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Pokémon Presents discussion thread

What was you favourite announcement?

16.7% (1 vote)
16.7% (1 vote)
66.7% (4 votes)
There was a 25 minute video released recently.
Today's morning, or yesterday, depending on where you live.

This is a thread to discuss that. Generally this type of thread is Klug's job, but since none was made, I'll just do it myself.

The announcements were:
-Diamond & Pearl remakes (in a cute chibi style)
-More info about New Pokémon Snap
-A new game called Pokémon Legends: Arceus (takes place in ancient Sinnoh and has a feudal aesthetic)
-Some events for their mobile games

Discuss, for the sake of organization, I'll discuss my thoughts separately eventually.
Хуй войне!

桐生会FOREVER #ThankYouCoco / Rest in peace, Near, thank you for everything
I'm quite excited for Pokemon Legends. Have always wished for an Open-World Pokemon game. That being said, I'll have to remain slightly sceptical for the time being, at least until we see further trailers.

What little we've seen of the game so far looked quite rough in my opinion. Not only the graphics (low resolution, very muddy textures, pixelated look, choppy animations), but also the game in general still looks like it needs quite some work. From what I understand, the game will be all about catching Pokemon in the wild. If that's the case, the Pokemon themselves need to feel really unique and stick out, otherwise exploration might not be very satisfying. However, in the trailer, it didn't seem like the game was quite there yet. The Pokemon seemed to behave exactly like in Sword & Shield, which IMO is a bad thing.

To get more specific: in Sword & Shield, there were a lot of Pokemon running around on the overworld, especially in the wild areas. However, they all felt very lame and uninteresting, because they weren't unique in any way. They all had the exact same behavior and were basically just model swaps of one another. For me, that doesn't really cut it. When Pokemon run around on the overworld, they also need to behave like Pokemon. That is, they need to behave in a way that would be natural to that respective Pokemon species. If Legends won't end up doing this, then that might greatly limit its appeal for me. In the trailer, the Pokemon didn't even seem to react to the player's presence at all. However, the game won't arrive before 2022, so I hope that a lot of work will still go into it. I honestly doubt they can change a lot in just one year, but I still hope they'll manage to improve it.

I'm also slightly sceptical about the battle system. In the little footage we were shown, it looked as though they were going with the same turn-based battle system we know once again, but I'm just not sure this kind of battle system really works all that well in an Open-World game. It will probably end up feeling really slow. Even more so than in previous games. Hope we can get clarification on this with further trailers.

All of that being said, I do think going Open-World is definitely the right choice for Pokemon, and if nothing else, I'm glad they're finally trying something bold again.

As for the Diamond & Pearl remakes, not much to say here. By now I have arrived at a point where I'm kinda nostalgic for Diamond & Pearl (even though I remember somewhat disliking Diamond as a teenager), so I was really looking forward to remakes. That being said, what we're getting here is playing it a little bit too safe for my personal tastes. I'm not a huge fan of remakes that stick too closely to the originals, as they always feel kinda pointless to me. I'm also really not into the graphical style of this one. For me personally, it feels like the worst possible aesthetic they could have chosen. I kinda like the graphics in Let's Go Pikachu & Eeevee, I think they were very charmeful, but this one just reminds me of a bunch of bad and cheap mobile games. It really isn't for me. I'll still probably end up picking these games up, because... come on, it's Pokemon, I just won't be able to resist. However, it'll really take some time for me to get used to the graphics.

You know, thinking about it, I'm kinda glad Pokemon Legends happens to be a Sinnoh game, because even if I'm not too impressed by the remakes, I'll at least get another take on the region that is more interesting to me. I think that was a good choice.
Feel free to visit my website/blog - it's updated rarely, but it looks pretty cool!
If I get D/P remakes (big if), this would be my first venture into the Sinnoh region. There's some things that turned me off from those games, but the pacing was by far the biggest offender. I hope that is no longer an issue.

Pokemon Legends: Arceus seems like a decent premise, and I'm interested to see where they will go from there.

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STELLA!
I already gave my thoughts on Pokémon Snap in the thread for that game, in short: I'm not interested in it and I'd prefer an open world Pokémon game...

