#This is like Pokemon Sun/Moon all over again where because our character is from Kanto there was a running bit that they just | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

eri-blogs-life · 3 years

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There was, of course, a fair amount of controversy around the time of Pokemon Sword/Shield’s release regarding Dexit, among other issues. When they first came out, I played Shield version, and had an okay time. Now, having put some space between the game’s release and the present, I decided to pick back up and try playing Sword version to see if my feelings changed any. Was it more than just okay? Or worse than I’d thought before?

I have a lot of notes on thoughts I had during this adventure, and I’m going to try to structure these thoughts in some way but idk how exactly. Some are fairly minor thoughts, but some are definitely going to require a more in-depth writeup. Also, for context, I only played through the base game, not the DLC. I probably will play through again to try out the DLC but I didn’t want to buy the DLC just yet.

Why Can’t Pokemon Follow You Anymore? AKA Iteration vs Innovation

Pokemon has a problem with getting any better as a series. Especially in the last few versions, we’ve really seen this coming to light - while early on, updates to graphics and gameplay (like the physical/special split) made each new generation feel like an evolution of the previous one’s gameplay, somewhere around gen 6 it really started to show that the series isn’t focused on evolution quite so much anymore. Sure, there’s still been some updates to mechanics and some graphical updates, but those have all been minor since, or completely dropped after that generation.

Mega Evolution, Z-Moves, and now Dynamaxing are all part of this problem. They are cool new ideas that add to the mechanics of the pokemon games, but are ultimately dropped in the next generation. They are gimmicks, meant to drive sales and engagement with any particular game in the series, but which don’t serve to elevate the series as a whole particularly well.

Generally speaking, it feels like the direction the Pokemon developers want to go with the games is more in coming up with some cool gimmick as a temporary measure rather than creating new core growth to the series that could be iterated upon in future versions to create better games with each new one. While Gold and Silver definitely felt like an evolution of Red and Blue, and Ruby and Sapphire yet again an evolution of Gold and Silver, with the games slowly becoming more advanced and better with each generation, I can’t really say that I feel like SwSh is any better than Sun/Moon, or Sun/Moon is really any better than X/Y. They are different, and have some small new iterations to the previous formula, but they don’t feel all that much better, just different.

Grinding bosses, AKA Diagetic Fail States

Diagesis is always a fun topic to talk about in video games. I was watching a video the other day about Sekiro and how it uses a lot of similar gameplay structures to other FromSoft games, like a diagetic fail state - when you die in Sekiro, that’s a part of the story. You don’t game over. There is no way to get a game over in a FromSoft game, as your character can never truly die.

Pokemon is definitely neat in how it is a series that has also always had a diagetic fail state - when you die, you retreat to the last pokemon center you were at, keeping any experience gained but losing your physical progress towards your next destination. However, each time you faint while traveling down a new route, you make the progress a little easier for yourself the next time, by both gaining experience for your team and defeating some of the trainers along the path.

However, this diagetic fail state doesn’t always make sense in Pokemon’s design, and I think the Championship in SwSh really brings that to the forefront. If your team faints while fighting a gym leader or while fighting in the championship or against the Champion, you don’t fail your gym challenge. You just retreat and come back to try again. This isn’t acknowledged in any way in-game. Leon has the same dialogue no matter how many times you fight him. Every time you fight him is the first time you fight him, no matter how many times you’ve been knocked out and had to retreat to the pokemon center. It creates a significant divide in the experience the game’s mechanics are giving you and the story they are trying to tell.

In the story, after helping stop the Darkest Day, you challenge the League Champion and claim your spot as the new champion. But in the gameplay, you have infinite tries to bash your head against the wall that is Leon, and the Championship will never end unless you end it.

I think the diagetic fail state pokemon normally has, wherein when you faint you go back to the last pokemon center, makes a lot of sense both mechanically and in terms of the world of pokemon. The world of pokemon is built in no small part to support this diagetic fail state. However, there are certain events, like fights with Team Leaders, Legendary Pokemon, or the Champion, where that diagetic fail state is incomplete.

How could pokemon fix this? I think the big thing would be to have two sets of dialogue for at least major antagonists, like the Team Leaders or the Champion, where they give you one set of dialogue the first time you fight them and a different set on future fights, if you lost the previous fight. And changing any cutscenes surrounding fights with Legendaries, like the fight against Eternatus in SwSh, to have different dialogue if you lost the fight at least once, could help explain why the legendary hasn’t already gone and done their nasty world-ending attack that the story often seems to set them up to be going through with.

It’s not a perfect solution, I think, but that seems like the simplest solution to resolve this weird discrepancy between the fail state that exists in gameplay and that which exists in story, one admitting the player failed but giving them a chance to try again, and the other simply pretending that the player didn’t even fight the legendary that would cause massive global destruction if it wasn’t defeated then and there.

The Legendary Problem, AKA Story-Driven vs Player-Driven Game Design

Speaking of legendaries... What even is a Legendary Pokemon? Mewtwo, Ho-oh, Lugia, Groudon, Kyogre, Palkia, Dialga, the three dogs, the three birds, the three regis. These are all legendaries. They are powerful and rare pokemon that exist in their particular game/region. But their existence and their purpose has steadily changed over time.

