Unpopular opinions

[Lontra Assassina]

I'm bothered by the perception people have of Sun & Moon, especially regarding the first island. Yeah, the game can be a bit intrusive with certain tutorials and the fact that they all have bespoke cutscenes contributed to how people see Melemele as "tutorial island".

That being said, labeling this first part of the game as just tutorials is just plain incorrect. A lot more time is spent on characterizing the cast and setting up arcs that will pay off much later into the game. The story just wouldn't be half as good if they didn't spend the time making sure you knew these people early on!

Besides, the pacing early on is important to the roleplaying experience. Unlike previous games, the adventure starts small, making you explore the local neighborhood and establishing a sense of place to these early areas that are usually brushed over by the narrative. This, in turn, gives more narrative weight to the moment you and the crew get to leave Melemele to explore new horizons. It gives a sense of adventure that feels earned in a way previous games haven't really captured.

This is not me saying the games are faultless: not being able to access the Pokémon Center until one hour in is aggressively stupid, and if the game ever gets a remaster someday they better add a text speed-up function at the very least. However, brushing off the first island as just "pointless tutorials to be skipped" is straight up not knowing how stories work.

 

[Bakugames]

the pacing of sumo is completely fine, they just needed a skip button, both for people who want to replay it and already know the story and characters, and also so people who dont gaf can skip it and not make five billion posts on how the game sucks bc theres no skip button

 

[pika pal]

My problem with SuMo is that a slow start is a very quick way to lose players like myself after Gen 6, for all its faults, had you on your way at a decent clip, and the "start small and open things up" approach didn't really pan out for me with Sun and Moon's world design since a lot of the area design still felt like connected landmarks rather than a large world map ala 3D Zelda games when you reach Hyrule/Hyrule Field, or Gens 8 and 9 having those huge expanses you can go multiple ways with off the bat.

Personal bias because I have family from Hawaii and thus have been there quite a bit myself, but it had the same structure and feeling as"what Island are we touring today on the vacation?" where instead of one world it was a collection of locations segmented from each other. In turn the later islands didn't feel like the world expanding to me so much as "okay what's the next sequence I'm railroading through?"

Gen 7 with Alola as the setting is quite possibly the WORST Pokemon region they could have chosen in terms of starting with this kind of pacing. This is compounded by Pokemon's production values feeling anywhere from 5 to 15 years behind the times for trying to tell a more ambitious story (something it's STILL struggling with in Gen 9 even if I have felt more receptive personally).

My go-to comparison on this topic if Final Fantasy X thanks to a similar linear structure, interpersonal character conflicts (lasting scars from parental mistreatment), and player/cast structure (Tidus in that game being your POV but not necessarily the Pivotal character for the story). I can give some amount of leeway since even Launch PS2 is more resources than a 3DS game has to work with presentation wise, but it still begs the question why the series is lacking in production values of predecessors and contemporaries (Bravely Default ~3 years prior on the same system ALSO had voice acting for major cutscenes with a comparable cast size) as well as basic QoL features (a fast forward/cutscene skip is a basic feature that FFX was criticized for lacking in 2001) that all bog the pacing down. A lot of RPGs infamously will alternate between higher-quality animation for major setpieces, and static model conversations with stock animations and minimal camera movement for just back-and-forth: Pokemon's issue is that even the majority of its "big" cutscenes tend to use the latter approach. In 2D this was tolerated a bit more because the sprites were always much more stylized/abstract approximations of what was unfolding, but the 3D models have significantly more detail that they do not put to use.

It's to the extent that the gameplay and story delivery actively get in the way of each other (they can still land, but are less than the sum of their parts), and I think is one reason people were more critical of the series since its jump to 3D: I can't just ignore the story if that's not what I want to engage with on this run, I must sit through story sequences reintroducing or reiterating information in stale, voiceless, minimally animated cutscene before I can resume interacting. Pokemon is trying to write bigger stories, but they're not telling it any more effectively than in the "excuse plot" days, yielding the equivalent of a scriptwriter turning in a first draft and storyboards for what should be a completed project.

tl;dr Sun and Moon have good story, but dear lord, it is HORRIBLY told and actively conflicts with the game as a medium compared to other iterations like the Manga and Anime of the same generation.

 

[Bakugames]

actively conflicts with the game as a medium compared to other iterations like the Manga and Anime of the same generation.

