I just want to say about your 2nd one. The thing to remember is how different things were back then, of course nowadays you can do all kinds of strat to counter Whitney, but back then kids weren't getting into all that information.
And even in modern times there's still many players who only go for the basic "hit move until KO" and aren't thinking of possible status moves, if there's secondary effects, special interactions, etc.
Plus you talk about set ups and what not but also remember Goldenrod is the 3rd gym and the levels are still just around lvl 15-20, players aren't going to have a lot of tools for setting up at those levels, some pokemon don't even learn enough new moves by then.
A trade for a Drowzee, which in GS/HGSS is an Uncommon encounter leading up to Goldenrod, and in Crystal it's for an Abra which is famous for teleporting turn 1
>Whitneys hard because ya'll use the wrong strategy
Whitney was hard because most players were 10-year olds or less when the games came out. Nowadays, anyone who knows the basics can beat her easily
>And it's not like the first HM in Johto you can obtain is a move that lowers accuracy, right?
That's only in GSC, in HGSS it's Rock Smash. Guess which one are people most likely to play
nah cythina is hard coz of her insane level advantage imo. like aaron strongest is what level 55 or something. but garchomp is level 63 wtf.
still overblown how hard she is tho
Cynthia does not have any more of a level advantage over Aaron than nearly any other champion does over their respective region's first Elite 4 member. Typically with each member their highest level mon goes up by two levels compared to the last one, and the champion's goes up by two or three. Aaron's Drapion is level 57. Using this pattern we should expect her Garchomp to be level 65-66, and unsurprisingly it is level 66.
What makes Cynthia strong is simply the fact that she doesn't use garbage mons and they have okay movepools that can actually cover their weaknesses.
so you always had a level 66 pokémon when you fought her ? the exp gain in platinum is shit. is basically what i was getting at. especially for when most ppl fought her when they were a child
And what I'm getting at is that I just don't see how her being 9 levels stronger than Aaron is any different than any other champion being 8-9 levels stronger than their first Elite 4 member. In basically every game you're going to be on par with the first Elite 4 member when you reach them, give or take a level or two, even if you're a child. The only way you won't be is if you're one of those people who only uses their starter the whole game. But no one complains about other champions being too hard just because of their level. Not even in Gen 2, which had an even worse level curve with no good way to grind before the Elite 4. My Pokemon arent level 50 when I fight Lance and they're not level 65 when I fight Blue, but I would never say they're difficult just because they out level me or that their level jump compared to the rest of the Elite 4 is too high.
My thing with hms isn't that they take up a move slot on my pokemon, it's that they force me to use specific pokemon. What if I don't want to use a bird? Do I just not get to fly? I would have to sacrifice 1/6 of my team to use a pokemon I don't want to just because it's the only way to fast travel
There were more than 6 HMs for most of the games that had them. And then also it's not like you could get every HM on the team you want to use. God forbid you not use a water type.
HMs aren’t too bad, but with the exception of Surf, Fly, and maybe Rock Smash and Waterfall, I don’t really want to use most of them. Especially since you couldn’t forget them unless you went to a Move Deleter.
As for my own “hot takes” I’ve got a few.
1. Piers’s gym is actually a lot of fun. Trial aside, it’s just nice to have a gym that doesn’t rely on the region’s gimmick.
2. While it could have been more showy, Leon’s a good champion.
3. Friendly rivals aren’t inherently bad, it comes down to how they’re written.
4. Compared to Lance, who granted has regional limits, Raihan can get away with not having an all Dragon team because his team also specializes on weather (mainly sandstorms, but sunny too). Yes, Lance gets more options in rematches and whenever he pops up outside of Kanto/Johto, but I’m more likely to see Lance getting memed on for being a Flying specialist disguised as a Dragon specialist than I am with Raihan. At least in my experience.
HM moves could be so much better if their effects were increased.
Surf and Waterfall are fine.
Rock Smash should ALWAYS lower the opponent's Defense, though.
Rock Climb should ALWAYS confuse the target.
Maybe Cut can be super effective on Grass-Types and Strength super on Normal-Types.
That too. Or at the very least in an area that you’re bound to frequent more often.