Early on, legendaries were truly that - legendary. To own a mewtwo in red and blue was one hell of a feat, because it took a lot of work to find it and a lot of work to catch it (unless you used a master ball). But things started changing around Crystal version, but especially in Ruby and Sapphire. Legendaries became less of a rare thing that was out there somewhere, as some kind of legend, and became more integral into the stories of pokemon, and representative in some way of the story that the developers were trying to tell. Groudon isn’t really all that legendary, as you’re guaranteed to encounter them in the normal course of gameplay of R/S, but it’s important that Groudon be encountered in the story because Ruby and Sapphire is a set of games all about environmentalism, and Groudon and Kyogre serve as metaphors for the natural balance of our environment.

And this is part of a greater discussion on the direction of the pokemon series as a whole. Over time, Pokemon has become less about the journey that you are on as a player, with your pokemon, and more about telling some kind of a greater story with the world as a whole, where the player character serves as a vehicle for the player to see the story that is going on.

Sure, Red and Blue had a world story, but in no small part it felt not like you were being funneled into partaking in a story, and more like you were building your adventure while you traveled. There was a sense of discovery in Red and Blue, like the region of Kanto had a lot of hidden away pockets of existence that just weren’t known to the populace as a whole. But by the time of the Galar region, even the wilderness is carefully curated and sanctioned off. The Wild Area exists as just a singular place, but it is full of bridges and other man-made structures clearly indicating that this place isn’t really wilderness.

And absolutely a part of this comes from me now being an adult and having played many pokemon games before. And certainly my nostalgia for the older games is playing a part in this reading, and I’d like to return to red and blue soon to see if this really holds up quite so well.

But overall, it feels like the direction that the pokemon franchise is taking in recent games strays further and further from the original intention of the pokemon franchise. The story is that the idea for pokemon was developed because the original creator missed his childhood adventures of going out into the woods and catching beetles, an experience one just couldn’t get while living in the city. Pokemon feels like it’s straying further and further away from that sense of a player-driven exploration-focused adventure, and more into a constructed narrative.

The Wild Area was a step in the right direction. And if I understand right, the DLC areas are in their entirety Wild Areas where you can just wander around freely encountering wild pokemon and trainers. With all hope, the developers are coming to a similar conclusion I have, that the core appeal of pokemon is in that sense of exploration, adventure, and finding new things.

(Though, to be fair, not everyone would think of that as the core appeal of pokemon, anyway! Different people are into different aspects of the series, and of games as a whole - some people are completionists, some are explorers, some appreciate a good story, and some are super-competitive. Everyone experiences games differently. And while the pokemon dev team has done has a lot to make things better for different styles of play, my hope is that they can give explorers like myself more to look forward to in future entries in the series.)

Other Notes

Alright, so that gets through all the big stuff. With that, let’s just talk quickly about some other little notes I had while I was playing!

There’s way too much dialogue, and it’s not very interesting.

Pokemon are definitely still very very cute and I love them and I love this franchise as a whole.

I loved when X/Y added fashion but really the clothes in Galar feels not great? There’s not a lot of options, and it’s mostly just the same couple of styles in different colors. So I was really unimpressed. I think the DLCs add a lot more clothing options, though? So that’ll be exciting to try out later on.

The whole thing with time freezing whenever you get on a ladder is still really really silly

The gym missions are real neat. They are definitely just kind of an expansion on the totem challenges from sun/moon, and I really like where they’re going with challenges that aren’t purely about fighting like older gyms were. (Look at me, talking about how this one innovation to the core gameplay is so great when I was just earlier complaining about their gimmicky way of not really innovating on the core gameplay. I don’t think this totally changes my opinion from earlier, but it does kind of. They are making changes, but just very slowly)

Why force players to wear the gym uniform during gym missions? Like, I worked so hard to buy my own fancy clothes and they won’t even let me show off my clothes to the whole of the Galar region during my fight against the champion. Horribly game design

Honestly, the whole dexit controversy. Like... I still don’t think the pokemon company were in the right, and they really should just delay main-series games until they are complete rather than trying to release on such a tight yearly schedule.

I miss Victory Road. Having to put all your skills and knowledge you’ve gained up to that point together for one final grueling challenge was just a really nice way to bring together the whole experience into a neat little package at the end. I guess since especially SwSh is more focused on the gym challenge and the spectacle of that rather than on giving you an exploratory adventure to go on, it kinda makes sense that instead we get a short linear route followed by a series of fighting your rivals and refighting some gym leaders before the Champion.

The Champion fight definitely feels way harder than any of the other fights. It’s got a decent bump in levels compared to the previous fight, and I think that’s... well, it’s kind of cool cause it does really make Leon feel impressive. But also like, at that point there aren’t any great places to just grind to catch up to him so I ended up grinding by just challenging him over and over until I happened to win one time, which largely happened by luck, not by my team’s strength or my stratetgies. Maybe the best way for this to have happened was having the player start to fight Leon, but then have that fight get interrupted after the first pokemon was knocked out, rather than interrupting the championship right before the fight with Leon. That way we could’ve seen Leon’s team in action and gotten a sense of how much stronger than the player he would’ve been at that point. Then, you could’ve gone out to train against the wilds and prepare yourself for your final battle.

But of course, following up on the last point and making this its own point, the only reason I did struggle at points was because I didn’t much take advantage of everything the game had to offer. I never once used a healing item in battle, I never used any rare candies nor did I ever dynamax any of my pokemon. I did use a couple of experience candies, but I only ever did three dynamax raids during the course of my game, so I didn’t have a ton of candies to use anyway. If I’d taken full advantage of everything Galar had to offer to buff up my pokemon, I would’ve absolutely bodied Leon. Instead it was a tough fight that was doable after a few tries and some luck.

