Pokémon Let's Go Might Be The Final Time Junichi Masuda Directs The Main Series

Well...
If next Pokemon games (Mainline or Spinoff) will be better from younger generation ideas, Nintendo can always find a replacement for Seniors if they want to retire.

Maybe now the 2019 Pokemon game will have a chance to be actually good.

This is the guy that ended up Gen 1 pandering and losing what made the series popular: Evolution.

When Ohmori got the chance to direct both ORAS and then Sun and moon, it was a huge change after the lacklustre XY. I tend to agree with Masuda that his magnum opus was Gen 5, because after that...wow.

@MsJubilee

OR the games will stray further from their roots and become even more simplified like Pokemon GO. I like how the guy has directed so many Pokemon games but because of one spin off, you think he's suddenly bad at what he does.

Also, go ahead and assume the Let's Go games are bad before you even play them. I and many other longtime Pokemon fans are still excited for this.

Good. I was getting tired of him babysitting us veteran players.

@Frenean "Also, go ahead and assume the Let's Go games are bad before you even play them" I was never gonna say Pokemon Let's Go baby our players was going to be a bad game my dude.

@MsJubilee

Yeesh lmao, that's all I have to say

No offense but good. He has been showing more and more negativity to complex games and recently even discussed that he hated Pokemon eggs. It's been mostly his pushing that's causing most of the games to be significantly easier. I don't understand why people say red and blue is not a starting point for a series when it was the first game and therefore had to be a starting point. I shouldn't be able to literally spam one move and get through 80% of battles without any concern. I appreciate his work, but I am glad to see he's finally stepping down.

Literally minutes after I posted this, I just found out that in Pokemon let's go you can pay an NPC to force a particular nature on all wild Pokemon you encounter. No more grinding out the natures you need or using hold items to coerce the natures you need you need. This is actually upsetting me right after that great Smash direct

@LordGeovanni

Grinding doesn't add complexity to a game, it's nothing but padding to artificially lengthen the time you spend in a game. I can agree that he seems to be losing his touch, but he's already stated that 2019's game will give hardcore fans what they want. Let's Go still looks fun.

Masuda has had some good ideas over the years, and I am getting Let's Go. But good. Considering just how much better Black 2/White 2 were than Black/White, and Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon better than Sun/Moon, the rookie teams, while not perfect, are still showing much more ambition. Black 2/White 2 in particular were awesome and I'm still waiting for another Pokemon with that many fun features, difficulty levels, and an achievement system.

While I don't agree with everything Masuda has done, he has had a hand in what is arguably one of the most popular video game IPs ever. In my opinion, he's earned at least a break from the series...if not retirement.

@Frenean grinding is a method to overcome adversity in games. It is a method of planning out and making logical decisions on how to advance. Spoon feeding brand new players the most powerful versions of any Pokemon they want whenever they want is not advisable. It weakens the dedication the fans have, and it contributes to either a sense of entitlement or a lack of confidence in their ideas. 'If you are too busy being always beaten by X Pokemon, dump your Y Pokemon and just make an X Pokemon because obviously it's so much superior'. It does not teach. It holds your hand the whole way. And you know what? You want to discuss it being padding? Well I am tired of being done with a $40 or $60 game in 20 hours. I value my time, but I value my money as well. If I enjoy sitting and grinding up Pokemon and deserving the effort of a strong team when I put that effort in, then how are other supposed to tell me that I'm playing a game wrong? In the meantime, why should I feel as though I made a great deal when I am able to get a perfect elite team in 15 hours or less and then only use my cartridge for 20 minutes where I get curb-stomped by people that are then cheating the absolute best team that they can anyway?

They need to step up their cheating detection and ramp up their punishments for cheaters. Not make everything free and easy to justify people cheating in previous games.

