It was an okay game from what I played, but it wasn't something I was going to continue. The process was surprisingly easy to resolve given it was an eShop purchase.

I figured I'd pick it up again in the future if something changes.

What's the general consensus around here regarding gen 9?

  • ssjmarx [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Playing on emulator, I've been really enjoying it. I think I liked Legends: Arceus a bit better though, I'm gonna go back and play that some more when I finish with Violet. I love being able to have your 'mon auto battle while you explore, and have been doing it a ton. I love these characters, I love the new monster designs, I love the freeform pacing (even if there is very clearly a single intended path), and I'm surprised to say I love making sandwiches for my Pokemon.

    That said I almost never play super polished AAA games, so when I see people complaining about jank I feel no empathy whatsoever. The visual quality is poor compared to other games in its class, but I play indie games that would have been laughed off the PS2 so I really don't mind how a game looks. One thing that does bother me is the continued insistence upon splitting the game in two despite the fact that that hasn't done anything good for the game's design since the 90s - another thing that bothers me is not having a national dex, which I am 100% positive they're doing on purpose because they want people to subscribe to Pokemon Bank (which is $5 per month for about 3 kilobytes of storage) and not because they want to make the games better.

    I'm sympathetic to Game Freak's desire to remain a small dev team, but they should reign in their game concepts to match the team they have - a big open world like this was clearly beyond what they could deliver, and it's been obvious that they can't deliver it since Sword and Shield. The next game needs to have a more focused design, with a return to the linear routes and towns of previous games, where you can pack a ton of personality into the smaller spaces. You can still do an open-world design with that kind of map setup - fan games have played with that concept for ages and it sucks to see Game Freak take a good idea (tackle the story missions in any order) and marry it to a bad idea (big open areas filled with nothing but roaming mobs like it's an MMO).

    Anyway, Pokemon Black/White 2 remains the best game in the main series, Pokemon Colosseum remains the best game in the franchise overall, The Pokemon Company needs to license more spinoffs.