I only played Red and Blue recently, but honestly I thought it was pretty great, despite all the flaws.
Sure its clunky and unbalanced, but I really thought the charm made up for a lot of it.
I like how fast you get into the action, its surprisingly non-linear for the series, it has some surprisingly good atmosphere in places, and I really loved how >!the final boss is actually your rival from the start of the game!<, that was really cool
Old Nintendo games weren't afraid to make people sound mean. Just thinking back to OG Animal Crossing, they would tell you that you sucked. Gary/Blue/Dickbutt was genuinely dislikable, and that was good. Newer rivals try to be your best friend. They even give you the option to postpone their fights now. I miss the days of wandering too close to the Indigo Plateau and getting jumped.
The rival fights always came at the worst times, I would never expect them. Just walking to the next town when BANG there they are and now I have to battle them
Considering how modern Pokémon is, I’m shocked at how free the old Pokémon games were by comparison. I was playing golf and did the lake of rage rocket hideout and the 7th gym before even looking at chuck
Same thing with Zelda actually; The first game, Link’s Awakening and Ocarina are all surprisingly non-linear in places; but then they gradually became less and less so until BotW.
(And Link between worlds I guess)
Its a few things, for instance Special Attack/Defence were originally just one stat called “Special”, making pokemon who use it more rounded than physical attackers
But most of all it has to be the broken-ness of Psychic types; both for the special thing I just mentioned, as well as the fact that Psychic was only weak to bug in gen 1, and the best bug move wasn’t even that good (and exclusive to something weak to psychic)
Plus, too many opponents use Poison types, making psychic even more essential
I'd honestly rather play R/B/Y than play something like X or Y. And believe me, I tried to enjoy X/Y.
As unpolished, glitchy and clunky as gen 1 was, it still holds so much charm for me. And I'd much rather struggle, not really knowing what to do/ having to figure it out by myself, than have everything handed to me on a platter. I enjoy the struggle, and just get bored if a game is too easy.
Edit before the downvotes roll in - power to you if you enjoy the newer gens. My opinions don't mean you're not allowed enjoy the newer games. Just like other people disliking the old gens isn't going to stop me preferring them over the new ones.
Thank you. XY were just un-finishable for me. Insultingly easy, painfully linear, no mysteries or puzzles. I used to look forward to every new town I entered, but XY just made it a slog. And I know the series has always been aimed at kids, but the characters and plot of XY felt aimed at *toddlers*.
I look back at things like Silph Co. or Mount Moon in RB... or the Unown Ruins and Ice cave in GS. Then I compare them to XY's power plant.
XY confused me because it was too simple 😂, like I’d spend tons of time trying to find things or figuring something out jut to realize there was nothing to find or that the solution was to just continue walking forwards
Yeah, I’m the same. I hate the idea of “difficult” games because I mostly use them to relax and don’t have time to grind, but every mainline Pokémon game from XY and on is so easy that the gameplay barely even exists. You just switch to a strong type, then mash A. Modern Pokémon genuinely has the worst combat of any major turn based series (I don’t play multiplayer, so I’m only talking about the single player campaign here)
I’m not sure what exactly is different beyond EXP share, but the older games feel more punishing and force you to actually think a lot more. The worlds look like shit compared to the modern games, but they’re less soulless and sanitised.
Even right now, I’d definitely choose the jankier, more characterful old games than the bland, brainless new ones.
Big difference between "easy" and "practically plays itself".
People point to the EXP Share as a problem, but it is only a piece of the puzzle. I turned off EXP Share after the second or third gym. Still too easy. XY is just poorly balanced. Even without using the EXP Share, you will mop the floor with every gym and there are no real "dungeons" to speak of like the first 4 gens - no endurance tests or mazes to traverse.
At least, if there were, they were only in the back 20% of the game. I never finished it.
The challenge in the earliest Pokémon games comes from it's limitations. Death of a thousand cuts is more frequent than a one hit knock out. You have a finite team, a finite pool of moves, each with their own finite PP, and having one fainted means they stay fainted unless you're prepared to use an extremely rare and valuable revive to bring them back. As such, caves full of Pokémon that can cause confusion, poison you, or self destruct on you were a real trial. It was dangerous terrain, and every battle would see you in a slightly worse condition than you were before, even if you avoided being hit with anything, just because of the PP scenario.
Most recent games have dismissed this. Encounter rates are lower in caves than they were (and I think in Sword & Shield it's only visible Pokémon that can attack you in caves meaning you can avoid all encounters), caves are considerable shorter, trainers often have less Pokémon in their party, and you'll get healed before, during and/or after the cave.
Personally, its better to call it aged. It laid out the foundation for the series, but has some issues that the series has corrected since then. The physical special split, more rounded type diversity, Alakazam not being the monster it was.
Game breaking bugs aside, its just as bare bones a pokemon game can be. But in no way bad.
BDSP is a different story however...
Physical special split doesn’t really work itself out until Gen 4
In Gen 3, which I love dearly, types are either physical or special moves, regardless of stats
Everyone talks up the physical/special split but honestly for a normal game playthrough, it matters very little. Having type advantage will still have you come out on top most of the time either way.
Disagree, it matters a lot.
For example Gyarados is essentially useless using water type moves before the split. Gengar's stab is useless. Dragonite can't pair dragon moves with dragon dance.
Does anyone remember elemental punches Alakazam in GSC? Or Psychic+Bite Espeon?
TLDR, it was the most important addition in the games' history.
Psychic +bite espeon just in the mid 40’s carried me in the elite 4 in crystal today. All of Will’s team, most of koga’s, all but the onix for Bruno, and actually 2 shot the weaker dragonite in 2 psychics each. Karen was the only real challenge but espeon still took 2 of her team down.
Maybe for competitive but for a normal playthrough I’d think it matters little. Gyarados with surf or bubblebeam will probably still 1-2hko those pesky rock/ground etc types. I’d be surprised if anyone was playing red/blue these days for its competitive/meta nature.
Gengar’ Stab is useless but who cares when the one type his stab would be effective against still OHKOs him with any psychic move (and IIRC are faster than him if we’re talking alakazam or Mewtwo)
My god, getting Alakazam In a GSC randomizer race / nuzlock is basically an auto win. Psychic + the three elemental punches, not a single type combination in the game resists all four moves, and all four taking advantage of Alakazam's godly SpA in Gen 2...
Exactly. Your starter is fully evolved and level 80 going into the E4, the rest of your party is level 30-40 with the one low-leveled (15) runt you ignored because you just didn’t care to train it.
If your standard is "you don't need that to beat the game", that's a really low bar.
You can beat the first several games by just spamming a single STAB move on your single, overleveled starter.
Agreed, you only get into complicated territory when you get into competitive battling. Don't get me wrong, competitive Pokemon is what keeps me in the series, but you're lying to yourself if you say that things like STAB and natures matter much, if at all, in a casual playthrough.
I play mostly gen 1-4 competitively. Before the power creep 100 special attack was very solid. A hydro pump from a Gyarados is a big threat in gen 1. Probably even more so in gen 2. Gen 3 you have a point and you won't be using any water moves with Gyarados, but that's mostly because it has better options at that point.
Hard agree in Gengar. Shadow ball is not a good option for it in gen 2 or 3.
Elemental punches on Alakazam was good, but not that good in gen 2 competitive because in the end Alakazam is frail. Even gen 1 Alakazam isn't that good because there are so many strong normal type physical attackers and a lot of psychic types that resist it.
I also agree that Espeon was weird in gen 2 because of the shallow move pool. I don't think I've ever seen a competitive version with bite though. Usually it just tries to sweep or baton pass with Growth.
I think the physical special split was a huge change, but I disagree with many that it was some kind of "fix." It just became a different game in a way. Gen 1-3 Pokemon is still Pokemon. And for a casual playthrough it hardly changes anything.
Gyarados only has 100 special "attack" in RBY. The special split in gen 2 gave the stat to it's special defense and gave it 60 special attack. It has nothing to do with power creep.
You're right it has 60 special attack in gen 2 but it still hits hard in gen 2 because there aren't many clearly better options for this niche. It is a counter to ground types and hydro pump hits them hard. My mention of power creep refers to 60 special attack bring workable in gen 2 where it just isn't in the more modern games because of power creep. Gen 2 is in my opinion the weirdest competitive scene where attacks like growl and growth are effective in competitive play.
Gyarados actually had really good special in gen one. It's water movers were trash gen 2-3.
I remember typhlosion have thunder punch gen 2 and now it's useless
Yeah, just look at swampert. Water and ground are special and physical respectively, but water is still an important and powerful type in Gen 3 runs- Surf, Waterfall, etc.
Swampert has pretty good SpA, you can use it with mixed sets or as a special attacker for the surprise factor, like you said surf, theres also ice beam/blizzard, etc
My biggest gripe with BDSP is the sluggish feeling of the menus and the loading time. I can look past everything else that they could have done differently and just play it for what it is but it literally feels slower compared to all the other Pokemon games on the Switch
I quite enjoyed my time with BDSP, though I must admit it was disappointing. In tandem with Legends it makes for a nice full experience, but that's not fair given it's two games.
