What would you say is the current state of Pokémon?

No one will truthfully vote for the last two because such a person would not be on the Pokémon forums.

In spite of the massive sales successes of the Switch era, I think it is clear to everybody, even the most ardent defenders, that the series has problems.

Much has been said about the lack of time and investment being put into the games, despite Pokémon being t__ h______ g_______ m____ f________ i_ t__ w____, culminating in three games being released in the span of one year (BDSP, PLA and SV). At this point the problems with those games have been discussed to death. Z-A doesn't look to have assuaged those concerns, seemingly more of the same.

Winds and Waves represents a pivotal point in the future of the franchise. It has had a long development cycle, and hopefully the developers will have been able to put that time to good use and mitigate at least some of the issues that have plagued recent games. Whether there has been significant concurrent financial and resource investment remains to be seen.

But if Gamefreak cannot make a good Pokémon game even with all the extra time and more powerful hardware at their disposal, I think I will have lost all faith in them and the franchise going forward.

I think they (or at least the people in charge of the franchise) will have demonstrated that they are happy to do the bare minimum to push out a scarcely functional video game, slap the Pokémon name on it and reap the sales and money as far as decades of love and good will can carry them.

But those things cannot sustain a franchise forever. Even the most diehard fans have their limits, and even the most casual, disengaged fan will notice they are not having as much fun and move on to something else.

And many an article will be written lamenting why Pokémon fans suddenly disappeared and dropped the games, and was the last installment really that bad? Nintendo and Gamefreak executives will scramble to fix the suddenly sinking ship. How could this happen out of nowhere?! Why now?

When the truth is the damage was done decades ago, and they have been taking on water for years.

sus i guess

idk it was a joke then i forgot i coulnt change it

I like gameplay not story so pokemon is awesome