I'm that psycho that would be happy with a new Let's Go game. I know people don't like it, but I actually appreciated the consistent graphical style and the Let's Go catching mechanics. If I am being honest with myself, my brain goes on total autopilot during wild Pokemon battles, so I actually liked them being different from the trainer battles. Once I got used to the idea of catching a bunch of Pokemon in a row and then picking the one I wanted and sending the others over to Oak, I actually really enjoyed that gameplay loop and it did a good job teaching me about natures and the stat bonuses received from candies.
I don't know if I'd say I have faith but I do think it's possible. The team is still exceptionally good at coming up with new monster and npc designs, and imo the core combat is so good it can carry even the worst campaigns. Sword and shield are an unmitigated mess but you can still have fun with them because some of the series' most important aspects are still alive and well.
In my mind there are two main things that have to happen for pokemon to be on par with its peers. 1.) I think if they just commit to stronger models and animation, they'd have something truly good-looking since art direction is something they've never waned on. 2.) They have to flex their level design muscles. This is an aspect that has gotten progressively vestigial over the last few generations to the point where they almost don't even bother with it. I know they have the talent and vision necessary for this, they just have to want it again.
Overall it kind of feels like the stars need to align a little bit, so again I don't think I'd say I'm hopeful but I really do believe they have it in em
I lost faith in Game Freak after they said they wanted to make a Pulseman sequel but ended up pumping out mediocre platformers like Tembo for years.
I sincerely doubt the Game Freak of today could ever hope to match the original Drill Dozer or Pulseman with how mediocre their non-mainline games have been.
GF is a slave to the marketing machine the Pokémon brand is. iirc Nintendo, GF and Creatures as TPC set the planms for the next few years, they establish game releases, merch releases, anime broadcasts... If they decided "Ok, GF will take 5 to 6 years to make an ambitious Pokémon game, and all its staff will work just on that game, nothing else", then the game could become the "proper" game we have been dreaming about all this time.
Why they don't do it? Because the marketing machine can't stop. The biggest franchise on the planet can't stop selling plushies, anime, figurines, gacha, commercials... There is a need for new Pokémon, new forms, new "gimmicks" to have more versions of the same Charizard (Normal, megaX, megaY, gigantamax...) and to sell them. :/
But they need to spit out games every 1 or 2 years, so compromises must be made. GF is definitely capable, they are not incompetent. They might've taken some poor decisions regarding Dex and whatever you want to complain about, but they are not stupid or "don't know how to make a game".
Why they don't do it? Because the marketing machine can't stop. The biggest franchise on the planet can't stop selling plushies, anime, figurines, gacha, commercials... There is a need for new Pokémon, new forms, new "gimmicks" to have more versions of the same Charizard (Normal, megaX, megaY, gigantamax...) and to sell them. :/
But they need to spit out games every 1 or 2 years, so compromises must be made. GF is definitely capable, they are not incompetent. They might've taken some poor decisions regarding Dex and whatever you want to complain about, but they are not stupid or "don't know how to make a game".
GF also has a desire to keep their numbers rather low. that prevents them from expanding the scope of their games, even with all the outsourcing they do
Well, Creatures handles the Pokémon models I believe, and doesn't Doesn't Nintendo lend them a hand? I have no idea on this.
But yeah, they want to keep the company tight. Which is amazing because they are the developers of the games of a brand that any industry giant would kill to have. Ask any gaming publisher if they'd like to have >10 million units sold every year by selling a game that doesn't cost as much to make as the standard AAA game.
They could always outsource the games between the starts of new gens.
Nintendo does assist, but I don't think they have a large number of personnel on the game
I still think Level 5 should reskin Yokai Watch 4 into a Pokemon game
I'd love that. Different developers could bring very interesting things to the series. Have GF make new gen games, tightly controlled and planned, and let other studios make interesting things. Which they are starting to do, specially with Unite.
I always felt like Game Freak's main problem might be just a bit of lack of experience on doing extensive 3D games for more powerful platforms, like the ones we all expect on the Switch. For a team who has grown used into making games for more 'underpowered' platforms (like the DS/3DS), the Switch might've been a quite significant jump that was maybe unexpected at first. I feel like every now and then Game Freak makes a proprietary project (Like Giga Wrecker and LIttle Town Hero) to gather experience from making different types of games and make some new in-house technological leaps in their engines, etc. I think eventually they will learn to properly use the Switch's power to fuller extents (like they did on the 3DS. At least imo, graphics and overall user experience improved a lot when you compare X&Y to USUM) and match the quality that the fans look so much forward to sometimes.
How has it taken over two years for me to hear someone else with this opinion
I am replaying Let's Go Eevee now and I swear to God people just need to give it a fair chance lol it's a good game
Good pick! LGE made me appreciate Eevee more, actually became one of my favorite Pokemon lol
Dude it really is a good game. One could argue it's a much better experience than Sword & Shield, but I don't want to argue that lol.
