Official Pokémon Discussion Thread

[Kong Wen]

This game has become a flashpoint of controversy. People are extremely angry that they are removing Pokemon and taking out the National dex. On the other hand, their excuse for doing so, which was supposedly to improve the graphics, has not convinced anybody. Many people believe that the graphics and animations are lazy and lackluster. Some people cite how even Pokemon Battle Revolution on the Wii was far superior in this regard. Other people have even shown how a Chinese bootleg Pokemon gacha game had better animations than Gamefreak's Sword and Shield.

Will it affect sales? I doubt it. Let's Go Eevee and Pikachu had unbelievable staggering sales numbers despite being mediocre games which also removed Pokemon and features. If those games are a bellwether of things to come, Sword and Shield should do just fine despite the populist furor from hardcore fans. Nintendo would have to screw up much harder in order for a Pokemon game on one of their best selling consoles to bomb.

Personally, I got tired of Pokemon by the time of the X/Y generation. I never trifled with Sun/Moon, even though I found some of the Pokemon designs interesting (like the Zhuge Liang ape). Therefore, the drama doesn't really affect me personally as I probably wasn't going to play Sword/Shield anyways. However, I do find some of the reaction interesting.

The drama doesn't affect me personally. I dropped off hard after Pearl/Diamond/Platinum and HeartGold/SoulSilver because it felt like they were just cranking out uninteresting trash, but the fact that S&S is a home console game rather than a portable game is intriguing. I'm not hardcore enough to care whether it has all the pokemon in it since there's no way I'd ever try to collect them all in one game anyway, and I don't care if the graphics are bad because it's a god-damned pokemon game. I'm more interested in hopping on because it seems like it'll be something relatively different. Maybe not fresh, per se.

[The Shoemaker]

Interesting thing is we haven't seen all the pokemon in a single game since what, generation 2? It's just this time around the extra pokemon that aren't in the game can't be traded in.

When it comes to the main campaign, this changes nothing for me. I'm also not a competitive player.

With that said, in general I'm not sure if I'll be getting this game due to how unambitious it looks. Their response to lacking the national DeX doesn't help. These games sell 15+ million with each entry on top of the side games, TV shows and merchandise. No excuse to have such a small team working on such a huge franchise and limiting the scope of the titles.

[SkyPikachu]

What worries me is that they said they didn't add every pokemon (something I don't care about) to improve the animations and graphics which look bad (not that that's a huge factor in pokemon) but it makes me wonder how much worse they would be if they did include everything. The game doesn't feel like it has that nintendo quality which worries me going forward and scares me that the story could be average.

Maybe Gen 9 will be the better game since they'll have had more time playing with a home console.

If the only bad parts of the game is graphics/animarions and not every pokemon exists then we're in for a treat but I don't see that happening.

Still buying the game unless reviews bomb hard (then I'll buy during a Christmas sale for cheap)

[Kong Wen]

The graphics frankly look amazing to me. I'm not going to base my impressions of the graphics on some salty trolls' cherry-picking for social media. Everything I've seen looks above and beyond what I expect out of a Pokémon game. Pokémon games don't even have stories, so that's not a concern. Pretty sure my expectations are in a good spot to be satisfied enough with a mindless collect-generic-dudes to fight other generic-dudes RPG, which is what every previous game in this series has been.

[SkyPikachu]

The graphics frankly look amazing to me. I'm not going to base my impressions of the graphics on some salty trolls' cherry-picking for social media.

Theyre no where near as bad as the people are cherry picking (eg the tree) but amazing seems a stretch. Just because graphics aren't the main attraction doesn't mean they have to be slack. That being said the world looking empty in certain places is the much more worrying aspect really hope the big overworld has a lot to do.

Pokémon games don't even have stories, so that's not a concern.

What? Even the original had a basic story and now the newer games have a pretty in depth plot for a kids game. It's not ground breaking stuff but there's still a decent story.

Pretty sure my expectations are in a good spot to be satisfied enough with a mindless collect-generic-dudes to fight other generic-dudes RPG, which is what every previous game in this series has been.

The thing is this is suppose to be the big switch to console with a ton of improvements but I don't really see many they're clearly gone for the safe approach and this franchise is huge and was a video game from the beginning we should expected better it's just they know anything will sell.