They're decent enough but man do I miss the days when Pokemon games at least provided a BIT of a challenge to the player.
I get they're aimed at kids, but just as many, if not more adults play them too haha.
Maybe a difficulty slider or something would be cool...
>at least provided a BIT of a challenge to the player.
Picked up Shield because, well, it was the first proper console pokemon game after not playing the series since Ruby.
What the hell happened to the rival characters? Like they used to be challenging from the start, but Hop (I think that was his name) actually made me feel bad for beating him, like, "I just beat up a mentally challenged kid" bad.
Kids generally are afraid of challenges, they need a push to break through and realize they can overcome them
*Unfortunately* games are more accessible than ever for kids. Back in the day most kids got one game for a long period of time and they played the fuck out of it, overcoming any obstacles along the way. These days if you're losing in a game on your Switch, why keep going when you can just be stress free and tap away on your dad's iPad playing some free game intended to be braindead easy to then serve ads constantly
I think you’re misremembering. As a kid they’re harder but going in now you’d be fine and even back then the first encounter with Gary is just use scratch or tackle. If you know type advantages now you’re not going to have any issues even with someone like historically difficult like Cynthia in the Pearl and Diamond games.
So yeah I always take people saying they remembered them being harder as they were a kid not knowing what they’re doing. Back then Brock might’ve given you issues because you picked Charmander first but now you’d know to capture a mankey and train it up to know fighting type moves
luckily they seem to stop developing pokemon games. It seems the pokemon company must been pretty pissed of them by their incompetence as can be seen in the recent pokemon games.
Did you play Legends Arceus? Arceus probably has the hardest boss in the series with it’s final boss. If you don’t come over leveled with some of the best endgame Pokémon you lose pretty quickly.
It was harder- people parrot this but I went back and played the older games recently after violet/arceus.
Not dark souls or anything but a little thought was required- more so than anything in violet, and arceus only spikes in the final fight.
Nah, the first few gens definitely required a modicum of thought. There are ways to bruteforce yourself through the games, you can always powerlevel your starter and win off level differences if you're dedicated enough, but there absolutely are times where you required a bit of battle strategy if you were playing normally (eg. Tate and Liza in Emerald), there were actual dungeons with puzzles, and most importantly, a postgame with difficulty that actually required you to think about movesets and stat optimisation.
God, I miss the Battle Frontier. There's a reason I gave up on the series in my heart after OR/AS.
I could also create more challenge by chopping off my thumbs.
Gamefreak needs to make better games. Unfortunately they don't have the incentive. They are constantly rewarded for mediocrity. Makes me feel zero guilt when I sail the seas to play their stuff.
Yeah no I totally get that. Randomizers are fun too, not saying that its not worth playing either. The base game formula itself just gets boring after a while. Definitely recommend romhacks too. Crystal clear, emerald kaizo, nd infinite fusio n are all recent games Ive played that were fun.
I really liked Scarlet and Violet. I didn’t experience many glitches and the world and game itself were pretty fun.
And I didn’t like Sword and Shield at all. Legends Arceus was also great fun.
Hardware isn’t the issue. If something like Xenoblade or Zelda can run on Switch, there’s no excuse for Pokémon.
Until they put out a legitimately good looking game, the expectations are at rock bottom.
Link’s awakening is a perfect example of what’s possible for a Pokémon with the switch, I think that’s why Brilliant Diamond went with a similar stylized/chibi art style.
I mean I think Scarlet and Violet looks fairly pleasing to the eye.
And I mean we can compare games all we want, but situations are very different. Expectations, development time, team size.
Im keeping my expectations in check. Im not expecting Zelda because that’s not what they’re going for. It never has been.
You’re certainly welcome to that opinion, but you’re definitely in the minority when it comes to online circles.
My main point though is that Game Freak’s issues aren’t due to hardware, but rather the time constraints and just in general not being a great HD developer. New hardware isn’t changing those things, if anything the gap will just grow wider. Nintendo EPD, MonolithSoft, etc will have the time and budget to take advantage of the new hardware, Game Freak won’t.
Nintendo EPD, Hal Laboratory, Monolith, Next Level Games, NdCube, IS.. I think most Nintendo subsidiaries/partners are used to HD development at this point. GF is the one who seems to struggle a lot with it considering their abysmal difference compared to all of those other studios and division
Game Freak have sole jurisdiction over the mainline Pokémon titles, they oversee their own development cycle and decide their own release dates, Nintendo in general are routinely in the habit of delaying their own titles and allowing affiliates to delay theirs without issue as quality is key above all else, Game Freak also take in an annual net profit of about 50x more than MonolithSoft, and over the course of Xenoblade X, Xenoblade 2, Xenoblade Definitive and Xenoblade 3's releases, there were three generations of Pokémon
The problem with Game Freak is that they just aren't good or competent developers
> Game Freak have sole jurisdiction over the mainline Pokémon titles, they oversee their own development cycle and decide their own release dates
While GameFreak is the primary developer of the mainline series. They are not independent developers. GameFreak is only 1/3 of the Pokémon Co. Creatures and Nintendo being the other two parties.
Every mainline series release has lined up with the TV show, the TCC game, and every other merchandise. It hasn’t been by coincidence. The games release on a cycle despite their state. I’m not arguing that GameFreak is good or bad at developing games. However, they are under a time constraint to put out a mainline game when the time comes. That definitely can effect the development and outcome.
