(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon

Then call it "Life Drain" or something if we need a name for a hypothetical upgraded version.

Leech Life's distribution overhaul is also weird because it's not like Bug-Draining Coverage is a Tier-0 move or anything that would break a Pokemon as far as I can tell. It's mediocre coverage, and for actual Bugs, most of them have a STAB about that strong anyway if they use Phys. If they insist on buffing instead of a variant, it's not like any current holder gets absurd from the existing move since it was so weak as to inevitably be replaced even in early-game Movepools.
 
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I fucking hate it here why can't we get ports of old mainline games at this level. Game Freak listen if you genuinely care so little then please just commission Bandai or Square or ILCA or whoever the fuck to do FF Pixel Remasters but for Gens 1-5.

But seriously. We got Pokemon Ranger and Mystery Dungeon Explorers on Wii U eshop but no DPPt. Puzzle League, OG Snap and now the Stadium duology are on Switch but no sign of RBY. What is their problem? Sorry if I sound a bit heated over videogames here, and I especially don't wanna be overly accusatory of Game Freak, but at a certain point I just gotta throw my hands up in the air and go "Aight bro, what's the gameplan here?".

I already made a post along this wavelength like a year ago where I said it was my biggest problem with the current state of Pokemon. I stand by that opinion and if anything it's only gotten worse. Pokemon has reached the age where a bunch of the marketing, merchandise and tie-ins now more than ever emphasize the overall legacy of the series rather than any one specific region or generation, and yet they refuse to open up that legacy to new players. Hey kid, like that cool guy named Wallace on that recent secret rare you pulled in our latest TCG set? Oooh, how about that awesome Sygna Suit we added for Rosa in Masters? Ain't she neat? Look at these lovingly crafted animations of the most iconic moments from past regions! Don't you wanna play those yourself? Don't you wanna experience those Pokemon, characters and scenes as they were originally created, in the palm of your hands? Well too bad!
 
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I fucking hate it here why can't we get ports of old mainline games at this level. Game Freak listen if you genuinely care so little then please just commission Bandai or Square or ILCA or whoever the fuck to do FF Pixel Remasters but for Gens 1-5.

But seriously. We got Pokemon Ranger and Mystery Dungeon Explorers on Wii U eshop but no DPPt. Puzzle League, OG Snap and now the Stadium duology are on Switch but no sign of RBY. What is their problem? Sorry if I sound a bit heated over videogames here, and I especially don't wanna be overly accusatory of Game Freak, but at a certain point I just gotta throw my hands up in the air and go "Aight bro, what's the gameplan here?".

I already made a post along this wavelength like a year ago where I said it was my biggest problem with the current state of Pokemon. I stand by that opinion and if anything it's only gotten worse. Pokemon has reached the age where a bunch of the marketing, merchandise and tie-ins now more than ever emphasize the overall legacy of the series rather than any one specific region or generation, and yet they refuse to open up that legacy to new players. Hey kid, like that cool guy named Wallace on that recent secret rare you pulled in our latest TCG set? Oooh, how about that awesome Sygna Suit we added for Rosa in Masters? Ain't she neat? Look at these lovingly crafted animations of the most iconic moments from past regions! Don't you wanna play those yourself? Don't you wanna experience those Pokemon, characters and scenes as they were originally created, in the palm of your hands? Well too bad!
It could be worse. It could be Fire Emblem, which is doing a lot of the same focus on legacy characters despite still having significant portions of that legacy being Japan-only.

Unfortunately, in Pokemon's case, I have a feeling that the issue is going to get worse instead of better. The revisits to old regions are increasingly their own things instead of retelling the original stories, which means that the series having consistent revisits is becoming less helpful as a way of exploring any stories that someone may have missed the first time around.
 
It could be worse. It could be Fire Emblem, which is doing a lot of the same focus on legacy characters despite still having significant portions of that legacy being Japan-only.
FE having 5 of its games on NES & SNES means that a lot of its legacy gets secured...in Japan. So that's something.

