/vp/ - Pokémon » Thread #58840949

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Anonymous Fri 16 Jan 2026 00:32:09 No.58840949 View View Reply Original Report

Quoted By: >>58840964 >>58840969 >>58840982 >>58840984 >>58840995 >>58841006 >>58841033 >>58841059 >>58841131 >>58841238

Has there ever been a greater fall off in quality for a franchise?
What do they have to lose from putting in the bare minimum effort?
Is it the Switch that caused this by creating technical demands that were too high to be delivered?

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 16 Jan 2026 00:34:00 No.58840953 Report

Quoted By:

USUMbros we made it

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 16 Jan 2026 00:37:12 No.58840964 Report

Quoted By:

>>58840949
Sonic had it worse than Pokemon IIRC

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 16 Jan 2026 00:37:34 No.58840966 Report

Quoted By: >>58841084

Oh cool, a genwar thread that won’t get deleted because the jannies are gigantic faggots and won’t actually enforce the “no genwar” rule unless you say something even slightly bad about gen 5

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 16 Jan 2026 00:38:40 No.58840969 Report

Quoted By:

>>58840949
>real pokémon games
of course they are. They are all Pokémon Red/Blue with different skins

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 16 Jan 2026 00:44:24 No.58840982 Report

Quoted By:

>>58840949
>What do they have to lose from putting in the bare minimum effort?
But that's literally what they've been doing ever since Pokemon Yellow. It's just that what "the bare minimum" looks like has shifted over the course of nearly 30 years because gaming as a medium has expanded exponentially from a hobby indulged in by nerds and children to a hobby indulged in by a global audience of nearly all ages, sexes and upbringings.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 16 Jan 2026 00:44:54 No.58840984 Report

Quoted By: >>58841008

>>58840949
The 3DS era is peak Pokemon and I'm tired of pretending it isn't. ORAS and USUM are some of the best Pokemon games and XY is probably the strongest initial pair (and the only one worth playing by virtue of not being overshadowed by a third version later on).

Anonymous

View Same Google ImgOps iqdb SauceNAO F9DD0F21-ECFE-41DE-9335-F867335A (...).jpg, 2MiB, 3299x5296

Anonymous Fri 16 Jan 2026 00:52:47 No.58840995 Report

Quoted By: >>58841903

>>58840949
>Has there ever been a greater fall off in quality for a franchise?
Nope

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 16 Jan 2026 00:56:26 No.58841006 Report

Quoted By:

>>58840949
>Has there ever been a greater fall off in quality for a franchise?
There was never a fall because Pokemon's been at rock bottom since the very beginning and never found a way to climb upwards, its success is owed entirely to its merchandising, the 22 minute weekly commercial that was the Ashnime, and a nostalgiabaiting mobile game.

Anonymous

View Same Google ImgOps iqdb SauceNAO route_5[1].png, 1MiB, 1000x923

Anonymous Fri 16 Jan 2026 00:57:28 No.58841008 Report

Quoted By: >>58841035

>>58840984
I loved the 3DS and regular put it over the DS

Except when it comes to Pokémon. It had growing problems, but the 3DS era really does reek of huge compromises, unreached potential, and generally uninteresting game design.

This is Alola Route 5, a route I've seen a lot of Alola defenders point to as being complexly designed and good just by looking at the map. It's not. It's essentially two parallel Alola routes with a ledge between them.
You enter from the south. There is typical Alola "walk in a pointless loop offshoot" design to the east, dead ends. Go north and you hit a ledge you can't cross. Go west and you get the iconic Alolan pointless loop and your destination. You can only really go in two directions and one is a fairly immediate dead end.

A couple trials later in the game, you enter the route via its north entrance. You can go to your destination to the east immediately, or you can walk in a fairly basic loop, the most advanced the Alolaloop ever gets because there are two dead end offshoots. And then you have the ledge you can jump down for no real reason.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 16 Jan 2026 01:12:03 No.58841033 Report

Quoted By:

>>58840949
unovafags lmao

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 16 Jan 2026 01:13:08 No.58841035 Report

Quoted By: >>58841040

>>58841008
And here's another example of the Alolaloop. You're given three different paths when you walk through this route, except it's not three paths, it's three brief parallel lines that lead exactly the same places. Oh sure, there's some grass in the top one and an item at the bottom, but this isn't exciting at all.