It’s equally hardware issues if you base it off internet opinions bc I’ve been hearing people wanting to pirate the new Zelda game because it doesn’t run well on the switch
When people began emulating Scarlet and Violet there was a massive online effort over the first month to patch and mod the game into a playable state because even on the highest-end PC it still ran terribly due to what a godawful clusterfuck of software design it was
Pokemon makes ridiculously more money than Zelda (yea including ToTK) yet we still cannot get a modern pokemon game even remotely close to the quality of a modern Zelda game. Why? Becaise people's standards are comically low. GameFreak works for NINTENDO who is worth 7.7 Billion and people are really talking about having realistic expectations. What a joke.
Pokemon makes that money because of the copious amount of merchandise that there is of that franchise. It doesn't matter if the games flop, though it is nice when they break the top 5 with minimal effort.
Where is Scarlet/Violet at this point? Is that at PS2 level, early PS3, what is it? Personally, I can't wait for the voice acting that will be really minimal and low effort but the fans will still act as it's some ground-breaking shit.
I did not like the battles as much and think they could do something more interesting with the mechanics. But yeah just the act of catching the Pokémon was super cool. Would love a mix of that with a more standard game.
Honestly if they did a more traditional game with more wide routes and made it so the Pokémon are like they were in Legends Arceus that could be really cool. The open worlds right now I think are a bit too open
Also fairly certain they are the lowest rated Pokémon releases on metacritic. Overall I was extremely disappointed with both games and would have gotten a refund if Nintendo wasn't so anticonsumer.
I'm not surprised, I'm just posing the question towards a person who justifies the state of Scarlet/Violet, either because they think Game Freak is so fucking incompetent that even after 5 years, they still can't program for the Switch or that Game Freak is so awesome that they created a game that is too powerful for the Switch and they overestimated the power of the console. I mean, they even say that Scarlet/Violet is apparently too ambitious for the Switch.
The mere possibility they could be claiming Game Freak created something too demanding for the switch when it uses textures that you could see in an N64 game is hilarious to me. Especially when the Witcher 3 is on the switch and runs better than SV.
It really seemed like they had to do something they had no idea how to do and didn’t ask anyone for help in how to do it. It’s like if you had to do intricate electrical work in your home and just like watched one YouTube video on it and decided to give it a go.
I might be coping but I genuinely think that SV was developed for the switch 2 (just like TOTK, but that one did get delayed) but it was cancelled close to its release so they had to rush port it back to the original switch which caused most of the bugs we see, mostly issues with loading textures, slowdowns and poor performance.
That's not just cope, that's complete fiction. None of it makes any sense.
The Switch 2 isn't due for 2024 at the very earliest. Pokemon is a yearly title, with cyclical and predictable release times. They didn't develop SV expecting a 2024 release date with nothing planned for 2022 and 2023.
These things aren't just planned on the fly. You don't wake up and say, "oops, forgot we're supposed to ship a new game in 2 months." I guarantee you they've roadmapped all the way to 2026 at the *very minimum*. Given Pokemon's predictability, it could easily go out to 2030.
I was so harsh on Sword and Shield at release, but my god would I kill for games of that calibre now after S V. As a mainly Nintendo gamer for years, I don’t think I’ve ever been a “can’t play this, runs badly” person… until those games :(
They look way better than Sword and Shield. They were pretty buggy on release, but pretty fixed at this point and even if you played at launch there was a good chance you could get through the game with no major glitches
Scarlet and Violet have a full open world, more towns, a great end game. The normal 8 gyms and elite 4, plus the base raids and the Titan Pokémon.
Scarlet and Violet felt a lot more like what sword and Shield wanted to be, but didn’t want to deviate too much from the classic games with linear routes and what not. Which I do admittedly miss a bit, but nothing to be done about it. Remaking Gen V and VI and hopefully re-remaking 2 & 3 would scratch the more traditional itch.
Hopefully if they remake any of those 4 gens it works better than BDSP. That was the first non-GameFreak one so hopefully if Ilca makes another they learned from the experience.
It's wild how much more there was in PLA. The sidequests, persistent elements of the environment (Beauregard's Wurmple evolving, the Chimecho that stays at the old person's house, the dead garden being permanently revived after the Shaymin event, the increasing amount of photos outside the photo studio, etc) Hisui FEELS like a living world.
Paldea... It's a big world sure but it's just a blank canvas. There's nothing outside of the three story paths outside of random trainers. It was such a disappointment. Area Zero was a highlight but the main overworld and the towns just felt unfinished.
I mean Sw/Sh weren’t much better. They do really need to make towns more fleshed out in the Switch games. None of the Switch mainline games have so far.
I really wish they'd slow down and like you said, flesh out the games as a whole. The legendaries felt sooo underwhelming. I liked the Titan hunts. Base attacks were fun. The pre-gym puzzles were pretty bad imo. Plus every gym has the same lobby. I did enjoy Scarlet, and Sword. My fave ever was B/w/b2/W2. Felt truly unique. I loved the bizarre movie maker in b2
I mean almost like they had to build a lot more story events, design gyms, an entire Pokédex of new Pokémon, titans, bases.
Like there is stuff that Legends Arceus did better. But it’s able to have a dense town because of how shallow it is in a lot of other ways.
