Why Pokémon Doesn’t Care If Their Games Are Bad 

What game do you think was the peak of Pokémon? 🟥 Grow your indie studio and support the channel! www.patreon.com/GoingIndie

Combination of apathy and overworking. Pokemon keeps releasing games every year in order to maintain relevancy but the recent games have shown that there just isn't enough time to release these games on a yearly basis. And as games get bigger they keep rushing the games out in order to maintain a quota and i feel that's destroying the games.

Pokemon is becoming the COD of Nintendo. Just releasing whatever they can annually despite bugs or other issues knowing full well they're in there but choosing not to fix or prevent them because they know it will sell well regardless.

Gen V was the last hoorah, they actually tried, they want all out animating all the sprites, they forced you to interact with an entire new gen of 150 pkmn and had a villain that made sense.

I’ve seen a number of people trying to justify S/V as saying it was “just for kids.” Yeah well here’s the kicker - the new games won’t capture a generation of players with busted games and dumbed down mechanics.

I would like to say that the Pokémon games are lacking everything from the OG gens. I’ve played all the games in order, and it really shows

yes.... and no. It's not just marketing. It's a loss of passion. People forget that everyone criticized B/W after release, and praised X and Y. Black and White were supposed to be the epitome of the franchise and has been stated as being the most effort that Gamefreak ever put into a single title. But Gamefreak heard the fans loud and clear. Black and White is a 6/10 and X and Y is a 9. Why try hard when your fans will eat up the slop you make?

Pokémon should have never gone open-world. They should have stuck with crafting thoughtful, tightly designed closed areas

I just don’t see why games can’t have better stories and more challenging aspects and STILL be designed for younger players, the earlier gens sold great and had far more to offer.

I think the company can make good games again if they just spent more time on them. The reason the older games were better is because they had enough time to fully finish the story, design, everything. If they went back to having 3 years between new games I think they would be better.

Shout out to all the great pokemon fan games out there. Rejuvenation, Reborn, Insergence, and all the other adult themed pokemon games with revamped difficulty curves. We've reached a point where fan games legitimately outclass mainstream titles.

One of the craziest things to me is that they're so fixated on this annual release shit AND keeping their team small... yet they've stopped the "remake with the same engine" plan, barely do any outsourcing, and continue trying to be way too ambitious compared to what they can actually do. Sword and Shield, PLA, and S/V all suffer from being too ambitious for their own good, and PLA especially gets shit on a lot for its graphics (which sucks, considering its gameplay is the most polished of the entire set, and I'll take a graphical hit any day over the fucking slog of menu loading that is S/V's UI). Sword and Shield should not have released with a Wild Area. That should've been left for the DLC. And S/V should have followed up by just having fully 3D routes rather than being open world. PLA should have maybe taken another year to release so the graphics could be touched up and the game could look like S/V does. BDSP gets shit on a lot, but if they'd just incorporated the Platinum features I honestly think it would have been nonoffensive at worst, even with the shenanigans of saving money on cartridges by making players download the music and movies. It's otherwise a quite faithful remake that could have been the template for how to handle remakes and ports by outsourcing them to different companies and releasing them during years that new games won't be coming out.

One thing: pokemon legends arceus was a fresh and innovative idea that was immediately beloved by most fans.

I grew up with gen 4 and 5, with my first game being Diamond and my favorite being white 2. I’ve played at least one game or more from every generation multiple times, and even despite the fact that the gameboy games are much older than the DS loves I loved all of them almost equally. Everything after gen 5 really just does not capture the same feeling those old games bring, especially since the switch era. It is very sad to see one of my favorite series of all time decline so much, and will probably never go past its peak from the 2D era.

"...Dumbing things down and never innovating" The irony is that you said that over footage of Legends: Arceus, which is one of the few Pokemon titles that actually tried to innovate and thus is an exception to that statement.

RIP Situru Iwata, I feel like he would be disappointed by Nintendo's stagnant mobility the last few years.