Overall, I’d say Pokemon Sword and Shield are an okay time. The game didn’t excel relative to my last time I played Shield near when they came out, and it doesn’t excel compared to past games in the franchise. It’s also not particularly bad compared to my first time or past pokemon games, though it definitely has its fair share of problems.

And of course, let us not forget the greatest tragedy of Pokemon Sword and Shield:

The best pokemon in Galar, Snom and Frosmoth, just aren’t that strong.

EDIT: one last note, here’s my final team that took on Leon with me

Dirt, my Runerigus, was someone I caught to fight against the fighting gym, and became an integral part of the team ever since.

Clara, my octopus thingy whose species name I forget, is nicknamed after my character from a wrestling tabletop rpg my group recently played.

Charlene, my Dubwool, was the mascot of the team from the very beginning. I caught her as soon as I could and quickly put my starter into the box

Pepper, my Shiftry, was in its third stage evolution before I even fought the first gym. I’d caught him as a Seedot early on, and he evolved into a Nuzleaf on the route before the town with the first gym. And in the town with the first gym, you can find a Leaf Stone just sitting around, so I evolved him before we went in to face the gym

Cooper, my Obstagoon, was someone I always thought I’d end up replacing, but just kept sticking around and proving herself more and more useful. In the end, it was her with her moves of Night Slash, Thunderpunch, and Icepunch, that was able to tank and take out like three of Leon’s pokemon

:3, my frosmoth, was a late addition to the team but absolutely beloved. He may have been pretty weak overall, but he pulled out a couple of clutch victories and I couldn’t be prouder of his time with the team.

#eri blogs games #whew this is... a big one #a long post if you will #i had a lot of thoughts about my latest single-player gaming experience #pokemon #pokemon sword and shield

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thisselflovecamebacktome · 7 years

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Pokemon Ultra Sun and Moon thoughts

So just like I did with Sun and Moon, I’m going to put out all my thoughts of the game here. It’s going to cover post game and will not be spoiler free so that’s your warning if you still haven’t finished it. However, I’m not going to be touching on things that were the same in Sun and Moon. If you’re that interested in my thoughts, you can check out my post on the main game here and post game here.

My Team:

- I made it my mission to make sure I used as many alolan pokemon as possible this time around considering one of my regrets of my first Sun playthrough was that I didn’t use them enough. My final team ended up being the Rowlet line, the alolan Grimer line, the Noibat line, the Pichu line, the totem Salazzle and a spare spot where I exchanged pokemon that needed evolving through level up.

- Honestly, I don’t really look out for stats and whatever when choosing pokemon but damn most of them were frail af defensively. Like Pichu/Pikachu and Noibat were damn near unusable before they evolved. Because of this, I decided to keep the experience share on but only used refresh for status conditions up until the elite four as opposed to all the time like in Sun at which point I got sick of not using what was one of my favourite features in the game and used it for ages.

Trial + Elite Four Changes:

- So I thought getting all the “harder” sos call ins (the ones that heal and give weather helping conditions) in Sun and Moon was bad but Lana and Kiawe’s trials kicked my damn ass this time around. Like I didn’t even have issues with Kiawe’s trial in Sun and Moon but this time around, just like Lana’s trial, it took me two times to do it. Chances are though a lot of this had to do with having those defensively weak pokemon and not using refresh for the benefits.

- I have mixed feelings about Mallows trial. On the one hand, I liked it a lot more than the original games, but on the other, I still feel like it’s one of the most forgettable.

- As much as I get why they chose Vikavolt for Sophocles’ trial in Sun and Moon, to be honest, I liked Togedemaru a lot better. I also found it cute that you had to go get the Grubbin beforehand.

- I’m glad they actually made it clear that you could fight the other captains in the game considering I didn’t realise you could in Sun and Moon until waaay later than appropriate. However, I don’t think Mina’s trial was the way to do it. They hyped up the fact that Mina was going to have a trial and so much could have been done with it to the point of this feeling like a letdown if I’m honest.

- Honestly? I said this once and I’ll say it again, what was the point of Kahilli? Adding a little scene where she shows you how to use the flying z move does not make her any more relevant. I can understand replacing Hala considering he had said Hau already beat him, but not over her. Like I have nothing against her personally, I just wish they had bothered to do something with her.

- Kukui’s joke about being champion made me smile a little but to be honest, kinda eh about the rival being the champion battle again.

Story Changes:

Lusamine:

- I find it interesting that they really pushed Lusamine being someone with a mental illness that pushed her to become this way as opposed to intentionally negligent like in the original games. I mean it was very heavily implied that Mohn’s disappearance pushed her obsession which pushed her ignoring Gladion and Lillie in the original games, but the dialogue definitely pushed more of a selfish angle as opposed to mentally ill mindset, especially the difference in Gladion’s words.

- I also find it interesting that there’s an implication that Lillie did not know what happened to Mohn in these games. Makes me wonder just how long ago he was taken.

- I have also been spoiled about the fact Mohn visits Aether Foundation when you beat Gladion in the elite four rematch but doesn’t remember any of the family. I haven’t actually seen it but I have mixed feelings about the scene. I understand that this was meant to be a major moment of growth and closure for Lusamine and I’m glad they finally fixed the “You know where he is but never tell Lillie or Gladion” issue I had with the first game, but regardless of what goes down between them, I feel weird knowing that she never gave him the choice to know his kids. Not to mention, does Lillie even know he came? Is Gladion okay with it? It seemed that they deliberately put in how much what happened affected him into these games and yet all we get is a “Are you sure?” from him.

