-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Anyone else disappointed by Pokemon Sun / Moon? (Spoilers obviously)
- Thread starter ZSaberLink
- Start date
This describes a lot of the new features for me. The Alola-forms for older pokemon was a neat concept that was poorly fleshed out, the Trials had a lot of potential to add variety to the game but many of them were less interesting than a seried of challenging trainer battles would have been, the SOS system was obviously extremely flawed and seemingly (bizarrely) designed to fuck over players who couldn't sweep all enemy pokemon with one move. Plus the constant railroading made the story feel cramped and offered the player very few opportunities to choose where to go next.
Dedpite these flaws I think SM stands as one of my favorite generations. The new pokemon designs are more insipired than they've been for a while, the new setting was refreshing and cute, and some of the trial pokemon battles were really fun. Not to mention they avoided falling into the trap of making trainer battles dreadfully repetitive by not giving trainers more pokemon than necessary. Most of the trainers in the game fall into the category of "1-2 unique pokemon" as opposed to fighting a trainer with a full team of boring normal-type pokemon, like the older games were so keen on throwing at you.
lvl99 Pixel
Member
what does this mean? they threw endless filler trainer fights at you, so many grunts
Compared to previous games, that's nothing. Remember Silph Co? There are around thirty Rocket Grunts in that part alone.
Spring-Loaded
Member
Got this as a gift for christmas. First Pokémon since Gold and Silver.
It was great. An adorable setting, super positive, and the "rival" is the nicest dude ever.
It was great. An adorable setting, super positive, and the "rival" is the nicest dude ever.
lvl99 Pixel
Member
Two recent flagship games from very different parts of the world also treat animals/creatures fighting in vastly different ways.
Witcher 3: Geralt (the monster slayer) calls what happens in the arena cruel
FFXV: despite being more modern of a civilization, everyones cheering for two monsters in the arena to kill each other, and you can egg them on by blowing horns
oh I agree, but it was still a slog.
Gyms at least had puzzles, and some interesting designs, trials were just bland areas that had a strong normal pokemon as a boss, and occasionally something interesting like an abandoned supermarket. Other than a few interesting things like the spot the difference fire trial, they were really really pointless, like the photography gimmick or a fetch quest for ingredients :/
Pokemon calling is indefensibly fucked up. messing with pokemons adrenaline to make them call for friends and family for you to endlessly beat the crap out of.
Witcher 3: Geralt (the monster slayer) calls what happens in the arena cruel
FFXV: despite being more modern of a civilization, everyones cheering for two monsters in the arena to kill each other, and you can egg them on by blowing horns
oh I agree, but it was still a slog.
Gyms at least had puzzles, and some interesting designs, trials were just bland areas that had a strong normal pokemon as a boss, and occasionally something interesting like an abandoned supermarket. Other than a few interesting things like the spot the difference fire trial, they were really really pointless, like the photography gimmick or a fetch quest for ingredients :/
Pokemon calling is indefensibly fucked up. messing with pokemons adrenaline to make them call for friends and family for you to endlessly beat the crap out of.
Baron_Calamity
Member
qUESTION? Is Pokemon Moon an ok first pokemon game for a 9 year old? The only other pokemon game she played was Pokemon Go.She is a gamer, plays lots of minecraft, Rocket League, and Roblox so I don't think it would be beyond her.
ZSaberLink
Media Create Maven
It's probably better to ask this in the Pokemon Sun/Moon OT than here, but I think it's fine entry point for a 9 year old.
Sorta, but the core gameplay is as good as ever, although I feel it might be a little difficult to really mess up the gameplay in a mainline Pokémon game(yet there're some aspects that need some fixing).
I still don't get how people still found this game harder than previous entries though. Trials are a nice diversion but not good as a replacement for gyms and even Kahunas were more or less gym leaders with a different name.
The story had some interesting stuff for a Pokémon game but the pacing was awful.
I still don't get what were they thinking when they removed PSS. Okay doing stuff online is still simple but with PSS it was even simpler than with the plaza whose benefits I'm not really seeing.
I still don't get how people still found this game harder than previous entries though. Trials are a nice diversion but not good as a replacement for gyms and even Kahunas were more or less gym leaders with a different name.
The story had some interesting stuff for a Pokémon game but the pacing was awful.
I still don't get what were they thinking when they removed PSS. Okay doing stuff online is still simple but with PSS it was even simpler than with the plaza whose benefits I'm not really seeing.
X almost put me off Pokémon. Didn't even get Moon day one, which is a first for Pokémon. Only reason I got it was because it was a Christmas present.
In the end I found myself enjoying it and it was a great improvement all round from X and Y,. Heck, just removing those damn rollerblades made it far more enjoyable to play (god I hated those).
And even if it's not the most mind blowing story, it was far better than that convoluted mess that was X and Ys. This was a story about you and the people you met along the way, which is what I want from Pokémon. Not you being a third party eye witness to some ancient giant's quest to find their lost Pokémon or whatever was going on. It was a major drop in quality after the excellent B and W too. Also I like that the main Team squad is the most down to earth one yet (just a bunch of common thugs) and yet the alternative team resulted in the most atypical JRPG fight ever for this series. Refreshing in two ways.
In the end I found myself enjoying it and it was a great improvement all round from X and Y,. Heck, just removing those damn rollerblades made it far more enjoyable to play (god I hated those).
And even if it's not the most mind blowing story, it was far better than that convoluted mess that was X and Ys. This was a story about you and the people you met along the way, which is what I want from Pokémon. Not you being a third party eye witness to some ancient giant's quest to find their lost Pokémon or whatever was going on. It was a major drop in quality after the excellent B and W too. Also I like that the main Team squad is the most down to earth one yet (just a bunch of common thugs) and yet the alternative team resulted in the most atypical JRPG fight ever for this series. Refreshing in two ways.