For every small portion of the community that criticizes the games, there's always a crowd double of that which will defend the games to death. They need to understand that it's not shameful to acknowledge that you spent money on a bad product. If you like it, that's fine, more power to you, but you can't defend what's objectively bad. The downgrade in quality is absolutely noticeable and you shouldn't defend that. It will just make GameFreak even more comfortable with how they are handling the games, as they'll see people supporting their trash.

I'm one of the rare millenials that actually really liked X/Y. Let's be honest, the Pokemon story has never been anything revolutionary, and they all follow the same basic story beats. Even Sun/Moon, that proclaimed to be doing something different and fresh, still had 8 challenges with occassional rival battles, a chance to capture a legendary creature of mythology, a showdown with a big bad evil, and then an elite four gauntlet rounded out by a champion battle. It's never been any different and likely never will be. Who honestly picks up a Pokemon game going "Boy, I can't wait to experience this new story and all its twists!"? I mean, come on. And I could give them a pass on the limited animations for X/Y since it was their first handheld 3D game, and the first mainline 3D game. The battles still looked okay, with some honestly pretty nice effects. But it's gotten worse from there. They haven't learned how to do better, only rushed things more and more and let the quality slide right down the drain. And the lies are what really did it- telling us they were remaking models that they already said were futureproofed for X/Y, and telling us they were making new animations- only for some very basic surface-level looks to make it very obvious that they reused everything they possibly could. As they get bigger, the worlds get emptier and uglier and the games themselves get blander and buggier. Something really big is gonna need to happen for them to change, and I mean monumental, like sales numbers so low they actually lose money. But if that happens, I foresee them just... not making games anymore, leaning on the merch, the shows, the cards, and just riding on their wave of popularity and success. It's a real shame, but I don't actually expect anything good to come from the mainline series ever again.

Shoutout to the developers of Pokémon romhcks and fangames that fill the void on what Nintendo can't. Games like Unbound and Prism are one of the few ones out there that really suprised me on how amazing the romhcking has evolved and continue to grow. Also games like Cassette Beasts that try to innovate a lot more with the monster capturing genre really excites me to the future of indie games that try to fill the void of what Nintendo can't do.

Wow you're absolutely right. I remember thinking that Pokemon on switch would be the turning point, I thought it was going to look like yokai watch 4 or better.

I agree with the overall sentiment, but something that annoys me with the whole conversation about new Pokemon games is "it's not what adults want" as if we want the games to have a darker, more philosophical plot(though we had that in 5th and 6th gen). If anything, I just want something simpler, with more polish, and some new content. The technology doesn't have to be incredible, it just has to be enough to give the illusion and sensation of having an adventure with cute little monsters. And not have a bunch of confusing, counterintuitive design decisions.

personally, those who say Scarlet and Violet are the worst, clearly aren't accounting for BDSP, which were just a mess, sure Scarlet and Violet have their drawbacks, but they have the best story for a new generation, since Black and White, at least in my opinion.

Palworld enters the chat.

I think gen 7 was the last good Pokemon gen, I dropped off after emerald when I was a kid. When I started college, gen 7 started coming around, same with Pokemon go, and it got me back into pokemon. I think it's my fav Pokemon gen. I was a bit sad when it was coming to an end lol

Introducing easy, medium, hard options to the game would help.

Sometimes I wonder if Pokemon would be in this state if Iwata was still around. He had first hand experience with the development of some of the games, and I know that he was very proud of them. I can't imagine a world where he would have ever let Scarlet and Violet be released in the state that it was and still is to this day.

I disagree about kids not caring about end game content or a game being too easy. Pokemon was too easy when I was a kid, it was babies first RPG already, to dumb it even further down is stupid. If kids nowadays don't care about that stuff is because they aren't getting quality games so their standards are lower than mine when I was a kid.

Its so strange comparimg modern Digimon to modern Pokémon. Digimon now has more polish for their games, and that's insane

Didn't address a big part of the issue. The last gen was the most sold ever. There is a core audience that will buy anything as long as is a new gen pkm game.