It's objectively more polished a game, though.
Because everyone who actually held that opinion or any good opinion about the game were shout down lmao. Let's Go was great. Wild battles mostly suck. For the first time I didn't mind them much in Sword and Shield and I think it is because of the EXP share lol.
It was a refreshing change in pace.
I've given up on a Drill Dozer sequel, especially given Gamefreak's current philosophy on difficulty in games
Ehh, I see very little evidence of this. Even given the cadence of game releases, they're a studio of comparable size to Monolithsoft, releasing games at a similar cadence, and...well the difference in their games speak for themselves
Xenoblade 1: 2010
Xenoblade Chronicles X: 2015
Xenoblade 2: 2017
Xenoblade 2 Torna: 2018
Xenoblade 1 DE: 2020
Their leadership needs to just, it needs to be completely reevaluated. They need to either switch to using a middleware or dedicate the time, and hire some EXPERIENCED 2D devs, to create them an actual modern 3D engine. They need people dedicated to keeping up with the latest tech, which every company should have, but whoever is in charge in GF has been doing an atrocious job at. If they want to allow devs to continue to break off for small releases with the whole Gear Project thing, they need to make sure their core team actually has enough members that they aren't left rushing their games.
It's just weird the kinds of issues with tech they've constantly been having for a company that's been in the industry for decades and has a special relationship with the platform holder their games are almost always released exclusively for. It makes no sense
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Literally nothing happened. It's all the same rumors, we are likely getting Sinnoh remakes, though there are some evidence that it might be Let's Go styled.
It's telling you stopped at Xenoblade X because if you looked at Xenoblade 1 in 2010 (a huge 3D world) you'd see GameFreak was still stuck on the DS making a mostly 2D game
Unite is still a spinoff, I mean they could outsource remakes and such.
I still believe that's a myth.
They keep proving the other aspects of the franchise can keep going on without focusing on new Pokémon, from the TCG that always features old Pokémon, sometimes even more than the current ones, and including Pokémon that don't even appear on the current regional dex, to the toys and action figures (i.e. the plushie collections that started with Kanto, Johto and now Hoenn, or the Shirts collection too) to the movies, like Gen VII which basically ignored the whole Alola saga and not to mention the anime which has basically broken all patterns with Pokémon Journeys and has barely showed Gen VIII Pokémon in a few selected episodes.
The franchise can very well keep going on without a new mainline game for a long time. We can also look at Sinnoh and how many episodes they put between gyms to make the season extend further.
That said, I do agree that I don't see them ever taking 4 or 5 years to release a game. Not because the rest of the franchise would go down, but because I think GF themselves want that constant revenue too, because you're implying they would all have to focus on this hypothetical game and nothing else, so 5 years without releasing anything? I don't think that would sound attractive to any development team, and tbh, for more that "objective" fans think this would be ideal, the majority of the fans, even those that complain about quality, would also complain for not having new games sooner.
Besides, people always dream about this hypothetical ultimate game, but after it's released, then what, they have to come up with a follow up, and setting the standard that high, would force them to each time take the same amount of time, or maybe even more for every new release, and they would fall in this cycle of long waiting between releases that'd drive everyone insane.
I think the only way we could get "better" games would be if they took longer to make the jump to a new console. Like, assuming they get better with each new Switch game, for example, there'll come a time when they finally perfect the recipe to make a Switch game, so if they stick to it for a few more years, even after a new console is announced, theoretically they'd have more time to invest on those details that would make the difference, once they don't have to waste time in creating the models or animations, because they would already have them by then.
I wouldn't really call the Pokéball Plus thing evidence. It's compatible with Sword and Shield as well.
I added it just for you :)
But either way, they did release a game between XB1 and X (Project X Zone)
And the point still remains that for a studio of comparable size, Monolithsoft has released much larger, more technically impressive titles, every 1-2 years. Using the dev time as an excuse for Gamefreak falls flat. Like I've said before, the studios technical team/management need to be re-evaluated. They have no excuse
A studio with many many more years of experience, yesI added it just for you :)
But either way, they did release a game between XB1 and X (Project X Zone)
And the point still remains that for a studio of comparable size, Monolithsoft has released much larger, more technically impressive titles, every 1-2 years
Consider that when they were making Xenosaga on the ps2, GameFreak was on the GBA, and even when they got to the 3DS it was still a system a bit weaker than PS2 and a lot weaker than the Wii
Gamefreak is an older studio than Monolithsoft. Also a lack of experience is again, a weird excuse for a dev that has an attractive IP and the financial resources to hire experienced developers. They have an incredibly strong relationship with Nintendo. They probably are among the earlier devs to know the specs and receive dev kits of any new systems Nintendo is releasing.
