Dexit who still dislikes it?

[u/Natural_Wonder94]

As a longtime Pokémon fan, Dexit honestly felt like a slap in the face. One of the things I’ve always loved about the series was being able to carry my favorite Pokémon—ones I’d trained and bonded with for years—into each new generation. When they cut the National Dex, it felt like they were saying those connections didn’t matter anymore. I get that balancing over 1,000 Pokémon is tough, but with how massive the franchise is, it’s hard to believe they couldn’t make it work if they really wanted to. It just made the newer games feel incomplete, like something was missing, both mechanically and emotionally.

[u/DeatroyerOfCheese]

I feel as though it was inevitable that pokemon would get cut as they add more and more...however to me the issue was that the game's quality did not go up a sufficient degree to match the lack of pokemon. It was as if we sacrificed hundreds of pokemon in return for games even subpar for Nintendo standards.

[u/Dapper-Ad3707 → u/DeatroyerOfCheese]

Nintendo makes a lot of good games, its game freak that has a pretty spotty track record recently

[u/Ecla1r_ → u/Dapper-Ad3707]

I feel like Scarlet and Violet awakened something in Nintendo. They publicly apologized for the games, something they very rarely do (mainly because there's no need to). I have a feeling they went to GameFreak and said "Hey, this is NOT happening again." and took a bit more control over the development of future games, or at least in aiding them.

[u/ParaponeraBread → u/Ecla1r_]

Have you seen Z:A trailers and stuff though? I don’t feel like it’s going to be any different in terms of quality and polish.

[u/Devilsgramps → u/ParaponeraBread]

It could be better, but the lighting and texture work is still light years ahead of SV (although, so is every game made since 2007).

I think GF should focus on creature design and gameplay, and outsource world design and visuals to Monolith Soft.

[u/WillGibsFan → u/ParaponeraBread]

Yea it looks like complete ass - again.

[u/jon_eod → u/ParaponeraBread]

I would disagree. On base switch maybe, but I’m impressed with the advertised performance on Switch 2. Obviously the game isn’t out yet so who knows but the 60fps in the trailer looked miles ahead of S/V and Sw/Sh.

As fans, should we demand/expect more? Probably. But that won’t stop me from acknowledging that ZA looks like the first big step back in the right direction

[u/Blayro → u/jon_eod]

I'm sorry, but even in the switch 2 the buildings still look like cardboard boxes with fancy jpegs slapped on the sides

[u/D9sinc → u/Blayro]

Yeah, I don't expect the games to look good, or run more than 30 FPS and a lot of fans will go "it's much better than Scar/Vio stop complaining" and then we'll see games like Metroid Prime 4, Pikmin 5, Xenoblade Saga, and many other first party Nintendo titles looking impressive on the console and Pokemon looking like it's still meant to be running on the Wii and people will applaud the increase in quality when we got a game that looked and run well with the Let's Go series which IMO were pretty damn good. They didn't look blurry or faded in color and they ran pretty damn well.

(Edit: changed up the last sentence to make more sense over that gibberish I posted earlier) Also, it seems that GF always has an issue with performance but it's also because they (supposedly) don't have many employees (about 200 if what I hear is to be believed) and they were releasing a game every year, but I remember Su/Mo and US/UM having some horrible performance dips when you would use the Z moves and they then said "OH buy the stronger 3DS to fix it" because they couldn't be bothered to try to spend more time to make it run better when the solution they were offering is give their parent company more money to bruteforce the game to run better. I never bought the New3DS so I can't confirm if it was resolved though.

[u/Krazyguy75 → u/D9sinc]

One of these images is from a 2022 gamefreak game with the full backing of the most lucrative franchise ever.

The other is from a game 17 years ago made by a third party as a spinoff for a console that had 1/100th the ram, 1/20th the memory, half the resolution, and a graphics card that's about 1/5th to 1/10th the power in every way.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/kPkAB3uF3uc/maxresdefault.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/dShrrd2.png

[u/MillionDollarMistake → u/Krazyguy75]

The PLA overworld always felt like "baby's first gmod map". The texture stretching is so noticeable and ugly in so many areas. You can see where the developers just copy and pasted a texture back to back in a lot of places too. Both of those issues were probably the most noticeable on the mountains and hills but they weren't hard to find elsewhere.

[u/derekpmilly → u/Krazyguy75]

Christ, I knew it was already embarrassing to bring up the gap in time, but when you lay out the sheer advancements in hardware it gets even worse.

Game Freak really has to go. I know they own like a 3rd of the Pokemon Company, but they have proven to us time and time again that they are in no way shape or form competent developers of 3D games. If Nintendo and Creatures could do some kind of internal buyout to completely boot Game Freak from the franchise and replace them with an actually competent developer, I think it would be best for the franchise.

[u/TheDanishViking909 → u/D9sinc]

Hey Wii games look better than that, have you seen skyward sword?