Nintendo: "who cares if our games suck? You'll still buy them anyway💀"

Quite simple. Too tight schedules, too lucrative and fans who are stupid, erm I mean loyal, enough to keep on putting up with it, in hopes of getting another taste of that sweet, sweet feeling Pokémon gave them when they were introduced to it.

here because pal world i really hope that game shook them up nintendo is going ham tweeting about pokemon ever since its launch which is strange because nintendo never does this timing is just too weird

Probably the most "adult" Pokémon games were Colosseum and XD on the GameCube, and maybe Conquest on the DS. It seems Nintendo wants to try as hard as possible to not acknowledge the Orre games were a thing. Well I loved those games. I mostly loved them for being more than a glorified battle simulator (like the Stadium games were). But their stories are relatively dark and have a more grown-up atmosphere... well maybe not XD so much.

The real problem is that the games aren’t the priority when they were the reason the franchise took off. The TCG, Merchandise and Anime lining up for a consecutive release is more important than delaying because the game isn’t ready. Sad really.

went downhill after oras. could tell by how bad sun moon anime style was people just brushed it off as cute and quirky (it wasnt) but the game sun moon was good still but then after that both game and anime became so crap

I still can't believe they thought they needed to create a motorcycle pokemon before remembering they have all kinds of assets to choose from Colosseum. We could have had the hover-bikes!! 🤦‍♀

I think it comes down to the fact that the Pokemon brand has grown so big that they either the developers aren't given enough room to improve the mainline games or they're lacking tge passion they once hand for making them.

I want to see newer Pokemon games have a reasonable level of difficulty. Pokemon is really not that hard to play for kids once they learn the ropes. The developers could always have NPCs carry bigger teams of stronger Pokemon.

0:50 and yet ironically here we are with the Digimon franchise putting more effort and passion into the series than Pokemon lately and releasing things that the fans actually like.

Palworld taps shoulder, we will take that money you left on the table.

HGSS ruined Pokémon by virtue of being the greatest games in the franchise and no game has ever come close

Every one of these seems to confirm the same thing. I wonder if we are a noticeable chunk of people enough to get GF or the general audience to care about this or not

watching this video after palworld is so funny, because it's just true

Ok, watching the video and gathering my insights, I came to a conclusion like this, no matter how painful it is, but: Pokemon and Game Freak no longer need and do NOT want to care, not because necessarily of their own initiative, but because the fanbase itself has proven to be easily vulnerable and manipulable. You see, Pokemon games, from the beginning, already had problems and had a simple concept, well done but still little developed and explored. Pokemon Red and Blue are very dated games that haven't aged well. The GBA remakes are clearly better for anyone experiencing Kanto for the first time. But does that mean Pokemon was "bad"?, "purposeless"?, "stupid"? No! From the first to the fourth generation Pokemon actually had a progression, at least in the gaming media. The issue is that the games were still stuck in a pre-made formula, as GF was obviously afraid of trying to innovate too much. Pokemon was a huge success and grossed millions in and out of Japan. The pressure in the 90s was real on Nintendo. And then we arrived at the watershed, Unova. Everyone knows that today many recognize that it was one of the best Pokemon games, as paradoxically, they feel dissatisfied with the return made by GF in terms of game themes and graphic and gameplay quality. After YEARS, Masuda finally seemed ready to take the franchise to another level, mature it, without losing its essence, but the fans, immature and still blinded by the feeling of nostalgia, dropped one of the biggest balls i ever seen, which was to reject and be hostile to the boldest project the development team made. There were IRATED people on the internet just because the game covered more serious themes and didn't have standard pokemons. This is not an argument in my view, so much so that this is what I and other people like about Unova, it is a generation that CHALLENGES, that IMPLEMENTS but without losing itself in essence, just like RE7 was for Resident Evil, which ironically received a certain unfounded reprisal. What was done in the fifth generation should have been seen and it is indeed something very good. In fact, Pokemon BW and BW 2 are the only games where I feel like the DEVS didn't want to hold my hand and treat me like an incapable child. It's finally a RPG. But no, instead of stopping living off old formulas, the "fans" chose to stay stuck in that eternal past, in an ancient but now unattainable childhood. Everything could have changed for the better there in my opinion, but no one paid any attention, they choose to hate it. And seeing this, Nintendo finally understood. Pokemon games consumers don't know what they want, they don't take action, they are easily convinced with easy tactics that appeal to a cheap feeling of nostalgia. Why try to be better? There is no need, from an economic point of view. The 3DS era of Pokemon wasn't really amazing. In fact, it went from incredible in Unova, to increasingly mediocre games. Pokemon XY is a terrible DOWNGRADE. I think it's funny how I loved this game when I was 9 years old and replaying it a while ago I just hated the game for being "empty" practitioner. the 3D is poorly implemented, the characters are not memorable, the map is also not memorable, the league of four is too easy and the post-game does not exist. A huge rushed game, sadly. I really need there to be other companies ready to take on Pokemon on the market. Pokemon needs competitors so that Nintendo wakes up and stops making fools of fans. Pokemon is just a huge "product" and no longer an "art". There is a lot of quantity and very little quality.

