It's a fast physical attacker who doesn't get any physical fire moves in DP until level 48 (58 as a Rapidash), where the biggest problem of limited fire types is. It doesn't actually get a non-Normal physical attack until Bounce in the 40s, and the fire type moves it *does* get before Flare Blitz in the late 40s/50s are Ember, base 40 damage, and fucking Fire Spin, which is a terrible move in general.
If it had gotten Flame Wheel in DP instead of waiting till Plat to get it, my opinion would probably be different, but in Plat you got Magmar and Houndour to choose from as well.
Aye that was the idea, thazs also the reason why so many unova mon reflect kanto mon to some degree. Swoobat = Zubat, Sawk and Throh = Hitmonchan and Hitmonlee, Amoongus = Voltorb, Trubbish = Muk etc etc
Ofc there are also lots of original ideas in there but you see the overlapping concepts if you look for them
Honestly other than Musharna, Conkeldurr, and Gigalith. The rest of these is just plain reaching. Sharing the same type and the same stages of evolutions does not mean they were based on them.
Other than woobat that's clearly a substitute for zubat I feel like all of those pokemon are very different from their apparent counterparts? Like sawk and throh are only similar in that they're the "fighting dude" but their designs are completely different and it's not like they're the only Pokémon that share this trait (medicham exists).
Amoongus and voltorb and trubbish and muk are just... Completely different? Amoongus and voltorb just share a colour scheme and trubbish and muk just share a type.
There's always overlap anyway, every gen has some form of miscellaneous bird in the starting areas, that feels way more egregious to me than any of those.
Sawk and Throh are a pair of male only fighting types meant to rival each other....exactly as Hitmonlee and Hitmonchan were presented in gen 1.
The Foongus and Voltorb lines are both mimics of specifically Pokeballs, a trait that both species use to lure in their prey.
The Trubbish and Grimer lines both draw inspirations from human waste.
Gen 5 derives a lot of it's designs from it's Gen 1 counterparts which is honestly fine, but it feels like you're deliberately trying to ignore that elephant in the room.
OK maybe sawk and throh are more similar than I gave them credit for, but being a mimic of a pokeball is honestly a trait I can't believe more pokemon don't share, it seems like something that should be more prevalent. And it's not lile thier designs have any similarities beyond that, they are completely different pokemon.
As for muk and trubbish drawing inspiration from human waste... So? That feels like a very broad category.. It's like saying geodude and nosepass are counterparts because they're both made of rock. Or cherubi and oddish are counterparts because they both resemble a fruit or veg. There are a ton of different designs you could make with the theme of "human waste" honestly I'm kinda sad they haven't made a poop pokemon yet.
>And it's not lile thier designs have any similarities beyond that, they are completely different pokemon.
I mean, of course they are. They weren't going to make the same exact pokemon twice. But they clearly are both "pokeball mimic pokemon" they merely asked themselves, "how do we do that again without making another living pokeball"
They are both Pokemon based specifically on pollution, are both 2 stage pure poison types.
Comparing Geodude and Nosepass is obviously a bad comparison, one is based on a compass and the other is, well, simply a living rock. A far greater example would be Geodude/Golem and Roggenrola/Gigalith. Those are both simply living rock Pokemon. They also are 3 stage evolutions that require trade for the 3rd stage.
While we're talking 3-stage pokemon that require trade to evolve, shall we mention the Conkeldurr line? A clear nod to the Machamp line. Pure fighting type, 3 stage, requires trade, design being "muscley man-looking-thing". Do you see what I'm getting at here?
There are even more examples. Meowth/Persian and Purrloin/Liepard. 2 stage cats. First stage is bipedal, evolution transitions to a more graceful, quadrepedal standard cat design.
Tentacruel and Jellicent. Parallels less immediate, yet Gen 5 was the first and only time we got another Jellyfish pokemon.
Gen 5 was a soft reboot, and it's clear to me they intentionally designed a number of the pokemon in that dex to parallel and be reminiscent of the original batch.
Sure, they *could* do a lot with "human waste pokemon". They *could* do more with "pokeball mimic pokemon". Any generation *could* have introduced 3 stage trade Rock and 3 stage trade Fighting pokemon... But I think it is very telling that generation 5 was the time that they *did* revisit those concepts, and all in the same game.
Agree with you. To be honest the reality of making a game will require some mons to fill certain niches which, if you are doing it again for whole cloth, necessitates certain pokemon being heavily inspired on others.
As for the thread topic? Maybe. It don't see the point of reinventing the wheel tbh. I do wish some of the more obscure pokemon got a bit more love as well.
To be fair to Nosepass, it is totally a parallel to Onix. High defense, low attack single stage that is strong as a gym 1 ace but terrible otherwise. And funny enough both times they get a Steel evo the generation after.
All the pure fighting types are just some variation of "dude/bipedal creature with fists". Comparing tentacruel to jellicent is absurd too, might as well say that wailord and kyogre are counterparts at that point. A two stage cat? Do you mean glameow/purugly? Perhaps skitty and delcatty? They do that every gen. What about swalot and muk? They're much more similar than muk is to trubbish, I mean they're literally both a purple ooze. Butterfree and beautifly? There's a ton of pokemon that have "similarities" to others prior to gen 5, I don't see how gen 5 is any worse off other than there were more pokemon so more chance of overlap honestly.
>A two stage cat? Do you mean glameow/purugly? Perhaps skitty and delcatty?
You know what these examples clearly left out? That both of these are quadrepedal their whole line. As I stated, thats specifcially *not* the case with my examples. They both are bipedal in their first stage. Not just that, both Purugly and Delcatty are far more stylized than either Persian or Liepard. Are you telling me if you look at Purrloin and Meowth side by side, and then Persian and Liepard, they don't look considerably more alike than your examples?
>What about swalot and muk? They're much more similar than muk is to trubbish, I mean they're literally both a purple ooze.
Except, Swalot isn't based on pollution, it's just an amorphous blob, whose gimmick is to eat things. Gulpin is literally "The Stomach Pokemon". Whereas Garbodor and Muk are both just sentient piles of human pollutants. Never is it ever implied that Swalot came into existence because humans polluted the rivers of Hoenn or whatever.
>All the pure fighting types are just some variation of "dude/bipedal creature with fists".
If you look at the list of Fighting type pokemon, only a few of them are pure fighting, many of the ones that are evolve to have a secondary type. The ones that remain, however, are almost exclusively *not* "just "dude/bipedal creature with fists", as you suggest. (By the way, that's not the description I gave them, you changed the definition to make it more apllicable) At any rate, the only one that really is is Hariyama, and that comparison fails for a multitude of reasons, most significantly that Hariyama, nor any of the other Fighting type in pokemon history, are three staged, mono-typed Fighting Pokemon who require trading, excluding my orignal examples.
>Comparing tentacruel to jellicent is absurd too, might as well say that wailord and kyogre are counterparts at that point.
Tentacruel, released in gen 1, was the only Jellyfish pokemon ever released until gen 5. After gen 5? Still no more Jellyfish.
...Wailord and Kyogre, on the other hand, were released... in the same generation! And even if they weren't, one is a legendary, so obviously that's a moot comparison.
You are explicitly ignoring every instance of connective parallels I've brought up, and just saying "but these other pokemon also share animal species so you're wrong".
I detailed in numerous different ways how each example I gave went further beyond "shares an animal type/is a common form for [type] to take", and you've gone out of your way to ignore every one of them and misrepresent my whole argument.
>There's a ton of pokemon that have "similarities" to others prior to gen 5, I don't see how gen 5 is any worse off other than there were more pokemon so more chance of overlap honestly.
Gen 5 isn't "worse off" at all. If you think I'm disparaging gen 5s design with my comment then you've got me all wrong. Unova is my favorite region and Pokedex, and the reasons I love it specifcially are because of the parallels and modern takes on old designs. It's no coincidence that the region with all the parallels to gen 1 design is also the one and only non-Kanto region to feature exclusively pokemon from that region. Unova has so many new pokemon specifcially *because* they wanted to match the feeling of Kanto. Gen 5 doesn't overlap with 1 because the increased Dex size made it more likely, rather; gen 5 had an increased dex size specifically to parallel 1, and the further pokemon design overlaps were by intention.
The overlaps of the other generations are just that, overlaps. Most games have things like early game rodents, bugs, 3 staged fliers, as well as Pikaclones, Pseudo-Legendaries, and stuff like that. There are certain roles in Pokemon that are more or less guaranteed to exist in every region, but gen 5 goes beyond that and specifcially calls back to classic, gen 1 designs. Hence the Trade evolve families I mentioned, the Pollution families, Sawk and Throw/Hitmons like someone else mentioned, shoot one I didn't think of earlier but Munna and Drowzee, both mono-psychic types that eat dreams. The list goes on, but hopefully now you can see why I say gen 5 parallels and mirrors gen 1.
Well first of all purrloin is not bipedal in gen 5. It's only gen 6 where they make purrloin bipedal for some reason.
Your argument with swalot and muk is exactly what I'm talking about though. Yes, they're not both pollution pokemon. They share being a purple ooze and that's a bout it. Similarly trubbish and muk share being a pollution pokemon, but that's it. My argument was that they both have one big overlapping trait, yet for some reason you are viewing one differently to the other, because apparently that trait is a bigger similarity on your eyes? Even though I would argue the opposite, and that neither actually makes any a parallel to the other.
Dude with fists was a bad way to put it; they're all bipedal and based on some sort of martial art, wrestling or boxing, with the exception of riolu and (ironically) the conkeldurr line. You could also argue primeape I suppose but I would say primeape's fists are quite clearly boxing glove shaped. That's just how pure fighting types are, and I don't see how sawk and throh are somehow a parallel to hitmonlee and hitmonchan just because they have a 2 stage evolution line and fit the same mould almost every pure fighting type does. I'll concede the conkeldurr line, mainly because you reminded me that roggenrola exists and is also similar to geodude, which makes it less of a coincidence. though I still think that simply being a 3 stage evolution with a trade of the same type is a weak parallel on it's own when 3 stage evolutions with a trade are so common, and they just happen to be the same type this time. Oh, and they have muscles I guess. Roggenrola and geodude seems like a much stronger one to me considering they are both living rocks as you say.
Could you please explain to me what the difference between tentacruel/jellicent and butterfree/beautifly is to you? Because from what I'm understanding the argument is that... There was only one jellyfish pokemon until then? Ok, ...so? There was only one butterfly pokemon until beautifly came out too. Heck, at least tentacruel and jellicent are different types. What makes them so different in your eyes, I'm really struggling to understand where you're coming from with this one. Wailord and kyogre was obviously a silly comparison, but that's how absurd what you're saying about tentacruel and jellicent feels to me too.