Still wanna know what bizarre set of circumstances lead to the Shadow Dragon NES switch localization, though.
Unfortunately, in Pokemon's case, I have a feeling that the issue is going to get worse instead of better. The revisits to old regions are increasingly their own things instead of retelling the original stories, which means that the series having consistent revisits is becoming less helpful as a way of exploring any stories that someone may have missed the first time around.
Honestly I'd say the revisits still retain enough of the original DNA that the difference is neglible and people interested in "revisiting" will just...not care?



And then, of course, there's BDSP....
 
Honestly I'd say the revisits still retain enough of the original DNA that the difference is neglible and people interested in "revisiting" will just...not care?
Let's Go for Kanto? Maybe. Legends: Arceus for Sinnoh? About the only thing that's the same is the geography. It has a lot of references to DPPt, but it is not a substitute for them. BDSP may not have been much of a step forward, but they aren't 100m to the side.
 
Let's Go for Kanto? Maybe. Legends: Arceus for Sinnoh? About the only thing that's the same is the geography. It has a lot of references to DPPt, but it is not a substitute for them. BDSP may not have been much of a step forward, but they aren't 100m to the side.
Legends Arceus revisted Sinnoh in a roundabout, significantly more original way yes but also it's physically impossible for me to care that it's different when BDSP is right there
 
I think the scenario Ironmage is describing is if/when we get another game like Legends but this time there's no accompanying regular remake because the subseries/general idea of returning to an old region in a fresh new way is established enough to where something like BDSP won't need to be pumped out as a weird overly cautious crutch. I think this is a very possible and even likely scenario, but that's neither here nor there.

Heck, remakes/revisits need to be preserved too! Daily reminder that HGSS is older now than GSC was when it came out.
 
I think the scenario Ironmage is describing is if/when we get another game like Legends but this time there's no accompanying regular remake because the subseries/general idea of returning to an old region in a fresh new way is established enough to where something like BDSP won't need to be pumped out as a weird overly cautious crutch. I think this is a very possible and even likely scenario, but that's neither here nor there.

Heck, remakes/revisits need to be preserved too! Daily reminder that HGSS is older now than GSC was when it came out.
BDSP sold gangbusters in a 1 month time span somehow I don't think they're going to abandon that fully for the sake of full LA styled games moving forward
 
One of the weirder things about Pokemon Colosseum is that there is absolutely no way to see any Gen I Pokemon not in the Hoenn Dex without trading them over from the GBA games. What makes it even odder is that the Gen II evolutions of those Pokemon are allowed to appear, most glaringly they were among four catchable Pokemon in the game: the starter Espeon and Umbreon (who are always Male so that way player's couldn't get Eevee, Vaporeon, Jolteon, or Flareon before FRLG made Ditto available), the Shadow Hitmontop(whose species is always Male so no Tyrogue and thus Hitmonlee and Hitmonchan) and the Japan-only Shadow Scizor(who is always Male so no Scyther). For those that are NOT catchable, most of them skill appear in the rosters of trainers, but their Gen I relatives who are also not in the Hoenn dex are completely absent.

In fact, the only non-Gen II Pokemon catchable in Colosseum are all Gen III Pokemon. You can't even get any Gen I Pokemon that are native to Hoenn.
 
One of the weirder things about Pokemon Colosseum is that there is absolutely no way to see any Gen I Pokemon not in the Hoenn Dex without trading them over from the GBA games. What makes it even odder is that the Gen II evolutions of those Pokemon are allowed to appear, most glaringly they were among four catchable Pokemon in the game: the starter Espeon and Umbreon (who are always Male so that way player's couldn't get Eevee, Vaporeon, Jolteon, or Flareon before FRLG made Ditto available), the Shadow Hitmontop(whose species is always Male so no Tyrogue and thus Hitmonlee and Hitmonchan) and the Japan-only Shadow Scizor(who is always Male so no Scyther). For those that are NOT catchable, most of them skill appear in the rosters of trainers, but their Gen I relatives who are also not in the Hoenn dex are completely absent.

In fact, the only non-Gen II Pokemon catchable in Colosseum are all Gen III Pokemon. You can't even get any Gen I Pokemon that are native to Hoenn.
I mean that's not weird, that was clearly a purposeful design conceit likely since FRLG was mid-development and clearly where they wanted the Gen 1 pokemon to be brought in full with. Meanwhile Colosseum was designed to get them access to (most of the ) gen 2 mons; as such they also did not want to even show the other non-gen 1 mons probably so you don't wonder why you can't catch them .

