nintendoknife

@Cathousemaster I've said it before, if a game trailer has "game footage not final" written on it, you can be 100% sure the game will look exactly like that when it's released (if not worse, in the infamous case of Watch Dogs).

@FlashBoomerang "Show it!" Look at the video this article is about!

@Yorumi "If gamefreak was actually programming every pokemon they would be the most incompetent programmers on the planet." I wouldn't put it past them, what with the 100 Lillies in Sun and Moon.

@JaxonH "I dont care" You do care, otherwise you wouldn't even have clicked on this article, let alone commented a dozen times.

@AxeltheCorvikni I agree, on the one hand it's fairly normal for the first games that established the franchise worldwide and received enormous media attention to be better recognised than later generations, but on the other hand, having (re)visited Kanto for six times already gets really boring, and then they also release brand new games like Pokémon Quest that exclusively contain first generation Pokémon. It's as if every day, The Pokémon Company comes knocking on your door, asking "have you heard about Pikachu?" "have you heard about Pikachu?" "have you heard about Pikachu?"

It numbs the mind whenever 'Pokémon' is equated with 'the first and only generation'.

@SuperRetroArt "There is zero noticeable input lag." I agree with the rest of what you wrote, but this is plainly not true, there is very much a noticeable input lag at play. If you have Symphony of the Night (or the Dracula X collection on a PSP/Vita) close by, press the jump button and watch Alucard jump instantly. Press attack and he attacks instantly. Compare that with Bloodstained, where you press attack and there's a slight delay before Miriam attacks, even with fast weapons like knives or boots. Same thing for the jump, which is really frustrating if, like me and probably many others, you use your 1337 platforming skills and always wait until you're at the very edge of a platform before you press jump. In Bloodstained, you often just fall off the platform because Miriam doesn't jump at the exact moment you press the button.

@Darasin I get what you're saying, the way the game looks on the Xbox One should technically be possible to do on the Switch, but it's just not going to happen if the Xbox One, which is far more powerful than the Switch, can't even run it at 1080p.

@Balta666 And your reasons are "I don't like the way it works".

@retro_player_22 You're comparing apples and oranges in every possible way.

Something I haven't seen mentioned yet is that when your health gets low, the rumble goes haywire. It's especially bad in portable mode because the rumble (in any game) causes a really annoying sound from the screen vibrating.

@Darasin The Switch is not as powerful as the base Xbox so that won't happen, and as other people already stated, the game is made with Unreal Engine 4, which doesn't run particularly well on any console and especially not on the Switch. Getting rid of the input lag and bumping the resolution to native res in portable mode are necessary, anything else would be great but I wouldn't hold my breath.

@Balta666 "I don't like these games, therefore they are bad." I don't like the gameplay of classic Castlevania games very much either (music and atmosphere have always been excellent), but they're still great games.

@Scottwood101 @BionicDodo Hey, you're right, I mixed up £ and €, my bad.

@Gzeus88 Don't forget that from now on, Pokémon games also cost 30% to 50% more because they're on a home console. In short we get an upscaled 3DS game with half of the Pokémon deleted and none of the cool features previous generations had, yet we're also expected to pay a lot more than before. As the AVGN would say twenty years from now: "What were they thinking?"

@Scottwood101 Hollow Knight was £13 on sale.

Interestingly, a minor overclock makes the game run at 720p in handheld mode. The visual downgrades in some places are strange, though, as they mentioned in the video, I had no idea some of those parts were supposed to be water, they looked more like some strange slush. I have no doubt that they'll make the game look much better as time goes on, going by how they've fixed nearly everything people complained about in the demo.

Gameplay-wise, in any case, the game is truly excellent. It's just like the Castlevanias on the DS, and of course Symphony of the Night. It's peak era Castlevania in all but name.

@Primarina Not 'for that game', but for every game from now on. Either way, as I believe I already wrote earlier in this thread, my concern is less with the fact that they've decided to change the way they're doing things, and more with them telling us that they're doing to because they're working hard on new animations and balancing the games, neither of which they're actually doing. Removing part of what made Pokémon games unique among other RPGs is one thing, but lying in the face of your customers as to why you did it is offensive. I don't think I was arguing with you, though.

