Topic: Pokemon Sword & Shield

This Pokedex fiasco opened a lot of eyes. For that i'm thankful to Mr. Masuda.

I think it's funny to see current Pokemon games after more than 20 years.
The Pokemon attacks were still looked like Classic Final Fantasy style, ranged attack.
Here is the analogy.

@MsJubilee
I don't see fiasco from current Pokedex for Sword / Shield.

@Yorumi
It's sad to see some peoples got angry for the things we still haven't know yet.

Thanks for reminding me how good the animations in Pokemon Stadium were, guys. It really is a shame we never saw another one with animations of that calibur.

I mean, Pokemon Stadium also lacked trainer animations or explorable areas, and the pokemon themselves were lower poly than anything nowadays, so I'm not saying it'll never happen because they're lazy...but it really does suck that this level of care probably can't logistically fit within their schedule.

@Yorumi I don't believe I ever implied that echo chambers only magnify negative opinions. Or that all criticism is invalid and a result of groupthink. Or that only certain communities are susceptible to groupthink. Or that nostalgia and marketing don't sway people to react more charitably to something than they otherwise would in the absence of those factors.

I don't believe I've even stated anywhere that Sw/Sh are perfect products, or that there isn't valid criticism that can be made about them.

I engaged in casual speculation about why I think such sudden and sustained outbursts of hyperbolic hostility toward something online might be magnified by social forces that extend beyond the personal. If you feel offended by this observation because, on some level, you realize that it is descriptive of your own behavior online, then I invite you to reflect on this.

@Snaplocket It's funny that you mention Xenoblade 2 as an example of a game dramatically improving from a predecessor, considering the common opinion in Nintendo fan communities seems to be that ít's inferior to the original game. I happen to agree, though. Despite its issues, I thought Xenoblade 2 was a solid improvement all-around when compared to previous games in the series.

Honestly, if it were better optimized for undocked play, ditched the gacha mechanics for rare blades, and streamlined field skill requirements for side quests, it'd likely be my favorite game on the system.

Like dismissing the opinion of people who don't hate the game or gamefreak as mere damage control done by white knight fanboys.

I don't think it's controversial to say that opinions are more polarised on the internet...especially in fan forums where the vast majority of people are enthusiasts with generally stronger opinions towards the topic than the general public. And it works both ways, with positive and negative.

@Octane ...I don't think I can defend that Wingull, sorry. But I do wonder how much of it's due to Wingull's design, as @Tsurii suggests, or greater limitations around animating flying Pokemon. I don't imagine it would look any better frantically flapping its wings without any wind or direction.

To be fair, we all hated the flying models back then in gen 6 too.

It's also a seagull hovering a few feet above ground... It's always gonna look off. Until they decide to create realistic bird movement patterns.

I do wonder how would wingull look just waddling around on its tiny feet though.

Well, yes that's perfectly acceptable to complain about.

I don't really mind it, personally. But it would be nice to see better animations for the overworld encounters.

They do look pretty ridiculous hovering around like UFOs.

Hopefully they either fix or remove those encounters. Considering we don't even know how recent that build was, I choose to remain optimistic on that front.

I wasn't gonna say anything, but yeah, I honestly felt like Xenoblade Chronicles 2 was a step down in nearly every way. Granted, a step down from near perfection is still pretty good, and Torna made great strides in addressing its issues.

Obviously, not everyone's gonna reach the same consensus. If there are people who genuinely feel like the new Pokemon game is looking more problematic, or just a step down, I know I can't fault them for that. It's not like it'd be the first time a mainline Pokemon let some people down, and this time it could be a major growing period that Creature and Game Freak simply aren't fully prepared for. I'm gonna wish them the best, but you guys do you.

@Tsurii Yeah. Torna was amazing. Unfortunately, it's still very much a supplementary experience. Also, despite some performance improvements, it still gets pretty hairy when undocked (it just doesn't hit the extremest lows of the base game).

To weigh in on the (slightly off-topic) Xenoblade Chronicles discussion - I personally like both games equally, and for different reasons - I don't really see one as significantly better than the other. And I don't think there is any consensus that XC2 vastly improved on the first game.

Regardless of whether this is true or not, I don't think you can assess quality on a single linear scale. A book, movie, or game can be somewhat objectively good on any number of scales, and the subjectivity comes in which scale holds more weight, or even the context of the scale. A think a good example is linearity vs. openness in video games - too many people treat the latter as an absolute ideal over the former, but that's not necessarily the case. To go back on topic - I personally prefer some of the earlier Pokemon games due to their relative simplicity, although some may argue that more content is better.

That said, I agree that hype =/= quality, but they must at least be correlated.

I think the combat in XC2 is improved, but it definitely feels like a rushed game. The story makes me scratch my head a lot, and certain areas aren't as open as I'd like them to be.

I'm really excited to see what they can do with an XC3.

@Ralizah I dunno. I've been saying the battle animations are terrible ever since Sun and Moon came out. Scratch that, the battle animations in BW look terrible as well, but for different reasons

It is true that more people are focusing on it because of the National Dex, or lack thereof. I think that's a great thing actually, I'm just hoping to see improvement in other areas now they don't have to focus on all the Pokemon.

@Buizel Someone on Reddit made a Wingull model from scratch with a flying animation in a day, and whilst it lacks some polish, it looks better than the current flying animation. I understand that a flying Wingull may be realistically too fast for an overworld encounter, but they could always have them land, hop around, and take off again if needed; Just like they do in the anime for example.

However, there are more Pokemon like Wingull. Swellow, Xatu and Tropius all ''hover'' in place during their idle battle animation as well. Xatu especially looks terrible this way, it looks so much better standing on its feet like it does in all the other artwork. It's because of the Sky Battles in XY that most Flying types have awkward idle animations, but I hoped they'd fixe those animation by now considering Sky Battles haven't been a thing since XY...

On the bright side, charizard and tropius must have extremely strong back muscles by now.

@Octane I completely forgot Sky Battles were a thing. I also don't remember Triple Battles ever returned after it was initially introduced, now that I think about it. How many battle styles have turned out to be one-off gimmicks?

There was Triple battle, Rotation Battles, Sky Battles and somewhat Inverse Battles iirc. I think Triple was kind of in Gen 6 for an area in Kalos. Besides that, all of them were basically one of gimmicks that they dumped.

Rotation and triple battles (and horde battles) were removed simply because the 3ds could not handle them that well to begin with.

With the inclusion of high quality trainer models to battles in Gen 7, they were simply not possible anymore.

They could make them return if they wanted to, but I don't see them doing it. I mean, they have been openly and actively rejecting the idea of creating another battle frontier so it's clear they don't like to pick things back up once they've touched the floor.

(sky battles were mostly just a medium sized waste of code and trainer data)