Sega DogTagz

Of course the Meta is dynamic, but they've never implemented a hard wall to my team building such as this. Even if new pokemon or moves come in and shake things up, I was never outright prevented from falling back on old favorites, or re-inventing them to fit the new mold. When Fairy type came out, and started wrecking dragons, that was game design. But in the same hand, I was never prevented from continuing to run my dragons, I just had to be smarter about team composition and develop new strategies from dealing with the new threat. With this Home restriction, I don't get that option. By axing a sizable percentage of the breeding pool, and preventing certain poke's from making the jump, not only are you limiting the versatility of every pokemon in the game, but your preventing me from being imaginative and building the team I want to make. Game design is the careful balance and re-tweaking of how the game works and plays to create a better experience. This is more like hacking off an arm without any idea what it'll do to the rest of the body. There are going to be consequences to removing certain mon's that we won't realize until years from now.

Its not like Gamefreak has to build new models for every game from scratch though. They have been reusing the same set for a few generations now. Once you wireframe up a decent Pikachu, you can re-use that asset again and again. Maybe some new texture maps or lighting to make it look better, but your not running a marathon here. Sure as the roster gets larger, that becomes a taller and taller task, but at the same time they get to capitalize on the work put into games from 6 and 7 years ago too. Much like how I can pop in a copy of Madden 2019 and recognize canned animations from 2010 still being used, I can look at any copy of Pokemon and see the same idle animation for most Pokemon since the franchise made the jump to 3D models from sprites. From a casual sense, that lv 100 pokemon and sentimental value is probably the limit. But from a competitive stance, (i.e. the people who play the game hardcore) your talking about potentially being barred from team members that you poured countless hours chain breeding for the perfect moves, natures, genders and IVs (super important invisible stats). That is a significant investment, and your basically telling people that whoops, your pokemon may not be available in the Meta for the next 2 or 3 years. And then furthermore, recreating that pokemon may be next to impossible, as removing a poekmon from an egg group has ripple effects everywhere else to make chain breeding impossible in some cases. Thats bunk. There is little doubt that as a Psudo-legendary pokemon, Goodra will make the cut. However it other Poekmon like Skrelp/Dragalgae don't, then Goodra can't learn Acid Armor. Without Scraggy/Scrafty it no longer has access to Counter. No Tyrunt/Tyrantrum? Say goodbye to Curse. By removing 1 Pokemon, you can royally f-up another. My Curse Goodra did work back in the Battle Tree. It would be a massive barrier to entry to new players if you make it impossible to make one going forward. By protecting the "experience" in one hand, your barring the movepool for every pokemon in the game.

That's a mute point. Pokemon Home isn't launching until some undefined point in 2020, so you may well have up to a full year to enjoy and get used to the Galar regions new faces before any of that is threatened by the tidal wave of old vanguards being ported up from older games. Protecting the experience was never a question of the matter because, at least for this game, there is nothing threatening that experience at launch or in the short or mid term. Everyone, regardless of desire, will be locked into the Galar region exclusives. What this mandate does is burn out the long game. When Home does become available, we won't have access to the X number of pokemon that don't make the cut. Any and all Poke fans will have long since worked their way through every inch of Galar by then. Who are you protecting? The pokemon newbie who was a late adopter and likely wouldn't have home or a back catalog of tanks to pull from anyway? C'mon man.

Is it true this game is being published by Sega in Japan? I think the same thing happened to the N'Sane trilogy on Switch, but that is odd considering the direct competition to one of their recently released games...

I'm super hyped to throw down in the middle of... Blu Fog? C'mon man. The 3DS games put in the extra effort to render caves, grasslands and all that other junk. Why are the trainer battles in a gym reduced to... THAT. I'd be okay if it didn't take place in the main stadium (thats cool to reserve for the Gym Leader) but they can do sooooooo much better than blu void.

