@VoidofLight Pokemon itself has always ridden on the coattails of other successful monster collectors. Everything about Pokemon as a whole can be argued as just taking ideas from Dragon Quest games including monster designs (Pidgeotto being the exact same bird as Bludgerigar but recolored, Charizard is just Red Dragon with wings, Gligar whom was meant to be a Kanto Pokemon looks almost exactly like Rumblebee, etc. Bear in mind these are just a FEW examples out of DOZENS that are super easy to notice when you look through Dragon Quest's older monsters), not to mention even the lore aspect of keeping monster buddies in capsules was done years before Pokemon by Dragon Quest.
They also did this with Yo-Kai Watch. Just about every "new innovation" with Sun and Moon can be easily argued as being a shoddy, watered down feature they took from Yo-Kai Watch games after Yo-Kai Watch 2 outsold ORAS in Japan as well as YKW anime getting better JP ratings than Pokemon anime.
If you have such an issue with TemTem "riding the hype" and that ruins a game for you, then it stands to reason Pokemon deserves FAR more criticism for such given they have done so for far longer.
Also, SWSH could have avoided the EXP problem by just giving the EXP Share an off switch like before.
Just one example of a needless problem they put on themselves with empty words given the devs themselves have said they want players to choose how to play for themselves but then remove something that lets them do that.
That's not even accounting for all their other empty words regarding SWSH such as promising game balance casually and competitively from removing monsters and yet you can get a Ninetales with Nasty Plot and Fire Blast before the first Gym, which is Grass, easily. Also the competitive format managed to be more busted than prior.
Meanwhile, you have monster collectors like Dragon Quest Monsters Joker 3 Pro and Yo-Kai Watch 3 having over 700 monsters after free DLC and still having much better balanced competitive formats as well as a ton of actual casual content despite both being 3DS games that so easily make SWSH look bad.
@westman98 Yo-Kai Watch just announced a collaboration with Hololive. As of now, a good chunk of the more popular VTubers are now officially Yo-Kai Watch characters just as Cloud, Sephiroth and Hello Kitty are.
That's the exact opposite of "dead and irrelevant". That's ongoing and relevant.
@PortuGuy
None of that is close to true especially since Yo-Kai Watch 2 outsold Pokemon ORAS in Japan, which explains alot why newer Pokemon games have mostly adopated poorly implemented Yo-Kai Watch features since Sun and Moon. What ACTUALLY happened is that their localization office had horrible management and employees were overworked and treated unfairly. Not to mention all their other stuff was making bank at the time such as Ni No Kuni 2 among other things and especially their YKW mobile games which never dwindled below the top 50 grossing mobile games in all Japan ever since its release.
I really wish people would do more research on this topic.
@westman98 New Pokemon Snap is also a first party game that sold monumentally less than that in Japan, yet no one is insisting it to be a flop or dead. Objectively, you still continue to brush aside my point of mobile game profits.
@westman98 Again, no it really isn't. No one claims Mario spinoffs are dead or declining as they continue to top charts. Also take the time to note you couldn't disprove my other points involving mobile game profits.
@westman98 It really isn't. Yo-Kai Watch games have always and continued to sell just as well as any first party Nintendo games on the same consoles in Japan and said first party Nintendo games do well in Japak. Especially YKW4 and Y-Academy selling just as well in their opening time frames as games that did just fine like Mario Tennis Aces or Mario Golf Super Rush. Heck, YKW4 sold more in its opening week than Mario Tennis Aces, yet nobody insists on calling Mario games dead or in cataclysmic decline, so please do more research. The fact of the mobile games still stand as throughout its years of lifetime, Yo-Kai Watch Puni Puni has always remained strong as one of the top grossing mobile games in Japan. Even some sales charts have neglected digital sales of Level-5 games for whatever reason where most of the sakes come from and which give more money to the devs than physical anyway.
I really dislike how westerners act like any monster collector is a "Pokemon rival" as if the idea of sharing a genre is some kind of unthinkable act. If the Japanese thought this way, Pokemon would have died off and be dismissed as a shallow, glitchy Dragon Quest wannabe, which Red Blue and Yellow are super easy to argue being with how much Dragon Quest DNA and inspiration is in those games. You could easily call Pokemon a clone of Dragon Quest 5 and no one would really have a good faith argument against that. Japan loves Pokemon more than any other country and makes the games yet has no issue playing other games in the genre, so why should I? I'm told they love TemTem.
That said, I'm looking forward to this game all the same.
@westman98 That's really not even close to true. Yo-Kai Watch mobile games continue to make bank in Japan and get frequent updates and the anime remains ongoing. Japanese franchises have never relied on non-Japanese audiences to remain alive, profitable and relevant. If you want to see other examples of that, look at Crayon Shin-Chan, Case Closed and Kochikame. Some of those are arguably more relevant and alive due to being even longer than One Piece despite their lack of a western audience. Plus, they never marketed themselves as a "Pokemon Killer". Only Viz Media said that and they only publish the manga and yet that phrase continues to live rent free in the heads of angry Pokemon fans for no reason. Having played Pokemon since the beginning and having played even newer entries like Legends Arceus, I can confidently say none of them come close to how big and good Yo-Kai Watch 3 is.
I'm not saying anyone has to drop Pokemon for other monster collectors or anything like that. You can play other games in a genre. It's not a crime to play both Mario and Sonic despite both being platformers, so why not do that for monster collectors?
@dimi What "great Pokemon games"? I was looking forward to buying this day one cuz all the Pokemon options stink. Every Pokemon game on Switch, I borrowed from someone else and none of them have been worth their price tag or play time when there are so many other better monster collectors on Switch like Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth Complete Edition, Shin Megami Tensei 5 or Monster Hunter Stories 2. I had more reasons to go back to my copy of Yo-Kai Watch 3 on my 3DS than I did to play more of my used copy of Pokemon Shield. That said, I'm more confident Coromon will certainly be worth the wait.
They're on the JP eShop like all the other games the west has yet to get.
Unfortunately, this is nothing new. As good as Level-5 is in terms of writing and game design, their localization is very slow. It took 3 years before Snack World and Yo-Kai Watch 3 became available in English.
@WoomyNNYes Yo-Kai Watch games have been on Switch for years already. This is the 3rd one so far.
@DrDaisy Japanese franchises don't really care about western apathy to remain alive and successful. If you need examples of that, look at Case Closed or Crayon Shin-Chan.
Personally, I'm quite looking forward to this one. Was skeptical about it at first but then watched the Y-Academy anime subbed and really loved its premise and I especially love the character Momo.
At first glance, this game reminds me a ton of Level-5's other game Fantasy Life on 3DS and I quite enjoyed that but now it's in a high school setting. According to other articles, this game has multiple endings including a harem one so I'm even more interested.
Imagine thinking Pokemon is even remotely original when almost everything about it is arguably a watered down ripoff of Dragon Quest 5 but you can bet westerns will never say jack squat when you bring that up.
Westerners that hate any other monster collectors for no good reason are busy wetting their diapers meanwhile the Japanese have never had any issue actually trying and playing other monster collectors hence why Pokemon didn't flop cuz it could easily have just been disregarded as a DQ wannabe and why series like Digimon and Yo-Kai Watch (series that borrow WAY more ideas from Shin Megami Tensei, a game that did monster collecting 9 years before Pokemon existed, than they do from Pokemon but westerners don't know that cuz they don't play anything else) continue to be popular and successful in Japan to this day.
Articles and comments like this are why I can't take western gamers even remotely seriously because they act like total babies over the idea of another monster collector genre game DARING to exist besides Pokemon.
Oh well. Almost any other monster collector has proven to be a much better game than Pokemon especially in recent years, so I have little doubt this one will be any different in being a better game too.
Pokemon doesn't even have any polish with its turn based combat. It makes its main battle system to progress 1v1 but designs many Pokemon and options for 2v2 instead of picking 1 and sticking with it.
Without unofficial rulesets like Smogon, the 1v1 battle system just rewards no-skill strategies like Moody Baton Pass Smeargle. Even with Smogon rulings, it has a long history of rewarding bulky offense and hyper offense teams over others.
Official 2v2 manages to be even worse because due to their huge PokeDex based banlists and other factors, variety in teams is almost non-existent. VGC 2014 was probably the only year to offer so much variety but that's because so many powerful Doubles options were banned that year.
Any other monster collector or RPG in general that has had a competitive format has always used a 3v3 or even 4v4 battle system.
Recent events have proven Pokemon fans will swallow anything for a Pokemon game anyway so if they made a real time battle system much like the terrible anime they love, there would no doubt be plenty defending that.
Imagine thinking Pokemon is original when almost everything about it was ripped off from Dragon Quest. Even funnier how so many of Pokemon's recent endeavors are just worsened ideas they took from better monster collectors like Yo-Kai Watch and Digimon.
@JellyPop So if this game ends up sucking even without them all in it, then what? You can have every monster in a game AND have the game be good. The 2 aren't mutually exclusive. Series besides Pokemon have been able to accomplish that despite having just as big or a bigger monster count than Pokemon.
