Jump to content
Awoo.

Sonictrainer

Recommended Posts

There's no evidence to suggest that it'll be anything but Gen VIII; and while the (on reflection, unwarranted) backlash against US/UM clearly did not inspire them to start production on a Switch game, it might well have precipitated the early announcement.  I would imagine it will still look very much like a handheld game, though; they'll still be anticipating it as the sort of game people take on the go to join up with others, or at least the kind of game where they won't want that to be a remotely inferior experience.

Personally, I enjoyed Sun/Moon quite a lot, largely for their more original treatment of elements of the games which were getting dangerously stale, like the use of HMs and gyms; Ride Pokemon and trials both make more of a gesture to the idea of a more integrated closeness with Pokemon as animals than the more mechanical past implementations did.  This was probably the approach to take, as I find that a lot of the minigames and other embellishments that have been added over the years have a certain degree of pointlessness.  At the end of the day, the genre is RPG, and the plot can only proceed by fighting, and as long as that is the case then bells and whistles which don't contribute to game progression I always find to be just so much busy-work; Pokemon Refresh, at least, increases friendship, which gives you advantages in battle, so I think any further forays into this kind of gameplay should also convey some kind of battling advantage, whether it's through giving your Pokemon lucky advantages, or experience, or having them learn new moves or anything like that.  Otherwise, they should change the genre of the game to reduce the focus on battling, and that's highly unlikely.

So far as Lillie's role in the game goes, I found the story to be a big improvement on the past couple of titles, though the series as a whole still has some massive problems with pacing and linearity.  But what they were trying to do with Lillie specifically is to expand on an idea which is also something they want players to do in real life, which is to emphasise your relationship with your friends as well as your Pokemon.  After all, outside of Pokemon Yellow, the games cannot force you to use any one Pokemon, and players would resent it if they did.  But they can certainly force you to spend time with friendly characters, and in that respect Lillie and Hau are merely expansions of the same concepts used to good effect in Black/White and considerably worse effect in X/Y.  Hau is a rival in that you can battle him; Lillie is incapable of being a rival.  Structurally, the pair of them together do everything that's needed of friend-type characters, whereas in BW Bianca and Cheren were both rivals, and in XY there were too many friends and individually none of them really did much.  So I think Lillie and Hau, and maybe to a lesser extent Gladion - and there is an example of a criminally underused character - are another take on that idea.  So I'd expect Gen VIII, unless it's a really radical deviation from the existing formula (unlikely), to have more characters along these lines.

  • Thumbs Up 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

SM had a lot of things going for it and I thought it improved on the main adventure in XY in almost every single way (even though I did like XY more than most people, I think), right down to having a story that didn't suck ass and was even better than B1W1's. Unfortunately it somehow manages to have a postgame that's even shittier than XY's, which killed a good chunk of my goodwill for Game Freak since Pokémon replayability is supposed to be all about the postgame.

USUM doesn't interest me at the moment, mainly because we barely know anything about it yet. I'll buy it immediately if it turns out to be the Platinum of gen7, though, which I think is the best third version/sequel/whatever to date. Fuck trying to complete the Pokédex again though... I already did my time twice

  • Thumbs Up 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, ZinogreVolt said:

I mainly dislike Sun and Moon because of how anti-Pokémon it is. Sure, the core gameplay is the same but a lot of the values of the series has been lost on this game. No longer is it about discovering a lot of the world by yourself and your Pokemon, now its about helping out some moe blob with her mommy issues with cutscenes that just never seem to end or lighten up. This is even reflected in the game's world design which is now incredibly simplified and boring. With Generation 8 on the Switch, I'm hoping the series will go back to its roots and understand just what made the games so fun to begin with.

Pokémon has been increasingly moving in this direction with each Generation, particularly since X and Y. Or arguably even Black and White. I really want to play a Pokémon game that has you exploring the wide, wild world with a plot that actually concerns Pokémon as characters. It's always just "humans cook up some dumb scheme to use Pokémon to do what they want and a ten year old child thwarts them with love and friendship". Yawn, much? You're never more than two feet from civilisation in the newer games either. And everything and everyone is just so sickly sweet. The world is dull, and if you're not interested in the metagame... What does a new Pokémon game even have to offer? The gameplay is unchanging.

