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Unpopular opinions
- Thread starter antemortem
- Start date
In Pokemon World, that is not a problem. Broke? Go outside with your Tyranitar (who conveniently knows Flamethrower, Thunderbolt and Ice Beam) and smash some toddler's Rattata and Pidgey, you now have money again. And if you lose and have no money, you are not losing more money, debts aren,t a thing in Pokemon World. If some guy turns out to have a Machamp for your Tyranitar, well, there is free healtchare too.
according to whomst
do you think this is a JOKE a man is a DEADBEAT because he cannot support his family due to drinking and gambling
HEY. Kristen Stewart is a really good actress, it's not her fault the role said "Be a cardboard cutout viewers can project on to." And it's not Selene/Elio's fault either, anti-social personality disorder is a diagnoseable condition.
It's similar to RBY vs. FRLG to me.
FRLG is, objectively, the better game. But it's awfully bland, and Gen 3 mechanics are just... dated. Probably my least favorite gen to play, despite all the great games. The in-between of having EVs instead of Stat. Exp. like Gens 1-2 makes all the slow mixed attackers so much weaker than they should be, but there's no Gen 4 Physical Special Split to set it as a modern game either.
Meanwhile, RBY has that good jank that makes things unique.
Colosseum is the same, the game is objectively worse, but it's also a lot more unique than XD. XD being better structured, but having its own issues means that at its core, it's also a Gen 3 game where most mons also get Refresh for some reason. Meh.
FRLG is basically the New Super Mario Bros. of Pokemon. It's easy to pick up and play, perfectly adequate and inoffensive. There is nothing it does exceptionally poorly and it's probably a better-constructed game than something like SV. But unless you're a Sevii Islands true believer there's really nothing to latch onto and it can feel a bit sanded off and bland compared to its predecessors
it's where you need to go to get all the unown forms in any gen 3 game I guess for whatever that's worth to anybody
I'm pretty sure the 3rd gen games are the only ones I've played that run at a consistent 60fps. They feel like the most technically polished entries I've ever played, anyway. Which isn't the most important thing for a turn-based RPG, but I think it's worth noting when the rest of the franchise is often notable for how buggy and unpolished it frequently is.
NSMBW+U bring a lot of substantial and worthwhile things to the table wrt game and level design but are typically dinged because of poor stylistic choices and the weight of simple nostalgia for older titles.
I think this is actually a pretty good comparison (laudatory).
NSMBW+U bring a lot of substantial and worthwhile things to the table wrt game and level design but are typically dinged because of poor stylistic choices and the weight of simple nostalgia for older titles.
FRLG doesn't even improve much from a game design lens, in fact removing much of Gen 1 Kanto's mechanical depth:
- Kanto's inherent design mean Psychic-types and special attackers in general as overpowered as before. Psychic is the only busted TM from Gen 1 that wasn't replaced, and Dark and Steel technically existing means nothing when Trainer rosters are completely unaltered. Intimidate being everywhere and a Growl- and Harden-stuffed early-game actively punish you for not using your special attacking starter.
- Speaking of starters, Venusaur and Grass-types in general are much harder to use end-game considering no Swords Dance in Silph, less reliable sleep mechanics, and a nerfed Razor Leaf leaving no exciting Grass-type moves in existence.
- Speed-based crit mechanics being gone leaves a good number of Pokemon with even fewer compelling moves. The likes of Persian and Rapidash, whose Speed and consequent crit chance gave them something of note, are now completely unremarkable.
- Ground-types no longer have the distinction of being physical attackers that easily beat Koffing and Gastly, leaving them arguably worthless.
- TMs being weaker leaves Normal-types with coverage that generally loses out to STAB Return, making them as uninteresting to play as Pokemon can get.
- Poison resisting Bug leaves Zubat and Paras without easy training targets in Grass/Poison types, and it makes Beedrill's power spike with Twineedle at level 20 a lot less impactful.
- Wrap/Bind users like Arbok and Onix can no longer cheese their way to victory to compensate for their general weakness.
- On top of so many Pokemon being weaker, the League is much harder to exploit, leaving less room for 'fun' builds and planning ahead. I've had to drop a 'yellow Pokemon only' run there because my only options were to grind or X item cheese. Pokemon is not fun when the AI outmatches you in every angle that matters, and the Gen 2 overhaul removed a lot of angles.
- Fighting-types is the only Pokemon category that got a significant upgrade, and even then, Poison being everywhere means you're using mopey Normal coverage or Rock Slide for every time you get to click a shiny new Fighting-type move.
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This one sticks out to me because of the way Cubone is obtainable in Kanto. Cubone is catchable in the Pokemon Tower as a rare encounter, and the one attacking move it has off the bat in RGBY is Bone Club, a Ground STAB.
This was a clever design choice in RGB because Gastly and Haunter are the common enemies in the Pokemon Tower dungeon and from an RPG standpoint are unique enemies that can only be ID'd and battled via the Silph Scope, and are very difficult to kill because they are impervious to typical physical skills (aka Normal-type moves) and even Fighting-type moves, and their high Special means they're hard to kill on the special side too outside of Psychic-types, with Ivysaur struggling to do anything, and Charmeleon and Wartortle not doing much to them with their magic attacks either. They are also immune to Poison, making it so they can't be worn down by the typical passive damage that you have (except Burn which has a low chance of occurring). So Cubone being there means a player who is struggling to kill Gastly/Haunter while in that dungeon can catch one, and its Bone Club will be a powerful tool to KO Gastly/Haunter easily: it's like the game is basically offering you a tool to give you an easy way out against a common enemy in a unique dungeon that is designed to be particularly difficult to deal with otherwise.
