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?
Look I’m drunk I don’t understand what you’re talking about. I live in Japan, but pokemon has always been a mystery to me. There’s the Pikachu, there’s pokemon Go. It’s just a game. I also don’t understand this Lemmy business, I’m trying
Welcome, random elderly relative from facebook
Kids these days with their tikky toks and pokemon and consarnit they ain’t got a lick a common sense
I think issue is Pokémon games are still made primarily for children with age between 6 to 12. There are a lot of older people who grow up with it and some of them righteous feel like they are left behind.
Same reason people complain about Switch controllers being too small to grip - because they are made for children’s hands too. Pokémon can’t be perfect for everyone at once so compromises have to be made.
Honestly, even as a fan of Pokemon for decades of this point, I don’t see a problem with the game being targeted at children. I have children now and I am all for games that target her age group instead of exclusively mine. Even if it’s a flagship series like Pokemon.
I don’t have an issue with it but I least they would do what Zelda does and ask you if you know this already. It makes the tutorial parts less of a drag
This is kinda what I was hoping for. They could even have an option buried in the settings to turn off tutorials.
“Uhhhh how exactly would that generate revenue? Actually don’t even answer that, just go clear out your desk, security will escort you to the parking lot”
—Gamefreak, the last time an employee suggested that
While I agree with you, I think Pokémon lost something along the way. It may be simply nostalgia messing with me, but there really isn’t that much sense of adventure anymore.
My first game was Pokémon Blue. In that game, you just walk out the door. No one is stopping you (except for Oak, and for a good reason). Once you try to set your foot outside of town, you get introduced to Oak and your rival, and you’re (after some fetch quest) told to just go and catch some Pokémon! The rest of the game, you sort of stumble upon things as you go!
I had a blast when I first encountered a gym without being introduced to what it was. The introduction to Team Rocket felt like a proper surprise, and so was stumbling upon a fork in the road or a cave. The HMs literally felt like keys to the world. My jaw dropped once I got Surf.
Maybe it’s nostalgia like I said. A tl;dr could simply be that avoiding handholding brings a sense of adventure, which brings immersion. Don’t explain what everything is before you have a chance to interact with the world. Let the player discover!
I agree with you 100%, I truly miss that sense of adventure and exploration gained from stumbling through a world and discovering things as they appear.
I’m definitely gonna sound like an old fart here, but it’s a symptom of the games and technology of today. The mindset TPC has when creating games is that they need to hold kids attention and that if they get stuck, they’ll just move on to some other game/video/whatever and drop Pokemon. Sadly I think they know their audience to an extent. I mean when I first played Blue it was literally the only game I had. When I got stuck in rock tunnel, all I could do was keep trying, and maybe get a peek at a strategy guide if i could get a parent to take me to a bookstore.
Now on switch they’re competing against a massive library of free games specifically tailed to get children addicted, and thousands of cheap options and single digit prices sales. It’s so easy for a kid to hit a wall and just drop it for the next shiny thing.
That said, if they want to keep their adult audience, they could really easily give an option to skip the tutorials, and maybe even an option for more complex dungeons (though that would require TPC to put in real effort, and we see how that’s gone so far). Sadly I don’t think we’ll see Pokemon return to that age of wold exploration, but hopefully the fan game community continues to thrive and pick up the slack in that area.
If that were the issue, the older games wouldn’t be more fun than the newer ones, but they are.
I personally agree that they are, but I recognize that that’s nostalgia. My 11 year-old’s favorite is Sword/Shield. He tried some of the older ones but couldn’t get into them. I think the oldest one he’s enjoyed was X/Y.
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.
I absolutely adored Cassette Beasts and cannot recommend it enough. The soundtrack alone is incredible.
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.
Coromon is another one that’s worth a shot. Much better story and world than Nexomon, only occasional 2v2 battles, and some of the best monster designs outside old school Pokemon IMO. It’s not a big a diversion from Pokemon as Cassette Beasts is, which could be good or bad depending on what your looking for.
Buying now. Looks sick, thanks for the tip!!
Cassette beasts is great. I’ve been watching my wife play it and it’s what we’ve been looking for in a pokemon game. There’s an interesting story with more engaging gameplay. And the soundtrack is really good.
I’m surprised I haven’t heard of this till now. It looks really good.
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.
Thanks for the recommendation. I haven’t played Pokemon in over a decade, and from what I’ve read here that probably will not change. However, Monster Sanctuary may be worth checking out.
I cannot recommend it enough. It’s a metroidvania and exploring for all the cool monsters is so much fun. It’s cheap and indie too, and gets genuinely tough right near the end. But it tests your ability to team build, rather than to just grind. New monsters will basically be at the level of your current squad, regardless of where you got them.
Now that you mention it. I think this is it. I’m not excited to play the game at all because after an hour, I feel like I’ve sheet seen everything the game has to offer. I caught some cool Pokémon, what else is there to do? Although I’m interested in the Diamond remake, I guess the classic style was better in some way.
Exactly my point. The first pokemon games you play generally feel so much more exciting because of the novelty of the world. Exploring the world, finding cool little secrets, it’s genuinely fun that first time round.