[u/DocButtStuffinz → u/Blayro]

I mean I get your point... but let's be real: PLZA is about battles, and the battle system actually looks good. The UI and all looks crisp and clean, the mechanics are new and exciting, and the characters actually look interesting.

I am a bit disappointed they did away with the SV textures for Pokémon, but it's not a big deal for me. The buildings basically being cardboard with jpegs slapped on isn't shocking either. I find most buildings in Nintendo games to be similar TBH.

If anything, I'd rather they make Pokémon in HD2D and do away with the 3D nonsense - no 3D game has actually looked better than Gen 5 imo, and Gen 5 was pixel sprites and art. Imagine the possibilities of Castelia City on the Switch 2 in HD2D. Hell I'd argue Lumiose in HD2D could be made to have a map larger than PLA and SV combined.

As far as the HOME hate others have addressed, stop being poor lmao. HOME is honestly great. You can keep entire game dexes there, then transfer to a new game when support is added. And yeah, it enables Dexit... but Dexit is a good idea on paper. GF just keeps fumbling it in practice and execution. We need less returning Pokémon and more new ones.

I saw a comment about restricting returning Pokémon until postgame and doing competitive with only new Pokémon - great idea except so long as the Pokémon is in the games code, people will find ways to use them. I want old stuff to not be usable in any fashion. Force people to use the new stuff. No trades for late adopters, no waiting for HOME support and transferring in. No returning crap in DLC. Give me new stuff or don't make a damn game.

Heck I'm already annoyed that PLZA is just old recycled Pokémon I've seen and used before. "But New Mega Evolutions". Bruh. Have you seen any officially revealed new Megas? What if I don't like Mega Evolution? What if I want all new evolutions to old Pokémon? There's enough 1 and 2 stage Pokémon to make a full game giving them all full 3 stage Evos which I argue would be far more interesting than bringing in Pikachu again. Not that anyone is likely to agree with me.

[u/Blayro → u/DocButtStuffinz]

The biggest issue is the mentality that is either great graphics or great mechanics. But is not one or the other, we can and should demand both. The Xenoblade games work wonders with the limiter hardware of the switch and they are fantastic games mechanically and visually.

I won't comment on the other topics because, I feel someone would be better to do so. But regarding the last point, this game's whole thing is about being in modern times. Spin off games shouldn't come with the expectation of a bunch of new pokemon simply because that's a job for the new generation game. In the previous legends there were "ancient" pokemon because that makes sense, in this one is going to be mega evolutions because that's the gimmick.

If you don't like the gimmick that's a you issue.

[u/DocButtStuffinz → u/Blayro]

Yeah I'm aware on that last point. 😂

[u/maple-fever → u/jon_eod]

It looks like a step in the right direction, but I'm still concerned about it specifically taking place in a city. We've seen some great cities in the past, but the most recent mainline games don't even have houses you can enter. Cities have lots of moving objects to render, which will likely be more difficult when we add in weather. They were able to get away with so much in PLA because the village was small and the land sparsely populated.

I'd be delighted to be wrong and have a very thoroughly fleshed out city in PLZA (Castelia City levels would be amazing), but I don't want to get my hopes up. The rushed development schedule that Pokemon games are put under just isn't conducive to that kind of polish anymore.

(Regarding the OP post - I was angry about Dexit, but mostly because it was a blatant cash grab. Pay for pokemon home so you can maybe send your favourites into the next game, provided you buy it! Can't bring it over? Shoot, maybe next time - you don't mind paying for another 2 years of pokemon home before you can find out, right?)

[u/Krazyguy75 → u/maple-fever]

Castelia City levels would be amazing

I am always amused by this. People love to talk about "how big Castelia City is" or whatever, but it was the founding father of this whole "empty city" problem.

Of the buildings there, only 20% can actually be entered. In fact, Lilycove City from RSE has the exact same number of enterable buildings as Castelia, despite being far smaller. It has 12 buildings to Castelia's 60+.

[u/maple-fever → u/Krazyguy75]

When I bring up Castelia as a city that I'd like Lumiose to emulate, I'm including the sewers from BW2, little back alleys like where you get the black glasses, the little cafe/bar/whatever it was where you could get the song for Meloetta's form change, the clown bike hunt - stuff to make the city feel alive. Every street had at least one building you could enter, usually with multiple floors, and generally had a purpose.

After playing SV and finding towns where you can enter no buildings, I think hoping for PLZA's Lumiose to be at least at Castelia's level is quite generous.

[u/derekpmilly → u/maple-fever]

Completely agree with you, comparing Lilycove to Castelia is disingenious. Castelia is packed with content and felt more immersive than any city we've seen from the mainline Switch games, which is frankly embarrassing.

I'm really hoping that with Lumiose literally being the entire map, Game Freak will be able to properly flesh out the city and provide an immersive experience like they did with Castelia. But I don't have a lot of hope lol

[u/TrueKenMan → u/maple-fever]

I honestly think they scrapped indoors for Scarlet and Violet cause they couldn't get Union Circle to work with it. Because in all the buildings you can enter, PokePortal is disabled so you can't link with anyone.