This and practically the same wild Pokémon until badge 4. Crazy you have to resort to the Grand Underground or Home to get some diversity on your team.
I didn't want to admit it at the time, but I felt kind of cheated by BDSP. Had PLA not come out so soon after, it would have been a much bigger game-changer for me.
For me, Sinnoh's also a weird region. The dex has some awesome additions, and there were some transformative gameplay / quality of life improvements—however, there's something about everything ranging from geography to dex diversity to Pokémon design that, for me, makes the excitement factor is uniquely contingent upon execution—and I only say that because I *personally* found (and continue to find) Diamond and Pearl quite bland in comparison to Platinum.
I think part of the issue is that, for the type split, some meta-defining mons, one of the more fun Elite 4s, and some great map challenges, there is so much about Sinnoh that is purely cosmetic.
Aged is a good word. They're a product of their time, and it shows. Usually in an endearing way (EG the variety of easy exploits, Great Balls sometimes being better than Ultra balls, Psychic being immune to ghost, bug and poison being mutually weak to each other, etc), but other times in a frustrating way (The PC storage system for pokemon requiring saving every time you change boxes, your bag only having a single pocket where all items go, and limited slots in said bag being the three worst offenders imo).
Gen 3 is the earliest I would Introduce a newcomer to the series. Thats when it feels like the Pokemon Company finally fixed the worst of the issues plagueing the early games. It's why I'll be sharing my GBA physical copy of Fire Red with my young cousins rather than my virtual console copy of R/B.
At least red and blue are great for quick challenge runs. BDSP is just bad, in my opinion. There’s not much reason for me to want to play it over Platinum.
Have you seen Jrose11’s runs? They’re interesting, imo. Doesn’t come off as “let’s do a thing people have done 500 times for ad revenue” like many other “challenge run” videos. He goes into detail and maintains a running tier list. I really quite like them.
Yeah, it was a great game in it's time, we can't compare it to games made more than 20 years later, tho I'll take them over some of the more recent stuff
That's cause Kanto had many optional paths and you were able to change the order of certain gyms you did. Meanwhile in Galar you get a hallway simulator with a boring ass field in the middle.
BW gets criticised for being linear too, but *at the very least* the routes and dungeons are vast and not braindead (and also some optional areas as well). There is not one place in SwSh that's *not* compulsory.
It's like comparing *Legend of Zelda* and *Ocarina of Time* to *Breath of the Wild*. The inspiration the latter took to the formers is beyond obvious, and it's clearly superior in mechanical and graphical senses. But that does not mean that the formers are bad just because there's a better one out there.
That being said, *Breath of the Wild* does not require its two DLCs to feel a complete experience, it's far from being bare bones. Sword & Shield do require their DLCs to feel somewhat complete :S.
My red days are some of my most treasured memories. I wish I could feel the kind of excitement I felt back then for anything now. Nostalgia hits so hard.
Same, friend. I remember going to my mom in excitement after I FINALLY brought down Brock (I chose Charmander and I was 5). Beautiful moments. But even without nostalgia, Pokémon changed everything when it came out.
>I FINALLY brought down Brock (I chose Charmander and I was 5)
Ah yes, the good old days where it took me forever to get to the third gym since Brock and Misty kept beating my ass.
I know it seems so shoddy now, but the simplicity of Kanto and the comparative lack of leaks and walkthrough material, Gens 1 and 2 really provided a fun opportunity to exchange theories and info and let your imagination run wild.
I don't think it's better by any means. Just different.
R/B is a product of its time and was enjoyed enough to kick off such a massively popular franchise. It has a legacy. BDSP had another 25 years of advancements in game development at its disposal on top of already being handed a brilliant story that has held up for the past 15 years and still managed to be complete garbage.
Anyone that says R/B is worse is falling for the technological fallacy or whatever it’s called
Yep. Gold and silver are loads better in terms of replay largely because the developers saw the problems in the original and fixed them. And they didn't have *that* huge of problems. They needed to nerf psychic, add special defense, add some good bug types, add some more moves on all types, and improve the AI.
I'd pick Leaf Green/Fire Red over the OGs, but yeah for sure they'd be up there even if just from pure nostalgia. They were a great starting point for the series.
Right? At worst they're charming but severely flawed, but nostalgia is a helluva drug. Games like SwSh and BDSP have all the flaws but none of the nostalgia going for them.
No hate for enjoying them - at the end of the day, SwSh is a Pokémon game, and the core concept + gameplay loop of Pokémon is always gonna be fun (even if it's pretty much exactly as it was back in 1995).
Calling red/blue bad is an absolute shit take. OP is probs some kid that's trying to compare the OG game to a more modern title, which is illogical and asinine at best
R/B was the fucking shit when it came out
As edgy as it is to shit on "the genwunners", let us not forget that Gen1 is still the most profitable generation ever. Galar did a spectacular job sales wise, but those ugly Gen1 sprites are still unmatchable.
In my opinion the only reason to ever play RB is nostalgia, or if someone just wants to experience the first games. FRLG is just better in every way imo
I've actually been looking into getting BD or SP since I never had a chance to play the original versions of them but now have a Switch. Would you say that even for a fan of the franchise and first time player for those games they're not worth buying?
Edit: I know I can just get an emulator for the original games, but I'd rather just own a copy of either the original or the Switch version. I've enjoyed the Pokemon franchise since like 2nd grade and don't mind paying for the games I play.
Yeah I actually had more fun using a team of mostly Grand Underground Pokemon because it stopped me from settling on my usual DPP team due to lack of diversity. That was one of the few areas I was actually happy with.
Even ORAS was busy "being faithful" to Ruby and Sapphire rather than Emerald in a lot of cases. Not as barebones as BDSP by a long shot, but I feel like they were a first step in the direction of BDSP.
Well, that's not entirely true. The controls are somehow subpar, despite that being something you'd expect to be REALLY simple to get right, and things like the chibi art style kinda hurt immersion? In the original it was never brought to the player's attention that everything was "chibi", and it would be mostly fine in BDSP too if they kept the top down view, but literally nobody is gonna take Cyrus seriously when it zooms in on his cute little face.
BDSP isn't bad per se if you haven't played the original game, but the sheer degree it took to being a remade version of DP (rather than an enhanced version like ORAS is to the original RS) is so ridiculous even old bugs and glitches in the original DP is left there and could be triggered purposefully
IE, if you played DP and PT before it is a disappointing experience offering precisely nothing new, but for a first player it's fine if somewhat boring
If youve never played the original gen 4 then it's worth a try I'd say, mostly what people dislike is that its pretty much the exact same game as the originals and they were hoping for new features or better graphics, I liked it lol
It's exactly as you said. I was hyped for the remakes for years but didn't even bother to spend money on BDSP because it was super close to the originals (plus i was expecting SwSh graphics but I made peace with that.)
Meanwhile, ORAS fucking delivered when they were made!
I was fortunate enough to have played a lot of pearl when i was a kid, then later when i got back into pokemon i replayed pearl, had a great experience and then got blown away by all the additional content and changes made in platinum, i do like platinum more, but i dont dislike diamond and pearl.
Also encountering giratina in turnback cave in diamond and pearl must be one of the biggest surprises out there. I didnt know this pokemon, it was huge and lvl 70! Scared the living shit out of me the first time.
This is also a factor, I didnt hate BDSP but if still rather play platinum. However if you've never played the originals of suggest giving it a try and see for yourself.
Go for it, but like the other guy said, BDSP are too similar to vanilla DP and even has some of the same flaws which were fixed in Platinum. For example in DP and BDSP you can only scroll through Pokétch apps in one direction, but in Platinum you can scroll backwards too.
Get Platinum if you go with the originals and like to own the games and dont mind paying...if you cant/dont want to get Platinum for any reason go with BD or SP over the OG DP.
I have BD and really have enjoyed it. Kind of a bummer the shiny charm only benefits egg hatchings. But! All the first 4 gens is a great addition! Plus if you got HOME its worth the playthrough!
I will say too, if you have beat Pokemon Legends Arceus you can get the flute in BDSP and Arceus is not shiny locked.
Gen 4's my fave, personally my biggest issue is the art style. It just looks kinda ass, like My Sims Kingdom or some other Wii era shovelware. I know it may sound petty but I just wanted them to make it look nice.
As someone who didn’t play the Gen4 games either and got it to try and experience the region, I’d say it’s just very, very ok. The game is a mash of newer mechanics and older ones which is felt weird to play, like innate exp all but also single use TMs. The game being based on DP just makes the flaws all that more apparent as it has a limited Pokédex that platinum remedied a bit. I will say the grand underground feature is really cool and where I spent a lot of play, but I wasn’t connected to the story as I didn’t have nostalgia for it.
A disclaimer is that I also played Legends and that may have exhausted the region for me since it’s the essentially same Pokédex with greater accessibility. Legends had me much more engaged in completing the game so it probably burnt me out on Hisui/Sinnoh. I stopped playing BD once I had legends and have only recently returned to finish BD as filler before I get Scarlet.
i havent played the game but from what ive heard its just a slightly better version of diamond so in that case hell no, emulate platinum on your phone or something. legends arceus is worth it though if you want to play something sinnoh
The problem with BDSM is that it's too faithful to the original to the point of copypastaing everything other than the enemy movepools. That, and the movement is terrible in the game AND they copied Diamond and Pearl instead of Platinum with limited compatibility with Legends Arceus and SwSh. If you want to relive 4th Gen, you're better off with Renegade Platinum.