@WoolooSweater There is only one group of people who truly don't care and they're the ones who aren't commenting at all. My aunt, for example, is someone who doesn't care. A common theme in these threads is that people rather calmly state that they're disappointed in the lack of effort Game Freak has been putting in their games the past couple of years, pointing to countless pieces of evidence to prove black on white that Game Freak is also highly dishonest about their supposedly new animations, models, balance, etc; then there are some others who comment essentially telling these disappointed fans to "shut up" (as you did, literally) because Game Freak won't listen to the complaints anyway and to accept mediocrity from a series that used to be great because that's the way Game Freak said it's going to be. The fact that The Pokemon Company itself for the first time in its entire history has publicly released a statement (the one this thread is about) to reply to the enormous ruckus caused by the disappointed fans shows that the fans' complaints did actually cause them to worry enough to release that public statement - again, for the very first time in its history. Unfortunately, of course, if you take out the fluff, the statement just says "suck it up".

@whanvee "I know the game isn't unplayable but I dont understand how this title can be more demanding than something like breath of the wild or even mortal kombat." I sure wonder who wrote that statement.

@Primarina "Define what makes a great Pokemon game." look at Black and White and their sequels. There was a lot of love and care put into those games, they designed 153 new Pokémon, the atmosphere is great, the music is great, the gameplay is great with triple and rotation battles mixing up the formula, it looks and runs great, and even the story is great. This is not to say that they didn't have any faults (why create a difficulty mode but only allow people to use it once they've beaten the game and delete their save file?), but they were the pinnacle of Pokémon games. HeartGold and SoulSilver were the pinnacle of remakes, also with incredible amounts of care poured into them.

That being said, the 'par' is not just taking into account Pokémon games, but games in general. If all other series improve greatly with every iteration and especially on the most powerful Nintendo console to date, but Pokémon just stumbles along, the bar should be raised for Pokémon games as well. This is why I brought up Smash Bros, Zelda, etc. Those games are so far beyond their predecessors that you would be forgiven to think that they weren't even made by the same developers. Game Freak, on the other hand, tells Pokémon fans "here, we upscaled the 3DS games and deleted half of the Pokémon, enjoy".

@Primarina "one of the most beloved remakes HG and SS had an exceptional amount of Pokemon left out" That's a totally different situation, I can't believe people are still bringing stuff like this up. No Pokémon game has ever had all Pokémon available to catch, you've always had to either trade with the other game, trade with the other games of the same generation, or import them from older generations. However, in the end, you were always able to have all Pokémon that were released up to that point in the latest games in the series (save for some one-off Pokémon like Spiky Eared Pichu, which I'm still angry never got to move on past HGSS). Even in the best games in the series, Black and White, you were forced to exclusively use the regional Pokémon (which was great and very refreshing after seeing Pikachu, Rattata, Pidgey, etc in every corner the preceding four generations) until you beat the game and were allowed to find non-Unova Pokémon and import them from older games. For Sword and Shield, though, the data for the missing Pokémon is removed entirely from the games, you can't import them even after beating the game.

@WoolooSweater "And you can hate Nintendo games and consoles without ranting online like a 3 year old since you can’t get what you want." What do you mean? Was that supposed to be an insult, suggesting that anyone who complains about the lack of care one of their favourite game series is given, is literally a baby? By your writing style and general quick-to-anger attitude, I take it you are still on the younger side yourself (no shame), and you seem to refuse to accept that people generally complain because they care. Many of the people who are upset at the way Game Freak has been acting for years, with the deletion of half of all creatures in the first true console Pokémon game and Game Freak's ludicrous rationale for doing so simply being the cherry on top, have grown up playing Pokémon games, have been playing them for twenty three years. Now that the game that these long time fans have awaited for virtually their entire life is finally here, and it's an upscaled 3DS game with less content instead of more, all of the reservations they've had about this or that problem in this or that Game Freak-developed game are now coming to light, and rightfully so. If Smash Bros. fans got an outstanding game with Ultimate, if Zelda fans got an outstanding game with Breath of the Wild, if Mario fans got an outstanding game with Odyssey, if Sonic fans got an outstanding game with Mania, if Resident Evil fans got an outstanding game with 7, and so on, why should Pokémon fans be content with a sub-par effort from a developer that stopped caring once they made the move to 3D?