@LordGeovanni

Again, grinding isn't complex or difficult. Just because you value the idea of spending your time doing the same thing over and over doesn't mean you're being challenged. The only thing being challenged is your patience. I'm sorry, but this idea that a game has to be 40 or more hours long to get your money's worth makes no sense to me. If you aren't really progressing through content, what's the point? If they incorporated a cool way to get the natures from Pokemon that you wanted that'd be one thing, but repeatedly catching the same Pokemon and hoping RNG is in your favor and you get the nature/etc. you want, or one-two shotting the same couple of Pokemon in an area to level up your Pokemon for hours, only to have to switch your lead Pokemon out and do the same thing over again isn't what I call engaging or fun. It's mindless busywork and it's why, outside of Pokemon, I've only beaten maybe 6 or 7 JRPGs in my life. It isn't difficult. It isn't stimulating.

I'll take a 20 hour game that keeps the gameplay/story fresh and exciting over a 40+ hour game where I spent over twice the amount of time it took to get through the campaign mindlessly grinding just so that I could hit some arbitrary numbers and artificially pad out the game.

I’m sure negative nelsons will spin this to whatever narrative they want, but it’s good to move on professionally and creatively. Software (be it a game or an application) is an art is just as many ways as it is a practical application of computer science. And it requires creativity and it pulls a lot from its creators. Sometimes you want to do something else, not because you are washed up or whatever but you have so many other ideas that you put aside for the business need or because you are in management (which I hate that so many companies act like that is the only path for growth when it isn’t really even a goal or thought for many that dev.) and your role locks you down. I hope stepping back not only means he grooms others but that he really gets to focus on projects he may have had to put aside.

@Ryu_Niiyama

Yeah, I'd definitely be interested in seeing what he does outside of Pokemon now.

@Frenean I hate to have to say it, but if you don't enjoy RNG and you don't enjoy having to wait or grind maybe RPGs are just not for you. Traditional RPGs are turn-based games that require large amount of times to complete. They are immersive stories that drag you in and bring you along for the ride. Pokemon started as this and despite the game makers making the games easier and easier and easier with every subsequent generation, people are now cheating even more than before. And the response is to effectively giveaway incredibly powerful Pokemon through online events or "walking to your GameStop" events. And when that is not enough they almost completely ruin breeding, shiny hunting, IV hunting, grinding, battling, catching... The list goes on... but so does the cheating.

You speak on hoping that RNG is in your favor, but you dismiss the actions in the game already that can benefit finding the nature you want. Synchronize is an ability that specifically is designed for that purpose as well as it's in battle use. But who cares about that just pre-program whatever you want it's only going to cost you money instead of you know actually thinking of ways to get what you need done without resorting to the game maker hand holding you the whole way.

@Knuckles-Fajita

I think pkmn sun and moon is lacklustre compared to XY. Alola is pretty bland. The world design is lacking detail, ugly roads, ugly buildings, ruins and caves....etc and slow combat. I actually liked XY.

After sun..i never bought Ultra sun and moon and i am alrdy dead set on not buying the new lets go.

@LordGeovanni

The JRPGs I've beaten were worth my time. Outside of Pokemon, the latest one I played and finished was Persona 5 and it was glorious. I love Pokemon, I've been playing and enjoying every single generation since the beginning. I even enjoy breeding, but this idea that grinding somehow adds depth to Pokemon is crazy to me. The games have always been easy. I won't argue with you that spending a large amount of time grinding and hoping RNG is in your side takes patience, but that's all it takes. Literally the only difference is that before you had to tell yourself that sinking hours into a mindless grind was going to be worth it. I'll agree that you feel better about your "accomplishment" once you finally get to where you want after hours of grinding, but I don't necessarily think that's a good thing. You were forced to spend so much time and for what, knowing that you spent hours doing the same thing over and over with no challenge?

You know what made me feel satisfied after a couple of hours of trying? Defeating Ornstein and Smough for the first time in Dark Souls solo. Yeah I was fighting them over and over again, but it was a challenge the entire time. I had to think about what I was doing and had to stay focused and concentrate. When I breed battle ready Pokemon? I'm just lying in bed barely paying attention while I bike up and down a set path while watching Netflix. One of these scenarios was an actual challenge, the other was padding.