Guzma:

- Him becoming legitimate is everything I wanted. Him disbanding Team Skull in the process, not so much. Like with all the implications that he takes in teens that don’t fit in elsewhere and give them a place to belong, the dissemination as opposed to reforming of the team makes me sad.

- Along with Lillie, I love that you can fight alongside him during the post game.

Ultra Recon Squad + Wormholes:

- It was interesting to have them show up so early. Definitely not what I was expecting.

- I like that Hapu played a role as kahuna in the Necrozma story, even if only small.

- I would have liked more to be done with their world. Like I get not fleshing out every ultra world because that would have been insane, but the one that they made such a big deal about in nearly every trailer? Could have been done. I did like that it had the alternate squad there though.

- Quite frankly, the Necrozma story needed to be fleshed out more. Like it very clearly felt like dlc as opposed to a main difference in the game.

- All up the wormholes are one of the better features in the game. I do have to ask though, are shiny odds increased with them? Because I go 15ish years without even seeing a shiny in my game to suddenly getting one in the first wormhole which is odd to me haha.

Other changes:

- I hate and am terrible at mantine surfing tbh. Like it was cool the first time around and I have the records for Akala and Melemele but it’s going to take forever to get the other two. It actually makes me really sad because I was looking forward to it and just do not enjoy it at all.

- Making it so you can get Vikavolt and Crabominable earlier was a good change.

- Looker showing up made sense right up until he did nothing during the post game in regards to the villains which was just lame. Like I don’t care about his character but honestly? He’s useless in the game.

- As much as I would have also liked a Kommo-o clothing option too, I actuall like the Lurantis one more. Either way though, clothing is still too damn expensive in the game $2M should be enough to buy all the options tbh.

- I feel like the Rotom Loto is too OP considering you can use it any time he looks sad. In saying this, I hate how it pushes you to take pictures every time a pokemon evolves or constantly save or that type of thing. Like don’t get me wrong, I’m one of the seemingly few that thought that the photo club was cute but I’ll do it in my own time. So yeah, at least give us a “Never ask me this again” option.

- Continuing from this, forcing you to do festival plaza stuff on route 8 is not clever, it’s annoying. I didn’t want to use the feature in the first games and I’m only doing it now to get the damn stamp on the passport. Don’t force it haha.

- Pikachu valley was cute but literally what’s the point of the van? Like is it actually possible to get in there? Also I liked that they implied that the famous Pikachu was from there which made it seem like a jab at gossip journalists when that one asked him why he was in alola. Like making fun of the idea that they don’t even know the basics and are just trying to get a scoop makes me smirk.

- The way you choose your starter in these games is cuter, but honestly, the tutorial part of the game is still far too long. I get that there’s new players, but pokemon seriously need to consider putting “I’ve played Pokemon before” options for long time fans so we can skip seeing how to catch pokemon and so on.

- I preferred and was much more emotional about Lillie leaving for Kanto than Gladion.

Post Game

- Once again, I feel as if Looker should have played a larger role.

- I still do not understand them using old Archie and Maxie sprites. Like I get they’re from alternate universes but that doesn’t actually explain why they didn’t just use the ORAS ones.

- On that note, it’s heavily implied that Archie/Maxxie come from the same universe but I don’t see how that would work considering anything one does would just be undone by the other both weather wise and actions wise. So like apart from natural disasters happening, I don’t see their world being much different. But I suppose that’s the point. It could be any world.

- While I get it was post game and hence probably couldn’t take up too much room, I kinda wish they had done something different than what ultimately felt like a battle tree type quest. Like maybe rather than Giovanni bringing them all in, they happen to fall in and you have to do quests to stop them achieving their goals in Alola. So like finding Rayquaza to stop Archie and Maxie or racing to find ultra beasts before Giovanni. I don’t know, I know it’d take too much space up for the creator’s liking but I would have much preferred it.

Random other notes:

- My money is 100% on the first switch game being a gen one or two remake. There’s far too many references to Kanto in this game for the next game not to at least travel to Kanto. Whether or not this means starting back at the 151 is yet to be seen.

- On this note, everyone’s talking about who Hau’s dad is but I want to know who ours is. Is it the gym leader that signed the paper in the room? Probably not considering it’s implied the character knows who their father is and would have referred to them as such. Even less likely is my headcannon that it’s Giovanni as opposed to Surge which is what I see a lot of people guessing.

- I get that they’re going back to the regular method next game so want to leave alola behind, but I still find it strange that they added z crystals but not new alola forms.

- Despite people speculating otherwise, the Kantonian gym was exactly what I was expecting. However, I had hoped that they would have it earlier and it would be kinda like a trick house thing where each time you went, they had a different layout mimicking the Kanto gyms and actually had the trainers have that typing pokemon. So like after the first trial you could enter and it’d be a rock based one, second; a water based one and so on. I do however think that the fact that Ryuki said he wants to be a dragon gym leader will mean that the remakes will either have him take over the dragon trial and set it up as a gym or just 8 gyms in general.

Final thoughts:

This was a good game and improved a lot on parts that people didn’t like about the originals. However, while the story changes in the second half were much appreciated, the first half felt repetitive and drawn out. The game as a whole honestly just made me wish that these were Sun and Moon because the way it was done just makes them feel like dlc. Although in saying this, while it could have been done better, I do think these games were a necessary step to the generation four remakes that I’m still sure are coming out next year (lets face it, I doubt a new generation will be ready by then) and even generation five remakes, and the possibilities it has left for future games excites me.

#pokemon #pokemon ultra sun and moon

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sage-nebula · 7 years

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Pokemon Sun/Moon games please?