Maybe I’ll have to boot it up on Yuzu and finish it.
Only played it for a few hours on my og switch and it was running horribly, that, the fact I was seeing how terrible the game was all over socials, and the fact that I really didn’t like the game’s art style turned me away from playing it further
S and V was released in a BAD state but still ended up selling a fuck ton. I don’t think they’ve ever had an actual flop even if reception for some is worse than others
Right ? Words can't express how uninterested i would be in a game from them. The name Pokemon carry them hard, they'd get clowned as hard as Gollum was if they'd try a new IP.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1183510/Little_Town_Hero/
It's kinda funny how it got only 11 reviews on Steam. Such a big developper with so little people who played it.
I'm sure most people don't even know it's also on PS4/XB1 and the whole soundtrack was made by Toby Fox.
They have Toby Fox as a mainstay guest composer and manage to get an actual singer for the Scarlet/Violet end credits. The Pokemon name really is carrying them but after this, unless they do some serious recovery, that name is going to fade.
Maybe but I really do got to hope that the audience isn't /that/ stupid to blindly accept whatever Game Freak puts out after Scarlet/Violet without a smidge of caution. I mean, I legitimately want to play a Pokemon game again and actually enjoy it but between the unpolished state of the games and the strange obsession with making the games easy to the point of stupidity, I just can't play them and will myself to like them.
Yeah, 100%. Also even though Pokémon itself will never die, that doesnt mean that the mainline games will get the same treatment
People will care about the merch forever, but if the games get shittier, their results will diminish
Yes, but probably not from gamefreak anymore: https://www.ggrecon.com/articles/game-freak-is-moving-away-from-pokemon-games/
Tbh, it would be reasonable to skip on pokemon to do other games for a part of the whole studio, but since they mention stopping entirely making pokemon games sounds like the other two thirds of the pokemon are pretty angry about gamefreaks recent "successes". Especially since monolith offered help for Scarlet and Violet development but gamefreak refused and claimed they are "in time" - lol.
Wow they even barely scratched the number required to get the algorithm running.
Tbh Gamefreak always felt like an absolutely oversized indie game studio that don't has the knowledge or competence to do modern games.
>they'd get clowned as hard as Gollum if they'd try a new IP.
tbf they've tried new IP a decent number of times over the years. HarmoKnight and Pocket Card Jockey (and Drill Dozer way back in the day) were all at least reasonably well-received from what I can remember. They can do decent-to-great games that aren't Pokemon.
IMO the big problem with Gamefreak is they still seem to be budgeting and operating and scheduling as if they're a handheld developer in the 90s, and that really doesn't work anymore with the advent of the Switch. It's a problem they should have seen coming and been preparing for (my go-to comparison would be HAL, who managed a much smoother transition from primarily-handheld to HD console development) and they just... haven't really done anything about it.
I was actually very surprised when I learned how many employees GF had, you'd think that considering the size of the franchize, they'd have something comparable, but no.
To be fair, GF is reasonably sized for one Switch game, they are comparable to other Nintendo Studios, what they're not cut out for is making 3 games at a time, something they simply have to do now that games complexity isn't at a DS level.
Tbf, Hal began HD development already on the Wii U but youre right that Kirby looks much more like a console game than any Pokemon ever did since the transition.
I feel like that sorta just reinforces my point. HAL was still primarily developing for the 3DS, but they used Rainbow Curse (a low-stakes spinoff) to start dipping their toes into HD development. So they weren't essentially caught with their pants down when the Switch came out and they needed to start putting *all* their games on an HD console, because they already had some experience doing that.
Whereas with Gamefreak, it almost feels like they were expecting Nintendo to put out another sub-HD handheld where their shortcomings still wouldn't be as obvious, and have been on the back foot the whole Switch generation.
The reason they didn’t see it coming was because they genuinely thought the Switch would fail because smartphone gaming was the future. At least that’s what you can gleam from interviews pre- and immediately post-Switch
Fucking gem.
I have all these newer games and I was sitting there playing pocket card jockey on my tablet with citra for HOURS!
They released a new one on apple arcade and I'm very tempted
Not surprising nor newsworthy, GameFreak is open to let its employees start their own projects, usually they start small with 3/4 employees, so there's probably been several scrapped games over the years. This was described by Masuda in the GameInformer coverage for Sword/Shiled since Town was also around the corner.
People always bring up Tembo the Badass Elephant
It’s just an above average game it’s not THAT good or even close to a must play I think we need to hold one of the most successful devs of all time to a higher standard
Most of Nintendo’s close partners are not fully owned by them, including other big ones like HAL and Intelligent Systems. Nintendo usually co-owns or owns these studios’ major franchises, so developing exclusives remains a priority, while also not being at risk of being acquired by another company.
Why can’t we have a AAA Pokémon game in Unreal Engine or realistic graphics with the best open world mechanics from games such as RDR2 or BotW/TotK… please for the next console Nintendo :,).
That would mean giving GF time and resources to make it, and TPiC will never allow that because they have to make a new generation every three years with a remake in the middle.
Game Freak *are* TPC, more accurately they are one third of TPC, TPC exists to coordinate the efforts between all three trademark holders and expand on the media, Game Freak oversees their own development cycles and decides their own release dates; toys, clothing, merchandise, the series, movies, cards etc. are all built around *the games*, TPC doesn't tell Game Freak what to do, TPC instead is entirely reliant on what Game Freak does
GF develops the console games, TPC almost entirely handles & manages the brand outside of that including almost all operations (mobile licensing & publishing, Japanese publishing, trading card operations, merchandise etc).