...and fittingly an open world Pokémon game was announced, which is awesome, or at least in paper. I love the design for the protagonists, but unfortunately, I can't say the same about the world around them. I also have mixed feelings on the usual battle system being used for this, on one hand I love that battle system and I'm happy I get to play it again, but on the other hand, a turn-based gameplay could take a lot away from the open world experience. I could elaborate more on my concerns bout Legens Arceus, but I'd just be repeating what RPG Hacker said.

As for the D/P remakes, I never played the originals, so I was never too hyped for this, and I'm not a fan at all of the chibi artstyle, so I'll pass on those.
I personally haven't been this excited for a new Pokémon game since ORAS, honestly. Initially I was quite miffed at how BDSP looked and while I still think it doesn't quite look how I anticipated and would've preferred a SwSh style... Dude it's faithful remakes of my childhood games.

My expectations dropped to zero after the other Switch entries and heck even THOSE were at least fun. Improvement over something that already was okay and throwing nostalgia all over it is only a good thing for me. I'm glad.

Legends has a single major flaw I am concerned about and that is the seemingly awful framerate of the Pokémon that aren't very close to you. I an not entirely hopeful they will fix this before release, though everything else looks pretty spot on and is exciting because it's something completely new I think.

If things really end up being disastrous for either or even both, I don't HAVE to get them anyway. I'll be the judge of what i'll spend my money on when they arrive.
It looks like a solid base to work from, but it practically looks like a tech demo-barren and empty. Of course, since it's coming in 2022 they've got time to work on it. Here's hoping there's finally a reason to get excited again.
My thoughts on the Sinnoh remakes aren't exactly positive. First of all, I don't think any of these games need remakes unless they actually go out of their way to fix the flaws the original games had, and also add new content. The reason people love FRLG and HGSS is because they actually update the source material, give it a bunch of new content and straight up make them feel like new games that could rival the current ones (and actually do honestly).

But if you don't do anything other than giving it 3D visuals and maybe a few new additions, I'd say that's pointless. Sadly, I'm sure that's the approach they're gonna take. Tiny Dawn looks fucking cute, but I don't care about this game overall, I'd hope I'm wrong about all that, but I doubt it. Which is a shame because Sinnoh is a very flawed region when it comes to games. It only became good in Platinum, but just like Emerald, they're probably gonna ditch most if not all new features in these remakes.

New Pokémon Snap looks nice, but I never played the original, so I haven't got much to say about this. It looks interesting, but I have no idea if I'd enjoy it.

Now Pokémon Legends is an interesting one! I wished for a Pokémon game that did something new for a long while, and finally this looks like it could be just that. I hope it isn't just "open world" and nothing else, that would be extremely disappointing.
I want a game that puts less focus on the story, or at least doesn't break your pace with story and tons of cutscenes and an annoying introduction (all main Pokémon games take forever to actually let you get started properly, it's the thing that singlehandedly kills the replayability, of course the lack of more save files in-game and no new game+ also don't help).

I want a Pokémon game that breaks from tradition, unfortunately, the starters are still the same conventional types (I'd love different starter types). But it's ok, there's still chance for more stuff to surprise me. There's not really much gameplay shown, so it's hard to even say much about it, but I just hope at the very least the game let's you explore on your own, and has legit incentive to do so. I really want the game to actually be dictated by player agency, instead of just pretending with a bland open world theme going on just to give the illusion of that.

To explain it better, I'd love to be able to get Pokémon in areas that usually are left to late-game, with fire, ice, poison, steel, dragon types, etc. The game would be smart if it did level and evolution scaling, based on some kind of player progression. Like say, you go to the icy area right off the bat, and you will find more baby and lower level ice types there, and later on, based on whatever gauges your progression in this game (don't know if they're badges, but whatever it maybe be, base the levels of surrounding Pokémon on such parameters), you will find higher leveled and evolved Pokémon in areas where more traditional beginning Pokémon would be (bug, grass, flying, etc). That would be so nice and also make the game so much more replayable.

Another thing I'd love is if the game gives you freedom to "live your own life". In all Pokémon games, they show that a lot of people don't live as trainers, they can be rangers, breeders, collectors, contest goers (dunno the proper term lol), or just regular people who own Pokémon, but live their own lives and don't simply live to get badges and battle solely. It would be really nice to be able to do these other things without needing badges and battles as your main goal. Sure, that would be a bit harder to implement, but I'm sure it could be done.

