Your controversial opinions

[Eitarou]

This one is probably unpopular rather than controversial, but Roxie is absolutely my favorite gym leader of them all. She is free spirited and her energy boosts my mood. I would like to befriend her if she was a real person.

Not in the slightest. People love Roxie.

 

[Norzan]

If Gen 5 remakes are getting released any time before late 2025 and we only had ILCA or Gamefreak to choose from as to who makes these games, I'd rather have them be made by ILCA than by Gamefreak and for Gamefreak to have very minimal involvement in the creation of the game.

Uh? ILCA made BDSP, which is arguably the worst remake so far. Gamefreak made FRLG, HGSS and ORAS. They did make the Let's Go games, but their batting average so far is better than ILCA.

But i wouldn't be surprised if Masuda had a ton of involvement in BDSP's development. So, i actually don't want either company making any pokemon remakes. In fact, i don't want more remakes because they are played out and boring at this point. Make something actually new with an old region like Legends Arceus.

 

[Bolt Strike]

Uh? ILCA made BDSP, which is arguably the worst remake so far. Gamefreak made FRLG, HGSS and ORAS. They did make the Let's Go games, but their batting average so far is better than ILCA.

Buti wouldn't be surprised if Masuda had a ton of involvement in BDSP's development. So, i actually don't want either company making any pokemon remake. In fact, i don't want more remakes because they are played out and boring at this point. Make something actually new with an old region like Legends Arceus.

I thought about that myself, but I'd rather ILCA be working on it so that Game Freak can work on a reimagining of an old region like LA. Unfortunately I don't think we get the latter without the former. Game Freak and/or TPC seem to believe that faithful remakes are a necessary evil now. They seem to believe that anytime a region gets old enough that it needs to be re-released that they need to provide a faithful remake with minimal changes so that the younger players that never got to play the game have an opportunity to.

Really, they should probably be relying on emulated ports (i.e. like VC and NSO) over remakes at this point, but for some reason they haven't started with NSO ports despite GB, GBC, and GBA now being on NSO, and they can't really do Gens 4-7 well because the Switch is only single screen (if a future console brings back dual screens though... then we'll talk about DS and 3DS on NSO). So for now if they do Unova on Switch they're going to have to do a BW remake. Let's just hope we get a Legends Unova, or some other similar type of reimagining that serves as a spiritual successor to LA, alongside it. Because yeah, if it's just BW remakes... that's not going to be very fun. We can pretty much say for sure at this point that it's going to be just BW, almost no BW2 content (we'll probably get the new forms from BW and that's pretty much it), no 6th-9th gen Pokemon at all (heck, I think they might even hit a new low and not even have the full 649 National Dex in, maybe just the 5th gen Pokemon in the main game and the BW2 expansion in post game), minimal new content period except a few QoL additions. And that would be a hard pass for me, BW1 was awful in just about every way (yes, the late game plot twists were great, but everything else? Felt like a step backwards for the series) and I have no interest in revisiting a remake that only includes BW1 content. BW2 is closer to what Unova should've been in the first place.

 

[Norzan]

and they can't really do Gens 4-7 well because the Switch is only single screen

Don't know why people keep thinking this when Megaman ZX and its sequel are on Switch and Wonderful 101 got a Switch port even though it heavily used the Wii U gamepad (far more than what the pokemon games did with the second screen of the DS). The Pokemon games on DS and 3DS hardly used the touch screen and they can easily have the second screen as a button that you can press it to bring it up.

Can people please stop saying they can't port DS and 3DS games to the Switch like they are somehow unportable? Plenty of ways to do it that doesn't take much work.

 

[CynthiaLover]

Here's a hot-take: Sword/Shield are better games than Scarlet/Violet. Yes, they are the pinnacle of railroading, and you can't see any shinies on the overworld, but I like the fact that there is an actual direction the games follow, the cast I feel are more interesting (with a ton of character development from ones like Hop and Sonia), the story is simpler but nicer, the region is nicer-looking, the regional variants (and resident Mons in general) are much cooler, the DLC is more entertaining, camping is more fun that picnicking, and breeding is much easier with Nurseries compared to the aforementioned annoying picnic mechanic. Really, Sword/Shield I feel are underrated and should really get a bit more credit for laying out the foundation, which was further refined with Legends Arceus, for what would become Scarlet's/Violet's open-world aspect. Sword/Shield had a lot to do as the first "real" mainline game to set the needed groundwork for what later games would improve on. All things considered, they did what they needed to do. So I feel that Sword/Shield are underrated and better than Scarlet/Violet.