Let's hope that the newer generation don't think that they have to uphold any traditions, just be creative. The only tradition they should uphold is.... Have a great game on release with little to no bugs.
Like if they see that doing other things to Pokémon would help it, go for it.
Obviously don't turn the game to an unrecognizable mess, but open that creativity and expand the game greatly.

I wasn’t aware that these Pokémon Let’s Go games were considered mainline games. I was under the impression the ones coming out next year were that and these were a reimagining of the story and setting from the first gen into a new type of game for a different crowd. At least that’s what I took away from that first big reveal.

@eSocrates

It's a bit of both, we're getting a more traditional, hardcore (if you can call it that) Pokemon game next year and this is its own thing.

@Frenean Grinding is not just depth. It is dedication. Placing effort into something for 5 minutes doesn't make that result lasting to the player. Putting in the time and grind makes things feel worth. Have you ever made a pot? Or painting? And then had it get ruined? It feels a whole lot worse than if it was some cheap $5 vase from Walmart or such. Same thing here. Grinding is dedication. It is effort. And it has meaning to the player for the result. The grind is not the fun part. It crafts the fun part.

And since you brought it up, let us talk the difficulty in the Pokemon games. Because you made a slight mistake in my view. The games have not always been easy. If you go back right now and decide on Charmander in Red or Blue, you are going to have a bit of a struggle beating Brock. And possibly Misty. If you play Gold/Silver, you are going to want to plan out your attack against Whitney's Miltank. Because THAT is how hard those games were.

I would bet that a new gamer, one starting games this year regardless of their age, would have more difficulty with Pokemon Gen 1 or 2 then they would have with Gen 7. But I would also say that it is NOT because of balancing that the game is easier. I would say it is because the game is deliberately made easier and I hate that. Pokemon has effectively become nothing more than a short and easy story to get you through the main game so you can get shoved into the "multiplayer" aspect of Online battles and real life tournaments.

But I will not just sit here and say what is bad. I do not believe pointing out mistakes is acceptable without at least giving potential solutions. For example, if people want shiny pokemon more accessible, why not increase the different # of shiny colors instead of increasing the chance of shiny? Right now I think it is something like 1/4096 with SOS allowing it up to 13/4096 and also being able to use the Shiny Charm to triple that? I would rather have something like three new shiny colors and have 3/8192 chance of getting one. And then you have greater odds of a shiny but less odds of a specific shiny. Allowing for many "improvements" for some pokemon fans dislike and also allowing for new content that should be simple to implement rather than giving us more poor designs like Ice cream cones.

@LordGeovanni

Catch a Mankey - Brock beaten.
Fighting type moves on a decently leveled Pokemon - Miltank beaten.

I'm not going to comment on the shiny thing aside from saying that a 3/8192 chance to catch a Pokemon with a different skin color is ridiculous and why I never hunted for shiny Pokemon.

Talking about poor Pokemon design choices is rich when generation 1 had three different goo Pokemon with faces, a Pokeball Pokemon, magnets that evolve into more magnets, and a blocky rocking horse. Let's not let nostalgia blind us here, Pokemon Blue was my first Pokemon game and G/S/C is my favorite but there are a few bad designs in every generation.

Dedication is fine, but being dedicated to spending hours doing the same thing over and over does not make the game anymore complex than it is now, in fact some people might just see it as a waste of their time because the content isn't really engaging. One shotting the same Pokemon over and over again with a super effective move to level up, only stopping to go to the Pokecenter to refresh PP and resume this tired process is not engaging and you aren't somehow more skilled because you raised your Pokemon's numbers.

I really hope Let's Go is the last traditional Pokemon game and they change it up drastically like BotW.

@Frenean
Good luck catching a Mankey in Red or Blue before Brock.
"I'm not going to comment on rare thing cause it is stupid"

And I wasn't commenting on Gen 1 designs. I was commenting on stupid designs to pad the "NEW" count. But good job trying to focus on ignoring my suggestion.

