I wasn't too impressed with Sw/Sh and I'm seeing a lot of the same complaints and more from capital-G Gamers and normal ass people alike.
Terrible performance, shitty animations (if they exist at all), lackluster open world, no more building interiors, missing features.
Is it even worth dropping $60 on this or is it just another shameful cashgrab? Strongly considering just picking up Legends Arceus as people seemed to really like that game and its fresh mechanics.
It’s very obvious that the people who made S/V did not play Legends Arceus. If they did they must’ve been mortified at how much better it was than the game they were making.
Why does it run so bad??? Why does it look arguably worse than Pokémon Colosseum? Why are there so many visual artifacts? Why do the shadows look worse than stuff on the original Xbox? Why does the battle interface look like a shitty knockoff version of Pokémon?
Why are there so many things I could do in Arceus that would be helpful to do now that I can’t? Why can’t I aim where I throw my Pokémon? Why can’t I dodge roll anymore? Why isn’t hiding in the grass a mechanic that actually works? Why don’t the Pokémon attack me? Why can’t I walk around during battles to get better camera angles? Why did we drop the Strong/Agile style attacks and the actual turn order that made speed matter more than in the opening turn?
Why does it look SO MUCH WORSE than Arceus, despite coming out later? Why does each blade of grass look like you blew up a blade of grass from the Windows XP wallpaper? Why are the controls completely different than in Arceus but just as bad, just awful in a different way? Why is the music way less interesting and thematically fitting? Why is there such a long load time every time I throw my Pokémon out at something.
Arceus was, in many ways, what I always wanted out of Pokémon, but still left a lot to be desired because even though the battle system was changed (for the better imo) we barely got to use it because there were no gyms. I’m not far in yet, but so far S/V is exactly how I feared GameFreak would fuck up an open world Pokémon game.
I truly hate that only GameFreak(slightly more complicated but) is allowed to make Pokémon games, in a just society those rights would’ve been taken from them years ago
Why did we drop the Strong/Agile style attacks and the actual turn order that made speed matter more than in the opening turn?
That whole system was so bad though, where moves all had hidden initiative costs and the whole thing was extremely obtuse and inconsistent because it only mattered when they hit the threshold to give a second consecutive turn to one pokemon or the other which also wouldn't line up with the displayed order since your opponent could just do a cheaper move and attack twice or stop you from attacking twice anyways. And then there was whatever they did to the damage calculations to make everything way deadlier and flatter across the board in unintuitive ways. How weird, inconsistent, and spiky the battles were in Arceus was the absolute worst part of it.
The world was a decent first stab at making an open world game, but all the mechanical changes to the core gameplay were just bad.
Not that it really mattered, since almost all the battles were against wild pokemon and all the big fights were just the player running around throwing shit at a darksouls-lite boss instead of using pokemon. I never even finished it because it got so boring and felt so pointless. It was just not a fun game at all after the novelty of the open world with pokemon wandering around wore off.
It was just not a fun game at all after the novelty of the open world with pokemon wandering around wore off.
Maybe it’s just that I like collectathons but I had the opposite experience. I basically 100%ed it, the only thing I’m missing is a couple of the special 1v1 battles in the post-game
As far as the turn order thing, the system was janky but I wish they had fine tuned it and made it work instead of going back to the way things were. At the very least I sometimes lost battles in Arceus, and when the hell was the last time that’s happened in a standard Pokémon game?
Cynthia in diamond
Woman how the fuck do you have level 60+ mons when everyone else in the elite 4 is using like 55ish, and the victory road pokemon are like 45ish.
Picked up the D/P remake, got all the way to Cynthia, lost to her bullshit fucking piece of shit Garchomp and just never played it again after that
You’re right, the last times were Cynthia in D/P/Pl and May on the bridge from Slateport to Mauville when her Grovyle would murder my Marshtomp
But also that was almost 15 years ago :doomjak:
Edit: Oh god I underestimated
Yep. Ruby was my first Pokémon game and 3 days from now will be the 20th anniversary of its release.
