Topic: Pokemon Legends Arceus

@VoidofLight The Pokemon have bumps and curvature on eyes and mouths, rather than just textures, this makes me unbelievably happy. Also, I think the human characters (aside from the blurry textures as you mentioned) look FANTASTIC, especially Amadan, Irida and Volo. I still cannot get over the fact that Cynthia's ancestor, the ancestor to one of the most confident, calm and forward thinking characters in the entire series, is the Beedle of the game: an absolute goofball who will pop up from out of nowhere to sell you things. I LOVE HIM.

@Fizza Agreed. I really like how the pokemon just finally have actual mouths and eyes, and make contact in fights now. The character designs are really strong as well, and I really like them more than I did for Sword and Shield. These games are developing a strong style, and I love it.

My whole point is I just get fed up of all the ‘graphics bad’ comments. They are always disingenuous, whether intentionally so or not. I can fully appreciate if you don’t like the style and even agree on some wider points about a real mix of quality when it comes to battle animations in S/S but people who talk like the games look objectively bad… they need to get their eyes checked. Especially in the context of the Switch. The Switch has produced some beautiful games with it’s limitations, but if you don’t think S/S is up there with them then… that is like your opinion, but I just cannot agree with you at all.

Using examples like the choppy, blurry, muddy SMT V or using Nintendo, in house, first party games which are quite literal tech miracles, to show that ‘graphics bad’ are just such bad faith arguments. If you genuinely believe that then again… I guess that is your opinion, but I just can’t agree with you at all.

And who knows, maybe Legends will have ***** animations or atrocious performance and if that is the case… then we’ll talk. But anyone who looks at the footage we’ve seen, understands the Switch’s limitations and the games on the system already and then makes comments like “it looks like an N64 game” is a clown.

@Pizzamorg Like I get the "Sword and Shield looks kinda bad" arguments when it comes to the wild areas, but outside of those areas, the game looks fine. I really think that Legends is a step up from that game graphically though, and I really like how Legends looks so far.

Yeah, the performance in the wild areas is atrocious and if that is the argument people are making, then we can agree on that, but don’t call it “graphics”. And don’t use BOTW, that was a big empty field like S/Ss wild areas were. The only difference is the base game wild areas ran in like single digit fps when playing online, but BOTW is kind of a miracle. Just look at all of the framerate issues in Hyrule Warriors AOC for contrast.

Like I say, if Legends doesn’t improve on that, then we’ll talk. But get out of here with this ‘graphics bad’ clown talk.

@VoidofLight one day I hope you can actually tell when I’m joking or not ;p

@Pizzamorg With Sword and shield, it was mostly just the textures in the wild area that looked kind of gross or off.

@Snaplocket SMT V is pretty choppy and blurry. Dunno what you're playing it on, but compared to other switch games, it's pretty muddy looking. I'm saying this as someone who's both played and enjoyed SMT V so far. The game pushes the switch, and so it has a really low frame-rate as a result. Looks worse in handheld mode than Xenoblade 2 did honestly.

Monster Hunter Rise looks alright, but it also has that same fuzziness issue, and a strange issue with character models where it looks like their arms are wearing fish nets or something. Stories 2 isn't that graphically intensive, and only looks as good as it does because of the art style alone. Octopath is an entirely different beast because it's 2D, and the textures are nothing to write home about, even though the game's still great.

Legends Arceus, at least for a pokemon game looks graphically better than the other entries in the series. If anything this just goes to show that the topic about graphics is subjective.

@Snaplocket Or the game must look wildly different in TV mode, since I'm playing in handheld. Either that, or I've had exposure to many other games outside of the Switch, so Switch games are more noticeable to me when it comes down to how SMT V looks and acts.

@Snaplocket The game hits really low framerates often.

These animations look great, and the music is pretty good. Aside from a few rough textures, the game looks pretty clean as well. The only thing I'm worried about is how barren the locations seem to be.

@Snaplocket The cutscenes did, but not the gameplay segments. Still looked extremely blurry there.

Yeah, in handheld, SMT V chugs just opening and closing a menu. Like it’s impressive they are able to get so many demons on screen, but the performance cost was significant, as was the cost for the visuals. All the environments are very basic, but even then it looks very compromised (hidden behind some very ugly filtering) and runs pretty poorly.

I also think Rise looks kinda awful. It is very low res, upscaled in such a way that somehow makes it look more low res? With lots of very obvious sacrifices made, like incredibly flat and bland environments. It looks better in TV mode, but even then, I would hardly choose Rise as an example of Switch’s best looking games. The saving grace of that game, however, is performance is rock solid. I have no idea what FPS it runs in, but I never notice any dips and a low but consistent framerate is better than a high, but unstable, one imo. Now if we want to argue it has a very nice art style, that is something different but something I can agree on.

Also I didn’t play Stories 2 on Switch, but didn’t that version have some serious performance issues?

So yeah, as I was saying… whether intended or not, these arguments are disingenuous.

@Pizzamorg Yeah, the Switch version had an uncapped frame-rate, so it chugged in tons of areas, as opposed to the PC version which ran at 60 FPS.

I just came back from the pokémon subreddit to check the general reaction to the new video, and man there are a couple of threads I kind of wish I could nuke. A bunch of people with the same old, tired, bitter arguments about visuals and developer ethics, over and over again. The place as a whole isn't like that, but there's some isolated points of pure poison.

@BrazillianCara I mostly avoid pokemon communities now, since there’s hardly any discussions that are good about any of these games. Most of the times, it’s people complaining about them or bashing the graphics, even if the concept of the game is exactly what they wanted.

The game doesn't look too bad. Though those overhead panning shots leave some things to be desired. I'm more worried there isn't a whole lot to do.

It's looks very game-y in the sense that 'here's an area with 3 Buizel and a Floatzel, and over here is an area with 3 Bidoof and a Bibarel'. They seem to be very much fixed in place, grouped in specific numbers, and they all seem to be walking around, doing... nothing. Just idling in place.

I was hoping there would be a little more interactivity with the environment. Some Pkmn climb trees, others hide in tall grass, two Tauros butting heads, an Ursaring chasing Starly away, etc. Show me a Scyther cutting up trees. Can you even destroy trees and (small) boulders?

Same holds true for the (only) town in the game, a bunch of houses with idle NPCs standing in front of the specific building they're designated to. There just isn't much life in this game. (kinda ironic, because it's jubiLIFE city lol)

@Octane I don't think it's going to be boring personally because of how much info each Pokemon needs to be catalogued with in the dex, such as habits, what moves they've used and even what food they eat (it's in the Presents back in August if you're looking for what I'm talking about). Besides that, there'll also be the main campaign, sidequests galore and lots of Pokemon to catch, just like Pokemon games have always been like. Also, I think there's going to be a few more towns than just Jubilife. Based off the map art, it seems there's also going to be one near the sea and one up in the mountains (precursor to Snowpoint?). Very exciting stuff.

I'm probably going to keep quiet here now just in case something happens and I start to become annoying by talking too much so have a good time chatting/arguing here everyone!

@Fizza Depends on what the side quests are. If they are 'catch 50 Bidoof', I'm out.