And you know what else is boring? Fighting Blissey that were specifically genned by players so they kill themselves and get you 38 levels each. Or running into 8th Level Gym Leaders with two or three pokemon and they are 20~30 levels below you. The game needs Challenge. And grinding is a way to immerse players into a game. If you cannot stand grinding, then like I said earlier... RPGs may not be your genre of game. But in the meantime, I will continue to give my opinion: grinding is part of the genre at a core level, and Pokemon spoon-feeding everything is making the game weaker overall.

@LordGeovanni

There are plenty of JRPGS that do difficulty better. Persona 5 has difficulty settings. Pokemon should have had a system like this from the beginning. I don't play Pokemon for complexity or difficulty because Pokemon has always been baby's first RPG. I play Pokemon to collect Pokemon, evolve them, and journey through a world with them with mostly good enough stories and great music/art design. The biggest draw to Pokemon, at least from the developer side, is catching them all. It's in the tagline. It's usually the ultimate challenge in the game. I actually like all of the traditional things in Pokemon, and I'll admit that they have streamlined the games but I wouldn't say they made them easier. They just took out a lot of the fluff. The enemy AI in Pokemon has always been as dumb as a bag of bricks and I'd say they need to work on that more than anything.

While they could make the difficulty better, what is happening, and what you are suggesting, is making the game even more a waste of time. Giving away free things or dumbing down systems in place is not an answer. It is a division down to the lowest common denominator. While I cannot make informed discussion of Persona 5 (I haven't played it myself), I could discuss the balance that Final Fantasy 8 did. Those enemies directly scaled with your level. They obtained attacks at certain levels and if you were above those levels it would alter the random battles and the actual story battles too. Even bonus bosses had scaled levels.
I could easily see Gym Leaders (and potentially even trainers on routes and in caves) having X number of standard moves and having Y, which is a number of TM moves to make challenging battles. Nothing quite makes a difficult battle like having Lance triple Dragonite team you. But if they had a varying moveset and HyperBeam + Dragon Dance I could see a lot more replay value.

But I would like to touch upon your thoughts on the "Catch em all" tagline. You would say they haven't made the game easier, so I would suggest a typical scenario from Pokemon Blue and Let's Go Pikachu. Both the same area, same pokemon, same everything aside the game makes (and improvements over the gens but I dont think those will factor here.)

Pokemon Blue. Mission? Capture a Clefairy. Get items for search, Pokeballs, potions, status items, Ethers... Go into Mount Moon. Start random battles until you find the Clefairy. Possibly get statused by Paras, or hurt by Geodudes, or Confused by Zubats and smack yourself around. Heal. Keep searching. FIND THE CLEFAIRY Now you need to weaken it and capture it. Let us say you are lucky and capture it instead of killing it. There you go. Mission complete and you earned it.

Pokemon Let's Go Pikachu. Mission? Capture a Clefairy. Step one? Buy supplies, Pokeballs. No potions, or status heals or anything really cause there are no longer random battles. Go find a spot to stand. Wait for a Clefairy. Wait more. Wait some more cause you looked away cause you were bored, and the only clefairy on screen despawned. Alright. FOUND ONE. Throw pokeball and catch.

While one has some "grinding", it has difficulty. It has cost to the actions. It has effort put in. The other? All that "fluff" stripped out is now just causing you to sit in a corner and wait for the "improved gameplay" to RNG a spawn for you. How engaging. This is what I mean when I talk about spoon-feeding, the game gives you what you want and in the end it is even less engaging and while some people like to cheer this on because "it removes that fluff in the way of my fun" it also makes the game vastly shallower. That "Uber Rare Spawn" had no challenge to obtain. No effort to obtain. Well... unless standing in one spot is physically painful to you. But it still shows that these improvements are not improvements.

Thank god for that, I say. Maybe there’s hope for the series after all.

That's all well and good, but Let's Go isn't main series.

Wonder what this will mean for the remake series. Does it just stop after ORAS and the Go series is the new "Remake" series or does the hopeful 4th gen remake happen after next year's games, with or without him?