 

[Daren]

They could have Bandai-Namco do B/W remakes. They've worked on the series before and I'd love the irony of them working on a mainline Pokémon game.

 

[Zexy]

BW2 is closer to what Unova should've been in the first place.

Now this is a controversial opinion I would love to agree with. Most people remember Gen 5 for the new things the first pair dared such as no old mons before postgame and the entire N subversion... What I loved about Unova was the second pair, it felt more fleshed out all over.

 

[Bolt Strike]

Don't know why people keep thinking this when Megaman ZX and its sequel are on Switch and Wonderful 101 got a Switch port even though it heavily used the Wii U gamepad (far more than what the pokemon games did with the second screen of the DS). The Pokemon games on DS and 3DS hardly used the touch screen and they can easily have the second screen as a button that you can press it to bring it up.

Can people please stop saying they can't port DS and 3DS games to the Switch like they are somehow unportable? Plenty of ways to do it that doesn't take much work.

That's a whole different ballgame from emulation, with a port like the ones you mentioned, you can change around the control schemes to circumvent those issues. With an emulation like an NSO port, they have to emulate the control mappings. They couldn't just let you press a button to toggle the touchscreen in NSO, they need to emulate the touch screen in some way. This might be a bit trickier.

 

[FelipePR]

They could have Bandai-Namco do B/W remakes. They've worked on the series before and I'd love the irony of them working on a mainline Pokémon game.

Considering the notion that they can't deliver a single really good Digimon game, I don't know if I like that idea.

That's a whole different ballgame from emulation, with a port like the ones you mentioned, you can change around the control schemes to circumvent those issues. With an emulation like an NSO port, they have to emulate the control mappings. They couldn't just let you press a button to toggle the touchscreen in NSO, they need to emulate the touch screen in some way. This might be a bit trickier.

I think they just have to rework the command/mapping buttons and, perhaps, introduce a secondary mini screen, for one function or another, in the style of Poketéch in BDSP. Honestly, I don't think it's very complicated.

 

[Norzan]

That's a whole different ballgame from emulation, with a port like the ones you mentioned, you can change around the control schemes to circumvent those issues. With an emulation like an NSO port, they have to emulate the control mappings. They couldn't just let you press a button to toggle the touchscreen in NSO, they need to emulate the touch screen in some way. This might be a bit trickier.

And still completely doable and i doubt it takes much work, which is my point. People thought Skyward Sword was also impossible to port to Switch because of Switch Lite having no motion conrols, and they still came up with a control scheme that allowed for button presses for sword swings and item uses (albeit a little more clunky than motion controls).

Here's the real reason why at least DS games aren't in VC or any emulation service from Nintendo: They purposely whithold anything from Gamecube onwards because they can just rerelease any of the games from those consoles with a basic ass remaster that doesn't take much work and sell it for 40 to 60 bucks. Skyward Sword HD, which is a remaster of at the time 10 year old game, with hardly any changes and they sold it for 60 bucks (and it sold very well). Even Metroid Prime remastered, which i'm guilty of buying, was 40 bucks and it hardly changed anything to a game that was 21 years old (and still is since the remaster came out this year).

The point is that, yes, they could easily have NSO for DS games, but why do that when you are sitting in a goldmine and you can just release remasters of specific, very popular games mind you and thus create a ton of hype, for 40 to 60 bucks and most likely rake more money than if you released a bunch of emulated DS games and sold them for like 15 to 25 bucks each with no hype or fanfare.

 

[skynerel]

Uh? ILCA made BDSP, which is arguably the worst remake so far. Gamefreak made FRLG, HGSS and ORAS. They did make the Let's Go games, but their batting average so far is better than ILCA.

I do have a question about this though. The reason ILCA did a faithful remake of DP is because gamefreak directed them to do it that way or because they chose to do it that way? Because if it was gamefreak’s idea & vision then I can’t blame Ilca for that, but if Ilca had the liberty to do the remake in whatever way they want, but chose the faithful remake then it’s entirely their fault.

 

[Poke Dragon]

As long as it's not the boring BDSP/faithful remake route again, then it's a good remake. If it's the BDSP route, then just port the games and give them modern features so there won't be two releases just 3 months from each other like what happened with BDSP and LA.

 

[Bolt Strike]

I do have a question about this though. The reason ILCA did a faithful remake of DP is because gamefreak directed them to do it that way or because they chose to do it that way? Because if it was gamefreak’s idea & vision then I can’t blame Ilca for that, but if Ilca had the liberty to do the remake in whatever way they want, but chose the faithful remake then it’s entirely their fault.