@yoshi12370, you also requested this, so I”m just going to tag you here! And also, oh boy, let’s see if I can keep this to five, because to be entirely honest I’ve been thinking about my dissatisfaction with Sun/Moon’s plot a lot recently (especially with everyone is gushing about how it/its characters are “the best the series has ever had!!1!” which … no).

Justice. For. Gladion. This is honestly one of my biggest sticking points, because I’m still so aggravated with the way he was treated by the game’s narrative.To begin with, he was hardly in it. Although he is introduced on the second island, his introduction is brief, and he doesn’t show up again until much later in the plot to give a cryptic warning, and then when Lillie and Nebby go off to Aether Paradise with Plumeria. Now, most of the characters in this game were neglected, and if he was simply another character then—while I would be disappointed because I like him—I would be more inclined to sigh and let it go. The fact is, however, that he should have had more of a role because he is Lillie’s brother and Lusamine’s son. He should have been just as important to the plot as the two of them, and he isn’t, to the point where it’s actually rather easy to forget that he’s even a part of that family considering the fact that he’s completely cut out of the picture after the events on Aether Paradise. Hell, even when Lillie shares her memory about dancing in the rain, Gladion isn’t mentioned at all. She recalls no memories of her brother whatsoever. Even a little mention there would have given a nudge that, hey, he was once part of this family as well—but we didn’t get that, on top of not seeing him throughout the plot. Considering his role in this family, it’s unforgivable.And it’s especially unforgivable in the climax. Don’t get me wrong, not having him show up more throughout the game is just as much of an issue, considering the fact that there are so many gaping holes in his story. For instance, he’s an “enforcer” for Team Skull, but what is it that he enforces? Team Skull doesn’t have any power in Alola whatsoever. They are, understandably, treated as a joke by the populace. Clearly he isn’t enforcing any sort of regulations or power, because they have none. He’s also not keeping the Skull grunts in line, because they openly disparage them, and he doesn’t even live in Po Town. Instead, he lives on a completely different island in a motel room. Given the fact that Team Skull is dirt poor and the fact that the motel manager tells us that Gladion paid two years of rent in full and is running out of money (presumably to buy food), we can also assume that Team Skull isn’t even paying him for whatever it is he does. So why is he employed by them? What is he getting out of it, and what does he do? We don’t know, because the game doesn’t bother to tell us. (Well, we do know that he wants to get stronger, so perhaps he battles—but again, we don’t know why he’s battling for them, if he’s battling with them or against them, et cetera. None of this is elaborated upon at all.) So all of that is an issue, but the fact remains that he’s not allowed to be a part of the climax, despite the fact that Lusamine abused him just as much as she abused Lillie before he left, and continued to berate and verbally abuse him when he finally returned during the Aether infiltration (and sicced Guzma on him to boot—nothing like abuse by proxy!). Gladion isn’t allowed to call her out, confront her, or even be there to support his sister. He’s not allowed to be there despite saying that he feels some measure of (misplaced) responsibility due to the fact that she is technically their mother. I get that the game wanted to give Lillie her big moment, and I’m glad she got to have that, but I’m upset that she was the only one who got to have it, and that Gladion’s abuse is so casually swept aside (and that he’s forced to go back to Aether Paradise to “clean it up” even though he had no believable reason to do that, and it’s clear that they forced him to do so just to get him out of the way). Hell, Gladion had far more of a reason to be there at the climax than the player did! If anything, it should have been Gladion and Lillie playing the flutes, a sibling duet in order to open up Ultra Space to go after their horrible, abusive, excuse for a mother. I also wish the game would have been even more explicit about the abuse Gladion suffered (which is implied to have been shifted to Lillie once he left, meaning he got the brunt of it before he did), because people still dismiss it and call him “emo,” and that really upsets me as someone who comes from an abusive background and reacted similarly to how he did. So seriously, justice for Gladion. He needs more of a role in the plot. He definitely needs a role in the climax. He and Lillie both need to confront Lusamine, together, and he needs to go to Kanto with Lillie to travel with her and show her the ropes of being a trainer (and also just to reconnect with her after their two-year separation). That would be a far better ending.