Gastly and Haunter gaining Levitate in FRLG and thus being immune to Ground-type moves kills that in-game niche entirely. Now Cubone can't do anything to Gastly and Haunter, and the only things that *can* easily deal with Gastly and Haunter are Kadabra and Mr. Mime.
In general a lot of the changes to mechanics in Gen 3 mesh poorly with RBG's original game design (which FRLG doesn't do much to alter) and completely compromise its identity as a very 90s JRPG. It's why I'm never a big fan of remakes and why I'm not fond of BDSP either. I like HGSS and ORAS on their own terms because they at least go all the way in being distinct, taking the source game and putting its own spin on it rather than just copypasting the original and putting in new mechanics that compromise the original design.
Or you know, Gastly and Haunter themselves.
The ground types in FRLG bit is also crazy because it means that any Ground type obtained after Lt. Surge does not have a single strong match-up against an important boss for the remainder of the game, aside from a very unstable Blaine (not a single ground type in Kanto can take a Fire Blast comfortably) and a reliable win against the very easy Silph Co. Giovanni fight.
While all these critcisms are fair, they are overblown. FRLG isn't way harder to beat than RBY. Haunter has 55 SDef and 45 Def it isn't tanking any kind of attack, Gastly is weaker and it has a way higher encounter rate. At least in gen 3, you can buy Dig in the Dept Store so Onyx, Sandshrew and the Nidos can have STAB. Ground immunity to electric attacks by itself guarantees they will never be useless in a Pokémon game and Poison isn't the only type that ground hits super-effectively.
Yeah like the idea of catching a Cubone to counter wild Haunter in theory sounds like a good point, but there's pretty much no circumstance in which I'm going to bail halfway through a dungeon like Pokemon Tower to change up my team anyway. It's not particularly huge and it's got a free healing panel halfway through it.
Also
Wartortle learns Bite via level.
i'm not sure how much of a hot take it is, but gen 3 is by far my favorite gen to play casually. i like all the gens (except 6) but gen 3 feels like it hits a really good balance where the games have a solid amount of difficulty to keep you engaged but with a good chunk of variety in mons. this is definitely nostalgia bias, but every time i revisit the games i don't feel like anything's really deeply wrong with them, they just hit a lot of the spots you would want in a pokemon game. i see a lot of people refuse to play them just because no physical/special split, which is honestly a shame.
I forgot the Gastly line wasn't given decent Special Defense. However, my point was moreso that it's a fairly common enemy Pokemon Ground-types can't hit without very specific moves.
My brain got ahead of my fingers, I typed Haunter when I meant Gastly. Yes, you can easily get a functional move for your Ground-type, but Dig is at its weakest in Gen 3, it's slow to use, and it isn't covering much of importance. Surge's Raichu can get out of hand if you're relying on Charmeleon or Wartortle, but it's the only threatening Electric-type in the game. What else are we covering with Ground? Fire? The only 'boss' Fire-types are Blaine's and Champion's Arcanine, which have Intimidate and out-stat most of the Grounds. Rock? If your team doesn't have other options for Rock, it's the exception, not the rule. Steel? There are no threatening Magnemite or Magneton users.
Many Pokemon fans would be much happier if they weren't so fixated on what's 'optimal' for their Pokemon. STAB on the lower offense isn't a cruel joke played on the likes of Flareon and Crawdaunt, it's an intentional way to round out a Pokemon's offensive competencies without succumbing to the 'biggest number' creep of later gens.
yeah, hard agree with that. i do feel like the physical speial split gave people a fixation on every single mon having perfect spammable stabs, which is why they think early gens feel bad to play. gen 3 does a pretty good job of ensuring mons have good options to play with that are varied and not always just the most optimized thing for that mon. i think this is a great part of the games that makes them feel really satisfying and engaging on every playthrough
I find this comment kind of humorous considering Dragon Quest is basically the JRPG template in general and already informed the franchise's design.
Plus it's not like Pokémon hadn't pulled level grind fuckery beforehand. *stares at GSC*
Yeah, most of the time I'm not even dipping into my TM stash for my in-game team, even if I'm playing on a save file where I have no need to "save" TMs. And then when I do it's often for field utility moves like Dig or Thief or something.
Like if you're not doing a Nuzlocke or the Battle Frontier or whatever then you really don't need to stress about maximizing the potential for every single move slot on your team.
Actually, this only applies to the account that the Pokemon initially was sent to. If you trade to another account that restriction doesn’t apply. It’s a pretty unfair restriction, my guess is this to ensure that players have to buy actual Pokemon games should they want the best Pokemon statistically- ensuring profit for TPC at the player expense.
I think even the worst level curve and grinding 'requirement' in GSC is not as bad as Colosseum's.
I didn't mind the grinding when I played Colosseum, and I used Plusle. It pulls double duty in both leveling up your party and purifying Shadow Pokemon, and the mook fights being reasonably challenging means it's still a fairly engaging process trying to keep your underleveled mon alive to optimize exp gain.
Honestly, I kinda wish there was more need to level grind, since when you're just battling to purify Shadow Pokemon, you're just mindlessly clicking Shadow Rush over and over hoping for Hyper Mode. It's not fun and you'll have a more enjoyable time putting down the game and doing something else while Wes vibrates in Agate.
Honestly, I kinda wish there was more need to level grind, since when you're just battling to purify Shadow Pokemon, you're just mindlessly clicking Shadow Rush over and over hoping for Hyper Mode. It's not fun and you'll have a more enjoyable time putting down the game and doing something else while Wes vibrates in Agate.