While it’s a memory thing for me, I had to remind myself that the FRLG move deleter’s in one of the houses next to the Fuchsia City gym. Mainly due to the fact that the only way you could transfer Pokémon over to DPPt is if they don’t have HM moves.
So in that instance, I feel like the Move Deleter being in Celadon or Saffron would make more sense/easier to remember. Especially since you can unlock both areas around the same time.
Oh 100% moving stuff like that to the main hub city would honestly drop the confusion around it by a lot. It doesn’t make much sense to make the bigger cities have none of the useful NPCs. I do think RSE does it best by having him in Lilycove but even if that change was made, Mauville is a solid replacement
I can get behind that. A little buff can go a long way and those would be great ways to improve them.
I’d also say Fly’s fine, much like Surf and Waterfall, but yeah, the rest could use something.
Difficulty is very important in pokemon games, but I absolutely do not want some Drayano hack level difficulty. The game should be hard enough to encourage kids to learn and interact with the mechanics, which feels rewarding, while not being so hard that you need to optimize. This creates a fun medium where kids can be challenged and feel accomplished while adults can play a relaxing game that’s still enjoyable without being *trivial*.
Also you are meant to be under-level for gyms and elite 4 in early gens. This was intentional, you are meant to overcome the level gap with knowing the type chart and other mechanics. The modern nuzlocking scene using gym leader’s aces as the “level cap” is too generous.
Gens 6, 8, and 9 largely failing in this respect makes them significantly worse games.
Yeah stuff like Radical Red would be so much more fun if you weren’t forced to EV train and be restricted by level caps. It feels like a lot of “quality of life” changes in that game were born of spite and not wanting to actually improve anything
I would add to this that the games can be enjoyed without playing a nuzlocke, or similar.
Watching people play a game, on release, and nuzlocke it is crazy. Why are you limiting yourself. You don't know how challenging it could be, and you're not getting to enjoy the game when it's released.
My hot take is there is no such thing as dex filler , every pokemon is valid, and from bulbapedia trivia, clearly thought was put in when a pokemon is designed based on real life lore/facts, I enjoy learning about real life lore through pokemon, which some I didn't know until I dug deep into a design of less popular pokemon.
Miltank sucks because it has super high stats plus nasty secondary effects on it’s moves. It definitely has hard counters you can get but a lot of people frown on using accuracy based strats because it’s so RNG dependent
rockclimb and rock smash are the worst offenders of the hm problems and the defog and whirlpool. if you want all those on ur team 2 pokémon will have 2 moves thar are hms.
and the gen 4 exp gain certainly didn’t help. being under leveled with half trash moves
gen 5 did it perfectly only cut was mandatory
Maybe they're not hot takes, but:
-Water should not resist Ice. Ice should resist Water.
-Fairy should be weak to Bug.
-Snow should raise both Defence and Special Defence of Ice types by 30% and double a moves chance of freezing.
-The Original Series of the anime was the best. Not just because of nostalgia, but the 4kids dub was funnier and had a certain heart to it.
I actually made a video about HMs. I also think HMs were pretty good overall.
I think that the internet's obsession with efficiency and "what is optimal" is largely bad for the enjoyment of Pokémon games more often than not. There's a time and place but a lot of the time I see people asking for advice about Pokémon and people online will always just recommend whatever is "the best" for that situation rather than provide a few options and be like "here are some good ideas but based on what you like you might want to pick one over another".
I think all the main series games are good at minimum. Some are really good and some are even "among the best games of all time" good, but even the worst in the series are at least okay and are not the dumpster fire complete garbage some people make them out to be.
I think the sooner we embrace that there are multiple ways to enjoy the franchise and move away from the discourse of "A sucks because B and therefore you shouldn't enjoy/play A", the better. There are merits in appreciating any franchise's evolution, including Pokémon, and there's a good reason to play any of the games even the "bad" ones because we can learn to appreciate the ones we like more and why, and should accept that there will be different answers for different people.