Lusamine needs to die. She should have died in the climax. Killed off for real, no take-backs. Aside from that …I’m upset at the rampant abuse apologism throughout Sun/Moon’s ending. The implication that she was the way she was because of neurotoxins, or “well she was nice to Lillie once so clearly she can be redeemed”—bullshit. My own mother was abusive to me and employed many of the same verbal/emotional abuse tactics Lusamine did (as well as some physical ones that we’re never told Lusamine did), and yeah, sometimes she was nice. Sometimes she showed kindness. That’s what abusers do, that’s what the abuse cycle is, that’s how they keep their victims where they want them! They show kindness sometimes so that the victim thinks “they really do love me, they’re just having a bad day/I made them angry/it’s this other thing that went wrong.” And hell, it fucking worked! Gladion says straight up that he told himself that Lusamine’s behavior was caused by his father’s disappearance so he could get through it. He specifically says that’s what he told himself so that he could get through it, meaning a.) that’s not necessarily true, and b.) he was trying to convince himself that his mother did love him, she did, she just had external factors that were driving her out of control. Particularly if she had rare moments of kindness with him like she did with Lillie, that would make it easier for him to convince himself that there were factors beyond her just not loving him, and thus make it easier for her to maintain control over him for as long as she did. (Which was a long time; he might be calling her “Lusamine” and “the president” by the time we meet him, but that letter found in his motel room has him apologizing for escaping his abusive situation, good lord.) Furthermore, we know that the rain dance situation was a rare moment of kindness because Lillie talks about how she was shocked she didn’t get punished, and kept waking Lusamine up because she couldn’t believe she was allowed to sleep in that bed. It was out of the ordinary for Lillie, that’s why she remembered it so clearly. Lusamine was an abuser from start to finish, and the game’s constant harping on healing her, redeeming her, helping her get better, and how her abused children felt responsible for caring for her was abhorrent. And honestly? While I’m on how absolutely repulsive that was, it’s especially repulsive to me because it was shoved down our throats that Lillie and Gladion had to help Lusamine after everything she did to them. Ghetsis was awful, yes, but the Unova games never made an attempt to tell us that he should be redeemed, or that N had a responsibility to him. N did come back to try and stop him in B2W2, and did try to talk some sense into him, but it was made apparent that N’s felt responsibility was in stopping Ghetsis from committing more evil, not taking care of and looking after him. It was never portrayed in such a way as, “Ghetsis abused N, but N still owes responsibility to him.” In the Alola games, however? Despite the fact that we see more on-screen abuse from Lusamine than we saw from Ghetsis (and more realistic abuse, too! She straight up pulls a line straight from my own abusive mother’s mouth!! I had to put the game down for a second I was so affected!), we’re still force-fed the “oh it wasn’t her fault” and “she can be redeemed” and “her kids are looking after her, don’t worry!” It’s vile. It’s straight up vile. I loathe it. So all of that said? She should have died. Nebby should have obliterated her after the Mother Beast battle. If they really wanted to, they could have still had that Regina George line that she gives to Lillie, all “when did you start becoming beautiful?” (bitch she was always beautiful, stop giving her backhanded compliments, and don’t ever talk to me or my daughter ever again), but then she should have legitimately died. I know that would be taking it a step farther than usual considering we don’t typically kill off characters in these games, but we talked about mass genocide last gen, we’ve talked about death in this gen, and they did straight up murder Lysandre’s ass in the anime. They could and should have killed Lusamine. Lillie and Gladion should have been free, and I would have been much happier. (Seriously, the relief I felt when I thought she had died, only to be crushed when I read the words “oh, she’s fine, just unconscious.” Ffs, kill her off! Vaporize her! Grind her into dust!!)And yes, I’m fully aware that Japanese culture plays a lot into familial responsibility, and honoring your parents, et cetera. Believe me, I know. But that doesn’t make it free from criticism, and it’s not as if Game Freak didn’t know that these games would be localized for a western audience. So while I’m sure that their cultural values did come into play, and while I do acknowledge this, it doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to be bothered by or criticize it, particularly since quite a lot of Lusamine’s behavior was reminiscent of my own abusive mother’s. (And also? Alola isn’t even a Japanese region, it’s an American one, so if anything, western values do play some role in it, too. It’s a complicated issue, but nonetheless.)

Pretty much the entire cast was under-utilized, to the point where the only one who had legitimate development was Lillie. Everyone else either had rushed or no development whatsoever, and barely impacted the plot. However, the main ones are:- Plumeria. Plumeria was barely in the plot, which is the second biggest damn shame next to Gladion’s minimal presence. To involve her more, I would have had her play an actual role in the Aether infiltration, namely in order to call Guzma out on his horrid treatment of Team Skull. While Guzma has a history of abuse himself (his behavior really speaks of someone who was abused in childhood and never received help), that doesn’t excuse how he treats the Skull grunts now, particularly since those he acts abusively around (by screaming, trashing the place, gloating about “beating down” Gladion, et cetera) are children, while he is a grown man. Plumeria is said to be Team Skull’s “big sis” and it’s clear that she cares about them. Therefore, she should have confronted Guzma at Aether Paradise with regards to him selling out the Skull grunts to the Aether Foundation, should have called him out on how horribly he treats them, and should have battled him, perhaps even for the title of Skull boss. Seeing Plumeria take charge and get shit done would have been amazing, and would have made her presence in the plot actually worth it, rather than completely wasting and not developing her character at all.- Burnet. Just like I love Plumeria, I also love Burnet, but again, she has a grand total of one scene in the plot, and that’s not enough. It’s especially not enough when you consider the fact that her specialization is in the different dimensions and creatures within them, which is directly tied to Sun/Moon’s main plot. We see Kukui all over the place even though his specialization has basically nothing to do with the main plot, and that … that’s a damn shame. Like, no shade on Kukui, but it’s a shame. So I would have involved Burnet more as well, including giving her a confrontation with Lusamine over both the Ultra Beasts/Ultra Space and her treatment of her children. - Hau. Hau was pretty much a static character throughout the game, and his presence in the plot was, again, very minimal. We get hints that he has more to him—living in Hala’s shadow, his father disappearing, brief disappointment when he loses right before the League, and his discomfort around Gladion due to how Gladion is constantly dragging him—but it’s not enough. I would have liked for Hau to have an actual character arc about building his own confidence and learning to be comfortable with himself, rather than just showing up for a friendly match, few jokes, and malasada lines. Again, I love Hau, but he should have had more done with him—he should have been a better realized character.- Wicke. Wicke is so boring. Her dialogue is bland, and her role in the plot basically amounts to “nice maternal figure who doesn’t actually do anything but low-key drag an abused boy by calling him ‘sheltered.’” Her character needs to be completely reworked to be more interesting. Also, make her somewhat villainous like Faba? Yes please.Really, all of the characters need expansion, but those are the ones that I keep coming back to whenever I think of all the wasted potential. There’s so much wasted potential.