Been playing Pokemon since RBY days so I am in fact older than Pokemon. Having played other monster collectors as well, I can fairly say that both older ones like Dragon Quest and newer ones like Yo-Kai Watch honestly make Pokemon look like a joke YKW3 and DQMJ3P had the full monster count on a 3DS without tranfer for 700+ monsters each with way better animation, content, etc to boot. They were superior overall games on 3DS and it won't be even remotely surprising if it remains the same making Pokemon look bad on Switch despite having far greater staff with a smaller budget.
@westman98 They don't need to do that cuz they make you pay double for the same game twice, double on top of that with another 2 games with a different set of monsters, usually a remake, and then charge you more now on top of that with a paid transfer system that doesn't automatically renew itself and now only works with a select group of monsters.
Notwithstanding companies like Level-5, Square Enix, Atlus and Bandai-Namco can accomplish the same feat of having far more animation with their own monster collecting RPGs with just as big if not bigger monster counts than your average Pokemon game thanks to having far bigger staff despite way less budget.
@MaxXanders
No idea what on earth gives you that idea since I plan on saving my money on monster collector RPGs with effort and soul put into them made by companies that have always spoiled me with good games in Shin Megami Tensei 5, the future Dragon Quest Monsters Switch project, Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch and Yo-Kai Watch 4: We're Looking Up At The Same Sky. It's nice to have other options.
@Mycroft
"It's just a game, stop getting angry."
Yeah, you right. Good thing I can just buy other games. You're kinda turning that statement on yourself since you're choosing to be passionate about a shallow and jokably easy game designed for Japanese kids. Good thing other monster collectors like YKW and DQM reach higher levels of quality despite being for Japanese kids. In my experience, Pokemon fans have actually gotten pissed if you call it a kiddy game compared to other adult and more mature monster collectors like Shin Megami Tensei and claim it's supposed to be a game for EVERYONE yet they have no issue saying it's for kids when you bring up its flaws.
What's more is that it's funny Masuda basically says you're wrong cuz he said this game was supposed to ALSO be something good for the hardcore veteran fans, i.e. adults.
@Zyph
It IS but there are plenty of examples where doing so is founded on far more quality. Look at the Dragon Quest games. A ton of them have been reusing models and animations ever since Dragon 8 on PS2 but those models have animation and personality comparable to the Pokemon Stadium models.
Plus even with reusing those models and animations, they could still fit their huge monster counts into a game. Dragon Quest Monsters remade its first game for 3DS in Terry's Wonderland. The original game had a 215 monster count with sprites on GBC but that game's remake has a 607 monster count on a 3DS with all the improved PS2 models and animations.
I hope that you realize that the whole point of a demo is so players can judge it before buying the game and get a taste of what it has to offer. A demo is the final phase of a beta, not the first stage of an alpha.
Besides, when it comes to Pokemon, all you have to do is observe how LGEP ended up looking exactly the same in final release compared to all previous footage with basically no change or polish at all. So if Sword and Shield on release end up looking exactly thevsame on final release just like the orevious main series Pokemon Switvh title, then what? What exactly will be the excuse? Cuz people certainly can't claim "the game isn't finished" as a counterargument. That point has a limited number of days before it gets gutted like a fish on release.
What's more is that I honestly find it kind of funny that ONLY with Pokemon, people are claiming you're not allowed to judge a game for anything based only on a demo. Where exactly was this mindset in regards to other games? You certainly didn't see that kind of thinking anywhere regarding the demo for Yo-Kai Watch 4 for instance and understandably so cuz the general consensus was that demo was top notch
@KryptoniteKrunch
And it certainly wouldn't hurt at all to have those nice things PLUS the nice things from past games plus the nice thing of being able to use any monster we please. Good thing I can spend my money and play time on all the other monster collector RPGs that spoil its fans to provide that tho.
@Heavyarms55 I'l stick to statistics and facts based on a far larger scale of the said real world experiences as opposed to going off an an extremely limited and narrow visioned scope of data but you do you as well.
@Vectorman Probably because the head CEO of Level-5 Akihiro Hino made it pretty clear on release during a stream all Yo-Kai would be returning in future free DLC.
@Heavyarms55
You should probably stop using the small sample size of a single classroom as a reference point then. YKW4 was the top preordered game on Amazon Japan. I don't even live in Japan and even I could look that up.
>Still 3 times bigger sales that the first game in its first week.
Do westerners just have some dumb delusion that a game HAS to break 1 million in week 1 to "not be dead and be a success"? Cuz that would certainly be a very silly way of thinking given Zelda BOTW didn't exactly sell much better week 1 compared to this and THAT was a worldwide release. Yet you certainly don't see people clamoring to call Zelda a dying franchise.
Watch the free DLC act as free advertising. Won't be remotely surprising when sales make a big jump when the 6th movie comes out and the free DLC that ties into it releases.
Looking forward to getting my bois Urnfulfilled, Putasockinit, Hoppy Go Lucky, Blownhistoppa, Mermother, Azure Dragon, Draaagin, Beetler, Quagmira, Shakey, Snitchin, Tut'n'K'mon, Cocobanana, Chymera and all my favorites coming back once their free DLC gets released. Sure is nice I'll get to have every monster in the series in a single game without having to pay extra.
@KingMike Thats very unlikely because Nintendo has absolutely NO hand in localization of this game or ANY game made by Level-5. Level-5 does all its OWN localization and Nintendo has absolutely no control or say over this franchise at all because Level-5 does its own publishing as well. This is just one of their series that just happens to be on a Nintendo console (Fun fact: YKW was originally planned to be a PS3 game).
@Yosher It's still super dominant in Japan. This was one of the top most anticipated upcoming games.
@graysoncharles It really isn't. The recent Medal Wars mobile game beta proved it was still a very popular and dominant franchise. Besides, it was NEVER meant to dethrone Pokemon in the first place. Only Viz said that and all they do is publish the manga. They don't actually make the games. That's like saying Pokemon was made to dethrone the monster collectors of Dragon Quest and Shin Megami Tensei, which it did a very poor job of considering those franchises still continue to have far more history and impact than Pokemon did in the homeland. Even if it wasn't meant to dethrone Pokemon, it's still doing a good job of that considering the Japanese absolutely hated USUM and LGEP for all the same reasons many westerners hated those games and the fact almost everything introduced in USUM is easily arguable as a feature they took from the YKW games and made worse and I can verify that after having paid full price for Moon and Ultra Moon and playing them for myself.
@FrowningCoach That's generally all that really matters at the end of the day for Japanese media anyway: homeland success. The only reason we even have a good number of Japanese media over in the west in the first place is BECAUSE they were popular and successful in Japan first ans foremost. The importance of homeland success is usually how it is for any game, really. Look at Spyro and Mother.
@SCAssassin Ni No Kuni had a huge open world tho and even if it's reusing the 3DS YKW maps, those maps are still very big, very open and free to let the players explore. Pokemon has always been known for being a pretty linear experience but you really can't say that at all about YKW or NNK.
@Oat With that statement, you've pretty much proven you've never actually played the game or done any kind of research, for that matter. Pokemon on its own is arguably just a Dragon Quest battle system watered down for babies with no real difficulty to it since fans have to make fanmade rulesets like the Nuzlocke challenge to get any hardships out of playing Pokemon. Meanwhile, the minibosses alone in Yo-Kai Watch such as Snartle, Awevil and a ton of the other daily battles are designed to beat bad players to a pulp if they can't construct proper team composition with postgame bosses like Kat Kraydel being even more brutal on top of that. Not to mention the official competitive metagame allowing for far more variety compared to Pokemon's official VGC Doubles metagame where half the PokeDex gets banned yearly but despite the fact bans usually help aid diversity, the metagame continues to have some of the most awful variety. Just look at the laughable top 8 results of VGC 2016 where you notice a pattern of teams either forced to support or try to beat Primal Groudon, Kyogre and Mega Rayquaza. On the other hand, you have Yo-Kai Watch's official competitive banlist that's fair, consistent and forces smart team composition much like fanmade metagame of Pokemon's Draft League meta. Also helps that you have to take a ton of factors into account in battle in Tribe Unity, optimal debuffing momentum, Soul Gems, redirection support and even more depth added onto that in the transition to YKW3 with Soultimate synergy, Linking for combo damage and blocking, Sub support, etc.
TLDR: Yo-Kai Watch's level of depth makes Pokemon's look stupid easy.
It's impossible to lose at a Pokemon game due to how easy it is (unless you're just that bad) while Yo-Kai Watch expects you to reach some insane levels of skill and dive deep into the game in order to accomplish something against the harder bosses. Try taking on Gargaros sometime and see how "shallow" you think it is.
@Ryu_Niiyama The franchise is doing fine, tbh. Love how none of these articles mention the fact the recent Forever Friends movie made like 10 million dollars.
@SinnohGeek It was never supposed to be a Pokemon killer in the first place. That was honestly just dumb American game journalist propaganda that got the insecure Pokemon fans to click on the articles and feel threatened about another game in the monster collecting RPG genre for no reason, ignoring that Pokemon arguably just rode on the hype of Dragon Quest being the top dog in RPGs by the time Pokemon came out and had monster collecting years prior to Pokemon.
@Bobb You must have questionable taste if mermaid milfs like Mermother can't click with you.
@ALinkttPresent Yo-Kai Watch isn't even published by Nintendo. Level-5 does all their own publishing. Also, if you think the myriad of gay sex jokes, murder stories and Dante's Inferno complete with the 7 Circles of Hell among other things YKW is filled with are things for children, you are SORELY mistaken.
