What is the best main series Pokemon game of all time?
(in your opinion)
Answers
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Black and White.
I have written on it extensively in the past in other threads, but to summarise my thoughts:
It was a game that took chances with its setup and narrative. For a Pokémon game, anyway.
In a series that was happy to have you get your badges, beat your rival, beat the clearly villainous team, become champion every game and call it a day, the story entertained the idea that beating up animals, capturing them and forcing them to fight each other may not be entirely morally laudable.
It suggested that the antagonist team might have a nuanced perspective, rather than being simply bad or selfish people: thieves, cultists, terrorists or (most reprehensible of all) environmentalists.
Of course, this was all dropped towards the end of the game and it turned out that you were the objectively correct moral agent of good all along, and the Pokémon really enjoy "mandatory friendships" actually. It was all a front for the usual world domination plot.
Somewhat disappointing, but far more interesting than anything that came before.
I also liked that the gym leaders and rivals were more involved in the story and had their own things going on, even assisting in the defeat of Team Plasma at the end. Previous games might as well have had the gym leaders crumble into dust the second you defeated them for all the relevance they held with regard to the larger narrative.
Pokémon games always had really appealing sprites for its Pokémon and characters (if a tad too "characterful" in the first gen) and gen 5 was when they reached their absolute peak. Animated, colourful and detailed.
It is a shame they threw all of that away and switched to flat, pastel coloured 3D models from that point onwards in gen 6. I do hope all the talented sprite artists found fulfilling work in the aftermath of the change, and weren't forced into the 3D modelling mines like a lot of other digital artists.
The music was really great, too. Music is one of the elements of the Pokémon series that has remained consistently high quality throughout, even in the worst installments.
Lastly, and perhaps my most controversial take, is that is was bold of them to strike out and make an entirely new Pokédex. They had to create the largest new roster since the original games and it compelled you to find and explore using new favourites, where as players might have previously built the same old teams every game before.
I like the bin bag Pokémon and the ice cream Pokémon. If we can have "circle" and "blob" in the form of Voltorb and Grimer in gen 1, then we can have refuse and confectionery.
In conclusion, my opinions are objectively correct, your opinions are all wrong (unless they match mine), I am the chad wojak and you are the soy wojak, 3D in video games was a mistake and pineapple does not belong on pizza.
I think my logic is irrefutable. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
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good option, I also love black and white
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I personally think it was Scarlet and Violet. It had a lot of lore and story and personality compared to the other games with more than one storyline, and two DLC expansion’s. It was vast and had a lot of potential… if all the glitches weren’t a problem. But aside from that, it was a great game! The main gimmick- Tera Orbs, was a good example of the best gimmick, Mega evolution was way too overpowered for competitive battles. It was one of the first fully 3D Pokemon games we have ever seen! If they hadn’t had a deadline for the game, there wouldn’t be as many glitches and they could have put even more detail into it! If you thought Kanto as an expansion to Gold and Silver was cool, there are THREE expansions! It has had some of the best starters ever, with every other starter being available in game!
In conclusion, Pokemon Scarlet and Violet is one of the best Pokemon games ever!Thank you for coming to my better Ted Talk.
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I guess I would say Heart Gold or Soul Silver, but I have to be honest. I don’t care all that much for the main series. I love Mystery Dungeon, Pokken, and all the other spin offs much more than I do the main series.
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Not trying to start an argument, but I feel like if someone says SV was the best mainline game ever, they haven't played much of the other games. It had a good story and good characters, but that's it. And exploring it, though it was fun, quickly felt empty because there was nothing to do.
Anyways, I think it's between XY and the original SM. One of my favourite things in Pokémon is exploring the world and interacting with it, and the Kalos region is the best when it comes to that. I could stay in just Lumiose city for dozens of hours and not run out of things to do and see. Each town has something like fossil restoration, an important and historical building, or at least a gimmick in it, even if it doesn't have a gym. Even if it has nothing, it probably has a hotel where the characters change every day, with their dialogue changing each day you interact with them until you get a reward on the third or fourth day, and all the towns look gorgeous. And the world felt like it actually had people in it, like that one old guy in Anistar, or the other sidequests and minor characters, despite the main story and important characters not being very good. Also the postgame was awesome.
Sun and Moon had an amazing story. It's a bit hard to explain without spoilers, but I find out something new every time I think about it. And the way Lillie acts feels realistic, she's one of my favourite characters ever. It's a sad story, but I loved the part after you get the Legendary. And then USUM horribly destroyed the characters and story, with Lillie and Lusamine being the ones who got the worst treatment. But it's ok because we got Ultra Wormhole rides and Mantine surfing I guess. Also the Alola region was so fun to explore.
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@UnovanZorua I think if they make a remake/remaster of Sun and Moon with better graphics and quality, then I can say Sun and Moon is better.
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And yes, I have played a lot of other Pokemon games, but the exploration of Scarlet and Violet was the best. They could have done a lot better on everything else, but it was something I enjoyed. It had a lot of potential as a sort of open world game. If they didn’t have a deadline they could make the game so much better and could be the best Pokemon game.
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X and y hands down for me(but for me overall the best definitely super mystery dungeon) also mystery dungeon is cannon at least the original cause in ruby and sapphire and emerald they saved hoenn from a meteor by sending it somewhere else aka mystery dungeon world and you wake up as a pokemon to save the pokemon world from the asteroid that was sent there also mystery dungeon rescue team takes place in the original timeline not any other timeline
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All jokes aside, do people really think Scarlet and Violet are the best in the series? Why?