@Barbara001 No, the problem is not defending the rich company in itself, the problem is that you're defending them from all criticism no matter how valid. You quite literally wrote that people should blindly continue buying Pokémon games to support their favourite franchise, no matter how dire those games become, no matter how little time the games spent in development. You have nothing to say whatsoever and therefore want to make sure no one else says anything either.

It's great seeing a company that used to make blood green or non-existent has now done a 180, decided to abolish censorship and leave it up to the customer to decide what to do with the ratings given by the various rating boards. It's too bad that Sony now decided to do a 180 on their previously lenient policies, though.

@graysoncharles I do hope you realise that WWE, which remains an American phenomenon despite their attempts to popularise it worldwide and which is really all about the shows (with some merchandise on the side, as with anything), is in no way comparable to Pokémon, a franchise recognised by children, their parents and their grandparents all over the world, with extremely successful branches in just about anything you can think of - as I said, if they were to start selling turds with a Pikachu drawn on, people would still buy them in droves, and Pokémon Turd would become yet another success story in Pokémon's history. Movies (animated and live action), tv series, spinoff games, books, theme parks, trading cards, plush dolls, clothing, foodstuffs, comic books, board games, and an overall cultural influence that cannot be understated. If you're going to accuse me of throwing around false equivalencies, you should probably not use one yourself.

@King-X Thanks! The video you linked was great btw, well informed and clearly explained.

@King-X How do you embed a video in a comment? Does it need any special tags?

@Barbara001 Why are you defending one of the richest companies in the world for their anti-consumer decisions when they aren't paying you to do so? You can like Nintendo games and consoles without blindly accepting the bad things they do.

@graysoncharles "Voting with your wallets" doesn't work if you're talking about the largest media franchise in the world, which thrives almost entirely on brand recognition. Draw a Pokémon on a turd and people will buy it. The idea is that most of the people who are complaining are indeed not going to buy it, or at least if they do it will be secondhand and not on release day in shops. However, even if this has a significant impact on expected sales (let's say they sell 5% less than predicted), this signals nothing to Game Freak other than "less people bought our game than expected". If no one had complained about Sonic's messed up design in the upcoming movie, and it had been released and had bombed in cinemas, the only thing the producers would have learned from that would have been "people must not be interested in Sonic movies". If no one had complained about the bad animations in Bloodstained and the game had flopped, the only thing the developers would have learned from that would have been "people must not be interested in more SotN-like Castlevanias". The hope is that perhaps some Game Freak employee, even if it's only one, will see the backlash and finally realise "well, damn, they're totally right". Unfortunately I have not seen any major game news outlet talk about how the bar for Pokémon games keeps being lowered as time goes on, I have not seen any outlet talk about just how bad the games actually look visually and how horrible the 10m draw distance is, nothing. Instead, most sites keep on praising it all to high heavens, and this very site even had a clickbait front page article to defend Game Freak's laziness not too long ago. This very site gave Let's Go an 8/10 when it's little more than a remake of Pokémon Yellow with 3DS graphics. I predict a 9/10 (if not a 10/10) for Sword and Shield, where all faults are swept under the rug.
Yes, Game Freak has been pulling these stunts for years (basically ever since they moved to 3D - the 2D games had their own technical shortcomings, but at least they offered loads and loads of stuff in return, even though many functions also only existed in one generation), but now all of their stunts have been compiled and the story has reached a breaking point. As a comparison: if a friend doesn't show up to your birthday party and only sends you a message a week later "sry, totally forgot dude", you'll be disappointed but you'll most likely let it slide. If that friend does the same thing the following year, you'll be sorely disappointed but you'll still let it slide because you see them enough on other occasions. If they do it the year after as well, you'll break off all contact and scrap that person from your mental friends list because it's become clear that they really don't care for you at all and that the other occasions of being stood up weren't just flukes.