@Haida Considering Game Freak's recent patterns and how they've ALREADY claimed Switch development is "5 times harder" while every other game development is handling the transition just fine, ESPECIALLY Level-5, I'd tell you not to count your chickens before they hatched since I personally gave up on that series after buying the scam that is USUM.
I find it funny people these days are only now looking for any excuse they can to try to discredit the Waluigi fanbase. The stupid "he's a meme" statement that has ONLY ever been parroted after Smash Ultimate came out of nowhere and it makes me smile people think you're not allowed to like """"meme"""" characters when absolute jokes like Jigglypuff whom are factually far more unimportant to their own franchises and have even less credit to them aren't called out for it especially when Waluigi has plenty of genuine appeal to him: his cocky attitude backed up by the fact he's a top tier metagame threat in sports games pretty much making him an alpha whom can trash talk everyone else and claim to be better than them only because it's TRUE, the fact he has the absolute highest Jumping stat in Mario lore that makes him capable of jumping higher and better than Mario "Jumpman" himself, the fact his accentuated trait is usually his Skill or Technique that shows he doesn't rely on being faster or stronger than his opponents to beat them or barrel through them like Wario usually can but by outsmarting them via finesse, trickery and techskill. Even then, people can like a character for whatever reason they darn well please and making nonsensical statements about the character's ""meme status"" isn't going to change that.
Also makes me happy that at least Jibanyan, a character I also like, wasn't as big a loser as Mario was.
@Henmii Why wouldn't it surprise you when the company is clearly doing just fine with making tons of money off mobile games and still making console titles seriously? The fact a developer would leave the chance to develop and learn quality coding for numerous genres of games on numerous platforms for a company that's still very profitable is what would be surprising.
Regardless of Layton, pretty much all the titles I've listed above had a ton of quality put into them with the possible exception of Yo-Kai Watch Busters 2, given that that game was outsourced and ended up receiving a ton of updates to finally fix all its issues for how buggy it was but that's just one game for the nine that I listed.
That's kinda vague and just suggests you have no actual proof since you clearly don't even know. I suggest you provide an actual link to that article to back up that claim, otherwise nobody has any reason to believe that that statement is true.
@Henmii You just contradicted yourself in your first 2 sentences.
"I don't know what is going behind the curtain."
Neither does the article above, hence why its title starts off with the word 'RUMOR'. Heck, all you can clearly do is speculate . Yet, you go on to say (as though you actually know what's going on behind the curtain)
"And yet they (the developing staff) are running away."
You have some actual proof that that's the case? In fact, Level-5's current job postings certainly do nothing to prove that's the case: https://www.level5.co.jp/recruit/
Their most recent job openings are months old and are for things like story board artistry and legal advice regarding patents (which makes sense since they do alot of crossovers). Absolutely NO job postings asking for replacements for game developers they allegedly lost.
"And then there's the fact that one of the most important guys at Level 5 has left."
Any chance you can provide a name so I can verify if THAT is at least true?
"Things don't seem to go so well at the moment. Even the quality of their games isn't that huge anymore from what I have heard."
Have you actually played any Level-5 games as of late to see if that's the case or do you just believe everything you hear? From personal experience, the only people that have ever said the Yo-Kai Watch games are bad are Americans that have never played the game for more than like 3 hours, let alone actually finished it, let alone actually played the sequels to see how immensely the series improved both in quantity and in quality. Even Inazuma Eleven fans have been in general agreement the franchise gets better with every sequel. Ni No Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom won the RPG of the Year Award. A game lacking in quality doesn't exactly accomplish that.
"My advice: Develop mainly for consoles again, and do it seriously!"
My advice to you is that you try looking through Level-5's list of projects lately so you'll find that they've actually been doing that this entire time, even WITH Layton for the past 3 years and even longer before that.
-Yo-Kai Sangokushi, 3DS console, 2016
-Yo-Kai Watch 3, 3DS console, 2016
-Layton's Mystery Journey, 3DS console but also on mobile, 2017
-The Snack World: Treasurers, 3DS console for 2017, ported to Nintendo Switch console as Snack World Treasurers Gold in 2018
-Yo-Kai Watch Blasters 2, 3DS console, 2017
-Ni No Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom, PC and PlayStation 4, 2018
-Yo-Kai Watch 4, coming to Nintendo Switch in 2019
-Inazuma Eleven Ares, coming to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 AND mobile in 2019
-Ushiro, coming to Nintendo Switch, release date unconfirmed.
@Henmii How does that kind of correllation make any kind of sense? Mobile games can be made cheaply and are like 10 times bigger in Japan than they are in America. In fact, focusing a ton on mobile games is a huge financial bonus over there, so if anything, they're MAKING more money than usual.
@Heavyarms55 The new movie recently came out on top of the Medal Wars mobile game and YKW4 being on the way, so it'd certainly be unsurprising if it did.
@Heavyarms55 Even so, you should probably look into the actual statistics of a game rather than judging its popularity and status based purely on the small sample that is your classroom. My local college here in America has only one guy that's a fan of Dragon Quest games but that doesn't change the fact that that series is still huge in Japan. What's funnier is that Yo-Kai Puni Puni is grossing more than Dragon Quest's mobile game library as well.
I don't know why anybody is even taking this article seriously. There's no actual proof in them using something like their open recruitments or anything to suggest this is even remotely true other than a speculation over a console game's release date being pushed back.
@Heavyarms55 Except it didn't flop. It still has a wide variety of mobile games that are still seeing success in Japan due to the fact that the mobile game market in Japan is HUGE. Not to mention they still have that Medal Wars one coming out soon. As I make this comment, Yo-Kai Puni Puni is still beating out Pokemon Go and Fire Emblem Heroes for one of the highest grossing mobile games in Japan. You can't seriously call that a "flop". If these stats are anything to go by then I guess that if a series that can make top 10 in grossing mobile games in Japan is a "flop", then I guess Dragalia Lost (which isn't even in the top 50 on this list in the grossing category) is an absolute failure. https://www.appannie.com/en/apps/google-play/top/japan/game/
@ShadJV In other words, you barely played it and didn't learn about the control elements of the battle system via book items or learn of the actual plot about the evil steward his racism.
No, it really isn't. Quality of a game is objective. Liking a game is subjective and liking a game doesn't make it good. I personally love Sonic '06 for its story and especially music but I'm not stupid enough to recommend it or claim it's an actually good game given everything that's wrong with it.
Care to name some actual examples then if you're so experienced? I can tell you Dragon Quest Monsters handles it breeding system in a manner that makes Pokemon's look like a joke in addition to a far superior following feature but I'm sure you've played that game. I can tell you Shin Megami Tensei handles plot way better since you can actually join the bad guys if you wish for alternate endings while Pokemon fans are stuck wishing they had the option to join Team Rocket but I'm sure you've played that game. I can tell you Yo-Kai Watch basically handles everything better than Pokemon. Actual challenge, better stat system, monsters with actual personalities, faster pacing, far more variety to its competitive meta, a better grasp on grind vs reward, etc and yet you clearly haven't actually played that game.
1. Amazing actually. Since the game has an official competitive banlist that's actually fair and consistent, there's a ton of variety to offer and has an extremely skill based meta. Also helps that players on the online ladder get super useful items for ingame. Compare this to Pokemon whose players usually have to use fanmade tiering systems like Smogon to get any kind of variety while their official VGC format is generally a cookie cutter meta any year that isn't 2014 where Se Jun was only able to get away with Pachirisu purely because VGC staples that take a big fat dump all over it like Landorus-T and Thundurus-I were banned that year.
2. WAY better than Pokemon's. Unlike Pokemon's IV system that forces you to go for a perfect 31 in every stat, YKW makes it so that innate stats can only get a good value in ONE stat but the cost is that you'll get a bad value in another stat. The formula is written so that innate stats generally lean towards a more balanced spread and in the higher levels, the numbers make much less of a difference. This effectively makes the IV system COMPLETELY optional so you can actually go play the game unlike Pokemon whom just makes it mandatory for a competitive team and make you walk your avatar around for hours just to get one monster with a spread you want.
3. Actually yes in a sort of way. Yo-Kai Watch does a thing similar to Dragon Quest where recolors are their own monsters but not nearly as repetitive. The recolors are generally very Rare, have extremely high trade value, are hard to get and they also work completely differently from the original monster in addition to their colors being noticably more exotic. For instance, compare the Fire Attribute B Rank Yo-Kai Multimutt to the Earth Attribute A Rank Yo-Kai Sir Berus. I guess it's kinda preferential but I always hated shinies because at the end of the day, they're just recolors that tend to have terrible color schemes compared to the originals (to the point a good amount of the fanbase wishes to fix them with better color schemes) and would take YKW's Rare, strong and actually different recolors over shinies.
4. Yes but they're not required though they do help a ton. The Busters minigame is like Pokemon Rumble but better in about every conceivable way with how much more depth it has, its online multiplayer, how it helps with the grind, etc. I'd have to write up an entire essay explaining the Busters mode for how much depth it has. It's generally only necessary for particular Rare and powerful monsters besides helping you with grinding. Plus playing a single Busters session takes only like 10 minutes anyway. There's also the optional dinner minigame and idol catgirl dancing mini game but I don't know the full details on those ones yet.