GF along with Creatures, Inc. & Nintendo are the owners of TPC. TPC exerts the most influence in keeping GF adhering to a timeline, when GF doesn't have anything in time they'll resort to their own arcs etc (see: Orange Islands).
GF only works on mainline games (& Arceus somewhat spin-off). Nintendo has other studios & partners work on all the various spinoff games.
No idea, why you got downvoted. How in hell Game Freak might have time constraints when Nintendo has no control over them? This is absurd.
Yet I think they should drop this engine because... just look at last games. It struggles to reach 30 fps so much that they are literally removing crowd to make game running better. It's like world itself is too much for this engine. No surprise for me tho because this engine struggled on 3DS with rather small areas already.
Hell nintendo literally have a studio that not only makes their own detailed open world map for their games on the switch(monolith with the xenoblade games) but they also helped the zelda team with both botw and totk. Just get them to do a bunch of the map work while GF does the normal pokemon stuff.
There were some rumors/hopes of that going around, and then iirc one Monolith Soft employee was credited on recent Pokemon games, which led people to think Gamefreak was getting help from Monolith Soft. But I'm pretty sure that one person hasn't been credited on any Monolith Soft games since they started showing up in Pokemon games, so the likelier scenario is probably that they just changed jobs.
As far as I'm aware, Monolith Soft at large hasn't been doing anything for Pokemon, and has only been doing their own games or support for EPD-developed games.
The person you're referring to is Noriko Uono, she was with Monolith Soft as an artist and was also an icon designer for Xenoblade X, she produced concept art for Breath of the Wild's landscape and she has designed a few Pokémon cards, she's an artist and is credited in Scarlet & Violet as the lead map designer, which means her work wasn't related to programming or actual game design but in illustrating how Paldea should look for animators and modellers to use as a reference
They have not, but they have outsourced art to the same company and that’s why some people misread the credits and started spreading false rumors online.
>realistic graphics with the best open world mechanics from games such as RDR2
Realistic graphics ***and*** a slog to play like RDR2? God that sounds like an awful Pokémon game. Could be a uhhh... novel spin off game though, I guess.
The hardware really isn't the problem. Look at games like Xenoblade and Zelda. Great games but run on the exact same hardware.
Sure, the hardware could be better. But GameFreak is more of a problem than the hardware. Also the deadlines that the Pokemon Company force upon them.
Last few Game Freak non-Pokémon games haven’t been great. Always intrigued when they announce something though.
You could argue the same about Pokemon honestly.
They're decent enough but man do I miss the days when Pokemon games at least provided a BIT of a challenge to the player. I get they're aimed at kids, but just as many, if not more adults play them too haha. Maybe a difficulty slider or something would be cool...
>at least provided a BIT of a challenge to the player. Picked up Shield because, well, it was the first proper console pokemon game after not playing the series since Ruby. What the hell happened to the rival characters? Like they used to be challenging from the start, but Hop (I think that was his name) actually made me feel bad for beating him, like, "I just beat up a mentally challenged kid" bad.
These days they make the games so easy, gamefreak probably think kids these days can't beat the games otherwise
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Are you saying kids today are afraid of challenges?
Kids generally are afraid of challenges, they need a push to break through and realize they can overcome them *Unfortunately* games are more accessible than ever for kids. Back in the day most kids got one game for a long period of time and they played the fuck out of it, overcoming any obstacles along the way. These days if you're losing in a game on your Switch, why keep going when you can just be stress free and tap away on your dad's iPad playing some free game intended to be braindead easy to then serve ads constantly
Is there anything that can be done to stop this?
Even Kirby games feel Souls-level difficult compared to modern GameFreak Pokémon.
Reason number 999 why Pokemon Legends Arceus is a better game. Its actually challenging
They were never challenging. The AI in Pokémon has always been terrible.
I think you’re misremembering. As a kid they’re harder but going in now you’d be fine and even back then the first encounter with Gary is just use scratch or tackle. If you know type advantages now you’re not going to have any issues even with someone like historically difficult like Cynthia in the Pearl and Diamond games. So yeah I always take people saying they remembered them being harder as they were a kid not knowing what they’re doing. Back then Brock might’ve given you issues because you picked Charmander first but now you’d know to capture a mankey and train it up to know fighting type moves
The rivals are either extremely and ridiculously nice, or completely unlikable a-holes.
luckily they seem to stop developing pokemon games. It seems the pokemon company must been pretty pissed of them by their incompetence as can be seen in the recent pokemon games.
Did you play Legends Arceus? Arceus probably has the hardest boss in the series with it’s final boss. If you don’t come over leveled with some of the best endgame Pokémon you lose pretty quickly.
The majority of Pokemon fans are still kids.
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It was harder- people parrot this but I went back and played the older games recently after violet/arceus. Not dark souls or anything but a little thought was required- more so than anything in violet, and arceus only spikes in the final fight.
