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765 Productions - N4A Chat Thread - May 2021


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6 minutes ago, EH_STEVE said:

GenVIII had that banging Gym Leader music. Best song of the series.

 

I never replayed GenVIII and the DLC release was not even on my radar that I missed it, and then realized I didn't care that I missed it, and never bothered to get it.

 

We need Leaders and Rivals who CHALLENGE us. I want to have to step back and thinks "oh shit, I need either a better strategy or a few more levels to win this".

 

You mean Piers' right? That might not be my personal favorite Gym Leader music, but it is so amazing! 

 

... But we don't need anything on the level of Whitney's Milktank and Clair's Kingdra. And Sabrina's Alakazam. NOT TOO challenging and broken. Sure, beating them were amazing, but they were a test of luck more than anything.  

 

Edit: HMs suck too. 

Edited by Link, the Hero of Dreams
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what games have good lore again? this is nintendo we're talking about. gen 5 is the closest to resembling notable lore. otherwise
the anime and such isn't really relevant. i'm sure gen 8 characters will get anime development too.
with the exception of gen 2 reappearances and a couple others, the vast majority of gym leaders have a couple of lines and are mainly notable for their design/teams
and gen 8's (along with other recent gen's) character design is one of its big strengths


 

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1 minute ago, Link, the Hero of Dreams said:

 

You mean Piers' right? That might not be my personal favorite Gym Leader music, but it is so amazing! 

 

... But we don't need anything on the level of Whitney's Milktank and Clair's Kingdra. And Sabrina's Alakazam. NOT TOO challenging and broken. Sure, beating them were amazing, but they were a test of luck more than anything. 

Just the one in general with the "WHOOAAAAA OHHH OHHH"

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6 minutes ago, April said:

what games have good lore again? this is nintendo we're talking about. gen 5 is the closest to resembling notable lore. otherwise
the anime and such isn't really relevant. i'm sure gen 8 characters will get anime development too.
with the exception of gen 2 reappearances and a couple others, the vast majority of gym leaders have a couple of lines and are mainly notable for their design/teams
and gen 8's (along with other recent gen's) character design is one of its big strengths

 

Legendaries, specifically. Maybe.  

 

The creation of Mewtwo? 

Burned Tower, Ho-Oh and the Legendary Dogs? 

Kyogre, Groudon, and Rayquaza? And Deoxys? 

Dialga, Palkia, and Giratina?

And possibly whatever the heck Gen VII was about. 

  

Gen VI and VIII have perhaps the weakest lore. Legendaries that connect to each other in a reasonable manner. If anyone knows what I mean, explain it better than I can. 

Edited by Link, the Hero of Dreams
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Regarding Snap, something interesting to keep in mind:

 

The orginal game had only 63 out of 151 Pokemon in it, or roughly 41.8% of all Pokemon that existed at the time.

 

New Snap, on the other hand, has 214 out of 898, or roughly 23.9%.

 

Of course, this has little to do with the overall quality of either game, and is merely indicative of the difference in scope between the franchise in the 22 years it's been since the N64.

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4 minutes ago, Tyranogre said:

Regarding Snap, something interesting to keep in mind:

 

The orginal game had only 63 out of 151 Pokemon in it, or roughly 41.8% of all Pokemon that existed at the time.

 

New Snap, on the other hand, has 214 out of 898, or roughly 23.9%.

 

Of course, this has little to do with the overall quality of either game, and is merely indicative of the difference in scope between the franchise in the 22 years it's been since the N64.

I mean, you're not wrong, but that's a pointless comparison. The scope and variety in New Snap is leaps and bounds to the original. The only thing I miss is being able to evolve Pokemon by chucking shit at them.

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To be fair, I went into New Pokémon Snap knowing not all of the Pokémon would be in it. Not every one of them would be good taken pictures with or cool in that format. And considering the level theming, what we got is good enough. I was disappointed in some obvious choices not being there, but maybe DLC. There’s still the original game too.

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32 minutes ago, Link, the Hero of Dreams said:

 

Legendaries, specifically. Maybe.  

 

The creation of Mewtwo? 

Burned Tower, Ho-Oh and the Legendary Dogs? 

Kyogre, Groudon, and Rayquaza? And Deoxys? 

Dialga, Palkia, and Giratina?

And possibly whatever the heck Gen VII was about. 