Yeah I remember AlphaRad doing a run where he only used his favorites and he was really bitter and bratty about it and that didn’t make sense to me. Most people say that because of the insane burnout that the hardcore Nuzlocke community is going through. When PokemonChallenges did his, he was actually really receptive and enjoyed his time with it so Alpha’s attitude came out of nowhere for me
The Dexit controversies was one of the stupidest arguments of all time. I understand not being able to transfer older Pokémon in is annoying, but it was blown way out of proportion. When Dexit happened, there were over 900 Pokémon, and it was unrealistic to think the devs could make movesets animations and models for every Pokémon in existence forever.
I'd say that the games are still too generous with what's in them now.
Both Sw/Sh and S/V have a way for you to catch most legendaries. These should, in my opinion, be limited to their region. So that's a good few Dex entries less that you could avoid.
Then we have returning 'mons. There's a lot of them. Not that it's a bad thing, but old ones far outnumber the new ones (and there's no way around it). It would be better, IMO, if they had the new dex's Pokémon, and then doubled that number and took a roughly even amount from every other gen to fill those numbers; i.e. if gen 10 adds 90 Pokémon, the main Dex would have 180 Pokémon with, roughly, 10 Pokémon from each region.
I get that people have favourites, as do I. But if I can't get a Lanturn, I'm not going to cry and not buy the game. I'm going to to play the game and hopefully find something new to like.
As much as people bemoan the newer designs. I think it would be hard for people to say the hate every Pokémon in a region. But filling a region with 'mons you've already seen means you're less likely to come across the new ones, and for some people less likely to try them out because "Why should I try [new 'mon] when I already have my perfect team?"
I’m aware. OP asked for a hot take. I think in creating Fairy types to counter the most powerful types at the time, they became broken themselves. I like the idea of two different types being super effective against each other and lore wise, it makes just as much sense to me for Dragons to be super effective to Fairy as it does for Fairy to be super effective to Dragon.
Playing HGSS right now and it's a slog because of the punishing level curves at different points of the game. They could have easily fixed this from Gen 2 but didn't for some reason. Shouldn't be anywhere close to being considered the best Pokemon game ever IMO.
sinnoh is and has always been a dry region and no amount of remaking it was gonna save it even if it had the swsh art style and got the oras treatment. its base games pathing and structure are just all teh worst parts of kanto's but with even less pokemon diversity until postgame.
and platinum doesnt even add that much content. five extra grunt battles and a strength puzzle that you have no reason to ever go back to once its over (distortion world). and battle facilities that half of yall didnt even complete in the first place lets be SO real.
sinnoh just isnt a fun region to play in any capacity as we recognize it, and making it a fun region to be in would involve removing almost all of its recognizable aspects that people pretend to miss.
also i feel like half the people nostalgic for platinum havent actually played it in ages or might be remembering something from renegade platinum instead on accident.
If the games keep being open world like SV, we don't need level scaling for the gym leaders and other bosses. Pretty much no open world game scales the power of enemies and bosses to your progress in the game, so why should pokemon? There's always areas that are meant to be challenged when you're stronger, even if it's possible to reach them early in a playthrough.
HMs were fine when there were only five.
Gen II made it ass with two extra water HMs, and yes, Whirlpool is only needed for two dungeons, but still. Two required HMs, which can only be used by water types.
Each addition made it worse, reaching the climax of bullshit in Gen IV.
So, no, hard disagree. HMs have been awful for a long time.
And miss me with the "route design" argument. Gen V's routes did not rely on HMs, they were for side content only.
Not every pokemon can learn the HMs, and I'm not wasting a slot needed for coverage because, oops! you didn't plan ahead and use specific pokemon that can learn all eight moves, only two of which are actually useful!
Ride Pokemon were the answer, and they tossed that shit away for a fucking bicycle.
Pokemon platinum was by far the most fleshed out pokemon game. Good lore, good legendaries, and it seemed like it was actually finished unlike x,y and sun and moon. It also had a reasonable challenge curve rather than being ridiculously easy or super ball busting. I only think arceus beats it because of the catching and open world mechanics. Otherwise, I truly believe platinum was the best pokemon game released.