People will talk about how excited they felt when discovering Melemele Meadow like it was a secret area. The game railroads you into going there to find Nebby. But Seaward Cave!... is also forced upon you and you're required to walk 95% of the way through it to find Nebby. But Kala'e Bay isn't required, and how many players found that, huh? How many players actually entered the door the game places in front of you after leading you to it? And yeah, there wasn't anything you could really DO in it for a while.

The whole game is some of the most boring, mediocre navigation I've ever had the displeasure of forcing myself to go through. At all times, you have a character telling you where to go while it pins your destination on your map and has your map verbally remind you what to do next all the time. You walk up the big horseshoe that is Hau'oli City, cutscene... cutscene... cutscene... Tauros won't let you go here, Lillie won't let you go here, the painted fence shortcuts won't let you go here, walk inside the guided lines as you go on an "adventure" in the world's biggest tourist trap. It's demeaning how they expect you to play to the standards of the lowest common denominator of player, and their ULTRA CHANGES next year comes off as something that only someone without any standards accepts without batting an eye.

Anonymous

View Same Google ImgOps iqdb SauceNAO Alola_Route_3[1].png, 1MiB, 1280x1324

Anonymous Fri 16 Jan 2026 01:14:10 No.58841040 Report

Quoted By:

>>58841035
Forgot pic

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 16 Jan 2026 01:17:46 No.58841050 Report

Quoted By: >>58841054

Pokémon was never good.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 16 Jan 2026 01:19:44 No.58841054 Report

Quoted By: >>58841078 >>58841117

>>58841050
This is a cope by people who are unable to articulate their thoughts in a critical manner because they're not observant enough to make actual comparisons or describe game design in any real capacity. They default to an easy answer that is repeated by other people incapable of critical though.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 16 Jan 2026 01:21:54 No.58841059 Report

Quoted By: >>58841070

>>58840949
This is a cope by people who are unable to articulate their thoughts in a critical manner because they're not observant enough to make actual comparisons or describe game design in any real capacity. They default to an easy answer that is repeated by other people incapable of critical though.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 16 Jan 2026 01:25:18 No.58841070 Report

Quoted By: >>58841075

>>58841059
>I'll own him by repeating what he says, that'll prove him wrong that I only just repeat others because I can't come up with my own thoughts!

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 16 Jan 2026 01:28:28 No.58841075 Report

Quoted By: >>58841095

>>58841070
Please point out where OP articulated his thoughts in a critical manner and was observant enough to make actual game design comparisons. I must have missed it.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 16 Jan 2026 01:31:02 No.58841078 Report

Quoted By:

>>58841054
>Gen 1
They cut and changed a lot from the original vision, making it way less interesting, and you can still see things that dont make sense like scientists fighting you at the Silph
>Gen 2
Beautiful sprite work and music, i don't care for the level curve meme, i love the designs but here the design philosophy of gen 1 already started to day
>Gen 3
The complete death of the original vision, now it's a more of the same, with predatory shit like artificial dexcut, so you need 7 games and a gamecube to finish the dex, they released RS knowing they were only a piece of something bigger, full corporate mentality
>Gen 4
More of the same, decent games
>Gen 5
Pretentious story because it was scared to actually develop its themes
>Gen 6
Kids slop
>Gen 7
Decent RPG, ruined with tons of useless cutscenes that don't add anything to the story
>Gen 8/9
You already know

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 16 Jan 2026 01:37:41 No.58841084 Report

Quoted By:

>>58840966
Gen 5 sucks and shouldnt be on the list

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 16 Jan 2026 01:41:19 No.58841095 Report