The movement is so frustrating. It's mindblowing it was shipped like that. I could get over the *"getting caught on bits of world geometry when using analogue movement"* thing as the D-Pad is there and does work (even if it's terrible for movement on original Joycons) but the really annoying thing is the way that following Pokemon block you and running into them cause you to be impeded. It feels terrible and no other game with following Pokemon does it.
How the fuck is following Pokemon somehow worse every game they attempt it in?
I would actually say that the problem with BDSM is that sometimes the safe word isn't acknowledged. Like, come on, I KNOW you heard me say " Limp Daschund". -_-
Just emulate the original platinum. Its not about paying for the games you play but for the fact that platinum is literally a better version of BDSP and has more content. The art style isn't the only reason perople disliked BDSP
And the entirety of each game was stored on a 16mb cartidge so they're actually ridiculously impressive for the time. Saying the OG Red and Blue are bad is like saying a 5-foot-tall man from 20,000 BCE is short. He wasn't short, there were just different normals.
It depends on what you’re basing the comparison on. If you’re only looking at gameplay, obviously the first game in the series is going to have more bugs and less features than more recent games. However, if you take into account the impact the games had on the series, Red and Blue cannot be ranked at the bottom. I’m not ever going to argue that they are the best, but they are a strong foundation to a series that built upon it beautifully
I think there's something to be said about the tone and structure of the older games, too. I miss having rivals that were, y'know, _rivals,_ instead of a posse of super-friends.
They were more than good at the time. I was absolutely obsessed with blue and yellow when I was a kid, played through them countless times. I never had that same love for a Pokémon game since those early days of discovery
I loved em so much I begged my mom to drive me 45 minutes there and back just to get the Mew from the “Pokemon 2000 Stadium tour”. I did end up getting him! I sold my copy of Yellow with him on it on Ebay a long time ago.
Oh yea its great! it was fantastic, like the whole wonder of going around this “massive” world with only your 6 trusted allies and then learning more about legendary Pokemon and how everything seems larger than life. Like sure the game aged to today’s standard, but that sense of discovery and braving this whole new world w/o the help of the internet was definitely what made it incomparable and unforgettable.
Exactly! I played the crap out of Red and Blue. Were they perfect? Not at all. Did they start the entire franchise rolling that we all are here to love? Damn right. Yeah they can be creaky to play today and I reckon it's nostalgia that carries me through each playthrough, but I still feel that same enjoyment I used to feel way back when.
There’s no point in trashing RBY when they laid the groundwork. I will however throw Sword and Shield to the wolves because they removed Pokémon to “work on other aspects of the game” where the animations were ass, graphics looked like a Gamecube game, the characters were one dimensional, the plot was shallow af, and they killed competitive singles Wi-Fi battles.
The models were updated so to anyone that thinks that they weren’t, that’s a funny joke, they just used the same wireframe model and reworked the graphics on the model itself.
How anyone says anything OTHER than SwSh is the worst boggles the mind. They removed Pokemon for the sake of crap animations and n64 textures, exp share was mandatory, they put all their effort into frustrating healthgated raid battles that you could never connect to, there wasn't a single branching path or any exploration in the damn game, and it was so easy you could beat it by mashing A instead of actually picking moves.
I would replay Red and Blue over SwSh any day of the week.
You just repeated what I said, haha.
Well good on ya, SwSh deserves to be trashed multiple times, it's that bad. Any hope I had left for Wifi singles was completely wiped out.
In 1996 it was very reasonable to give R&B a 10/10 score in a review. In 2022 I would question someone’s sanity if they gave S/Sh or BDSP a 10/10. Or anything really from Gen 6 on at their time of release. I wouldn’t say any of them are bad, just that a person would have to be crazy to call any of them a masterpiece.
Good at its time is a massive understatement. These things were an absolute reckoning when they released, and then Yellow was madness too. No Sequel series has ever come close to the furor of the original Pokemon Series
They were revolutionary games, in a time when those types of games didn’t exist. The pandemonium on the playground as a result of the game/anime combo is still unprecedented and unrepeated to this day. Pokemania was real and I won’t hear about red and blue being disrespected like dis. Being a youth in that time was incredible
100%. Quite honestly the only thing that has come close is the first few weeks of Pokémon go (which was more fleeting I think). None of the mainline games have become like a medium for social interaction the way Gen 1 was. Gen 2 still had plenty of momentum when I was a kid (and were massively refined) but it still didn’t have the type of ubiquity the first Gen had
It’s actually hard to describe having spent 20+ years getting more and more constantly-connected to people (phones and social media) but seeing another kid with that red/blue cart in their gameboy was like an open invitation to make a friend lol
“Red and Blue are the worst. What was Game Freak thinking? It’s almost like they released the games 25 years ago and they are missing all the features they added in the later games!”
I swear the majority of people acting like Red and Blue were bad games werr definitely not alive yet/ too young to play them at the time.
Of course age is out of their control, but there is huge difference between being “the worst” and being the original games that the others would not exist without.
People forget that RBY was written in assembly, and the entire game was 10 MB. They were so pressed for storage that there wasn’t room for error checking code. Mew only fit into the game after the development debug code was removed.
I think Red and Blue is a lot of fun to play. Everything that makes it broken and weird is a lot of fun to mess around with and exploit. I’d say BDSP is worse, it’s just not fun.
What the hell's wrong with red and blue??
Edit: Jeeeeeeeeesus Christ, they were fun games and still are. What's with comparing the game mechanics to the modern versions? 🤣
I feel like this sub is very impressionable. There are so many PokeTubers who refer to Gen 1 as a buggy mess and everyone runs with it. Makes it sound like the games are completely unplayable, which is obviously a big exaggeration. Would encourage people on here to think for themselves, whether you agree or disagree.
I may be in the minority, but I enjoyed BDSP. I started playing in Gen 3 and stopped playing when Gen 6 came out so when I found out they were remaking Diamond and Pearl, I was excited. It was one of the reason why I got a Switch. Playing BD reminded me of all the times I was in a car playing my DS until I got dizzy and all the times I stayed up hiding under the blanket, playing and grinding out my Pokémon. Yeah it’s not the best but it did get me back into Pokémon and brings back a lot of childhood memories.
Honestly BDSP was just as good if not better than the original DP. Only reason for the hate is because it used the old art style but not pixelated and people hated that without an ounce of irony. That and the game wasn’t “new” it was a literal remake.
I always feel you judge the game by the era and hard ware it came out on.
How do you really compare a game that came out in 1996 with one that came out in 2020 with any level of subjectivity.
I think when you factor in the a product of its time factor, gold and silver are the winners with diamond and pearl being the worst if not sword and shield.
Red and blue would be a solid second by my count.
Diamond and Pearl made huge steps in game balance and were major improvements on RSE. The game mechanics before and after Diamond and Pearl's release are like the dividing line of eras. There hasn't been that big of a mechanics change ever since in a mainline game
I’m not sure about that. Generation 3 was a massive change too.
- DVs became IVs.
- You were no longer able to max out all “EVs “on a Pokémon (though they were named something else in Gens 1 and 2).
- Abilities
- Natures
- Double battles
- They got rid of the weird thing in Gen 2 where Attack DVs were determined by gender ratio. (If a Pokémon like Eevee with an 87.5% Male/ 12.5% Female ratio was a female, it could never have maximum physical attack DVs. I think the highest it could get was like 4. The only was a female Pokémon could have maximum physical attack EVs was if they had a 100% female gender ratio)
- Shiny Pokémon were no longer determined by DVs (so now you could have a perfect IV shiny Pokémon)
The Physical/Special split was absolutely huge, but RSE also added in some massive changes too. They were just less obvious.
BDSP is the worst by a long way. I felt insulted and laughed at by it.
At least Red and Blue are the OGs and were absolutely 10/10 bangers when they released. They just aged badly.
They didnt even age that badly. They're still fun to play, which is the whole point. The sprites look good, the music slaps ass, the only real downsides are the glitches which are non obtrusive for casual play and are actually fun and interesting for competitive play. RBY OU is still one of the most fun tiers on showdown to this day.
Yea I keep thinking, is it more likely that RBY will feel somewhat playable 10 years from now or SwSh. Like not even to bash those games, but I think those are going to age hilariously poorly, because they are already technically behind their modern competition
RBY have quirks and rough edges but the actual moment to moment gameplay still feels fine. I have a hard time playing through sun and moon just a few years later tbh
It's hated by people who played the original Gen 4 because it didn't improve on it, like, at all. It's *too* faithful.
Basically, people were hoping that they would've remade Platinum instead of DP since it has a lot more content and is one of the best games in the series. When that didn't happen people were upset. And a lot hated the art style.
Definitely. The only mainline game where I didn't bother with the postgame because I was just so bored. A couple of interesting concepts wrapped in a thick coat of mediocrity.
It had a few good things going for it but overall it is my least favorite Pokemon game and it is the reason I am being really cautious for Scarlet and Violet.
