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What do you NOT miss about the older games?

-An odd one, but limited bag space in gen 1. You can hold only like 20 different things and had to go back and forth between the Item storage in PCs and your bag. It's especially annoying if you're obtaining different items, like HMs and TMs, and have to lug them around because you don't want to use them right away or can't store them right away.
I forgot about that one. Doesn't help that the PC can't hold all the possible items you can get.

-A lot of glitches and coding coding errors where things didn't work as intended. For example, ghost being weak to Psychic in gen 1, and Moon balls only working on Pokemon that evolve with Burn Heals.
I know the apricot balls were a last second addition and that's why they are extremely glitchy as a result, but what the hell?
 
The really bad movesets that most Pokemon back in the earlier generations had. Most Pokemon learned really awful moves not just naturally but by TMs too in earlier games unless they were in the top 5% of above average Pokemon. The newer generations at least give 80% of Pokemon competent moves.
 
-Pokemon Musicals
-Sinnoh Super Contests
-No Running Shoes
-Lack of physical/special split
-Pokemon fleeing from battles (in Generation II)
-Stat experience
-Lack of abilities (some Pokemon, such as Azumarill, are useless without them)
-Rotation battles
-SOS battles
-Single-use TMs, of course
-Legendary Pokemon having no connection to the storyline
-Battle faciities only awarding Battle Points after defeating 7 trainers in a row and not after each victory
-Small regional Dexes

All of this plus the nuisance and burocracy that was the early Storage System with the saves, the full box, the deposit & withdraw, save again! :eek:
 
ALSO: the sheer lack of decent Pokemon games on home consoles! I mean, Pokemon Sword and Shield are the first actual main games in a home console (yes, the Switch is a hybrid, but you can use it as an exclusively home console if you want to). The closest we got before that was with Pokemon Colosseum and XD, and those didn't even have the full roster of Pokemon of the time. The Pokemon Stadium games were fun and all, but since you couldn't go on a normal journey, plus the need for having not only main series Pokemon game plus the adaptor, made them quite inferior to the more recent home console games.
 
Oh boy reading this thread has me all riled up.

Let's start with the worst offender:
* Broken mechanics. You know, Gen 1 stuff like Psychic being immune to Ghost instead of weak, the effectiveness messages displaying the wrong thing, unfair moves like Wrap and Fire Spin, the critical hit system, pokeballs missing etc etc
* God awful movesets. I replayed Yellow and remembered Pokemon in the 40s with Growl and Leer in ther movesets. Yuck
* Lack of pokemon/awful distribution. Stuff like Johto having no Johto mons, or Sinnoh being massive yet having only 150 mons and only 2 Fire type lines and lacking a lot of pokemon that should've been in the region. Or finding the same pokemon over and over all around the map.
*Lack of space in the bag. God I hated this so much.
* The awful box storage in Gen 1. This was a nightmare. I can't go back and play Gen 1 games because I'll have to use the boxes.
* Level curves being horrible. Johto is the main offender here but there are others such as Unova and Sinnoh (in the post game mainly).
* Safari Zones and equivalents. I hated this so much! The pokemon could escape, they were a pain to catch and you were restricted in the amount of pokeballs and steps you could use. And they even charge you for using them! Ugh
* Game Corners. Prizes were good and the games were ok, but good luck grinding for all the coins you need to actually get the prizes. Like the 9999 coin Porygon.
*Single use TMs. No, just no.
*HMs. I didn't dislike them as using your pokemon to explore the overworld gave the games a sense of adventure. What I disliked is that they were mostly poor moves with weak BP and awful typings, and you couldn't erase them normally. And they took a slot in your movesets. Meh.
* The glacial walking speed in Gens 1, 2 and 4. Gen 4 is generally slow but only the walking and surfing speed irks me.
* GRINDING. Seriously this is the part of pokemon I hate the most. It is tied to the level curve problem but in general, grinding is so slow. Most games don't have a way to grind fast, mainly the E4 and wild pokemon who don't give much experience. I don't like that SwSh give you EXP in a silver plate (almost quite literally) but I am happy I don't have to grind for hours to evolve a pokemon just for a pokedex entry.
* National Dex. Now, hear me out. I used to like it because I've been fortunate enough to have several consoles (GB, GBC, GBA, GBA sp, DS, DS lite, 3DS you name it) and several games so all the trading and transferring pokemon needed to have a complete national pokedex was super easy for me. But after I transferred every pokemon I had in every game to pokemon bank I erased all my save files and tried to complete the national dex without transferring from previous games. THe horror! Now I sort of understand why GF cut it since Gen 7 and why they don't want every single pokemon in every single game. It's a daunting task to catch'em all if you're just starting out. I'm having problems completing Gen 4 National Dex back when there were only 400ish pokemon. I can't even imagine what it would be like to try to complete a NatDex in Gen 8, when there's almost twice the amount of pokemon now, starting from scratch.
* Trials: trials make me rage so much. I never liked them, they were so boring and infuriating. Good riddance.
* A bunch of other Alola exclusive mechanics. Mainly SOS battles, Ultra Beasts, alternate universes etc etc etc. I hate Gen 7 so much.
 