We don't know for sure but most likely the former. ILCA had never taken the reins on developing a game before, they had assisted other devs on games, but never done it themselves. Furthermore, BDSP has a lot of the same issues as past remakes like ORAS and LGPE (unwillingness to include third version content, degradation of content and effort in general, limited rosters). The only major surprise is the artstyle being similar to the originals instead of SwSh, other than that if you told me BDSP was developed by Game Freak I would've believed you, what they gave and didn't give us fits with their MO.

 

[Nicolas721]

I do have a question about this though. The reason ILCA did a faithful remake of DP is because gamefreak directed them to do it that way or because they chose to do it that way? Because if it was gamefreak’s idea & vision then I can’t blame Ilca for that, but if Ilca had the liberty to do the remake in whatever way they want, but chose the faithful remake then it’s entirely their fault.

The director was Masuda himself so...you do the math.

Here's a hot-take: Sword/Shield are better games than Scarlet/Violet. Yes, they are the pinnacle of railroading, and you can't see any shinies on the overworld, but I like the fact that there is an actual direction the games follow, the cast I feel are more interesting (with a ton of character development from ones like Hop and Sonia), the story is simpler but nicer, the region is nicer-looking, the regional variants (and resident Mons in general) are much cooler, the DLC is more entertaining, camping is more fun that picnicking, and breeding is much easier with Nurseries compared to the aforementioned annoying picnic mechanic. Really, Sword/Shield I feel are underrated and should really get a bit more credit for laying out the foundation, which was further refined with Legends Arceus, for what would become Scarlet's/Violet's open-world aspect. Sword/Shield had a lot to do as the first "real" mainline game to set the needed groundwork for what later games would improve on. All things considered, they did what they needed to do. So I feel that Sword/Shield are underrated and better than Scarlet/Violet.

Agreed! SWSH were very lacking in some areas but they feel like a natural evolution of Gen 7, have decent graphics (as well as probably the best-looking battles in the whole of the Switch games), amazing DLC and decent features like Dynamax Adventures, Battle Tower and Poke Jobs. SV feels more like a step to the side, with customization, real-world inspirations and features being toned down or outright deleted just to make the "completely open world" and it's not that good of a world, there are hundreds of items you don't need and the Pokemon get repetitive after a while. Way too many people give them a pass just because the story, and while it was good the story ends eventually and the shortcomings remain....

 

[Poke Dragon]

That brings up something I wanted to say in this thread: SWSH's trainer customization is better than SV's trainer customization at everything.

For one, there is a lot more individuality in terms of looks you can achieve in SW/SH, even allowing you to, in a way, become a different trainer class if you wanted. In SV on the other hand, you can't change out of the uniform, and even when the DLC finally gave options aside from school uniform, it's still limited in that you simply can't customize out of style of the usual village, town, or city, so you still can't dress to become another trainer class if you wanted.

Basically, SV's trainer customization has secretly been far too limited compared with SW/SH's trainer customization, heck even LA's trainer customization allows for more freedom, as there are clothes that don't go into that traditional Japanese aesthetic, thus giving more freedom for the player to look like they are a foreigner instead.

Basically, good character customization should allow players to be outside the theme of the setting a game is in, even if it doesn't make sense.

 

[CynthiaLover]

SWSH also did the whole TM thing better compared to SV by effectively making a compromise. The lesser but still useful moves like the Elemental Punches, U-turn, Draining Kiss, Mystical Fire, etc were turned into reusable TMs while the more powerful and useful moves like Flamethrower, Thunderbolt, Ice Beam, Sludge Bomb, etc were made into TRs that are pretty easy to obtain and farm despite being one-time wonders. And in the DLC areas you can find TRs lying around like TMs. There's no nonsense of needing to collect materials, craft, or wait for a TM to be added to your list via Starfall Street completion (or just finding it randomly), all you really need are Watts, which are stupidly easy to farm even at their lowest values either from Raid Dens or Diggin' Pa from the Isle of Armor. Really, I feel that was the best version of the whole TM thing since it was a compromise between the more preferred reusable TMs that Gens 5-7 gave us and the one-time wonder TMs that most other games have. While I do vastly prefer the whole reusable TMs that Gens 5-7 gave us, at the same time if I was forced to choose between SWSH's TM/TR system or SV's TM system, I'd choose SWSH in a heartbeat, especially since it effectively doubled the learnable moves we could teach our Mons (and had the extra benefit of removing some Egg Moves, which I, personally, find to be rather annoying).