 

  • Thumbs Up 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sun and Moon have been the best games in the series for me. They were a breath of fresh air. The story is also my favourite in the whole series, Alola has so much untapped lore that I hope will be touched upon for the sequels/third versions.

Also Sun and Moon literally has the best NPC's for me. I loved everyone.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I enjoyed Sun and Moon even if they did go a bit overboard with the cutscenes (if we can even call most of them that), especially during the first island.

I appreciated what they did with Lillie, but wasn't satisfied with Hau as a rival when there was such a better character that could've filled that role in Gladion.

Also, I preferred gyms to the waste of time that where trials. What I expected of what can be called the bosses of Pokémon is going through a "hard" area and face the boss at the end of it, not playing some mediocre ass mini-games like following rats or making food only to face one Pokémon with raised stats. By the time they actually let you face the Trial Captains they are already underleveled as shit.

When it comes to stuff like Refresh/Amie, PokéStar Studios, etc. I agree with FFWF that they are useless. They just feel like something to entertain your little sister with when she begs to play. I mean, once you've petted or feed a Pokémon, you've basically done it to all 802 Pokémon.

Something like the contests from gen 3 or the various battle facilities from the same gen plus 4 seem like a much better form of optional entertainment in a JRPG like Pokémon.

Personally the way that I get attached to my Pokémon during any playthrough is through the battles we face, when X crits after it seemed like the battle was over, making your own Pokémon face the opponent's of the same species, having them evolve after a fierce battle against the rival, etc. and at the end of the day, after beating the Champion and having them registered in the Hall of Fame just looking at them and feel proud, like, yeah those are my boys.

  • Thumbs Up 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Blue Blood said:

Pokémon has been increasingly moving in this direction with each Generation, particularly since X and Y. Or arguably even Black and White. I really want to play a Pokémon game that has you exploring the wide, wild world with a plot that actually concerns Pokémon as characters. It's always just "humans cook up some dumb scheme to use Pokémon to do what they want and a ten year old child thwarts them with love and friendship". Yawn, much? You're never more than two feet from civilisation in the newer games either. And everything and everyone is just so sickly sweet. The world is dull, and if you're not interested in the metagame... What does a new Pokémon game even have to offer? The gameplay is unchanging.

Yes :)  I feel like both with the technological leap and also perhaps being able to borrow some of Breath of the WIld's engine? this era of the series will hopefully be the most complete representation of the original inspiration for Pokemon. ^_^:)   

The tall grass mechanic was a fairly brilliant early workaround that was still needed into recent generations but has begun to gradually change.  I am sure the new games will inclulde some Pokemon hiding in grass, but could it be that many of them will be free standing and travelling through their habitats, and that some sort of stealth meter will be gently borrowed from BotW? 

Is it possible that there will be much more explorable tree canopies, ponds and lakes, hillsides and cliffsides, via different methods? 

Consider if there were many small, medium and even large types of separate and interconnecting caves, and that many would be optional, similarly with all of the environment types listed above and all that I haven't remembered! 

I don't expect an excessively more realistic game as much as one where the missing pieces you are describing are prioritized and made amazing, it will be very inspiring in terms of its environments and locations being more fully explorable and rewarding!

There will have to be different ways of improving from generation to generation now that the technology is going to be the most modern. To make the environments more interactive, eventually changing the characteristics of other key mechanics of the game, within reason, gives them an area within which to design and place these developments.   

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Although an open world Pokémon game has long been on my mind, it would probably be a far too much of a leap for a series that's an approachable JRPG at heart. It took until Sun and Moon for Game Freak to finally get rid the tile system, and that ended up making the games more restrictive somehow. All I'm really after is a world where I can properly explore, and that's actually about Pokémon. 