Honestly, with how S/V is the funny part is some Pokemon fans are just turning to other sources of Pokemon-esc content. Be it fan made pokemon titles, or even indie game alternatives. I know one Indie Monster Capture game I found and enjoyed was Cassette Beasts. Basically while Pokemon isn't bleeding fans yet, this lull in game quality is having some finding alternatives to help sate their monster catching needs.

It's so sad that one of the best beloved franchises in the world has come to this😢😮

Amazing video essay, couldn't agree more! Been a fan since Ruby & Sapphire, I can only hope they can give the new Pokemon games the quality, time and innovation they require.

Digimon, Monster Rancher, Neopets or, Monsuno should make a comeback.

Well now Palworld might be the competition to Pokemon that the Pokemon Company needs

Great vid. Glad to be an earlier sub to you, im sure youre gonna grow big someday

"Or you played Digimon and had no friends" Damn bro you didn't have to do me like that .

Dude, your content is *SO* well made! Glad I found your channel. I'm shocked you don't have several times the subs. Keep it up!

Pokémon is my favorite video game franchise of all time. It makes me so sad how bad the new games are. I can't even play them anymore

Problem is, why can’t they make their money and merchandise AND a good game?

We need more videos like this! we need more people with platforms discussing the issues with the pokemon company. We are consumers! we have the right to complain about a product that is not up to the standard that we paid for.

Hello from Palworld

The fact that it only took a year and some to create the story of what is argued to be the peak of pokemon storytelling speaks volumes of the way TPC + GF handle pokemon. To be honest, it shows the BW games were written in a year and some time, and I consider Unova my home generation. I've seen other people state that GF can no longer handle pokemon because its become so massive, and I have to agree. I skipped out on scvi because the entire game feels slimy and an offense to play. Gen 10 better stay away for the next 4 years or so.

There is no other video game franchise with as much untapped potential. As a kid, I imagined a game that worked like the anime. Dodging attacks leading into counterattacks, the ability to use the environment to your advantage in creative ways, all the good stuff Ash did. Full blown single elimination tournaments like the Pokemon league in the anime. Multiple optional gyms, some with creative rules that applied only to them. Alternate "career" paths like contests, racing, etc. Pokemon games should be GOTY contenders. Pokemon should have at least 1 game that is genuinely considered a top 5 game of all time.