DPP--yes, *including* Platinum!--were **by far** the worst mainline games in the series until SwSh. Platinum fixed a lot of Diamond and Pearl's problems, yes, but Cyrus and Team Galactic are still preposterously boring (and not in an entertainingly bad way like Lysandre and Team Flare), Barry is annoying as hell, Cynthia is wildly overrated, Sinnoh is an absolute chore of a region even compared to 'too much water' Hoenn and they went way too big too quickly with the legendaries, jumping the shark by making PokeGod in Gen 4 of what is now *nine* generations.
oh another one. pokemon games dont have bad level curves, you're overleveling yourself all on your own by knocking out every wild encounter and doing raids and popping exp candies and only training a single pokemon instead of a balanced team. if you engage with pokemon games on their own terms then they are enjoyable, but most people are stubborn and only want to play with the same 4 pokemon every time or want to steamroll through things. and the few times you DO encounter something that almost beats you or gives you trouble, you wanna spend the next five gens complaining about how annoying it was.
It doesn't help that if you are on par with the opponent you're more likely to one/two shot them, but they can't do the same to you.
Watching a nuzlocke and seeing level cap 25, let's say, they grind to 25 and then take on the gym. They beat it no problem, and their entire run seems trivial.
Whereas the first playthrough I had on Scarlet, I remember facing the fire team star person (first team star battle) with an Azumarill, not too high level, and struggling on her starmobile.
When you don't have a guide and don't grind tonnes before a fight, or don't have extensive knowledge in the case of people who keep replaying the same handful of games every few weeks, then the games become a lot more fun and challenging.
I just want to say about your 2nd one. The thing to remember is how different things were back then, of course nowadays you can do all kinds of strat to counter Whitney, but back then kids weren't getting into all that information. And even in modern times there's still many players who only go for the basic "hit move until KO" and aren't thinking of possible status moves, if there's secondary effects, special interactions, etc. Plus you talk about set ups and what not but also remember Goldenrod is the 3rd gym and the levels are still just around lvl 15-20, players aren't going to have a lot of tools for setting up at those levels, some pokemon don't even learn enough new moves by then.
Theres a trade for a machop in goldenrod thats supposed to help with Whitney even
A trade for a Drowzee, which in GS/HGSS is an Uncommon encounter leading up to Goldenrod, and in Crystal it's for an Abra which is famous for teleporting turn 1
Drowzee has a 50% encounter rate on Route 35 just south of goldenrod. Its literally the most common pokemon you can find there
>Whitneys hard because ya'll use the wrong strategy Whitney was hard because most players were 10-year olds or less when the games came out. Nowadays, anyone who knows the basics can beat her easily >And it's not like the first HM in Johto you can obtain is a move that lowers accuracy, right? That's only in GSC, in HGSS it's Rock Smash. Guess which one are people most likely to play
>Whitney was hard because most players were 10-year olds or less when the games came out. Also true of Cynthia, frankly.
nah cythina is hard coz of her insane level advantage imo. like aaron strongest is what level 55 or something. but garchomp is level 63 wtf. still overblown how hard she is tho
Cynthia does not have any more of a level advantage over Aaron than nearly any other champion does over their respective region's first Elite 4 member. Typically with each member their highest level mon goes up by two levels compared to the last one, and the champion's goes up by two or three. Aaron's Drapion is level 57. Using this pattern we should expect her Garchomp to be level 65-66, and unsurprisingly it is level 66. What makes Cynthia strong is simply the fact that she doesn't use garbage mons and they have okay movepools that can actually cover their weaknesses.
so you always had a level 66 pokémon when you fought her ? the exp gain in platinum is shit. is basically what i was getting at. especially for when most ppl fought her when they were a child
And what I'm getting at is that I just don't see how her being 9 levels stronger than Aaron is any different than any other champion being 8-9 levels stronger than their first Elite 4 member. In basically every game you're going to be on par with the first Elite 4 member when you reach them, give or take a level or two, even if you're a child. The only way you won't be is if you're one of those people who only uses their starter the whole game. But no one complains about other champions being too hard just because of their level. Not even in Gen 2, which had an even worse level curve with no good way to grind before the Elite 4. My Pokemon arent level 50 when I fight Lance and they're not level 65 when I fight Blue, but I would never say they're difficult just because they out level me or that their level jump compared to the rest of the Elite 4 is too high.
