>>57480057Because they don't do demos and shareware like they used to, try before you buy is the best way to know you're gonna get your money's worth, and I can afford to pay for things that have value to me. It's easy to see something I know I won't like and just not bother with it or something that's clearly going to be a good time, but sometimes I'm on the fence about it. Most games I've pirated I've ended up buying, but occasionally something that looked good on paper/in video ended up completely different from what was promised or just not my cup of tea.
In the case of pokemon, it's been hit or miss since moving to 3d and the official demos for oras and sm were more like dlc side quests with rewards for the main game than demonstrations of what's new/different in the games themselves. Each game in the switch era has been a mixed bag of some really cool features like wild pokemon actually populating the world and riding your pokemon vs dumb shit like extra long tutorials and mandatory friendship boosts. I found lgpe, pokken, snap, and pla fun enough to buy. I found swsh, bdsp, and sv not worth it. Never touched the mystery dungeon remake because I haven't been interested in the dungeon crawler genre for decades.