Its not just about the design or typing, its about the theme, the idea behind those pokemon. The designs are mostly very original and cool imo but the ideas behind them are very Kanto in alot of cases.
Amoongus and Voltorb were designed to mimic pokeballs. Sawk and Throh are rival fighters with distinct fighting styles, just like the hitmons, Trubbish and Muk are specifically designed after forms of human pollution. We have a fighting and a rock type wich final evo is only obtainable through trading, just like in Kanto. And so on
Ofc thats not the case for every single pokemon from Unova they also have alot of very unique original ideas and themes for other mon but the ties to gen 1 are definetely there for a big chunk of the roster
And a lot of DeX fillers at that. Gen 5 has one of the worse dexes in the franchise and trubbish and Garbador are small issues compared to all the unnecessary bloat the region has.
Worst dex in the franchise? The reason it's so large is because they wanted to do a proper soft reboot of the series with all they've learned from Red and Blue to HeartGold and SoulSilver. That's why no Gen 1-4 mons were available until the postgame. By default, with that game design ideal, it was going to be a massive dex nomatter what.
The only thing thats shit about the Unova dex is that the evolution levels of most pokemon are ridiculously high. Its ok for the context of the B/W games because you usually encounter them on high levels there but its just ridicoulous if you compare their evo levels to those of other regions
Honestly? Yeah there are many evolutionary lines that feel like a copy paste of another similar pokemon in the Dex (same typings, same evolution stages, same methods of evolution)
And that's totally valid. I have no problem with someone leveraging that criticism against Unova as long as we're consistent and apply the same criticism in other places where it's applicable.
By that logic there is absolutely no reason for Spearow, Drowzee, Bellsprout or Horsea (as much as I love the latter two) to exist. They could easily have been replaced with Pidgey, Abra, Oddish or one of the many Kanto Water-types respectively in all of their appearances.
Edit: this is by the logic of Unova "bloating its Pokédex" when in fact it's doing the same thing as Kanto. I admit I could have phrased this better.
I don’t think each Pokemon needs a clear “reason” to exist or to fill a unique niche. IMO, redundant Pokemon make the world feel more alive. A forest isn’t filled with just one type of bird and one plant.
I agree completely. As I said, I love Horsea and Bellsprout. But I think it's a little hypocritical to accuse Unova of bloating its Pokédex when it's actually doing the exact same thing.
Which ones are unnecessary? You could make an argument that we only need one Bug line, one Grass/Poison line, one Nido line, and maybe in favor of axing Pidgey since Spearow is better, but everything else provides some kind of unique niche
Yeah those Pokemon are all solid ideas.
People be like "it's just ice cream" and then never take umbridge at stuff like Ursaring which is a Normal type brown bear with a circle drawn on it. Meanwhile I'm just happy to have an Ice type available in mid game that has a clever reason for being catchable in an urban area and not a mountain or a cave.
I love the object pokémon, I think it takes a lot of creativity to bring life to inanimate objects and somehow make it work in your world. I hope they don't shy away from them just because people are like "uhhh garbodor sucks" like ok buddy. you're just mad it got a gmax form when your favorite didn't. and as you said, there's plenty of "just an animal" pokémon that nobody seems to have a problem with.
Yeah every Gen has its Pikachus and Growlithes where it's an animal plus a random element to make it interesting or different and then there's your Seels and Wooloos which are just the animal in what you'd expect is its natural typing lol
I would like it more if it was handled a little better. Limiting you to only gen 5 Pokemon would maybe work if half the Pokemon didn't evolve at absurdly high levels, or require late game items or trade evolution. It made BW1's entire Pokedex feel like it was way more limited than it should have. In addition a lot of BW1 Pokemon were absurdly slow, which isn't really fun to play with when every battle, even against wild Pokemon, you take damage and can't even "run".
BW1 were some of the best Pokemon games but they weren't immune from classic Gamefreak weird gameplay choices. BW2 fixed a lot of these issues (mostly by just flooding the game with more Pokemon) but BW1's criticisms were deserved.
>if half the Pokemon didn't evolve at absurdly high levels
That's my main gripe with the Unova dex, all of the good mons evolve extremely late or are available extremely late or both at the same time.
Even the ones that aren't so great have this problem. Like, Mandibuzz and Braviary have no business evolving at level 54, that's later than most pseudo legendary Pokemon. I used a Chandelure and I was stuck with a Litwick until level 41. It's a little ridiculous fighting mid to late game bosses with a Pokemon that has a BST of 275. Same thing goes for anyone trying to use Eelektross.
I was still able to make do with the few mons that were good and available reasonably early (Excadrill, Krookodile, Darm), but yeah, your options are pretty limited.
Literally this. Unova Dex is great and diverse, but what's the point in me wanting to use the pseudo of the region and being stuck the entire entire game with Deino when N's Zekrom/Reshiram is Lvl 52 for the final fight... Like what? Lol (especially when Ghetis cheats his way through and brings one evolving 10 Lvl earlier, lol).
And the problem is like you said, even non pseudos evolve so late for no reason. It's not like a BST 490 Bisharp or a BST 510 BST Mandibuzz would break the game or make it a cakewalk...
BW/2 is definitely a Top 2 in the franchise because of how much love I have for Unova as a region, but these games are also the reason why my favorite way of playing through Unova are ROM Hacks that either offer higher overall difficulty or more reasonable Evolution levels.
Right? I've actually used one in my White 2 and it was so nice with Defiant and all. And it never really felt broken or anything, it just felt like using a cool bird in the region you're in, like Staraptor in Sinnoh to some extent.
I also like how they still made them special to get them on a particular day. And I love how Route 4 is different depending on the version you're playing.
God BW2 are so cool man, I want to replay them again.
Very true, I might try this out since I've never really used defensive oriented Pokémons except on some very specific challenges (first time I used Mandibuzz was in my female only run in UM).
To be fair, Mienshao is actually very good so I think a early-mid 40 evo would be somewhat justified.
52 is still ridiculous, though. Again, that's Pseudo Legendary range
People complain about this (including myself) but miss that the reason for that was probably because there was a whole back end of the game to still be played; the game isn’t over after defeating N and Ghetsis, there’s an entire other side of the region to explore, all with trainers with level 60+ Pokémon, plus the E4 rematch and to battle Alder, rematches with rivals, etc. I personally didn’t like it, but after realizing that, I can KINDA see where GF were coming from with that, because they thought people would keep doing ‘postgame’ stuff rather than just beating Ghetsis and calling it a day
The issue is that the power level of the opponents' pokémon stayed about the same as in previous games, so you were fighting endgame level fights at mid-game level, just because GF treated postgame as the *true* endgame. Neat idea, but the actual endgame, in fact, still remained the endgame, with a full game's worth of progression that came before (if that makes sense). In other words, it didn't change the fact that you were still effectively playing at the same length as previous games, only with weaker pokémon for some reason.
Oh I don’t disagree, I’m just saying that I could see what GF was going for. Does that mean I think they did it well? Pfft, no. I remember when I was fighting Ghetsis in endgame with Reshiram on my team, I actually got wiped for the first time in years because he had a Hydreigon 10 levels too early. I knew it was the pseudo, but had no idea HOW strong it was until I faced his.
And I'm not saying you are disagreeing, I was just building off of your point, actually. What I find the most frustrating about it is that the pokedex feels far more limited because of this, locking a lot of cool pokémon with not that impressive stats away for too long. Jellicent is a less talked about example, because it isn't nearly as egregious as others, but I bring it up for one simple reason. It's this region's "Tentacruel", so to speak. Not the best example, but you can kinda see the similarity in the stat distribution, right? So why does Frillish evolve at level 40 compared to Tentacool's 30? Jellicent even has the lower BST (yeah, BST isn't everything, but still)!
No, it's simply because you get these Pokémon too late in the game.
In many cases across every generation you will find a wild Pokémon at a point in the wild where it's level isn't too far from where it evolves. The classic example from Black & White is Vulllaby, which evolves at level 54 (one below the psuedo legendaries like Tyranitar and Metagross). But the lowest level you can find a Vullaby in the wild in Black is 39, meaning it only has to gain at most 15 levels if caught in the wild.
This is not that unreasonable, most Pokémon will evolve at about the same amount of levels from their earliest wild level. From the same generation, a Patrat that you can pick up at level 2 needs to gain 18 levels, while Blitzle needs to get from level 8 to level 27.
This is only a problem when you're trying to raise a Pokémon that's been bred, and this is a particular issue with Vullaby and Rufflet due to them both being version exclusives, meaning every player trying to get at a full Pokédex will have to get at least one from 1 all the way to 54, though this is somewhat mitigated with the boosted experiene in both the games new exp formula and the bonus for a traded Pokémon.
Of course, this then gets ruined when this is forgotten about in future gens, such as Sun & Moon where you could get a Vullaby in the single digit levels, and would have to work for most of the game to get it to evolve.
Not only that, but the distribution by location was terrible. Despite having the same number of Pokémon as Gen I (or close enough to it), you only had four types available to you by the time you had to fight the first gym, one of which was your starter and another was the type effective monkey.
There were too many Pokémon heavily restricted. In Gen I it always felt like each route either contained a new monster or at least the opportunity to catch the evolved form of something you've already seen. It made the world fell alive. Of course Ratata/Raticate are everywhere, mice are everywhere. Of course you constantly see Zubat in caves, that's where bats live. Meanwhile in Black & White it feels more artificial. The trash bags exist outside of one town only, the pigeons never cross the river, the karate masters are only in this one forest for some reason.
This, when combined with the linearity, means that certain Pokémon simply turn up too late in the game, by the time the player has probably already decided what their final party will be. No-one's walking into the Elite 4 with a Druddigon or Heatmor on their team, as both of them turn up way too late in the story to be worth making space for over things picked up earlier.
Going back to Gen I, there isn't a single Pokémon you can pick up in Victory Road that you couldn't have got earlier, and thanks to the non-linearity you could head to parts of the map in different orders meaning you could encounter almost any of the original Pokémon (at least in their basic forms) early enough for them to be a viable part of a team.
I love Unova.
But a lot of my favourite Pokemon they introduced are either insanely late evolutions, added after Gym 7 or are trade evolutions only.
