>>58708549Part of making a good JRPG is balancing the encounters based on the level you're expected to be at. There's two ways to fuck it up; the enemies being too powerful and you have to grind (notable example being Dragon Quest 2), or the enemies being too weak so you just steamroll with no issue. Because Game Freak only had such a small amount of time to design the game, they tended to use older Pokemon that they knew the stats of and on average undershot what the level should be because they'd rather make a game for children too easy than make another DQ2. Whitney is an exception because she was given an okay new Pokemon with a move that has tremendous snowball potential, meaning most people found her hard but anyone that got good RNG and didn't get fucked by Rollout got the intended experience. It's stuff like that that makes a game memorable, and why not a single boss in XY is memorable compared to basically every other Pokemon game having at least one memorable or interesting fight (the Switch titles leaned harder in to presentation to make up for the lack of challenge which is also a solution, even if I think it only really worked in SV).
>>58708576It still boggles my mind Snubbull made it into Route 38 when it was a last minute addition in SW97 while Houndour/Houndoom were around longer and used by more notable trainers (Rockets).
Brand synergy, Snubbull made it into an anime short.
>Who knows if they were waiting for the planned GBA successor before they were forced to make it for the DS?Pretty sure the DS is the GBA's successor, the "third pillar" thing was just marketing speak. You can look into the various Game Freak and Nintendo leaks if you really want to know, it should contain everything relevant. Most of DP's problems come down to GF not really getting 3D development, it's why they had to poach people from Genius Sonority who had experience with 3D.