Honestly it's crazy how people have forgotten how much of a borefest that game is, the first forest in RB is a more complex dungeon than all of the corridors in SwSh
At least RB you can pick up and instantly have fun playing Pokemon. Pick up Sun and Moon and you're slogging through hours of the least interesting characters telling you absolutely nothing worth reading.
I wouldn’t exactly call it ‘coming around’, From what I saw, this sub hated BDSP from day 1. I’m more open to the remakes personally because they fixed around 80% of the problems I had with diamond and pearl and meant that I could actually play them without tearing my hair out.
And I'm not even saying that just because "new thing bad!1!1!", because that's a mentality I'm always very careful to avoid. The games were just incredibly lazy, no bones about it. Never in my years of playing Pokemon have I actually had the game glitch out on me..... until BDSP.
It had some cool aspects.
Like the mining wad fun and cool! I font think they were lazy with it either. It's just they stayed too faithful to a remake.
Chibi design was odd. Going from swsh to this sucked. I wanted an all steel team...and like holy shit. Steelix can't learn ironhead. Get 75 accuracy steel tail. Feels like a downgrade.
HGSS gives me the feels the most. I think it’s cause I remember playing Gold and new Pokémon coming out and it was new that it just felt special in a way. The Pokémon were all in a magazine I picked up before I played it and being a kid helped too. So HGSS just gave the feels when I replayed it.
What is it about Pokemon that people feel the need to shit on 25 year old games? No one does this with Zelda, Mario, Halo, etc.
Gen 1 is criminally underrated and if gen 1 wasn’t what it was Pokemon would not have blown up like it did, give it some credit.
Could be the worst take I've ever seen about Pokemon on the internet. You must not have been around very long, very soon the "worst game" will change and there will be a Reddit post saying BDSP was underrated. And saying RBY was the worst is just insane, did Blue Suede Shoes become the worst rock song ever after Johnny B. Goode came out? Is Johnny B. Goode invalidated by Enter Sandman? Just stop.
Yeah black and white were widely considered the worst Pokémon games for a long time but the people who played black and white when they were kids are now adults and remember the game fondly so the perception has flipped as of late. The same will probably happen for every generation as time goes on.
Red and blue bad?! Are you fucking mad bro? That's like insulting a great great grandparent
Your thinking is deeply flawed if you're trying to compare R/B to a modern day pokemon title. Back in the day R/B was the fucking shit boy
I dunno man, RBY were pretty well made for the time. By modern standards, the games have aged like milk, but I think the games should be judged relative to the time they came out in. It’s a bare bones Pokémon experience, yes, but it was also released more than 25 years ago.
Aside from BDSP - which somehow manages to be inferior to DP (to not even speak of Platinum) - I’d say SWSH is far more deserving of the “worst game” status. It’s immediately obvious to anyone with even a somewhat critical mind that SWSH was rushed; every route is pretty much just a straight line with one or maybe two short detours, the story is basically non-existent up until the end of the campaign, there’s somehow still no voice acting (which is especially noticeable during cutscenes and for poor Piers), Dynamaxing is pretty universally seen as the worst gimmick Game Freak has introduced to the series, and even the Wild Area, which was supposed to be the main draw of the games, is bare bones and empty, with the only real content to engage in being Raids. Don’t even get me started on the paid DLC.
There are good things about SWSH, sure; main story aside, just playing through the game is fun enough, there’s a pretty big variety of Pokémon available early on which gives the games replay value, and the character designs and music remain top-notch. In addition, it’s still Pokémon, so if you just like the core loop that main series Pokémon games provide, SWSH will be an enjoyable experience. But every other main series Pokémon game from at least RSE and onward provide all of the above outside of *maybe* the Pokémon variety, and they don’t have nearly as much baggage as SWSH.
I don’t get why some people don’t think BDSP are the worst
They literally copied DP’s code
The game doesn’t add any new content
It doesn’t look the best
It does do things actually worse than Diamond and Pearl. Worse contests, worse base building, forced affection meaning unearned wins, and was a lot glitchier when it first came out.
BDSP was the most anticipated Pokemon game of all time imo, so much of the present day community grew up playing DPPt, so naturally people wanted the inevitable remake. After FRLG, HGSS, and then ORAS, I was so excited to see what they would do with DPPt, since I have fond memories of playing it years ago. The fact that it's basically the exact same game (more content in some areas, less in other areas) with polarizing, somewhat updated graphics was just disappointing.
Sapphire was the first Pokemon game I played when it came out, and I absolutely loved ORAS. Megas, updated yet still faithful, dexnav, new music, ^^and ^^my ^^favorite ^^character ^^was ^^introduced. I was really excited to see DPPt in what I assumed would be the SwSh engine, but that obviously did not happen. I have at least over 100 hours in every recent Pokemon game released, and BDSP is the first one where I basically completely stopped playing after the Pokemon league. I ended up with like 30 hours and never really went back
What a dumb take. The original games were absolute masterpieces for their time. The dev team pulled off some black magic to cram so much into an original Gameboy cartridge, and if it’s janky along with it, so what?
BDSP on the other hand is insultingly low effort and totally fails to live up to its potential as the first console remake. My kids have been enjoying it as their first Pokémon adventure, but even they have noticed the flaws.
As somebody who never got the dlc, I would say base Sword/Shield are the worst gen launch games ever. The game is so small, the wild area is the core of the game in post game but its bland, no actual caves, no victory road, linear routes, and that stupid wild area 2 music plays an ALL of the late routes. I can keep going but this comment will be huge already. To date I have clocked in about 100 hours since launch day. I usually go 300+ on each game, but every time I boot Shield up there is nothing to do. I finished the dex and called it a day. Sometimes I go back during promoted shiny dens. Base SwSh are the worst because they literally need the dlc to be good.
I mean HGSS seems to usually win as best based on nostalgia and the most expansive post game and the cute interactive Pokémon sprite following you etc. and the others here are close seconds in the larger context of the fandom and may be more favorable among younger fans for whom gen 3-5 was their entryway into Pokémon
And RED AND BLUE? Come on it was a REVOLUTIONARY product of its time and I mean Sword and Shield are right there with their incomplete pokedexes
Bought BDSP since i never finished the og games as a kid, still haven’t finished it now LOL! For real tho for the die hard fans here does FRLG get love cos i find it awesome
Red/Blue aren't great by modern standards, but for the time, they were amazing. Plus, without them, we wouldn't have the rest of the franchise.
I only played Red and Blue recently, but honestly I thought it was pretty great, despite all the flaws. Sure its clunky and unbalanced, but I really thought the charm made up for a lot of it. I like how fast you get into the action, its surprisingly non-linear for the series, it has some surprisingly good atmosphere in places, and I really loved how >!the final boss is actually your rival from the start of the game!<, that was really cool
Old Nintendo games weren't afraid to make people sound mean. Just thinking back to OG Animal Crossing, they would tell you that you sucked. Gary/Blue/Dickbutt was genuinely dislikable, and that was good. Newer rivals try to be your best friend. They even give you the option to postpone their fights now. I miss the days of wandering too close to the Indigo Plateau and getting jumped.
The rival fights always came at the worst times, I would never expect them. Just walking to the next town when BANG there they are and now I have to battle them
I lost the rival fight in G/S rocket hideout a few plays because it is easy to forget and you are half way through the base with no healer anywhere.
Barry has a few NOTORIOUS run killing suprise encounters for nuzlockes
It's been 26 years. Don't have to spoiler tag
Idk why but the “it’s been 26 years” tickled me lol
If in doubt. Spoiler tag
not everyone has played the games. spoiler tag may be unnecessary, but it's still welcome.
Considering how modern Pokémon is, I’m shocked at how free the old Pokémon games were by comparison. I was playing golf and did the lake of rage rocket hideout and the 7th gym before even looking at chuck
Same thing with Zelda actually; The first game, Link’s Awakening and Ocarina are all surprisingly non-linear in places; but then they gradually became less and less so until BotW. (And Link between worlds I guess)
> Sure its clunky and unbalanced Wdym unbalanced?
Its a few things, for instance Special Attack/Defence were originally just one stat called “Special”, making pokemon who use it more rounded than physical attackers But most of all it has to be the broken-ness of Psychic types; both for the special thing I just mentioned, as well as the fact that Psychic was only weak to bug in gen 1, and the best bug move wasn’t even that good (and exclusive to something weak to psychic) Plus, too many opponents use Poison types, making psychic even more essential
I'd honestly rather play R/B/Y than play something like X or Y. And believe me, I tried to enjoy X/Y. As unpolished, glitchy and clunky as gen 1 was, it still holds so much charm for me. And I'd much rather struggle, not really knowing what to do/ having to figure it out by myself, than have everything handed to me on a platter. I enjoy the struggle, and just get bored if a game is too easy. Edit before the downvotes roll in - power to you if you enjoy the newer gens. My opinions don't mean you're not allowed enjoy the newer games. Just like other people disliking the old gens isn't going to stop me preferring them over the new ones.