 

[Kanjouhi]

As long as it's not the boring BDSP/faithful remake route again, then it's a good remake. If it's the BDSP route, then just port the games and give them modern features so there won't be two releases just 3 months from each other like what happened with BDSP and LA.

Yeah, I'd argue that BW/B2W2 still feel modern/recent enough that it'd be wiser to just call Switch versions enhanced ports instead of remakes and add a few things from more recent entries (such as Fairy type, newer moves/abilities/items, B2W2 forms in the original, make it possible to catch more of the 649 dex without using Home, maybe even add the cross-gen evos from after Gen 5???, etc) and maybe some original stuff like new postgame content while they're at it. (Plus if it means they get to use a more HD2D-esque artstyle then that's even better cause to me that style definitely feels like a natural evolution of the style used in Gen 5.)

 

[There Is No Arceus]

i'm of the opinion that instead of the usual paired versions, they should release remakes of BW and BW2 at the same time, with version exclusives in each. Add the new areas from BW2 to BW as postgame content; maybe hide one of the sages there.

 

[FlitPix]

It was said recently here that BDSP were the worst remakes to have come out, but I'm going to go ahead and say that they are nearly on par with FRLG to me, and are underrated and still worth playing now.

I don't usually replay Pokémon games like others seem to enjoy doing. I generally play through them once, then focus almost entirely on post-game content. I also don't play Pokémon primarily for the story (so, in my mind, SV are not amazing, but that's another topic).

In my mind, FRLG and BDSP are designed very similarly. Both are very close to their source material with inherent improvements brought about by both the new hardware they're released on, and new, modern-for-the-time design philosophies.

FRLG has odd decisions littered throughout the game, however; they might not have been bad at the time of release, but they're glaring problems now. Why can you not evolve Kanto Pokémon to their Gen 2 evolutions until after obtaining the National Pokedex, which is post-game? Why can you not trade with non-FRLG Gen 3 games until completing a post-National Pokedex sidequest (if anything, getting the National Pokedex should have been the prereq)? BDSP has some as well but they're not as prevalent and are mostly inherited from DP (not that they should have been to begin with, but regardless).

FRLG has the edge in terms of added new content with entire new areas not found in the original game (or any subsequent one). It also has new designs for various characters, trainer classes, etc. to fit Gen 3's overall artstyle and aesthetic, though I don't personally think they're as substantial on their own.
This isn't to say that BDSP lacks original content, though. Besides mixing in Platinum content, which FRLG didn't do with Yellow at all, BDSP also completely revamp the Underground in a way that is actually useful to most players, and add additional rematches to provide more challenging battles to long time players (which I imagine a decent chunk of people on this forum are).

Where I think BDSP shines the most over FRLG, though (and every game up to Gen 6, tbh), is in its inclusion of QoL improvements that Gen 7 and 8 added to the series as a whole. Box Link means I don't have to bike/fly back to a pokecenter to use my boxes every time. Whole-party Exp Share streamlines the playthrough itself by making me not have to grind nearly as much for the most part. The Poké Radar is improved over even XY's interpretation of it. While there aren't Exp Candies, we still have Mints and Hyper Training, although they aren't as easy to access - but that lack of ease of access is totally negated by HOME support and the further QoL that other HOME-supported games bring, so you'll more likely use mints and exp candies and bottle caps in SV or SwSh, or even evolve certain held item Pokémon in PLA. You can also actually catch and use every Pokémon up to Gen 4 just with BDSP alone - something the older games entirely lacked.

I feel like the only reasons BDSP is overall worse than FRLG for me are its rough launch and the fact that the version on cart is incomplete - but I imagine most probably play with patches installed anyway. I certainly do and I have no reason not to uninstall them. It's still unfortunate for those who can't, though, and I still dislike that.

...I also don't think people are going to be able to buy the original Gen 4 games anytime soon.

For a first time Sinnoh playthrough or even repeat ones, BDSP isn't a bad game, and I think it's still worth a shot even now. Of course, it still has many flaws and I wouldn't recommend it at MSRP for that reason, but then just... don't get it at MSRP. Get it used, or on sale at a retailer.

 

[Greninjaman]

You know, I think I don't like Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee anymore. Really, it's the capture mechanic that I don't like. I have tried to play it multiple times, but I just quit. I don't want to have to catch hundreds of Pokemon just to level up. I enjoyed it when it was new, but now I don't really care. I have done multiple play throughs of the game (After doing a regular play through, I did several with Ash's Pokemon).