Your controversial opinions

[Pigrider09]

They should bring back the overworld shiny sparkle sound in the next mainline pokemon game

I'm not sure that's controversial but I agree.

 

[toastghost]

convergent evolutions are lame, actually. i don't get why they decided to make whole new pokemon species that are complete expys of existing pokemon, when we already had regional variants which just feel better in every way to me.

 

[Eitarou]

Convergents are basically just a slight variation of regional forms. I feel like people make them seem far worse than they actually are.

 

[Greninjaman]

Convergents are basically just a slight variation of regional forms. I feel like people make them seem far worse than they actually are.

One way to look at it.

 

[Sobblefan]

convergent evolutions are lame, actually. i don't get why they decided to make whole new pokemon species that are complete expys of existing pokemon, when we already had regional variants which just feel better in every way to me.

The convergent pokemon designs are cool, but why not just make them regional pokemon instead lol

 

[Ransei]

I'm one of those oddballs who prefer future paradoxes over the past paradoxes. They're a unique group of pokemon uniformed together into their concept. They look more like they fit into the whole "paradox" category than a bunch of the same types of fleshy creatures we've seen in 900 other Pokemon. I look at Slither Wing and Roaring Moon and think "It's just another Pokemon", but I look at Iron Bundle and Iron Moth thinking they're part of a rare group of Pokemon hardly seen anywhere else.

 

[beryllium]

• rowlet is laughably overrated
• incineroar is cool
• trubbish and garbodor are adorable
• so is purugly. it's a lot cuter than glameow.
• while i do think platinum is pretty good, diamond and pearl are genuinely terribly constructed games and would be the worst in the series if not for rby
• speaking of that, gen 1 is the worst gen
• mega evos leaving was a lot worse than dexit
• silver is not a bad person
• literally the only people showing charizard too much affection is gamefreak themselves
• reshiram >>>> zekrom
• the battle agencies after the main games really are not that fun and i have never found them particularly entertaining
• marnie isnt "waifu bait" and saying so is really questionable considering shes like... twelve
• bede is a terrific rival
• oh fuck it. swoshi are great games
• most of the pika clones are really awesome. there's only one i dislike, and that is pachirisu.
• single battles >> double battles
• xy are also awesome games. the only bad pokemon games are rby and dp, as i said
• sv has a better story than bw/b2w2
• i didn't find hugh or penny annoying in the slightest

 

[Norzan]

I genuinely take a game more akin to a Generation 1 game at this point because i'm sick of these huge cast of characters following the player around to dump exposition on them about the plot or some other crap. Basically let go of my hand, let me explore the world at my leisure and don't constantly interrupt my gameplay.

Yes, i don't mind just casually bumping into the evil team trying to take over a building for their evil plan like in Silph. Co with Team Rocket. If anything, that was one of the best parts of RBY and felt far more satisfying finding about it on my own than being told to go there by a character that is following me around.

 

[Daren]

I genuinely take a game more akin to a Generation 1 game at this point because i'm sick of these huge cast of characters following the player around to dump exposition on them about the plot or some other crap. Basically let go of my hand, let me explore the world at my leisure and don't constantly interrupt my gameplay.

Yes, i don't mind just casually bumping into the evil team trying to take over a building for their evil plan like in Silph. Co with Team Rocket. If anything, that was one of the best parts of RBY and felt far more satisfying finding about it on my own than being told to go there by a character that is following me around.

Yes, this annoys me too.
It feels like a divide where they want these people to get the story role traditionally given to the party members in an RPG--but of course here your party is the Pokémon.

 

[Norzan]

If i have to pick between a content filled game with a lot of polish, difficulty options and other much needed options, but with a bare plot and barely any characters outside of bare minimum like the professor, gym leaders and evil team, and a game with a more involved plot but it lacks polish and content and it has far too much handholding and constantly interrupts my gameplay with too much dialogue, i'll take the former any day. Because i play pokemon games to catch and train pokemon and battle with them either against AI or human players, i couldn't care less about the plot and characters in pokemon games because even the ones that are considered "good" are extremely shallow compared to many RPGs out there.