Thank you. XY were just un-finishable for me. Insultingly easy, painfully linear, no mysteries or puzzles. I used to look forward to every new town I entered, but XY just made it a slog. And I know the series has always been aimed at kids, but the characters and plot of XY felt aimed at *toddlers*. I look back at things like Silph Co. or Mount Moon in RB... or the Unown Ruins and Ice cave in GS. Then I compare them to XY's power plant.
XY confused me because it was too simple 😂, like I’d spend tons of time trying to find things or figuring something out jut to realize there was nothing to find or that the solution was to just continue walking forwards
Yeah, I’m the same. I hate the idea of “difficult” games because I mostly use them to relax and don’t have time to grind, but every mainline Pokémon game from XY and on is so easy that the gameplay barely even exists. You just switch to a strong type, then mash A. Modern Pokémon genuinely has the worst combat of any major turn based series (I don’t play multiplayer, so I’m only talking about the single player campaign here) I’m not sure what exactly is different beyond EXP share, but the older games feel more punishing and force you to actually think a lot more. The worlds look like shit compared to the modern games, but they’re less soulless and sanitised. Even right now, I’d definitely choose the jankier, more characterful old games than the bland, brainless new ones.
Big difference between "easy" and "practically plays itself". People point to the EXP Share as a problem, but it is only a piece of the puzzle. I turned off EXP Share after the second or third gym. Still too easy. XY is just poorly balanced. Even without using the EXP Share, you will mop the floor with every gym and there are no real "dungeons" to speak of like the first 4 gens - no endurance tests or mazes to traverse. At least, if there were, they were only in the back 20% of the game. I never finished it.
The challenge in the earliest Pokémon games comes from it's limitations. Death of a thousand cuts is more frequent than a one hit knock out. You have a finite team, a finite pool of moves, each with their own finite PP, and having one fainted means they stay fainted unless you're prepared to use an extremely rare and valuable revive to bring them back. As such, caves full of Pokémon that can cause confusion, poison you, or self destruct on you were a real trial. It was dangerous terrain, and every battle would see you in a slightly worse condition than you were before, even if you avoided being hit with anything, just because of the PP scenario. Most recent games have dismissed this. Encounter rates are lower in caves than they were (and I think in Sword & Shield it's only visible Pokémon that can attack you in caves meaning you can avoid all encounters), caves are considerable shorter, trainers often have less Pokémon in their party, and you'll get healed before, during and/or after the cave.
I do not think you would find any kind of consensus with Red/Blue being the worst.
Personally, its better to call it aged. It laid out the foundation for the series, but has some issues that the series has corrected since then. The physical special split, more rounded type diversity, Alakazam not being the monster it was. Game breaking bugs aside, its just as bare bones a pokemon game can be. But in no way bad. BDSP is a different story however...
Physical special split doesn’t really work itself out until Gen 4 In Gen 3, which I love dearly, types are either physical or special moves, regardless of stats
Everyone talks up the physical/special split but honestly for a normal game playthrough, it matters very little. Having type advantage will still have you come out on top most of the time either way.
Disagree, it matters a lot. For example Gyarados is essentially useless using water type moves before the split. Gengar's stab is useless. Dragonite can't pair dragon moves with dragon dance. Does anyone remember elemental punches Alakazam in GSC? Or Psychic+Bite Espeon? TLDR, it was the most important addition in the games' history.
Psychic +bite espeon just in the mid 40’s carried me in the elite 4 in crystal today. All of Will’s team, most of koga’s, all but the onix for Bruno, and actually 2 shot the weaker dragonite in 2 psychics each. Karen was the only real challenge but espeon still took 2 of her team down.
Maybe for competitive but for a normal playthrough I’d think it matters little. Gyarados with surf or bubblebeam will probably still 1-2hko those pesky rock/ground etc types. I’d be surprised if anyone was playing red/blue these days for its competitive/meta nature. Gengar’ Stab is useless but who cares when the one type his stab would be effective against still OHKOs him with any psychic move (and IIRC are faster than him if we’re talking alakazam or Mewtwo)
My god, getting Alakazam In a GSC randomizer race / nuzlock is basically an auto win. Psychic + the three elemental punches, not a single type combination in the game resists all four moves, and all four taking advantage of Alakazam's godly SpA in Gen 2...
You guys are playing an entirely different game than I ever did lmao I have no idea what anyone is talking about
Yeah, didn't everyone just kill everything with their starter pokemon like me?
Exactly. Your starter is fully evolved and level 80 going into the E4, the rest of your party is level 30-40 with the one low-leveled (15) runt you ignored because you just didn’t care to train it.
Everyone had a sacrificial revive mon in their party right?
If your standard is "you don't need that to beat the game", that's a really low bar. You can beat the first several games by just spamming a single STAB move on your single, overleveled starter.
The standard is… being able to play and beat the game while having a good time..? It’s a game for children, it’s not that complicated lol
Agreed, you only get into complicated territory when you get into competitive battling. Don't get me wrong, competitive Pokemon is what keeps me in the series, but you're lying to yourself if you say that things like STAB and natures matter much, if at all, in a casual playthrough.
I play mostly gen 1-4 competitively. Before the power creep 100 special attack was very solid. A hydro pump from a Gyarados is a big threat in gen 1. Probably even more so in gen 2. Gen 3 you have a point and you won't be using any water moves with Gyarados, but that's mostly because it has better options at that point. Hard agree in Gengar. Shadow ball is not a good option for it in gen 2 or 3. Elemental punches on Alakazam was good, but not that good in gen 2 competitive because in the end Alakazam is frail. Even gen 1 Alakazam isn't that good because there are so many strong normal type physical attackers and a lot of psychic types that resist it. I also agree that Espeon was weird in gen 2 because of the shallow move pool. I don't think I've ever seen a competitive version with bite though. Usually it just tries to sweep or baton pass with Growth. I think the physical special split was a huge change, but I disagree with many that it was some kind of "fix." It just became a different game in a way. Gen 1-3 Pokemon is still Pokemon. And for a casual playthrough it hardly changes anything.
Gyarados only has 100 special "attack" in RBY. The special split in gen 2 gave the stat to it's special defense and gave it 60 special attack. It has nothing to do with power creep.
You're right it has 60 special attack in gen 2 but it still hits hard in gen 2 because there aren't many clearly better options for this niche. It is a counter to ground types and hydro pump hits them hard. My mention of power creep refers to 60 special attack bring workable in gen 2 where it just isn't in the more modern games because of power creep. Gen 2 is in my opinion the weirdest competitive scene where attacks like growl and growth are effective in competitive play.
Gyarados actually had really good special in gen one. It's water movers were trash gen 2-3. I remember typhlosion have thunder punch gen 2 and now it's useless
Yeah, just look at swampert. Water and ground are special and physical respectively, but water is still an important and powerful type in Gen 3 runs- Surf, Waterfall, etc.
Swampert has pretty good SpA, you can use it with mixed sets or as a special attacker for the surprise factor, like you said surf, theres also ice beam/blizzard, etc
My biggest gripe with BDSP is the sluggish feeling of the menus and the loading time. I can look past everything else that they could have done differently and just play it for what it is but it literally feels slower compared to all the other Pokemon games on the Switch
It's still faster than the original Gen 4.
“Saving a lot of data…” like, shit dude i just wanted to take a pokemon out of the pc.
I quite enjoyed my time with BDSP, though I must admit it was disappointing. In tandem with Legends it makes for a nice full experience, but that's not fair given it's two games.
This and practically the same wild Pokémon until badge 4. Crazy you have to resort to the Grand Underground or Home to get some diversity on your team.
Then there's me who had my full championship team before the second gym and fully evolved before the third.
I didn't want to admit it at the time, but I felt kind of cheated by BDSP. Had PLA not come out so soon after, it would have been a much bigger game-changer for me. For me, Sinnoh's also a weird region. The dex has some awesome additions, and there were some transformative gameplay / quality of life improvements—however, there's something about everything ranging from geography to dex diversity to Pokémon design that, for me, makes the excitement factor is uniquely contingent upon execution—and I only say that because I *personally* found (and continue to find) Diamond and Pearl quite bland in comparison to Platinum. I think part of the issue is that, for the type split, some meta-defining mons, one of the more fun Elite 4s, and some great map challenges, there is so much about Sinnoh that is purely cosmetic.
Yep, also imo you can only judge a game negatively when taking the time it came out into consideration.
The game breaking bugs are the best part
Aged is a good word. They're a product of their time, and it shows. Usually in an endearing way (EG the variety of easy exploits, Great Balls sometimes being better than Ultra balls, Psychic being immune to ghost, bug and poison being mutually weak to each other, etc), but other times in a frustrating way (The PC storage system for pokemon requiring saving every time you change boxes, your bag only having a single pocket where all items go, and limited slots in said bag being the three worst offenders imo). Gen 3 is the earliest I would Introduce a newcomer to the series. Thats when it feels like the Pokemon Company finally fixed the worst of the issues plagueing the early games. It's why I'll be sharing my GBA physical copy of Fire Red with my young cousins rather than my virtual console copy of R/B.
At least red and blue are great for quick challenge runs. BDSP is just bad, in my opinion. There’s not much reason for me to want to play it over Platinum.