5. If you'd actually play the first game fully (which you clearly didn't) you'd know about the book items that completely control what a Yo-Kai will do during battle so that they can do what you want to anyway while you focus on all the other battle factors of removing debuffs/status conditions, wheel placement, poking, Soultimate usage, etc. Even then, if you want a turn based RPG that also has auto attacks that can also give you full control that is also far better than Pokemon, I highly recommend playing Dragon Quest Monsters.
So with all this in mind, YKW should honestly be better to you in practically every way.
@ShadJV Just because you don't like a game, it doesn't mean you can't look at it more objectively. Could you elaborate on how far you actually got in the first game to hate it? I ask because from my experience, the people that hate the game only played the demo and did no further research.
Besides, as far as quality and being a "better game", goes, the numerous flaws Pokemon has had since its inception just don't exist in other monster collecting RPGs that have come before it and after it. YKW just happens to be another example of such as it has far more to offer and doesn't struggle with Pokemon's issues.
I could easily list all of the qualities that make YKW3 easily worth way more money in terms of being better than LGEP provided you'd be willing to listen.
Also, could you provide examples of game with little content that are considered good and games with lots of content that are considered bad or are you just making a baseless claim?
I fail to see how the Master Trainers are considered content worth money since it's just more braindead NPCs with a level advantage with your reward being ingame text that does nothing but it's your money and not mine.
@Anti-Matter Pokemon itself isn't even an original monster collecting RPG. They basically stole all of its gameplay elements from Dragon Quest 5 which came out 4 years prior.
Yo-Kai Watch borrows WAY more concepts from Shin Megami Tensei (a monster collecting RPG that predates Pokemon by 9 years) than it does from Pokemon.
@harlowlad The YKW games don't use monster transfers. I personally always hated monster transfer because it potentially gives you the option to start the game off with stupidly strong max level monsters that remove the challenge. In addition, it gives the developers an excuse to just make you buy more games to get every monster by keeping certain monsters game-exclusive. YKW makes it generally so you can get 90% of the monster count bar the version exclusives in a single game. From my understanding, if you have a certain version of YKW2, you'll get a specific Rare S Rank Yo-Kai you can't get any other way. Bony Spirits lets you get Jibanyan S, Fleshy Souls gets you Komasan S and Psychic Specters gets you Komajiro S.
@ShadJV Out of curiosity, what DIDN'T you like about the first games? Pretty much any of the problems the first game had no longer exist in the sequels.
@Arcamenel No, I honestly don't feel good about a franchise I've liked since RBY being reduced to an object of ridicule but it doesn't make it any less true and doesn't mean I can't focus on the topic at hand.
Given this mannequin's status in the anime, he's most likely going to be the first boss. So look forward to other bosses being harder after this guy.
@Silkyinsect_UK @Arcamenel I don't know why you guys have to bring a completely different franchise into this conversation made by a completely different company whose first mainline Switch installment has been a 60 USD mobile game expansion that reuses the same assets with choppy animations from the 3DS that had huge frame rate drops on the system and barely looks any better than 3DS visuals on top of said franchise's company not caring about the thoughts of anyone that isn't a Japanese child.
Anyway, back to the topic at hand, It feels more insertive when you view the YKW games from directly behind the character and with fully rotating camera rather than the top down view that we were usually used to on 3DS. They still keep a map with a quest mapper and a sort of compass at the top to let you know how close you are to the objective. I always liked that about this series because it lets the worlds be big, open, expansive and you'll still know exactly where you need to go. The Ni No Kuni 2/Yo-Kai Watch Busters Gameplay is certainly unsurprising. It worked and people loved it. Seems that they've added a true MP stat in this iteration, which is strange. Usually, Yo-Kai didn't have an MP guage and could just attack with magic and physical attacks as they pleased. I guess they want to make it more challenging than it already was or something. I sure can't wait to figure out how the Shadowside mechanic works in battle for Jibanyan to change in the battle like that. I just hope it isn't random but if it is, please let it be fair RNG.
@CanisWolfred That isn't necessarily true. People continue to gush over the Xenoblade Chronicles games despite the battle system hugely being auto attacks and DQMJ is a monster collecting RPG with auto attacks that offer even LESS control in battle than YKW but it STILL manages to be a fantastic, challenging game since there are numerous instances where the game actually rewards you MORE for using auto attacks instead of issuing commands. Main game gameplay in YKW has a TON of control elements that require constant and preemptive focus for faster gameplay rather than slowing you down with command inputs. You just have to learn what they they are and how to make use of all of those mechanics in Tribe Unity, Attitudes, Soul Gems, Inspirit Pokes, Targetting, Wheel placement, Inpirit Buffs, Inspirit Debuffs and how to optimize and refill Soul Meter for Soultimates.
I really wish people would stop trying to compare this series to Pokemon. Yo-Kai Watch borrows WAY more concepts from Dragon Quest and Shin Megami Tensei than from Pokemon (both of which are monster collecting RPGs that came out YEARS before Pokemon and arguably play way better than Pokemon as well).
Since people are inevitably thinking this spinoff is comparable to Pokemon Mystery Dungeon or Pokemon Rumble, let me clear up that it's not. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon is just the game Dragon Quest Characters: Torneko no Daibōken but with Pokemon: a turn based dungeon crawling RPG with no real online multiplayer.
Pokemon Rumble has no online/local multiplayer either and lacks the depth to remotely be compared to this game.
This real time local/online 4 player team action RPG is far more comparable to Monster Hunter, if anything.
@Mogster Relevancy is not a valid excuse as long as Jigglypuff is part of the roster. Despite being with Smash since the beginning, she has always been and still is one of the most laughably unimportant characters to her franchise. You'd think the Pokemon Company and Game Freak would go out of their way to make her more important after Smash, but no. She's been a garbage Clefairy knockoff from the very beginning, Clefairy even got her own manga, her anime importance is an outdated relic, she has absolutely no Starter Pokemon level privileges compared to things like Riolu, Meowth or even Munchlax in any main or spinoff games, no Mega Evolution, no Alola variant and even after the introduction of Fairy, the Clefairy line remains factually superior to the Jigglypuff line in battle. Even though she IS in Smash, she's still unimportant outside of the first 2 games because everything she WANTS to do, Wario just does it better: just as good air mobility, actually good grab, just as good recovery, actual survivability, a command grab, actual combos, etc. There's absolutely no point to use Jigglypuff in Pokemon games when Clefairy is available (or any Normal or Fairy mon for that matter) and there's absolutely no point to play as her in Smash when Wario is available. Waluigi is far more important and adored to his own franchise compared to Jigglypuff.
Comments 46
Re: Pokémon-Inspired MMO Adventure Temtem Now Has Over 1 Million Players
@VoidofLight Pokemon itself has always ridden on the coattails of other successful monster collectors. Everything about Pokemon as a whole can be argued as just taking ideas from Dragon Quest games including monster designs (Pidgeotto being the exact same bird as Bludgerigar but recolored, Charizard is just Red Dragon with wings, Gligar whom was meant to be a Kanto Pokemon looks almost exactly like Rumblebee, etc. Bear in mind these are just a FEW examples out of DOZENS that are super easy to notice when you look through Dragon Quest's older monsters), not to mention even the lore aspect of keeping monster buddies in capsules was done years before Pokemon by Dragon Quest.
They also did this with Yo-Kai Watch. Just about every "new innovation" with Sun and Moon can be easily argued as being a shoddy, watered down feature they took from Yo-Kai Watch games after Yo-Kai Watch 2 outsold ORAS in Japan as well as YKW anime getting better JP ratings than Pokemon anime.
If you have such an issue with TemTem "riding the hype" and that ruins a game for you, then it stands to reason Pokemon deserves FAR more criticism for such given they have done so for far longer.
Also, SWSH could have avoided the EXP problem by just giving the EXP Share an off switch like before.
Just one example of a needless problem they put on themselves with empty words given the devs themselves have said they want players to choose how to play for themselves but then remove something that lets them do that.
That's not even accounting for all their other empty words regarding SWSH such as promising game balance casually and competitively from removing monsters and yet you can get a Ninetales with Nasty Plot and Fire Blast before the first Gym, which is Grass, easily. Also the competitive format managed to be more busted than prior.
Meanwhile, you have monster collectors like Dragon Quest Monsters Joker 3 Pro and Yo-Kai Watch 3 having over 700 monsters after free DLC and still having much better balanced competitive formats as well as a ton of actual casual content despite both being 3DS games that so easily make SWSH look bad.
Re: Feature: Temtem Dev On The Difficulties Of Bringing The Pokémon Rival To Switch
@westman98 Yo-Kai Watch just announced a collaboration with Hololive. As of now, a good chunk of the more popular VTubers are now officially Yo-Kai Watch characters just as Cloud, Sephiroth and Hello Kitty are.
That's the exact opposite of "dead and irrelevant". That's ongoing and relevant.
Re: Level-5's Mech RPG Megaton Musashi Is Going Free-To-Play On Switch This Fall
@PortuGuy
None of that is close to true especially since Yo-Kai Watch 2 outsold Pokemon ORAS in Japan, which explains alot why newer Pokemon games have mostly adopated poorly implemented Yo-Kai Watch features since Sun and Moon. What ACTUALLY happened is that their localization office had horrible management and employees were overworked and treated unfairly. Not to mention all their other stuff was making bank at the time such as Ni No Kuni 2 among other things and especially their YKW mobile games which never dwindled below the top 50 grossing mobile games in all Japan ever since its release.