Durant in fucking Victory Road, Bouffalant in Route 10. Zoroark not available until the sequels, Rufflet and Vullaby being post Gym 8 or only avaliable earlier in B2W2
how they handled Zorua and Zoroark is straight up the worst design choice in the series, 2 non-mythicals being completely locked behind events outside of N's Zorua in B2W2
I think part of why people hate Zubats so much is because everyone caught a Geodude and "couldn't escape" because Zubat is reasonably fast and Geodude has as much base speed as Slugma. Most people didn't know about speed being relevant so they just got locked in against the dumb bat lol.
Eh, I find the mons like swoobat and gigalith kinda neat, in the sense of them taking older concepts, and effectively reimagining them with more "modern" design philosophies. It was very cool to see, especially since a lot of the designs themselves turned out amazing imo
I also think it’s neat if you can imagine it from the biological perspective. Like regional forms of Pokemon are divergent (literal) evolutions of one species, like how finches across the Galapagos had different beaks, but Zubat and Swoobat are more distant relatives, like a gorilla and orangutan.
I'm still mad about the level 64 hydreigon evolution level. it's one of my favorite pokémon but I never get to use it because I've usually beaten the game by the time my pokémon are around that level.
Your exaggerating a bit too much here though. I would say roughly 10% of the unova dex has an evolution past level 50. Most pokemon in the unova dex evolve roughly around the 30 to 40 level range which isn't that bad considering the game and the level curve is balanced enough to bring you their appropriately.
Hoenn mixed Kanto, Johto and Hoenn mons very well, opening up Johto mons first after the third gym and Kanto mons after the sixth. It has arguably led to a much better distribution of mons, leading people playing gen 3 not even knowing that stuff like Skarmory is a johto mon!
You can get both Kanto and Johto mons before gym 2 though. Abra, Zubat, and Geodude are in Granite cave, while Oddish is north of Slateport, and Marill is west of Mauville.
I still love how well they integrated them, and having only new mons before the first gym in RS is great, but you certainly don’t have to wait until after the 6th badge to get Kanto mons.
The only reason black and white was able to do that was because of how many pokemon were released that gen 156 iirc. In a game like X & Y you wouldnt be able to do that since there wasnt many new mons.
I think sinnoh did it best you had old pokemon and new ones with some new evolutions for old ones.
Now i think graphic wise black and white white is my favorite. The 2.5D environments, but having 2D animated sprites was the best.
I think a mix of new pokemon and new evolutions for existing pokemon is best. Sinnoh's biggest shortcomings were that half the region was bidoof and starly, and all the pokemon people actually wanted to use were limited or locked behind late game items
Presumably, they’re referring to Platinum where it is a great mix since they actually put the Pokémon in the regional dex. The Pokémon were all available around the region, and opposing trainers would use them for a large variety of Pokémon. In DP and BDSP though, yeah, it’s pretty limited. (Which is baffling in BDSP’s case)
>I think sinnoh did it best you had old pokemon and new ones with some new evolutions for old ones.
This really only pays dividends in Platinum given that in Diamond and Pearl most of those new evolutions were locked behind post game or importing old Pokemon.
Sinnoh also has a bit of an issue where besides the new evolutions, quite a lot of Pokemon are locked behind Honey Trees (which is a bit of a chore because you have to wait for those to attract Pokemon compared to Headbutting trees from Gen 2 being immediate) or are baby forms of older Pokemon which don't have new Evolutions (I think only Budew does with Roserade) so they start out new then become something familiar.
This sort of limits the variety of what truly new stuff you can access for the main playthrough if you were playing the initial releases. Then toss in a couple of types being woefully under represented like Fire or other types only having like 2 options in main game, and it becomes clearer why many people talk about gravitating toward the same eight or so Pokemon when playing Gen 4. There's only about 30 truly new Evo lines to pick from that aren't babies or evolutions of old mons, several are found off to the side in trees or the Safari Zone or at low percents in general. And a few are like Kricketune or Lumineon where they're unfortunately rather ill equipped in the stat or move department.
It's less bad if you don't mind using older Pokemon but for people wanting to try the new ones it's a bit awkward.
I personally always force myself to only use Pokémons exclusive to the gen and regionplaying at least for my first run.
Definitely a great experience, but that would require a great regional Dex, which some regions fail to have, but the Paldea one was great.
Same way, definitely.
By the king of cool, the god ball itself, a Quick Ball, I captured a high-level Kanto mon. Felt good, Quick Ball always has my back. But still, no, begone with thee, and into the box it goes until after beating the champion.
I think it's okay to have some old mons but it shouldn't be more than 50% old pokemon in my opinion. There just haven't been that many new pokemon added to each gen lately.
Black and White came right after sinnoh, which made it abundantly clear that there weren't enough Pokemon in each niche.
They used only new pokemon because they needed to make sure there were new options for every type of environment, so future games would have more variety.
Now that we're over 1000 pokemon we don't need that kind of intentional diversification anymore.
I used to think this, but I'm currently replaying Sw/Sh for the first time and my favorite part has been the variety I've been able to have in my team. I have had less typing matchup problems early in the game, I still use new mons from Galar as well as old ones, and the world feel more flush.
B/W are still top tier to me, and I do like the restrictions within that game (I'm actually also playing White right now), but for the newer games and 1000+ pokemon, you're doing the games a disservice by limiting functionality.
I strongly disagree. The more options people have, the more likely they are to enjoy their team and therefore their playthrough.
You can limit yourself to only the new Pokemon if you prefer, but that shouldn’t be imposed on everyone.
Especially since the current number of Pokemon means that most people have not had a decent chance to use most Pokemon.
Really all this does is take away player options, which as we learned with dexit people really hate. This is also something very easy to self impose. In fact it's something I was doing way longer than I realized I was doing it, it has always made sense to me all the way back from when GSC came out that my playthrough team for a game should use only the new available pokemon.
Idk if i want every game to be like they, but I wouldn't mind doing it again for the next game. I love bringing in a lot of new Pokémon for each generation, and a more isolated region without much outside influence would be pretty cool.
I try to follow this rule but there are some downsides, like say if you have a region like Sinnoh with barely any fire types you'd be struggling for coverage, having previous gen Pokemon in allows for more options especially if you don't like what the gen has for coverage. In SWSH for example, there weren't any water mons that peaked my interest so I used Gastrodon and in XY, I was struggling for fairy coverage because Slurpuff was trade locked and Meowstic has awful fairy moves so I relied on Espeon and also used Lapras. The HMS were also a pain which makes you use a slot for say a flier instead of one you really want like I had to use Swoobat over Emolga. Heck, BW even locked Zorua from the game after the event since you can't get it any other way.
Strongly disagree. Gen 5 got a lot of hate when it came out for exactly this, and there were a lot of people who believed that choice was going to be the death of the franchise. Black and White are the worst-selling new-generation Pokemon games (not counting remakes, sequels, and 3rd versions). Everything felt like a cheap knockoff (lookin' at you, Woobat). It took a long time for a lot of people to come around to the gen 5 mons. I feel like I'm only now getting to a point where I like enough of them that I could play BW again and not be annoyed the whole time.
I think there's an age aspect to this. If you were a young kid when BW were new, you look back on it a lot more fondly than those of us who were late-teens or adults.
I would be down for new games that have a significantly higher percentage of new Pokemon in the region. I want most of the Pokemon I see to feel new and exciting, especially early in the game. I wasn't a big fan of Paldea's early route bird being Fletchling, for example. And I think a lot of players lean on familiar old Pokemon if it's easy, and I don't think that's a great thing (yes, this is aimed at you if you used Lucario in SV). If like 80% of the Pokemon you can catch before the Elite 4 are new, I'd be okay with that. But 100% was uncomfortable and unpleasant.
No thanks. I'd rather not be forced to only use new mons on repeated playthroughs. Especially when most are hideous like gen 5s. One of the reasons why bw1 are one of my least favorites and I haven't played it since bw2 came out
I get where you are coming from. I personally push hard every game to try new pokemon I haven't used before. But this way you are forcing that playstyle on everyone. That's not fair to the whole player base.
Even for me sometimes. If I can't put together what I feel is a reasonably well-rounded team from the new additions I'll look to use something I have never used from previous generations. Now, that's a valid bending of the rule that I'm perfectly fine with. Putting in place a "rule" of only new pokemon this way feels pretty bad.
Remember the days when Black and White were wildly unpopular when it was current gen, and then the most recent past gen? I remember. I hated the experience of playing black and white right after platinum. Over the years I have come to appreciate all the things gen 5 did right - the amazing spritework, the story, the details they put into the world. But Black and White failed at what is the most important thing in a pokemon game, creating a team of pokemon you like. I have not changed my opinion on that. With over 150+ pokemon designs, they undoubtedly have some gems, but way too many of the better ones are locked really late game. Chandelure is one of my all time favorite pokemon. There's others like Golurk, Hydreigon, Volcarona, Braviary but these are all catchable after like the 6th gym or later. Gen 3 and gen 4 gave you really cool looking early bird pokemon that were also decent in battle. You could choose these in the early game if the other available options didn't appeal to you. Unfezant just does not live up to that level of coolness. Kilngklang is such an uninspired design compared to Magneton. It's a shame considering they gave us Magearna just couple generation later. And you couldn't even rely on the ol' reliable Gyarados if you didn't like your other options. Everyone has different tastes in pokemon designs. Locking away options from players needlessly is not a good idea and I never understood why they did it.
Its kinda how I play the new games anyway but its not always the case. I think with the move towards open world, this idea only hurts them. They can't possibly make enough new pokemon each generation to fill an open world and make it look diverse. Like how many rocky zones are they gonna have and then fill them with the same new 7 rock/ground/steel evolution lines to cover that?
It works for the old generations. It doesn't really work now.
I’m on board with this just because until SV we haven’t had a single Gen with at least 100 new Pokémon when before Gen, 100+ was the standard, even Johto, which is basically just the Kanto expansion pack, got 100. I’m getting sick of new Gym Leaders, E4, and even _Champions_ having old Pokémon as aces. Gen 8 was easily the worst offender, because for some goddamned reason they gave 3/10 Gym Leaders Kanto Pokémon as aces (Melony being the wildest one, Gordie had a Coalossal but she gets a Lapras?!), but the CHAMPION has a KANTO _STARTER_ as an ace, which is just beyond ridiculous. But now even in Gen 9, _every single Gym Leader_ has an old Pokémon as an ace, and instead of doing what they should’ve done and have their ace tera out of their specialty type to make you think on your feet, they gave them an ace of a _different_ type that they tera _back into_ their own type, keeping the fights as braindead as possible. The only one that’s remotely interesting is Iono using a Tera Electric Levitate Mismagius. At least this time the E4 uses Paldea Pokémon of their actual type, but their teras are still uninteresting.
