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If You'll Excuse Me, I'll Be Over Here Playing Blue Version (Pokemon Gen7 Rant)

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Al-1701:
I don't know who here plays Pokemon, but this is a rant about the latest generation of Pokemon games and will contain spoilers.  So, be warned.

I recently finished Pokemon Ultra Sun (I got Sun and Moon for Christmas in 2016, but decided to play the Ultra Sun version when I heard it was coming out).  And can I start out with that.  Game Freak, you're on a system that allows for DLC.  Why did you need to make these completely new games?  There is very little altered in the Ultra versions, so you could have easily put the additions in a DLC pack for ten bucks instead of making a new set of games for 40.

Unfortunately, this is not where my complaints stop.  The 7th generation is the point where Pokemon stopped being fun.  Once I was done with the game, including the aftergame campaigns, I was underwhelmed and not amused.  I hope all the hipsters are happy, because Game Freak finally changed up the formula like you had been whining and sniveling for and the new formula stunk.  This is the first story line in a Pokemon I do not look forward to playing through ever again.

Where to begin with this trainwreck.  Well, let's begin with the characters.  I hate Hau.  I don't even love to hate him like the rivals from the first and second generations.  I just plain hate him.  I hate that dopey grin he always has on his face, I hate how you seem to run into him every two seconds and he wastes your time with five minutes of dialogue which is basically explaining everything your about to be forced to explore anyway (I'll get to that in a minute).  He might as well be floating behind you the entire game going "look, look, listen, listen".  Actually, no, that's what's next.

Why does the PokeDex talk?  Why does it not just talk, but talk constantly?  Why does it have to extend conversations with its banal input that adds nothing but more lines of dialogue to get through?  Why does it have to say something every time you turn on the game?  Who at Game Freak thought this was a good idea, and why did no one say "That's dumb?"  After playing the game, I want to pack Hau and the PokeDex in a rocket and launch them into the sun.

Even Lily got on my nerves.  At least she has a story arc in which she actually grows as a character.  However, she's not the character.  So, her story arc intrudes into a game where it doesn't really matter and feels like a distraction.  If Game Freak wanted to do a story where a character has an arc, then they should drop the nameless, voiceless trainer thing and have you play as that character.  There are plenty of RPG's still out there where you play as a set character with a story to them, and I think playing as Lily probably would have elevated the storytelling compared to viewing by proxy.

Then we get into how they changed up formula.  Gone are gyms and in are...gyms under a different name.  The Island Challenge did not impress me.  The challenges were not too different from the traps in Pokemon gyms, and the Trial Captains and Kahunas were basically the same thing as gym leaders.  The only addition of note were the Totem Pokemon which were just bigger versions of common Pokemon that upped their stats to be a semi-legendary.  They were hard to take down, but were more frustrating than a challenge to be enjoyed since you typically put the Pokemon best able to take them down quickly at the beginning of your team to keep them from getting in a position to sweep your team.  In other words, they're like the bosses from Paper Mario Sticker Star (you know, the one EVERYONE hates).

I also didn't like how you were led by the nose.  I start off where you were being led from place to place on the first island.  I figured it was okay because they were easing you into the game.  However, it didn't stop.  You were led from point A to point B through the entire game.  Even what were usually side quests to partake in at any moment were turned into required story points.  It felt less like a journey of exploration and discovery and more like a guided tour with the most annoying tour guide ever.  The Alola region didn't even feel like that interesting of a place with little capturing my curiosity like previous games did.  Though, this game seemed to force you to do so much, little was left as voluntary (and I was too tired of the force sightseeing to really care what else there was).

Even actual Pokemon battling was pathetic.  So many trainers had just one Pokemon, and you almost never came across one with more than three.  Even in Victory Road (or whatever they called it), even after becoming champion.  Remember when you ran up against trainers with four or five Pokemon as early as just after the first gym?  And I found most of the Alola forms to be underwhelming and inferior to the originals.  Especially Diglett/Dugtrio.  And few of the new additions are Pokemon I would want to use compared earlier kinds.

Then we get to the Limit Breaks I mean Z-moves.  I never used a Z-move in my playthrough.  I was willing to accept Mega Evolutions, but Z-moves are just a step too far.  Stop making these stupid gimmicks.  The games were fine without them.  They were BETTER without them.

The overall story didn't grab me.  Team Skull were fun enough (though their rosters were as bare as any other trainer in this game).  However, they were more a gang of punks (actually they were a gang of the punk trainer class only with gaudy necklaces) with no real impact on the story.  They were Team Rocket without the malicious disregard for life.  Actually, raiding their base was one of the high points of the game.  Aether or whatever they called themselves (I really couldn't care), was almost completely nonexistent for the "dramatic twist" so they had little impact even though their actions were supposed to be driving the story.  The addition of the Ultra Recon squad in the Ultra version was yet another unwelcome distraction.

Really, that's what all of this can be summed up as, it was all distractions.  The previous two generations (as well as Platinum) had given us a sense of grandeur to the events around us.  We were dealing with deep and rich history regarding the local legendary Pokemon and what the evil team was up to.  Here, we suddenly have aliens with this light stealing monster who would have come out of nowhere if it was not drilled into our heads every five minutes whenever the Ultra Recon Squad showed up.  And that was an improvement over the original story where Lily's mother merges with one of the ultra beasts only so she can throw Pokemon at you.

