Same reason people complain about Switch controllers being too small to grip - because they are made for children’s hands too. Pokémon can’t be perfect for everyone at once so compromises have to be made.
Same reason people complain about Switch controllers being too small to grip - because they are made for children’s hands too. Pokémon can’t be perfect for everyone at once so compromises have to be made.
Honestly, even as a fan of Pokemon for decades of this point, I don't see a problem with the game being targeted at children. I have children now and I am all for games that target her age group instead of exclusively mine. Even if it's a flagship series like Pokemon.
This is kinda what I was hoping for. They could even have an option buried in the settings to turn off tutorials.
"Uhhhh how exactly would that generate revenue? Actually don't even answer that, just go clear out your desk, security will escort you to the parking lot"
—Gamefreak, the last time an employee suggested that
While I agree with you, I think Pokémon lost something along the way. It may be simply nostalgia messing with me, but there really isn't that much sense of adventure anymore.
My first game was Pokémon Blue. In that game, you just walk out the door. No one is stopping you (except for Oak, and for a good reason). Once you try to set your foot outside of town, you get introduced to Oak and your rival, and you're (after some fetch quest) told to just go and catch some Pokémon! The rest of the game, you sort of stumble upon things as you go!
I had a blast when I first encountered a gym without being introduced to what it was. The introduction to Team Rocket felt like a proper surprise, and so was stumbling upon a fork in the road or a cave. The HMs literally felt like keys to the world. My jaw dropped once I got Surf.
Maybe it's nostalgia like I said. A tl;dr could simply be that avoiding handholding brings a sense of adventure, which brings immersion. Don't explain what everything is before you have a chance to interact with the world. Let the player discover!
I agree with you 100%, I truly miss that sense of adventure and exploration gained from stumbling through a world and discovering things as they appear.
I'm definitely gonna sound like an old fart here, but it's a symptom of the games and technology of today. The mindset TPC has when creating games is that they need to hold kids attention and that if they get stuck, they'll just move on to some other game/video/whatever and drop Pokemon. Sadly I think they know their audience to an extent. I mean when I first played Blue it was literally the only game I had. When I got stuck in rock tunnel, all I could do was keep trying, and maybe get a peek at a strategy guide if i could get a parent to take me to a bookstore.
Now on switch they're competing against a massive library of free games specifically tailed to get children addicted, and thousands of cheap options and single digit prices sales. It's so easy for a kid to hit a wall and just drop it for the next shiny thing.
That said, if they want to keep their adult audience, they could really easily give an option to skip the tutorials, and maybe even an option for more complex dungeons (though that would require TPC to put in real effort, and we see how that's gone so far). Sadly I don't think we'll see Pokemon return to that age of wold exploration, but hopefully the fan game community continues to thrive and pick up the slack in that area.
If that were the issue, the older games wouldn't be more fun than the newer ones, but they are.
I personally agree that they are, but I recognize that that's nostalgia. My 11 year-old's favorite is Sword/Shield. He tried some of the older ones but couldn't get into them. I think the oldest one he's enjoyed was X/Y.
I absolutely adored Cassette Beasts and cannot recommend it enough. The soundtrack alone is incredible.
Coromon is another one that's worth a shot. Much better story and world than Nexomon, only occasional 2v2 battles, and some of the best monster designs outside old school Pokemon IMO. It's not a big a diversion from Pokemon as Cassette Beasts is, which could be good or bad depending on what your looking for.
Cassette beasts is great. I've been watching my wife play it and it's what we've been looking for in a pokemon game. There's an interesting story with more engaging gameplay. And the soundtrack is really good.
Look I'm drunk I don't understand what you're talking about. I live in Japan, but pokemon has always been a mystery to me. There's the Pikachu, there's pokemon Go. It's just a game. I also don't understand this Lemmy business, I'm trying
Welcome, random elderly relative from facebook
Honestly, this might be a bit of a hot take coming in. But I don't think the lengthy tutorial is the actual issue when it comes to modern Pokemon games. Plenty of games have very slow openings, monster hunter is the first that comes to mind.
I think the issue is that the game doesn't actually have any depth behind the initial tutorial. Once you know how to battle, catch, and level up, what more is there? Barring competitive play, the basic mechanics are the entire game.