And before people say why not a game that does both, never gonna happen.

 

[Ransei]

A bunch of hot takes about the stories alone. Nothing else.

Gens 1 and 2 have a story. It's just shown through actions rather than words. The story is simple, yet effective. You're just a kid travelling across the region trying to catch Pokémon, collect gym badges, and be the very best like no one ever was, but along the way you have to stop an evil organization.

Emerald does not make more sense than Ruby and Sapphire, but rather slightly less sense. Seeing Rayquaza end the conflict was still cool though.

Platinum by far has the worst written story any Pokémon game has ever had, and I find it incredibly difficult for any future Pokémon game to top it in this aspect. For the theme this generation tried to represent, the execution was so horrendously botched it's not even funny. The only reason Cyrus ever made it as far as he did with how Team Galactic handled their plans, was because he and his team were so immensely plot armored it makes Ash's Master 8 run look completely free of any plot armor. Cyrus's motives are stupider than most other evil teams, but by itself was okay. However there was an extraordinary amount of missed opportunity to work the plot around this as he was literally messing with the gods of space, time, and emotion.

Black and White's story is very overrated as it's really just about you having a nigh-goosechase to N all around the region to tell him he's wrong and his team has been trolling Unova this whole time. It grossly misrepresents the Pokemon, as they try to portray the situation as if Pokemon don't have a say in what happens, when the anime and other games clearly show that they do. It failed to utilize the Swords of Justice, Pokemon who waged war against humanity in order to protect Pokemon. It failed to handle the legendary dragon correctly. Reshiram's case doesn't make sense so I'll try to explain Zekrom.

Zekrom's entire purpose of existing is to work alongside humanity to have them accomplish what they find most ideal in the world and yet, was not only fighting for something that was obviously not ideal by the majority and the very laws of Pokemon itself, it was fighting to erase its entire purpose of existing... The whole reason this dragon split in the first place was so it could work alongside humanity in different parts of itself. What's even the point of the Original Dragon, Reshiram, or Zekrom if people and Pokemon were liberated?

On another note, there are some parts I don't understand about N's execution at all. How he was brainwashed his whole life into believing being a trainer was bad yet was constantly engaging in pointless Pokémon battles to try proving his point, and despite his lack of conviction, the legendary dragon accepted him? He's constantly throwing the well-being of Pokémon down the line, according to his own views, without ever realizing it, and the legendary dragon itself seems far too easy to manipulate for something in the status of a legendary god. Another concern I have is his ability to listen to what Pokemon have to say. If he was truly in to care all about Pokemon and try understanding them how in the world did his mindset drag on for so long in the plot without even trying to seek alternatives from battling to accomplish his goals? Every time I talk with people about this they say "oh don't you realize he was brainwashed?" yes, exactly. I'm asking WHY his own actions are contradicting the beliefs that were brainwashed in him while he's so convinced he's in the right at the same time!!

The last thing I need to say is, Black and White's story was not about the Pokemon. You were not fighting to decide the fate of Pokemon. You were fighting to expose N of all the BS Team Plasma tried to enact upon throughout the region, as they have shown many clear signs throughout the plot of their words being just lies. The first example is shown in the Dreamyard where Team Plasma members kick a Munna. Outside of that, the grunts give away hints of their ploy throughout the game, there's even one grunt you can find who explicitly tells you the truth in N's castle before the final fight, Ghetsis vaguely gives himself away twice, once in Castelia City in his conversation with Burgh, and the other in Tubeline Bridge. They were really just trying to manipulate people into giving Plasma their own Pokemon or getting rid of their Pokemon so Plasma could have all the power in the world. The Pokemon themselves can have a say, the Pokemon themselves can escape when they want, the Pokemon themselves can fight back. That's all been shown and expressed throughout other games and other media, but Black and White fails to showcase this and as a result, grossly misrepresents the Pokemon in an attempt to have a more compelling story.