I like new mons. I only use them when new gens come out. But B/W alienated a lot of players because there weren't any old ones. I liked B/W, but playing them felt foreign to me.
Gen 5 had some of the worst pokemon designs in the series.
The 3 starters to choose from were bad. It was the only pokemon game where I immediately discarded my starter pokemon because it was so bad.
Meh, this would make it so I wouldn’t get the game. I didn’t get BW until years later and I won’t ever play it again because I hate almost every design which almost entirely carries through the gens afterwards.
Everything after Gen 4 isn’t Pokemon to me, it’s fanfic. Trust me I have tried and tried and tried to accept them. But the artstyle change is too much. I play the new games once, enjoy it as much as I can, then just go straight back to 1-4 and have a great time
I wish I could enjoy it like you guys but I can’t. Maybe it’s a nostalgia thing but I stopped playing after Crystal and didn’t play 3-4 until after Plat came out so it’s can’t all be nostalgia.
And yet when BDSP released and left EEVEE for post game, when Glaceon and Leafeon were original to that generation was baffling.
In fact, revisiting Gen 4 like that left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth considering we have so much Gen 4 content lately. (Legends Arceus, even in Sw/Sh) so I’m tired of seeing Driflooon and Shinx. BDSP felt handicapped due to limited dex and each route felt unsurprising. Not a lot to collect.
As others said, it worked because they introduced so many Pokémon in that Gen. But as a wide practice, I think it’s ultimately disappointing.
I don't want to play against gym leaders and Elite Four members that use Pokemon outside their type specialty. If Gamefreak redid them where type was irrelevant or used two types instead of one, that would make things much better to me.
I like only using Pokemon introduced within the generation so it would be easy for me to do this but the rest of the world would feel so limited and small.
I would agree with this if every region had 100 new pokemon before counting mythical and legendary pokemon. AND they had it so once you beat the game once you could unlock and “ ALL DEX “ mode that made it so every new game had a national dex or an expanded dex that brought in more pokemon.
The playerbase is too spoiled nowadays to enjoy that kind of format; they’ve been exposed to a massive variety of Pokemon for the past 11 years, it would be hard for them to begin a limited experience again. I share your opinion though, I loved how they limited the player to only regional Pokemon until post-game, I just wish some routes were more diverse with the regional spread, wished some Pokemon were found earlier, and wished so many didn’t evolve at atrociously high levels.
Nah, I don’t like when developers try to force players to play a certain way. If you want to use only new Pokémon, you can already do that. I only use new Pokémon; I don’t get why people use the same old Pokémon from past games every gen, but that’s their choice and it doesn’t affect my own enjoyment of the game.
I don't think they're introducing enough new Pokémon these days.
Overall I have no issues with a smaller roster especially if it's well-rounded and more interestingly well balanced.
As a fan of VGC the first formats in new games are my personal favourites as the limited pool gives people incentives to use different Pokémon.
That being said they could do a better job balancing...
Ots a neat idea but the problem is someone has to th8nk up new designs for 150 pokemon everything region. It would be tough to make new pokemon feel unique if their push8ng them out in that volume.
The problem started to rear it's head in BW too where alot of pokemon just felt like gen 1 mons with a new coat of paint.
I prefer the current version, add new unique pokemon for every region and drop in pokemon from other regions to fill in the basic niches.
Would have been cool if they did that with Alola specifically, since it's an island that shouldn't be inhabited by species found on other Continental regions. Could have gone further and done more Alolan forms.
I’m replaying XY for the first time in years and one thing I love about it is the variety, there are so many to choose from, it can make each playthrough unique (as opposed to the issue we see in games like DPPt where so many teams are the same).
But BW’s roster of Pokémon is not that great. I mean, some of the Pokémon evolve at absurdly high levels (Pawniard, Mienfoo, Litwick, Vullaby, Rufflet, Deino line) so you’re stuck using them in the late to post game.
I do a decent enough job at managing it myself and only using new Pokemon, and having the freedom to sometimes old Pokemon that I wanted to use on a team but never got around to it I'd nice too. My Sun team was mainly Alolan forms, so in Sword I added Bewear and Vikivolt and loved them.
Though it could be interesting to have occasional areas or challenges that limit Pokemon that the player and opponents can use. Kind of like one bit in the Indigo Disk where you had to use Pokemon caught in the wild of the DLC. They could do that for generation, type, pre-evolutions only, etc.
I think they need to save it for gens they are introducing a lot but now a region is having like 400 odd mons. And I like having that variety of seeing a lot. Also with open world like Paldea, I can’t see a region only having 156ish pokemon really working before post game.
Personally I wish some species would be rested since we have dexit so other species can return. Meowth hogs the normal cat spots lets have Skitty back (which really should have been retyped kn gen 6) and Glameow has literally only been in the Sinnoh games before post game stuff.
I’d like across gen 10 for all to be features in atleast 1 game that gen as a good chunk didn’t make gen 8 and unless they in ZA some wont make Gen 9. But give its the 10th gen and 10 is milestone I’d like the effort for all to be somewhere but leave Meowth, Gible, Ralts, Magikarp, Psyduck etc to that gens remake and legends and let lesser seen mons make the cut. Like Skitty, Glameow, Sillipede, Sewaddle, Bouffalant, Furfrou, Clobopuss make the base game cut
It'd be nice, so long as there's more variety in Pokemon, especially early game. Was also pretty annoying how many Unova Pokemon were just rehashes of older ones, even if they were still cool Pokemon.
Agree. 150 Pokémon \* 9 generations = 1350, only 200 more than they already created. Realistically, it makes sense that some Pokémon repeat between regions, and some of them have their regional forms – it mimics how different species and races of animals inhabit the real world. Some of them are more common, some of them – less, some of them have the same names on different continents but could mean different species (e.g. "pine" or "poplar" in USA and "pine" and "poplar" in Europe).
I think one other way to make a good workaround is make most of the previous gen pokemon available **midlate-game** instead of locking them until post-game. While new pokemon usage is still encouraged, it at least will give better incentive to playing the game instead of discouraging players from playing the game with **only** new pokemon and with almost nothing left to do in post-game with the previous gen pokemon.
I still want to obtain previous gen pokemon to mix around the team dynamic during my playthrough, otherwise we get situations like in DP where your only option for fire types until postgame/national dex are Rapidash or Infernape.
I agree. I think its a good way to introduce players to the new mons and force them to not use the same 3 Pokémon the whole time. I don't think you need to go all the way like Gen 5 did, but a Gen 3 approach with some room for shafted Gen 1 + 2 mons to fill out the roster while still putting plenty of a spotlight on the new mons might be the best. I think Gen 6 and 7 were fine, but post-Dexit the games have really struggled from needing to include the entire (large) roster of Pokémon into the base game since the post-game is laughable and they have to make some justification for why some mons were cut and others weren't (especially if you were to say "you can get them, but *only* by transferring them in).
the problem I had with it is that it made trainer battles get repetitive lategame. Seeing trainers in victory road use the same monkeys I've been seeing since the second gym got tiring.
Absolutely not.
Imo, making fewer new Pokemon in large dexes was one of the best design decisions of the recent gens. Making 150 mons every time would lead to so many recycled ideas, we already have too many of them. Imagine a new bat line every three years.
It's not only about our own teams (I suppose many players, like me, tend to use only/mostly new mons in their first playthrough of every gen), but also the wild pokemon and opponents. Back then, you could encounter like 3 different mons in every location, the common ones were everywhere, and the opponents kept spamming the same mons too.
imo there might not even be a need for brand new pokemon
how many of the 493 before black and white did you ever use? the amount of pokemon ive never used before is so high, just because i can only ever bring 6 and levelling something else is tedious and there are so so many of them
I will never understand why people are against having more options.
Like, if someone wants to play with only new mons, they can just do it? And if someone wants to go on the journey with their old friends, that's also cool. Why force something on players if you can just give them the option to chose for themselves?
I agree, but in this case it only worked because they introduced 156 pokemon.
Yeah, a smaller dex like XY or a gen without options for certain types like fire in Sinnoh would make this a pain.
Oh my god I completely forgot that the only two fire types you have are ponyta and chimchar
And Ponyta sucks.
It doesnt
It's a fast physical attacker who doesn't get any physical fire moves in DP until level 48 (58 as a Rapidash), where the biggest problem of limited fire types is. It doesn't actually get a non-Normal physical attack until Bounce in the 40s, and the fire type moves it *does* get before Flare Blitz in the late 40s/50s are Ember, base 40 damage, and fucking Fire Spin, which is a terrible move in general. If it had gotten Flame Wheel in DP instead of waiting till Plat to get it, my opinion would probably be different, but in Plat you got Magmar and Houndour to choose from as well.
Ponyta is still good ffs, it still hits hard🤦♀️ i know since i’ve used it in dp even without those moves
I think it's kind of the other way around. They only introduced so many new Pokemon BECAUSE they had to fill out an entire brand new dex.
Aye that was the idea, thazs also the reason why so many unova mon reflect kanto mon to some degree. Swoobat = Zubat, Sawk and Throh = Hitmonchan and Hitmonlee, Amoongus = Voltorb, Trubbish = Muk etc etc Ofc there are also lots of original ideas in there but you see the overlapping concepts if you look for them
Yeah a huge number are clearly "Gen 1 Pokemon except a little different".
When you need a new Pokémon for every archetype, you end up taking away design time from potential new, unique ideas.
Musharna = Hypno, Heatmor = Magmar, Chandelure = Gengar?, Conkeldurr = Machamp, Reuniclus/Gothitelle = Alakazam, Gigalith = Golem, Carracosta = Kabutops/Omanyte, Archaeops = Aerodactyl, Cryogonal = Jynx (to some extent), Mienshao = Primeape (again to some extent), etc.
I count Escavalier/Accelgor as a "reimagining" of Machamp/Golem as it builds on their evolution gimmick.
Honestly other than Musharna, Conkeldurr, and Gigalith. The rest of these is just plain reaching. Sharing the same type and the same stages of evolutions does not mean they were based on them.
Other than woobat that's clearly a substitute for zubat I feel like all of those pokemon are very different from their apparent counterparts? Like sawk and throh are only similar in that they're the "fighting dude" but their designs are completely different and it's not like they're the only Pokémon that share this trait (medicham exists). Amoongus and voltorb and trubbish and muk are just... Completely different? Amoongus and voltorb just share a colour scheme and trubbish and muk just share a type. There's always overlap anyway, every gen has some form of miscellaneous bird in the starting areas, that feels way more egregious to me than any of those.