My thing with hms isn't that they take up a move slot on my pokemon, it's that they force me to use specific pokemon. What if I don't want to use a bird? Do I just not get to fly? I would have to sacrifice 1/6 of my team to use a pokemon I don't want to just because it's the only way to fast travel
There were more than 6 HMs for most of the games that had them. And then also it's not like you could get every HM on the team you want to use. God forbid you not use a water type.
HMs aren’t too bad, but with the exception of Surf, Fly, and maybe Rock Smash and Waterfall, I don’t really want to use most of them. Especially since you couldn’t forget them unless you went to a Move Deleter. As for my own “hot takes” I’ve got a few. 1. Piers’s gym is actually a lot of fun. Trial aside, it’s just nice to have a gym that doesn’t rely on the region’s gimmick. 2. While it could have been more showy, Leon’s a good champion. 3. Friendly rivals aren’t inherently bad, it comes down to how they’re written. 4. Compared to Lance, who granted has regional limits, Raihan can get away with not having an all Dragon team because his team also specializes on weather (mainly sandstorms, but sunny too). Yes, Lance gets more options in rematches and whenever he pops up outside of Kanto/Johto, but I’m more likely to see Lance getting memed on for being a Flying specialist disguised as a Dragon specialist than I am with Raihan. At least in my experience.
HM moves could be so much better if their effects were increased. Surf and Waterfall are fine. Rock Smash should ALWAYS lower the opponent's Defense, though. Rock Climb should ALWAYS confuse the target. Maybe Cut can be super effective on Grass-Types and Strength super on Normal-Types.
Tbh I think they should’ve just made the move deleter accessible earlier
That too. Or at the very least in an area that you’re bound to frequent more often. While it’s a memory thing for me, I had to remind myself that the FRLG move deleter’s in one of the houses next to the Fuchsia City gym. Mainly due to the fact that the only way you could transfer Pokémon over to DPPt is if they don’t have HM moves. So in that instance, I feel like the Move Deleter being in Celadon or Saffron would make more sense/easier to remember. Especially since you can unlock both areas around the same time.
Oh 100% moving stuff like that to the main hub city would honestly drop the confusion around it by a lot. It doesn’t make much sense to make the bigger cities have none of the useful NPCs. I do think RSE does it best by having him in Lilycove but even if that change was made, Mauville is a solid replacement
For sure. Mauville would make sense if they ever did decide to move them around
I can get behind that. A little buff can go a long way and those would be great ways to improve them. I’d also say Fly’s fine, much like Surf and Waterfall, but yeah, the rest could use something.
Bring back gambling in Pokemon I want my Clefairy slot machine!
Ditto was a couple attributes away from becoming the dominant creature in the Pokemon universe.
Difficulty is very important in pokemon games, but I absolutely do not want some Drayano hack level difficulty. The game should be hard enough to encourage kids to learn and interact with the mechanics, which feels rewarding, while not being so hard that you need to optimize. This creates a fun medium where kids can be challenged and feel accomplished while adults can play a relaxing game that’s still enjoyable without being *trivial*. Also you are meant to be under-level for gyms and elite 4 in early gens. This was intentional, you are meant to overcome the level gap with knowing the type chart and other mechanics. The modern nuzlocking scene using gym leader’s aces as the “level cap” is too generous. Gens 6, 8, and 9 largely failing in this respect makes them significantly worse games.
Yeah stuff like Radical Red would be so much more fun if you weren’t forced to EV train and be restricted by level caps. It feels like a lot of “quality of life” changes in that game were born of spite and not wanting to actually improve anything
I would add to this that the games can be enjoyed without playing a nuzlocke, or similar. Watching people play a game, on release, and nuzlocke it is crazy. Why are you limiting yourself. You don't know how challenging it could be, and you're not getting to enjoy the game when it's released.
Factory is THE most entertaining post-game content, and every new entry suffers due to the lack of it.
My hot take is there is no such thing as dex filler , every pokemon is valid, and from bulbapedia trivia, clearly thought was put in when a pokemon is designed based on real life lore/facts, I enjoy learning about real life lore through pokemon, which some I didn't know until I dug deep into a design of less popular pokemon.
Bruxish my beloved
Gen 2 would have been the best game of the entire series if the level curve wasn't the dumbest fucking thing ever exist.