In the end, I found the experience to be a slog I don't feel like repeating.  There are some rays of light.  PokeRide is an improvement over HM's or other moves with field effects.  Would have liked an 8th one (I'm not including Mantine Surf since it was more a mini-game) for like Dive or Dig so there were as many as a normal compliment of HM's (actually, include Dive and Dig and get rid of Mudsdale and the rocky terrain).  Mantine Surf is a blast to play and the best way to rack up BP Game Freak has thought of yet (and you have access to it early).  However, these were superficial to the problems with the game in general.

As the title suggests, I'm starting a new game on the Blue Version.  It'll be one of many times I've played through the original game just for the fun of it.  It's rather basic nowadays, but sometimes basic works.  Really, after slapping way too many bells and whistles on their latest games, Game Freak could stand to get back to basics (by basics I would say where they were in G5) in their next game.

SpaceButtPonies:
Omg finally someone said it!

As you can tell by my name I love pokemon, but Sun and Moon was a HUGE let down, the game pretty much holds your hand the entire way.

With X and Y I LOVED that game, I broke the clock and hit 999.99 hours on it. With SM I barely broke 30...

Leave a Whisper:
I like Hau. He's the type of kid I woulda hung with. I think he's very sweet.

Screw DLC! Its one of the poisons of modern gaming. No thanks Al. Plus Pokemon has been doing this make a superior version formula FOREVER.

Eh Pokemon is Pokemon. Your pretty much doing the same thing here as any other game. Just tweaked a little.

The pokedex is embarrassing.

Lilly is annoying.

The. main character has the best and mildly creepy sociopathic expression EVER!!!

The UB Pokes are uggggly. But they make for some great name jokes. My daughter WT her Buzzwole Arnold and got a buzzwole named Ah-nold in return. XD

My daughter and boyfriend love it.

Cheer up. Gen 2 Crystal is coming out this month.

Pokemon has always been easy and handholdy. Every gen has a teacher, and trainer tip signs and npcs that give you no duh advice.

Kiwi:
Moving to The Toy Box & Games Cupboard forum.

Harmonie:
It's interesting how we both dislike Generation VII, but we have completely different reasons.

For me I wasn't bothered by the island challenges replacing the gyms. I wasn't bothered by "hand-holding" - I'm not even sure I even caught that was even happening.

I was bothered by things like the SOS feature in wild Pokemon battles. You can get caught in an infinite loop where the Pokemon keeps calling for more and it succeeds, which makes it impossible to catch the Pokemon, because they can't be caught when another is on the field. It also makes training weaker Pokemon very hard, because now they're double-teamed.

For that, and other reasons, grinding was just really tedious and frustrating in the games. I didn't want to turn on EXP Share, but I had to because trying to train my Pokemon individually frustrated me too much.

Another reason I didn't really enjoy training or battling in this game is that I felt the difficulty was all over the place. I felt like my Pokemon had stats that were weaker than normal, they were taken out much easier, and their attacks were also much weaker than I remember in previous games. I was made to feel like I was supposed to be training them competitively, worrying about IVs, EVs, etc. and I want none of that. I don't care to spend that much time on a video game. For clarification, I have no problem with those mechanisms existing and competitive players being able to use them, I just don't think that it should ever bleed into the main game.

So it was much harder to judge when I could take out a Pokemon, and it was also very hard to judge when my Pokemon were gong to be taken out. This is where the inconsistency in difficulty comes into play. Some trainers were a cake walk like in previous games, but then you'd run into trainers who smartly used their Pokemon, and their Pokemon seemed to have been trained with better stats. Perhaps some people will like that, but again, I don't. Especially since it is so darn inconsistent. Trainers you'd expect to be smarter like the rival do the dumbest things, meanwhile some random trainer will surprise you.

Next, the region felt so limiting. I've never felt so limited in a Pokemon game. You can only fish in certain spots, and Surf is very limited compared to previous games... Like you can only surf in very small spots, a strange decision for a tropical region. This may be part of the "hand-holding" that people are complaining about. The paths are just too linear, too small.

The one thing that just really killed it in the end for me, though, was the fact that there is no National Pokedex. So that means that Pokemon that aren't in the Alola Pokedex will register nowhere. There is no in-game way whatsoever to track catching Pokemon outside of the Alola Pokedex. This is unforgivable. Combine this with the QR feature that shows you Pokemon outside of the Alola Pokedex. What in the world is the point of that? The fact that they've been shown to you is registered nowhere. It's completely pointless.

It was at that point that I completely lost interest in Sun, and most certainly didn't care to pick up US/UM.

Generally, I think changing some things up is the right direction to go. It's nice to see some inspiration in a series every once in a while. Just look at The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. However, Pokemon Generation VII ain't no BoTW. It's come to the point that I don't think that Gamefreak even knows what they're doing when they try to change things up. I also found Generation III to be disappointing. Perhaps it's just best that Pokemon remains a very conservative series. It seems like that's what Gamefreak does best... This generation is a flop.

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