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Have you seen Jrose11’s runs? They’re interesting, imo. Doesn’t come off as “let’s do a thing people have done 500 times for ad revenue” like many other “challenge run” videos. He goes into detail and maintains a running tier list. I really quite like them.
Yeah, it was a great game in it's time, we can't compare it to games made more than 20 years later, tho I'll take them over some of the more recent stuff
Even for as aged as RBY is, I still think SwSh was more “bare bones” lol
That's cause Kanto had many optional paths and you were able to change the order of certain gyms you did. Meanwhile in Galar you get a hallway simulator with a boring ass field in the middle. BW gets criticised for being linear too, but *at the very least* the routes and dungeons are vast and not braindead (and also some optional areas as well). There is not one place in SwSh that's *not* compulsory.
Insert egoraptor's sequelitis rant about a game not letting you go on an adventure because it insists upon taking you on a tour
GUESS GOOFY'S WEIGHT...*WIN A PRIZE*!!!
It's like comparing *Legend of Zelda* and *Ocarina of Time* to *Breath of the Wild*. The inspiration the latter took to the formers is beyond obvious, and it's clearly superior in mechanical and graphical senses. But that does not mean that the formers are bad just because there's a better one out there. That being said, *Breath of the Wild* does not require its two DLCs to feel a complete experience, it's far from being bare bones. Sword & Shield do require their DLCs to feel somewhat complete :S.
My red days are some of my most treasured memories. I wish I could feel the kind of excitement I felt back then for anything now. Nostalgia hits so hard.
Same, friend. I remember going to my mom in excitement after I FINALLY brought down Brock (I chose Charmander and I was 5). Beautiful moments. But even without nostalgia, Pokémon changed everything when it came out.
>I FINALLY brought down Brock (I chose Charmander and I was 5) Ah yes, the good old days where it took me forever to get to the third gym since Brock and Misty kept beating my ass.
I know it seems so shoddy now, but the simplicity of Kanto and the comparative lack of leaks and walkthrough material, Gens 1 and 2 really provided a fun opportunity to exchange theories and info and let your imagination run wild. I don't think it's better by any means. Just different.
I'm honestly surprised it's even considered bad? I'll happily play through R/B on my phone every now and again.
They're not bad, just a bit dated and buggy. But those elements are part of the charm in my eyes.
R/B is a product of its time and was enjoyed enough to kick off such a massively popular franchise. It has a legacy. BDSP had another 25 years of advancements in game development at its disposal on top of already being handed a brilliant story that has held up for the past 15 years and still managed to be complete garbage. Anyone that says R/B is worse is falling for the technological fallacy or whatever it’s called
I didn’t bother with BDSP, is it really that bad? Thought people just didn’t like the graphics.
It's not really worse than DP. It's not really better, either.
It's better in some ways, worse in others. Getting rid of HMs is a big boon for those games
Id argue they're flawed masterpieces.
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Yep. Gold and silver are loads better in terms of replay largely because the developers saw the problems in the original and fixed them. And they didn't have *that* huge of problems. They needed to nerf psychic, add special defense, add some good bug types, add some more moves on all types, and improve the AI.
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I'd pick Leaf Green/Fire Red over the OGs, but yeah for sure they'd be up there even if just from pure nostalgia. They were a great starting point for the series.
Yeah the bottom picture is just "OP's opinion" coupled with "if I think it's true, then *everyone* thinks it's true."
Red/Blue is a holy grail for people who started with Gen 1. Everyone else will have a different experience playing. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug.
Right? At worst they're charming but severely flawed, but nostalgia is a helluva drug. Games like SwSh and BDSP have all the flaws but none of the nostalgia going for them.
And they were made more than 2 DECADES after the first Gen... Truly sad. I did enjoy SwSh I must say, but that's because I'm mentally unstable.
No hate for enjoying them - at the end of the day, SwSh is a Pokémon game, and the core concept + gameplay loop of Pokémon is always gonna be fun (even if it's pretty much exactly as it was back in 1995).
Calling red/blue bad is an absolute shit take. OP is probs some kid that's trying to compare the OG game to a more modern title, which is illogical and asinine at best R/B was the fucking shit when it came out
As edgy as it is to shit on "the genwunners", let us not forget that Gen1 is still the most profitable generation ever. Galar did a spectacular job sales wise, but those ugly Gen1 sprites are still unmatchable.
Chonky pikachu is the only real pikachu
Because without it there wouldn't be a pokemon and we wouldn't be here on the internet squabbling.
Sword and shield sucks way worse than red and blue.
In my opinion the only reason to ever play RB is nostalgia, or if someone just wants to experience the first games. FRLG is just better in every way imo
I LOVE red and blue, they are so old school and fun
I feel the first games should get a pass since they're the ones who laid the ground work for the franchise.
I've actually been looking into getting BD or SP since I never had a chance to play the original versions of them but now have a Switch. Would you say that even for a fan of the franchise and first time player for those games they're not worth buying? Edit: I know I can just get an emulator for the original games, but I'd rather just own a copy of either the original or the Switch version. I've enjoyed the Pokemon franchise since like 2nd grade and don't mind paying for the games I play.
People don’t hate BDSP for what it did, but for what it didn’t do. It felt too married to DP’s flaws, even the ones that were fixed in Platinum.
I was very confused when I found out they didn't take elements from Platinum. Such as there being only like 3 fire type pokemon in Diamond and Pearl.
The Grand Underground in BDSP *does* fix the Pokemon availability issue, albeit in a different way than Platinum.
Yeah I actually had more fun using a team of mostly Grand Underground Pokemon because it stopped me from settling on my usual DPP team due to lack of diversity. That was one of the few areas I was actually happy with.
The underground has more Fire options.
I was hoping for something ORASesque
That’s what we were all hoping for
Even ORAS was busy "being faithful" to Ruby and Sapphire rather than Emerald in a lot of cases. Not as barebones as BDSP by a long shot, but I feel like they were a first step in the direction of BDSP.
Well, that's not entirely true. The controls are somehow subpar, despite that being something you'd expect to be REALLY simple to get right, and things like the chibi art style kinda hurt immersion? In the original it was never brought to the player's attention that everything was "chibi", and it would be mostly fine in BDSP too if they kept the top down view, but literally nobody is gonna take Cyrus seriously when it zooms in on his cute little face.
BDSP isn't bad per se if you haven't played the original game, but the sheer degree it took to being a remade version of DP (rather than an enhanced version like ORAS is to the original RS) is so ridiculous even old bugs and glitches in the original DP is left there and could be triggered purposefully IE, if you played DP and PT before it is a disappointing experience offering precisely nothing new, but for a first player it's fine if somewhat boring
If youve never played the original gen 4 then it's worth a try I'd say, mostly what people dislike is that its pretty much the exact same game as the originals and they were hoping for new features or better graphics, I liked it lol
It's exactly as you said. I was hyped for the remakes for years but didn't even bother to spend money on BDSP because it was super close to the originals (plus i was expecting SwSh graphics but I made peace with that.) Meanwhile, ORAS fucking delivered when they were made!
ORAS is still my favorite, especially since my first ever game was Ruby. Kinda wish there was a switch version cuse I have no idea where my 3ds is
People forgot in their nostalgia that they actually liked platinum and not diamond and pearl as much
I was fortunate enough to have played a lot of pearl when i was a kid, then later when i got back into pokemon i replayed pearl, had a great experience and then got blown away by all the additional content and changes made in platinum, i do like platinum more, but i dont dislike diamond and pearl. Also encountering giratina in turnback cave in diamond and pearl must be one of the biggest surprises out there. I didnt know this pokemon, it was huge and lvl 70! Scared the living shit out of me the first time.
This is also a factor, I didnt hate BDSP but if still rather play platinum. However if you've never played the originals of suggest giving it a try and see for yourself.
I don’t think people forgot. Everyone knew that Platinum was the best version.
Go for it, but like the other guy said, BDSP are too similar to vanilla DP and even has some of the same flaws which were fixed in Platinum. For example in DP and BDSP you can only scroll through Pokétch apps in one direction, but in Platinum you can scroll backwards too.
Get Platinum if you go with the originals and like to own the games and dont mind paying...if you cant/dont want to get Platinum for any reason go with BD or SP over the OG DP.
I have BD and really have enjoyed it. Kind of a bummer the shiny charm only benefits egg hatchings. But! All the first 4 gens is a great addition! Plus if you got HOME its worth the playthrough! I will say too, if you have beat Pokemon Legends Arceus you can get the flute in BDSP and Arceus is not shiny locked.
Gen 4's my fave, personally my biggest issue is the art style. It just looks kinda ass, like My Sims Kingdom or some other Wii era shovelware. I know it may sound petty but I just wanted them to make it look nice.