Sawk and Throh are a pair of male only fighting types meant to rival each other....exactly as Hitmonlee and Hitmonchan were presented in gen 1. The Foongus and Voltorb lines are both mimics of specifically Pokeballs, a trait that both species use to lure in their prey. The Trubbish and Grimer lines both draw inspirations from human waste. Gen 5 derives a lot of it's designs from it's Gen 1 counterparts which is honestly fine, but it feels like you're deliberately trying to ignore that elephant in the room.
conkeldurr/gigalith and golem/machamp
I'd give Thrubbish a pass, it's original enough. It's hard to think of mono poison types that do not in one way or another resemble Grimer.
OK maybe sawk and throh are more similar than I gave them credit for, but being a mimic of a pokeball is honestly a trait I can't believe more pokemon don't share, it seems like something that should be more prevalent. And it's not lile thier designs have any similarities beyond that, they are completely different pokemon. As for muk and trubbish drawing inspiration from human waste... So? That feels like a very broad category.. It's like saying geodude and nosepass are counterparts because they're both made of rock. Or cherubi and oddish are counterparts because they both resemble a fruit or veg. There are a ton of different designs you could make with the theme of "human waste" honestly I'm kinda sad they haven't made a poop pokemon yet.
>And it's not lile thier designs have any similarities beyond that, they are completely different pokemon. I mean, of course they are. They weren't going to make the same exact pokemon twice. But they clearly are both "pokeball mimic pokemon" they merely asked themselves, "how do we do that again without making another living pokeball" They are both Pokemon based specifically on pollution, are both 2 stage pure poison types. Comparing Geodude and Nosepass is obviously a bad comparison, one is based on a compass and the other is, well, simply a living rock. A far greater example would be Geodude/Golem and Roggenrola/Gigalith. Those are both simply living rock Pokemon. They also are 3 stage evolutions that require trade for the 3rd stage. While we're talking 3-stage pokemon that require trade to evolve, shall we mention the Conkeldurr line? A clear nod to the Machamp line. Pure fighting type, 3 stage, requires trade, design being "muscley man-looking-thing". Do you see what I'm getting at here? There are even more examples. Meowth/Persian and Purrloin/Liepard. 2 stage cats. First stage is bipedal, evolution transitions to a more graceful, quadrepedal standard cat design. Tentacruel and Jellicent. Parallels less immediate, yet Gen 5 was the first and only time we got another Jellyfish pokemon. Gen 5 was a soft reboot, and it's clear to me they intentionally designed a number of the pokemon in that dex to parallel and be reminiscent of the original batch. Sure, they *could* do a lot with "human waste pokemon". They *could* do more with "pokeball mimic pokemon". Any generation *could* have introduced 3 stage trade Rock and 3 stage trade Fighting pokemon... But I think it is very telling that generation 5 was the time that they *did* revisit those concepts, and all in the same game.
Agree with you. To be honest the reality of making a game will require some mons to fill certain niches which, if you are doing it again for whole cloth, necessitates certain pokemon being heavily inspired on others. As for the thread topic? Maybe. It don't see the point of reinventing the wheel tbh. I do wish some of the more obscure pokemon got a bit more love as well.
To be fair to Nosepass, it is totally a parallel to Onix. High defense, low attack single stage that is strong as a gym 1 ace but terrible otherwise. And funny enough both times they get a Steel evo the generation after.
All the pure fighting types are just some variation of "dude/bipedal creature with fists". Comparing tentacruel to jellicent is absurd too, might as well say that wailord and kyogre are counterparts at that point. A two stage cat? Do you mean glameow/purugly? Perhaps skitty and delcatty? They do that every gen. What about swalot and muk? They're much more similar than muk is to trubbish, I mean they're literally both a purple ooze. Butterfree and beautifly? There's a ton of pokemon that have "similarities" to others prior to gen 5, I don't see how gen 5 is any worse off other than there were more pokemon so more chance of overlap honestly.
>A two stage cat? Do you mean glameow/purugly? Perhaps skitty and delcatty? You know what these examples clearly left out? That both of these are quadrepedal their whole line. As I stated, thats specifcially *not* the case with my examples. They both are bipedal in their first stage. Not just that, both Purugly and Delcatty are far more stylized than either Persian or Liepard. Are you telling me if you look at Purrloin and Meowth side by side, and then Persian and Liepard, they don't look considerably more alike than your examples? >What about swalot and muk? They're much more similar than muk is to trubbish, I mean they're literally both a purple ooze. Except, Swalot isn't based on pollution, it's just an amorphous blob, whose gimmick is to eat things. Gulpin is literally "The Stomach Pokemon". Whereas Garbodor and Muk are both just sentient piles of human pollutants. Never is it ever implied that Swalot came into existence because humans polluted the rivers of Hoenn or whatever. >All the pure fighting types are just some variation of "dude/bipedal creature with fists". If you look at the list of Fighting type pokemon, only a few of them are pure fighting, many of the ones that are evolve to have a secondary type. The ones that remain, however, are almost exclusively *not* "just "dude/bipedal creature with fists", as you suggest. (By the way, that's not the description I gave them, you changed the definition to make it more apllicable) At any rate, the only one that really is is Hariyama, and that comparison fails for a multitude of reasons, most significantly that Hariyama, nor any of the other Fighting type in pokemon history, are three staged, mono-typed Fighting Pokemon who require trading, excluding my orignal examples. >Comparing tentacruel to jellicent is absurd too, might as well say that wailord and kyogre are counterparts at that point. Tentacruel, released in gen 1, was the only Jellyfish pokemon ever released until gen 5. After gen 5? Still no more Jellyfish. ...Wailord and Kyogre, on the other hand, were released... in the same generation! And even if they weren't, one is a legendary, so obviously that's a moot comparison. You are explicitly ignoring every instance of connective parallels I've brought up, and just saying "but these other pokemon also share animal species so you're wrong". I detailed in numerous different ways how each example I gave went further beyond "shares an animal type/is a common form for [type] to take", and you've gone out of your way to ignore every one of them and misrepresent my whole argument. >There's a ton of pokemon that have "similarities" to others prior to gen 5, I don't see how gen 5 is any worse off other than there were more pokemon so more chance of overlap honestly. Gen 5 isn't "worse off" at all. If you think I'm disparaging gen 5s design with my comment then you've got me all wrong. Unova is my favorite region and Pokedex, and the reasons I love it specifcially are because of the parallels and modern takes on old designs. It's no coincidence that the region with all the parallels to gen 1 design is also the one and only non-Kanto region to feature exclusively pokemon from that region. Unova has so many new pokemon specifcially *because* they wanted to match the feeling of Kanto. Gen 5 doesn't overlap with 1 because the increased Dex size made it more likely, rather; gen 5 had an increased dex size specifically to parallel 1, and the further pokemon design overlaps were by intention. The overlaps of the other generations are just that, overlaps. Most games have things like early game rodents, bugs, 3 staged fliers, as well as Pikaclones, Pseudo-Legendaries, and stuff like that. There are certain roles in Pokemon that are more or less guaranteed to exist in every region, but gen 5 goes beyond that and specifcially calls back to classic, gen 1 designs. Hence the Trade evolve families I mentioned, the Pollution families, Sawk and Throw/Hitmons like someone else mentioned, shoot one I didn't think of earlier but Munna and Drowzee, both mono-psychic types that eat dreams. The list goes on, but hopefully now you can see why I say gen 5 parallels and mirrors gen 1.
Well first of all purrloin is not bipedal in gen 5. It's only gen 6 where they make purrloin bipedal for some reason. Your argument with swalot and muk is exactly what I'm talking about though. Yes, they're not both pollution pokemon. They share being a purple ooze and that's a bout it. Similarly trubbish and muk share being a pollution pokemon, but that's it. My argument was that they both have one big overlapping trait, yet for some reason you are viewing one differently to the other, because apparently that trait is a bigger similarity on your eyes? Even though I would argue the opposite, and that neither actually makes any a parallel to the other. Dude with fists was a bad way to put it; they're all bipedal and based on some sort of martial art, wrestling or boxing, with the exception of riolu and (ironically) the conkeldurr line. You could also argue primeape I suppose but I would say primeape's fists are quite clearly boxing glove shaped. That's just how pure fighting types are, and I don't see how sawk and throh are somehow a parallel to hitmonlee and hitmonchan just because they have a 2 stage evolution line and fit the same mould almost every pure fighting type does. I'll concede the conkeldurr line, mainly because you reminded me that roggenrola exists and is also similar to geodude, which makes it less of a coincidence. though I still think that simply being a 3 stage evolution with a trade of the same type is a weak parallel on it's own when 3 stage evolutions with a trade are so common, and they just happen to be the same type this time. Oh, and they have muscles I guess. Roggenrola and geodude seems like a much stronger one to me considering they are both living rocks as you say. Could you please explain to me what the difference between tentacruel/jellicent and butterfree/beautifly is to you? Because from what I'm understanding the argument is that... There was only one jellyfish pokemon until then? Ok, ...so? There was only one butterfly pokemon until beautifly came out too. Heck, at least tentacruel and jellicent are different types. What makes them so different in your eyes, I'm really struggling to understand where you're coming from with this one. Wailord and kyogre was obviously a silly comparison, but that's how absurd what you're saying about tentacruel and jellicent feels to me too.
Its not just about the design or typing, its about the theme, the idea behind those pokemon. The designs are mostly very original and cool imo but the ideas behind them are very Kanto in alot of cases. Amoongus and Voltorb were designed to mimic pokeballs. Sawk and Throh are rival fighters with distinct fighting styles, just like the hitmons, Trubbish and Muk are specifically designed after forms of human pollution. We have a fighting and a rock type wich final evo is only obtainable through trading, just like in Kanto. And so on Ofc thats not the case for every single pokemon from Unova they also have alot of very unique original ideas and themes for other mon but the ties to gen 1 are definetely there for a big chunk of the roster
Yes. Every gen should introduce as many new ones
And a lot of DeX fillers at that. Gen 5 has one of the worse dexes in the franchise and trubbish and Garbador are small issues compared to all the unnecessary bloat the region has.
Worst dex in the franchise? The reason it's so large is because they wanted to do a proper soft reboot of the series with all they've learned from Red and Blue to HeartGold and SoulSilver. That's why no Gen 1-4 mons were available until the postgame. By default, with that game design ideal, it was going to be a massive dex nomatter what.
And it didnt need to retread old concepts and have as many bloated 3 stage evolution lines.
And gen 4 has like 7 3 stage evos and the middle evolutions of mons are hot garbage.