WTF is up with the backgrounds for the trainer battles in the Water gym? Jesus, that lazy. Pokemon Stadium on the N64 put in more effort than that.

What are you on about? The WiiU version of Rio had Volleyball and BMX, and the 3DS version included multiple swim styles, pole vaulting, trampoline, 1500m, hammer throw.... shoot pretty much every event I listed sans the long jump. They were all in Rio Most of the usual trash events I'd agree with. But I'll eat my fist if they were to leave out some of the longer, more involved sports like volleyball. Its one of the few games with a playtime long enough to consider online multiplayer viable - which is a selling point for this go around too. Fair enough, point taken... But just to nitpick, but you cant use the winter/summer split to bolster that argument. Kinda hard for Omega to be exclusive to the 100m dash when the winter olympics don't have one lol.

Some of the previous games, including 3DS london, limited the characters you could use in each event. There was something like 4 or 5 choices for each, with only Sonic and Mario themselves capable of competing in everything. everyone complained about it.

That screen is likely a placeholder though. Just by combing through the regular events, there are some notable omissions. Things like the 1500m Dash and Hammer throw (which would use the same controls as 100m dash / Discus throw) are no-brainer omissions. And then you can just run down the list of events that aren't here, but would likely make the cut to pad out the game counts. Trampoline, long jump, different swimming styles - heck the back catalog is loaded with events primed to make a return like pole vaulting. Also, if your going to recycle the same set of guests/bosses (like we all expect them too), then you almost have to bring back their associated events too. Volleyball and BMX are near locks. In the same light, I would expect the dream events to mirror the regular events that are included. I'd be shocked if they removed dream football - as they've done it before. And if your bring in a sport like Volleyball then you can bring back its dream event too.

Does the home stuff really change that much? Sure its a bit foreboding for the future of the franchise. When Gen 9 rolls around we will get side-swipped by this same truck. But as far as sword and shield are concerned, they won't be affected nearly as much. Since Home isn't slated to launch until next year (I don't think they've even given a date beyond 2020). We could be looking at half or even a full year before Home launches and is even available to flood those games with fresh blood. Until home eventually launches, you wouldn't have access to your back catalogue of pokemon anyway. You'll be playing the game without access to any of your old favorites regardless. This is some legit bad news tho. Hopefully Pokemon Gun fixes everything. Guns are always the answer.

That trailer actually looked like... honest effort?! At least for this series. We already knew they were going the extra mile on the characters clothing, but seeing that in action between the different events is very nice. The collection of events continues to expand, and this game will continue to grow. The archery character select screens show that they have done away with the last games least popular and most baffling decision. Things are trending up.

Have you seen the crap Penders churns out? Of course it could have been worse. That being said, I did get a giggle out of the ribbed tracksuit being inspired by the Sega logo itself,. If your going to set out to make an abomination, might as well have fun with it lol.

Devolving the series to 2D seems like a bit of a slap to the face of what the original fell short of. Its like they cringed at the reaction to the first game, and kind of retreated to their safe space. Even if this sequel is done well and is a good game, I feel like its gonna get bogged down by the weight of what it could... and arguably should have been. Think I'll pass on boarding the hype train for this one.

What backfired exactly? Considering how the term still gets flung around today, I'd say it was a wildly successful marketing ploy.

Too much of an early game advantage turns the game into easy mode, and we all know one of the biggest knocks against most pokemon games is the lack of a real difficulty curve. So I'm essentially encouraged to not pick the starter I want, because it would make the first few hours a walk in the park. Honestly, those first 15-20 levels are really the most "threatening" moments as far as getting pushed to the edge. The lack of a full team, the lack of coverage moves and TMs to rectify that and the constant desire to grind out a few more battles before retreating to a pokemon center... those first few hours are important. Without them, the game is just begging to be steam rolled until after the credits roll for beating the elite 4. I'd love a Hard Mode option for this one. But I say that about every pokemon game.