I'll have to disagree here, because the sumo manga is probably one of the most dogshit manga arcs I've read in my entire life, somehow even the swsh pokespe arc is better paced and easy to follow than sumo, even though its boring as fuck

 

[Yung Dramps]

I'll have to disagree here, because the sumo manga is probably one of the most dogshit manga arcs I've read in my entire life, somehow even the swsh pokespe arc is better paced and easy to follow than sumo, even though its boring as fuck

See the fact the SM arc of Special is (seemingly, haven't read it) debatably a worse told story than the actual game really amuses me. Books like it and the various Sonic comics should have better storytelling essentially by default because that's literally all they do! They don't have to think about the bajillion other considerations of game design that Game Freak's writers have to take into account, and in the case of direct adaptations by coming out after the game they have at least a little bit of time to look at audience reception to its story beats. If the SM chapter is really as bad as you say then that's an absolutely huge, embarrassing failure

 

[Bakugames]

See the fact the SM arc of Special is (seemingly, haven't read it) debatably a worse told story than the actual game really amuses me. Books like it and the various Sonic comics should have better storytelling essentially by default because that's literally all they do! They don't have to think about the bajillion other considerations of game design that Game Freak's writers have to take into account, and in the case of direct adaptations by coming out after the game they have at least a little bit of time to look at audience reception to its story beats. If the SM chapter is really as bad as you say then that's an absolutely huge, embarrassing failure

kusaka tried to fit every single point in the games as a story point. its a writing mess of an arc and its only value has been reading to laugh at it tbh. it's the main reason people don't think its as bad as swsh, because the swsh arc has sooo many chapters where nothing happens, something exciting does, it gets dropped and then more of nothing happens. At least sumo is so incompetent its funny

 

[Lontra Assassina]

My problem with SuMo is that a slow start is a very quick way to lose players like myself after Gen 6, for all its faults, had you on your way at a decent clip, and the "start small and open things up" approach didn't really pan out for me with Sun and Moon's world design since a lot of the area design still felt like connected landmarks rather than a large world map ala 3D Zelda games when you reach Hyrule/Hyrule Field, or Gens 8 and 9 having those huge expanses you can go multiple ways with off the bat.

Personal bias because I have family from Hawaii and thus have been there quite a bit myself, but it had the same structure and feeling as"what Island are we touring today on the vacation?" where instead of one world it was a collection of locations segmented from each other. In turn the later islands didn't feel like the world expanding to me so much as "okay what's the next sequence I'm railroading through?"

Gen 7 with Alola as the setting is quite possibly the WORST Pokemon region they could have chosen in terms of starting with this kind of pacing. This is compounded by Pokemon's production values feeling anywhere from 5 to 15 years behind the times for trying to tell a more ambitious story (something it's STILL struggling with in Gen 9 even if I have felt more receptive personally).

My go-to comparison on this topic if Final Fantasy X thanks to a similar linear structure, interpersonal character conflicts (lasting scars from parental mistreatment), and player/cast structure (Tidus in that game being your POV but not necessarily the Pivotal character for the story). I can give some amount of leeway since even Launch PS2 is more resources than a 3DS game has to work with presentation wise, but it still begs the question why the series is lacking in production values of predecessors and contemporaries (Bravely Default ~3 years prior on the same system ALSO had voice acting for major cutscenes with a comparable cast size) as well as basic QoL features (a fast forward/cutscene skip is a basic feature that FFX was criticized for lacking in 2001) that all bog the pacing down. A lot of RPGs infamously will alternate between higher-quality animation for major setpieces, and static model conversations with stock animations and minimal camera movement for just back-and-forth: Pokemon's issue is that even the majority of its "big" cutscenes tend to use the latter approach. In 2D this was tolerated a bit more because the sprites were always much more stylized/abstract approximations of what was unfolding, but the 3D models have significantly more detail that they do not put to use.

It's to the extent that the gameplay and story delivery actively get in the way of each other (they can still land, but are less than the sum of their parts), and I think is one reason people were more critical of the series since its jump to 3D: I can't just ignore the story if that's not what I want to engage with on this run, I must sit through story sequences reintroducing or reiterating information in stale, voiceless, minimally animated cutscene before I can resume interacting. Pokemon is trying to write bigger stories, but they're not telling it any more effectively than in the "excuse plot" days, yielding the equivalent of a scriptwriter turning in a first draft and storyboards for what should be a completed project.

tl;dr Sun and Moon have good story, but dear lord, it is HORRIBLY told and actively conflicts with the game as a medium compared to other iterations like the Manga and Anime of the same generation.

I don't get this notion that SuMo have "bad production values". You can argue that about the Switch games, sure, but SuMo isn't falling behind the 3DS big hitters (without counting mostly on-rails stuff like Kid Icarus).