I’m looking forward to Pokémon let’s go. I’m a hardcore fan but I’m just happy that we’re getting a yellow remake for the most part

Even if the game is pretty bad i bet I'll still enjoy it. So imma grab it. While Pokémon games are stagnant, they still hold my attention, up till sun & moon. I hadn't played since platinum, but hopped back for X&Y and was thoroughly surprised. Didn't get OSRS just cus I had beaten Ruby a few months before release. Sun & moon just failed to keep me hooked though. While stagnant, the man did keep the series high quality enough to keep drawing you in, and keep you loving it, for the most part, the whole way thru. I give him props for that, wish him well. Looking forward to what a new team might bring.

Hopefully he will remain as a developer for future Pokémon games, especially as a composer with Go Ichinose, Hitomo Sato and the others

Did anyone saw that lets go games won't be compatible with the pro controller?
I think this is the last drop of water in the bucket and that I won't buy this games...
I was hoping for ignoring the motion controls completely but now I am no even sure you can play with two joy cons on grip (probably you need to play with single joy con in TV mode lol)

Good the series can really use some fresh new people.

Good because the Pokemon series needs an injection of new ideas outside of the character art.

Like people who can actually make a story that's well written.

@MsJubilee,

You forgot to say Pokemon let's go is not the game everybody wanted.

@LordGeovanni @Frenean I don't think grinding is the right word. Paying NPCs to have a Pokemon appear is just lazy. To keep the world consistent and believable within its own frame, it makes sense you go out and hunt them down. Paying an NPC is like paying your buddy while you're fishing with him and he pulls the biggest fish you wanted to catch out of the water for you for some pocket change. It kinda ruins the magic.

There's other ways they can fix this ''issue''. I'm not a big fan of how LGPE reveals every Pokemon on a new route just by looking at it. It's not an issue for gen 1, but part of the charm of a new generation is stumbling upon these guys on accident in a battle. Seeing them walking around is just silly. ORAS had some good ideas of showing body parts sticking out of the grass (remember the Zigzagoon tail?), they can do stuff like that, so it's easier to look for Pokemon once you're already familiar with them.

Paying NPCs is just a lazy solution in this case.

To be honest, I'm actually glad this happened sooner than later, since the direction of the games recently have been average/decent instead of going the extra mile in some cases. Don't get me wrong, hes done some amazing things in the past but the things he has mentioned during interviews for content and playerbase has just been annoying as of yet. One thing I'd personally want from someone that may take the mantel, is them having a mindset of expanding what can be done for post-game content in terms of battling, other than the set standard and being willing to understand that it definitely is possible like in the past.

And lastly, here is hoping that atleast somethings get resolved internally on how they manage the directions of what comes forward in first based games during a generation, since those have been needing to improve for I dare say 12 years.

Hopefully they don't just swap out one talentless hack for another.

Great that he's giving the younger generations a chance to shine. He has had a great career so far and at 50 years old, probably has at least another 15 years left. I would love it if he oversaw the series in general, but really focused his efforts on new ideas. Game Freak have made some cool titles like HarmoKnight, Tembo the Badass Elephant and Drill Dozer, so seeing more new stuff from them would be welcome.

Hopefully, Kunihiko Yuyama follows suit and leaves the main anime to someone more competent that will have the since to remove ash or age him up a bit. At the very least ash should be a mentor to another MC like how Brock was a mentor to him at this point.

@SuperGhirahim64 They had a blueprint to follow then to improve upon it.
The Ultra games aren't bad because of new problems they added, it's quite the contrary in fact, it just is boring because it took back the flaws of Sun/Moon. I'm not sure they had a choice in that matter.

So I don't think you have to worry because the "younger generation" isn't responsible for what is bothering you.

@Frenean thank you for that great comment I scrolled past some ignorant ones before yours and was just shaking my head. Everybody nowadays is in a hurry to pull out the pitchforks without their own self refelection. Good day to you!

@MsJubilee That was uncalled for.

This would be a good change both creatively and professionally. This guy still has plenty of time left in his career, but it'd be good to see him take on a more... supervisor-ish role.
Nintendo has been having a great deal of luck allowing their new and younger talent to have more say. I mean, Pokemon has been in this weird backward stasis state ever since the end of gen 4.
I didn't care for gen 5 at all, gen 6 was forgettable and gen 7 was the definition of handholding.