Black 2 White 2 have the single most pointless plot in the entire series and were a complete waste of potential in itself from a story standpoint. Instead of taking the direction of resolving Unova's lore and mysteries, they decided to have Team Plasma come back as terrorists and have Kyurem's only use be a superweapon. We needed these games to be about Kyurem. We needed the Unova sequels to flesh out further on Unova lore and try its best to complete it all the way. These SHOULD HAVE been the games to give Unova a proper conclusion. I'm confused over how people find this tolerable but not find the lack of Pokemon Z tolerable, when at the end of the day, Zygarde got more fleshed out without ever having its own game, than Kyurem ever did with two games. Everyone is asking for Zygarde to get a game because it's the only third legendary that never got any real spotlight in a Pokemon game cutscene or any involvement on a story centered SPECIFICALLY around it. Think about this though, everyone is asking for Kyurem to get a game for it to be fleshed out in, despite already having two that were designed for that specific purpose, because those games failed to give Kyurem the focus it needed in its own games. Outside of that, nothing really got answered beyond what could have been done in Pokemon Black and White's postgame. There could have been a postgame episode where Team Plasma grabbed Kyurem, fired ice beams on Unova, and then had the DNA splicers for it to merge with your legendary dragon, but instead they had us chase down the sages, deliberately gave us misinformation about Kyurem and waited until the sequels to give us basic information about it... I'm confident people really just say B2W2 is a top tier story because it's the sequel of what tried to be a compelling story, rather than because of its own story being great.

X and Y's story is not written as bad as people make it out to be. Especially when many people have no idea what Team Flare nor Lysandre were trying to do, despite information about it actually being given in the game itself. It's clunky, but present. Lysandre's goal was to establish a new order in his own vision. He believes the world is overpopulated and this being the reason people steal and fight each other for resources, hence creating an ugly world, much like how things were during the Kalos war. His goal is to reduce the population to any random given point that would allow resources to sustain without anyone having to steal, fight, or even share for them. This "random given point" being the small amount of people able to join Team Flare before he fires his weapon. I don't believe this makes any less sense than most other villains in the series, especially not less than people like Cyrus, who wants to force gods to create a new universe because he hates emotions. The man could've just gone to therapy or went to Mesprit!

People try to claim Team Flare's actions had nothing to do with the endgoal at all, which simply isn't true. The Ultimate Weapon is fueled by energy taken from stones. The first places they were in were a cave where stones are, and then a power plant they tried to raid for energy. After that you found AZ with the key to the Ultimate Weapon. Team Flare is then found at the Poke Ball Factory where they try to collect as many Poke Balls as possible. This is because they found out that Ultimate Weapon was fueled specifically by Pokemon life energy. They were going to try catching as many Pokemon as possible to use as fuel for the Ultimate Weapon, and according to a brief dialogue brought out by Tierno after the climax, they were doing just that alongside using the legendary box art. They were then in Frost Cavern trying to use an Abomasnow specifically, pointing out how it radiated with high amounts of energy for use.

Aside from that, the XY rivals are mostly just there. Calem/Serena are really bland and Trevor and Tierno seem to just be filler, but I found Shauna to be a great character for Pokemon standards. She's all about sharing, especially memories. The good, the bad, the ugly, the pointless. She tries to do anything to share her experiences with people around her. She focuses on this and uses it to serve as a vocal counterpart to Lysandre, someone who wishes to create a world where no one has to share. I even believe that random Haunted House cutscene was made specifically to enhance Shauna's character.