I also disagree with the point of how cutscenes are presented, partially because I don't value voice acting as much when it comes to immersion (I play a lot of older games and games made by small teams). Like yeah, Bravely Default has a lot of voiced lines, but most of the story is conveyed in flat visual novel-esque sequences, while SuMo has a lot of intentional camera movement in a 3D space, so you could argue in favor of any of those when it comes to production values.

I don't think you're wrong for not vibing with SuMo, I've bounced off Xenoblade because it does nothing for me in a gameplay or storytelling sense, despite knowing why people see it as a masterpiece. It's fine to be disinterested, but it's not necessarily the games' fault.

(Also I wanna make clear that I'm not here saying "SuMo is worth it because of the plot", I also think the gameplay is the best in the series and it helps to elevate the plot, but that's another story)

 

[Yung Dramps]

I don't get this notion that SuMo have "bad production values". You can argue that about the Switch games, sure, but SuMo isn't falling behind the 3DS big hitters (without counting mostly on-rails stuff like Kid Icarus).

I also disagree with the point of how cutscenes are presented, partially because I don't value voice acting as much when it comes to immersion (I play a lot of older games and games made by small teams). Like yeah, Bravely Default has a lot of voiced lines, but most of the story is conveyed in flat visual novel-esque sequences, while SuMo has a lot of intentional camera movement in a 3D space, so you could argue in favor of any of those when it comes to production values.

I don't think you're wrong for not vibing with SuMo, I've bounced off Xenoblade because it does nothing for me in a gameplay or storytelling sense, despite knowing why people see it as a masterpiece. It's fine to be disinterested, but it's not necessarily the games' fault.

(Also I wanna make clear that I'm not here saying "SuMo is worth it because of the plot", I also think the gameplay is the best in the series and it helps to elevate the plot, but that's another story)

Adding to this I'm also pretty confused by the assertion that the bulk of Alola's major story setpieces are bland simple back and forths with the overworld models. Pika pal was talking about the 3D games in general granted (maybe this is more of a problem with SV? Paldeaheads please inform me) but looking at SM/USUM you got full, very well-animated cutscenes for:
-The intro sequence
-Tapu Koko saving the player
-The Totems' intros
-Nebby's final evolution
-Nihilego possessing Lusamine
-Necrozma merging with Nebby and becoming Ultra Necrozma

Any really important beat that doesn't have a dedicated cutscene tends to be pretty lowkey (e.g. a lot of Lillie's big moments in the second half). This isn't even counting stuff like in-battle trainer animations!

 

[Sonikku A]

See the fact the SM arc of Special is (seemingly, haven't read it) debatably a worse told story than the actual game really amuses me. Books like it and the various Sonic comics should have better storytelling essentially by default because that's literally all they do! They don't have to think about the bajillion other considerations of game design that Game Freak's writers have to take into account, and in the case of direct adaptations by coming out after the game they have at least a little bit of time to look at audience reception to its story beats. If the SM chapter is really as bad as you say then that's an absolutely huge, embarrassing failure

Yeah, weird both IDW Sonic and later Pokemon Spe fail so hard for adapting

Admittedly for Spe it was admitted frustration with playing Gen 7, so there's some honest admittance. Rotomdex being immediately shat on gets me

 

[Yung Dramps]

Rotomdex being immediately shat on gets me

Rotom dex slander? KILL THIS MANGA IMMEDIATELY!!!!!

 

[Bakugames]

kusaka has a contempt for sumo while also forcing himself to adapt everything in the games as main parts of the story. he brought his misery upon himself tbh, while older games werent nearly as complex as sumo + usum, he had the sense that some parts of the world would just appear once and that's ok. he got caught up trying to make a grandiose plot that gets completely shat on by the games themselves lmfao

also why did he try to give the pikachu clothes relevance

 

[AztecCroc]

kusaka has a contempt for sumo while also forcing himself to adapt everything in the games as main parts of the story. he brought his misery upon himself tbh, while older games werent nearly as complex as sumo + usum, he had the sense that some parts of the world would just appear once and that's ok. he got caught up trying to make a grandiose plot that gets completely shat on by the games themselves lmfao

also why did he try to give the pikachu clothes relevance

So basically exactly the same as the Archie Sonic comics then.