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  • HMs
  • Single-use TMs
  • The grinding. While I certainly think there should be an option to turn the Exp share on or off, I very much prefer the Gen 6-8 (well, 8 if it could be turned off) exp share to the hours I would have to spend grinding just to get my Pokemon up and ready to take on gyms. It almost makes some of the older games unplayable (the Johto games in particular)
  • How long it took to save your game. I hadn't played much of the games pre-gen 4 (my first game was Crystal, but it was on an emulator). But HGSS, Pt, and BW2 seemed to take forever to save. I don't know if it was just something about the games or what, but I certainly do not miss those days.
  • Running Shoes. Specifically not having them at the beginning of the game (or at all). What's the point of forcing the player to have to wait to get around faster? This was especially brutal in Gens 1 and 2 that didn't have the item at all, and you had to wait to get the bike.
  • Roaming Legendaries. Even with them being trackable, I just never liked the chase. I like the initial surprise encounter, but after that it's just annoying.
 
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-An odd one, but limited bag space in gen 1. You can hold only like 20 different things and had to go back and forth between the Item storage in PCs and your bag. It's especially annoying if you're obtaining different items, like HMs and TMs, and have to lug them around because you don't want to use them right away or can't store them right away.
Ooh yeah, the limited bag space was always annoying.

Another thing from Gen 1 that isn't missed: the fact that you had to go into the Pokemon menu every time you wanted to use an HM move outside of battle, so like every time you needed to use Cut or Surf, or even moves like Dig, etc. you would have to select it manually. It was the same even for key items like the fishing rods and the bike, you had to go into your bag every time to select them (Gen 2 onward at least made it possible to set items to the Select button)
 
I've never played the gen. 1 and 2 games, so I can't really comment on them. However, when it comes to gen. 3, it has to be the lack of physical/special split, and to some degree the rather limited move pool quite a few Pokémon had back then. Oh yeah, and that weird "purist" approach they took with Fire Red/Leaf Green. Like, my Golbat wants to evolve, WHY WON'T YOU LET IT?

I didn't mind the TM and HM mechanics back then, I actually think it added a bit of challenge to the games. But yeah, if Emerald and Fire Red/Leaf Green existed without the aforementioned issues, they would pretty much be perfect to me and I would probably put them on the same level as Platinum and HeartGold/SoulSilver.
 
Me: *whistles as I walk down a route*

Cave: HI I'M NEXT ENJOY CONSTANT RANDOM ENCOUNTERS. Also, hope you have the move Flash lol

Me: FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

I hate caves. I hate caves with near constant random encounters. I hate caves that require me to use a move slot to make things visible.

I loved Sword and Shield's caves to death. I could actually enjoy being in a cave.
 
Roaming Legendaries. Even with them being trackable, I just never liked the chase. I like the initial surprise encounter, but after that it's just annoying.

I want to say that there must be a way to make this concept work in a way that's fun. Randomizing their location whenever you enter a new area definitely isn't it. Maybe it could be partially time-based. Like, during a certain time of day, it will be guaranteed to appear on certain routes, and you only have to encounter it x amount of times before it stops fleeing. Or I guess the easy answer would just be to narrativize it, kind of like Suicune in Crystal - have a certain number of cutscene encounters with it (maybe flesh them out to be more significant than a dialogue dump, like maybe in one scene there's another Trainer who spots it and tries to get in on it) before a climactic final battle.
 
I want to say that there must be a way to make this concept work in a way that's fun. Randomizing their location whenever you enter a new area definitely isn't it. Maybe it could be partially time-based. Like, during a certain time of day, it will be guaranteed to appear on certain routes.

This is what they did with Thundurus and Tornadus in BW. I was extremely glad with that.
 
Replaying Soulsilver right now and just... lol. I'll always love these games, but gosh there are some things I don't miss.