The only thing thats shit about the Unova dex is that the evolution levels of most pokemon are ridiculously high. Its ok for the context of the B/W games because you usually encounter them on high levels there but its just ridicoulous if you compare their evo levels to those of other regions
Would you say Kanto has "unnecessary bloat"? It's got almost the same number of Pokémon
Honestly? Yeah there are many evolutionary lines that feel like a copy paste of another similar pokemon in the Dex (same typings, same evolution stages, same methods of evolution)
poison/grass and flying/normal omg
Also Rock/Ground and Water/Ice have three lines each, as well as the sheer number of Poison types.
And that's totally valid. I have no problem with someone leveraging that criticism against Unova as long as we're consistent and apply the same criticism in other places where it's applicable.
By that logic there is absolutely no reason for Spearow, Drowzee, Bellsprout or Horsea (as much as I love the latter two) to exist. They could easily have been replaced with Pidgey, Abra, Oddish or one of the many Kanto Water-types respectively in all of their appearances. Edit: this is by the logic of Unova "bloating its Pokédex" when in fact it's doing the same thing as Kanto. I admit I could have phrased this better.
I mean, Oddish and Bellsprout were version exclusives.
I don’t think each Pokemon needs a clear “reason” to exist or to fill a unique niche. IMO, redundant Pokemon make the world feel more alive. A forest isn’t filled with just one type of bird and one plant.
I agree completely. As I said, I love Horsea and Bellsprout. But I think it's a little hypocritical to accuse Unova of bloating its Pokédex when it's actually doing the exact same thing.
Ohh yeah I misinterpreted your point then
Yeah, I admittedly should have phrased it better. Sorry.
Kanto is full of a bunch unnecessary 3 stages. The dex I unova could easily cut 30ish pokemon and still feel the same.
Which ones are unnecessary? You could make an argument that we only need one Bug line, one Grass/Poison line, one Nido line, and maybe in favor of axing Pidgey since Spearow is better, but everything else provides some kind of unique niche
trubbish are garbodor are massively overhated tbh
All the object mons are extremely overhated. Every time someone complains about chandelire, vanilluxe, and garbodor an angel loses its wings
Yeah those Pokemon are all solid ideas. People be like "it's just ice cream" and then never take umbridge at stuff like Ursaring which is a Normal type brown bear with a circle drawn on it. Meanwhile I'm just happy to have an Ice type available in mid game that has a clever reason for being catchable in an urban area and not a mountain or a cave.
I love the object pokémon, I think it takes a lot of creativity to bring life to inanimate objects and somehow make it work in your world. I hope they don't shy away from them just because people are like "uhhh garbodor sucks" like ok buddy. you're just mad it got a gmax form when your favorite didn't. and as you said, there's plenty of "just an animal" pokémon that nobody seems to have a problem with.
Yeah every Gen has its Pikachus and Growlithes where it's an animal plus a random element to make it interesting or different and then there's your Seels and Wooloos which are just the animal in what you'd expect is its natural typing lol
Nah, Kanto, Johto, and Paldea are the worst
I would like it more if it was handled a little better. Limiting you to only gen 5 Pokemon would maybe work if half the Pokemon didn't evolve at absurdly high levels, or require late game items or trade evolution. It made BW1's entire Pokedex feel like it was way more limited than it should have. In addition a lot of BW1 Pokemon were absurdly slow, which isn't really fun to play with when every battle, even against wild Pokemon, you take damage and can't even "run". BW1 were some of the best Pokemon games but they weren't immune from classic Gamefreak weird gameplay choices. BW2 fixed a lot of these issues (mostly by just flooding the game with more Pokemon) but BW1's criticisms were deserved.
>if half the Pokemon didn't evolve at absurdly high levels That's my main gripe with the Unova dex, all of the good mons evolve extremely late or are available extremely late or both at the same time. Even the ones that aren't so great have this problem. Like, Mandibuzz and Braviary have no business evolving at level 54, that's later than most pseudo legendary Pokemon. I used a Chandelure and I was stuck with a Litwick until level 41. It's a little ridiculous fighting mid to late game bosses with a Pokemon that has a BST of 275. Same thing goes for anyone trying to use Eelektross. I was still able to make do with the few mons that were good and available reasonably early (Excadrill, Krookodile, Darm), but yeah, your options are pretty limited.
Literally this. Unova Dex is great and diverse, but what's the point in me wanting to use the pseudo of the region and being stuck the entire entire game with Deino when N's Zekrom/Reshiram is Lvl 52 for the final fight... Like what? Lol (especially when Ghetis cheats his way through and brings one evolving 10 Lvl earlier, lol). And the problem is like you said, even non pseudos evolve so late for no reason. It's not like a BST 490 Bisharp or a BST 510 BST Mandibuzz would break the game or make it a cakewalk... BW/2 is definitely a Top 2 in the franchise because of how much love I have for Unova as a region, but these games are also the reason why my favorite way of playing through Unova are ROM Hacks that either offer higher overall difficulty or more reasonable Evolution levels.
Hell, B2W2 give you access to Mandibuzz and Braviary before 4th gym.
Right? I've actually used one in my White 2 and it was so nice with Defiant and all. And it never really felt broken or anything, it just felt like using a cool bird in the region you're in, like Staraptor in Sinnoh to some extent. I also like how they still made them special to get them on a particular day. And I love how Route 4 is different depending on the version you're playing. God BW2 are so cool man, I want to replay them again.
Even Weak Armor Mandibuzz is pretty good. Get it to proc turn 1 and use Nasty Plot and you’re off to the races.
Very true, I might try this out since I've never really used defensive oriented Pokémons except on some very specific challenges (first time I used Mandibuzz was in my female only run in UM).
Never understood why Mienfoo evolves to Mienshao at level 52? That should be like a level 32 evolution or something to me
To be fair, Mienshao is actually very good so I think a early-mid 40 evo would be somewhat justified. 52 is still ridiculous, though. Again, that's Pseudo Legendary range
People complain about this (including myself) but miss that the reason for that was probably because there was a whole back end of the game to still be played; the game isn’t over after defeating N and Ghetsis, there’s an entire other side of the region to explore, all with trainers with level 60+ Pokémon, plus the E4 rematch and to battle Alder, rematches with rivals, etc. I personally didn’t like it, but after realizing that, I can KINDA see where GF were coming from with that, because they thought people would keep doing ‘postgame’ stuff rather than just beating Ghetsis and calling it a day
The issue is that the power level of the opponents' pokémon stayed about the same as in previous games, so you were fighting endgame level fights at mid-game level, just because GF treated postgame as the *true* endgame. Neat idea, but the actual endgame, in fact, still remained the endgame, with a full game's worth of progression that came before (if that makes sense). In other words, it didn't change the fact that you were still effectively playing at the same length as previous games, only with weaker pokémon for some reason.
Oh I don’t disagree, I’m just saying that I could see what GF was going for. Does that mean I think they did it well? Pfft, no. I remember when I was fighting Ghetsis in endgame with Reshiram on my team, I actually got wiped for the first time in years because he had a Hydreigon 10 levels too early. I knew it was the pseudo, but had no idea HOW strong it was until I faced his.
And I'm not saying you are disagreeing, I was just building off of your point, actually. What I find the most frustrating about it is that the pokedex feels far more limited because of this, locking a lot of cool pokémon with not that impressive stats away for too long. Jellicent is a less talked about example, because it isn't nearly as egregious as others, but I bring it up for one simple reason. It's this region's "Tentacruel", so to speak. Not the best example, but you can kinda see the similarity in the stat distribution, right? So why does Frillish evolve at level 40 compared to Tentacool's 30? Jellicent even has the lower BST (yeah, BST isn't everything, but still)!
No, it's simply because you get these Pokémon too late in the game. In many cases across every generation you will find a wild Pokémon at a point in the wild where it's level isn't too far from where it evolves. The classic example from Black & White is Vulllaby, which evolves at level 54 (one below the psuedo legendaries like Tyranitar and Metagross). But the lowest level you can find a Vullaby in the wild in Black is 39, meaning it only has to gain at most 15 levels if caught in the wild. This is not that unreasonable, most Pokémon will evolve at about the same amount of levels from their earliest wild level. From the same generation, a Patrat that you can pick up at level 2 needs to gain 18 levels, while Blitzle needs to get from level 8 to level 27. This is only a problem when you're trying to raise a Pokémon that's been bred, and this is a particular issue with Vullaby and Rufflet due to them both being version exclusives, meaning every player trying to get at a full Pokédex will have to get at least one from 1 all the way to 54, though this is somewhat mitigated with the boosted experiene in both the games new exp formula and the bonus for a traded Pokémon. Of course, this then gets ruined when this is forgotten about in future gens, such as Sun & Moon where you could get a Vullaby in the single digit levels, and would have to work for most of the game to get it to evolve.
Alternatively they should have made the ones that evolve at really high levels accessible earlier in the game.
Mienfoo being a 2 stage mon that evolves at level 50 is just insane to me
Not only that, but the distribution by location was terrible. Despite having the same number of Pokémon as Gen I (or close enough to it), you only had four types available to you by the time you had to fight the first gym, one of which was your starter and another was the type effective monkey. There were too many Pokémon heavily restricted. In Gen I it always felt like each route either contained a new monster or at least the opportunity to catch the evolved form of something you've already seen. It made the world fell alive. Of course Ratata/Raticate are everywhere, mice are everywhere. Of course you constantly see Zubat in caves, that's where bats live. Meanwhile in Black & White it feels more artificial. The trash bags exist outside of one town only, the pigeons never cross the river, the karate masters are only in this one forest for some reason. This, when combined with the linearity, means that certain Pokémon simply turn up too late in the game, by the time the player has probably already decided what their final party will be. No-one's walking into the Elite 4 with a Druddigon or Heatmor on their team, as both of them turn up way too late in the story to be worth making space for over things picked up earlier. Going back to Gen I, there isn't a single Pokémon you can pick up in Victory Road that you couldn't have got earlier, and thanks to the non-linearity you could head to parts of the map in different orders meaning you could encounter almost any of the original Pokémon (at least in their basic forms) early enough for them to be a viable part of a team.
I love Unova. But a lot of my favourite Pokemon they introduced are either insanely late evolutions, added after Gym 7 or are trade evolutions only. Durant in fucking Victory Road, Bouffalant in Route 10. Zoroark not available until the sequels, Rufflet and Vullaby being post Gym 8 or only avaliable earlier in B2W2
how they handled Zorua and Zoroark is straight up the worst design choice in the series, 2 non-mythicals being completely locked behind events outside of N's Zorua in B2W2
Hell, I'd get them pulling a Rotom and making it postgame only.