Last note about the rivals is how people were confused about them earning the National Honor of Kalos award. After the climax, Tierno briefly mentions how he, Trevor, Dexio and Sina were out there freeing many Pokemon tied to stones on Route 10, who would've otherwise had their life energy taken away for the weapon. They saved the lives of many Pokemon behind the scenes while you and Calem/Serena were fighting Team Flare from within their base and Shauna caught up with the key necessary to enter the final room.

What I do really like about the story most is how seemingly well the Kalos lore was integrated into it. It's an ancient folklore about how a man had ties so strong with a Pokemon that when he lost it in war he built a machine to restore it back to life, then used the machine as a weapon to clear out the war in vengeance. Once his Pokemon discovered what he did, it left, waiting for the day that man finally starts caring for Pokemon as a whole again. You adventure around the game discovering the secrets of mega evolution, then later know that the man's name was AZ and Lysandre was trying to reuse his weapon in attempt to "re-balance" the world. The weapon was powered by life energy, which is sourced from the legendary box art. It took away life energy from its surroundings and concentrated the energy from within, much like Yveltal, then used this energy to restore AZ's Pokemon back to life and make them both immortal, much like Xerneas. The Ultimate Weapon was a reflection of Xerneas and Yveltal's roles as legendary Pokemon and Lysandre was using the weapon in an attempt to do what was supposed to be Zygarde's job. The legendary box art was snuck while asleep, but then miraculously woke up and broke out like it was nothing, revealing its prowess was not to be messed with, let alone any Zygarde would have held. Upon defeating Lysandre you get a brief hint that the energy emitted from that weapon was responsible for Mega Evolution, and then end up resolving Kalos's ancient folklore once and for all by the end of the game by teaching AZ the wonders of connecting with Pokemon. This story really tried to push somewhere and honestly made it further than any mainline game before it imo, but it tried to do so much at once that it became difficult for many to understand the story and it's often regarded as the most incomplete.

People also complain that Xerneas/Yveltal don't do much here, but honestly, considering their concept, there's not much else they could've done while keeping the game PG. They are also not really more underutilized than many other legendary box arts in the series. They're more involved than Rayquaza flying down for 1 cutscene, roaring once, then flying away, or the Unova dragons appearing last second to fight each other over proven nonsense. They're snuck into the weapon, you reach them, they wake up, break out, then show the villain who's boss. Anything extra with the gods of life and death could've possibly made it not PG. Honestly I find X and Y's written story to be, while not perfect, better than most other Pokemon games.

I find Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon's story better than Sun and Moon's because the latter is so human-centric to the point where it fails to recognize that Pokemon are taking majority control of the situation caused by Lusamine and the climax of Sun and Moon fumbled because of this. The climax itself is even disorganized and non-sensical in various other ways (Lusamine summoning every sort of Ultra Beast and focusing on JUST Nihilego, while no other beast is addressed and no explanation of this was present in the main story, you battling Hapu before the 7th trial, Lillie giving away Nebby because "she couldn't be a trainer", Lusamine fusing with Nihilego for no reason while still chucking Poke Balls at us, Lusamine completely changing behavior upon defeat despite still being neurotoxined) Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon's story is for the most part, more organized and connected. It's about how a deity gave its trust to humanity but got backstabbed in return, giving it a permanent injury so bad it either has to put entire universes at stake in order to survive, or die a slow and utterly painful death. The lore focuses on how this traumatic event made Alola the way it is today, and the end goal is for someone to figure out how to stop/ease Necrozma's situation. The climax was well-pieced together and really struck at intense stakes. Lusamine, Lillie, and Hau also each get more overall development in this game than in Sun and Moon's, despite pieces of Lusamine and Lillie from Sun and Moon, no longer being present in Ultra. We get to see greater parts of Lusamine and Lillie that SHOULD HAVE been in Sun and Moon.

Sword and Shield's story had a lot of missed potential but at the very least, the legendaries involved did do their jobs correctly, and most characters were alright.

