I am playing Pokemon Violet at the moment and it is a total bore. I have played the game so many times and I just want to run around catch Pokemon and battle.
I do not need another tutorial about what a Pokemon center is. Or a tutorial to tell me that I need to use a Pokeball to catch a Pokemon.
Can we get a "I've played this game 100 times" mode where it just saves the tutorials and lets us play the game?
Gamefreak clearly isn’t interested in evolving their formula very much. Each game is designed to be approachable for young children who are potentially playing Pokemon for the first time. So yeah, there is a lot of hand holding.
I’ve found myself hoping the same thing though, that maybe the franchise would grow up with me, but it doesn’t look like it is going to happen. I expect that we’ll have to mash the A button through the Pokemon catching tutorial until the end of time.
It would be nice if this gigantic studio (in terms of profit) could make more than one game. Or make it in a way that players of all skill levels can enjoy.
Honestly, this might be a bit of a hot take coming in. But I don't think the lengthy tutorial is the actual issue when it comes to modern Pokemon games. Plenty of games have very slow openings, monster hunter is the first that comes to mind.
I think the issue is that the game doesn't actually have any depth behind the initial tutorial. Once you know how to battle, catch, and level up, what more is there? Barring competitive play, the basic mechanics are the entire game.
Legends was a breath of fresh air, because you did have to explore and learn about the world and Pokemon in order to succeed. Even if it was incredibly minimal.
If anyone is still reading this, my recommendation for a game that scratches the deep mechanical and monster collecting itch would be Monster Sanctuary. The story is thin on the ground, and the designs themselves can lean on the simpler side. But my god, I haven't seen an equal when it comes to team building or strategy. Genuinely fantastic.
When I was a kid I was super into pokemon. I loved playing the games and they stood out to me for one reason: they were challenging. My first game was Black, and I got stuck on the first gym leader for a few days, but when I figured it out it was immensely satisfying. I would hit roadblock, I would struggle, and eventually I overcame it. Then my friend introduced me to Pokemon Mystery Dungeon and it got even harder. I honestly think that the final dungeon of Explorers of Time made me smarter or something. It forced my dumbass child brain to think outside the box and find solutions on my own.
Then Pokemon X and Y released, and it was the most stupidly easy game ive ever played. And it kept getting easier after that. Add onto that the worsening quality and I stopped caring about Pokemon. My friend who is really into Pokemon hasnt bought a new game in years, he only plays Romhacks or replays the old games.
Dragon Quest 11 does what you probably want in Pokemon.
It's an easy RPG, but before you start a new game you can check boxes like "no shop buying", "RNG hates you with shypox", "no XP for beating under leveled enemies", etc.
I love it because you can customize difficulty to tweak it to your liking without fiddling with mods, and does more than just slapping a x2 in every variable and punching out for the day.
I played it and thought it was a good game but never felt the need for additional difficulty. Maybe because it was my first Dragon Quest game.
Pokemon has gotten insanely easier. Constant healing by friendly npcs, exp share from the start, rival picks a pokemon that is weak against yours... Remember when Gary was waiting at the end of a big cave and all your Pokemon were nearly dead? XD
It feels like Gamefreak has really struggled to appeal to the various different sets of fans post Gen 5, I wonder how much of the hand holding and other issues are a reaction to the backlash gen 5 sadly got.
I personally lost interest in Pokémon after gen four. SoulSilver was my last game until a few years ago, so I'm kind of biased with that, but still. I think Pokémon designs started going downhill after gen five, plus all the over the top hand holding and tutorial stuff. The worst part to me however is the apparent lack of care and resources put into the newer games. A game like S/V is downright embarrassing as a modern game. Like hilariously bad.
I think Gen 5 was the last non-"commerical" games. Almost all games since then are way too simple, it's like playing a visual novel. AND SO SLOW - I haven't found much other people who related to this, but the movement, animations, and general gameplay feel slow and bloated.
tbf - the games didn't get too easy either, all the enemy trainers have ev trained pokemon with perfect IVs in later gens, so much so that nuzlocking them is apparently harder than old games. That doesn't change the fact that there's too much handholding tho.