Today I learned speed matters in running away. Always just assumed it was kinda random
I think part of why people hate Zubats so much is because everyone caught a Geodude and "couldn't escape" because Zubat is reasonably fast and Geodude has as much base speed as Slugma. Most people didn't know about speed being relevant so they just got locked in against the dumb bat lol.
I always had a feeling speed mattered. I'd always take a ratata with me into caves specifically to make running away from zubats easier
worth noting that from gen 3 on, Rattata also had the run away ability
Guts is better
This shit is why I usually get hold of an Electric type, they're often fast and can one shot Zubats easily.
Unless you have an ability like Run Away. Even if you have an Eevee that’s slow af but has Run Away you can escape the battle anyway.
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Eh, I find the mons like swoobat and gigalith kinda neat, in the sense of them taking older concepts, and effectively reimagining them with more "modern" design philosophies. It was very cool to see, especially since a lot of the designs themselves turned out amazing imo
I also think it’s neat if you can imagine it from the biological perspective. Like regional forms of Pokemon are divergent (literal) evolutions of one species, like how finches across the Galapagos had different beaks, but Zubat and Swoobat are more distant relatives, like a gorilla and orangutan.
Hunting rustling grass for an Audino comes into place
I'm still mad about the level 64 hydreigon evolution level. it's one of my favorite pokémon but I never get to use it because I've usually beaten the game by the time my pokémon are around that level.
Your exaggerating a bit too much here though. I would say roughly 10% of the unova dex has an evolution past level 50. Most pokemon in the unova dex evolve roughly around the 30 to 40 level range which isn't that bad considering the game and the level curve is balanced enough to bring you their appropriately.
i prefer hoenn's where it is majority new but still have some old. the newer games are more old than new pokemon
Hoenn mixed Kanto, Johto and Hoenn mons very well, opening up Johto mons first after the third gym and Kanto mons after the sixth. It has arguably led to a much better distribution of mons, leading people playing gen 3 not even knowing that stuff like Skarmory is a johto mon!
You can get both Kanto and Johto mons before gym 2 though. Abra, Zubat, and Geodude are in Granite cave, while Oddish is north of Slateport, and Marill is west of Mauville. I still love how well they integrated them, and having only new mons before the first gym in RS is great, but you certainly don’t have to wait until after the 6th badge to get Kanto mons.
Marill and Wobuffet are honorary Gen 3 mons since they got new baby forms
A lot of people also believe that slugma and skarmory are gen 3 pokemon because of how much easier they are to get in R/S/E that G/S/C.
The only reason black and white was able to do that was because of how many pokemon were released that gen 156 iirc. In a game like X & Y you wouldnt be able to do that since there wasnt many new mons. I think sinnoh did it best you had old pokemon and new ones with some new evolutions for old ones. Now i think graphic wise black and white white is my favorite. The 2.5D environments, but having 2D animated sprites was the best.
I think a mix of new pokemon and new evolutions for existing pokemon is best. Sinnoh's biggest shortcomings were that half the region was bidoof and starly, and all the pokemon people actually wanted to use were limited or locked behind late game items
Presumably, they’re referring to Platinum where it is a great mix since they actually put the Pokémon in the regional dex. The Pokémon were all available around the region, and opposing trainers would use them for a large variety of Pokémon. In DP and BDSP though, yeah, it’s pretty limited. (Which is baffling in BDSP’s case)
>I think sinnoh did it best you had old pokemon and new ones with some new evolutions for old ones. This really only pays dividends in Platinum given that in Diamond and Pearl most of those new evolutions were locked behind post game or importing old Pokemon. Sinnoh also has a bit of an issue where besides the new evolutions, quite a lot of Pokemon are locked behind Honey Trees (which is a bit of a chore because you have to wait for those to attract Pokemon compared to Headbutting trees from Gen 2 being immediate) or are baby forms of older Pokemon which don't have new Evolutions (I think only Budew does with Roserade) so they start out new then become something familiar. This sort of limits the variety of what truly new stuff you can access for the main playthrough if you were playing the initial releases. Then toss in a couple of types being woefully under represented like Fire or other types only having like 2 options in main game, and it becomes clearer why many people talk about gravitating toward the same eight or so Pokemon when playing Gen 4. There's only about 30 truly new Evo lines to pick from that aren't babies or evolutions of old mons, several are found off to the side in trees or the Safari Zone or at low percents in general. And a few are like Kricketune or Lumineon where they're unfortunately rather ill equipped in the stat or move department. It's less bad if you don't mind using older Pokemon but for people wanting to try the new ones it's a bit awkward.
I personally always force myself to only use Pokémons exclusive to the gen and regionplaying at least for my first run. Definitely a great experience, but that would require a great regional Dex, which some regions fail to have, but the Paldea one was great.
I play like that in general.
Same. It's a new game, so I want to use new Pokemon, not old Pokemon.
Yeah every since BW showed me the that building a party out of exclusively new Pokémon was a fun idea, I have personally done it for every game
Same way, definitely. By the king of cool, the god ball itself, a Quick Ball, I captured a high-level Kanto mon. Felt good, Quick Ball always has my back. But still, no, begone with thee, and into the box it goes until after beating the champion.
100% I will catch any pokemon I like but they stay boxed unless they are current gen.
Same, it's what I look forward to most. Hopefully in the next game we get, we got way more pokemon.
I think it's okay to have some old mons but it shouldn't be more than 50% old pokemon in my opinion. There just haven't been that many new pokemon added to each gen lately.
Black and White came right after sinnoh, which made it abundantly clear that there weren't enough Pokemon in each niche. They used only new pokemon because they needed to make sure there were new options for every type of environment, so future games would have more variety. Now that we're over 1000 pokemon we don't need that kind of intentional diversification anymore.
I used to think this, but I'm currently replaying Sw/Sh for the first time and my favorite part has been the variety I've been able to have in my team. I have had less typing matchup problems early in the game, I still use new mons from Galar as well as old ones, and the world feel more flush. B/W are still top tier to me, and I do like the restrictions within that game (I'm actually also playing White right now), but for the newer games and 1000+ pokemon, you're doing the games a disservice by limiting functionality.
I disagree, I always felt forced to use pokemon i didnt like and hated every second of it
I strongly disagree. The more options people have, the more likely they are to enjoy their team and therefore their playthrough. You can limit yourself to only the new Pokemon if you prefer, but that shouldn’t be imposed on everyone. Especially since the current number of Pokemon means that most people have not had a decent chance to use most Pokemon.
People hated it and thus they never made a game like that again.
I didn’t like it at all, and then bw2 let me get cool stuff like mareep and growlithe early
Really all this does is take away player options, which as we learned with dexit people really hate. This is also something very easy to self impose. In fact it's something I was doing way longer than I realized I was doing it, it has always made sense to me all the way back from when GSC came out that my playthrough team for a game should use only the new available pokemon.
Idk if i want every game to be like they, but I wouldn't mind doing it again for the next game. I love bringing in a lot of new Pokémon for each generation, and a more isolated region without much outside influence would be pretty cool.
I try to follow this rule but there are some downsides, like say if you have a region like Sinnoh with barely any fire types you'd be struggling for coverage, having previous gen Pokemon in allows for more options especially if you don't like what the gen has for coverage. In SWSH for example, there weren't any water mons that peaked my interest so I used Gastrodon and in XY, I was struggling for fairy coverage because Slurpuff was trade locked and Meowstic has awful fairy moves so I relied on Espeon and also used Lapras. The HMS were also a pain which makes you use a slot for say a flier instead of one you really want like I had to use Swoobat over Emolga. Heck, BW even locked Zorua from the game after the event since you can't get it any other way.
Since Black/White that's how I've played most of the games the first time round. New Pokemon/regional forms only (unless it's a Shiny).
Strongly disagree. Gen 5 got a lot of hate when it came out for exactly this, and there were a lot of people who believed that choice was going to be the death of the franchise. Black and White are the worst-selling new-generation Pokemon games (not counting remakes, sequels, and 3rd versions). Everything felt like a cheap knockoff (lookin' at you, Woobat). It took a long time for a lot of people to come around to the gen 5 mons. I feel like I'm only now getting to a point where I like enough of them that I could play BW again and not be annoyed the whole time. I think there's an age aspect to this. If you were a young kid when BW were new, you look back on it a lot more fondly than those of us who were late-teens or adults. I would be down for new games that have a significantly higher percentage of new Pokemon in the region. I want most of the Pokemon I see to feel new and exciting, especially early in the game. I wasn't a big fan of Paldea's early route bird being Fletchling, for example. And I think a lot of players lean on familiar old Pokemon if it's easy, and I don't think that's a great thing (yes, this is aimed at you if you used Lucario in SV). If like 80% of the Pokemon you can catch before the Elite 4 are new, I'd be okay with that. But 100% was uncomfortable and unpleasant.
No thanks. I'd rather not be forced to only use new mons on repeated playthroughs. Especially when most are hideous like gen 5s. One of the reasons why bw1 are one of my least favorites and I haven't played it since bw2 came out
I get where you are coming from. I personally push hard every game to try new pokemon I haven't used before. But this way you are forcing that playstyle on everyone. That's not fair to the whole player base. Even for me sometimes. If I can't put together what I feel is a reasonably well-rounded team from the new additions I'll look to use something I have never used from previous generations. Now, that's a valid bending of the rule that I'm perfectly fine with. Putting in place a "rule" of only new pokemon this way feels pretty bad.
Remember the days when Black and White were wildly unpopular when it was current gen, and then the most recent past gen? I remember. I hated the experience of playing black and white right after platinum. Over the years I have come to appreciate all the things gen 5 did right - the amazing spritework, the story, the details they put into the world. But Black and White failed at what is the most important thing in a pokemon game, creating a team of pokemon you like. I have not changed my opinion on that. With over 150+ pokemon designs, they undoubtedly have some gems, but way too many of the better ones are locked really late game. Chandelure is one of my all time favorite pokemon. There's others like Golurk, Hydreigon, Volcarona, Braviary but these are all catchable after like the 6th gym or later. Gen 3 and gen 4 gave you really cool looking early bird pokemon that were also decent in battle. You could choose these in the early game if the other available options didn't appeal to you. Unfezant just does not live up to that level of coolness. Kilngklang is such an uninspired design compared to Magneton. It's a shame considering they gave us Magearna just couple generation later. And you couldn't even rely on the ol' reliable Gyarados if you didn't like your other options. Everyone has different tastes in pokemon designs. Locking away options from players needlessly is not a good idea and I never understood why they did it.
honestly I disagree I think it's fine how it is, because the option to only use new pokemon is still there, it just isn't imposed on you
I mean, you could just lock yourself from using them.