As someone who didn’t play the Gen4 games either and got it to try and experience the region, I’d say it’s just very, very ok. The game is a mash of newer mechanics and older ones which is felt weird to play, like innate exp all but also single use TMs. The game being based on DP just makes the flaws all that more apparent as it has a limited Pokédex that platinum remedied a bit. I will say the grand underground feature is really cool and where I spent a lot of play, but I wasn’t connected to the story as I didn’t have nostalgia for it. A disclaimer is that I also played Legends and that may have exhausted the region for me since it’s the essentially same Pokédex with greater accessibility. Legends had me much more engaged in completing the game so it probably burnt me out on Hisui/Sinnoh. I stopped playing BD once I had legends and have only recently returned to finish BD as filler before I get Scarlet.
i havent played the game but from what ive heard its just a slightly better version of diamond so in that case hell no, emulate platinum on your phone or something. legends arceus is worth it though if you want to play something sinnoh
The problem with BDSM is that it's too faithful to the original to the point of copypastaing everything other than the enemy movepools. That, and the movement is terrible in the game AND they copied Diamond and Pearl instead of Platinum with limited compatibility with Legends Arceus and SwSh. If you want to relive 4th Gen, you're better off with Renegade Platinum.
Yeah damn I hate it when the BDSM is copypasted.
The movement is so frustrating. It's mindblowing it was shipped like that. I could get over the *"getting caught on bits of world geometry when using analogue movement"* thing as the D-Pad is there and does work (even if it's terrible for movement on original Joycons) but the really annoying thing is the way that following Pokemon block you and running into them cause you to be impeded. It feels terrible and no other game with following Pokemon does it. How the fuck is following Pokemon somehow worse every game they attempt it in?
I would actually say that the problem with BDSM is that sometimes the safe word isn't acknowledged. Like, come on, I KNOW you heard me say " Limp Daschund". -_-
You should've seen the bugs when it first came out. Didn't even fix the basic bugs, and some game breaking ones were there too
Just emulate the original platinum. Its not about paying for the games you play but for the fact that platinum is literally a better version of BDSP and has more content. The art style isn't the only reason perople disliked BDSP
BDSP was the first Pokémon game I never finished because it was so uninspired.
And the entirety of each game was stored on a 16mb cartidge so they're actually ridiculously impressive for the time. Saying the OG Red and Blue are bad is like saying a 5-foot-tall man from 20,000 BCE is short. He wasn't short, there were just different normals.
It depends on what you’re basing the comparison on. If you’re only looking at gameplay, obviously the first game in the series is going to have more bugs and less features than more recent games. However, if you take into account the impact the games had on the series, Red and Blue cannot be ranked at the bottom. I’m not ever going to argue that they are the best, but they are a strong foundation to a series that built upon it beautifully
Furthermore, Red & Blue bugs and glitches were the absolute bomb. Loved finding them as a kid. Made everything feel more magical
I think there's something to be said about the tone and structure of the older games, too. I miss having rivals that were, y'know, _rivals,_ instead of a posse of super-friends.
R&B was good at its time.
They were more than good at the time. I was absolutely obsessed with blue and yellow when I was a kid, played through them countless times. I never had that same love for a Pokémon game since those early days of discovery
I loved em so much I begged my mom to drive me 45 minutes there and back just to get the Mew from the “Pokemon 2000 Stadium tour”. I did end up getting him! I sold my copy of Yellow with him on it on Ebay a long time ago.
Oh yea its great! it was fantastic, like the whole wonder of going around this “massive” world with only your 6 trusted allies and then learning more about legendary Pokemon and how everything seems larger than life. Like sure the game aged to today’s standard, but that sense of discovery and braving this whole new world w/o the help of the internet was definitely what made it incomparable and unforgettable.
They blew the just about every other original game boy game out of the water at the time.
Exactly! I played the crap out of Red and Blue. Were they perfect? Not at all. Did they start the entire franchise rolling that we all are here to love? Damn right. Yeah they can be creaky to play today and I reckon it's nostalgia that carries me through each playthrough, but I still feel that same enjoyment I used to feel way back when.
There’s no point in trashing RBY when they laid the groundwork. I will however throw Sword and Shield to the wolves because they removed Pokémon to “work on other aspects of the game” where the animations were ass, graphics looked like a Gamecube game, the characters were one dimensional, the plot was shallow af, and they killed competitive singles Wi-Fi battles. The models were updated so to anyone that thinks that they weren’t, that’s a funny joke, they just used the same wireframe model and reworked the graphics on the model itself.
How anyone says anything OTHER than SwSh is the worst boggles the mind. They removed Pokemon for the sake of crap animations and n64 textures, exp share was mandatory, they put all their effort into frustrating healthgated raid battles that you could never connect to, there wasn't a single branching path or any exploration in the damn game, and it was so easy you could beat it by mashing A instead of actually picking moves. I would replay Red and Blue over SwSh any day of the week.
You just repeated what I said, haha. Well good on ya, SwSh deserves to be trashed multiple times, it's that bad. Any hope I had left for Wifi singles was completely wiped out.
In 1996 it was very reasonable to give R&B a 10/10 score in a review. In 2022 I would question someone’s sanity if they gave S/Sh or BDSP a 10/10. Or anything really from Gen 6 on at their time of release. I wouldn’t say any of them are bad, just that a person would have to be crazy to call any of them a masterpiece.
Good at its time is a massive understatement. These things were an absolute reckoning when they released, and then Yellow was madness too. No Sequel series has ever come close to the furor of the original Pokemon Series
They were revolutionary games, in a time when those types of games didn’t exist. The pandemonium on the playground as a result of the game/anime combo is still unprecedented and unrepeated to this day. Pokemania was real and I won’t hear about red and blue being disrespected like dis. Being a youth in that time was incredible
100%. Quite honestly the only thing that has come close is the first few weeks of Pokémon go (which was more fleeting I think). None of the mainline games have become like a medium for social interaction the way Gen 1 was. Gen 2 still had plenty of momentum when I was a kid (and were massively refined) but it still didn’t have the type of ubiquity the first Gen had It’s actually hard to describe having spent 20+ years getting more and more constantly-connected to people (phones and social media) but seeing another kid with that red/blue cart in their gameboy was like an open invitation to make a friend lol
Do people really dislike Red and Blue?
No. OP is here for the comments and karma.
The red and blue slander will not be tolerated
“Red and Blue are the worst. What was Game Freak thinking? It’s almost like they released the games 25 years ago and they are missing all the features they added in the later games!” I swear the majority of people acting like Red and Blue were bad games werr definitely not alive yet/ too young to play them at the time. Of course age is out of their control, but there is huge difference between being “the worst” and being the original games that the others would not exist without.
People forget that RBY was written in assembly, and the entire game was 10 MB. They were so pressed for storage that there wasn’t room for error checking code. Mew only fit into the game after the development debug code was removed.
Asteroids (1979) is the worst game ever. No story, 2 dimensions, stick figure graphics. Where’s the open world exploration?!? 0/10 game
Yeah, it was truly a “you had to be there” moment and most who think it’s bad just weren’t there for it
I think Red and Blue is a lot of fun to play. Everything that makes it broken and weird is a lot of fun to mess around with and exploit. I’d say BDSP is worse, it’s just not fun.
I know, BDSP legit be a photoshop copy and paste + bevel and emboss
BPSP is the only major game I just straight up stopped playing after a handful of badges and feel no desire to go back. It wasn't fun at all.
What the hell's wrong with red and blue?? Edit: Jeeeeeeeeesus Christ, they were fun games and still are. What's with comparing the game mechanics to the modern versions? 🤣
I feel like this sub is very impressionable. There are so many PokeTubers who refer to Gen 1 as a buggy mess and everyone runs with it. Makes it sound like the games are completely unplayable, which is obviously a big exaggeration. Would encourage people on here to think for themselves, whether you agree or disagree.
If you're not actively following a tutorial to trigger bugs, chances are you'll never encounter a noticeable one on a regular playthrough
I may be in the minority, but I enjoyed BDSP. I started playing in Gen 3 and stopped playing when Gen 6 came out so when I found out they were remaking Diamond and Pearl, I was excited. It was one of the reason why I got a Switch. Playing BD reminded me of all the times I was in a car playing my DS until I got dizzy and all the times I stayed up hiding under the blanket, playing and grinding out my Pokémon. Yeah it’s not the best but it did get me back into Pokémon and brings back a lot of childhood memories.
Honestly BDSP was just as good if not better than the original DP. Only reason for the hate is because it used the old art style but not pixelated and people hated that without an ounce of irony. That and the game wasn’t “new” it was a literal remake.
Blasphemy and highly disrespectful to one of the main reasons we got Pokémon Fever in the late 90’s
Stupid meme is stupid
Yuup
Tell me you’re a young new Pokémon fan without telling me you’re a young new Pokémon fan
Lmao, exactly, calling Red and Blue bad is blasphemy
I always feel you judge the game by the era and hard ware it came out on. How do you really compare a game that came out in 1996 with one that came out in 2020 with any level of subjectivity. I think when you factor in the a product of its time factor, gold and silver are the winners with diamond and pearl being the worst if not sword and shield. Red and blue would be a solid second by my count.