So in that light the weirder thing is that last sentence, not the ones before it. In total there are a grand total of 4 pokemon who you couldn't get in RS but still show up in trainer rosters:
-Blissey, on Venus's Deep Colosseum set
-Porygon2 on a one of the "elite 4" type trainers for the Realgem final gauntlet
-Slowking, on Evice's team
-Scizor, also on Evice's team. As you also noted you could get this one out of the E-reader cards.

And it's just like...why, though? If you didn't want the player to capture them, okay (Blissey in particular is understandable, being Female only and obviously they don't want you getting Chansey), but why include them at all? Bit of an unenforced error; it's not like they included the various babies (there's TONS of trainers with weak unevolved pokemon so it'd have been easy to have babies you can't capture), Unown, Steelix or Politoed anywhere. 3 of these are in the same string of 5 battles, 2 of them being on the same team, and then the last one is deep in the post game so it's not even a thing of "oh you see them all the time, frustrating but whatever" type deal.
And of course the added weirdness of they could have let you catch Porygon2, Slowking and (non-ereader) Scizor pretty easily? Porygon2 cant breed without a ditto and the latter 2 could just be locked to male. Just put them on different trainers.

Honestly feels like an oversight sometimes.
 
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I fucking hate it here why can't we get ports of old mainline games at this level. Game Freak listen if you genuinely care so little then please just commission Bandai or Square or ILCA or whoever the fuck to do FF Pixel Remasters but for Gens 1-5.

But seriously. We got Pokemon Ranger and Mystery Dungeon Explorers on Wii U eshop but no DPPt. Puzzle League, OG Snap and now the Stadium duology are on Switch but no sign of RBY. What is their problem? Sorry if I sound a bit heated over videogames here, and I especially don't wanna be overly accusatory of Game Freak, but at a certain point I just gotta throw my hands up in the air and go "Aight bro, what's the gameplan here?".

I already made a post along this wavelength like a year ago where I said it was my biggest problem with the current state of Pokemon. I stand by that opinion and if anything it's only gotten worse. Pokemon has reached the age where a bunch of the marketing, merchandise and tie-ins now more than ever emphasize the overall legacy of the series rather than any one specific region or generation, and yet they refuse to open up that legacy to new players. Hey kid, like that cool guy named Wallace on that recent secret rare you pulled in our latest TCG set? Oooh, how about that awesome Sygna Suit we added for Rosa in Masters? Ain't she neat? Look at these lovingly crafted animations of the most iconic moments from past regions! Don't you wanna play those yourself? Don't you wanna experience those Pokemon, characters and scenes as they were originally created, in the palm of your hands? Well too bad!

Forgive my ignorance since I never had a Wii U (did anyone actually?) but how did Ranger work on that?
 
I mean that's not weird, that was clearly a purposeful design conceit likely since FRLG was mid-development and clearly where they wanted the Gen 1 pokemon to be brought in full with. Meanwhile Colosseum was designed to get them access to (most of the ) gen 2 mons; as such they also did not want to even show the other non-gen 1 mons probably so you don't wonder why you can't catch them .

So in that light the weirder thing is that last sentence, not the ones before it. In total there are a grand total of 4 pokemon who you couldn't get in RS but still show up in trainer rosters:
-Blissey, on Venus's Deep Colosseum set
-Porygon2 on a one of the "elite 4" type trainers for the Realgem final gauntlet
-Slowking, on Evice's team
-Scizor, also on Evice's team. As you also noted you could get this one out of the E-reader cards.

And it's just like...why, though? If you didn't want the player to capture them, okay (Blissey in particular is understandable, being Female only and obviously they don't want you getting Chansey), but why include them at all? Bit of an unenforced error; it's not like they included the various babies (there's TONS of trainers with weak unevolved pokemon so it'd have been easy to have babies you can't capture), Unown, Steelix or Politoed anywhere. 3 of these are in the same string of 5 battles, 2 of them being on the same team, and then the last one is deep in the post game so it's not even a thing of "oh you see them all the time, frustrating but whatever" type deal.
And of course the added weirdness of they could have let you catch Porygon2, Slowking and (non-ereader) Scizor pretty easily? Porygon2 cant breed without a ditto and the latter 2 could just be locked to male. Just put them on different trainers.