  • Thumbs Up 5
Link to comment
Share on other sites

This sounds so fucking redundant to me, because I thought Pokemon was already and RPG with the level up, turn based combat, and overworld.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Sgt Jack V said:

This sounds so fucking redundant to me, because I thought Pokemon was already and RPG with the level up, turn based combat, and overworld.

lolwat

They're making a point that an RPG Pokémon game is coming to the Switch, as opposed to something like Battle Revolution, Box, PokéPark or Myster Dungeon.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

23 hours ago, Chris Knopps said:

Not really, most just want a Pokemon main-series entry that looks absolutely jaw-droppingly gorgeous and is a little more open, nobody is expecting some super-massive open world like the series you mentioned or Breath of the Wild for instance. Really what folks seem to want is a better looking game with Pokemon roaming the over world more naturally.

There's no reason to expect that no matter what console they put it on.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Tornado said:

There's no reason to expect that no matter what console they put it on.

Oh, I know. That's just a common topic/request presently.

-Edit-

What if it's a "core series" entry for Pokemon Snap instead...?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 hours ago, Sgt Jack V said:

This sounds so fucking redundant to me, because I thought Pokemon was already and RPG with the level up, turn based combat, and overworld.

You're forgetting all the Pokemon spinoffs. The reason they have to clarify is because this is a straight up traditional Pokemon on a home console platform (one that just happens to be mobile as well) as opposed to the many home console spinoffs they've had like Pokemon Stadium or Pokken Tournament.

 

A traditional Pokemon RPG with level up, turn-based combat, overworld, has NEVER been on a home console before. That is why they had to clarify that.

 

6 hours ago, Chris Knopps said:

Oh, I know. That's just a common topic/request presently.

-Edit-

What if it's a "core series" entry for Pokemon Snap instead...?

Because they carefully stated that its the traditional turn-based RPG with gathering and leveling up Pokemon. There is no way to interpret it as anything else.

 

 

6 hours ago, Tornado said:

There's no reason to expect that no matter what console they put it on.

They'll give it better visuals at least. It'll look like a home console Pokemon game because they can do it. But yeah, they're probably not going to change anything else up.

  • Thumbs Up 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 6 months later...

All the stuff about the setting, theme, and the Chinese localisation team having more leaks than a sieve is plausible enough, but a completely different battle system isn't really credible... especially if Z-Moves are back, because if the battle system is totally different then they'd be Z-moves in name only.  I could see the battle system being tweaked or rethought a little one of these days, but nothing too radical, as elemental rock-paper-scissors is absolutely at the core of the series.  No new Mega Evolutions figures, as I get the impression they kind of regret making them; a lot of the canon fluff on Mega Evolutions kind of condemns them as a concept, and a number of them would have been better off as actual evolutions.  Z-Moves are easier to produce and retain without requiring inventing a completely new Pokemon just for a power-up.

Probably a lot of people would disagree, but I'd be on-board with soft-rebooting the series from a gameplay perspective just to declutter.  The number of moves, items, and random pointless forms that exist now have accumulated to high levels of redundancy, and I think it would overall be worth dropping a lot of them to streamline the series.  Rethink some of the evolution methods with unnecessary extra conditions (especially those they cooked up just to avoid retcons), combine some of the evolution stones, throw out some useless or gimmicky items and moves that aren't sufficiently distinct, use the fact that we're now in 3D models to turn some of the especially redundant forms into circumstantial animations (I'm thinking of Cherrim and Keldeo in particular), etcetera.

  • Fist Bump 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The rumor is probably bullshit. As if the game is far enough along to be finished being translated. The completely changed battle system would be dumb and extremely unlikely. Assuming it's true for discussion, it would probably get me to not buy it.

The battle system isn't the part of the games that really need to change. It's the world. It needs to become bigger and more open/less linear. Towns should actually be big towns and not just small areas with three buildings. 

Also, have the camera be mostly behind the back. 

Taking place in Spain could be possible. Someone on Resetera said some people from Game Freak went to Spain. We'll see, I guess.

  • Thumbs Up 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 5 weeks later...