Scarlet and Violet's story so far is mostly just a bunch of filler and the real meat of it has barely even begun.


tl;dr - The Pokemon matter in a story. People completely disregard the way they're handled when judging a story. Sequels are overrated. B2W2 failed as sequels from a story department.

 

[Bolt Strike]

Gens 1 and 2 have a story. It's just shown through actions rather than words. The story is simple, yet effective. You're just a kid travelling across the region trying to catch Pokémon, collect gym badges, and be the very best like no one ever was, but along the way you have to stop an evil organization.

"No story" is somewhat of an exaggeration (an exaggeration I admittedly like to use because it's not far off), but simplistic stories tend not to be very interesting or entertaining stories because a zillion people have included similar elements from simplistic stories. Adventuring around the world, making friends, striving to be the best, stopping the bad guys, these elements have been done to death so they're not very entertaining. The evil team stories especially tend to be where Pokemon stories stand out and heavily differentiate from each other and Team Rocket just falls flat because there's never really a sense of depth, connectedness, or high/increasing stakes in any of their events. It's just random Saturday morning cartoon tier plots.

Emerald does not make more sense than Ruby and Sapphire, but rather slightly less sense.

Elaborate on this please.

Black and White's story is very overrated as it's really just about you having a nigh-goosechase to N all around the region to tell him he's wrong and his team has been trolling Unova this whole time. It grossly misrepresents the Pokemon, as they try to portray the situation as if Pokemon don't have a say in what happens, when the anime and other games clearly show that they do. It failed to utilize the Swords of Justice, Pokemon who waged war against humanity in order to protect Pokemon. It failed to handle the legendary dragon correctly. Reshiram's case doesn't make sense so I'll try to explain Zekrom.

I think people like Unova's story for its novelty more than its writing quality. What stands out about Unova's stories is that they don't follow the same tired tropes and story beats and insist on defying them at every turn. Most Pokemon stories, especially up to that point, had the same formula of "Evil team wants the legendary to cause an apocalypse, they try to catch it, fail, then you get to catch it, then you finish the gym challenge and fight the Elite 4 and Champion as the final boss". Whereas in BW, they get to Dragonspiral Tower trying to catch the legendary (granted this time the opposite version legendary) and past precedent says that they're going to fail and we're going to need to stop them. But then they actually succeed. Then they continue to be a threat even through the rest of your gym challenge up until the Elite 4 and then throws a monkey wrench in the Champion battle too and the story ends in a completely different way with you having to defeat Team Plasma instead of Alder. There's also a nice double bluff where you see Ghetsis pretty early on and think "Oh, he's probably the leader" only to find out later on that N is the king of Team Plasma. Then once you fight them in the climax Ghetsis gets angry at N for losing and reveals that nope, he was manipulating everything the entire time and was truly in charge.

Black 2 White 2 have the single most pointless plot in the entire series and were a complete waste of potential in itself from a story standpoint. Instead of taking the direction of resolving Unova's lore and mysteries, they decided to have Team Plasma come back as terrorists and have Kyurem's only use be a superweapon. We needed these games to be about Kyurem. We needed the Unova sequels to flesh out further on Unova lore and try its best to complete it all the way. These SHOULD HAVE been the games to give Unova a proper conclusion. I'm confused over how people find this tolerable but not find the lack of Pokemon Z tolerable, when at the end of the day, Zygarde got more fleshed out without ever having its own game, than Kyurem ever did with two games. Everyone is asking for Zygarde to get a game because it's the only third legendary that never got any real spotlight in a Pokemon game cutscene or any involvement on a story centered SPECIFICALLY around it. Think about this though, everyone is asking for Kyurem to get a game for it to be fleshed out in, despite already having two that were designed for that specific purpose, because those games failed to give Kyurem the focus it needed in its own games. Outside of that, nothing really got answered beyond what could have been done in Pokemon Black and White's postgame. There could have been a postgame episode where Team Plasma grabbed Kyurem, fired ice beams on Unova, and then had the DNA splicers for it to merge with your legendary dragon, but instead they had us chase down the sages, deliberately gave us misinformation about Kyurem and waited until the sequels to give us basic information about it... I'm confident people really just say B2W2 is a top tier story because it's the sequel of what tried to be a compelling story, rather than because of its own story being great.