I would have liked Lusamine’s focus to be less “OMG BEAUTY MINE MINE MINE” and more about scientific beauty. The Aether Foundation—which, mind you, should have been evil from conception to end, I hate that they were just ~*~temporarily~*~ evil, fuck that noise, I’m still counting them as the real villains, idgaf—has a very sterile, scientific feel to it. Even if we don’t go the straight up alchemy route (#disappointment), they’re creating chimeras and running space-time experiments. Lusamine is the president. I know that the game threw in an NPC saying it was her grandfather who created the Aether Foundation (of course), and also that it was Mohn who carried out the bulk of the original experiments (of course, this is all very typical of Pokémon, unfortunately), but in my view we should excise her grandfather, and hell, excise her husband (it’s not as if he’s terribly important anyway, we could do without him—and no, we don’t need him to explain the twins, because if Johto Rival doesn’t need a named mother, then Lillie and Gladion don’t need a named father), and make it about her and her fascination with science. Because here’s the thing: They can keep Lusamine’s interest and love for beautiful things while also making that interest and love clinical and scientific rather than obsessive and a stereotypical brand of feminine evil. Formulas can be beautiful to a scientist. Ultra Beasts could be beautiful to her in a fascinating way. To her, it can be less about beauty in the form of love, and more about the beauty in control, the beauty in flawless experimentation, the beauty in power and having her plans come to fruition, the beauty of science. Rather than Lusamine’s motivations being reduced to either “she wants to love things” or “she’s obsessed with beauty” or “she’s obsessed with finding her husband,” it could be all about her scientific experimentation, quest for power, and other motivations that are, quite frankly, typically given to male characters but are for some reason denied female characters for, gee, some reason we just can’t figure out. Having Lusamine still retain her manipulations and deception and playing that into her exceedingly high intelligence would have been far more interesting. Hell, if they wanted to model her after another character, GLaDOS is right there. I’m just saying.

I strongly dislike how the player was touted to be this amazing gift from the heavens without doing anything to actually deserve such praise. The Pokémon games are, of course, set up with the express purpose of enabling the player to Be The Very Best Like No One Ever Was™, but ordinarily it either happens as a bout of happenstance (the player is usually just in the right place at the right time, and is only given just enough thanks for whatever it is they did—and sometimes less than they deserve, tbh), or it’s literally written in as a bout of potential destiny that someone (/coughcough N /coughcough) chose to make a reality. Here, however, it felt like the trainer wasn’t really doing anything but completing a few really easy “challenges” (the Island Trials were not nearly as complex or involved as I would have liked them to be; I really enjoy the concept, but I want them to be more like Zelda’s temples in the future if they’re brought back), and then being practically worshiped by every single character for literally no reason, including and especially Lillie, even if you’re a jerk to her in your dialogue choices. It was excruciatingly aggravating by the end of the game, to the point where I actually disliked having to sit through cutscenes of Lillie gushing over the player character. Those were scenes that would have been much better if she was instead bonding with the brother she had been separated from for the past two years, you know? I don’t need praise heaped upon me, especially when I’ve barely done anything. I’m just a person, and not even a very interesting one. Please, take the laurels off me, pass the focus over to the twins, and let me enjoy a story in which they both get the focus they deserve, instead of having me take Gladion’s portion just so that the game can try and make me feel special. So yeah, this is a huuuuge issue that would need to be fixed, but less hero worship for the player, harder challenges, and more focus on characters who aren’t the player (and are thus actual characters and deserve the focus far more therefore). That would definitely be an improvement.

#five things i would change meme #yoshi12370 #kittykatzvillage #there's a lot more i could say tbh #the more i see people gush about these games the more ://// i feel #Black/White were far superior plot-wise imo #these were still really good #but they're far from The Best™#long post for ts

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evajellion · 7 years

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You didn't like sun and moon?

There were things I did like about the game, such as some of the new Pokémon and the removal of HMs, but there are so many problems I have with the game, and when you look more into it… it’s almost comparable to Sonic 06 in some aspects.

Everyone’s gonna grab their torch and pitchforks, but it’s kinda true. They focused so much on the story, and rushed the game for not only for an anniversary release, but a Christmas one too. Even the kid who gave it to me (yes, it was given to me) said he thought it was boring compared to the previous titles.

Eh, might as well go on, and point out the things that are wrong in terms of programming, and writing…

Unfinished content. There are several unused assets in Sun/Moon, more than there were in Gen 2 and 3. There’s this golf course for one. Supposedly, /vp/ went into the code and found a ton of unused stuff. The player’s house was originally way bigger than it is in the game with a garage and other rooms. Fully modeled Pokémon that follow you are still in the game data. There’s also a bunch of unused caves, allegedly.

There’s a few buildings that you just… can’t enter, for whatever reason. The lighthouse, and the one building in Malie Garden. It’s kind of frustrating since there is a door there, but you can’t do anything with them. It doesn’t even give you the satisfaction of a “it’s locked” like past games did.

There’s quite a bit of lag in this game, even with the new 3DS. Supposedly, once again at /vp/, an anon went into the code and found out that the programming behind battles in SM constantly re-rendered the models over and over, which slows the game down tremendously. Why they did this? I have no clue.

The AI for some of the trainers happen to be extremely pathetic, especially the Elite Four. This isn’t even a case of the EXP Share being overpowered, the AI is just as stupid as it was in gen 1.

I might as well nitpick the Elite Four while I’m at it. Two of them you already fought, one you have met, and one is from the aforementioned unused golf area most likely. They couldn’t bother to come up with new people to insert, or use exclusively the ones you didn’t battle.