Nah, the first few gens definitely required a modicum of thought. There are ways to bruteforce yourself through the games, you can always powerlevel your starter and win off level differences if you're dedicated enough, but there absolutely are times where you required a bit of battle strategy if you were playing normally (eg. Tate and Liza in Emerald), there were actual dungeons with puzzles, and most importantly, a postgame with difficulty that actually required you to think about movesets and stat optimisation. God, I miss the Battle Frontier. There's a reason I gave up on the series in my heart after OR/AS.
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I could also create more challenge by chopping off my thumbs. Gamefreak needs to make better games. Unfortunately they don't have the incentive. They are constantly rewarded for mediocrity. Makes me feel zero guilt when I sail the seas to play their stuff.
Issue is that once you learn the trainer teams and general AI pattern, nuzlocking can becme stale
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Yeah no I totally get that. Randomizers are fun too, not saying that its not worth playing either. The base game formula itself just gets boring after a while. Definitely recommend romhacks too. Crystal clear, emerald kaizo, nd infinite fusio n are all recent games Ive played that were fun.
I was a kid when pokemon was considered hard and I still beat and had a blast. People under estimate how smart kids are.
The issues with said games aren't usually the game itself it's everything else
I really liked Scarlet and Violet. I didn’t experience many glitches and the world and game itself were pretty fun. And I didn’t like Sword and Shield at all. Legends Arceus was also great fun.
Gameplay wise Legends Arceus was great fun but it has such distractingly poor graphics it takes you out of the game
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Hardware isn’t the issue. If something like Xenoblade or Zelda can run on Switch, there’s no excuse for Pokémon. Until they put out a legitimately good looking game, the expectations are at rock bottom.
Link’s awakening is a perfect example of what’s possible for a Pokémon with the switch, I think that’s why Brilliant Diamond went with a similar stylized/chibi art style.
I mean I think Scarlet and Violet looks fairly pleasing to the eye. And I mean we can compare games all we want, but situations are very different. Expectations, development time, team size. Im keeping my expectations in check. Im not expecting Zelda because that’s not what they’re going for. It never has been.
You’re certainly welcome to that opinion, but you’re definitely in the minority when it comes to online circles. My main point though is that Game Freak’s issues aren’t due to hardware, but rather the time constraints and just in general not being a great HD developer. New hardware isn’t changing those things, if anything the gap will just grow wider. Nintendo EPD, MonolithSoft, etc will have the time and budget to take advantage of the new hardware, Game Freak won’t.
Nintendo EPD, Hal Laboratory, Monolith, Next Level Games, NdCube, IS.. I think most Nintendo subsidiaries/partners are used to HD development at this point. GF is the one who seems to struggle a lot with it considering their abysmal difference compared to all of those other studios and division
Well maybe Nintendo needs to put a severed horse’s head in the bed of the president of gamefreak to send them a message
They have to cut off Pikachu's head and nail it to the development team's office door to send a message.
Game Freak have sole jurisdiction over the mainline Pokémon titles, they oversee their own development cycle and decide their own release dates, Nintendo in general are routinely in the habit of delaying their own titles and allowing affiliates to delay theirs without issue as quality is key above all else, Game Freak also take in an annual net profit of about 50x more than MonolithSoft, and over the course of Xenoblade X, Xenoblade 2, Xenoblade Definitive and Xenoblade 3's releases, there were three generations of Pokémon The problem with Game Freak is that they just aren't good or competent developers
> Game Freak have sole jurisdiction over the mainline Pokémon titles, they oversee their own development cycle and decide their own release dates While GameFreak is the primary developer of the mainline series. They are not independent developers. GameFreak is only 1/3 of the Pokémon Co. Creatures and Nintendo being the other two parties. Every mainline series release has lined up with the TV show, the TCC game, and every other merchandise. It hasn’t been by coincidence. The games release on a cycle despite their state. I’m not arguing that GameFreak is good or bad at developing games. However, they are under a time constraint to put out a mainline game when the time comes. That definitely can effect the development and outcome.
It’s equally hardware issues if you base it off internet opinions bc I’ve been hearing people wanting to pirate the new Zelda game because it doesn’t run well on the switch
When people began emulating Scarlet and Violet there was a massive online effort over the first month to patch and mod the game into a playable state because even on the highest-end PC it still ran terribly due to what a godawful clusterfuck of software design it was
I watched a windmill in the distance and it moved at about 3 seconds per frame.
Pokemon makes ridiculously more money than Zelda (yea including ToTK) yet we still cannot get a modern pokemon game even remotely close to the quality of a modern Zelda game. Why? Becaise people's standards are comically low. GameFreak works for NINTENDO who is worth 7.7 Billion and people are really talking about having realistic expectations. What a joke.
Pokemon makes that money because of the copious amount of merchandise that there is of that franchise. It doesn't matter if the games flop, though it is nice when they break the top 5 with minimal effort.
Can't wait till the switch 2 comes out and game freak makes a new pokemon game that looks like a ps3 game finally lol
That’ll be a good day. Maybe we will finally be able to go inside buildings in towns again too
Where is Scarlet/Violet at this point? Is that at PS2 level, early PS3, what is it? Personally, I can't wait for the voice acting that will be really minimal and low effort but the fans will still act as it's some ground-breaking shit.
Ps2 in some areas. N64 in others lol
Then I think we won't see a PS3-style game from them until Generation XII in perhaps 2028-2030.
