Anyone else play pokemon mostly because of the concepts? Maybe this is super autistic, but I've only ever been interested in video games because of the degree to which the material offered by different franchises interested me aesthetically-conceptually. I judge books on the basis of literary quality, and am rather harsh in that regard, and I judge movies on the basis of narrative quality and formal composition, but I don't care about the 'gameplay' of games. Turn-based RPGs aren't really even 'fun' to me in most cases, but I still play a bunch of them, including pokemon.
This is why I'm getting swsh regardless of the lackluster post-game or dex cut or w/e. I like the ideas for the pokemon this time around so I'm getting it. I'm being completely serious and I'd like you to consider my position.
Maybe this is an extremely reddit sentiment, but I think it's exactly the opposite, to be honest. I find it bizzare when people privilege 'gameplay' as the determining factor of a game's quality because the actual activity of playing video games has always been vacuous insipid trash. You input some beep boop buttons to reach a success state at the end of some sequence of button presses (determined by the formal elaboration of a system of mechanics, which is represented visually). Of course, after a ton of mediations there's some visual/narrative/conceptual representation, but anything before that has always been stupid to me. The way I look at it, if you're looking for intellectual stimulation you should be reading a book, and if you're not looking for intellectual stimulation, then how is rapt, mindless fascination over concepts (which is generally considered 'reddit' and immature) any worse than rapt, mindless fascination over ‘good gameplay’?