Yes, the glitches are a grave flaw with the games, but here's the thing: even if the games were 100% glitchless, I would still think they were bad games.
That is not to say they did not have merit or bring good ideas to the table. There are even things about Sword and Shield, my most hated games, that I like. And I was charmed at first by Scarlet and Violet when they released. I thought they were the best 3D games for a time. But after spending more time with them, they dropped in my estimation of their quality.
The open world premise is a trap that many developers fell into a decade ago, when it seemed like every game was descending into the Ubisoft open-world mono-game. Thankfully that seems to have been averted, though Breath of the Wild threatened to bring it back. In fact, maybe BotW has more to do with SV's problems than Ubisoft.
There is nothing inherently wrong with open-world. There have been phenomenal open-world games. The problem is a lot of developers take a lazy approach to adapting their previously linear game into an open world. They take a linear design and plonk it into a big empty map and expect everyone to find it more fun and think it an automatic improvement. Because "more freedom = more better", right?
However an open world fundamentally changes how each player interacts with your game, its narrative and difficulty curve.
In SV, this problem is most observable in the gym system. Rather than strictly enforced linear progression from the first gym to the last (maybe with the option to do a couple out of order) you can challenge the gyms out of sequence, but they clearly have an intended order, based on the levels of the gyms, their location on the map and the abilities you have unlocked for your ride Pokémon.
You could go and challenge the later gyms early on if you want and can access them, but even if you beat them, the lower level gyms do not change, so you have made them trivial and pointless to beat where as they might have presented more of a challenge early on.
The solution to this was suggested in the Red and Green chapters of the Pokémon Special manga back in the 90s. Have each gym leader change the number, types and levels of the Pokémon they use based on the number of badges of the challenger. One could even assume that that was what was implied to be happening in the games, you just had little to no opportunity to do them out of the intended order.
But this was the game to do it. The open world game. I assume that the time constraints during development meant that they didn't want to design eight different battles for each leader.
Plus it has always been that way.
That seems to be a consistent defence for the current state of the Pokémon series. A design philosophy was adopted for a 2D Game Boy role playing game in the 90s, so we can't possibly include features other games would be laughed out of the industry for not including.
We only just got a free-camera control on the right stick with this game. Finally Pokémon can aspire to early 2000s era console game design. Maybe we'll get voice acting in 2040?!
The gameplay itself is also shamefully shallow, exacerbated by the now mandatory exp. share and shift battle style. We can't have difficulty modes (it's always been this way, so we just can't, okay?!) but at least you could opt in to a more challenging experience by disabling these options.
But no, no child left behind. Some hapless brat might turn off their exp. share and the game becomes too hard for them. Better to force it on everyone all the time.
Success is at its most gratifying when there was no chance you could ever fail, right? Everyone gets a participation trophy.
That is the only logic I can assume could be behind this baffling decision. Surely it is virtually no work at all to turn off a feature?
The open world and graphics have also led to one of the ugliest Pokémon worlds in a while. Most of the environments are just single colour expanses of open ground, with Pokémon milling about. Maybe you get the odd low texture rock, ruin or building cropping up. It feels empty.
The towns feel like a step down. I had a lot of criticisms for Sword and Shield, but at least the towns looked nice and you could enter buildings (even if the interiors were identical at that point). Now you cannot enter buildings anymore and NPCs just slideshow around town at 5 fps.
The NPCs themselves also look really ugly. Previous games used the same model and portraits for every character of the same class, but at least they were appealing designs. These NPCs look like someone hit randomise on a character creator, with often poor results.
The old students are particularly baffling in Paldea. Given that the school is literally central to the region, I feel it is incredibly vague and poorly defined.
The opening and the classmates you see are all children, implying that it is like a joint primary and secondary school, and the subjects are fairly standard (math, science, etc.), but also include Pokémon.
But then you meet adult or elderly students. Does the school cater to higher education too? Is it one unified campus for pre-school to post-grad students? Are they on a different part of campus? Have they already graduated and kept their uniform to show their connection to the school?
Everything outside of the main characters' storylines seems incredibly poorly defined. Does the entire region revolve around the school? Is Paldea the equivalent of a university town like Oxford or Cambridge? Did one of the higher ups during game development decide "this game will be set in a school" and then every developer had to tweak everything they were making to invoke this ambiguous "school" theme?
That is just a selection of my most immediate criticisms of the games. I could say more on the story, but that would make this long post even longer.
If you like these games, as with anything, that is "allowed". My criticisms can't take that from you. You like what you like.
But I feel that these games were an incredible disappointment given the incredible potential that a 3D, open-world Pokémon game offers.
Hopefully those at TPC, Gamefreak and Nintendo in charge of making these decisions have recognised the problem with a development model that sees three Pokémon games released in the span of a year, and are taking steps to ensure the developers have the time and resources to fully realise a quality Pokémon game in the future.
Some of you might be inclined to point out that it is hypocritical of me to criticise Scarlet and Violet for things like not having voice acting, or poor 3D graphics, or a bad open world, when Black and White didn't even have any of these things, and yet it is my favourite.
A 2010 2D Nintendo DS game does not have, nor should be expected to have, the same modern features as a 2022 Nintendo Switch game. I like BW because, while not flawless, they are excellent installments given the technology and platform of the time.
Pokémon fans should really expect more from their modern home console releases made for the highest grossing media franchise in the world than the standards of a handheld console RPG made over a decade ago.
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