Legends was a breath of fresh air, because you did have to explore and learn about the world and Pokemon in order to succeed. Even if it was incredibly minimal.
If anyone is still reading this, my recommendation for a game that scratches the deep mechanical and monster collecting itch would be Monster Sanctuary. The story is thin on the ground, and the designs themselves can lean on the simpler side. But my god, I haven't seen an equal when it comes to team building or strategy. Genuinely fantastic.
I cannot recommend it enough. It's a metroidvania and exploring for all the cool monsters is so much fun. It's cheap and indie too, and gets genuinely tough right near the end. But it tests your ability to team build, rather than to just grind. New monsters will basically be at the level of your current squad, regardless of where you got them.
Now that you mention it. I think this is it. I’m not excited to play the game at all because after an hour, I feel like I’ve sheet seen everything the game has to offer. I caught some cool Pokémon, what else is there to do? Although I’m interested in the Diamond remake, I guess the classic style was better in some way.
Exactly my point. The first pokemon games you play generally feel so much more exciting because of the novelty of the world. Exploring the world, finding cool little secrets, it's genuinely fun that first time round.
For all the complaints about Pokemon tutorials, they are a minority of the actual issues. But a good representation of the fact that Pokemon refuses to break "tradition". Think about the world design of Pokemon. Like, genuinely think and compare each of the maps and regions. And they'll honestly start to blend together. Even Alola, which imo had the best designed world, aesthetically, blends in to the rest of the world.
And the issue is, when they DO break the mold. It's fucking fantastic. Area Zero, the Megalopolis from Su/Mo, the Distortion World. All fantastic zones that are relegated to the 11th hour and then barely brought up again.
Once you've explored one Pokemon game, you've probably explored them all. And that's pretty egregious considering the main draw of Pokemon is exploration.
If you guys are interested in romhacks/fangames/Pokemon games with a little more meat and difficulty to them, I heartily recommend Pokemon Infinite Fusion. It's based on FR/LG, with a slightly different story (but it's still essentially Team Rocket doing Team Rocket things), with the big difference being that you can fuse Pokemon. Every Pokemon in the game is fuseable, giving you a MASSIVE possible amount of combinations. You can play it classic mode, like a regular Pokemon game, but there's even a randomised mode which changes it up so every wild encounter and trainer battle uses randomly fused Pokemon. It's great fun!
As for whether modern Pokemon games hold your hand too much, I dunno. I do recognise they're made explicitly for children, so I can't tell you how much is too much. In fact, I remember as a child being stumped enough that I quit playing Diamond halfway through because I thought the gyms were 'too hard'. I still enjoy the newer games (I don't care what anyone says, I loved SwSh) but I don't let their shortcomings get to me as I recognise they're children's games.
Re fangames, I'd also recommend Pokemon Insurgence. It has a darker story than most Pokemon games, but it's also more difficult as well. It has challenge run options in-game if ya want to run a Nuzlocke or something like that.
A big second here for Infinite Fusion! I just found out about it a couple weeks ago and I've been absolutely loving it. It's certainly the classic Red/Blue storyline, but with just enough changes to the maps/story to feel fresh and interesting. The fusions are so much fun, especially the community created art. I wound up finishing my first run with an entire team of Monster Hunter themed Pokemon. Now I'm trying out the randomizer mode and it's such a blast. Despite browsing the discord for a while and seeing dozens of Hall of Fame teams I'm still finding fresh fusions constantly, it's really amazing.
For me, Pokemon has become more about romhacks/fangames than official releases. I still love the property, but the product Nintendo is providing at this point just isn't something I'm all that interested in.
...although credit where credit is due, Legends Arceus and Scarlett/Violet did attempt to innovate with the open world stuff. The results of that were also...not for me, but credit there.
Thread reminds me that I need to finish Pokemon Unbound. I have a bad tendency to start new hacks before finishing the ones I started haha.
Honestly, though Legends Arceus wasn't like groundbreaking or anything, it's embarrassing how much more fun it was to me than SV considering one was supposed to be the mainline attempt...