Honestly feels like an oversight sometimes.
(Venus has a Steelix in her first battle)
 
(Venus has a Steelix in her first battle)
Bah, knew there was a place I forgot to check. I went down the pokeearth list on serebii and must have skipped the Station you fight her with (side note its really funny looking at those old serebii pages and their ancient tables...and gonzap's erroneous Growlithe lol).

The GamePad has a stylus.

I think their excuse for not re-releasing mainline Pokémon games very often is that they want to preserve the trading aspect, which isn't easy to emulate.
That's probably definitely part of it. I don't think any of the GBA or DS VC titles supported multiplayer at all, likely not helped by not...really...being able to do local multiplayer. It definitely feels like a gamefreak/nintendo way of looking at them: we can't just bring Pokemon over without trading! But also we can't just implement trading in an emulator on a console that can't even do it to begin with.

Also there was no Bank on Wii U, and they really wanted you to take your Pokemon with you

Probably because the Wii U was a big flop so they didn't see it worth putting the effort in on those hypothetical VC titles or nor putting Bank on the Wii U that would exist purely to interact with VC titles and nothing else.

if it were more successful, who knows, maybe they'd have gone whole hog with both?

the wii u was such a flop people barely knew the gamepad had a touch screen with a stylus
 
Tbh when the Wii U first came out I thought it was similar to the DSi for about a month. Though that may have been because I was caught up in Year 12 exams and post-grad celebrations. (also cos it had no new interesting games with it!)
 
Rock Head and Reckless affect different groups of moves. Or more specifically, when they were giving Hitmonlee a signature ability in Gen 4, the devs were like "well we want to buff the Jump Kicks but there aren't enough kick moves to justify making Iron Foot" so instead of updating what moves were considered "recoil moves" to include the Jump Kicks, they created an entirely new category that was just the recoil moves + the Jump Kicks.

No Pokemon with Rock Head learns Jump Kick or High Jump Kick, so it wouldn't have affected any game balance. It also would have opened up the possibility for a risk-free Jump Kick user in the future, which would have been neat.
 
Rock Head and Reckless affect different groups of moves. Or more specifically, when they were giving Hitmonlee a signature ability in Gen 4, the devs were like "well we want to buff the Jump Kicks but there aren't enough kick moves to justify making Iron Foot" so instead of updating what moves were considered "recoil moves" to include the Jump Kicks, they created an entirely new category that was just the recoil moves + the Jump Kicks.

No Pokemon with Rock Head learns Jump Kick or High Jump Kick, so it wouldn't have affected any game balance. It also would have opened up the possibility for a risk-free Jump Kick user in the future, which would have been neat.
I mean that capability does exist, just give High Jump Kick to something with Magic Guard instead of Rock Head.
 
Rock Head and Reckless affect different groups of moves. Or more specifically, when they were giving Hitmonlee a signature ability in Gen 4, the devs were like "well we want to buff the Jump Kicks but there aren't enough kick moves to justify making Iron Foot" so instead of updating what moves were considered "recoil moves" to include the Jump Kicks, they created an entirely new category that was just the recoil moves + the Jump Kicks.

No Pokemon with Rock Head learns Jump Kick or High Jump Kick, so it wouldn't have affected any game balance. It also would have opened up the possibility for a risk-free Jump Kick user in the future, which would have been neat.

I mean, at least they bothered to separate the effects, unlike in Gen V where Sheer Force is allowed to negate Life Orb damage because it's a secondary effect.
 
I mean, at least they bothered to separate the effects, unlike in Gen V where Sheer Force is allowed to negate Life Orb damage because it's a secondary effect.
Sheer Force is especially weird since while it can negate effects not directly attached to a move (such as Life Orb and Color Change), it doesn't actually check for them. It only negates these effects if the attack used is already being affected by Sheer Force.
 
BDSP sold gangbusters in a 1 month time span somehow I don't think they're going to abandon that fully for the sake of full LA styled games moving forward

A bit late to the conversation, but I wouldn't use sales to determine whether they would find it ideal to continue doing BDSP-styled "faithful remakes" going forward.