They should go back to 2d with a great art direction

A another reason gamefreak doesn’t care is that they know people are gonna buy it despite the bugs and glitches Pokémon scarlet and violet made 22 million units and that number will increase further in the game’s lifetime just goes to show gamefreak can just do quantity over quality and people will still buy it

X and Y hold up to all the games that came before it and I won't ever see how people don't like it

Among other works, Masahiro Sakurai created the Kirby and Super Smash Bros. video game series and directed Kid Icarus: Uprising. From the Wikipedia article on him: Sakurai left HAL on August 5, 2003, after growing tired of the sequelization passively forced by HAL, ending his work on the Kirby series. "It was tough for me to see that every time I made a new game, people automatically assumed that a sequel was coming," Sakurai commented, in an interview with Nintendo Dream, two weeks after he resigned from HAL. He explained that, "even if it's a sequel, lots of people have to give their all to make a game, but some people think the sequel process happens naturally". I admit to being one such person he speaks of here. I can imagine his frustrations, passionately creating something only for the consumer and investors to ask for more when little time has passed since the latest release. The game developer spends years creating a game that a consumer like me will complete in less than a month, not often playing beyond that. After the effort of many to create Starfield, the demand for The Elder Scrolls VI and Fallout 5 only increase on its heels. But while there are passionate fans of these franchises eager for these games to come to fruition, is this truly what the developers at Bethesda want to create anymore? When does a franchise end? And does it ever end? It’s possible that Pokémon has already concluded in a spiritual sense, even if games continue to come out. While I enjoyed Pokémon Legends: Arceus quite a bit, it certainly had its problems and any hope I have of the games getting even better moving forward has been nearly squashed with Pokémon Scarlet and Violet. It’s easy as fans, especially speaking from my own experience, to want more and more of what we love and to grab a hold of anything with any resemblance. But sometimes we need to cherish what we’ve got and appreciate that it didn’t come automatically. Edit: I originally typed "any hope I have of games getting even better" but had meant to type "any hope I have of the games getting even better", speaking of Pokémon games specifically.

You forgot another main problem these online zombie army defending every single move of Pokemon

Excellent video. Just two things I would like to add: 1: even if the games are considered mediocre, most of us like mediocre stuff. 2: every time a new Pokemon game comes out, it sells well. Even Sword&Shield and Scarlet&Violet. So there is no reason for Game Freak to innovate because a, it is going to sell well and b, what you said: even if it flops, the other merchs will make it profitable.

People give the 3DS games a lot of flak, but it really didn't go bad until after Pokémon GO came out.

When the 3DS launched Nintendo was printing money. The DS and Wii had done gangbusters. But in 2011 the 3DS launch was bad and a price cut followed mere months later. Wii U launched for the holiday 2012 season and it was a disaster. A price cut would come the following summer. GF was moving to the new handheld and creating an all 3D game, a first for the mainline series. ALSO GF was launching the NA and European versions simultaneously as the Japanese release, usually this caused a 4-6 month delay for NA and about 9 months for Europe. GF has had a near annual release cycle for the mainline games but previously GF had taken longer to switch development to next-gen platforms. The Japanese release of Crystal was in Dec 1999 and Ruby/Sapphire Nov 2002. Emerald on GBA in Sep 2004 and Diamond/Pearl on DS in Sep 2006. But the leap from B/W2 Jun 2012 to X/Y Oct 2013 was only 16 months. The challenges of creating a 3D game on a new console AND have the localization all completed day and date, AND the likely pressure from Nintendo to push it out the door on time because of their console and handheld businesses faltering was likely a recipe for a poor product compared to previous entries. Is it any wonder this was the beginning of the generation gimmick?

Pokemon Legends Arceus had a sh!t ton of potential to be the next big grab since the sprite era. I absolutely love the game and it's my favorite modern Pokemon game. The ability to manually chuck Pokeballs at Pokemon; that's something a lot of us wanted to do for so long.

Just like that Spaceballs scene. "Merchandising Merchandising, Merchandising. See you again in the sequel Spaceballs 2: Quest for more money."

