What do you hate most about Pokémon?

[Spring-Loaded]

There's a lot to love about Pokémon across its various media. But by that same token, there must be a lot to hate.


What do you hate about Pokémon? For me, I lament how much focus has been put on battling, both in the games and serialised media.A big part of the appeal of the IP is the variety among the monsters, and the "merely" cute or interesting ones are indirectly framed as lesser because of whatever utility they may lack in battle. It's why Pokémon spinoffs/clothing/memes/animated shorts/etc. that aren't about some typical trainer battle can be so refreshing—Pokémon like Bidoof get their own music video because of how cute they are, and that cuteness is more evident in their behaviour in NEW Pokémon Snap.

 

[ILikeFeet]

discussing it

 

[LossAversion]

That I'll never catch them all.

 

[Milennia]

Specific to the games, but I really hate the lack of endgame outside of random online battles considering how much I liked the endgame in older titles, actually a big peeve of mine

Pretty tolerant of everything else considering

 

[KtSlime]

The people who can't shut up about how much they hate Pokemon is what I hate about Pokemon.

 

[Fulminator]

how insistent gamefreak (masuda in particular) is that the games be extremely easy

 

[Jadow]

Reading threads about it in Era

 

[--R]

The community.

 

[RockmanBN]

No options for increased difficulty and removing options for the sake of making things even easier

 

[ejoshua]

Silent protagonist with no story growth except to catch all, train all. I know that's not what the games are about and it shouldn't change because it's working for people who care about the series, but that's why I stowaway don't care for them or struggle with them.

 

[Kinsei]

Recently the lack of proper route and dungeon design. The Diamond/Pearl remakes have a lot of issues, but it's nice to traverse a region in more than a straight line.

 

[Professor Beef]

the community

 

[Ultima_5]

How mindless they've become

 

[808s & Villainy]

The writing/narrative is some of the worst I've seen in any game. Definitely in any JRPG. The plots are mindnumbingly simple, the dialogue is awful, and you have tons of NPCs who could be used for worldbuilding that instead just say random nonsense

 

[Tan]

The community

I love Pokemon but I don't want to talk to anyone who likes Pokemon

 

[EddyZacianLand]

The constant negativity surrounding Pokemon online

 

[Omanisat]

That the way you engage with the combat hasn't meaningfully changed or evolved since the very first entry on the gameboy twenty-odd years ago.

 

[Atom]

All related but:

- lack of difficulty or at least options
- the constant one step forward two steps back, kitchen sink kind of sonic team approach
- the pivot from RPG with meaningful single player exploration focus, side content and serendipity to a design philosophy seemingly more focused on a railroad to endgame and more a showcase of gimmicks to promote pokemon as a brand.
- the generally underwhelming visuals.

And also:

- Some of the hyperbole and passion that people approach pokemon with online. At the end of the day it's a video game and yeah it would be nice if the games took a bit more of what was good in the old titles or experimented more, but please don't curse people out because of it. I get that it sucks to see a franchise you used to like being done a disservice compared to other less profitable franchises but still. The old games are always there. Besides, PLA looks like it will be a shakeup. It could also be a fuckup, but it will be different to what has sort of plagued the last decade regardless.

 

[PonyStation]

The lack of events and exploration. Like you go to a mountain on Sunday between 9pm-4am and you stumble upon Pokemon that usually are lazy, but they're all dancing and doing some kind of ritual. I think there was something similar in HG and SS with Clefairy's?

Pokemon has so much potential but everything about it is so mediocre, starting with the lack of difficulty options.

 

[EddyZacianLand]

That the way you engage with the combat hasn't meaningfully changed or evolved since the very first entry on the gameboy twenty-odd years ago.

Click to shrink...

Which is changing in 20 days

 

[TheCthultist]

The community, as well

 

[ned_ballad]

Weird inconsistent breeding and new evolution methods

Like the piles of incenses needed to make baby Pokemon with absolutely no explanation in-game. You're just supposed to know

And the mess of Eevee evolution methods when stones exist that work for the three forms with arbitrary friendship mechanics

I know it's pretty minor but it just bothers me, I guess it might be since in Ruby I frustratingly bred a ton of Marill looking for Azurill but then had to look up that it needed to hold a random item to make Azurill babies

 

[Greywaren]

The fans.

Well, the "fans". You know what I mean.

 

[Dezzy]

1-on-1 combat. Switching Pokemon back and forth does not count. I want full parties like SMT.

 

[McNum]

Saving the world has gotten old. Team Badguy has captured some god or whatever, but they didn't use a Poké Ball and therefore it is evil. Go stop them and catch the thing they caught.

Team Yell was such a refreshing Team, they were just hooligans cheering for Marnie, and, well. I can get on board with cheering for Marnie. But then the Mayor STILL had to mess with Eternatus in the middle of the final tournament. Like could he just not? It's not like his reasoning needed it to happen at that exact time, anyway.

Pokémon should be about the journey from nobody to champion. Cosmic horrors and ancient gods or even manifested abstract concepts can wait until you're the champion and can be expected to deal with those kinds of things.

Not "Oh, hey, twelve-year-old with a handful of badges! Go fight the God of Time/Space for us!" Cynthia, that's YOUR responsibility. I'm just there because of coincidence, where were you when the skies turned into a disco show and reality itself hang in the balance?

 

[Zutrax]

I've been a massive fan of the franchise since it's inception, as I've gotten older my biggest gripe has always been just how monotonous, tedious, and mind numbingly simple the games continue to be.

