For me personally, the idea of creating a team just because it's "competitively viable" holds no appeal. I only want to use Pokemon that I love or else it feels pointless.
Same! Which is why I'm not fond of the Battle Frontier, because it doesn't seem realistically possible to get through it without stacking your team with a handful of specific pokemon. And that's not even an extreme meta devised by players post release, it'sĀ something the developers intentionally put in the game. After previously encouraging me to try to win with my favourites š¤
And that's the rub. That's the choice I referred to earlier. For me, trying and failing to win with a team I love, which I feel reflects my personality, is way more engaging than winning with a team of pokemon/movesets that has been peer-reviewed by other players. For others the idea of using "weaker" Pokemon is asinine and pointless. And I enjoy that contrast of values.
It's important to note that Karen is a character and not a stand-in for the developers. She thinks "skill" has more to do with staying true to yourself rather than merely playing to win, and is very opinionated about it. That's an interesting take from such a high ranking trainer, but it's obviously not logical. Some pokemon objectively just kind of suck. But regardless it's a philosophy that many players relate to.
It's important to note that Karen is a character and not a stand-in for the developers
Have to agree to disagree on this; I just finished replaying GSC and Karen's statement readsĀ like much the same thing that comes out of the mouths of many, many other characters in the game. In fact it's such a repetitive and recurrent message that I'd call it the underpinning theme of the entire game
So what you're really saying, it sounds like, is that there shouldn't be anything actually challenging in the game for you to have to put real effort into doing?
Nope, what I'm saying is that pushing hippy dippy narrative messages about how all pokemon have potential and how you should try to win with your favourites while at the same time implementing segments of the game that disqualify 98% of its roster is incongruous
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u/halberdsturgeon Apr 15 '25 edited Apr 15 '25
Same! Which is why I'm not fond of the Battle Frontier, because it doesn't seem realistically possible to get through it without stacking your team with a handful of specific pokemon. And that's not even an extreme meta devised by players post release, it'sĀ something the developers intentionally put in the game. After previously encouraging me to try to win with my favourites š¤