You may notice that the National Dex is not in the game at all. So when you get a Pokémon not in the dex, like say, Inkay, it will not show up. No entry, nothing. Your save file will never read more than "302" Pokemon even if you have all 802 of them.

On that note, a lot of the returning Pokémon are from gen 1. There’s only a couple of Pokémon from gens 2-6. Pandering much? Especially with that Nugget Bridge callback, even though the Nugget Bridge in my opinion, was one of the worst parts of gen 1.

Unlike most people, I love when new Pokémon are introduced, and I get really upset when they become practically hidden in comparison to the flood of Kanto Pokémon plus Alola forms. Seriously, it took far too long to find a Salandit, Rockruff I never ran into at all, Dhelmise I only saw in the Elite Four, and Dewpider? Didn’t even know it was in the game. Gen 2 had this problem as well, but that was years ago, and they should have learned.

Nitpicking again, but Alola forms… yeah, not a fan of them. I was okay with the Mega Evos, particularly when they were given to underpowered Pokémon. Geodude and Grimer didn’t need these things at all. Bellossom though, one of the few Pokémon that would work well in Alola? Maybe as a Fire/Grass type..? Uhhh, nope, it’s gen 2, not our precious gen 1!

The Zygarde stuff feels like it was leftover from the next part of gen 6, but rather than making “Z” like everyone initially expected, in hopes of fixing past problems X/Y did. Instead though, GameFreak came with Sun/Moon, and rushed it for the 20th anniversary.

And the Battle Tree. God, I remember everyone gushing over Red and Blue returning, but… they were literally just there, for another recycled Battle Maison thing. You think GameFreak would have learned from the backlash against ORAS for removing the Battle Frontier, but nope. It’s literally barebones fan-service.

Soooo… what of the story? Well, in the game is kind of a mess, then maybe the story is better? What about the characters?

And by characters, I mean just Lillie. Lillie is the only character that gets any development, that becomes likable-- heck, I’ve seen some people say they wish she was the protagonist instead of the blank-faced player avatar, because they absolutely hate the player avatar for standing there.

I would have liked Lillie even more, if she went from disliking fighting, to deciding to break through and actually try it herself, becoming a rival. She doesn’t though, so…

Hau doesn’t do anything for his character. He’s nice, but he’s no Bianca, who became a professor at least. Gladion is an edgelord who helped Team Skull (even though they were helping his awful mom anyway so.. did he even know about this?) who just suddenly turns around at the climax.

Guzma… well, there’s nothing negative to say about him, but I just… don’t understand him. Why is he helping the Aether Foundation? Was there something I missed? He’s funny, and I liked having a less serious antagonist after how tryhard Lysandre was, but then that ends up being ruined with Lusamine.

Lusamine, god, where do I begin? She is easily worse than Lysandre in terms of Pokémon antagonists. She lost her husband (who is on that island with the Pokébeans by the way, so he isn’t dead or anything to begin with) and just ends up being cold to her children, focusing only on the Ultra Beasts.

This would be okay, if she was maybe… actually depressed, and not absolutely psychotic for no reason, wanting to fuse herself with Nihilego and freezing Pokémon. And you’re supposed to feel sorry for her and Lillie, I’m sorry, what? No, I’m not forgiving her. These are explanations, but not excuses.

Cyrus wasn’t forgiven, even though out of all the antagonists, I find him to be the most sympathetic. Ghetsis certainly isn’t being forgiven, and for good reasons, he closed his son off from the rest of the world and used him for his own goals.

The game can’t figure out if they want Lusamine to be absolutely awful, or “no she’s not so bad, she just had it rough!” It ends up feeling like a bad fan-fic, and I honestly wished Lusamine kicked the bucket after you fought her, because that would have actually been a nice change for a Pokémon game.

When she fuses herself with Nihilego, nearly everyone would expect you to fight her, as the Nihilego… but no, she just sends out her usual Pokémon from before, and she’s pathetically easy. Why was it so hard to fight her, but with Nihilego’s moveset?

Lusamine is easily the worst character and the worst antagonist in a Pokémon game, ever. The entire Aether Foundation has little build-up too, you can figure out they’re the bad guys right from the opening cutscene. At least Cipher from the GameCube games had thought into their bigbads, y’know.

Finally, we have the Ultra Beasts. I was thinking this would be a game where you have to catch the legendaries, and use them against all the Ultra Beasts to chase them out, like how we saw Tapu Koko going against Buzzwole, but no. It’s only Lusamine fusing with Nihilego. You only have a proper fight against the Ultra Beasts in a ridiculous post-game sidequest that’s more annoying than fun.

Whew… okay, I think that’s it. Yeah. Sorry for the long-winded rant, but I’ve been wanting to get that off my chest for a while. Yeah, I just didn’t have much fun with the game, and could tell it was rushed out. I disliked it even more when I learned of all the unused content, and thought more about the story.

If you liked Sun/Moon, that’s fine, I’m honestly hoping Ultra fixes all the mistakes this game made, but… I kinda doubt that, GameFreak’s jump to 3D was kinda rocky. Doesn’t help when people hype these games for a couple of months, then completely drop and forget about them.

If I want a Pokémon game with more story, I think I’ll stick to Black/White, the GameCube games, and Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky, thank you.

I’ve said it before to friends but… y’know, it’s kinda sad when Pokémon Clover, an unfinished and very crude hack by 4chan, is far more polished than Sun/Moon is. (Heck, rather than removing the TMs, they buffed them, especially Cut!)

#look out here comes a long rant #Anonymous

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