Topic: Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon discussion

@Kimyonaakuma not really that because there's not that many new mons (you could consider ORAS to have more new pokemon via megas then ultra sun and moon's actual new mons)

Simply put, they're just slow, apparently they spent more time introducing mandatory tutorials for unskippable minigames and insufferable cutscenes with endless dialogue to get pokebank in for release.

Seriously... these games are 3 times as long and it doesn't have anything to do with the story, its like they just split full sentences into two separate textboxes whenever they could get away with it. At least lusamine is a more likable character so that's... something out of all that text i guess?

EDIT: ^thanks

@Tsurii That sounds pretty convoluted...

What I find annoying is that if you have a living dex in Sun and Moon, you have at most 3 boxes remaining. It makes Pokemon Bank almost mandatory

I skipped a year and all my stuff is still there.

Also you can still take pokemon OUT without a subscription, you just can't put them IN without one.

Which is fair considering they're locking your free content behind a paywall otherwise.

@Araquanid weird I think I went less and lost everything the first time it ran out on me unless it was tied to a different email or the old 3ds system I sold. @Tsurii Yeah hopefully that's the case for me just annoying you can't simply re up on a website or even the 3ds I should have just kept Omega Ruby until the sub ran out to re up oh well I'll find out soon. Might be for the best I had a lot of doubles in the bank

Guess now we know what they meant by "double script".

I think Pokebank isn't amazing but it's better than what came before it. I used to spend hours transferring my Pokemon from game to game (I've been transferring them from Emerald all the way to Moon), so I appreciate that it's faster.

I've not been too excited for Ultra Sun and Moon, I bought Ultra Sun today and it's still sealed in the box but I'm hoping to start it tonight. I manage to get through the story really quickly in Pokemon games compared to when I was younger but then I don't even remember or enjoy it as much! I didn't even care for SM after the pokemon league because there was so little post game content.
Not sure if the Pokemon games that I grew up with are better than the new games today or if it's me, but I really don't enjoy them as much anymore

The former.

TBH I felt people were being a bit too harsh over BW, X/Y, and ORAS but granted there were some things I can't disagree on,

but sun and moon is honestly the games getting worse from every angle, and ultra I'm willing to stretch and say are worse then the regulars strickly off story progression, more tutorials, and more unecessary (and awful imho) minigames.

Infact half way through got so bad I had to trade stuff from my sun and moon to make it more playable and even then I came across a difficulty curve not even pokemon 20 levels up could handle (seriously, perish song carried me through some of the totems and necrozma.. good thing I traded over a primarina with it unintentionally over using the rowlett I picked)

I went into ultra expecting nothing and was still let down.

By all means the games would be more enjoyable if you haven't experienced S/M yet or want a harder experience and don't care for post game, but coming from the more competitive demographic this was honestly not worth 40 to me and if it was 10 dollar DLC for the others I wouldn't pay for that either. Just my opinion, I know two friends that feel the same way but the other is really enjoying theirself with the game.

Oh well that's glowing reviews for when my copy arrives on my death bed.

Well maybe looking at the older games now vs. the games we're getting, they're all right, but is being on par with 10-20 year old games really much of an accomplishment? Wouldn't you expect the games to continually improve with time and technology? That's the reason I can appreciate Emerald and Platinum a little more than USUM, because those games pushed boundaries and did things that were previously unheard of and that made them more exciting. USUM though? Not so much. You do have new Pokemon introduced mid gen but there's far too few of them to really make an impact, other than that they're basically just on par with what Emerald and Platinum. So even though content wise USUM is doing the same thing, because they're doing most of the same things we've seen already and the series has shown itself capable of much larger changes, it doesn't pack as much of a punch as previous versions did.

@Araquanid I'm somehow becoming less and less interested in starting Ultra Sun now...

But I think XY is better than SM, but both don't really compare to the older games for me.
I remember enjoying most of the 3DS games during my initial playthroughs, the linear story and regions along with the lack of good post game is what has ruined it for me I think. I actually enjoyed ORAS, I preferred Emerald overall but I enjoyed it a lot more than the other Pokemon games on the 3DS.