7:44 Bro that laugh almost gave me a heartattack. Am alone in the office. its launch time and i was watching this to pass time while in headphones. that laugh felt so real i thought someone was across my shoulder laughing. literally removed my headphones and turned. then saw no one. i swear i thought i was went crazy for a bit. or that whomever laughed stormed out after. had to replay the part to check if it was me or the video lol

It amazes me that the same company made a masterpiece like heartgold and games such as scarlet and violet

I’ve owned pretty much every Pokémon game from firered and leaf green all the way thru black and white 2. My favorite out of the series has to be platinum, Hgold and Ssilver. I used to collect handbooks, cards, merch you name it. It’s sad asf to see where the franchise has fallen. Imo they should’ve stopped at X and Y.

Pokemon peaked at HeartGold and SoulSilver, started going downhill in gameplay at gen 5, started getting outright *bad* at gen 8, and became unplayable trash with "Brilliant" Diamond and "Shining" Pearl. They have a meme in Japan about what Game Freak thinks of their franchise: _"Why bother; it'll sell well, anyway."_

Some random dude streamed your shit so I clicked off his video which was pushed to my recommended and searched for yours. Great video. Liked and subbed.

I totally agree with most points but I also liked gen 6 and loved gen 7. I wish gen 7 would’ve gotten a proper sequel instead of the bad alternate universe take. I really hope future games will have quality that rivals ToTK bc S/V is completely unacceptable

I was never a fan of pokemon in the first place, but I knew a lot of people didn't liked the new generation games, and it makes sense to think about revenue (nintendo has probably enough), but kinda sucks if the games aren't on good condition tbh

One aspect that most people often overlook is that the mainline games were originally came from Gameboy-DS line, then move to home console line in a short time span. As a developer myself, it takes time and effort whenever you move and adapt from one tech to another (either be it engine or framework). I’m still surprised noticing the recent Switch releases still maintain its 3 years cycle generation in which left me thinking how GF be able to suppress time and resources with a relatively small team upon moving to a completely different console when their most of spin-off home console games were outsourced to a different company. I don’t understand why GF, if not, TPC, needs to deliver in such fixated time when the fans expect more time for more bigger and different game. If the game isn’t the focus from profit standpoint, they would delay the game more often than not, yet they didn’t. It recalls back at the time when Ubisoft wanted to release Assassin’s Creed annually until they got a backlash on Odyssey for being too similar with its previous game. P.s.: While I do notice GF developed couple home console games, they are leaning more to Indie game level than AAA level of Pokemon.

the fanbase and budget can definitely sustain 2 gamelines, one for kids and one for teens and adults

Pokemon doesnt care if its games are bad because you keep buying them.

great video! beginning to almost the end. Your conclusion came out of the blue though IMO. You just said the franchise is catered towards kids so why should the Pokemon company develop better/more innovative games to prevent the franchise's downfall? It would be interesting to see how many kids are buying the games compared to earlier generations. If the numbers are still satisfying, they got no reason to change the formula. ... and kids play a lot of trash, have you ever seen the top games on app stores? Your focus as a kid in games is way different from an adult's.

Its another "experiment" tactic they do if people still play this kind of game genre , but most people play because of Art and Visuals itself (1st expression). I understand it now 👍🏾

I think gen 10s gimmick should be like the masters 8 tournament with z moves megas gigatmax and terra all avaible in battle and i think ride pokemon should be the big new gimmick where you can ride any large enough pokemon

Emerald, and Generations 4 and 5 are the best. They at least play great, and tried to add as much as they could. Anime graphics should have been used in any Japan-based video game for better potential for smooth gameplay, stable physics, and plenty of content. The characters should look appealing, even being sex dimorphic with sex-locked clothes and hair. The arching head and tall eyes design is the best in making characters look cute. The school setting contradicts the open-world setting and theme that the schools work in the old Pokémon games since the schools are just minor places you can visit like they are training modes. All the routes and cities open is how you can make an open-world video game while still having some linear elements like with the gyms you can only get in based on how many badges you have. The Exp. Share should be an option to level up Pokémon evenly, and just over-level the different ID Pokémon. Abilities no longer work in the overworld, which takes away the Pokémon-getting variety. Now we are back to how the Abilities work in RS and FRLG. Despite Game Freak being so lazy in copying the Pokémon models and moves from the 3DS games, they did not try and copy the male and female models to change the hair, eyes, and clothes as a way to create new characters. I heard that making ugly characters is hard to do because they waste memory size. Inti Creates, M2, Arika, and Code Mystics can probably make Pokémon games better-especially with anime graphics that would allow potential for the Regional PokéDex, National PokéDex, Abilities working in and out of battles, sex dimorphic characters, sex-locked clothes and hairstyles, overworld Pokémon, Loto-ID, rematches, Battle Frontier, reusable TMs, TRs, HMs, arcades, farming, and others. Pokémon Scarlet and Violet are the worst in the series for being ugly and broken, as well as being porikore as the Japanese say.