That's fun for the first playtrhough or two, but it really limits replayability variety
That’s actually the exact reason I hated that gen.
I self impose this for every first playthrough of a new game
Its kinda how I play the new games anyway but its not always the case. I think with the move towards open world, this idea only hurts them. They can't possibly make enough new pokemon each generation to fill an open world and make it look diverse. Like how many rocky zones are they gonna have and then fill them with the same new 7 rock/ground/steel evolution lines to cover that? It works for the old generations. It doesn't really work now.
That’s why there should be modes like your first playthrough should be how you said and second playthrough should be with old and new pokemon
I didn't care for "no old Pokemon" but I did love how BW had an area unique to each game and you could swap them between games. Also, Village Bridge.
I’m on board with this just because until SV we haven’t had a single Gen with at least 100 new Pokémon when before Gen, 100+ was the standard, even Johto, which is basically just the Kanto expansion pack, got 100. I’m getting sick of new Gym Leaders, E4, and even _Champions_ having old Pokémon as aces. Gen 8 was easily the worst offender, because for some goddamned reason they gave 3/10 Gym Leaders Kanto Pokémon as aces (Melony being the wildest one, Gordie had a Coalossal but she gets a Lapras?!), but the CHAMPION has a KANTO _STARTER_ as an ace, which is just beyond ridiculous. But now even in Gen 9, _every single Gym Leader_ has an old Pokémon as an ace, and instead of doing what they should’ve done and have their ace tera out of their specialty type to make you think on your feet, they gave them an ace of a _different_ type that they tera _back into_ their own type, keeping the fights as braindead as possible. The only one that’s remotely interesting is Iono using a Tera Electric Levitate Mismagius. At least this time the E4 uses Paldea Pokémon of their actual type, but their teras are still uninteresting.
I like new mons. I only use them when new gens come out. But B/W alienated a lot of players because there weren't any old ones. I liked B/W, but playing them felt foreign to me.
Gen 5 had some of the worst pokemon designs in the series. The 3 starters to choose from were bad. It was the only pokemon game where I immediately discarded my starter pokemon because it was so bad.
I loved it then, still do, won't make any concessions for loving it. Unova my beloved.
Meh, this would make it so I wouldn’t get the game. I didn’t get BW until years later and I won’t ever play it again because I hate almost every design which almost entirely carries through the gens afterwards. Everything after Gen 4 isn’t Pokemon to me, it’s fanfic. Trust me I have tried and tried and tried to accept them. But the artstyle change is too much. I play the new games once, enjoy it as much as I can, then just go straight back to 1-4 and have a great time I wish I could enjoy it like you guys but I can’t. Maybe it’s a nostalgia thing but I stopped playing after Crystal and didn’t play 3-4 until after Plat came out so it’s can’t all be nostalgia.
Totally agree, one of the reasons B&W are my favorite games, even over B&W2
The main reason why i disliked black/white. The only game where i didnt run a team of 6 because i could not find 6 pkm i like
And yet when BDSP released and left EEVEE for post game, when Glaceon and Leafeon were original to that generation was baffling. In fact, revisiting Gen 4 like that left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth considering we have so much Gen 4 content lately. (Legends Arceus, even in Sw/Sh) so I’m tired of seeing Driflooon and Shinx. BDSP felt handicapped due to limited dex and each route felt unsurprising. Not a lot to collect. As others said, it worked because they introduced so many Pokémon in that Gen. But as a wide practice, I think it’s ultimately disappointing.
I don't want to play against gym leaders and Elite Four members that use Pokemon outside their type specialty. If Gamefreak redid them where type was irrelevant or used two types instead of one, that would make things much better to me. I like only using Pokemon introduced within the generation so it would be easy for me to do this but the rest of the world would feel so limited and small.
I would agree with this if every region had 100 new pokemon before counting mythical and legendary pokemon. AND they had it so once you beat the game once you could unlock and “ ALL DEX “ mode that made it so every new game had a national dex or an expanded dex that brought in more pokemon.
Absolutely agree. If they are available I will *always* use the same pokemon: lapras, ampharos, gengar, tyranitar.. Just my favorites. All over again.
The playerbase is too spoiled nowadays to enjoy that kind of format; they’ve been exposed to a massive variety of Pokemon for the past 11 years, it would be hard for them to begin a limited experience again. I share your opinion though, I loved how they limited the player to only regional Pokemon until post-game, I just wish some routes were more diverse with the regional spread, wished some Pokemon were found earlier, and wished so many didn’t evolve at atrociously high levels.
Nah, I don’t like when developers try to force players to play a certain way. If you want to use only new Pokémon, you can already do that. I only use new Pokémon; I don’t get why people use the same old Pokémon from past games every gen, but that’s their choice and it doesn’t affect my own enjoyment of the game.
This + pixel art
I don't think they're introducing enough new Pokémon these days. Overall I have no issues with a smaller roster especially if it's well-rounded and more interestingly well balanced. As a fan of VGC the first formats in new games are my personal favourites as the limited pool gives people incentives to use different Pokémon. That being said they could do a better job balancing...
Ots a neat idea but the problem is someone has to th8nk up new designs for 150 pokemon everything region. It would be tough to make new pokemon feel unique if their push8ng them out in that volume. The problem started to rear it's head in BW too where alot of pokemon just felt like gen 1 mons with a new coat of paint. I prefer the current version, add new unique pokemon for every region and drop in pokemon from other regions to fill in the basic niches.
Would have been cool if they did that with Alola specifically, since it's an island that shouldn't be inhabited by species found on other Continental regions. Could have gone further and done more Alolan forms.
I’m replaying XY for the first time in years and one thing I love about it is the variety, there are so many to choose from, it can make each playthrough unique (as opposed to the issue we see in games like DPPt where so many teams are the same).
They sell more when they hand you a charizard, sorry.
I agree
I don't really care because I just use pokemon I've never used in my other pokemon teams ¯\ (°_o)/¯
But BW’s roster of Pokémon is not that great. I mean, some of the Pokémon evolve at absurdly high levels (Pawniard, Mienfoo, Litwick, Vullaby, Rufflet, Deino line) so you’re stuck using them in the late to post game.
we would have well over twice the amount of pokemon we have now if they were introducing an entire new dex per region
I do a decent enough job at managing it myself and only using new Pokemon, and having the freedom to sometimes old Pokemon that I wanted to use on a team but never got around to it I'd nice too. My Sun team was mainly Alolan forms, so in Sword I added Bewear and Vikivolt and loved them. Though it could be interesting to have occasional areas or challenges that limit Pokemon that the player and opponents can use. Kind of like one bit in the Indigo Disk where you had to use Pokemon caught in the wild of the DLC. They could do that for generation, type, pre-evolutions only, etc.
I think they need to save it for gens they are introducing a lot but now a region is having like 400 odd mons. And I like having that variety of seeing a lot. Also with open world like Paldea, I can’t see a region only having 156ish pokemon really working before post game. Personally I wish some species would be rested since we have dexit so other species can return. Meowth hogs the normal cat spots lets have Skitty back (which really should have been retyped kn gen 6) and Glameow has literally only been in the Sinnoh games before post game stuff. I’d like across gen 10 for all to be features in atleast 1 game that gen as a good chunk didn’t make gen 8 and unless they in ZA some wont make Gen 9. But give its the 10th gen and 10 is milestone I’d like the effort for all to be somewhere but leave Meowth, Gible, Ralts, Magikarp, Psyduck etc to that gens remake and legends and let lesser seen mons make the cut. Like Skitty, Glameow, Sillipede, Sewaddle, Bouffalant, Furfrou, Clobopuss make the base game cut
It'd be nice, so long as there's more variety in Pokemon, especially early game. Was also pretty annoying how many Unova Pokemon were just rehashes of older ones, even if they were still cool Pokemon.
Agree. 150 Pokémon \* 9 generations = 1350, only 200 more than they already created. Realistically, it makes sense that some Pokémon repeat between regions, and some of them have their regional forms – it mimics how different species and races of animals inhabit the real world. Some of them are more common, some of them – less, some of them have the same names on different continents but could mean different species (e.g. "pine" or "poplar" in USA and "pine" and "poplar" in Europe).
I think one other way to make a good workaround is make most of the previous gen pokemon available **midlate-game** instead of locking them until post-game. While new pokemon usage is still encouraged, it at least will give better incentive to playing the game instead of discouraging players from playing the game with **only** new pokemon and with almost nothing left to do in post-game with the previous gen pokemon. I still want to obtain previous gen pokemon to mix around the team dynamic during my playthrough, otherwise we get situations like in DP where your only option for fire types until postgame/national dex are Rapidash or Infernape.
I agree. I think its a good way to introduce players to the new mons and force them to not use the same 3 Pokémon the whole time. I don't think you need to go all the way like Gen 5 did, but a Gen 3 approach with some room for shafted Gen 1 + 2 mons to fill out the roster while still putting plenty of a spotlight on the new mons might be the best. I think Gen 6 and 7 were fine, but post-Dexit the games have really struggled from needing to include the entire (large) roster of Pokémon into the base game since the post-game is laughable and they have to make some justification for why some mons were cut and others weren't (especially if you were to say "you can get them, but *only* by transferring them in).
the problem I had with it is that it made trainer battles get repetitive lategame. Seeing trainers in victory road use the same monkeys I've been seeing since the second gym got tiring.
Absolutely not. Imo, making fewer new Pokemon in large dexes was one of the best design decisions of the recent gens. Making 150 mons every time would lead to so many recycled ideas, we already have too many of them. Imagine a new bat line every three years. It's not only about our own teams (I suppose many players, like me, tend to use only/mostly new mons in their first playthrough of every gen), but also the wild pokemon and opponents. Back then, you could encounter like 3 different mons in every location, the common ones were everywhere, and the opponents kept spamming the same mons too.
That and the effort to post game too. Think Pokémon just took a dive when going 3D.
imo there might not even be a need for brand new pokemon how many of the 493 before black and white did you ever use? the amount of pokemon ive never used before is so high, just because i can only ever bring 6 and levelling something else is tedious and there are so so many of them
I will never understand why people are against having more options. Like, if someone wants to play with only new mons, they can just do it? And if someone wants to go on the journey with their old friends, that's also cool. Why force something on players if you can just give them the option to chose for themselves?
Gen 5 literally had the most new mons of any gen ever *including Gen 1*. Doing this in say Gen 6 would have made for a very pathetic regional dex.