I really wish people would do more research on this topic.
Re: Feature: Temtem Dev On The Difficulties Of Bringing The Pokémon Rival To Switch
@westman98 New Pokemon Snap is also a first party game that sold monumentally less than that in Japan, yet no one is insisting it to be a flop or dead. Objectively, you still continue to brush aside my point of mobile game profits.
Re: Feature: Temtem Dev On The Difficulties Of Bringing The Pokémon Rival To Switch
@westman98 Again, no it really isn't. No one claims Mario spinoffs are dead or declining as they continue to top charts. Also take the time to note you couldn't disprove my other points involving mobile game profits.
Re: Feature: Temtem Dev On The Difficulties Of Bringing The Pokémon Rival To Switch
@westman98 It really isn't. Yo-Kai Watch games have always and continued to sell just as well as any first party Nintendo games on the same consoles in Japan and said first party Nintendo games do well in Japak. Especially YKW4 and Y-Academy selling just as well in their opening time frames as games that did just fine like Mario Tennis Aces or Mario Golf Super Rush. Heck, YKW4 sold more in its opening week than Mario Tennis Aces, yet nobody insists on calling Mario games dead or in cataclysmic decline, so please do more research. The fact of the mobile games still stand as throughout its years of lifetime, Yo-Kai Watch Puni Puni has always remained strong as one of the top grossing mobile games in Japan. Even some sales charts have neglected digital sales of Level-5 games for whatever reason where most of the sakes come from and which give more money to the devs than physical anyway.
Re: Feature: Temtem Dev On The Difficulties Of Bringing The Pokémon Rival To Switch
I really dislike how westerners act like any monster collector is a "Pokemon rival" as if the idea of sharing a genre is some kind of unthinkable act. If the Japanese thought this way, Pokemon would have died off and be dismissed as a shallow, glitchy Dragon Quest wannabe, which Red Blue and Yellow are super easy to argue being with how much Dragon Quest DNA and inspiration is in those games. You could easily call Pokemon a clone of Dragon Quest 5 and no one would really have a good faith argument against that. Japan loves Pokemon more than any other country and makes the games yet has no issue playing other games in the genre, so why should I? I'm told they love TemTem.
That said, I'm looking forward to this game all the same.
@westman98 That's really not even close to true. Yo-Kai Watch mobile games continue to make bank in Japan and get frequent updates and the anime remains ongoing. Japanese franchises have never relied on non-Japanese audiences to remain alive, profitable and relevant. If you want to see other examples of that, look at Crayon Shin-Chan, Case Closed and Kochikame. Some of those are arguably more relevant and alive due to being even longer than One Piece despite their lack of a western audience. Plus, they never marketed themselves as a "Pokemon Killer". Only Viz Media said that and they only publish the manga and yet that phrase continues to live rent free in the heads of angry Pokemon fans for no reason. Having played Pokemon since the beginning and having played even newer entries like Legends Arceus, I can confidently say none of them come close to how big and good Yo-Kai Watch 3 is.
I'm not saying anyone has to drop Pokemon for other monster collectors or anything like that. You can play other games in a genre. It's not a crime to play both Mario and Sonic despite both being platformers, so why not do that for monster collectors?
Re: Pokémon-Like Monster Catcher 'Coromon' Delayed On Switch, Will No Longer Arrive March 31st
@dimi What "great Pokemon games"? I was looking forward to buying this day one cuz all the Pokemon options stink. Every Pokemon game on Switch, I borrowed from someone else and none of them have been worth their price tag or play time when there are so many other better monster collectors on Switch like Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth Complete Edition, Shin Megami Tensei 5 or Monster Hunter Stories 2. I had more reasons to go back to my copy of Yo-Kai Watch 3 on my 3DS than I did to play more of my used copy of Pokemon Shield. That said, I'm more confident Coromon will certainly be worth the wait.
Re: Level-5 Teasing Major Announcement For Yo-Kai Watch Jam: Yo-Kai Academy Y
@WoomyNNYes
They're on the JP eShop like all the other games the west has yet to get.
Unfortunately, this is nothing new. As good as Level-5 is in terms of writing and game design, their localization is very slow. It took 3 years before Snack World and Yo-Kai Watch 3 became available in English.
Re: Level-5 Teasing Major Announcement For Yo-Kai Watch Jam: Yo-Kai Academy Y
@WoomyNNYes Yo-Kai Watch games have been on Switch for years already. This is the 3rd one so far.
@DrDaisy Japanese franchises don't really care about western apathy to remain alive and successful. If you need examples of that, look at Case Closed or Crayon Shin-Chan.
Personally, I'm quite looking forward to this one. Was skeptical about it at first but then watched the Y-Academy anime subbed and really loved its premise and I especially love the character Momo.
At first glance, this game reminds me a ton of Level-5's other game Fantasy Life on 3DS and I quite enjoyed that but now it's in a high school setting. According to other articles, this game has multiple endings including a harem one so I'm even more interested.
Re: Nexomon: Extinction Is The Latest Monster-Catcher Hoping To Take On Pokémon
Imagine thinking Pokemon is even remotely original when almost everything about it is arguably a watered down ripoff of Dragon Quest 5 but you can bet westerns will never say jack squat when you bring that up.
Westerners that hate any other monster collectors for no good reason are busy wetting their diapers meanwhile the Japanese have never had any issue actually trying and playing other monster collectors hence why Pokemon didn't flop cuz it could easily have just been disregarded as a DQ wannabe and why series like Digimon and Yo-Kai Watch (series that borrow WAY more ideas from Shin Megami Tensei, a game that did monster collecting 9 years before Pokemon existed, than they do from Pokemon but westerners don't know that cuz they don't play anything else) continue to be popular and successful in Japan to this day.
Articles and comments like this are why I can't take western gamers even remotely seriously because they act like total babies over the idea of another monster collector genre game DARING to exist besides Pokemon.
Oh well. Almost any other monster collector has proven to be a much better game than Pokemon especially in recent years, so I have little doubt this one will be any different in being a better game too.
Re: Here's Another Monster-Battling RPG That's After Pokémon's Crown
@BenAV
Pokemon doesn't even have any polish with its turn based combat. It makes its main battle system to progress 1v1 but designs many Pokemon and options for 2v2 instead of picking 1 and sticking with it.
Without unofficial rulesets like Smogon, the 1v1 battle system just rewards no-skill strategies like Moody Baton Pass Smeargle. Even with Smogon rulings, it has a long history of rewarding bulky offense and hyper offense teams over others.
Official 2v2 manages to be even worse because due to their huge PokeDex based banlists and other factors, variety in teams is almost non-existent. VGC 2014 was probably the only year to offer so much variety but that's because so many powerful Doubles options were banned that year.
Any other monster collector or RPG in general that has had a competitive format has always used a 3v3 or even 4v4 battle system.
Recent events have proven Pokemon fans will swallow anything for a Pokemon game anyway so if they made a real time battle system much like the terrible anime they love, there would no doubt be plenty defending that.
Re: Here's Another Monster-Battling RPG That's After Pokémon's Crown
Imagine thinking Pokemon is original when almost everything about it was ripped off from Dragon Quest. Even funnier how so many of Pokemon's recent endeavors are just worsened ideas they took from better monster collectors like Yo-Kai Watch and Digimon.
Re: Review: Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth: Complete Edition - Pokémon's Biggest Rival Is Still Worth A Look
Any monster collector that isn't Pokemon is better than Pokemon.
Re: Soapbox: Why Sword And Shield's Pokémon Purge Will Benefit Everyone
@JellyPop So if this game ends up sucking even without them all in it, then what? You can have every monster in a game AND have the game be good. The 2 aren't mutually exclusive. Series besides Pokemon have been able to accomplish that despite having just as big or a bigger monster count than Pokemon.
Re: Soapbox: Why Sword And Shield's Pokémon Purge Will Benefit Everyone
@konbinilife
Been playing Pokemon since RBY days so I am in fact older than Pokemon. Having played other monster collectors as well, I can fairly say that both older ones like Dragon Quest and newer ones like Yo-Kai Watch honestly make Pokemon look like a joke YKW3 and DQMJ3P had the full monster count on a 3DS without tranfer for 700+ monsters each with way better animation, content, etc to boot. They were superior overall games on 3DS and it won't be even remotely surprising if it remains the same making Pokemon look bad on Switch despite having far greater staff with a smaller budget.
Re: Level-5 Is Releasing The Original Yo-Kai Watch Game On Nintendo Switch
I'm hoping this opens up the possibility for porting the other sequels. Knowing Level-5, they're bound to make some great improvements with this port.
Re: Game Freak Prefers To "Implement New Things Fairly Gradually" In Pokémon
@westman98 They don't need to do that cuz they make you pay double for the same game twice, double on top of that with another 2 games with a different set of monsters, usually a remake, and then charge you more now on top of that with a paid transfer system that doesn't automatically renew itself and now only works with a select group of monsters.
Re: Is Game Freak "Recycling" 3DS Animations In Pokémon Sword And Shield On Switch?
@nintendoknife
Notwithstanding companies like Level-5, Square Enix, Atlus and Bandai-Namco can accomplish the same feat of having far more animation with their own monster collecting RPGs with just as big if not bigger monster counts than your average Pokemon game thanks to having far bigger staff despite way less budget.