The thing with Pokemon in particular is that it's practically guaranteed to sell well because the name brand of Pokemon is just that powerful. Pokemon is a powerhouse franchise, and any game with "Pokemon" attached to it is guaranteed to sell multi millions because of the sheer brand power behind Pokemon. I think everyone in the room as far as the companies go, not just the developers like Game Freak, but also the higher up corporations including TPC and Nintendo, is probably fully aware of this.

BDSP selling well was practically a given in this regard. It didn't sell gangbusters because of anything particularly unique to it. It sold well because it's Pokemon. And of course, it came out in the holiday season as usual for Black Friday and Christmas. It was of course going to sell superbly given those circumstances. And the thing is that its sales weren't particularly exceptional for a Pokemon game either. Its sales are about as on par as any other Pokemon game would sell. So I don't think BDSP selling would particularly encourage them to continue making games of its type.

What matters more, I imagine, is feedback and attachment. Response to feedback is important, and consumer feedback plays an important role in whether a company should continue making products of a certain type or not. Moreover, attachment value is vital, because it would be less encouraging to continue creating something of a certain type if people don't stick to it in the long term.

Looking at BDSP in particular, observing overall trends, it is notable for two things:

- The attachment level people have had to BDSP is quite low. It sold well in the early days shortly after release, but people dropped it like a rock within months, especially after Legends: Arceus came out. As far as being in the eye of public attention, BDSP rapidly faded into obscurity in lieu of Legends: Arceus. Sword and Shield, meanwhile, despite being older, has still continued to maintain a relatively steady level of attention over two years after release, staying in the center of attention alongside Legends: Arceus and even in the midst of us being in the Scarlet and Violet pre-release period.
- The Japanese fandom's sentiment towards BDSP has been overwhelmingly negative. The folks in the room, when listening to feedback, tend to prioritize feedback from the Japanese audience first and foremost since that is their domestic/home audience, so while we all know Western fandom has a negative opinion towards BDSP, it is especially more apparent that the Japanese fandom shares the exact same sentiments towards BDSP. The Japanese fandom has been excessively critical of BDSP for many of the same reasons many of us here in the West have criticized it, and have also considered it one of, if not the worst game in the franchise. Just recently, BDSP was announced in Japan as having received a "Global Category" reward, and Japanese Pokemon fans immediately took it upon themselves to express their dislike of BDSP. Many have panned it for its glitches, being an overly faithful and bland experience, and have hurled insults at the game calling it a blemish on the Pokemon series and "Shitty Game of the Year". That really reflects a rather poor light on BDSP.

The above two sentiments I feel are more important in determining whether they would want to continue doing BDSP-style "faithful remakes" and combined with the fact that it was inherently a secondary concern and a crutch measure in case Legends: Arceus didn't sell well, I think it's likely they would want to move away from doing BDSP-esque games in the future. The low attachment value and exceedingly negative reception towards BDSP are very notable: BDSP was bought up due to being a remake of a popular game (combiend with Pokemon's brand power) but immediately was followed up with immense disappointment and people dropping it like a rock less than 3 months after release. The nearly universally negative sentiment towards the game combined with how quickly it fell off the face of the Earth after its "new toy" season ended pretty much makes it clear that it's less likely they would want to do this kind of game again in the future.

Plus from Game Freak's perspective, Legends: Arceus was the game they actually wanted to make in the first place. Legends: Arceus selling well is more notable because of that, and especially so given that it was released at an awkward time in the year, and is a singular version mainline game instead of a paired version like most mainline Pokemon games. And not only did PLA sell magnificently, it has been met with very positive reception for the most part, especially from the Japanese fandom, many people loved the direction it took, and it has remained prominent in the public consciousness even while we are now quickly in the midst of SV+Gen 9 hype season. This would *definitely* encourage Game Freak to do more Legends styled games for future past generation revisits.

Anyway, point being, while sales may matter, in this case reception and feedback are very much important factors as well, and so is attachment value to a game in the long term. Especially in this case, sales would likely matter *less* than feedback because in the case of Pokemon, selling well is a given considering Pokemon's brand power, so sales alone cannot be used to determine whether the developers would consider it worth it to continue taking a certain direction with the games moving forward.
 
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