Topic: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

@Pizzamorg @Snatcher
I honestly don't see Pokemon as a JRPG or an RPG. Granted, I can't say anything about the 2nd generation onward, but 1st gen simply didn't feel like it.
Party composition: you just have a roster of "ready" pokemon you bring out one at a time to fight one enemy at a time until either is swapped out or exhausted, rather than 3-6 characters on the field who either fight simultaneously or by turns according to an initiative order.
Combat: turn-based 1v1 with various skills to exhaust the opponent's HP while safeguarding your own; you can swap pokemon in and out of combat to use different abilities. Swapping costs a turn.
Encounters: one enemy per random encounter; three-to-five per side when dueling a trainer, one at a time until HP exhaustion for each.
XP: only the individual pokemon that are let out to fight
Equipment: pokeballs that increase capture chance
Consumables: HP, leveling up and evolution boosters.
Navigation: town map, field map, inside buildings; travel by foot, by bike or by pokemon

It is an adventure game with managing your roster for dueling and it includes some RPG mechanics, but it is not an RPG. At best RPG-adjacent. If it'd be an RPG, I'd see your trainer having improvable stats as a pokemon master with different skills you can level up to make your job more effective, and also rework the obedience mechanic so it wouldn't be directly tied to badges.

@Tounushi
nah its still obviously a JRPG, lolz

@Tounushi Dude, why does a rpg have to follow such strict rules, it does the basics, turn based combat, item, leveling, learning new moves, adding new members, random encounters, literally screams jrpg, and a jrpg doesn’t even need to be turn based, just the bases of what an jrpg is, which is Pokémon.

It’s not even debatable, it is a jrpg, it has been for a long time and still is. And to say it’s not Just because you level up your Pokémon and not the trainer, is kinda silly, you are a Pokémon trainer, not a party member, your a coach, you make the plays Pokémon do the plays. The trainer is just the person (You) that somehow gives orders to the party given form.

Some of the JRPG rules are bizarre as outlined by that person, too. Splitting hairs at the molecular level for no clear gain.

If Pokemon isn't a JRPG, then I guess Digimon Cyber Sleuth isn't a JRPG, or Final Fantasy after FF3, or Shin Megami Tensei, or Persona.

Pokemon is a JRPG. You as the player may not level up, but the battles still function like a JRPG. You still compose a party, and you still level those party members up. They fight in battles in order to level up.

@VoidofLight According to them if the character you are controller doesn’t level up it isn’t a a jrpg……….bruh.

Isn't this the point of the thread? I'm posting an opinion and giving my basis and getting s*at on for it.

Pokemon are tools, not party members. You don't recruit them, you capture them in the wild, trade them or breed them and make them fight for you.

Does this make sports manager games RPGs, just with travel and exploration excised?

Pokémon is a JRPG and to me it's silly that some people try to make it stand out from other JRPGs by insisting it's not one.

@Tounushi Demons are legit just tools which you use to fight for you in Shin Megami Tensei, and yet that's still a JRPG, since they're technically counted as party members, and they still level up. Pokemon are still party members which level up.

@TheJGG What's wrong with it standing as a niche of its own?

@Tounushi There not even in the same realm!

I have no idea someone would actually argue that Pokémon isn’t a jrpg, it boggles my mind, it’s just fact. If you level up a party, add party members, have stuff like healing potions and the like, it’s a jrpg, how in the world does sport manager games count? There sport managers! Unless said sport managers have the basic rpg fundamentals, then no, it isn’t, but I don’t know many or any sport managers.

@Tounushi The thing is though, it's not just an unpopular opinion. It's factually incorrect. Nintendo even lists Pokemon as a "Roleplaying game" on the eshop, which is what JRPGs are pretty much listed under. The official pokemon Scarlet and Violet website even mentions that it's the first open-world pokemon RPG.

@VoidofLight They said first open world Pokémon rpg? Interesting! Does this mean it differs from legends in some way?

Like I've said, my experience with the franchise is Gen I, so I'll have to take their word on those.

Gen I simply didn't feel like an RPG to me. Adventure, definitely, but not an RPG.

@Tounushi Gen 1 was marketed as a RPG back when the series was first made.

@Snatcher Legends wasn't open world. It was more akin to Monster Hunter, where you had big open areas to explore, but none of them were connected. With Scarlet and Violet, the entire world is completely open. Every area aside from one city is connected without a loading screen, at least going off the previews for the game, and you're free to do the gyms in any order you wish apparently.

I've been wrong about this for 26 years so I'm refuse to be unwrong now and fact is this is my opinion and opinions can't be wrong so it's factually right!

This thread is very weird sometimes.

Back then the only marketing about it here was the show, maybe some posters and an occasional TV ad and nobody at school refered to it as an RPG. When they were having the event of dealing out Mew at Tennari I don't remember the media calling it an RPG. In fact this thread is the first time I've even run into the subject of whether or not Pokemon's an RPG.

Well, it's the unpopular opinions thread. You won't see a dude with a mug behind a text-covered table here.

@Tounushi What's a "dude with a mug behind a text-covered table"?