Topic: The Chit-Chat Thread

@Tyranexx I have no issue with the gimmicks being "one and done". I like the world building idea that different places have different battle styles and gimmicks. And frankly keeping them limits them from doing new things in the future. The simulator Pokemon Showdown has a custom ladder with the full national dex and all the gimmicks and it's absolute chaos. I really like this direction Pokemon is going because it feels like how card games have rotations. And there is no reason they cannot bring back any gimmick later on in a future game. Maybe in a few generations we go back to Kalos and megas come back or something. Or a new region that is closely related to Alola has its own Z-moves. Who knows?

Also yes, if I had to pick one set as my favorite Pokemon games, HGSS easily takes the win. Those games were as close to perfect as Pokemon ever got for me - but there were still a few details I'd like to change. If we ever get a second gen 2 remake, I'd like to see the new breeding and EV/IV training mechanics carried over and some level rebalancing in Kanto to make the post game more interesting.

I love gen 4 and 5 but my God, I could never go back to the old way of competitive Pokemon. I remember spending 2 days getting a Mamoswine with a perfect IV in attack alone and being proud of the accomplishment! Most people were happy just to have Pokemon with 2 perfect IVs! Something that would be laughably bad by today's standards. Sw/Sh improved that so very much! Competitive battling is almost the best it could be now. The only thing I think they really need to fix is to let people ditch that silly 20 minute time limit for single battles. It's perfect for VGC rules but way to short for 6v6 singles.

Also I really liked the Pokewalker from HGSS and I was bummed that the Pokeball+ from Let's Go was kind of a downgrade. I was very much that super nerd, walking around high school with the Pokewalker on my belt. And the walker was kind of Pokemon Go before Pokemon Go - it got me outside walking around when I almost never did before. I don't like cheesing systems like that by shaking the walker - or later the 3DS just to rack up steps.

@bimmy-lee Sounds like a deal! Thankfully I have plenty of great aunts and a grandmother I can consult...once we're out of pseudo-quarantine.

@Heavyarms55 I wish some gimmicks would return. I like mega evolution and some of the alternative battle formats that have appeared over time. Others I'm fine with them being left alone. Z-moves for example didn't really do much for me. I also miss some of the non-Pokemon extras too, such as secret bases and the movie studio near Virbank City in BW2.

I do get what you're saying about keeping all of the gimmicks being a bit much. I'm fine with them experimenting with new things, I just wish they'd keep around some of the better received ones.

HG/SS are near-perfect games in my eyes, but I do agree that there were a couple of small issues. Empty Kanto was a bit of a carryover from the original games I loved, but I feel like they could have went a bit further with the adjustments there. I can't say much on the breeding perfect Pokemon situation though; I didn't really have a way to easily get anywhere to play competitively back then and didn't have the patience for competitive play and breeding. Now it's a question of time and patience. XD I have noted people in my local PoGo group and elsewhere aboslutely loving how easy it is to build a good team in Gen VIII.

@Tyranexx Well that's kind of what I am saying, there is nothing stopping GF from bringing back any gimmick at any point. For all we know, some of those features will be in the DLC for these games even. I loved the secret bases feature in ORAS for example and that would be a great addition to the wild area. And the Pokemon World Tournament in BW2 was super cool! They could do something like that again as well. And honestly I really do think they will. Unless @NEStalgia is right and we're on the verge of a new dark age. But that's beside the point.

And I do agree HG/SS were nearly perfect - but there were still some tweaks to be made. I played Pokemon Liquid Crystal, a fan remake of Crystal built on the GBA engine that was absolutely amazing! But it wasn't a 1:1 remake, they added additional rivals, a lot more exploring and a lot more content pre-and post E4. Though they never did - at least in the build I found a couple years ago, finish all the late game content they had planned. And it didn't feel like clutter it felt like Kanto was part 2, rather than the post game, which I liked and would love in another official revisit to those games potentially in the future.

@hobbitgamer @bimmy-lee I'm ready when you are. Just hop on and I'll join.

Arena created.

Edit: hopped off guys. I know you're both busy with a.c. maybe this weekend or next week. Its a shame too, i had a real good arena name picked out. I guess youll never know now lol. Ill probabaly play some ff7 or Owlboy later tonight.

@Heavyarms55 I agree that the announcement of the expansion pass adds a lot of extra potential to Sword/Shield and I prefer that approach to 3rd versions.

@Tyranexx yea i checked hltb as well. I can manage 30-35 hours. And 5 hours in I actually love it. You can do x3 speed thru dialogue to speed things up which is nice. You should check it out. It's really good so far

@NintendoByNature Speeding through stuff is a real game changer with FF. I remember 7 took me probably 70-80 hours on the PS. A lot of time doing your typical leveling up through battles.

The story is good in the game, so don’t skip that part.

I did not mean something bad saying dead, I mean you can say dead if it's in the correct tone of voice. ca'nt I.

@NotTelevision it's super fun and the story is entertaining. Ive only been speeding stuff thru text (but still reading it) and walking around to make it go a little faster. I'm so happy I actually gave it a shot considering I never played a ff7 game And typically don't played turn based rpgs. But with all the ff7 remake talk, i wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

LOL 🤣🤣🤣
Open your English book and study the other words you haven't knew yet.

@Heavyarms55 Ah, that's a good point: the DLC! I'm interested to see what all fully comes from that. TBH I prefer that approach over them releasing a third or enhanced version or two. You don't even need to start a new game file to jump in. It'll be a ways off before I get it, but I'm sure I'll end up with the DLC at some point...and this is from someone who normally doesn't bother with add-on content outside of free downloads. I have mixed feelings when it comes to most DLC, but that depends on the game and the content on offer.