On 1/24/2018 at 4:26 PM, FFWF said:

And speaking of Gen VIII, here's my wishlist, in no particular order:

  • Keep PokeRide: Hidden Machines reach their ultimate and perfected form in Ride Pokemon, which let us see Pokemon do cool things in the world under our command without forcing our Pokemon to sacrifice a move slot.  I want to see more of this; I want to see more inventive Ride functions, I want to see old HMs brought back with a new spin, I would even be happy for new Pokemon to be designed primarily to be Ride Pokemon.  With one caveat: They must feel distinct and necessary.  Mudsdale feels artificial.
  • Keep Totems: Totem Pokemon are great.  They put the focus and challenge back on Pokemon rather than the humans who use them, and turn particular Pokemon into exciting, tough showcases.  A lot of the trials don't even need human guidance; Acerola's Ghost-type trial, for instance, could have stood alone, like the Dragon trial.  At the same time, we don't need to actually sacrifice more elaborate trials, or gyms, or what have you.  Just stick the Totems in-between as bonus extras out in the world, filling up the type representation for challenges.  In Gen VII, you could occasionally discover particular Z-Crystals just sitting alone in pedestals out in the world; add optional Totems to that, and it would have been great.  That's one possibility I see for Totems in the future.
  • Keep the difficulty: In Kalos, I was at level 100 by the time I reached the Pokemon League.  Here, the game seemed to catch up with me in the latter stages - and while Po Town was a sad joke full of losers with Pokemon that should have evolved ten levels ago, the difficulty and the variety of Pokemon I faced cranked right up afterwards.  That's not even starting on that possibly too difficult Ultra Necrozma battle!  More of this, please.
  • Bring back mazes: The trouble with 3D is that it's meant that pathways have to be bigger, which has resulted in routes and dungeons being a lot less complex - just one main pathway wriggling along with a few side-paths.  I yearn for the multi-path, multi-level dungeons we used to have, full of mystery and choices.  I notice that the encounter rate for Surfing has plummeted; do the same for caves, zoom the camera out a bit, add a minimap as good as the overworld map, and let us get lost again.
  • Bring back puzzles: I feel like the only time in this game that I really solved a puzzle was during the deliberately nostalgic Episode RR, and in fact the game had so few puzzles that I was genuinely surprised to see, for instance, the delightful conveyor arrow tiles again.  Strength in particular hasn't been worthwhile since the boulders stopped being small enough to see over and started just being lock-and-key rather than an element of Zelda-like block-pushing puzzles; and does it have to be so slow?  But the big loss in Alola were the massive, set-piece puzzles we used to get in gyms, full of moving parts and unique, artificial rulesets.  The loss of those is the greatest argument I can think of for bringing back gyms in some capacity.  Barely ever did I have to actually think while playing this game.  I miss it.
  • Bring back wilderness: Kalos in particular, and in a different way Alola, have felt especially... pedestrianised.  You aren't going out on a big adventure into the wilds with your Pokemon; you're just following literal roads, long-established paths set out before you and with literal progress barriers making sure you do everything the way adults want you to.  I want to see a region that's untamed, at least in places; areas you can visit which feel like barely anyone else has ever been there, lonely and trackless.  Sinnoh gave me this feeling, at the best of times.  I want to see it back.
  • Use fewer trainers: Essentially an extension of some of the above points, this is a game which sometimes feels like it's crawling with people everywhere.  Granted, they're partly there to make good use of the game's expanded Pokedex, and I celebrate that as a contrast to the drudgery of ORAS and its millions of trainers who use exactly the same Pokemon again and again - but here's the thing: The vast majority of them use one Pokemon.  Just one.  Barely any trainers in this game are using even half of their full six slots; it's a waste.  No wonder the Experience Share exists, because you're barely ever going to be switching Pokemon!  In any case, trainers just aren't as interesting since they lost the ability to walk up and block your path, changing the layout of the mazes you walked.  3D makes it difficult to go back to that, but don't bother using trainers unless they have good teams or they're playing an interesting role in the environment.

And that's that.  Alola was fun, but I didn't need to play this game and kind of regret getting it.  Roll on Generation VIII!  Just so long as everything isn't spoiled this time.

This is wonderful to read!  I feel that is okay to bring this writing to this topic to reply, and moreso that others can read your post in this context!