For all the complaints about Pokemon tutorials, they are a minority of the actual issues. But a good representation of the fact that Pokemon refuses to break “tradition”. Think about the world design of Pokemon. Like, genuinely think and compare each of the maps and regions. And they’ll honestly start to blend together. Even Alola, which imo had the best designed world, aesthetically, blends in to the rest of the world.
And the issue is, when they DO break the mold. It’s fucking fantastic. Area Zero, the Megalopolis from Su/Mo, the Distortion World. All fantastic zones that are relegated to the 11th hour and then barely brought up again.
Once you’ve explored one Pokemon game, you’ve probably explored them all. And that’s pretty egregious considering the main draw of Pokemon is exploration.
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.
Unbound is great! Also I have to mention Pokemon Emerald Rogue. Probably my favorite thing to play on my phone, and favorite pokemon experience
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.
Pokemon Legends Arceus was a real breath of fresh air, but it doesn’t seem like GF wants to learn anything from it. Repeating something I saw on Reddit: Pokemon deserves better developers
I’m still holding out hope for a similar Legends game set in Kanto/Johto. Arceus was so much more fun than Violet for me.
It helps that PLA feels like a finished product.
Two different teams iirc. But they should bring over stuff from arceus
I also appreciated the new format, but sadly I couldn’t make it longer than a few hours with how painfully dialogue-heavy it felt.
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
If you guys are interested in romhacks/fangames/Pokemon games with a little more meat and difficulty to them, I heartily recommend Pokemon Infinite Fusion. It’s based on FR/LG, with a slightly different story (but it’s still essentially Team Rocket doing Team Rocket things), with the big difference being that you can fuse Pokemon. Every Pokemon in the game is fuseable, giving you a MASSIVE possible amount of combinations. You can play it classic mode, like a regular Pokemon game, but there’s even a randomised mode which changes it up so every wild encounter and trainer battle uses randomly fused Pokemon. It’s great fun!
As for whether modern Pokemon games hold your hand too much, I dunno. I do recognise they’re made explicitly for children, so I can’t tell you how much is too much. In fact, I remember as a child being stumped enough that I quit playing Diamond halfway through because I thought the gyms were ‘too hard’. I still enjoy the newer games (I don’t care what anyone says, I loved SwSh) but I don’t let their shortcomings get to me as I recognise they’re children’s games.
Re fangames, I’d also recommend Pokemon Insurgence. It has a darker story than most Pokemon games, but it’s also more difficult as well. It has challenge run options in-game if ya want to run a Nuzlocke or something like that.
A big second here for Infinite Fusion! I just found out about it a couple weeks ago and I’ve been absolutely loving it. It’s certainly the classic Red/Blue storyline, but with just enough changes to the maps/story to feel fresh and interesting. The fusions are so much fun, especially the community created art. I wound up finishing my first run with an entire team of Monster Hunter themed Pokemon. Now I’m trying out the randomizer mode and it’s such a blast. Despite browsing the discord for a while and seeing dozens of Hall of Fame teams I’m still finding fresh fusions constantly, it’s really amazing.
While on one hand I completely and totally agree that the games seem to always ignore the seasoned vets of the series. It’s also been very clear that their design choice is to always assume this is your first Pokémon and that you ARE a child since that’s the target audience always. So the hand holding is always a result of that design choice, now obviously there’s better ways to go about it, Pokémon is the only game that treats me like a child for the first 4 hours but then opens the system up and leaves me alone. But I also think it’s been getting better, look at the 3DS generation of games, those things were relentless with its constant “hey look over here and do this!” That it took a lot for me to finish those games.
I agree that they are made for children, but there could easily be an option to turn off tutorials.
Oh for sure, I mean how many games have that simply because they assume you will replay it? Why not do it for a long running series?? it’s bonkers.
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.
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.
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.
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
I think I’d be cool with this if we could just get difficulty levels man :/
Pokemon is still so much fun, but they really took away the process of getting lost and figuring your way around things.
The most fun I had with the game was the rush when you finally make it though some area and get to the next town.
Imagine if they actually treated the game like a class jrpg where there were really long fights.
I guess part of the boredom is just pushing through everything.
Not sure if you’ve tried ROM hacks, but Renegade Platinum with Following is the ultimate Pokemon game. It’s very challenging and regular trainers use the same AI as gym leaders.
There are so many decent Pokemon clones out there that there’s honestly little reason to buy the new ones. From what I’ve seen they are a total bore fest and way too easy, I think people just need to accept they’re kids games and move on. I personally really enjoyed Monster Sanctuary. Even though it’s a very different game it gave me the same enjoyment of catching monsters and building a team.
I’m not so certain there is a comparable title to Pokémon at it’s best. I want there to be, but it doesn’t exist yet.
Yeah and even when Pokemon is at it’s worst it’s still got one big thing going for it that nobody else can have, and that’s the Pokemon.
I don’t agree that there are clones that are close enough to what pokemon is. I have not really explored it, so I could be wrong.
Coromon was really fun to play. One big improvement is that they let you customize your character.
Digimon and SMT, while not Pokemon clones are monster-collector games that are far superior.
edit: And for those that want something like Pokemon Legends just go play Craftopia or PalWorld. (craftopia’s a bit more like BOTW but it’s close enough).