BW2 is usually praised more for what it did to other aspects of the game such as gameplay, pokemon selection, new areas, etc. The storyline did fall a bit flat, especially compared to BW. Again, I think it's more the novelty of "OMG we got an actual sequel instead of a third version" than writing quality.

That being said, I'm not sure what more they could've done with Kyurem. It seems like they covered most of their bases here. They could provide some way to recreate the Original Dragon I guess, but that might be an intentional exclusion since the Original Dragon seems like it's meant to be some mythical, untouchable perfection that we're not meant to get or even see.

As for Zygarde, we have lore about Zygarde balancing out Xerneas and Yveltal but because we never got a Z version we never got to see this. Zygarde is just randomly shoehorned into Alola and has little to do with what's going on there. Zygarde's role as an environmental mediator has never truly been realized in any game's story when it shows up it's just... there and never does anything of significance to the story.

People try to claim Team Flare's actions had nothing to do with the endgoal at all, which simply isn't true. The Ultimate Weapon is fueled by energy taken from stones. The first places they were in were a cave where stones are, and then a power plant they tried to raid for energy. After that you found AZ with the key to the Ultimate Weapon. Team Flare is then found at the Poke Ball Factory where they try to collect as many Poke Balls as possible. This is because they found out that Ultimate Weapon was fueled specifically by Pokemon life energy. They were going to try catching as many Pokemon as possible to use as fuel for the Ultimate Weapon, and according to a brief dialogue brought out by Tierno after the climax, they were doing just that alongside using the legendary box art. They were then in Frost Cavern trying to use an Abomasnow specifically, pointing out how it radiated with high amounts of energy for use.

Saying it had nothing to do with the end goal is going a little far, I agree, but I get the sentiment. The real issue with Team Flare's earlier actions is that their lore/motives are poorly paced. We just know "they're gathering energy because ???" and other than that it just feels like Team Rocket-esque Saturday morning cartoon plots without any more context until the final confrontation where Lysandre tips his hand. It's more a matter of poor pacing.

Lusamine summoning every sort of Ultra Beast and focusing on JUST Nihilego, while no other beast is addressed and no explanation of this was present in the main story,

Lusamine is under the effect of the neurotoxin and not thinking clearly, in her mind she's probably just thinking "More wormholes = More Nihilego" and not really caring about whether or not other UBs come along too.

you battling Hapu before the 7th trial

The 7th trial is abandoned, I don't think the Alola League even expects you to complete it. You really only completed it because it was in your way of getting to the Altar of the Sunne/Moone.

Lusamine completely changing behavior upon defeat despite still being neurotoxined

The defeat may have temporarily weakened the neurotoxin, but not completely purged it from her system.

Lusamine, Lillie, and Hau also each get more overall development in this game than in Sun and Moon's, despite pieces of Lusamine and Lillie from Sun and Moon, no longer being present in Ultra. We get to see greater parts of Lusamine and Lillie that SHOULD HAVE been in Sun and Moon.

Lusamine's motivations make even less sense in USUM. Some of the insane things she did in SM, especially freezing Pokemon to "preserve them", aren't as justifiable without her neurotoxin-induced insanity and they never really address why someone so committed to protect Alola from Necrozma is so rabidly insane.

Hau... really didn't get much development in USUM. He's still largely the same laid back person as ever. I guess he's a little more serious about getting stronger, but you can barely feel it and fighting him in the Champion battle instead of Kukui didn't really feel meaningful either, it just felt like they swapped him in just to change things up.

Scarlet and Violet's story so far is mostly just a bunch of filler and the real meat of it has barely even begun.