Also, Pokemon Legends: Arceus was pretty neat. Not a classic pokemon game, but a polished one atleast.
A lot of it is to blame on blind fans - people will buy any random crap that comes out with a pokemon stamp and let Gamefreak escape the consequences
What ruined SV for me wasn't the hand-holding but rather how dead the game felt after endgame.
You cannot re-challenge the Elite Four and the only endgame activity is the Academy Ace Tournament where you'll stomp everybody.
A good tip for anybody going into Gen 9, don't pick Quaxly (the water starter) because their moveset sucks. Meowscarada literally gets Gen 1 Razor Leaf as their signature move while Skeledirge gets a fire move that scales in power on each use. Compare this to Quaquaval which only gets speed boosts...
All there was to really do after you beat the game was to do the limited time raids, breeding if you want to max stats (which if you aren't doing competitive is not really worth the effort), or play competitive. And none of those actually took place in the open world they built. Felt like a bit of a waste
I have heard very positive reviews of Casette Beasts, which appears to cater to the Pokemon crowd. I’m not so much into that genre, but has anyone else tried it? It’s on Game Pass as well.
Kinda got burned by Nexomon (story felt like it was written by an edgelord) and Temtem (too much 2v2 focus.) If Cassette Beasts is any good I am more than willing to try it.
I've played both PLA and SV and my impression from both was that the tutorial dragged on for way too long. Even as a new player, that shit should not be lasting for over an hour. Also way too many text boxes that don't change anything based on what you pick. Just let me play the game please.
For me, Pokemon has become more about romhacks/fangames than official releases. I still love the property, but the product Nintendo is providing at this point just isn't something I'm all that interested in.
...although credit where credit is due, Legends Arceus and Scarlett/Violet did attempt to innovate with the open world stuff. The results of that were also...not for me, but credit there.
Thread reminds me that I need to finish Pokemon Unbound. I have a bad tendency to start new hacks before finishing the ones I started haha.
Honestly, though Legends Arceus wasn't like groundbreaking or anything, it's embarrassing how much more fun it was to me than SV considering one was supposed to be the mainline attempt...
Romhacks are mostly what I stick to now as well. I haven't really gotten into it but it's insane how the community has come together for Pokemon Fusion to make SO many custom sprites.
I want games like the past, with almost no tutorials at all. Give me pokemon red, yellow where the prof is like, heres a pokemon, a pokedex, and some old guy will teach you to catch a pokemon next door. BOOM, pokemon expert.
Don't think you are going to see this from AAA games. Big companies are going to want to make sure their games are accessable to as many people as possible and that means hand holding at the beginning
I just finished playing through Pokemon Infinite Fusion and had a great time. I played on hard difficulty and it was a good challenge. Lots of content with a fun central mechanic. I also played it on my Steam Deck so I got the handheld experience. It was a little buggy at times(though I guess that is expected with pokemon now 🙃)
Yeah, I was kind of enjoying it at first. I think I got 15 or 20 hours in before I just put it down and never came back to it. Not intentionally, I just never felt like it. That's saying something, because I wasn't that impressed with Sw/Sh either, but I 100%ed Sword.
They absolutely hold your hand too much. I wish Nintendo could make a Pokémon game instead of The Pokémon Company. I feel like Nintendo's first-party team would make something stellar with more of a challenge (without being unfair), a more engaging story, fun puzzles, a more curated world to explore, better graphics, and maybe even add something actually new to the series.
It seems like such an obvious quality of life improvement to introduce a difficulty-like mechanic that asks the user if they are familiar with the series. That way, there could be two tracks to the start of the game: the standard hold-your-hand tutorial for newbies and children, and the streamlined version that skips a lot of the dialogue that explains what pokeballs are or whatnot. While I thought Scarlet/Violet wasn’t the worst offender of some of the recent series, this series HAS been going for decades now and I’d like to see them reflect this in their intended audiences. There is a large child fanbase but there is also a large amount of adults who play after having grown up with the games.
Some quality of life improvements are great, some aren't. It would be nice to have a tutorial/experienced mode for it just to cut out some of the fluff
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