And yet that pretty much sounds like Sun/Moon's story.
Rad Shadow
Banned
Not my favorite game in the series.
Most of the new pokemon look awful.
Oh, and I hated the fishing system. The bubbles can blow me.
Most of the new pokemon look awful.
Oh, and I hated the fishing system. The bubbles can blow me.
Sun and Moon were definitely not perfect but they were still way way better than I expected and am used to with Pokemon, so I can't say I'm disappointed.
For things they can do to make it better, the big ones are post game content (Platinum-style expansion will be ideal, including a national dex) and more/better trials (some trials are trivial and some Z-stones are just given to you). For things they can fix for the next entry in the series, I hope for less focus on long cutscenes and animations but not holding out for that.
I recognize at this point that Pokemon will never again have the mazes and puzzles that previous games had and there's nothing I can do about that, but I hope that they'll at least put one challenging cave or something in the post-game. At the very least please don't streamline them in the DPPt remakes.
For things they can do to make it better, the big ones are post game content (Platinum-style expansion will be ideal, including a national dex) and more/better trials (some trials are trivial and some Z-stones are just given to you). For things they can fix for the next entry in the series, I hope for less focus on long cutscenes and animations but not holding out for that.
I recognize at this point that Pokemon will never again have the mazes and puzzles that previous games had and there's nothing I can do about that, but I hope that they'll at least put one challenging cave or something in the post-game. At the very least please don't streamline them in the DPPt remakes.
To Far Away Times
Member
Sun/Moon the only one I've played to the end since Red/Blue.
It reignited my interest in Pokemon and gave new life to the series.
It reignited my interest in Pokemon and gave new life to the series.
At first that bothered me a lot but then figured how it worked and it wasn't too bad, not good but not awful as I thought at first. On the other hand, weather + SOS only Pokémon is still an awful idea.
GameFreak's story would say one shouldn't hold hopes for that.
Agreed with this. The calling for help thing is just fucking stupid and the story, while not especially terrible, was just a Pokemon story. There's nothing really interesting or of intellectual value for anyone over the age of 7.
Yeah, I guess I must be comparing it to older games. It's been a few months since I played Sun/Moon but I remember my impression the ratio of super-tedious regular trainer battles to somewhat interesting ones skewed more towards the latter than previous games. Maybe I'm misremembering though.
I think so, yeah. The game does a decent job of easing you into the mechanics, it's always very clearly pointing you to where you need to go next, it never gets so difficult that you can't progress and you're never more than a few minutes of grinding away from being pretty powerful. The world is pleasant, the game has a positive message and the story doesn't get as weird or overly dramatic as some of the recent games did (the villians don't want to destroy the entire world, for example).
Sounds like the worst Pokemon game ever tbh
It's a mixed bag for me. I like a lot of the graphical changes, the new character models are fantastic and I honestly don't think I can go back to the weird chibi look of X and Y.
Z-Moves are a fun addition to the game and a welcome shift in the competitive meta.
The new pokes are hit and miss for me. I hate how slow in general the new gen is, with most of the new pokes not even breaking the 80 speed bench (me thinks Gamefreak is becoming aware of how much speed-creep has been in the past games)
The removal of Supertraining is a huge step backwards for me. I get that you can farm EV's through the "Calling for Help" system, but the ability to min-max my pokemon with little to no chance of screwing it up was very appealing for me.
Z-Moves are a fun addition to the game and a welcome shift in the competitive meta.
The new pokes are hit and miss for me. I hate how slow in general the new gen is, with most of the new pokes not even breaking the 80 speed bench (me thinks Gamefreak is becoming aware of how much speed-creep has been in the past games)
The removal of Supertraining is a huge step backwards for me. I get that you can farm EV's through the "Calling for Help" system, but the ability to min-max my pokemon with little to no chance of screwing it up was very appealing for me.
I liked the Supertraining but because it was a funny minigame, but the Poké Pelago is far superior. You can't screw the EV training with this.
It's a great game in spite of its flaws (a major one of which is certainly the campaign structure).
Disliked the handholding, and that the marketing was about all games coming together, when there was alot let references then I expected, it did have the one reference I wanted though about
.
Performancewise I did not expect it to have to cut alot of features (triples, rotation), so that's a minus.
Same with that we just get the battle tower all over again, we get it, it has been in every game since gen 3...
That said, it could set up ok for the next games, but I really hope they are not Switch exclusive, paying both for online AND pokebank seems like a unfair deal.
Bill, the games true villain? Putting pokemon in boxes and also transforming to them himself
Performancewise I did not expect it to have to cut alot of features (triples, rotation), so that's a minus.
Same with that we just get the battle tower all over again, we get it, it has been in every game since gen 3...
That said, it could set up ok for the next games, but I really hope they are not Switch exclusive, paying both for online AND pokebank seems like a unfair deal.
TheOnlyOneHeEverFeared
Member
It does so many things right, but I just can't love it.
Pokémon games could only lean on their substance until they started focusing heavily on the presentation in Gen VI. People definitely cared about the substance then. There's a reason why people used to egg on Game Freak for not updating the look of their games.
lvl99 Pixel
Member
wait, people liked Z moves? They were the equivalent of FF8's unskippable summon animations. You can turn off ALL animations, and make the game look really soulless, and even that does not skip the initial animations of Z moves. Not to mention the generic typed Z moves that work for any mon look really really stupid since they didnt bother to animate the pokemon models at all (watching the fairy type Z move was hilarious)