:scared:
Like 12 years ago in gen 5 maybe? Ghetsis and Iris were fuckin' brutal
Insurgence is pretty solid imo, the Delta Pokemon are fun and they made the gym battles legitimately difficult. I was trying to go through it on hard mode and couldn't get past the third gym leader.
If you like difficulty and original story try pokemon reborn. It's really good and has lots of varied forms of challenges
I'll check it out, there's so many it's kinda overwhelming figuring out which ones to try.
I swore off Pokemon before Sword & Shield released so I'm a certified hater at this point. However, my partner still likes Pokemon and had this to say after playing six hours of the new game:
6/10 ignoring performance. 2/10 including performance issues. I am actually really bummed and disappointed. Had more fun playing shield. The open world is cool but… there’s so much missing, and the performance issues are seriously horrific
I've been playing it off and on for the past week on an emulator and it's ok. IMO it's a downgrade from Sword and Shield in every way except for having a free cam everywhere instead of being a fixed camera in most places. The current ryujinx build runs it fine on PC, probably better than on a Switch, so I'd recommend just grabbing the ROM for free and doing that if you can.
Ryujinx performance on all the Pokemon games has been solid for me.
If you're looking to play multiplayer stuff with other emulated users be sure to download the Ryujinx LDN build (it's free and on a Patreon post).
I'm heavily biased towards Ryujinx over Yuzu for accuracy reasons, but use whichever is better for you (Ryujinx is more accurate and slightly heavier, Yuzu is less accurate and slightly lighter resource wise).
Not sure how that was on the Switch, but it ran pretty well on an emulator for me. If you've got a decent computer you can always try it out. There's a fitgirl repack of sword and shield with a copy of ryujinx set up and ready to go with the firmware, or if you'd rather set it up from scratch you can follow this guide to get everything set up and to find ROMs if you don't already have them on hand. With the caveat that the ROM sites they link are sketchy af and should be used cautiously.
Yeah, I wasn't joking about that. The guide itself stresses the need for a strong adblocker and gives you the other tools needed to bypass their bullshit. One of the ROM sites was outright blocked by my browser, and the other used sketchy redirect middlemen on all the links.
I'd strongly recommend the fitgirl repacks for that reason, because that's a trusted repack group that doesn't do sketchy shit like that.
I watched a streamer play a bit of it and it runs bad with some animations having miserably bad fps, textures on environment look bad and the game is just slow with animations and waiting for every single thing. If you just care about "new pokemon game" and nothing else, then get it. You'll probably have fun, but it's not sounding like a good game
I think there's quite a lot to criticize with Scarlet/Violet but calling it a cashgrab isn't fair at all imo, because they're really trying to shake things up. There's a lot of passion in the game, the character designs are very nice and I think it's a lot better written than previous entries. The generation gimmick is really interesting, much better than Dynamax.
Many systems that were core to Pokemon games since forever have been overhauled or abolished entirely, they implemented a lot of good things from Legends Arceus like being able to remember old moves whenever and how the open world works. The game's structure is completely different than any main series game before.
Scarlet/Violet is the most innovation and deviation from the formula that a main series Pokemon game has ever seen by a wide margin. Not everything worked out, but I think it's a good sign that Gamefreak is actually trying to reinvent the series and not just phoning in a new generation every few years.
Yeah, in terms of performance and graphics it sucks and is a straight downgrade of Sword/Shield, but I don't know how anyone can look at this game and think it's a lazy cashgrab.
Yeah, in terms of performance and graphics it sucks and is a straight downgrade of Sword/Shield, but I don’t know how anyone can look at this game and think it’s a lazy cashgrab.
It’s also a significant downgrade compared to Legends Arceus, the game they released last year
I will still maintain that the Let's go Pikachu/Eevee are the best games graphically in the 3d era. They should have stuck with that art style and graphics. 3d development doesn't seem to be Gamefreak's forte. Or they should return to the pixel graphics.
Pokemon was always a milquetoast series with a lame plot and poor mechanics. The only good iterations of the franchise were fan made. I've never spent a dime on any edition of the game since Red/Blue and I have no regrets. Did have a great time playing Pokémon Insurgence, tho.
