>>37714363In my view (and I'd be happy to hear different opinions on this), the main series of Pokemon game has always had 3 main components (ordered in importance);
- A battle system
- A world to explore and characters to meet
- The progression of a story
I don't think anyone is gonna deny that the battle elements are at a pretty good place right now, or that it at least got better since Gen 4's phys/spec split.
But the other two are as basic as they always were. Sure, the systems have more power and everything so the map is bigger, more varied, but that's only natural. If all you care about is battle, that's fine, it shouldn't disappear in anyway. If that's all Pokemon has to be, a pointless story in a series of corridors that you have to go through to get to the full extent of the battle system, fine. But the biggest franchise in the world, who always markets itself as an adventure, doesn't get to just sit back and do the same thing it has always been doing and expect everyone to still be onboard after 20 years. They are wasting the potential of what they have, while Zelda took a risk, Mario perfected it's gameplay and DK has never been more beautiful and tighter control than in TF. Meanwhile Gamefreak should get a pass for doing the bare minimum every generation? That's going to be without me.
It doesn't have to be an open-world. There are other things they can do, even if I personally think it's the most natural evolution of the franchise at this point in time. But fuck going around a region and collecting badges to have 5 battles that are only harder because they come at the end and are played all in a row, all while clashing against an evil team unable to beat a 10 years old kid. I have no idea of how that still satisfy people.
