>>40602985>the games were easy anyway so becoming absolutely braindead is fineI have to contest with this. For all the faults Pokemon might have from a battle perspective the games aren't braindead they're just not made with fans over the age of 12 in mind. A kid might not struggle with Pokemon but they're still going to have a decent time and stay invested throughout. An adult fan however who has the type chart perfectly memorized, that knows every Pokemon's type, ability, moveset, knows when to use special or physical moves and on what Pokemon, understands how to balance a team. Gamefreak will never be able to make a game hard enough for that player. Even with perfect IV and EV spreads like USUM it's just not happening. No hard mode is going to fix the fact that this battle system is a simplistic kiddy game system. For the most part a kid is also going to use the Pokemon they like when they want to use them rarely really shifting approach. And that's who these games are ultimately for. And while even for a kid Pokemon isn't outright hard it's still enough to keep them hooked.
And when it comes to hand holding a lot of it is just examples we see in gaming as a whole now. Barring forced tutorials (Which have been a thing since generation 3, almost 18 years now) healing between major fights, getting random free items at various points, or even getting stronger "weapons" that you don't have to really work for are all things we're seeing from gaming as a whole these days. It's just Pokemon following the shitty trends. Really Pokemon will never really evolve anyway because Pokemon is a toy commercial. It was always a toy commercial. It's a mass marketed brand designed to sell toys to children with a video game that simply exists to prop up all the items that sell much, much better than it. It's never going to grow out of that because the games could sell 100 units and it won't matter because the cards or plushes will make billions more than the video ever would have.