Romhacks are mostly what I stick to now as well. I haven't really gotten into it but it's insane how the community has come together for Pokemon Fusion to make SO many custom sprites.
While on one hand I completely and totally agree that the games seem to always ignore the seasoned vets of the series. It’s also been very clear that their design choice is to always assume this is your first Pokémon and that you ARE a child since that’s the target audience always. So the hand holding is always a result of that design choice, now obviously there’s better ways to go about it, Pokémon is the only game that treats me like a child for the first 4 hours but then opens the system up and leaves me alone. But I also think it’s been getting better, look at the 3DS generation of games, those things were relentless with its constant “hey look over here and do this!” That it took a lot for me to finish those games.
I agree that they are made for children, but there could easily be an option to turn off tutorials.
Oh for sure, I mean how many games have that simply because they assume you will replay it? Why not do it for a long running series?? it's bonkers.
What ruined SV for me wasn't the hand-holding but rather how dead the game felt after endgame.
You cannot re-challenge the Elite Four and the only endgame activity is the Academy Ace Tournament where you'll stomp everybody.
A good tip for anybody going into Gen 9, don't pick Quaxly (the water starter) because their moveset sucks. Meowscarada literally gets Gen 1 Razor Leaf as their signature move while Skeledirge gets a fire move that scales in power on each use. Compare this to Quaquaval which only gets speed boosts...
All there was to really do after you beat the game was to do the limited time raids, breeding if you want to max stats (which if you aren't doing competitive is not really worth the effort), or play competitive. And none of those actually took place in the open world they built. Felt like a bit of a waste
Pokemon Legends Arceus was a real breath of fresh air, but it doesn't seem like GF wants to learn anything from it. Repeating something I saw on Reddit: Pokemon deserves better developers
I’m still holding out hope for a similar Legends game set in Kanto/Johto. Arceus was so much more fun than Violet for me.
Two different teams iirc. But they should bring over stuff from arceus
I've played both PLA and SV and my impression from both was that the tutorial dragged on for way too long. Even as a new player, that shit should not be lasting for over an hour. Also way too many text boxes that don't change anything based on what you pick. Just let me play the game please.
I personally lost interest in Pokémon after gen four. SoulSilver was my last game until a few years ago, so I'm kind of biased with that, but still. I think Pokémon designs started going downhill after gen five, plus all the over the top hand holding and tutorial stuff. The worst part to me however is the apparent lack of care and resources put into the newer games. A game like S/V is downright embarrassing as a modern game. Like hilariously bad.
Pretty much the same opinion as you.
I think Gen 5 was the last non-"commerical" games. Almost all games since then are way too simple, it's like playing a visual novel. AND SO SLOW - I haven't found much other people who related to this, but the movement, animations, and general gameplay feel slow and bloated.
tbf - the games didn't get too easy either, all the enemy trainers have ev trained pokemon with perfect IVs in later gens, so much so that nuzlocking them is apparently harder than old games. That doesn't change the fact that there's too much handholding tho.
Also, Pokemon Legends: Arceus was pretty neat. Not a classic pokemon game, but a polished one atleast.
A lot of it is to blame on blind fans - people will buy any random crap that comes out with a pokemon stamp and let Gamefreak escape the consequences
I've always heard five is pretty good, so I definitely need to play it at some point; I've mean to for years. Maybe I'll emulate that on my Steam Deck this weekend! Arceus was pretty good too, though I didn't finish because my sticks got insane drift when I was playing that and I just lost interest due to that.
Gen 4 was the worst for slowness IMO, Platinum improved it a bit but DP was horrible in that regard. I can't play any Pokemon games outside an emulator with a speed control at this point, it's just miserable.
Gen 6 and 7 had some good designs too.
I think every generation has at least some great designs no matter what. I can't remember what gen number Sword and Shield are, but the fox that you can find pretty early on was a really standout design to me, for example.
There are so many decent Pokemon clones out there that there's honestly little reason to buy the new ones. From what I've seen they are a total bore fest and way too easy, I think people just need to accept they're kids games and move on. I personally really enjoyed Monster Sanctuary. Even though it's a very different game it gave me the same enjoyment of catching monsters and building a team.
