Topic: The Switch Could Use a Spiritual Successor to Pokepark

So one thing that a lot of Pokemon fans have been asking for in regards to the Switch is for Pokemon to transition to real time battling and to feel more like an Action RPG. However, that might be too drastic a change for the series and so it might be better to satisfy this demand with a spinoff rather than the main series. What's funny though, is that there's already a pair of Pokemon games out there that could fill this role that many people seem to overlook. For some good reasons to be fair, but these games already provide some of the gameplay elements that people are probably looking for on the Switch. Those games are the Pokepark games, Pokepark Wii: Pikachu's Great Adventure and Pokepark 2: Wonders Beyond, with the second one especially being closer to a legitimate Action RPG.

Now one thing about the Pokepark games, and I think this is the main reason they didn't sell all too well, is that they're not marketed right. The branding makes it come off as a shovelware party game chock full of minigames, and while there are some, the game is also an action adventure game that involves exploring the overworld, befriending Pokemon. Befriending Pokemon can consist of various games, Chase, Hide and Seek, Quizzes. But the kicker is that some of them also involve battles. Actual, real time battles. 2 goes even further away from the mini games and more towards the action adventure elements with there only really being 4 mini games in the entire game and they also added extra playable characters with different overworld abilities (the 5th gen starters, you had Oshawott who could swim, Snivy who could use Leaf Tornado to give herself a double jump, and Tepig who could use Flame Charge to break boulders). Here's a video of the gameplay for those not familiar:

So I think this is actually a pretty solid foundation for a new Action RPG spinoff series, but with a few improvements:

1. Change the name and marketing. Pokepark implies a party game, you're not going to get "sandbox ARPG" from that. Turn it into a new series with a new name but similar gameplay. Also remove the mini games completely and just focus on exploration and battling for the main gameplay.
2. Larger game worlds. The original games are about OoT size, maybe smaller. That's not big enough in the year 2018.
3. Better controls than the original games. The Wii games had you play the Wii Remote sideways and use the D-Pad to move around. Definitely not going to fly now, a game like this needs analog control.
4. More playable characters. 2 only had 4 characters. They're going to want much more than that. They should at least have one of each type, but ideally every Pokemon that exists in the game should be playable. They already have to go through the trouble of creating the models for every Pokemon and giving them attacks to battle with, there's not much else after that that needs to be done to make them playable.

Sounds like a winner to me. Anyone else want to see this?

I think fans do want a game where you actually control the Pokemon in real time. But I don't think many people want to see the main series change to that. Aside from the massive impractically of making roughly 800 playable characters, such a drastic change would be an almost certain deathblow to the competitive community.

However a spin off game where you play as a select few Pokemon in an action RPG type game would probably be really popular. And would spawn countless fan arguments over which Pokemon people want to see. Such a game would be best done by an outside studio, rather then Game Freak itself.

I would like to see sequel of Pokepark.
Pokepark was like a Raw Diamond.
That game has a lot of potential.
Just add with more RPG elements, proper control, more customize, more proper mini games, etc and the game will be great.

I've enjoyed both PokePark entries by quite a bit. They're real easy and pretty short but still, for what they are, they're good and fun.

The battle system, though, always seemed like one of the more basic systems of the games. Just dodge and attack, dodge and attack. I doubt you could transfer the strategic, type-based combat into real time easily. I mean, you could but it would be a lot of work. How do all those 800 something Pokemon move? How do size differences between battling Pokemon effect that real time system? and so on. But a lot of/hard work is a big no-no over at GameFreak. I can pretty much guarantee that the move to HD and the requirement to polish up their models and give them something like real hands with fingers is already going to be enough work for them.

But I'd have to agree that it'd be nice to have like maybe 30 controllable characters in an ARPG spin-off and have them actually focus the work on a battle system like that.

I mean, I'm not sure what else you really want. Maybe some items, but as far as the actual battling they've got enough to work with. As far as how to balance size, they could just make smaller Pokemon faster.

And yeah, Game Freak would definitely not work on this. Game Freak never does spinoffs.