Well, I'm not putting my hopes on any of these actually happening yet, since there's almost nothing of the game shown, but I'd be really happy if something like it happened. I just want to love Pokémon again, man, simple as that. It doesn't have to be necessarily what I've mentioned, but it needs to be actual mechanics (and not gimmicks that they'll throw out in the next game).
Хуй войне!

桐生会FOREVER #ThankYouCoco / Rest in peace, Near, thank you for everything
Originally posted by Y.Y.
I'd love to be able to get Pokémon in areas that usually are left to late-game, with fire, ice, poison, steel, dragon types, etc. The game would be smart if it did level and evolution scaling, based on some kind of player progression.


Actually, I would love to have that as well, but without the smart scaling. That is, I would love if you could just walk right into Mt. Coronet at the beginning of the game and encounter Garchomps at level 60 or whatever, right there for you to catch. They should just balance this by making it really, really hard to catch a Pokemon like that. Obviously, a Garchomp at level 60 would insta-kill almost any other Pokemon at level 10, but on top of that, they could also give it a really, really low catch rate the weaker your trainer's team is (like maybe a 1 in 200 catch chance or whatever), and they could also make high-level Pokemon more likely to disobey you in the case you catch them early. I think this alone would already balance them really well, without having to artificially restrict the player.

The thing is, for me personally, being able to do things I'm not necessarily supposed to do yet is part of the appeal of open-world games. In Xenoblade Chronicles, you can encounter level 99 monsters right on the starting map, and they will absolutely kick your ass if you challenge them. In Breath of the Wild, you can also walk right into Hyrule Castle to face Ganon and will likely get your ass kicked as well, unless you're a really skilled player. I love game design like that, because it allows players to test their own limits and to play their own way. It's also really fun for speedruns. Having smart scaling would kinda ruin that aspect for me, in addition to potentially making the world less believable.

This was actually one of the things I really disliked about Sword and Shield. They put some high-level Pokemon into the wild areas, which in theory was a cool thing, but when you battled and tried to catch them, the games would just tell you "no, you can't do that, it's too strong! You should run away!", and I was just like "well what's the point then?". I would love it so much more if the developers just allowed players to break the game, at their own risk.
Feel free to visit my website/blog - it's updated rarely, but it looks pretty cool!
Honestly, I'm fine with that, as long as they make harder encounters more rare. Mostly because, I truly want baby Pokémon and other lower level Pokémon of certain types to become useful. In most games, dragon, fire, ice, poison, etc baby types are only available if you breed their parents, which is kinda... situational (or you can find them in the wild, but in really late game, when you already have a lot of powerful Pokemon anyway). I mean, it's useful if you want to EV train or do something specific, but even then, it wouldn't really matter if they're a baby or not.

But finding baby forms of these future powerful Pokémon would be nice because it would make people feel interested in actually getting them and even giving them more appeal beyond just being cute or whatever. It would even tie-in nicely with your idea. You go out of your way to get the powerful Pokémon as soon as you can, and you will have it harder, but it can be a satisfying thing to pull off, a risk vs reward thing. But if you can also more easily find these pre-evolutions, that you can catch more easily and will give you less trouble, but you will need to train them for them to become powerful, which takes more time, but also lets you customize some of their moves and stats.

Maybe the game could even keep count of how many higher level Pokémon the player fought against and caught, and give them some sort of special reward based on that, and if you do really well at that, you can get some kind of higher difficulty challenge and some other few rare items.

And that's just scratching the surface, this type of stuff has a lot of potential, and many ideas can come up just by casually talking like we're doing. Which makes me wonder how no one at Game Freak even thought of something like that (well, maybe they did, but the higher ups want the games to be really simplified).
Хуй войне!

桐生会FOREVER #ThankYouCoco / Rest in peace, Near, thank you for everything
Yeah, I agree. Evolving with your Pokemon can be very satisfying, and some strong Pokemon take really long to evolve, so it only makes sense to get access to them early on. In Sword and Shield in particular, there were a lot of stage 3 evolutions that you could catch just like that in wild areas, and it was both good and bad. On one hand, it made it way easier to complete that gigantic PokeDex, but on the other hand, it also made evolving Pokemon quite pointless very quickly. It's difficult to find a balance here. I mean on one hand, encountering strong stage 3 evolutions on the overworld kinda makes the world more believable (and also more exciting), but on the other hand, as I said, it gives less of a reason to even catch the lower evolution stages of those Pokemon.
Feel free to visit my website/blog - it's updated rarely, but it looks pretty cool!