I’m not so certain there is a comparable title to Pokémon at it’s best. I want there to be, but it doesn’t exist yet.
Yeah and even when Pokemon is at it's worst it's still got one big thing going for it that nobody else can have, and that's the Pokemon.
I don't agree that there are clones that are close enough to what pokemon is. I have not really explored it, so I could be wrong.
Coromon was really fun to play. One big improvement is that they let you customize your character.
Digimon and SMT, while not Pokemon clones are monster-collector games that are far superior.
edit: And for those that want something like Pokemon Legends just go play Craftopia or PalWorld. (craftopia's a bit more like BOTW but it's close enough).
Yeah, I was kind of enjoying it at first. I think I got 15 or 20 hours in before I just put it down and never came back to it. Not intentionally, I just never felt like it. That's saying something, because I wasn't that impressed with Sw/Sh either, but I 100%ed Sword.
They absolutely hold your hand too much. I wish Nintendo could make a Pokémon game instead of The Pokémon Company. I feel like Nintendo's first-party team would make something stellar with more of a challenge (without being unfair), a more engaging story, fun puzzles, a more curated world to explore, better graphics, and maybe even add something actually new to the series.
Honestly I wonder what was appealing about pokemon games when I was a child. They have boring gameplay and every single game is the exact same.
Yes this is precisely where my pokemon nostalgia comes from
Did you get into any other jrpg games back then? Maybe it was just not the genre for you.
That's a good point, it's not my genre I think.
My wife thinks that genre is boring because nothing happens. But her friend came over the other night and we just talked about our favorite jrpgs.
Yes, as kids...
The most fun I had with the game was the rush when you finally make it though some area and get to the next town.
Imagine if they actually treated the game like a class jrpg where there were really long fights.
I guess part of the boredom is just pushing through everything.
Not sure if you've tried ROM hacks, but Renegade Platinum with Following is the ultimate Pokemon game. It's very challenging and regular trainers use the same AI as gym leaders.
Man I was more bummed about the fact that the newest games don't let you change out of that god awful school uniform, or at least change the colors...
I'm right there with you. I've been around since red/blue on the GameBoy, but I started seriously playing when my kid got into it with black/white. We played every generations together since then. We're really burned out with Scarlet/Violet. The throwaway gimmicks, the hand holding, the lousy graphics, the glitchy multiplayer, it's painful because of the memories associated with Pokemon. We keep hoping they up their game only to be disappointed at release. Probably should just let go at this point.
I was big into red and blue. I know I played gold and ruby, but I don't really remember them. Then I didn't play again until black and white.
I enjoyed black and white, but sword was a huge letdown. It seemed that they made the games even more dumbed down then they used to be.
I just started playing Violet for the first time last night. I noticed the opening "tutorials" of Sword/Shield took like 90 minutes to get through, and that hasn't changed much here. And I'm not looking forward to taking biology exams or whatever, I really hope that's optional content. I just want to battle my way to the Pokemon League!
Yeah! Just let my go to explore. I thing I’d be ok just walking around catching Pokémon and not battling.
I’m just replaying gens 1-5 over and over. I’ve had a few friends recommend RomHacks, and I’m thinking about trying some after finals.
Maybe that’s what’s best. I’d never thought about rom hacks, but I bet there are a ton of good ones.
yeah from what i’ve heard most of them pretty much skip the whole tutorial as anybody playing a romhack has almost certainly played another pokemon game first
Do you have any romhacks that you recommend?
the two i plan on starting this summer are pokemon glazed and pokemon reborn - going in blind, these are just what i’ve been told by friends are the best
Dragon Quest 11 does what you probably want in Pokemon.
It's an easy RPG, but before you start a new game you can check boxes like "no shop buying", "RNG hates you with shypox", "no XP for beating under leveled enemies", etc.
I love it because you can customize difficulty to tweak it to your liking without fiddling with mods, and does more than just slapping a x2 in every variable and punching out for the day.
I played it and thought it was a good game but never felt the need for additional difficulty. Maybe because it was my first Dragon Quest game.