Hard disagree. SV's main story was about choosing your own adventure, and then elements of all three stories came together in the final story (granted more with Path of Legends than the others) and The Way Home felt like the real meat. I'm not even sure if the DLC will add much onto the main story of SV, Teal Mask and Indigo Disk just feel like they might be filler side stories unrelated to Area Zero (which is pretty much how Isle of Armor and Crown Tundra were anyway) and only that extra story tidbit of you returning to Area Zero is where the real storyline additions will likely take place.

 

[Morningstar]

The convergent pokemon designs are cool, but why not just make them regional pokemon instead lol

my assumption is because of a trend that GF wants to enforce. In games where a regional variant is catch-able in the wild, the normal version is not. Owing to sharing he same dex ID. Convergent mons are in a sense, a loophole for having both version available in the same game (while doing slight variations on the designs such as with a haunted tea caddy, a trio of eels bound to a rock and a walking tentacool)

The paradox mons are of a simialr bent but with the stats and role as ecological time bombs as the Ultra Beasts

 

[Norzan]

Emerald does not make more sense than Ruby and Sapphire, but rather slightly less sense.

Uh? The entire plot of Generation 3 is completely silly, but Emerald makes far more sense than RS. Team Aqua blowing up a volcano to make basically a lake is complete nonsense, while Team Magma blowing it up to make more mass makes far more sense. Team Magma having a base surrounded by water is silly while them having the base near the same volcano they were trying to blow up makes actual sense. Groudon being in an area beneath water also makes no sense, but being inside of a volcano makes actual sense.

Don't know how people can even attempt to argue that RS makes more sense than Emerald because it doesn't. These story changes were clearly made because Gamefreak looked at it and noticed just how ridiculous some of these things were. Shame they kept all the nonsense that was fixed by Emerald for ORAS.

 

[There Is No Arceus]

Uh? The entire plot of Generation 3 is completely silly, but Emerald makes far more sense than RS. Team Aqua blowing up a volcano to make basically a lake is complete nonsense, while Team Magma blowing it up to make more mass makes far more sense. Team Magma having a base surrounded by water is silly while them having the base near the same volcano they were trying to blow up makes actual sense. Groudon being in an area beneath water also makes no sense, but being inside of a volcano makes actual sense.

Don't know how people can even attempt to argue that RS makes more sense than Emerald because it doesn't. These story changes were clearly made because Gamefreak looked at it and noticed just how ridiculous some of these things were. Shame they kept all the nonsense that was fixed by Emerald for ORAS.

nobody caring that Groudon was on the loose made way less sense than any of the nonsensical things Sapphire did. Team Magma randomly attacking the space station even though their leader is supposedly pursuing Groudon also made negative amounts of sense. And even if these things did make sense, the extra team magma encounters fuck with the pacing of the game, making for a worse story.

 

[toastghost]

also, it's much more interesting to have both evil teams constantly fighting each other, with us and the other gym leaders completely caught in the middle.

 

[Norzan]

nobody caring that Groudon was on the loose

Where did it say they didn't care? They don't even know where it even went after leaving Jagged Pass, so they couldn't do anything about it. Also pretty sure Team Aqua part of plot starts right after or a little after and that's more important than trying to find a thing they have no clue where it went.

Team Magma randomly attacking the space station even though their leader is supposedly pursuing Groudon

They don't know where it went, so they can't exactly pursue something without having a clue where it went. Also they go to the Space Center to steal rocket fuel to attempt to blow up Mt. Chimney. You know, that thing they tried earlier? It wasn't random.

Also, no, none of these are stupidier than a team with the goal to expand landmass making a base surrounded by water or a water based team trying to blow up a volcano to make a lake.

also, it's much more interesting to have both evil teams constantly fighting each other, with us and the other gym leaders completely caught in the middle.