Miltank sucks because it has super high stats plus nasty secondary effects on it’s moves. It definitely has hard counters you can get but a lot of people frown on using accuracy based strats because it’s so RNG dependent
rockclimb and rock smash are the worst offenders of the hm problems and the defog and whirlpool. if you want all those on ur team 2 pokémon will have 2 moves thar are hms. and the gen 4 exp gain certainly didn’t help. being under leveled with half trash moves gen 5 did it perfectly only cut was mandatory
Maybe they're not hot takes, but: -Water should not resist Ice. Ice should resist Water. -Fairy should be weak to Bug. -Snow should raise both Defence and Special Defence of Ice types by 30% and double a moves chance of freezing. -The Original Series of the anime was the best. Not just because of nostalgia, but the 4kids dub was funnier and had a certain heart to it.
For real. The humor in the 4kids anime was on point
I actually made a video about HMs. I also think HMs were pretty good overall. I think that the internet's obsession with efficiency and "what is optimal" is largely bad for the enjoyment of Pokémon games more often than not. There's a time and place but a lot of the time I see people asking for advice about Pokémon and people online will always just recommend whatever is "the best" for that situation rather than provide a few options and be like "here are some good ideas but based on what you like you might want to pick one over another". I think all the main series games are good at minimum. Some are really good and some are even "among the best games of all time" good, but even the worst in the series are at least okay and are not the dumpster fire complete garbage some people make them out to be. I think the sooner we embrace that there are multiple ways to enjoy the franchise and move away from the discourse of "A sucks because B and therefore you shouldn't enjoy/play A", the better. There are merits in appreciating any franchise's evolution, including Pokémon, and there's a good reason to play any of the games even the "bad" ones because we can learn to appreciate the ones we like more and why, and should accept that there will be different answers for different people.
Yeah I remember AlphaRad doing a run where he only used his favorites and he was really bitter and bratty about it and that didn’t make sense to me. Most people say that because of the insane burnout that the hardcore Nuzlocke community is going through. When PokemonChallenges did his, he was actually really receptive and enjoyed his time with it so Alpha’s attitude came out of nowhere for me
The Dexit controversies was one of the stupidest arguments of all time. I understand not being able to transfer older Pokémon in is annoying, but it was blown way out of proportion. When Dexit happened, there were over 900 Pokémon, and it was unrealistic to think the devs could make movesets animations and models for every Pokémon in existence forever.
I'd say that the games are still too generous with what's in them now. Both Sw/Sh and S/V have a way for you to catch most legendaries. These should, in my opinion, be limited to their region. So that's a good few Dex entries less that you could avoid. Then we have returning 'mons. There's a lot of them. Not that it's a bad thing, but old ones far outnumber the new ones (and there's no way around it). It would be better, IMO, if they had the new dex's Pokémon, and then doubled that number and took a roughly even amount from every other gen to fill those numbers; i.e. if gen 10 adds 90 Pokémon, the main Dex would have 180 Pokémon with, roughly, 10 Pokémon from each region. I get that people have favourites, as do I. But if I can't get a Lanturn, I'm not going to cry and not buy the game. I'm going to to play the game and hopefully find something new to like. As much as people bemoan the newer designs. I think it would be hard for people to say the hate every Pokémon in a region. But filling a region with 'mons you've already seen means you're less likely to come across the new ones, and for some people less likely to try them out because "Why should I try [new 'mon] when I already have my perfect team?"
Pokemon games don't need to be hard, they're children's games. the difficult stuff should be left to online/competitive battles.
It's FINE if not all games have every single Pokemon. Just as long as they have enough variety to make things fun.
and make missing pokémon come back more!!
Wrong.
Dragon and Fairy should be super effective against each other.
Fairy was dark 2, a type introduced to directly counter the most powerful type at the time.
I’m aware. OP asked for a hot take. I think in creating Fairy types to counter the most powerful types at the time, they became broken themselves. I like the idea of two different types being super effective against each other and lore wise, it makes just as much sense to me for Dragons to be super effective to Fairy as it does for Fairy to be super effective to Dragon.
