?
2. World Building. The Lore of the region, the characters in it, and interesting things about the region and pokemon in it. I like immersing myself in the games I play so I like when the world feels like its more than just a cardboard cutout of locations with monster infested grass in between.
3. Gameplay that lets me interact with the pokemon through more than just battling. Contests, following pokemon, the pokeathlon, pokemon amie, the photography club in Ultra Sun and Moon, camping, things like that. I like the idea that pokemon are not just for battling and I like that the games started to include that more. Now if only they could just freaking use them all in one game instead of keeping some and ditching others. Let me pet my pokemon, talk to it as we walk together, AND feed it curry before taking it to compete in its favorite non-battle competition, damnit!
4. Bonus points if I can decorate a hidden base/my room. I like pretending my character makes a cozy little house somewhere. And just covering everything in pokedolls like how I did my bed in real life. Also WHY DIDN'T THEY BRING BACK ROOM DECORATING IN THE JOHTO REMAKES!?