The entire plot feels like it was written with the way Emerald is setup, but they had to do the two versions because it was tradition at this point and that meant the evil teams making incredibly silly things that are completely out of character.

Also yes, having both evil teams actually fight each other and be an active part of the plot is far better than one team do literally nothing or next to nothing in the plot like Team Magma in Sapphire and Team Aqua in Ruby.

 

[Bolt Strike]

Also yes, having both evil teams actually fight each other and be an active part of the plot is far better than one team do literally nothing or next to nothing in the plot like Team Magma in Sapphire and Team Aqua in Ruby.

Oh no, they do something. They team up with you to stop the other one. Which also doesn't make much sense. "Yeah, we want to destroy the environment in the opposite way but yeah, team up with us to stop the other team! We're totally not evil at all!".

 

[There Is No Arceus]

Where did it say they didn't care? They don't even know where it even went after leaving Jagged Pass, so they couldn't do anything about it. Also pretty sure Team Aqua part of plot starts right after or a little after and that's more important than trying to find a thing they have no clue where it went.

They could try to track where it went. Thing tends to cause abnormal weather patterns, so it's not that difficult. I'm not saying the player should be chasing after the thing, but any mention of it being a problem would be nice.

They don't know where it went, so they can't exactly pursue something without having a clue where it went. Also they go to the Space Center to steal rocket fuel to attempt to blow up Mt. Chimney. You know, that thing they tried earlier? It wasn't random.

Maxie could be trying to track it down like he suggests he's going to do after you beat the magmas at the jagged pass

Also, no, none of these are stupidier than a team with the goal to expand landmass making a base surrounded by water

Groudon being on the seafloor doesn't make any sense, but team magma building a base where they can store a submarine does make sense. They need a submarine to get to where groudon is. Groudon being on the seafloor is why i specifically said that it's Sapphire's plot that makes more sense, nor RS's plot.

or a water based team trying to blow up a volcano to make a lake.

They weren't trying to blow it up, they were trying to deactivate it so that the crater can fill with water. The only nonsensical part here is that people treat this as a bad thing.

 

[Rachael]

This is going to get meta, but I don't think an opinion needs to be unpopular in order to be controversial. "Controversial" just means "giving rise to public disagreement," so I think any opinion that can lead to an argument within a sizeable number of fans could be called "controversial." And, of course, what constitutes "sizeable" will change from person to person, there's plenty of wiggle room for whether or not an opinion is appropriate for this thread. "Scarlet/Violet is good/bad" may or may not be a popular opinion, but it can still be controversial, because it's a subject that many people have strong feelings about one way or another.

And so that this post doesn't feel completely off-topic:

I've loved pretty much every Pokemon game except for Ruby/Sapphire--and I even fell in love with Hoenn when ORAS came out. That in itself isn't controversial, of course, but in my case, it's why I love all the Pokemon games.

I like new things. They're exciting for me. I love the expansion of the world they take place in. I love new characters and new Pokemon. I love the new Pokedex entries. I love the new music and the new places. And because I have very few requirements for a Pokemon game--just please, please leave in my turn-based combat and leave out that action RPG stuff (although I only have love-hate feelings for Pokemon Legends Arceus, not full-on hate)--I can accept them even when there are features that are left out, even if there are bugs and glitches (as long as they don't make the game unplayable), even if there's not a lot of old Pokemon, even if there's no Battle Frontier and I can't rematch a stronger Elite Four. Pokemon Scarlet/Violet are among my favorite Pokemon games, right up there with Sun/Moon and ORAS.

I just want Pokemon to keep going and going and going--and yes, I will probably still continue to buy the games, no matter what their "quality" (again, provided they don't deviate from my few requirements). It's not that I don't have standards. They're just relatively low.

But I do feel for other fans who aren't getting their money's worth. I admit, the cost of games is why I stick to only two series for the most part. It's not a bad thing to have high standards. We're all Pokemon fans.