I'm not a game designer so I'm not qualified to speculate on what could be fixed. But I think less frequent battles that mean more and have more difficulty would go a long way. Have less trainers, but each trainer has 6 Pokemon levelled appropriately just like you would. I also think (and I say this as someone who genuinely has done tournament play before) there's too much of the combat that relies on one turn sweeps. The game at a casual level does not even remotely insist on a player to use status effecting moves over powerful one turn super effective moves. I don't know the answer here, but maybe a slight buff across the board to HP values would make things feel more meaty and meaningful on the combat front, but in turn players would not like how much weaker moves feel so it could bite them in the ass.

I just want the combat to feel a lot more meaningful than it currently does.

 

[Atom]

The lack of events and exploration. Like you go to a mountain on Sunday between 9pm-4am and you stumble upon Pokemon that usually are lazy, but they're all dancing and doing some kind of ritual. I think there was something similar in HG and SS with Clefairy's?

Pokemon has so much potential but everything about it is so mediocre, starting with the lack of difficulty options.

Click to shrink...

It did. Mount Moon dancing clefairys (Clefairies?), and it was in Gen 2 as well I think. Idk if it was a crystal addition. You had to go to the little mount moon square and find them. Gen 2, probably because it's still the largest single gen leap in terms of non-battle mechanics, really pushed a lot of day/time based events from evolutions, to contests, to certain npcs etc. Really embiggened the world in those games.

 

[Xterrian]

The venipede line isn't in every game.

 

[cdm00]

The fan base is the worst part of Pokémon

That Nintendo fan base tier list is 200% accurate

 

[DinoBlaster]

Everything is so cumbersome, at least through the DS generation. IVs and the like were a so tedious

 

[Pyro]

discussing it

Click to shrink...

Bingo

 

[Johann Mistletoe]

Weedle erasure

Don't act like Weedle isn't important, world

 

[Dennis8K]

Too easy
Bad graphics
Stale games

 

[Brawly Likes to Brawl]

Right now my biggest problem is that the route and dungeon design for new mainline games has just gone completely down the toilet. I see people complain about Sword & Shield a lot, but I don't see a lot of discussion about how almost all of Galar's routes are just very phoned in straight lines. It feels very out of character for the Gamefreak I knew in childhood.

 

[ghostcrew]

The people who can't shut up about how much they hate Pokemon is what I hate about Pokemon.

Click to shrink...

Co-signed

 

[808s & Villainy]

I think this thread is Pokemon discussions at a whole. You have people giving substantive things they dislike and others who seemingly don't dislike anything to the point they respond with a meta answer (aka "the community") as opposed to anything in particular...

Although maybe the responses would be different if instead of "hate most", it was just "dislike"

 

[Elliott]

The venipede line isn't in every game.

Click to shrink...

This but sandile.

 

[Hikari]

The community by far is ridiculously toxic. Not just on here.

 

[Watershed]

Online Pokemon fans.

 

[Deleted member 24021]

Mainline needs a better developer

 

[Deleted member 81119]

How little it changed each generation. But if Pokemon Legends is the tester for Gen 9 then the future is looking very bright.

Im slightly worried this is just an experiment and Gen 9 will go back to being traditional. But I don't really think that'll happen.

 

[OtakuCoder]

Not "Oh, hey, twelve-year-old with a handful of badges! Go fight the God of Time/Space for us!" Cynthia, that's YOUR responsibility. I'm just there because of coincidence, where were you when the skies turned into a disco show and reality itself hang in the balance?

Click to shrink...

To be fair, Sword/Shield had the Champion solving problems for you and that wasn't very satisfying.

 

[sir_crocodile]

Thankfully I don't engage with the pokemon community so can talk about the actual games.

I have no thing I really "hate" about them, but I feel sad I don't get the same "vibe" from them that I did back in the r/b g/s days. The feel of exploration, the slight sense of weirdness. Hard to quantify tho

 

[Pau]

I'd say the same as you OP. I just want more games where I get to interact with Pokemon as pets or stuff outside of battling.

But truly the worst thing about Pokemon is that they are not real. ;-;

 

[Deleted member 3208]

Ignoring the community, how GameFreaks brings a new mechanic and then gets rid of it in the next game. Like the seasons in BW and then disappearing in XY.

 

[RealTravisty]

Game Freak's raging hard on for the first generation. I grew up with that generation and I'm just so tired of it.

 

[super-famicom]

I hate how much focus there is on online battling and the meta. The fact that there are IVs, EVs, etc give me a lot of stress. I would just like to play through the story (which I admit are not the greatest) and become the very best, but the min/maxer in me feels like I should do all this Pokemon breeding and training for perfect stats even though it doesn't matter at all for the single player portion. I just end up not playing at all at this point.

 

[808s & Villainy]

Thankfully I don't engage with the pokemon community so can talk about the actual games.

I have no thing I really "hate" about them, but I feel sad I don't get the same "vibe" from them that I did back in the r/b g/s days. The feel of exploration, the slight sense of weirdness. Hard to quantify tho

Click to shrink...

Well the original creator, Satoshi Tajiri, stopped directing the games after G/S

 

[AhiKuma]

How budget the mainline title seems.

 

[McNum]

To be fair, Sword/Shield had the Champion solving problems for you and that wasn't very satisfying.

Click to shrink...

And then the fool threw a basic Poké Ball at a full health legendary and expected it to work. Honestly that fight just made him look weak.

Funny thing is that the postgame then had those two with the weird hair show up to start the events that let you catch the cover Pokémon. Which is a good time for that kind of thing to happen.