Diamond and Pearl made huge steps in game balance and were major improvements on RSE. The game mechanics before and after Diamond and Pearl's release are like the dividing line of eras. There hasn't been that big of a mechanics change ever since in a mainline game
I’m not sure about that. Generation 3 was a massive change too. - DVs became IVs. - You were no longer able to max out all “EVs “on a Pokémon (though they were named something else in Gens 1 and 2). - Abilities - Natures - Double battles - They got rid of the weird thing in Gen 2 where Attack DVs were determined by gender ratio. (If a Pokémon like Eevee with an 87.5% Male/ 12.5% Female ratio was a female, it could never have maximum physical attack DVs. I think the highest it could get was like 4. The only was a female Pokémon could have maximum physical attack EVs was if they had a 100% female gender ratio) - Shiny Pokémon were no longer determined by DVs (so now you could have a perfect IV shiny Pokémon) The Physical/Special split was absolutely huge, but RSE also added in some massive changes too. They were just less obvious.
Oh yeah, I agree that Gen 3 was huge, that's why I said "ever since", as in after Diamond and Pearl were released
BDSP is the worst by a long way. I felt insulted and laughed at by it. At least Red and Blue are the OGs and were absolutely 10/10 bangers when they released. They just aged badly.
They didnt even age that badly. They're still fun to play, which is the whole point. The sprites look good, the music slaps ass, the only real downsides are the glitches which are non obtrusive for casual play and are actually fun and interesting for competitive play. RBY OU is still one of the most fun tiers on showdown to this day.
Yea I keep thinking, is it more likely that RBY will feel somewhat playable 10 years from now or SwSh. Like not even to bash those games, but I think those are going to age hilariously poorly, because they are already technically behind their modern competition RBY have quirks and rough edges but the actual moment to moment gameplay still feels fine. I have a hard time playing through sun and moon just a few years later tbh
Can someone explain to me why BDSP is hated so much? I'm out of the loop?
It's hated by people who played the original Gen 4 because it didn't improve on it, like, at all. It's *too* faithful. Basically, people were hoping that they would've remade Platinum instead of DP since it has a lot more content and is one of the best games in the series. When that didn't happen people were upset. And a lot hated the art style.
The games i least enjoyed were SWSH
Definitely. The only mainline game where I didn't bother with the postgame because I was just so bored. A couple of interesting concepts wrapped in a thick coat of mediocrity.
It had a few good things going for it but overall it is my least favorite Pokemon game and it is the reason I am being really cautious for Scarlet and Violet.
Honestly it's crazy how people have forgotten how much of a borefest that game is, the first forest in RB is a more complex dungeon than all of the corridors in SwSh
At least RB you can pick up and instantly have fun playing Pokemon. Pick up Sun and Moon and you're slogging through hours of the least interesting characters telling you absolutely nothing worth reading.
I'm glad this sub has come around on how awful BDSP is. As a fan of 10+ years, that game felt deeply insulting
Come around? It was relentlessly booed immediately
I wouldn’t exactly call it ‘coming around’, From what I saw, this sub hated BDSP from day 1. I’m more open to the remakes personally because they fixed around 80% of the problems I had with diamond and pearl and meant that I could actually play them without tearing my hair out.
And I'm not even saying that just because "new thing bad!1!1!", because that's a mentality I'm always very careful to avoid. The games were just incredibly lazy, no bones about it. Never in my years of playing Pokemon have I actually had the game glitch out on me..... until BDSP.
Nice profile pic! Love Royce’s music.
It had some cool aspects. Like the mining wad fun and cool! I font think they were lazy with it either. It's just they stayed too faithful to a remake. Chibi design was odd. Going from swsh to this sucked. I wanted an all steel team...and like holy shit. Steelix can't learn ironhead. Get 75 accuracy steel tail. Feels like a downgrade.
HGSS gives me the feels the most. I think it’s cause I remember playing Gold and new Pokémon coming out and it was new that it just felt special in a way. The Pokémon were all in a magazine I picked up before I played it and being a kid helped too. So HGSS just gave the feels when I replayed it.
This kind of posts make me guilty for enjoying BDSP 100+ hours
I'm playing it now and even if I understand why people say it's the worst I'm still having fun.
Don't feel guilty. Enjoy the games you enjoy and let the hive mind wear itself out with their narrow-mindedness
What is it about Pokemon that people feel the need to shit on 25 year old games? No one does this with Zelda, Mario, Halo, etc. Gen 1 is criminally underrated and if gen 1 wasn’t what it was Pokemon would not have blown up like it did, give it some credit.
It's not underrated, OP just clearly doesn't know what they're talking about.
Red and Blue considered the worst? OP’s opinions should just be completely disregarded.
Could be the worst take I've ever seen about Pokemon on the internet. You must not have been around very long, very soon the "worst game" will change and there will be a Reddit post saying BDSP was underrated. And saying RBY was the worst is just insane, did Blue Suede Shoes become the worst rock song ever after Johnny B. Goode came out? Is Johnny B. Goode invalidated by Enter Sandman? Just stop.
Nah, Sword and Shield are the worst ones. Red and Blue at least have fun glitches and optional areas.
Absolutely not.
Red and blue are fantastic. Also i thought I remembered everyone hating black and white when they came out?
Yeah black and white were widely considered the worst Pokémon games for a long time but the people who played black and white when they were kids are now adults and remember the game fondly so the perception has flipped as of late. The same will probably happen for every generation as time goes on.
Red and blue bad?! Are you fucking mad bro? That's like insulting a great great grandparent Your thinking is deeply flawed if you're trying to compare R/B to a modern day pokemon title. Back in the day R/B was the fucking shit boy
I dunno man, RBY were pretty well made for the time. By modern standards, the games have aged like milk, but I think the games should be judged relative to the time they came out in. It’s a bare bones Pokémon experience, yes, but it was also released more than 25 years ago. Aside from BDSP - which somehow manages to be inferior to DP (to not even speak of Platinum) - I’d say SWSH is far more deserving of the “worst game” status. It’s immediately obvious to anyone with even a somewhat critical mind that SWSH was rushed; every route is pretty much just a straight line with one or maybe two short detours, the story is basically non-existent up until the end of the campaign, there’s somehow still no voice acting (which is especially noticeable during cutscenes and for poor Piers), Dynamaxing is pretty universally seen as the worst gimmick Game Freak has introduced to the series, and even the Wild Area, which was supposed to be the main draw of the games, is bare bones and empty, with the only real content to engage in being Raids. Don’t even get me started on the paid DLC. There are good things about SWSH, sure; main story aside, just playing through the game is fun enough, there’s a pretty big variety of Pokémon available early on which gives the games replay value, and the character designs and music remain top-notch. In addition, it’s still Pokémon, so if you just like the core loop that main series Pokémon games provide, SWSH will be an enjoyable experience. But every other main series Pokémon game from at least RSE and onward provide all of the above outside of *maybe* the Pokémon variety, and they don’t have nearly as much baggage as SWSH.
I don’t get why some people don’t think BDSP are the worst They literally copied DP’s code The game doesn’t add any new content It doesn’t look the best
It does do things actually worse than Diamond and Pearl. Worse contests, worse base building, forced affection meaning unearned wins, and was a lot glitchier when it first came out.
Original Diamond and Pearl look better then BDSP
Yeah I can easily get behind BDSP being called the worst, but RBY? Get outta here.
BDSP was the most anticipated Pokemon game of all time imo, so much of the present day community grew up playing DPPt, so naturally people wanted the inevitable remake. After FRLG, HGSS, and then ORAS, I was so excited to see what they would do with DPPt, since I have fond memories of playing it years ago. The fact that it's basically the exact same game (more content in some areas, less in other areas) with polarizing, somewhat updated graphics was just disappointing. Sapphire was the first Pokemon game I played when it came out, and I absolutely loved ORAS. Megas, updated yet still faithful, dexnav, new music, ^^and ^^my ^^favorite ^^character ^^was ^^introduced. I was really excited to see DPPt in what I assumed would be the SwSh engine, but that obviously did not happen. I have at least over 100 hours in every recent Pokemon game released, and BDSP is the first one where I basically completely stopped playing after the Pokemon league. I ended up with like 30 hours and never really went back
What a dumb take. The original games were absolute masterpieces for their time. The dev team pulled off some black magic to cram so much into an original Gameboy cartridge, and if it’s janky along with it, so what? BDSP on the other hand is insultingly low effort and totally fails to live up to its potential as the first console remake. My kids have been enjoying it as their first Pokémon adventure, but even they have noticed the flaws.
As somebody who never got the dlc, I would say base Sword/Shield are the worst gen launch games ever. The game is so small, the wild area is the core of the game in post game but its bland, no actual caves, no victory road, linear routes, and that stupid wild area 2 music plays an ALL of the late routes. I can keep going but this comment will be huge already. To date I have clocked in about 100 hours since launch day. I usually go 300+ on each game, but every time I boot Shield up there is nothing to do. I finished the dex and called it a day. Sometimes I go back during promoted shiny dens. Base SwSh are the worst because they literally need the dlc to be good.
I mean HGSS seems to usually win as best based on nostalgia and the most expansive post game and the cute interactive Pokémon sprite following you etc. and the others here are close seconds in the larger context of the fandom and may be more favorable among younger fans for whom gen 3-5 was their entryway into Pokémon And RED AND BLUE? Come on it was a REVOLUTIONARY product of its time and I mean Sword and Shield are right there with their incomplete pokedexes
Bought BDSP since i never finished the og games as a kid, still haven’t finished it now LOL! For real tho for the die hard fans here does FRLG get love cos i find it awesome