 

[pokemon4eva]

kusaka has a contempt for sumo while also forcing himself to adapt everything in the games as main parts of the story. he brought his misery upon himself tbh, while older games werent nearly as complex as sumo + usum, he had the sense that some parts of the world would just appear once and that's ok. he got caught up trying to make a grandiose plot that gets completely shat on by the games themselves lmfao

also why did he try to give the pikachu clothes relevance

I said before in another thread that the main problem about the SM Special Arc is that it flows so quickly to register anything. I was about to say Kusaka had trouble adapting this one because of how story heavy the game is compared to the ones before it, but then I remember that the BW arc was adapting a game that focused on plot more than its predecessors and it did a pretty good job overall! So in that case, considering the games were getting released yearly consistently in the 2010s, I think it's safe to say he wasn't doing his best having to handle many arcs at the same time. BW2 had multiple hiatuses and its period extended throughout three generations, and it really shows with how that arc went...

Also I need some evidence that states Kusaka hates sumo bc of the new trend of some SM fans being so "oh, NO ONE gets these games like I do! It's not that they have pacing issues, everyone else is the problem!". They quickly became more annoying than the BW crowd that blames pokefans for getting the low sales number of 15.64 million units.

 

[ant4456]

Also I need some evidence that states Kusaka hates sumo bc of the new trend of some SM fans being so "oh, NO ONE gets these games like I do! It's not that they have pacing issues, everyone else is the problem!". They quickly became more annoying than the BW crowd that blames pokefans for getting the low sales number of 15.64 million units.

Maybe that's because people actually don't get these games like we do lol, also yeah that's the cycle it's our turn at the wheel. It's been like 5 years of Gen 5 dickriding, and before that it was years of Gen 4 dickriding, Gen 6 is probably getting skipped at this point so it's Gen 7's turn for people to start appreciating it.

Give it 7-10 years for Gen 9 to be the game getting appreciated, and then Gen 10, and then etc.

 

[Yung Dramps]

Also I need some evidence that states Kusaka hates sumo bc of the new trend of some SM fans being so "oh, NO ONE gets these games like I do! It's not that they have pacing issues, everyone else is the problem!". They quickly became more annoying than the BW crowd that blames pokefans for getting the low sales number of 15.64 million units.

 

[Coronis]

Maybe that's because people actually don't get these games like we do lol, also yeah that's the cycle it's our turn at the wheel. It's been like 5 years of Gen 5 dickriding, and before that it was years of Gen 4 dickriding, Gen 6 is probably getting skipped at this point so it's Gen 7's turn for people to start appreciating it.

Give it 7-10 years for Gen 9 to be the game getting appreciated, and then Gen 10, and then etc.

Yeah I don’t get this trend at all. My favourites don’t really change from when I initially play them. I still prefer 2, 4, 7 and will continue riding them as I always have (now 9 too).

 

[Worldie]

Yeah I don’t get this trend at all. My favourites don’t really change from when I initially play them. I still prefer 2, 4, 7 and will continue riding them as I always have (now 9 too).

Allow me to introduce you to the concept of "rose tinted glasses"

 

[Coronis]

Allow me to introduce you to the concept of "rose tinted glasses"

Oh I’m pretty sure my Gen 2 love is a lot of rose tinted glasses and nostalgia.

But I stick to my guns.

Gen2forlyf

The Weird Tree doesn’t like the Squirtbottle!

The Weird Tree attacked!

Great moment in videogame history imo.

 

[ant4456]

Yeah I don’t get this trend at all. My favourites don’t really change from when I initially play them. I still prefer 2, 4, 7 and will continue riding them as I always have (now 9 too).

It's not that people change their favorites, it's more about the cycle of age groups.

If you were 10 when you played Pokemon Red, you were 22 when Pokemon Black came out. You are the primary age demographic of something like Reddit.

Genwunners.

Now you just repeat the cycle for each gen, people who played Gen 4 when they were 10 were around 20 in 2016, Gen 5 around 2019, Gen 6 got skipped and now Gen 7 continues the cycle.

 

[Bakugames]

I'm not even a big xy defender but I wonder why it was skipped. I don't think those games are that egregious and you'd think people would hype shit up like megas again, and the story is not even the worst when it comes to pokemon plots. its a bit barren and unfinished but completely harmless.

 

[ant4456]

I'm not even a big xy defender but I wonder why it was skipped. I don't think those games are that egregious and you'd think people would hype shit up like megas again, and the story is not even the worst when it comes to pokemon plots. its a bit barren and unfinished but completely harmless.

I think a lot of the people from that era are more of ORAS enjoyers nowadays, BDSP sparked the "reappreciation era" where ORAS started being recognized as a great remake. I remember I used to get clowned on for thinking ORAS was better than Emerald, but I see more and more people recognize it as a worthy and lovable entry in the series.