They've had technical issues on every system they've developed for except for the GBA (the Gen 3 games ran well, granted they were probably the weakest looking titles relative to other games on the system)
Monolith was made by old Square employees, it's not like they appeared out of nowhere. Again experience in much more powerful hardware.
Hiring people happened, but that can't have changed the fact the people they already had (aka the majority) didn't have that experience which they could only get by actually working on 3D games.
They have not had technical issues on every system they developed for either, and saying the gen 3 games look weak feels pretty subjective.
Unless you consider minor fps drops a technical issue then Monolith soft has had technical issues on every system they've developed for and in way worse scale too.
Gen 3 is my favorite generation period, but even I could recognize the GBA games looked poor when compared to the other JRPGs on the system like Golden Sun, Megaman Battle Network, the Mario & Luigi games, the Square SNES re-releases (like FF6 and Chrono Trigger), etc
I consider the numerous glitches in their GB games technical issues. I consider the slowness of Gen 4 and the atrocious framerate of the underground when wifi was enabled a technical issues. I consider the atrocious framerate when 3D is enabled in their 3DS games tech issues. I consider the super jarring pop up at a few feet away and the framerate when wifi is enabled in the Wild Area (reminiscent of the Sinnoh underground) technical issues.
At what point will Gamefreak be as experienced as other devs developing on their respective systems? Or will there always be some excuse they're playing catchup?
They will be close to being as experienced as other devs pretty soon. Having to jump from 3DS to Switch accelerated the process, the Crown Tundra isn't all that different from a Xenoblade 1 area, if the next gen is like that throughout the whole game plus the natural advancement of the graphics they will be pretty much set for the future. Of course in the meanwhile everyone else has kept improving as well.
And again, the GB games were extremely ambitious for the platform and they were caught by storm by the success of the game. The GBA games were perfectly fine. Diamond and Pearl were the only DS games out of 5 to have notable performance issues. The 3DS games only dropped fps in battles because they chose to use models that were too much for the 3DS, which while it was a misstep in their decision-making doesn't tell us much about their technical abilities. Let's Go didn't have any notable issue besides isolated fps drops, and SWSH was a mixed bag comparable to Diamond and Pearl.
This all pales in comparison to the performance issues of every Monolith soft game despite me absolutely agreeing they were pushing the systems much harder, which is not the point in question
So I mean, they're getting there in the exact timeframe I was expecting by looking at their own trends and other devs' trends
Gamefreak will always be defended by the same lot of people who hear valid criticism and just say "God its so toxic in here, as expected when discussing Pokemon"
I'd rather play a great Pokemon game any day than have to call out and criticize the quality of Gamefreak's products, which no one gets a joy out of doing since we just want the series to be good again.
We were having a civil conversation until you stepped in putting words in other people's mouth for no reason but go off king
Game Freak is lucky to strike gold with Pokemon. other companies who were in their position don't fare as well *glances at Alpha Dream's corpse*
I didn't even read your posts (I wasn't replying to you...), but there is nothing untrue or exaggerated about what I said. You can see it in the early pages of this thread.
Gamefreak certainly gets a lot of excuses despite lowering the bar with the products they put out (probably to cancel out rising dev costs now with HD gaming and they want maximum profit), and the "give them time" reassurances are getting to rival what Sonic fans say about Sonic Team
I think you should just take away from my post that people just want the series to be much better than what Gamefreak thinks is an acceptable product
Oh what the hell that's an amazing idea, why didn't they do this already?
*praying*
I was just playing it again for the first time in a long while
it's good fun, with stronger style and prettier presentation than SWSH
not every choice is a home run but i appreciate the experiment more than the status quo
have I missed any scoops today? I take it no announcements *sad daft punk noises*
I'll be disappointed if it's a let's go games. I'd play it and enjoy it but I prefer the core games even swsh.
Pearl was my first game I swear if it's not remakes this year I'll be sad it is what it is I'm not gonna throw a tantrum but I'd personally love it if they arrive.
I'll be disappointed if it's a let's go games. I'd play it and enjoy it but I prefer the core games even swsh.
Pearl was my first game I swear if it's not remakes this year I'll be sad it is what it is I'm not gonna throw a tantrum but I'd personally love it if they arrive.
Because they haphazardly removed a bunch of mechanics, have you a starter with a bunch of ridiculously good moves and significantly higher base stats than it should have, and replaced EVs with a really broken system where you can just make Pokémon ludicrously powerful via candy. Ostensibly, these changes were supposed to make the game easier and more approachable, though I think how effectively they accomplished that was dubious.
Yeah going through it the way I usually play these games (not doing wild battles) I find let's go to be actully kinda brutal because they expect you to engage with the catching system a lot to stay on the level curve and there's less strategy you're able to leverage due to lack of items/abilities
it didn't make things all that easier. if anything, new young players would miss all that stuff entirely.
if the idea of "more accessible" is just "give them broken moves and overpowering the player", I don't think they were actually trying in the first place