Re: Is Game Freak "Recycling" 3DS Animations In Pokémon Sword And Shield On Switch?
@MaxXanders
No idea what on earth gives you that idea since I plan on saving my money on monster collector RPGs with effort and soul put into them made by companies that have always spoiled me with good games in Shin Megami Tensei 5, the future Dragon Quest Monsters Switch project, Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch and Yo-Kai Watch 4: We're Looking Up At The Same Sky. It's nice to have other options.
@Mycroft
"It's just a game, stop getting angry."
Yeah, you right. Good thing I can just buy other games. You're kinda turning that statement on yourself since you're choosing to be passionate about a shallow and jokably easy game designed for Japanese kids. Good thing other monster collectors like YKW and DQM reach higher levels of quality despite being for Japanese kids. In my experience, Pokemon fans have actually gotten pissed if you call it a kiddy game compared to other adult and more mature monster collectors like Shin Megami Tensei and claim it's supposed to be a game for EVERYONE yet they have no issue saying it's for kids when you bring up its flaws.
What's more is that it's funny Masuda basically says you're wrong cuz he said this game was supposed to ALSO be something good for the hardcore veteran fans, i.e. adults.
Re: Is Game Freak "Recycling" 3DS Animations In Pokémon Sword And Shield On Switch?
@Zyph
It IS but there are plenty of examples where doing so is founded on far more quality. Look at the Dragon Quest games. A ton of them have been reusing models and animations ever since Dragon 8 on PS2 but those models have animation and personality comparable to the Pokemon Stadium models.
Plus even with reusing those models and animations, they could still fit their huge monster counts into a game. Dragon Quest Monsters remade its first game for 3DS in Terry's Wonderland. The original game had a 215 monster count with sprites on GBC but that game's remake has a 607 monster count on a 3DS with all the improved PS2 models and animations.
Re: Is Game Freak "Recycling" 3DS Animations In Pokémon Sword And Shield On Switch?
@mjharper
I hope that you realize that the whole point of a demo is so players can judge it before buying the game and get a taste of what it has to offer. A demo is the final phase of a beta, not the first stage of an alpha.
https://youtu.be/d79KArgmgcc
Besides, when it comes to Pokemon, all you have to do is observe how LGEP ended up looking exactly the same in final release compared to all previous footage with basically no change or polish at all. So if Sword and Shield on release end up looking exactly thevsame on final release just like the orevious main series Pokemon Switvh title, then what? What exactly will be the excuse? Cuz people certainly can't claim "the game isn't finished" as a counterargument. That point has a limited number of days before it gets gutted like a fish on release.
What's more is that I honestly find it kind of funny that ONLY with Pokemon, people are claiming you're not allowed to judge a game for anything based only on a demo. Where exactly was this mindset in regards to other games? You certainly didn't see that kind of thinking anywhere regarding the demo for Yo-Kai Watch 4 for instance and understandably so cuz the general consensus was that demo was top notch
@KryptoniteKrunch
And it certainly wouldn't hurt at all to have those nice things PLUS the nice things from past games plus the nice thing of being able to use any monster we please. Good thing I can spend my money and play time on all the other monster collector RPGs that spoil its fans to provide that tho.
Re: Japanese Charts: Yo-Kai Watch 4 Takes Number One Despite Lower-Than-Usual Series Sales
@Heavyarms55 I'l stick to statistics and facts based on a far larger scale of the said real world experiences as opposed to going off an an extremely limited and narrow visioned scope of data but you do you as well.
Re: Japanese Charts: Yo-Kai Watch 4 Takes Number One Despite Lower-Than-Usual Series Sales
@Vectorman Probably because the head CEO of Level-5 Akihiro Hino made it pretty clear on release during a stream all Yo-Kai would be returning in future free DLC.
@Heavyarms55
You should probably stop using the small sample size of a single classroom as a reference point then. YKW4 was the top preordered game on Amazon Japan. I don't even live in Japan and even I could look that up.
Re: Japanese Charts: Yo-Kai Watch 4 Takes Number One Despite Lower-Than-Usual Series Sales
>"Low Sales"
>Still 3 times bigger sales that the first game in its first week.
Do westerners just have some dumb delusion that a game HAS to break 1 million in week 1 to "not be dead and be a success"? Cuz that would certainly be a very silly way of thinking given Zelda BOTW didn't exactly sell much better week 1 compared to this and THAT was a worldwide release. Yet you certainly don't see people clamoring to call Zelda a dying franchise.
Watch the free DLC act as free advertising. Won't be remotely surprising when sales make a big jump when the 6th movie comes out and the free DLC that ties into it releases.
Looking forward to getting my bois Urnfulfilled, Putasockinit, Hoppy Go Lucky, Blownhistoppa, Mermother, Azure Dragon, Draaagin, Beetler, Quagmira, Shakey, Snitchin, Tut'n'K'mon, Cocobanana, Chymera and all my favorites coming back once their free DLC gets released. Sure is nice I'll get to have every monster in the series in a single game without having to pay extra.
Re: Yo-Kai Watch 4 Release Delayed Yet Again In Japan
@KingMike Thats very unlikely because Nintendo has absolutely NO hand in localization of this game or ANY game made by Level-5. Level-5 does all its OWN localization and Nintendo has absolutely no control or say over this franchise at all because Level-5 does its own publishing as well. This is just one of their series that just happens to be on a Nintendo console (Fun fact: YKW was originally planned to be a PS3 game).
Re: Yo-Kai Watch 4 Release Delayed Yet Again In Japan
@Yosher It's still super dominant in Japan. This was one of the top most anticipated upcoming games.
@graysoncharles It really isn't. The recent Medal Wars mobile game beta proved it was still a very popular and dominant franchise. Besides, it was NEVER meant to dethrone Pokemon in the first place. Only Viz said that and all they do is publish the manga. They don't actually make the games. That's like saying Pokemon was made to dethrone the monster collectors of Dragon Quest and Shin Megami Tensei, which it did a very poor job of considering those franchises still continue to have far more history and impact than Pokemon did in the homeland. Even if it wasn't meant to dethrone Pokemon, it's still doing a good job of that considering the Japanese absolutely hated USUM and LGEP for all the same reasons many westerners hated those games and the fact almost everything introduced in USUM is easily arguable as a feature they took from the YKW games and made worse and I can verify that after having paid full price for Moon and Ultra Moon and playing them for myself.
@FrowningCoach That's generally all that really matters at the end of the day for Japanese media anyway: homeland success. The only reason we even have a good number of Japanese media over in the west in the first place is BECAUSE they were popular and successful in Japan first ans foremost. The importance of homeland success is usually how it is for any game, really. Look at Spyro and Mother.
Re: Pokémon Sales Slump To All-Time Low In Japan, Despite Strong Worldwide Performance Of Let's Go
@SCAssassin Ni No Kuni had a huge open world tho and even if it's reusing the 3DS YKW maps, those maps are still very big, very open and free to let the players explore. Pokemon has always been known for being a pretty linear experience but you really can't say that at all about YKW or NNK.
Re: Yo-Kai Watch Popularity Declines Sharply Against Steady Ol' Pokémon
@Oat With that statement, you've pretty much proven you've never actually played the game or done any kind of research, for that matter. Pokemon on its own is arguably just a Dragon Quest battle system watered down for babies with no real difficulty to it since fans have to make fanmade rulesets like the Nuzlocke challenge to get any hardships out of playing Pokemon. Meanwhile, the minibosses alone in Yo-Kai Watch such as Snartle, Awevil and a ton of the other daily battles are designed to beat bad players to a pulp if they can't construct proper team composition with postgame bosses like Kat Kraydel being even more brutal on top of that. Not to mention the official competitive metagame allowing for far more variety compared to Pokemon's official VGC Doubles metagame where half the PokeDex gets banned yearly but despite the fact bans usually help aid diversity, the metagame continues to have some of the most awful variety. Just look at the laughable top 8 results of VGC 2016 where you notice a pattern of teams either forced to support or try to beat Primal Groudon, Kyogre and Mega Rayquaza. On the other hand, you have Yo-Kai Watch's official competitive banlist that's fair, consistent and forces smart team composition much like fanmade metagame of Pokemon's Draft League meta. Also helps that you have to take a ton of factors into account in battle in Tribe Unity, optimal debuffing momentum, Soul Gems, redirection support and even more depth added onto that in the transition to YKW3 with Soultimate synergy, Linking for combo damage and blocking, Sub support, etc.
TLDR: Yo-Kai Watch's level of depth makes Pokemon's look stupid easy.
It's impossible to lose at a Pokemon game due to how easy it is (unless you're just that bad) while Yo-Kai Watch expects you to reach some insane levels of skill and dive deep into the game in order to accomplish something against the harder bosses. Try taking on Gargaros sometime and see how "shallow" you think it is.
@Ryu_Niiyama The franchise is doing fine, tbh. Love how none of these articles mention the fact the recent Forever Friends movie made like 10 million dollars.
@SinnohGeek It was never supposed to be a Pokemon killer in the first place. That was honestly just dumb American game journalist propaganda that got the insecure Pokemon fans to click on the articles and feel threatened about another game in the monster collecting RPG genre for no reason, ignoring that Pokemon arguably just rode on the hype of Dragon Quest being the top dog in RPGs by the time Pokemon came out and had monster collecting years prior to Pokemon.