I started with Gen 4 and it has most of what I love about Pokemon. BW was alright but I think B2W2 was much better. I'm more interested to see how the series will be on Switch at this point.

If they can mess up the eventual remake of the Sinnoh games then I'll be really concerned...

Feels like i'm encountering different Pokemon to start like Igglybuff on Route 4 and Smoochum in the cave on the first island

I guess that I am in the minority here because Im just as hooked on Ultra Sun as I am for any Pokemon game. They have done just enough that I feel like I'm getting a new experience despite being in the same place. When you talk about older games being better which ones exactly? I couldn't finish the vc yellow because it felt like such a step down from all the mechanics I've come accustomed to.

I haven't had much time to play, sadly.

One would think the weekend would be the best time to play Pokemon, but tell that to my family.

So far I've noticed some changes. This one features 80% less Kukui home invasion.

Still no game...

As far as VC Yellow and the question of which games are "better", what you have to keep in mind is that some of these games were good for their time but don't necessarily stand out today. It's not really fair to play Yellow and expect it to meet the standards of a fleshed out, full featured game in 2017 because games weren't capable of nearly as much in 1999 as they are now. This is also the issue with third versions in general, they were fine for their time but now that we have DLC they're not really acceptable by modern standards.

As far as what kind of game I do expect in 2017, for me to spend money on any revisit (whether it's third version, sequel, remake), I would want at least the following:

-An island's worth of new areas, complete with full routes and cities. A large part of Pokemon's gameplay is exploring the overworld and going to new places to find, catch, and battle Pokemon. If you're just spending the whole game retreading areas you've already visited that aspect of the game becomes a lot less fun. An island's worth is the bare minimum I'll accept as an expansion at this point in the series, and ideally there should be a significant amount of those as main game areas instead of just post game areas.
-At least 20 new forms/completely new Pokemon added to the game. Most third versions have taken to adding new forms and now even new Pokemon to its roster of natives to help shake things up, but when it's just scraps that show up only at certain points in the game they don't really make much of an impact. But if we see about 20 or more of them that's enough for them to show up prominently in important battles or to shake up wild rosters.
-Compelling, in depth side features to provide replay value. This has been a major problem with the 3DS era as a whole, it's been unwilling to add in extra features that you could get invested in for hours at a time. Aside from ORAS, which only added in the bare minimum of Contests and Secret Bases because they were prominently featured in the original, they haven't really provided these kinds of features, it's been more bite sized stuff.

Now as far as Pokemon as a whole, there's other issues with region design with them making linear regions with few side areas and putting in tons of roadblocks forcing you to complete the game in a very specific order. Region design closer to Sinnoh would be the best example from past regions but really I think the series needs to go beyond what they've done with previous regions. Eventually, I'd like Pokemon to be full open world, but that's not really feasible at this point (maybe 9th or 10th gen), but at the very least I'd want something more like Ocarina of Time in terms of region design. Full of large open spaces, plenty of places to run around in and explore, but still linear enough to be familiar.

I'm at the Pokémon Center just before second trial. I think I'll play this at bit of a slower pace since it feels like it hasn't been long enough since I played Moon. I liked Moon a lot. I don't quite understand why most people are like "This is the greatest game ever!" while playing a new generation and after a month of finishing it, they're like "It was the worst in the series."

I like the small things they've done that feel a bit like side-quests. For example, the bottles with letters. They also made sure to tell about the things that open up after beating the kahuna this time around. I know so many people who moved from Melemele as soon as they could and never visited the shop with Gracidea flower, Adamant Orb, etc. or met the woman and Machamp in the cemetery. Speaking of the cemetery, I can't help but laugh when the Office Worker Jeremy says "When I come to the Pokémon cemetery... it's no good because I get so mournful." and then the battle starts and he looks like this:

Probably because the "greatest game ever" comments are knee jerk reactions to the changes and then when the game's over there's not much left to do and people are getting bored with the extra content.

@Late I remember that guy and thinking the same thing.

So the plan was to spend the time between the 17th and 1st on Pokemon and some backlog, before Xenoblade. Looks like that's not happening as Xenoblade will probably arrive first XD