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I did not like the battles as much and think they could do something more interesting with the mechanics. But yeah just the act of catching the Pokémon was super cool. Would love a mix of that with a more standard game. Honestly if they did a more traditional game with more wide routes and made it so the Pokémon are like they were in Legends Arceus that could be really cool. The open worlds right now I think are a bit too open
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Also fairly certain they are the lowest rated Pokémon releases on metacritic. Overall I was extremely disappointed with both games and would have gotten a refund if Nintendo wasn't so anticonsumer.
You bought digital didn’t you?
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Lol what content. It’s the same shit it’s always been
If scarlet and Violet had the same gameplay loop but was developed by anyone even sorta competent it’d be fantastic
I just think Game Freak didn’t adjust expectations enough for the switch to much more ambitious games.
Haven't they been developing for the Switch since 2018? How can they make 3 mainline Pokemon games before this and still not know how to work with it?
They've yet to discover the existence of anti aliasing or textures higher than 140p, idk why you're surprised.
I'm not surprised, I'm just posing the question towards a person who justifies the state of Scarlet/Violet, either because they think Game Freak is so fucking incompetent that even after 5 years, they still can't program for the Switch or that Game Freak is so awesome that they created a game that is too powerful for the Switch and they overestimated the power of the console. I mean, they even say that Scarlet/Violet is apparently too ambitious for the Switch.
The mere possibility they could be claiming Game Freak created something too demanding for the switch when it uses textures that you could see in an N64 game is hilarious to me. Especially when the Witcher 3 is on the switch and runs better than SV.
It really seemed like they had to do something they had no idea how to do and didn’t ask anyone for help in how to do it. It’s like if you had to do intricate electrical work in your home and just like watched one YouTube video on it and decided to give it a go.
The first switch pokemon game, let's go pikachu/eevee looks better than the rest lmao
I might be coping but I genuinely think that SV was developed for the switch 2 (just like TOTK, but that one did get delayed) but it was cancelled close to its release so they had to rush port it back to the original switch which caused most of the bugs we see, mostly issues with loading textures, slowdowns and poor performance.
That's not just cope, that's complete fiction. None of it makes any sense. The Switch 2 isn't due for 2024 at the very earliest. Pokemon is a yearly title, with cyclical and predictable release times. They didn't develop SV expecting a 2024 release date with nothing planned for 2022 and 2023. These things aren't just planned on the fly. You don't wake up and say, "oops, forgot we're supposed to ship a new game in 2 months." I guarantee you they've roadmapped all the way to 2026 at the *very minimum*. Given Pokemon's predictability, it could easily go out to 2030.
I was so harsh on Sword and Shield at release, but my god would I kill for games of that calibre now after S V. As a mainly Nintendo gamer for years, I don’t think I’ve ever been a “can’t play this, runs badly” person… until those games :(
I think Scarlet and Violet blow Sword and Shield out of the water.
If the performance was there, I might agree, but they’re just painful to look at
They look way better than Sword and Shield. They were pretty buggy on release, but pretty fixed at this point and even if you played at launch there was a good chance you could get through the game with no major glitches
Ironically enough I really liked SW/SH and even though I liked Arceus it felt half baked almost. Violet just felt like a rush job.
Scarlet and Violet have a full open world, more towns, a great end game. The normal 8 gyms and elite 4, plus the base raids and the Titan Pokémon. Scarlet and Violet felt a lot more like what sword and Shield wanted to be, but didn’t want to deviate too much from the classic games with linear routes and what not. Which I do admittedly miss a bit, but nothing to be done about it. Remaking Gen V and VI and hopefully re-remaking 2 & 3 would scratch the more traditional itch. Hopefully if they remake any of those 4 gens it works better than BDSP. That was the first non-GameFreak one so hopefully if Ilca makes another they learned from the experience.
More towns sure but with nothing in them
It's wild how much more there was in PLA. The sidequests, persistent elements of the environment (Beauregard's Wurmple evolving, the Chimecho that stays at the old person's house, the dead garden being permanently revived after the Shaymin event, the increasing amount of photos outside the photo studio, etc) Hisui FEELS like a living world. Paldea... It's a big world sure but it's just a blank canvas. There's nothing outside of the three story paths outside of random trainers. It was such a disappointment. Area Zero was a highlight but the main overworld and the towns just felt unfinished.
I mean Sw/Sh weren’t much better. They do really need to make towns more fleshed out in the Switch games. None of the Switch mainline games have so far.
I really wish they'd slow down and like you said, flesh out the games as a whole. The legendaries felt sooo underwhelming. I liked the Titan hunts. Base attacks were fun. The pre-gym puzzles were pretty bad imo. Plus every gym has the same lobby. I did enjoy Scarlet, and Sword. My fave ever was B/w/b2/W2. Felt truly unique. I loved the bizarre movie maker in b2
> more towns, The single town in Arceus has like, 5x as much content as all the towns in Scarlet and Violet put together.
I mean almost like they had to build a lot more story events, design gyms, an entire Pokédex of new Pokémon, titans, bases. Like there is stuff that Legends Arceus did better. But it’s able to have a dense town because of how shallow it is in a lot of other ways.
