>>51291648>Recolors in RPGs aren't presented as anything special. The fact that shinies are so rare makes them cool simply by virtue of them being difficult to find.Most shinies are either barely different than the original or random pallette swaps with no thought put into how the color changes are supposed to work with the design. Shinies like Chesnaught that look even better than the original are the ultra-rare exception and probably a fluke. I'm pretty sure the shiny-hunting crowd has built shinies up to be a much bigger deal than Game Freak thinks they are. In my opinion, shinies have become just another jingling set of keys used to distract people so Game Freak doesn't have to meaningfully improve the games.
>Regional forms are more than just recolorsThe same could be said for Nise Agumon Hakase, or Robonyan, or Dark Slime, etc., but the same charity is not extended to any other RPG, just Pokemon.
>Palette swapped enemies in other RPGs are not. No lore justification. No interesting implications.This is not always true. Take Gotsumon, for example, who has a line where the Adult stage (Icemon) and Perfect stage (Insekimon) evolutions are both recolors, but the idea is that the material that forms its body is what changes as it evolves, not its physical appearance. Or Metal Slime, whose shtick has always been that it's not easy to kill but it gives you tons of EXP when you do.
If anything, it's shinies that aren't particularly interesting and are just there because Nintendo finally gave the Game Boy a color screen 24 years ago.