I've heard of Liquid Crystal; it's one of the Pokemon ROMs I'd like to play whenever my backlog becomes less robust. Along with others like Prism and Vietnamese Crystal.

@NintendoByNature That one is definitely on my radar - as is half the main FF series at this point - but I've decided I'm gonna hold off just a bit longer on VII and IX for this round. They go on discount every so often, plus I have a few FFs already weeping in the wings. XD

I still haven't decided whether I want to start with VI on the SNES Classic or X/X-2 on the Switch....

@Tyranexx VI is on snes classic? I guess i never noticed. I will definitely check that out after I beat 7. Thanks for letting me know. 😊

@Tyranexx @Grumblevolcano I prefer the DLC route to the 3rd version route by far. I was honestly quite annoyed with the Ultra games because even though I liked the new content overall it amounted to only a very small portion of the game and the rest was the same content again. Such a practice was understandable on Game Boy and DS because DLC wasn't possible but other games on 3DS had DLC just fine.

From the looks of it, this might be how Pokemon moves forward. Instead of yearly releases, we'll get a game one year and DLC the next year. Which sounds good to me. So long as the DLC remains content heavy like we've seen so far and like other Nintendo DLC has been in games like Fire Emblem, Xenoblade, BOTW and Splatoon 2. If they open the toxic rabbit hole of micro-transactions, that's where I draw the line. I'm not paying a dollar for a move tutor move, 2 dollars for a legendary encounter, etc etc...

Also, I've heard Prisim is more of a ground up fan game than a rom hack. But I could be wrong.

@Heavyarms55 Well, that was exactly my point. Well, for the most part. I don't advocate PC gaming, because yes, you could get far better results than on any current or future console, but it'll also cost far more, and the return on investment is definitely not short term, so in the end, the console is still the best place for high end gaming, at a reasonably affordable price. Which is of course the exact selling point of the video game console in the first place....

@bimmy-lee Yeah, it was fun reading through all that, so I thought I'd share. I was a bit disappointed at some of the less elaborate mentions, though. And for games and occurrences that were actually quite important or worthwhile, if you ask me. But still: it was a nice trip through memory lane.

@NintendoByNature No prob! FF VI is listed as Final Fantasy III on the menu, so that could be why you don't remember it. The naming is weird as it was the third FF to come to America, after the original and (IIRC) IV/"II". The other three didn't make it over here until some time later, from what I've read.

@Heavyarms55 I simultaneously both liked and disliked Ultra Sun for that reason. It felt like what the original Sun/Moon should have been in terms of content, though ironically I prefer the less insane story in the original Gen 7 games. But in nearly everything else, I felt Ultra was a step up. DLC could have easily satisfied many of the additions.

I've disliked the yearly release fix they've been on lately and am happy that they seem to be taking a break of sorts this year. Part of it is because I'm a little behind on the games right now, but a lot of it in my book has to do with oversaturation. I feel like they could innovate even more if given enough time and less stringent deadlines. I don't mind DLC when it's purely cosmetic and optional, but things like locking "true endings", pay-to-win mechanics, loot boxes, and any other types of microtransactions are definitely not for me.

Prism is a fan game IIRC, but it was built using Crystal's engine, so in my head it still qualifies. XD

@Tyranexx makes sense thanks.

@Tyranexx I do think that part of my very negative reaction to the ultra games is because we got them right after the original Sun/Moon. The very next year. It wasn't just another Pokemon game the next year - something I'd never minded before - it was, mostly - the very same Pokemon game again, on the same engine, the very next year. Talk about over saturation.

Although I do like most of the new content, the one thing from the first S/M that I preferred was crazy Lusamine. I felt like in the Ultra games they tried hard to shift her from insane horrible abusive parent to the misguided but still vaguely heroic trope and toned down a lot of abusive parent aspects. But it was the relationship between Lusamine, Lily and Gladion that was the most memorable aspect of the game for me. I actually thought GF brave for showing a story like that in a kids game - only for them to change their minds and tone it down later. And that scene where she fuses with the Ultra beast? That was nuts! It was a shame we didn't get to actually fight her as the beast, but I think that's because doing so would have forced a higher rating for the game and Pokemon will always be E rated.

But on the other hand, I did like how they double down on the parallel dimension thing and had the villains from previous games all show up in the post game. Even if I think Ghetsis should have been the leader, not Giovanni. I like the older version of Giovanni and Team Rocket being basically just a Pokemon mafia out to make money via poaching, stealing and the like with Giovanni being a mob boss. Ghetsis was definitely more of the world conquering megalomaniac type. I mean hell, he tries to make Kyuem outright murder you in in BW2.

On a side note, I pissed off my friend by spoiling that scene without thinking.

@ThanosReXXX There are rumors going around that XboxX and PS5 could both be 500 dollar or more machines. It's really pushing the line for that affordability aspect. But I was the one who made that post a while back pointing out how it seems, to me, that while other products have steadily gone up in price over the years, video games have gone up more slowing. I remember DVDs being 20 dollars at the same time as games being 60 and yet games are still 60 while many new blue rays tend to be 30-40.

You are the last person here to tell anyone to open English books. Listen to your own advice for once.

@NintendoByNature @bimmy-lee Man, the narcolepsy hit me hard around 9. 😂