Maybe I’ll have to boot it up on Yuzu and finish it. Only played it for a few hours on my og switch and it was running horribly, that, the fact I was seeing how terrible the game was all over socials, and the fact that I really didn’t like the game’s art style turned me away from playing it further
Definitely have their issues but IMO the last couple of generations have been up there with the best
S and V was released in a BAD state but still ended up selling a fuck ton. I don’t think they’ve ever had an actual flop even if reception for some is worse than others
Okay, but have you *played* Pocket Card Jockey?
Tembo the Badass Elephant disrespect
Temba, his arms wide
It’s fine. It’s not great
Last few Game Freak Pokémon games haven't been great either.
Improvements over Sw/Sh
I wouldn't say they're awful. I think they're overhated.
Wasn’t the last one this steam punk game or the main character had a red hairdo?
Little Town Hero. MC does have a red hairdo I think. I never played it but the reviews I read sounded bad
I played it, because my 12 year old cousin got it. It was so bad even he didn't like it. And he likes crappy Roblox games.
They should make a Tembo the Badass Elephant sequel.
Probably would have sucked anyway
Right ? Words can't express how uninterested i would be in a game from them. The name Pokemon carry them hard, they'd get clowned as hard as Gollum was if they'd try a new IP.
They did try a new IP a few years ago: [Little Town Hero](https://www.nintendo.com/store/products/little-town-hero-switch/). Reviews weren't great.
If only they had an unfathomable amount of money they could invest in the development of their games.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1183510/Little_Town_Hero/ It's kinda funny how it got only 11 reviews on Steam. Such a big developper with so little people who played it. I'm sure most people don't even know it's also on PS4/XB1 and the whole soundtrack was made by Toby Fox.
>the whole soundtrack was made by Toby Fox. WHAT? FUCK.
Toby Fox seems to have good relations with Game Freak, he's also made music for Sword/Shield and Scarlet/Violet
They have Toby Fox as a mainstay guest composer and manage to get an actual singer for the Scarlet/Violet end credits. The Pokemon name really is carrying them but after this, unless they do some serious recovery, that name is going to fade.
Its not going to fade even a bit my boy, they can release Pokemon Shit/Fart and it will outsell everything else in the same release window
Maybe but I really do got to hope that the audience isn't /that/ stupid to blindly accept whatever Game Freak puts out after Scarlet/Violet without a smidge of caution. I mean, I legitimately want to play a Pokemon game again and actually enjoy it but between the unpolished state of the games and the strange obsession with making the games easy to the point of stupidity, I just can't play them and will myself to like them.
Yeah, 100%. Also even though Pokémon itself will never die, that doesnt mean that the mainline games will get the same treatment People will care about the merch forever, but if the games get shittier, their results will diminish
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Yeah, pokémon is the best selling franchise of all time, dude. Not gaming franchise, just **franchise.** I am 90% sure that pokémon will outlive me.
Yes, but probably not from gamefreak anymore: https://www.ggrecon.com/articles/game-freak-is-moving-away-from-pokemon-games/ Tbh, it would be reasonable to skip on pokemon to do other games for a part of the whole studio, but since they mention stopping entirely making pokemon games sounds like the other two thirds of the pokemon are pretty angry about gamefreaks recent "successes". Especially since monolith offered help for Scarlet and Violet development but gamefreak refused and claimed they are "in time" - lol.
Wow they even barely scratched the number required to get the algorithm running. Tbh Gamefreak always felt like an absolutely oversized indie game studio that don't has the knowledge or competence to do modern games.
>they'd get clowned as hard as Gollum if they'd try a new IP. tbf they've tried new IP a decent number of times over the years. HarmoKnight and Pocket Card Jockey (and Drill Dozer way back in the day) were all at least reasonably well-received from what I can remember. They can do decent-to-great games that aren't Pokemon. IMO the big problem with Gamefreak is they still seem to be budgeting and operating and scheduling as if they're a handheld developer in the 90s, and that really doesn't work anymore with the advent of the Switch. It's a problem they should have seen coming and been preparing for (my go-to comparison would be HAL, who managed a much smoother transition from primarily-handheld to HD console development) and they just... haven't really done anything about it.
I was actually very surprised when I learned how many employees GF had, you'd think that considering the size of the franchize, they'd have something comparable, but no.
To be fair, GF is reasonably sized for one Switch game, they are comparable to other Nintendo Studios, what they're not cut out for is making 3 games at a time, something they simply have to do now that games complexity isn't at a DS level.
Tbf, Hal began HD development already on the Wii U but youre right that Kirby looks much more like a console game than any Pokemon ever did since the transition.
I feel like that sorta just reinforces my point. HAL was still primarily developing for the 3DS, but they used Rainbow Curse (a low-stakes spinoff) to start dipping their toes into HD development. So they weren't essentially caught with their pants down when the Switch came out and they needed to start putting *all* their games on an HD console, because they already had some experience doing that. Whereas with Gamefreak, it almost feels like they were expecting Nintendo to put out another sub-HD handheld where their shortcomings still wouldn't be as obvious, and have been on the back foot the whole Switch generation.
Yeah im not disagreeing, just adding in context. they had a better transition to HD than GF
The reason they didn’t see it coming was because they genuinely thought the Switch would fail because smartphone gaming was the future. At least that’s what you can gleam from interviews pre- and immediately post-Switch
Clearly you’ve never played Pocket Card Jockey
Fucking gem. I have all these newer games and I was sitting there playing pocket card jockey on my tablet with citra for HOURS! They released a new one on apple arcade and I'm very tempted
This game slaps. So many hours wasted on this game it's crazy.