@graysoncharles It is certainly ironic how you complain of people defending corrupt politicians against their best interests, yet at the same time you mock anyone who dares complain about one of the richest companies in the world acting against its consumers. In addition, it is quite rich to talk of "man-children" when using an avatar of a big-breasted 3D woman.

@DTFaux I know full well what it means in a literal sense. I also know out of many years of experience that any game trailer which has "game footage not final" written on it somewhere is an exact 1-to-1 representation of what the end product will be like. "Game footage not final" is a running gag for good reason.
Game Freak is also an outstanding example, as they always release all available information on their new games before they're out, there's never anything new or otherwise unmentioned beforehand. What we are trying to do is temper people's expectations because what you see now is exactly what you'll get, and nothing more, and prevent you from disappointment. It's up to you to either accept or ignore the advice from those experienced in being disappointed.

I was expecting a reference to World's End Girlfriend, alas.

@ibtachi and anyone else who defends Game Freak's "updated animations": disregard the silly title and watch the following video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbDOrjE4ka4

@jswhitfield8 "I also think this decision is taken from research of how many players actually complete their pokedex" Sure, but it would be nice if they could at least tell their customers the truth as to why they've changed direction, instead of lying about it, adding insult to injury.

@ibtachi "tons of comparison videos", can you link to one?

@jswhitfield8 The difference is that this time around the code for the Pokémon will not even be in the games. Previously you could still trade with other games, import from older games (the reason they made Pokémon Bank in the first place) or get some exclusives via Mystery Gift, or even glitch/hack them in, but in Sword and Shield, if e.g. Reuniclus is not in the game, it is literally not in the game and no amount of trading, importing, mystery gifting, glitching or hacking will allow you to get it. I don't get why people keep bringing up the American catchphrase of the early years either, but there is clearly a difference in how the games are going to work from now on compared to beforehand. Also, they'll keep doing Mystery Gift exclusives, don't worry about it.

@AyanamiReign Exactly. If they'd said they were going to stop allowing all Pokémon to be transferred to all games but instead they were going to focus on improving the gameplay, graphics, performance, balance, etc, and actually did those things, people would still be frustrated but at least there would be a proper reason for the change of direction.

@Monzerol Other than the new Pokémon and trainers, they all already have their models, rigged and animated for enter/still/leave/physical/special/hurt/sleep/walk/run/fly animations. The massive amount of work you're talking about was already done for Pokémon X and Y, they made the models future proof so that they would only have to mess with some textures and lighting effects for years to come. They reused those same models in Let's Go, and they're reusing those same models in Sword and Shield. If Sun and Moon could have nearly 1000 different models (this includes all different formes, each of which in the game's programming is a different Pokémon), how could that suddenly become a problem for games on a far more powerful system?

Edit: and to add, there is nothing contradictory between wanting better visuals and wanting more creatures. The two don't cancel each other out and are handled by different teams entirely. If you're the only person creating a game, you have to do everything by yourself, but a company has artists and programmers who are specialised in different things. (Unfortunately, in Game Freak's case, their programmers aren't specialised in anything, even dating back to the Gold and Silver era, where they couldn't fit those games on a Game Boy cartridge, until Satoru Iwata single-handedly fixed everything and included nearly all of Kanto as well, and still Gold and Silver are smaller than other GB games).

Edit 2: also, "give us more AND make it better", what exactly do you think Smash Bros Ultimate is? Or how about Mario Kart 8?

