>>37104618I've discussed it in other threads. Game Freak is clearly a group of passionate, yet incompetent programmers who created a phenomenon by accident. Go back and look at the first games; they are ugly, simplistic, glitch-riddled messes that endured simply because of the appeal of the core concept; collecting, trading and battling a large roster of monsters with various levels of appeal to assure there is something for everyone.
Gamefreak took FOREVER to develop Pokemon (I think the original pitch to Nintendo was back in 1991), and the first product in 1996 were even more slapdash than the improved releases of red and blue in 1998. Then there's Pokemon Gold and Silver, which were being coded so poorly that they weren't even going to be able to fit it on a GB cart. That's when Nintendo sent Iwata in and he single-handedly reprogrammed the whole game so efficiently that they had enough room to fit in THE ENTIRE KANTO REGION. Game Freak are a bunch of fucking hacks. It's written in their history.
They got stupendously lucky that A.) Pokemon caught on and became a craze, and B.) they were partnered with Nintendo which gave them a credibility boost. They obviously got better at developing as time went on, and arguably peaked around the 4th/5th gen in terms of basic competence, but now that they are fully aware what drives their market, Game Freak has become more focused on giving their products flash (shit like Z-moves, fanservice, and retarded anime-tier plots) over giving them actual substance (depth, difficulty, customization, etc).
Pokemon is lightning in a bottle, absolute dumb luck, with very little actual talent behind it. I'd argue that the only aspect of the series with any true artistic integrity are Sugimori's original Pokemon designs and watercolor art. Everything that followed has just been an attempt to stay the course and not rock the boat, because nobody at Gamefreak would have any idea how to right it if it happened to capsize.