Pokemon has gotten insanely easier. Constant healing by friendly npcs, exp share from the start, rival picks a pokemon that is weak against yours... Remember when Gary was waiting at the end of a big cave and all your Pokemon were nearly dead? XD
Ha, I wonder what DQ11 Draconic Quest like options you can add to Pokemon.
Weaknesses and resistances x 2?
Pokemon knocked out are automatically released?
Game auto saves after every finished battle and no manual saving?
Sell items for less?
The exp share is generous. Especially giving experience after catching a Pokémon.
Yeah, Pokemon in general is just far too easy. Either just go with the Kaizo hacks or play SMT. For me I just play SMT now. Similar enough and the difficulty is just perfect. Also Pokemon's story sucks ass. Never once been interested in any of their plots. Team Magma/Aqua was okay but pretty much make my own stories for it.
@worfamerryman This is how all modern Nintendo games seem to me. Playing Tears of the Kingdom and every character has to explain some game concept to me in the middle of their dialog. It's super clunky and repetitive.
I think modern games in general hold your hand too much. Some small level of hand holding/tutorial is fine, but so many take it way too far. I've gotten bored of a lot of games before they actually started because of that.
I am having trouble thinking of an example, but I know for sure that I have turned off a few games because the tutorial was just long and boring.
One of them was Pokemon Arcus, or however it is spelled.
Destiny 2 was one I wanted to mess around with a little recently, since the game itself was interesting enough to me. Got bored probably nowhere close to the end of the long and boring tutorial section. There are others that I can't recall the name of, too. Obviously not memorable enough.
I just finished playing through Pokemon Infinite Fusion and had a great time. I played on hard difficulty and it was a good challenge. Lots of content with a fun central mechanic. I also played it on my Steam Deck so I got the handheld experience. It was a little buggy at times(though I guess that is expected with pokemon now 🙃)
I want games like the past, with almost no tutorials at all. Give me pokemon red, yellow where the prof is like, heres a pokemon, a pokedex, and some old guy will teach you to catch a pokemon next door. BOOM, pokemon expert.
When I was a kid I was super into pokemon. I loved playing the games and they stood out to me for one reason: they were challenging. My first game was Black, and I got stuck on the first gym leader for a few days, but when I figured it out it was immensely satisfying. I would hit roadblock, I would struggle, and eventually I overcame it. Then my friend introduced me to Pokemon Mystery Dungeon and it got even harder. I honestly think that the final dungeon of Explorers of Time made me smarter or something. It forced my dumbass child brain to think outside the box and find solutions on my own.
Then Pokemon X and Y released, and it was the most stupidly easy game ive ever played. And it kept getting easier after that. Add onto that the worsening quality and I stopped caring about Pokemon. My friend who is really into Pokemon hasnt bought a new game in years, he only plays Romhacks or replays the old games.
That’sa good point. There is no challenge to the modern game. I already have a bunch of level ten Pokémon and I didn’t even do anything other than catch a few Pokémon.
Because they give you a Exp Share right off the bat, and it shares exp with ALL your pokemon. So theres no point to actually training.
I was not aware of the hard mode. Is that what you had to do to unlock it?
What was changed in hard mode? If it’s better enemy AI, I’m interested.
Here is the bulbapedia wiki on it
You have to beat the champion to get it, then you can switch your own difficulty or give a copy of the key to another DS. However you can't replay the story line on Hard/Easy Mode on the same DS because wiping your save also erases the key.
Better Enemy AI is in there.
Thanks, I’ll look into a cheat or hack to get it to work right away.
It seems like such an obvious quality of life improvement to introduce a difficulty-like mechanic that asks the user if they are familiar with the series. That way, there could be two tracks to the start of the game: the standard hold-your-hand tutorial for newbies and children, and the streamlined version that skips a lot of the dialogue that explains what pokeballs are or whatnot. While I thought Scarlet/Violet wasn’t the worst offender of some of the recent series, this series HAS been going for decades now and I’d like to see them reflect this in their intended audiences. There is a large child fanbase but there is also a large amount of adults who play after having grown up with the games.
thanks for using Leebra!
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I think issue is Pokémon games are still made primarily for children with age between 6 to 12. There are a lot of older people who grow up with it and some of them righteous feel like they are left behind.
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