@Chibi_Manny Huh? Why are you comparing the games exclusively to older games in the franchise? For one, the models remain exactly the same as in the 3DS games and only some new lighting effects and textures were created to make them look slightly better (in the eye of the beholder). However, what's wrong with comparing it to other franchises? Look at the astonishing graphics developers like Square Enix, or even Nintendo themselves, can get out of the system whilst also making the games run near flawlessly, and compare those to Game Freak who genuinely struggle to make a game with upscaled 3DS graphics (look up what the 3DS games played on an emulator on the PC look like, they're pretty much exactly the same as Let's Go and SS) and tree models ripped straight out of the N64's Ocarina of Time run at 30fps (Viridian Forest in Let's Go lagged so bad it wasn't even funny). 3D games can look cartoony but still look really good, just look at Ni No Kuni or World of Final Fantasy for some recent examples. If you're going to hold Game Freak up to a different set of standards all because "Pokémon games have never been the best-looking games in the graphics department", you're missing the point. Up until now, most people just said "well, okay, it doesn't look as good as I'd have hoped, but it's still Pokémon and it's still fun and it still has the basics a Pokémon game needs", but now Game Freak literally claims that they refuse to copy the data for a bunch of Pokémon over because they're "working on the graphics", even though they very obviously have not worked on the graphics at all as they are completely incompetent in that regard. They're making up fake excuses, and for some inexplicable reason they used the main thing they haven't worked on at all for years as their excuse for whatever the real reason behind taking out a sizeable chunk of the Dex is.

@Chibi_Manny "amazing graphics" Surely you are joking?

Also my apologies for the string of posts but this system makes it really hard not to sextuple post if you want to reply to multiple people.

@johnvboy "the mass Pokemon market will buy the game for what it's got" No, they'll buy it because it's called Pokémon, not because it has a, b and c features. If you think otherwise you do not understand brand recognition and loyalty whatsoever.

@sanderev Mystery Gift exclusive legendaries are DLC.

@DTFaux @NotTelevision "Game footage not final." is corporate speak for "This is exactly what it will look like when it's released."

@Heavyarms55 @Ulysses I would simply like to say that people generally complain because they care. Breath of the Wild is a great game but the overall lack of music and the weapons that break way too fast are still worth complaining about because the game would undisputably have been better with (more) music and with slightly more durable weapons. Pokémon games are still fun to play but the sheer lack of effort Game Freak puts into them is horrifying, and their total disrespect towards the very people who've made the series grow into the colossus it is today, the real fans and not just the "only 151 Pokémon exist" crowd, has now ballooned up to a point where even the hardcorest of the hardcore are saying that they no longer stand for Game Freak's anti-consumerism. There has never been this much of a backlash against a main series Pokémon game. The lack of a Battle Frontier in ORAS and the lack of basically anything new in USUM pale in comparison.

@Majora101 I agree, in fact I haven't heard of anyone who dislikes the art style. It's brilliant because just like Wind Waker, it can never look dated. The line feels odd, like it was written to pad a short article more than anything.

Great going when a mobile pay-to-play-everyday (hopefully not pay-to-win) spinoff made by a third party developer has a more complex battle system than the mainline games. Six Pokémon on screen at once, Game Freak must be scratching their heads as to how DeNA could ever pull that off.

@Blizzia I see, so how old are you - generally speaking, if all goes to plan and you don't have to redo anything - when starting the pre-uni combo? I thought more or less everywhere you start a bachelors at 18, masters at 21 and a PhD afterwards for the few who really like their field of study. It sounds as though your system either has you start the bachelors relatively late or the pre-uni combo at a really young age.

@Alucard83 "The 240p was just a killer for me." "Original ps1 still wins for me" Hmm, I wonder, what was the PS1's resolution again...

@Blizzia How do you 'major in German and history' before starting your higher education?

@Crono1973 I mentioned it above but it's just a GDPR compliance update, doesn't block anything as that would be a lot of effort for little to no gain.

@Ventilator They could technically fix all of the exploits still, but there's not much of a point in doing so because I assume anyone who wanted to hack their device has already done so a long time ago, they aren't selling Wii U's anymore anyway and in any case not many people will install firmware updates for systems they abandoned years ago. Patching the exploits would require a lot of effort for little to no gain, and the day after they'd release the final bugfree update someone's bound to find a new exploit anyway.