Topic: Pokémon Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl

@Eel I mean, the promise was made years ago, back when the series was in a very different position and direction.

@Zuljaras Eh, it's not lazy if they do something like Legends, where they fully redo every single pokemon model, and make brand new animations from the ground up.

@Pizzamorg @VoidofLight I would agree on 100% with you guys if they were not in the business for so many years and they were not as successful as they are financially

I mean come on, it is Pokemon, not some indie franchise or studio

Is this ALL Pokemons from Gen 4 ?
Only 2 Pokemons really caught my attention: Empoleon and Lucario since I prefer humanoid looking Pokemons like on Yokai Watch.
The other Gen 4 Pokemons are okay for me but not really crazy with them.

I mean it is being made by a studio of like 300 people, who have predominantly either supported projects or done mobile games. If this was made by GAMEFREAK/Nintendo with full resources behind it, maybe you'd have an argument. But this deffo seems like it has been given to a D team to manage, so your expectations should be really managed accordingly. You can be mad about this being full price or not grander in scale etc I ain't saying you are wrong for feeling that way, but in the context there isn't really much you can do.

@Pizzamorg you are right. I guess IF there is a problem with the game it would be the price but let's be honest Pokemon are not cheap games. They will maintain their price through the years

@Zuljaras It's not really to do with finances as it is to do with TPC's shift in priority. They don't see the games as something to prioritize anymore, with the merch and anime taking the front seat to it all. The games are mostly made on a strict timeline from the looks of it, so that TPC can keep pushing out the Merch and anime seasons.

It's a sad state of affairs, and I feel bad for the developers at gamefreak, since they probably do want to do more with the series, but they don't really get that chance from the looks of it. Hopefully though, Legends will end up being that chance for them to do something new and exciting.

Also, speaking about ILLCA, this is the first game they've done on their own I'm pretty sure, so it's probably going to end up being fairly basic. It looks decent though.

@VoidofLight To be honest Legends sounds like a hub with some separate open areas like in Sword and Shield. I hope I am wrong here.

@Zuljaras It isn't open world like BotW, and functions like Monster Hunter mainly. The areas are bigger wild areas effectively, but that's not really a bad thing. Should help with the game glitching, and should make for areas that aren't just giant empty spaces.

Ohhh ok, I was worried when I heard that, if it's like monhun or xenobladw than that should be fine, those were still fine. I didn't like sw&sh's way of doing it though.

Yeah, let us keep with hubs for now which hopefully won't run like ***** and then look to do the open world thing with the next Nintendo console. Before people say it, yes we know the Switch can do open worlds but it clearly requires some serious work on the optimisation front - at least to find a good compromise between performance and visuals.

However, the way in which Pokemon is being handled, it seems like they can't be bothered to do the extra work required to optimise the title properly for Switch's limitations. And I mean why would they be bothered, when it seems like people eat up anything Pokemon branded, regardless of quality.

While I am excited for P/D, I feel this only further agitates the issue. We won't know until reviews drop, but based on the marketing, they are doing fairly minimal work on P/D, which might be a blessing given the Switch's limitations, but it is very Nintendo of Nintendo to just take an old title, do a couple of things to it and slap the Switch logo on it, and sell it for full price. Like aren't these games almost two decades old?

Nintendo have no real competition for their IP or the kind of market share they are going for, so they can sorta just do whatever the ***** they want and you either have to agree to this or just cut your loses.

@Pizzamorg Sword and Shield....it...SERIOUSLY, feels like an HD 3DS game. Like the battle system was just ported over from Sun and Moon or something. :/

You see like Monster Hunter Stories 2 and all the insane animations and dynamic movement and so on, to really make a turn based battle feel alive. Then Pokemon has like a static image being moved up and down on the spot like it is MS Word and maybe the other Pokemon will flicker or something to suggest it is hit. Just wild that the battle animations have barely moved in over two decades.

Are we really doing this again?
And aren't the majority of MHS2 animations using the templates of years of Monster Hunter games?

Yeah there's like, no reason for the games to exclude Pokemon when they're just going to continue to use idle animations when they slide towards their target for a split-second for a Tackle, or something. lol

Also this, but at least the monsters were redesigned, and have their unique animations and such.

I really hope one day we get a pokémon game with every single pokémon present with new models, and with complex animations for every single move. Not because I need it, but so people can stop complaining.

What are you asking or what point are you trying to make here? Pokemon is older than Monster Hunter, yet they still have such basic battle systems. So if MH can put together animations using "templates of years of games" (whatever that even means), then that gives Pokemon even less of an excuse, surely?

Like didn't S&S say they cut down to the roster to curate the animations in battles? Cause well that sure turned out well.

Stories 2 is the game Pokemon games should be. In fact, I'd say JRPGs have been ahead of Pokemon in terms of battle animations even for turn based games for literally decades. Pokemon is just pure low effort, because it sells regardless.

They're also quite different from each other...not only that, the monsters are used outside of battle since you ride and fly with them. In Pokemon, the mons are kinda just...there...mostly idle animations. Even in the overworld...the monsters in Stories/2 had more work put into them.

At this point, I don't know why nobody has tried to go directly to them to protest against the current state of the games. And I mean an actual protest, gathering at least a few hundred people with signs and banners in front of closest The Pokémon Company office, making enough noise to draw the attention of mainstream media.

Yeah, a semi open world, where the monsters exist in the open world and you can actually see them. You can also interact with your monsters as well. You can fine tune your monsters to fit specific purposes or serve different functions. All of the moves are fully animated, even smaller animations like just doing a little boop or something is animated.

Like these just seem so basic, but they don't even exist in a Pokemon game or when they try it, your are getting 6 FPS and a 30 centimetre to scale draw distance.