  

Gen VI and VIII have perhaps the weakest lore. Legendaries that connect to each other in a reasonable manner. If anyone knows what I mean, explain it better than I can. 


gen 3 maybe had it going on with the land and sea god power struggle thing even though the premise of the teams was really dumb in retrospect
(gonna flood/dry up the world because... it's a good idea! pokemon!!)
if you take away what was expanded in all the tie-in material, the lore of mewtwo was like... a few lines ("mew gave birth") and sometimes hinting about a strong pokemon
extra strong pokemon! the idea of legendaries was fresh so it was enough at the time.
the legendary catdogs also didn't have much. they put in the suicune otaku guy but otherwise you just have the burned tower moment and they're not really returned to, right? the main cool things were pokemon going berserk side arc (but that was taken care of quickly) and the kanto time skip
i would say pokemon has always been made with a lot of hints of backstory that are really cool when explored in the manga and such, but they've never been more than light flavoring within the games themselves. i don't really see the difference with other legendaries, other than maybe they added too many lol

Edited by April
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At least there’s more context than whatever Gen VI was about (and you cannot deny that the villain in that game probably had the worst motivation), and two legendaries with a sword and sword motif fighting chaos or whatever (and don’t get me started with the villain there too). I don’t know how the legendaries are tied to the underlying themes of their own games. Structurally theming, I forgot. I think Xerneas and Yveltal were about life and death, but I don’t remember the game saying anything about that or how they tie into their own game. Sure, the sword and shield guys have their own lore of battling evil or whatever... but we’ve been there before with the other games. What makes those two special? Unlike space and time, they got nothing except for offense and defense. (I’ve also played a sub-par Ace Attorney case to know what they were going for.)
 
And as for those two teams you mentioned, their goal was to create more land/more sea. They never intended to make the earth worse for humanity and Pokémon. They just didn’t think things through in hindsight. As for Cyrus, he was pretty messed up to begin with, so there was no pleading with that nihilist anyways. His goons were too dumb to never catch on. Ghetsis was a hypocrite, and I think he knew he was from the beginning.  
 
And even if those legendaries would be worse off if the media didn’t exist... the media DO exist. Who here admits they never saw any of the anime and movies, or played any of the spin-offs? It’s not the creators are saying they aren’t canon or something similar. Or if they do, I’ve been Joss Wheadon’ed or whatever before with the Star Wars franchise.

Edited by Link, the Hero of Dreams
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I realize my problem with latter day Pokemon can be summed as: "it's like Final Fantasy XIII, but with mons." A very poor gameplay-to-story ratio (too much dialogue for plots that are, honestly, too lackluster) and railroading that means you're always forced to do everything in a highly specific order not unlike FF13's corridors. Gen 8 almost averted this with the wild area, but in practice it's just empty land you go through on the way to more plot (you can't capture most mons there and the raid system practically requires an online system that, at least my experience, didn't work).

 

anyway, I got to the postgame of gen 8 and just never had the desire to touch the game again.  I'm playing Digimon Cyber Sleuth currently to scratch my mon itch, and it's alright; definitely very story heavy, but at least the premise is intriguing enough. And maybe the Dragon Quest direct will have Dragon Quest Monsters for switch, that'd be neat omg;

Edited by Stephen 776
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9 minutes ago, April said:


it might be more convincing if you give any examples at all y;

What I said was mostly me giving my general perspective on the situation, but sure I can provide a list of why I think that way.

 

Here’s a possible list of strengths in no particular order:

 

- Leon is an absolute boss. Furthermore, he has much more presence than some of the champions from previous generations (Diantha, Alder, and Iris were all laughably underdeveloped; and obviously an avatar-intended character like Alola’s playable character is by nature personality-less). I also genuinely struggled with fights against him sometimes which is more than I can say of ANY Champion since Gold/Silver came out. Which leads me to the next point.

 

- Contrary to popular opinion, I did not find the game was insultingly easy. There were certainly ways to make it much easier, but in reality the opinion that player choice should not “have to” drive difficulty is flawed (I sometimes hear this point of view about these games’ approach to difficulty). Not every game needs to be dark souls from the gate, and if you can have a hard time if you don’t take leveling seriously, I see that as a sign that the difficulty level is not inherently bad. Player induced handicap options are only a sign of poor difficulty design when the last sentence I said is not true. As I played with my son and tried to hurry through some days, I ended up struggling if I neglected training. That is not a sign of a “baby difficulty game”.

 

Again, I actually struggled with Leon sometimes, and despite keeping up with leveling. Even taking into account my earlier comment about Gold/Silver, in retrospect that game was only hard when I was 10. Later playthroughs saw me breeze past Lance in the blink of an eye, and even Red was not that hard.

 

- Pokémon designs for gen 8 are fine, actually. Some are very creative (like the Dreepy and Applin lines, but not exclusively; I like lots of others). The idea that Pokémon has been on a decline in creative design has always been a tenuous assertion (you can not like the designs, fine; it’s the outright claim they all lack creativity of “the olden days” which is just silly). Do people REALLY think a pile of sludge is better than a trash Pokémon, or whatever, for example? Sorry but this idea is just not as strong as people want to believe.

 

- The music was also pretty good, overall. I found a few actually memorable, most others at least ambient, and really that’s the most video game songs NEED to be. Not everything needs the weight of the Zelda theme or almost anything Nobuo Uematsu puts out.