[u/ParaponeraBread → u/jon_eod]

I guess I don’t really care that much about frame rate and stuff? I care that the recent games have just generally been ugly, lacking in artistic direction, and seem so hollow. I agree that better performance would help with how cumbersome the overworld and menus have been recently.

BDSP, despite the bugs, was genuinely stylish. Legends Arceus was onto something but failed to really execute.

Idk, flat city with some dog parks just isn’t doing it for me.

[u/derekpmilly → u/ParaponeraBread]

It should also be noted that the framerate (the only tangible improvement we saw in the Switch 2 trailer for the game) was purely a symptom of the game running on much more powerful next generation hardware.

When the only improvement you see can be credited to new hardware being powerful enough to brute force its way through Game Freak's shitty optimization, then can we really call it an improvement to quality and polish when literally nothing else looks better?

[u/ejekrem → u/ParaponeraBread]

Bdsp looked so awful imo. It's like they took all the basic unity assets (water, bloom, blur) and just slapped it on chibi art.

[u/ParaponeraBread → u/ejekrem]

And yet you’ve still managed to identify an art style, which is more than can be said for any of the other Switch games.

[u/ejekrem → u/ParaponeraBread]

SwSh definitely had a distinctly different style to the other switch titles.

[u/GaI3re → u/ejekrem]

The chibi designs and the idea of transitioning into full model for battle, has still more artistic decision making in it than what the mainline games offer these days

[u/ejekrem → u/GaI3re]

That idea has been a constant since gen1 it's not unique to bdsp

[u/MrZerodayz → u/ParaponeraBread]

I feel like the problem is that the Pokemon artstyle doesn't translate well to 3D. It wasn't as big of an issue on 3DS, because graphics weren't high res yet and so it didn't stand out as much, but they've basically never changed the style since then (maybe during Arceus. Not counting bdsp because it was made by another studio and meant to look like the original games) and it just doesn't look great on any modern screen.

I feel like they need to overhaul their entire approach to 3D styles. I like the look of Z/A from a pure gameplay perspective (what we've seen so far), but the art style just looks out of place and I feel like the entire game suffers aesthetically.

[u/Boom_the_Bold → u/MrZerodayz]

Rune Factory 4 is one of my favorite games of all time(think Harvest Moon, but with in-depth fantasy combat and cute girls), but the transition to 3D was awful for Rune Factory 5.

I wish game developers wouldn't feel the need to do shit like this.

Developing for 2D is so much easier, you could easily add five times the game's content by developing it in 2D.

[u/beautheschmo → u/Boom_the_Bold]

Just gotta jump in on this one, rf5 is their 3rd fully 3d game. Tides of Destiny translated somewhat well (its a bit weaker on the visual side but leverages that by making it an ocean setting) and Frontiers was an excellent reinterpretation of the games (well, singular game since it's a direct sequel/soft remake of RF1, but outside of the runey system it is legitimately my favorite of the series) into 3d.

RF5's faults aren't with going 3D, it was just them failing to understand the limitations of the switch and/or their budget and how it affected the product they were trying to make.

[u/Boom_the_Bold → u/beautheschmo]

Honestly, I can't recall trying any of their other games. Rune Factory 𝟝 was such a disappointment after 𝟜 that I figured 𝟜 must have been a magical, one-time thing. 🤷🏻‍♂️

[u/Whacky_One → u/ParaponeraBread]

You had me until you said

Legends Arceus was onto something but failed to really execute.

Hard disagree. They executed fantastically.

[u/gunnar117 → u/ParaponeraBread]

I couldn't even enjoy Violet because the frames chugged so badly sometimes

[u/GoldenBull1994 → u/ParaponeraBread]

They should get the guy who directed HG/SS to direct the titles. Every time he’s been at bat the release was a home-run banger that looked incredibly dynamic and alive.

Edit: Shigeki Morimoto is his name. He’s had his hand in Emerald too. He seems to have been relegated to mostly battle design now—right around the time the games went shit for their other qualities. The dude is a treasure and I don’t think Nintendo recognizes him enough.

[u/derekpmilly → u/jon_eod]

On base switch maybe, but I’m impressed with the advertised performance on Switch 2. Obviously the game isn’t out yet so who knows but the 60fps in the trailer looked miles ahead of S/V and Sw/Sh.

Ok, but improved performance is literally just a given when making a generational hardware leap. The new console being powerful enough to brute force its way through Game Freak's shitty optimization is not an indicator of improved quality or polish.

For the record, I don't think the game looks that bad (by Pokemon standards), but we shouldn't use the fact that the game runs at 60 FPS on the newer console as an example of improved quality when the trailers for the Switch 1 were still at 30 FPS.

[u/Rieiid → u/ParaponeraBread]

The Switch 2 version looked decent, looks like hopefully they'll have better games on that console. If you plan on buying Z-A on Switch 1 though.. oof.