The Pokemon world is just an untapped hotbed for creativity. There are so many stories and types of gameplay that could be explored. Colosseum and Gale of Darkness are some of my favourite games in the whole series, and they didn't follow the traditional path. I think they need to look at concepts like that more while moving forward.

Eh I'm not sure so much of the negativity about the actual mainline games is deserved here,but I do still think Pokémon Let's Go looks awful.

I don't mind QOL improvements but it seems like they just removed everything.

They need to go the Zelda route and make it open world.

@personauser0893 Well they did have some help from Miyamoto. He was the origin of the idea that the series should go back to its roots. The gameplay mechanics were also inspired by watching him climbing up and down trees for more than an hour XD

I honestly think people are focusing too much on the man and not the ball. Yes, Masuda is the lead designer on Let's Go, but I suspect, like most Japanese companies, that it is a collaborative decision making process. Unless Let's Go performs badly, which I highly doubt, then the format is here to stay. Masuda has already hinted that the design reflects the approach they want to take going forward.

People are seriously naive if they think the 2019 game will be a reversion to form. I suspect it will be much more closely aligned with Let's Go than people suspect.

After all, why would Game freak make a new game to appeal to casual fans to encourage them to buy the games, only to revert to the usual game style - which Masuda thinks is too difficult for many players. That makes no sense at all.

I can’t wait to see the younger generation do the games.
Not to be rude, but maybe we can get what everyone would like in a Pokemon game.

Plus it’s sad to see the developer of the first game go but after a while, everyone needs a break at one point.

@Frenean My issues with Masuda have nothing to do with this game (Which for reference is considered main series, not a spin-off), X and Y are by far the worst games in the series, falling hard after the amazing Black/White (2). More so than that, every interview with him post-BW has just shown that he now holds opinions that are an antithesis to everything I loved about the Pokemon games in the first 5 generations. SuMo may not be my favorite games, but at least they make me more than confident that they are trying to push the series forwards again.

@ThatNyteDaez Sorry homeboy

I thought the young developers were the ones making this in the first place, whilst the more senior guys are making the actual Pokemon game.
This isn't a mainline game either, it's a spinoff.

I'm just curious as to what about these games constitutes a spin off to some?

Wonder if this means we'll finally get that open world Pokemon game people have been asking for, for years.
Though I would personally like Pokemon games to have the combat of Pokken, cause it actually feels like a Pokemon battle, than the turned-based combat does.

Well finally, nothing after gen 4 was memorable, not even the pokemon, although I must say B2 & W2 were quite good. I would really like another Pokemon game with the difficulty of Fire red & Leaf green, an actual rival, less handholding, a good story like Platinum or ORAS. Oh and please no more exp share as key item and getting exp by capturing Pokemon. Its boring when I'm progressing through the games and I'm 10 to 20lvls higher than everybody.

@MsJubilee So just because of one spin-off that he wanted to do out of interest for broadening the demographic, he's suddenly a bad director because it's not what YOU wanted.

This is the same man who's directed every mainline title since Gen 2, except HG/SS, OR/AS or US/UM, and just because you didn't get exactly what you wanted out of this title, he's a terrible person for incarcerating what you like, oh boo hoo!

If you're not here to celebrate everything this humble being has accomplished during his time with the series, I suggest you take your tears elsewhere.

@BlueBlur101"I suggest you take your tears elsewhere." Woah dawg calm down. I just have another different opinion than you, don't have to tell me to f*ck off.

Another thing just cause he did all that in the past doesn't mean he can't get criticized now.

@MsJubilee You worded it as if Let's Go disregards all of the other games he's worked on. As if now he's a bad director just because of those games.

I didn't like US/UM at all, and I have no intentions of getting Let's Go, but that doesn't mean I don't like what they're doing with the game. Frankly, it's smart of them to target the Go-playing crowd, in an attempt to ease them into the core series, in time for 2019's games