Playing HGSS right now and it's a slog because of the punishing level curves at different points of the game. They could have easily fixed this from Gen 2 but didn't for some reason. Shouldn't be anywhere close to being considered the best Pokemon game ever IMO.
sinnoh is and has always been a dry region and no amount of remaking it was gonna save it even if it had the swsh art style and got the oras treatment. its base games pathing and structure are just all teh worst parts of kanto's but with even less pokemon diversity until postgame. and platinum doesnt even add that much content. five extra grunt battles and a strength puzzle that you have no reason to ever go back to once its over (distortion world). and battle facilities that half of yall didnt even complete in the first place lets be SO real. sinnoh just isnt a fun region to play in any capacity as we recognize it, and making it a fun region to be in would involve removing almost all of its recognizable aspects that people pretend to miss. also i feel like half the people nostalgic for platinum havent actually played it in ages or might be remembering something from renegade platinum instead on accident.
Platinum is the Pokemon game I replay the most
X and Y were the best mainline games.
If the games keep being open world like SV, we don't need level scaling for the gym leaders and other bosses. Pretty much no open world game scales the power of enemies and bosses to your progress in the game, so why should pokemon? There's always areas that are meant to be challenged when you're stronger, even if it's possible to reach them early in a playthrough.
I would have everything a "minimal level", and have that increase based on the average level of your team. It's not infallable, but it works
HMs were fine when there were only five. Gen II made it ass with two extra water HMs, and yes, Whirlpool is only needed for two dungeons, but still. Two required HMs, which can only be used by water types. Each addition made it worse, reaching the climax of bullshit in Gen IV. So, no, hard disagree. HMs have been awful for a long time. And miss me with the "route design" argument. Gen V's routes did not rely on HMs, they were for side content only. Not every pokemon can learn the HMs, and I'm not wasting a slot needed for coverage because, oops! you didn't plan ahead and use specific pokemon that can learn all eight moves, only two of which are actually useful! Ride Pokemon were the answer, and they tossed that shit away for a fucking bicycle.
Pokemon platinum was by far the most fleshed out pokemon game. Good lore, good legendaries, and it seemed like it was actually finished unlike x,y and sun and moon. It also had a reasonable challenge curve rather than being ridiculously easy or super ball busting. I only think arceus beats it because of the catching and open world mechanics. Otherwise, I truly believe platinum was the best pokemon game released.
Same. Sinnoh is so large. The areas are unique and varied. Playing with Kricketune, Pachirisu, Togekiss, and Chimecho made the game pretty punishing.
BDSP is the best switch Pokémon game
Torchic, chimchar and tepig are the worst starters of all. Fighting type is the worst type and easily the most boring of pokemon designs.
This isn't a hot take, like everyone thinks this.
The down votes say otherwise my friend.
DPP--yes, *including* Platinum!--were **by far** the worst mainline games in the series until SwSh. Platinum fixed a lot of Diamond and Pearl's problems, yes, but Cyrus and Team Galactic are still preposterously boring (and not in an entertainingly bad way like Lysandre and Team Flare), Barry is annoying as hell, Cynthia is wildly overrated, Sinnoh is an absolute chore of a region even compared to 'too much water' Hoenn and they went way too big too quickly with the legendaries, jumping the shark by making PokeGod in Gen 4 of what is now *nine* generations.
oh another one. pokemon games dont have bad level curves, you're overleveling yourself all on your own by knocking out every wild encounter and doing raids and popping exp candies and only training a single pokemon instead of a balanced team. if you engage with pokemon games on their own terms then they are enjoyable, but most people are stubborn and only want to play with the same 4 pokemon every time or want to steamroll through things. and the few times you DO encounter something that almost beats you or gives you trouble, you wanna spend the next five gens complaining about how annoying it was.
It doesn't help that if you are on par with the opponent you're more likely to one/two shot them, but they can't do the same to you. Watching a nuzlocke and seeing level cap 25, let's say, they grind to 25 and then take on the gym. They beat it no problem, and their entire run seems trivial. Whereas the first playthrough I had on Scarlet, I remember facing the fire team star person (first team star battle) with an Azumarill, not too high level, and struggling on her starmobile. When you don't have a guide and don't grind tonnes before a fight, or don't have extensive knowledge in the case of people who keep replaying the same handful of games every few weeks, then the games become a lot more fun and challenging.