 

- Dynamaxing is cool, sorry. Kaiju Pokémon is a great idea. They did a good job with Gigantamax forms, especially. And they loop it in pretty well to the lore of the game. Can it be better? Sure. Does it replace Megas? No. But is it a sign of “laziness” or any more gimmicky than most other Pokémon features? Absolutely not.

 

-Also, has it really never bothered anyone that the very idea of Gyms and Badges was NEVER explained in any meaningful way before Galar? This time there is a reason for it, and not just a believable one, I daresay a GOOD one. Treating Pokémon battles like soccer/football is perfect. 

 

-The first “evil” team also plays into this soccer idea, and guess what? They’re not just one-dimensional idiots like every team but Team Rocket and the Aether Foundation. There is an actual point to their annoying antics (stupid as most of the people in this team may arguably still be) beyond the Saturday morning cartoon villain excuse. And that the “leader” is not actually that kind of one-dimensional villain type just adds to the unexpectedly good idea for this game.

 

-Further to the above point, there is genuine character development in this game, contrary to the apparent popular claim. Piers, Marnie, Bede, even Hop (yea I said it) all have real arcs. Are they “mature and deep”? No. Could they have done more with this? Sure. But it’s a far cry from the lazy/non-existent perspective I so often hear.

 

-Also, Chairman Rose may be a flawed villain in terms of execution, but I really do think his general situation and philosophy can work. I liked both him and Oleana a lot. Again, the execution was definitely lacking in certain important ways, but it’s not for lack of general creativity. Perhaps they ran out of time with this part, and I don’t feel how it turned out was game breaking, so I am willing to forgive it. This piece is the most conflicted bit of the game for me: Rose/Oleana had a lot of potential, IMO, and I do wish the part between battling Hop and then battling Eternatus was better executed. But it’s not really awful, either...

 

-Interestingly, on multiple replays the post-game bit has grown on me. Rushed, sure, but again in terms of the world-building the two “celebrities” surprisingly work, and completing Hop’s arc through it was actually quite well done, IMO.

 

-The DLC was also good, I really liked both bonus places and all they offered.

 

 

Feel free to agree or disagree with any of the above; this isn’t intended to be viewed as an attempt at an infallible defence. My main point is that the assertion that there is nothing good about these games and they represent everything wrong with modern Pokémon is no less an opinion than that they are fine. For anyone to ultimately act like the base view should be that these games are bad and the opposite view must be vigorously well outlined and defended or be rendered unacceptable or something is unfair and silly. That may not be everyone’s intent but with the sheer animosity I can see towards these games, it sure feels like that’s what is being said. People are free to like and dislike whatever they want, and games can be flawed but still have silver linings. 

 

At the end of the day, I have no problem with people wanting more, even better, from Pokémon. I can even personally think of good counter-arguments that demonstrate things that are NOT good about Sword and Shield. But I really am sick of the “Pokémon is DEAD” or TPC/Game Freak are particularly bad at making games now narrative. I just do not agree with that.

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I like everything about pokemon except actually playing it... and all the things I dislike most about it seem to have been turned up over time like the emphasis on story and extreme hand-holding. And so many of them are so slow even with the battle animations off and the text speed cranked up all the way.

 

Sword and Shield looks okay but I've bounced off the last 3 gens at least before even finishing them lol

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1 hour ago, Tyranogre said:

Regarding Snap, something interesting to keep in mind:

 

The orginal game had only 63 out of 151 Pokemon in it, or roughly 41.8% of all Pokemon that existed at the time.

 

New Snap, on the other hand, has 214 out of 898, or roughly 23.9%.

 

Of course, this has little to do with the overall quality of either game, and is merely indicative of the difference in scope between the franchise in the 22 years it's been since the N64.

I don't know if that's really fair. Like I love the original pokemon snap game but you can 100% it in like an hour. If they put out a game like that nowadays for full price people would shit all over it.

 

Also that means it has almost 3.5x as many pokemon as the original game which is pretty good.

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1 hour ago, Link, the Hero of Dreams said:

If anyone remembers controversial ECW wrestler New Jack, he dead. Knowing he caused some other wrestlers misfortune, I won’t RIP him. Mass Transit Incident, anyone?

lmaooo yeah that dude is wild

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Late to that nightmare conversation but referring to anything involving Pokemon drunkenly attempting worldbuilding or telling a story as "lore" is going to make the blood in my veins freeze over. y;  The storytelling in Pokemon games are juvenile as Hell.  If anything I'd consider that a massive compliment because Children's shows nowadays have more moral complexity and depth than Pokemon games do.  Other than some occasionally spooky pokedex entries in the first few gens it's always been pretty toothless.

The intrigue of the worlds and massive amounts of pokemon will always be held back or undersold by the games because GF and TPC are stuck in the AAA plight not being allowed to diverge or experiment heavily with mainline games because people resist change when a series hasn't changed for decades.  It's not like a franchise like FF which has the luxury of basically reinventing itself with every installment. (for better or worse)

Edited by Edie Napier
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