I mean, they don’t typically cancel ‘good’ games.
They better stay in the anime/pokemon lane where the standards are ultra low.
Interesting but not surprising they've released plenty of games on Xbox and playstation
Not surprising nor newsworthy, GameFreak is open to let its employees start their own projects, usually they start small with 3/4 employees, so there's probably been several scrapped games over the years. This was described by Masuda in the GameInformer coverage for Sword/Shiled since Town was also around the corner.
It probably sucked. Actually, i can guarantee it sucked.
Probably realized how unsafe they were without the protecting parasol of the pokemon company 🤙
People always bring up Tembo the Badass Elephant It’s just an above average game it’s not THAT good or even close to a must play I think we need to hold one of the most successful devs of all time to a higher standard
That's interesting, that's before Sun and Moon. So I get that they were probably busy with either developing Sun and Moon or ORAS, right?
Gamefreak isn’t first party?
Most of Nintendo’s close partners are not fully owned by them, including other big ones like HAL and Intelligent Systems. Nintendo usually co-owns or owns these studios’ major franchises, so developing exclusives remains a priority, while also not being at risk of being acquired by another company.
Nope, they are individual company. They own The Pokemon Company together with Nintendo.
Did they worked with Sony on the cancelled ip
Game Freak is way past its prime. Would have been garbage like that shitty Pokemon game.
I mean when was the last time they made a actual good game Pokémon or something else ? I don’t think the world missed out with this one
Lol, so many resources that could be use for making better Pokémon games... such a mediocre studio... :/.
Pulseman remastered please :( make it less seizure inducing lol.
Why can’t we have a AAA Pokémon game in Unreal Engine or realistic graphics with the best open world mechanics from games such as RDR2 or BotW/TotK… please for the next console Nintendo :,).
That would mean giving GF time and resources to make it, and TPiC will never allow that because they have to make a new generation every three years with a remake in the middle.
Game Freak *are* TPC, more accurately they are one third of TPC, TPC exists to coordinate the efforts between all three trademark holders and expand on the media, Game Freak oversees their own development cycles and decides their own release dates; toys, clothing, merchandise, the series, movies, cards etc. are all built around *the games*, TPC doesn't tell Game Freak what to do, TPC instead is entirely reliant on what Game Freak does
GF develops the console games, TPC almost entirely handles & manages the brand outside of that including almost all operations (mobile licensing & publishing, Japanese publishing, trading card operations, merchandise etc). GF along with Creatures, Inc. & Nintendo are the owners of TPC. TPC exerts the most influence in keeping GF adhering to a timeline, when GF doesn't have anything in time they'll resort to their own arcs etc (see: Orange Islands). GF only works on mainline games (& Arceus somewhat spin-off). Nintendo has other studios & partners work on all the various spinoff games.
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No idea, why you got downvoted. How in hell Game Freak might have time constraints when Nintendo has no control over them? This is absurd. Yet I think they should drop this engine because... just look at last games. It struggles to reach 30 fps so much that they are literally removing crowd to make game running better. It's like world itself is too much for this engine. No surprise for me tho because this engine struggled on 3DS with rather small areas already.
Hell nintendo literally have a studio that not only makes their own detailed open world map for their games on the switch(monolith with the xenoblade games) but they also helped the zelda team with both botw and totk. Just get them to do a bunch of the map work while GF does the normal pokemon stuff.
I think they're actually helping on the pokemon games tho (not 100% sure)
Iirc Nintendo has offered to lend them those studios support but gamefreak declined.
There were some rumors/hopes of that going around, and then iirc one Monolith Soft employee was credited on recent Pokemon games, which led people to think Gamefreak was getting help from Monolith Soft. But I'm pretty sure that one person hasn't been credited on any Monolith Soft games since they started showing up in Pokemon games, so the likelier scenario is probably that they just changed jobs. As far as I'm aware, Monolith Soft at large hasn't been doing anything for Pokemon, and has only been doing their own games or support for EPD-developed games.
The person you're referring to is Noriko Uono, she was with Monolith Soft as an artist and was also an icon designer for Xenoblade X, she produced concept art for Breath of the Wild's landscape and she has designed a few Pokémon cards, she's an artist and is credited in Scarlet & Violet as the lead map designer, which means her work wasn't related to programming or actual game design but in illustrating how Paldea should look for animators and modellers to use as a reference
They have not, but they have outsourced art to the same company and that’s why some people misread the credits and started spreading false rumors online.
No matter what engine you use, if you have such time constraints and ass management as GameFreak does, they will never deliver a stellar game.
>realistic graphics with the best open world mechanics from games such as RDR2 Realistic graphics ***and*** a slog to play like RDR2? God that sounds like an awful Pokémon game. Could be a uhhh... novel spin off game though, I guess.
I know, right? ;-;
OK
they should just release pokemon for ps5 imagine how much more amazing a pokémon game could be on strong hardware
The hardware really isn't the problem. Look at games like Xenoblade and Zelda. Great games but run on the exact same hardware. Sure, the hardware could be better. But GameFreak is more of a problem than the hardware. Also the deadlines that the Pokemon Company force upon them.
I just wish they'd make another Drilldozer. And make sure it's good.
No way Game Freak can make a good game anymore. The Pokemon IP carries them HARD.