3:34 altho to be fair, probably most of those extra DP hours are spent waiting for the life bars to go down

can you make a video on Palworld

This is all a consequence from the fanbase ignoring and shitting on Generation 5 back in 2011/12. They dug this hole for themselves. Now we all pay the consequences for it. When Gamefreak and the franchise wanted to grow alongside the audience, the fans immediately jumped on their throats and boycotted the games (the lowest sales for a mainline game EVER)

É culpa dos fãs, eles criticaram bons jogos no passado e ovacionaram positividade sobre os jogos medíocres mais recentes. E a Gamefreak apenas está seguindo o que os fãs pediram.

Have people tried Cassette beasts instead of Temtem ? Temtem is online only, which is a dealbreaker for me.

The budget is going into the anime I'd say. the Paldea winds series has at least 3 animator dungeons.

It gets worse and worse.

No it's our fault for continuously buying the newer games

Bro. GBA didn't have those lights. What was that footage with the GBA with lights??

The last Pokémon game I was really into was white 2. After that the 3D games felt like hollow shells of what they once were

I can't believe I am saying this, but Pokemon has practically the Nintendo equivalent of Garten of Banban, something bad that had become successful because of merch and RU-vidrs talking about it. As soon as the merch point came in, it immediately sounded familiar all over of sudden.

Sun and moon was absolutely fantastic I think. It respected your time and had a decent story concept. For collecting it’s one of the best even if it doesn’t have all the monsters

Genius Sonority should've kept making them, they really put heart into the Pokemon Games.

Tbh seeing our mons and other mons taking damage and adding the x for the eyes would really be cool and more heartstring pulling

XY wasn't that bad at all. A simpler story for the first 3D Pokemon game was fine at the time, it didn't have to be the focus. The animation wasn't stripped down either. And the handholding? It wasn't that bad, it was worse in gen 7 and just as bad as in gen 5. It had less content but that usually applies to every first game of a generation, BW1 has less content then Platinum for example, also you compare XY to DP in terms of time but that doesn't mean much since the time in DP is increased due to how slow those games are. It says Platinum takes less time but clearly it has more content. Nah long term fans mostly did like XY back then. They didn't get worse overall yet. Gen 7 was a slog at times but it mostly was great, better story, more content, higher difficulty, and at least the slowness is not as bad as gen 4 and actually had an excuse being the story. Eh...is gen 9 the worst ones? Gen 8 seems pretty bad too. After gen 5 there were still some good and great games. Like the series is stagnant...but not for 10 years, gens 6 and 7 still have made more changes then gen 5 did and Legends Arceus was a big shake up too.

palworld better

I remember hearing a fair few times that the games aren't what kicked off Pokemon at all. It was a multimedia project created by creatures inc.

This does actually make a lot of sense. My little cousins all want pokemon plushies for Christmas and I dont think theyve played any of the games theyre 4 years old. I still wish they would care a little more for the quality of games, I understand making games for kids but there's so many glitches and there was a lot of shady things they did with Violet like releasing the game half completed to save on manufacturing and force people to install the other half of the game on their own storage in a day 1 patch. Stuff like that is just wrong, they are really just exploiting kids for money. Obviously its what theyve always been doing but theres a huge difference between making something actually good and expecting money for it, compared to selling people half of a game that barely works for $80