The new games at least feel like they have the potential to be an overwhelming triumph for the series; almost as though Breath of the Wild was released but there had been no n64, Gamecube, or Wii entries in the series, only handheld and SNES!!  It is mind boggling in a good way, especially with the eventual news that the main, experienced team has been working on this game already for some time. 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think the reason towns have never been more than a few buildings is so they don't overshadow the more natural environments. Having fewer towns might work, and making those that are included larger. It'd be if a region-base of the UK had just London, Birmingham, Manchester, and Edinburgh as cities. Smaller towns would be two or three buildings in close range, surrounded by the environment.

Also, if a more behind-the-shoulder view was to be used, it'd need to be a full 3D modelled environment with no shortcuts. So long as they can actually make 'mon look 3D in the battles like the GCN Orre games, I'll be happy if the overworld remained in a top-down view. Of course, both would be preferable.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

To be honest, if anything I'd prefer smaller towns.  There was a trend pre-Alola of towns getting bigger and bigger, with every game seeming to feel obliged to include a new "biggest ever city," culminating in metropolises like Castelia City - and, at last, the unnavigably oversized Lumiose City, for which the developers had to invent PokeRiding just to speed up travel around that awful place.  I really do believe if they had made a Pokemon Z then Lumiose would've had its own minimap...  Alola was much improved by having the very first city you encounter be both the region's biggest and comparatively small.

I actually thought of another couple of items I'd like to add to my wishlist:

  • Keep PokePelago: A success both thematically and functionally, PokePelago finally solves the ethical dilemma of leaving your Pokemon in PC oblivion forever whilst also shuffling a whole load of useful functions away from disparate locations in the main game to a single useful hub.  I'd be very happy to see something like PokePelago return next game - perhaps with the addition of breeding and the possibility of getting there earlier in the game.
  • Keep the friends: Perhaps a controversial suggestion, and perhaps also an unnecessary one, given that GameFreak themselves have stated that they moved away from a "rival" model towards a model of friends who you go on a journey with - but "friends" have been a feature of Pokemon games since arguably Gen III, with varying degrees of success; Black and White had the most elegant friend-based model with its two (semi-)rivals, I think, while everyone knows how badly X and Y failed with its irrelevant friends who do nothing and barely ever show up.  Well, Sun and Moon were definitely the biggest successes in this regard so far, I think, by surrounding the player character with friend characters who are that miracle combination of interesting, entertaining, and consistently present.  They stumble a bit with Gladion, who abruptly becomes something resembling a member of the gang after far too few previous appearances, but in general Sun and Moon did a good job making Hau and Lillie enjoyable to have around, adding a dimension of personal relationships and development to your journey.  By this means, the plot becomes a painting of not just major but also minor strokes; the epic drama of organisations and legendary Pokemon plus the personal drama of the individuals surrounding you.  I guess just calling this a trope of "friends" isn't really very informative when X/Y did such a shoddy job on them (and your Gen III rival was pretty lousy until rescued by ORAS), but basically I'm giving a commendation for good writing here, good writing and actually committing to an idea rather than going for half-measures.
  • Thumbs Up 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...

Fake, but getting better.  The rabbit and the platypus could work with some colour tweaks; the lemur hasn't a hope, but the colour scheme feels more official.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Platypus looks a little too generic, Rabbit looks like a mascot of a fantasy game, and the lemur is.....looks more fit for a general Pokemon than a starter.

But if the grammar was better it'll be neat. I would praise the creator's art, Japanese and handwriting.

 

 

(I'd be surprised if this was real...:blink:)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

20 hours ago, QuantumEdge said:

Dear GameFreak

In the event that these are another elaborate hoax, then please scrap whatever ideas you have for the next starters and adopt these ones instead.

https://pokejungle.net/2018/02/20/rumor-2-could-the-gen-viii-starters-have-leaked/

Thank you.

Update: Apparently confirmed fake by the creator.

We should really stop feeding every supposed leak that comes strolling through.  The proportion of fakes as compared to genuine leaks continually increases.

  • Thumbs Up 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Honestly, the only one that really felt like a real Pokemon to me was the lemur. The other ones looked nice, but they felt fake to me. Especially the colors of the platypus.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

You must read and accept our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy to continue using this website. We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.