  • One use TMs and HMs, as mentioned by a lot of people. Especially ones like Cut and Rock Smash that are mostly useless in battle and impossible to get rid of for a long time. In HGSS, the move deleter isn't until Blackthorn, almost at the end of the game.
  • Needing heart scales to relearn a forgotten move. SWSH made getting back old moves so much easier and erased the concern of your Pokemon missing a move if it evolved too late.
  • Possibly missing the chance to learn certain moves if your Pokemon didn't evolve in time. This is mainly an issue with the Eeveelutions for me. I had to make sure my Eevee evolved into Espeon before level 15 because it would not learn another psychic move until level 36 otherwise. All the Eeveelutions immediately learning a STAB move upon evolving in Gen 7 was such a major improvement for me.
  • Level curve and grinding. Especially in Gen 4. This and the slowness of the gen 4 games is the main reason why they're some of my least favorite games to play through. HGSS isn't as bad as the Sinnoh games imo, but I'm already dreading grinding for the Elite 4.
  • Certain Pokemon only being able to be caught at night, events that only happen once a day on certain days of the week (bug catching contest) and other things that can only happen on certain days like getting an evolutionary stone at the Pokelethon Dome. HGSS is the main offender here. Only being able to buy a fire stone to evolve your Vulpix on a Tuesday is.... no. Not to mention all the Pokelethon minigames you have to play through before you can get it.
  • I don't miss not having the Fairy type... I guess that's more of something I do miss from the newer games rather than something I don't miss from the older games.
 
Certain Pokemon only being able to be caught at night, events that only happen once a day on certain days of the week (bug catching contest) and other things that can only happen on certain days like getting an evolutionary stone at the Pokelethon Dome. HGSS is the main offender here. Only being able to buy a fire stone to evolve your Vulpix on a Tuesday is.... no. Not to mention all the Pokelethon minigames you have to play through before you can get it.
Well, at least you could kinda cheat those. The problem would be the Safari Zone, but that was already massively problematic (why do you need a month to get a Pokémon?).

EDIT: Also, don't you get a Fire Stone at the Burned Tower? Unless you spent that one on Growlithe or Eevee...
 
This is what they did with Thundurus and Tornadus in BW. I was extremely glad with that.

That's right! I forgot that they changed how they worked. And I actually liked those two quite a bit, because the weather that came with them made the encounter feel a little more out-of-the-ordinary as well. None of the other roamers changed anything about the overworld - you'd just wander in the grass until different music played (if even that). But Tornadus and Thundurus's storms gave them a certain level of presence, and did so without taking away the jolt of surprise that comes when the special battle music hits.
 
That's right! I forgot that they changed how they worked. And I actually liked those two quite a bit, because the weather that came with them made the encounter feel a little more out-of-the-ordinary as well. None of the other roamers changed anything about the overworld - you'd just wander in the grass until different music played (if even that). But Tornadus and Thundurus's storms gave them a certain level of presence, and did so without taking away the jolt of surprise that comes when the special battle music hits.
They also reduced the amount of possible routes to three depending on the hour, so you didn't have to pray for the roamer to appear like you had to do with the others.
 
Something else I'm glad is gone are the rather ugly chibi character models, especially in the earlier 3DS games. My replay of X reminded me why I didn't like those character models. Starting from Gen 7, the character models are proportioned correctly. Sword/Shield took it further in that department, especially now that the PC can emote like a real person instead of having the blank smile of doom plastered on their faces 24/7 in Gen 7 except in certain cutscenes. That also goes for the other characters, who emote quite nicely when the situation calls for it.
 
Something else I'm glad is gone are the rather ugly chibi character models, especially in the earlier 3DS games. My replay of X reminded me why I didn't like those character models.

The worst thing about them is that GF clearly programmed more appealing models (better proportioned), such as the ones shown before an important battle (i.e. the final battles with Lysandre, or the battles with your actual rival, say, Serena), but they used the chibi ones instead in the overworld. The Alola games showed the capabilities of the 3DS in that regard.

And yes, I agree, GF still has to work more on the expressions of the human characters, especially the avatars.
 
The Alola games showed the capabilities of the 3DS in that regard.

Seemingly at the expense of the overworld having any real depth, though. Scaling up the player avatars also means scaling up the overworld, which means we get things like the Hano Grand Resort consisting of a whole one room as opposed to something like the Hotel Richissime, which had several floors and a lot more interact with. Personally I'd rather have ugly chibis if it means better maps.
 
Limited bag, lack of physical/special split and limited movesets. That's about it; non-Surf HMs are a nuisance, but not that much in Kanto/Johto.
 
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