@Bobb You must have questionable taste if mermaid milfs like Mermother can't click with you.
@ALinkttPresent Yo-Kai Watch isn't even published by Nintendo. Level-5 does all their own publishing. Also, if you think the myriad of gay sex jokes, murder stories and Dante's Inferno complete with the 7 Circles of Hell among other things YKW is filled with are things for children, you are SORELY mistaken.
@Haida Considering Game Freak's recent patterns and how they've ALREADY claimed Switch development is "5 times harder" while every other game development is handling the transition just fine, ESPECIALLY Level-5, I'd tell you not to count your chickens before they hatched since I personally gave up on that series after buying the scam that is USUM.
Re: Random: Waluigi Wins Nintendo's Official Valentine's Day Poll
I find it funny people these days are only now looking for any excuse they can to try to discredit the Waluigi fanbase. The stupid "he's a meme" statement that has ONLY ever been parroted after Smash Ultimate came out of nowhere and it makes me smile people think you're not allowed to like """"meme"""" characters when absolute jokes like Jigglypuff whom are factually far more unimportant to their own franchises and have even less credit to them aren't called out for it especially when Waluigi has plenty of genuine appeal to him: his cocky attitude backed up by the fact he's a top tier metagame threat in sports games pretty much making him an alpha whom can trash talk everyone else and claim to be better than them only because it's TRUE, the fact he has the absolute highest Jumping stat in Mario lore that makes him capable of jumping higher and better than Mario "Jumpman" himself, the fact his accentuated trait is usually his Skill or Technique that shows he doesn't rely on being faster or stronger than his opponents to beat them or barrel through them like Wario usually can but by outsmarting them via finesse, trickery and techskill. Even then, people can like a character for whatever reason they darn well please and making nonsensical statements about the character's ""meme status"" isn't going to change that.
Also makes me happy that at least Jibanyan, a character I also like, wasn't as big a loser as Mario was.
Re: Rumour: Level-5 Game Delays Linked To Mass "Employee Exodus"
@Henmii Why wouldn't it surprise you when the company is clearly doing just fine with making tons of money off mobile games and still making console titles seriously? The fact a developer would leave the chance to develop and learn quality coding for numerous genres of games on numerous platforms for a company that's still very profitable is what would be surprising.
Regardless of Layton, pretty much all the titles I've listed above had a ton of quality put into them with the possible exception of Yo-Kai Watch Busters 2, given that that game was outsourced and ended up receiving a ton of updates to finally fix all its issues for how buggy it was but that's just one game for the nine that I listed.
That's kinda vague and just suggests you have no actual proof since you clearly don't even know. I suggest you provide an actual link to that article to back up that claim, otherwise nobody has any reason to believe that that statement is true.
Re: Rumour: Level-5 Game Delays Linked To Mass "Employee Exodus"
@Henmii You just contradicted yourself in your first 2 sentences.
"I don't know what is going behind the curtain."
Neither does the article above, hence why its title starts off with the word 'RUMOR'. Heck, all you can clearly do is speculate . Yet, you go on to say (as though you actually know what's going on behind the curtain)
"And yet they (the developing staff) are running away."
You have some actual proof that that's the case? In fact, Level-5's current job postings certainly do nothing to prove that's the case: https://www.level5.co.jp/recruit/
Their most recent job openings are months old and are for things like story board artistry and legal advice regarding patents (which makes sense since they do alot of crossovers). Absolutely NO job postings asking for replacements for game developers they allegedly lost.
"And then there's the fact that one of the most important guys at Level 5 has left."
Any chance you can provide a name so I can verify if THAT is at least true?
"Things don't seem to go so well at the moment. Even the quality of their games isn't that huge anymore from what I have heard."
Have you actually played any Level-5 games as of late to see if that's the case or do you just believe everything you hear? From personal experience, the only people that have ever said the Yo-Kai Watch games are bad are Americans that have never played the game for more than like 3 hours, let alone actually finished it, let alone actually played the sequels to see how immensely the series improved both in quantity and in quality. Even Inazuma Eleven fans have been in general agreement the franchise gets better with every sequel. Ni No Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom won the RPG of the Year Award. A game lacking in quality doesn't exactly accomplish that.
"My advice: Develop mainly for consoles again, and do it seriously!"
My advice to you is that you try looking through Level-5's list of projects lately so you'll find that they've actually been doing that this entire time, even WITH Layton for the past 3 years and even longer before that.
-Yo-Kai Sangokushi, 3DS console, 2016
-Yo-Kai Watch 3, 3DS console, 2016
-Layton's Mystery Journey, 3DS console but also on mobile, 2017
-The Snack World: Treasurers, 3DS console for 2017, ported to Nintendo Switch console as Snack World Treasurers Gold in 2018
-Yo-Kai Watch Blasters 2, 3DS console, 2017
-Ni No Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom, PC and PlayStation 4, 2018
-Yo-Kai Watch 4, coming to Nintendo Switch in 2019
-Inazuma Eleven Ares, coming to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 AND mobile in 2019
-Ushiro, coming to Nintendo Switch, release date unconfirmed.
Seems to me they've already been following your advice just fine. What's more is that Level-5 stated themselves that their mainline games would mostly be for the Nintendo Switch from here on out so they were ALREADY way ahead of you: https://www.ign.com/articles/2018/03/30/level-5-basically-all-our-future-main-titles-coming-to-nintendo-switch
Re: Rumour: Level-5 Game Delays Linked To Mass "Employee Exodus"
@Henmii How does that kind of correllation make any kind of sense? Mobile games can be made cheaply and are like 10 times bigger in Japan than they are in America. In fact, focusing a ton on mobile games is a huge financial bonus over there, so if anything, they're MAKING more money than usual.
@Heavyarms55 The new movie recently came out on top of the Medal Wars mobile game and YKW4 being on the way, so it'd certainly be unsurprising if it did.
Re: Rumour: Level-5 Game Delays Linked To Mass "Employee Exodus"
@Heavyarms55 Even so, you should probably look into the actual statistics of a game rather than judging its popularity and status based purely on the small sample that is your classroom. My local college here in America has only one guy that's a fan of Dragon Quest games but that doesn't change the fact that that series is still huge in Japan. What's funnier is that Yo-Kai Puni Puni is grossing more than Dragon Quest's mobile game library as well.
Re: Rumour: Level-5 Game Delays Linked To Mass "Employee Exodus"
I don't know why anybody is even taking this article seriously. There's no actual proof in them using something like their open recruitments or anything to suggest this is even remotely true other than a speculation over a console game's release date being pushed back.
@Heavyarms55 Except it didn't flop. It still has a wide variety of mobile games that are still seeing success in Japan due to the fact that the mobile game market in Japan is HUGE. Not to mention they still have that Medal Wars one coming out soon. As I make this comment, Yo-Kai Puni Puni is still beating out Pokemon Go and Fire Emblem Heroes for one of the highest grossing mobile games in Japan. You can't seriously call that a "flop". If these stats are anything to go by then I guess that if a series that can make top 10 in grossing mobile games in Japan is a "flop", then I guess Dragalia Lost (which isn't even in the top 50 on this list in the grossing category) is an absolute failure. https://www.appannie.com/en/apps/google-play/top/japan/game/
Re: Review: Yo-Kai Watch 3 - The Perfect Swansong For The Series On Nintendo 3DS
@Rei Did you check the eShop?
Re: Review: Yo-Kai Watch 3 - The Perfect Swansong For The Series On Nintendo 3DS
@ShadJV In other words, you barely played it and didn't learn about the control elements of the battle system via book items or learn of the actual plot about the evil steward his racism.
No, it really isn't. Quality of a game is objective. Liking a game is subjective and liking a game doesn't make it good. I personally love Sonic '06 for its story and especially music but I'm not stupid enough to recommend it or claim it's an actually good game given everything that's wrong with it.
Care to name some actual examples then if you're so experienced? I can tell you Dragon Quest Monsters handles it breeding system in a manner that makes Pokemon's look like a joke in addition to a far superior following feature but I'm sure you've played that game. I can tell you Shin Megami Tensei handles plot way better since you can actually join the bad guys if you wish for alternate endings while Pokemon fans are stuck wishing they had the option to join Team Rocket but I'm sure you've played that game. I can tell you Yo-Kai Watch basically handles everything better than Pokemon. Actual challenge, better stat system, monsters with actual personalities, faster pacing, far more variety to its competitive meta, a better grasp on grind vs reward, etc and yet you clearly haven't actually played that game.
1. Amazing actually. Since the game has an official competitive banlist that's actually fair and consistent, there's a ton of variety to offer and has an extremely skill based meta. Also helps that players on the online ladder get super useful items for ingame. Compare this to Pokemon whose players usually have to use fanmade tiering systems like Smogon to get any kind of variety while their official VGC format is generally a cookie cutter meta any year that isn't 2014 where Se Jun was only able to get away with Pachirisu purely because VGC staples that take a big fat dump all over it like Landorus-T and Thundurus-I were banned that year.