Quoted By: >>58841125

>>58841075
Dunno about OP, and it probably is just a genwar thread, but the quality of Pokémon games did drop pretty hard and this is a fairly common observation from longtime fans. For example, I think somebody could take a single route of Kanto and point to it as being mediocre, like Route 15, but that ignores the context of the game, where you've done Route 12/13/14/15 (and possibly even Route 11) all in a row as a gauntlet of Trainers and different types of route designs, where 15 functions as a breather. Meanwhile, if you had been speaking to NPCs and interacting with the world, you could have gotten the Bike Voucher from the Fan Club, which allows you to go through the Route 16 gate and take the much easier and faster Cycling Road which literally pulls you down. In that case, you may have hypothetically taken the gauntlet backwards and Route 15 is the start, or skipped it entirely. In this case, the gauntlet is a three-pronged super route that connects Vermilion City, Lavender Town, and Fuchsia City. Route 212 in DP is also another good route that's broken into two halves with totally different route design that utilizes shortcuts, has a significant amount of content, is technically optional, and is a good amount into the game. Route 210 is also similar.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 16 Jan 2026 01:50:26 No.58841117 Report

Quoted By: >>58841125 >>58841222

>>58841054
Dunno about anon, and it probably is just a genwar thread, but the quality of Pokémon games has always been shit, and this is a fairly common observation from longtime fans. For example, Gen 1 is broken in a multitude of ways and is incredibly poorly balanced. Every game can be cheesed by completely ignoring mechanics like type matchups and simply mash A with one Pokemon. The writing is poor and lazily written, such as having Team Plasma kick a Munna for no reason just to establish that they’re evil instead of having a nuanced story. Games like DPPt have unforgivable performance issues that are somehow worse than the previous release despite being released on a stronger console. The graphics are always multiple years behind contemporaries, such as gen 5 having poorly animated sprites that don’t even have the correct resolution, and the game is so linear and handholdy that there’s virtually no gameplay in any of the maps except walking in a line and sweeping trainers while you reach the next roadblock.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 16 Jan 2026 01:53:54 No.58841125 Report

Quoted By:

>>58841117
This is the correct take
>>58841095
This is a fictional construct by a manchild desperate to have her childhood seen as "valid" to "hardcore" gamers.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 16 Jan 2026 01:57:41 No.58841131 Report

Quoted By: >>58841142

>>58840949
RSE almost killed the franchise. Pokemon was suddenly a baby game for dumb babies, and anyone who fucked up and admitted to playing the games or collecting the cards/merch got publicly humiliated.
Single-handedly stalled the unending momentum of pokemania.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 16 Jan 2026 02:01:26 No.58841142 Report

Quoted By: >>58841156 >>58841659

>>58841131
Shame the stupid babies on this board never experienced the shaming and think their childhood was the peak of their lives because Pokemon grew fucking down the moment Masuda took over

Note that even at the absolute most normie level, the only post-Kanto Pokemon that get any real attention are the select few, usually naturally popular mascots like Gardevoir, Garchomp or Mimikyu end up the ones that people give a shit about while the remaining 700+ shitmons get left to rot

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 16 Jan 2026 02:07:29 No.58841156 Report

Quoted By: >>58841659

>>58841142
Yeah, it was rough. You couldn't even pretend you were playing something else on your gameboy since the cartridges were bright as shit.
It wasn't until a year or two after platinum came out that it became safe to admit you still liked pokemon.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 16 Jan 2026 02:24:47 No.58841187 Report

Quoted By:

>real Pokemon games
>All shit
Pokemon Main games are dogshit

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 16 Jan 2026 02:30:51 No.58841202 Report

Quoted By: >>58841208

They were always bad quality, there are better looking 2d games than Pokemon even a fucking hamtaroo game lol

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 16 Jan 2026 02:34:52 No.58841208 Report

Quoted By:

>>58841202
>graphicsfaggotry

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 16 Jan 2026 02:36:50 No.58841214 Report

Quoted By:

Who cares? Kanto is the only matters

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 16 Jan 2026 02:42:38 No.58841222 Report

Quoted By:

>>58841117
parroting is an admission of defeat
so thanks for admitting defeat

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 16 Jan 2026 02:48:57 No.58841238 Report

Quoted By:

>>58840949
>real pokemon game
>bw
lol have a (you)

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 16 Jan 2026 06:11:01 No.58841659 Report

Quoted By:

>>58841142
>>58841156
Unless you fucks were like 25-30 when RSE came out.
Literally no one cared in my town.
Sorry the browns beat you up for liking pokemon

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 16 Jan 2026 09:26:53 No.58841903 Report

Quoted By:

>>58840995
trvthnvke

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