A lot of the 3DS era media has hit its era beyond XY too, Gates to Infinity is ostensibly a Gen 5 spinoff but being on the 3DS has a lot of people loop it into that era (came out in 2013 for most of the world), that game used to be a laughing stock of the PMD community and in the last few years it's become a lot more defended and enjoyed.

I think PLZA has like the last opportunity to kick off XY's "reappreciation era", I know several people who have decided to replay the game in preparation for ZA and I do find the fandom's growing opinions interesting to look at.

 

[Yung Dramps]

I have no objective, scientific data points for this other than this one Japanese poll from 2020 which could easily be an outlier but I've always had this hunch for a while that Kalos is super popular among normies and ultra casual fans who don't participate in online fandom spaces, not unlike Kanto. Whereas our hardcore bubble sees it as this highly controversial franchise turning point, everyone else sees it as "the game with Greninja, Mega Evolution, those awesome bottom screen features and the really good anime".

Again, nothing to go off of besides scattered anecdotes I've collected over the years, but it feels like I'm onto something. I'm sure there were plenty of legitimate artistic considerations behind making Legends Z-A but in the end this is still a business which has access to all kinds of market research we don't and so the choice to go back to Kalos next over the hardcore bubble pick of Unova stands out

For the record there are 100% hardcore XY truthers in the bubble they just aren't super vocal for some reason

 

[Esserise]

For the record there are 100% hardcore XY truthers in the bubble they just aren't super vocal for some reason

The reason is I’ve learned to pick my battles

 

[pika pal]

My honest guess is that it's a combination of XY being popular with "casual" (i.e. less deep-into-fandom-sites) players of the series, and also ostensibly feeling the most underdeveloped of the main-series titles, in that it clearly was aiming to accomplish things it didn't reach when compared to most other entries. Unova by comparison has people wanting more, but its elements don't feel lacking for "meat" on their bones if it's never revisited: compare XY's lackluster rivals, glossing over the resource shortage conflict after Lysandre go boom, or just the existence of AZ as a physical entity rather than just a backstory/myth of the region, all of which feel like elements the story throws in but doesn't use to much effect.

XY is the entry where completing it raised a reaction of "that's it?" moreso than "more please!" with enthusiasm, so revisiting it years later like this makes sense to me under the perspective of "all that stuff we said should be here could be here!" for a hype machine. Comparatively, Unova feels like there's one unexplored thread with it atm in the Original Dragon Myth (since Kyurem already confirmed theories as the shell with the Black/White forms in the sequels) and the rest would be "now you can DO that thing we described in side quests/dialogue for Gen 5" with the Musketeers, Genesect, Mythicals, etc (Genies got moved to PLA so I admittedly wouldn't rule-out expanding other regions' legendaries too).

 

[Yung Dramps]

My honest guess is that it's a combination of XY being popular with "casual" (i.e. less deep-into-fandom-sites) players of the series, and also ostensibly feeling the most underdeveloped of the main-series titles, in that it clearly was aiming to accomplish things it didn't reach when compared to most other entries. Unova by comparison has people wanting more, but its elements don't feel lacking for "meat" on their bones if it's never revisited: compare XY's lackluster rivals, glossing over the resource shortage conflict after Lysandre go boom, or just the existence of AZ as a physical entity rather than just a backstory/myth of the region, all of which feel like elements the story throws in but doesn't use to much effect.

XY is the entry where completing it raised a reaction of "that's it?" moreso than "more please!" with enthusiasm, so revisiting it years later like this makes sense to me under the perspective of "all that stuff we said should be here could be here!" for a hype machine. Comparatively, Unova feels like there's one unexplored thread with it atm in the Original Dragon Myth (since Kyurem already confirmed theories as the shell with the Black/White forms in the sequels) and the rest would be "now you can DO that thing we described in side quests/dialogue for Gen 5" with the Musketeers, Genesect, Mythicals, etc (Genies got moved to PLA so I admittedly wouldn't rule-out expanding other regions' legendaries too).

Undeniably true, but I also suspect there's a casual vs hardcore divide here too. For the former, "Pokemon Z" was essentially shorthand for "The Zygarde Game", a request which has already been satisfied from the title, hence all the memes of Zygarde rising from the dead on release day. On the other hand, stuff like the locked Power Plant door and Southern Kalos (the Teraleak gave us the full scope of it but it had been theorized for many years already) are more esoteric affairs you'd have to be really invested in the franchise to know about. We'll find out once we start getting real information on the game, but if Game Freak's outlook on these elements when designing the game leans closer to the casual perspective (i.e. they're more interested in brand new sequel concepts than offering these bits of "closure") there could be some friction.

Honestly Legends Z-A could potentially be a really interesting art philosophy case study for these reasons.