2. WAY better than Pokemon's. Unlike Pokemon's IV system that forces you to go for a perfect 31 in every stat, YKW makes it so that innate stats can only get a good value in ONE stat but the cost is that you'll get a bad value in another stat. The formula is written so that innate stats generally lean towards a more balanced spread and in the higher levels, the numbers make much less of a difference. This effectively makes the IV system COMPLETELY optional so you can actually go play the game unlike Pokemon whom just makes it mandatory for a competitive team and make you walk your avatar around for hours just to get one monster with a spread you want.
3. Actually yes in a sort of way. Yo-Kai Watch does a thing similar to Dragon Quest where recolors are their own monsters but not nearly as repetitive. The recolors are generally very Rare, have extremely high trade value, are hard to get and they also work completely differently from the original monster in addition to their colors being noticably more exotic. For instance, compare the Fire Attribute B Rank Yo-Kai Multimutt to the Earth Attribute A Rank Yo-Kai Sir Berus. I guess it's kinda preferential but I always hated shinies because at the end of the day, they're just recolors that tend to have terrible color schemes compared to the originals (to the point a good amount of the fanbase wishes to fix them with better color schemes) and would take YKW's Rare, strong and actually different recolors over shinies.
4. Yes but they're not required though they do help a ton. The Busters minigame is like Pokemon Rumble but better in about every conceivable way with how much more depth it has, its online multiplayer, how it helps with the grind, etc. I'd have to write up an entire essay explaining the Busters mode for how much depth it has. It's generally only necessary for particular Rare and powerful monsters besides helping you with grinding. Plus playing a single Busters session takes only like 10 minutes anyway. There's also the optional dinner minigame and idol catgirl dancing mini game but I don't know the full details on those ones yet.
5. If you'd actually play the first game fully (which you clearly didn't) you'd know about the book items that completely control what a Yo-Kai will do during battle so that they can do what you want to anyway while you focus on all the other battle factors of removing debuffs/status conditions, wheel placement, poking, Soultimate usage, etc. Even then, if you want a turn based RPG that also has auto attacks that can also give you full control that is also far better than Pokemon, I highly recommend playing Dragon Quest Monsters.
So with all this in mind, YKW should honestly be better to you in practically every way.
Re: Review: Yo-Kai Watch 3 - The Perfect Swansong For The Series On Nintendo 3DS
@ShadJV Just because you don't like a game, it doesn't mean you can't look at it more objectively. Could you elaborate on how far you actually got in the first game to hate it? I ask because from my experience, the people that hate the game only played the demo and did no further research.
Besides, as far as quality and being a "better game", goes, the numerous flaws Pokemon has had since its inception just don't exist in other monster collecting RPGs that have come before it and after it. YKW just happens to be another example of such as it has far more to offer and doesn't struggle with Pokemon's issues.
I could easily list all of the qualities that make YKW3 easily worth way more money in terms of being better than LGEP provided you'd be willing to listen.
Also, could you provide examples of game with little content that are considered good and games with lots of content that are considered bad or are you just making a baseless claim?
I fail to see how the Master Trainers are considered content worth money since it's just more braindead NPCs with a level advantage with your reward being ingame text that does nothing but it's your money and not mine.
Re: Review: Yo-Kai Watch 3 - The Perfect Swansong For The Series On Nintendo 3DS
@ShadJV So purely preferential factors then and you'd rather spend more money (60 dollars) on a game with even less content. Very well then.
Re: Video: See Yo-Kai Watch 4 Running On Switch With This 10-Minute Gameplay Video And Trailer
@Anti-Matter Pokemon itself isn't even an original monster collecting RPG. They basically stole all of its gameplay elements from Dragon Quest 5 which came out 4 years prior.
Yo-Kai Watch borrows WAY more concepts from Shin Megami Tensei (a monster collecting RPG that predates Pokemon by 9 years) than it does from Pokemon.
Re: Review: Yo-Kai Watch 3 - The Perfect Swansong For The Series On Nintendo 3DS
@harlowlad The YKW games don't use monster transfers. I personally always hated monster transfer because it potentially gives you the option to start the game off with stupidly strong max level monsters that remove the challenge. In addition, it gives the developers an excuse to just make you buy more games to get every monster by keeping certain monsters game-exclusive. YKW makes it generally so you can get 90% of the monster count bar the version exclusives in a single game. From my understanding, if you have a certain version of YKW2, you'll get a specific Rare S Rank Yo-Kai you can't get any other way. Bony Spirits lets you get Jibanyan S, Fleshy Souls gets you Komasan S and Psychic Specters gets you Komajiro S.
@ShadJV Out of curiosity, what DIDN'T you like about the first games? Pretty much any of the problems the first game had no longer exist in the sequels.
Re: Video: See Yo-Kai Watch 4 Running On Switch With This 10-Minute Gameplay Video And Trailer
@Arcamenel No, I honestly don't feel good about a franchise I've liked since RBY being reduced to an object of ridicule but it doesn't make it any less true and doesn't mean I can't focus on the topic at hand.
Given this mannequin's status in the anime, he's most likely going to be the first boss. So look forward to other bosses being harder after this guy.
Re: Video: See Yo-Kai Watch 4 Running On Switch With This 10-Minute Gameplay Video And Trailer
@Silkyinsect_UK @Arcamenel I don't know why you guys have to bring a completely different franchise into this conversation made by a completely different company whose first mainline Switch installment has been a 60 USD mobile game expansion that reuses the same assets with choppy animations from the 3DS that had huge frame rate drops on the system and barely looks any better than 3DS visuals on top of said franchise's company not caring about the thoughts of anyone that isn't a Japanese child.
Anyway, back to the topic at hand, It feels more insertive when you view the YKW games from directly behind the character and with fully rotating camera rather than the top down view that we were usually used to on 3DS. They still keep a map with a quest mapper and a sort of compass at the top to let you know how close you are to the objective. I always liked that about this series because it lets the worlds be big, open, expansive and you'll still know exactly where you need to go. The Ni No Kuni 2/Yo-Kai Watch Busters Gameplay is certainly unsurprising. It worked and people loved it. Seems that they've added a true MP stat in this iteration, which is strange. Usually, Yo-Kai didn't have an MP guage and could just attack with magic and physical attacks as they pleased. I guess they want to make it more challenging than it already was or something. I sure can't wait to figure out how the Shadowside mechanic works in battle for Jibanyan to change in the battle like that. I just hope it isn't random but if it is, please let it be fair RNG.
Re: Yo-Kai Watch Blasters - A Spin-Off Done Right, Even If We've Had To Wait A While
@CanisWolfred That isn't necessarily true. People continue to gush over the Xenoblade Chronicles games despite the battle system hugely being auto attacks and DQMJ is a monster collecting RPG with auto attacks that offer even LESS control in battle than YKW but it STILL manages to be a fantastic, challenging game since there are numerous instances where the game actually rewards you MORE for using auto attacks instead of issuing commands. Main game gameplay in YKW has a TON of control elements that require constant and preemptive focus for faster gameplay rather than slowing you down with command inputs. You just have to learn what they they are and how to make use of all of those mechanics in Tribe Unity, Attitudes, Soul Gems, Inspirit Pokes, Targetting, Wheel placement, Inpirit Buffs, Inspirit Debuffs and how to optimize and refill Soul Meter for Soultimates.
Re: Yo-Kai Watch Blasters - A Spin-Off Done Right, Even If We've Had To Wait A While
I really wish people would stop trying to compare this series to Pokemon. Yo-Kai Watch borrows WAY more concepts from Dragon Quest and Shin Megami Tensei than from Pokemon (both of which are monster collecting RPGs that came out YEARS before Pokemon and arguably play way better than Pokemon as well).
Since people are inevitably thinking this spinoff is comparable to Pokemon Mystery Dungeon or Pokemon Rumble, let me clear up that it's not. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon is just the game Dragon Quest Characters: Torneko no Daibōken but with Pokemon: a turn based dungeon crawling RPG with no real online multiplayer.
Pokemon Rumble has no online/local multiplayer either and lacks the depth to remotely be compared to this game.
This real time local/online 4 player team action RPG is far more comparable to Monster Hunter, if anything.
@theinstruct0r @NEStalgia @SimplyCinnamon53
Re: Sakurai Is Well Aware That You Want Waluigi In Smash Bros. Ultimate, Says Reggie
@Mogster Relevancy is not a valid excuse as long as Jigglypuff is part of the roster. Despite being with Smash since the beginning, she has always been and still is one of the most laughably unimportant characters to her franchise. You'd think the Pokemon Company and Game Freak would go out of their way to make her more important after Smash, but no. She's been a garbage Clefairy knockoff from the very beginning, Clefairy even got her own manga, her anime importance is an outdated relic, she has absolutely no Starter Pokemon level privileges compared to things like Riolu, Meowth or even Munchlax in any main or spinoff games, no Mega Evolution, no Alola variant and even after the introduction of Fairy, the Clefairy line remains factually superior to the Jigglypuff line in battle. Even though she IS in Smash, she's still unimportant outside of the first 2 games because everything she WANTS to do, Wario just does it better: just as good air mobility, actually good grab, just as good recovery, actual survivability, a command grab, actual combos, etc. There's absolutely no point to use Jigglypuff in Pokemon games when Clefairy is available (or any Normal or Fairy mon for that matter) and there's absolutely no point to play as her in Smash when Wario is available. Waluigi is far more important and adored to his own franchise compared to Jigglypuff.