Pokémon (Not-So) Griefing Thread - Scarlet and Violet Released with 10 Million Copies in First 3 Days in Buggy States

even though gen i and ii were earlier what the fuck is this?
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This is silly, but when I was waiting for my preorder for Ruby to come in, so long ago, I was excited for the new menu sprites. I love these sprites, because they're so vague, and yet so specific. I couldn't wait to see the next round of weird fuckos.

...but they had finally made custom menu sprites.
 
“It’s chewsday innit?!”
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Max content is one of GO's biggest fails.
Agreed, tying max particles to battle entry and upgrading pokemoms was DUMB but not as dumb as the amount of candies and XL candies required to upgrade moves which whales over the Silphroad will say it's fine since after all the events and community days you should have a bajillion candies (nevermind that for years they told you to just spend the candy and XL candy is scarce and a"recent" addition to the game).

As for the max raids themselves, for a long time I didn't bother with them since the cost of entry was steep (and last year the soft cap and daily particles were lower)
I recall being invited (remotely) to one of the gigantamax galar starters raids and seeing something like 30 or 40 people in the lobby, thought to myself "should be easy with this many people". I think we did less than 1/4 of the boss's hp bar before everyone got wiped out,I was soured on the concept again.
Gave them another chance during go fest since I could just use the sword/shield dogs which I was gonna power up anyways and ended up liking them. Turns out I was going the wrong way about getting my pokemon ready for them: often You only need to unlock and upgrade a single move to lvl2 and your party should consist of 1 attacker and two tanks/healers, mind you this is totally alien to someone used to normal raids where DPS is king and everything else takes a backseat.
It is a nice change of pace from normal raids and I like the fact that defensive pokemon finally have an use in pve content but the cost of entry is absolutely horrendous, they really need to decrease candy costs.
 
I have complicated thoughts on BW.

I get the appeal. Pokémon Black & White came out swinging with a “real story” at a time when the franchise had basically been content to repackage Saturday morning cartoon plots with the emotional depth of a puddle. It wanted to be different. It wanted to mean something. But in retrospect, I think it’s high time we stop pretending that wanting to mean something is the same as actually doing it.

The Unova Pokédex, for example, was clearly designed to mirror Gen 1 — a full reset, no returning monsters until postgame, a deliberate act of world-building from the ground up. But in practice, many of the designs felt more like placeholders than reinventions. You had your new regional rodent, your new bird, your new ghost trio, your pseudo-legendary — but little that felt genuinely distinct or necessary. Today, with the benefit of hindsight and nearly 2,000 Pokémon in the canon, it's hard not to look back and think: if these designs had been made now, half of them would be regional forms or convergent species.
Then there’s the story — the so-called crown jewel of Gen V. This is where things get even murkier.

Team Plasma’s message of Pokémon liberation starts with the promise of depth. A villainous team with a moral cause? A story that questions the relationship between trainer and Pokémon? That’s bold. But the execution often undermines itself almost immediately. Within the first few hours, it's made painfully clear — even by the grunts themselves — that their liberation rhetoric is just a smokescreen for theft and control. It’s spelled out so explicitly, so early, that there’s no real ambiguity left. And worse, most of the major characters already know this. So what’s being challenged, really?

Then we have N. The character who should have been the thematic core of the game. And in many ways, he is — just not in the way the game seems to think. N is interesting on paper: a child raised in isolation, taught to see Pokémon as victims, and manipulated into becoming the figurehead for a broken ideology. But in practice, his arc is riddled with contradictions. He rails against trainers for battling, only to challenge you repeatedly. He questions the very structure of the world he lives in, but rarely does so in ways that feel personal or vulnerable. His journey feels more like a performance than a reckoning — and while that could be the point, the game never quite interrogates that possibility

The legendary dragons — said to represent truth and ideals — are treated like narrative symbols without weight. The moment one is aligned with a side built on a fundamental lie, the whole duality collapses. The idea that neither side can cancel the other out falls flat when one side is built on ideological sand. The resolution, in the end, feels less like a clash of equals and more like a long-overdue course correction.

And then, of course, there’s the finale — that towering castle rising from beneath the Elite Four, built by enslaved Pokémon. It's theatrical. It's imposing. It's completely tone-deaf. The imagery is powerful, but the story does almost nothing with it. No character meaningfully grapples with the horror of it. It exists because it looks dramatic, not because it says anything new. In that sense, it's emblematic of the game as a whole: big ideas, strong imagery, but uncertain follow-through.

Ultimately, I think a lot of the love for Black & White is retroactive. Not because it did things perfectly, but because everything that came after it fumbled the ball so hard. The 3D era’s been a mixed bag at best, and people started looking back at Gen V the way Star Wars fans look at Revenge of the Sith—flawed, messy, but better than what followed.
 
The troon that went REEEEEEEEE LE CHIKORITA HATERS ARE LE HECKING SEXIST made this absolute slop

I always report videos that have gay shit in the thumb nail or title, make sure everyone reading this goes to the video reports it for Sexual content and write about how it's about exposing kids to sex, it's a kids' game and faggot shit should never have anything to do with it.
 
I have complicated thoughts on BW.
Again, I don't understand why Unova specifically deserves criticism for having archetypes like a Normal type rodent or a pseudo-legendary line when literally every region does. And being based on the same animal does not make them a regional form, Purrloin is not any more of a Meowth clone than Skitty is. The only two Unova Pokemon that aren't distinct enough and should've been regionals/evos are Alomomola and Bouffalant.

Nothing's being challenged because the main premise of the franchise cannot be challenged. Team Plasma have to be hypocrites because otherwise they would have a valid point about the premise being inherently cruel, and GF understandably didn't want to call Pokemon battling cruel in a Pokemon game. Was it dumb to tell this story when they knew they couldn't deliver? Maybe, but even with this flaw it's still perfectly serviceable and has more depth than what came before it.

N battling you is another thing that has to happen because it's a Pokemon game, an antagonist that shows up to lecture you like an angry vegan without fighting you would be a shit antagonist. Even then the game is aware of this, N's team always consists of Pokemon from the area where you fight him (except in the final battle), so it's implied that he catches Pokemon just to fight you and releases them afterwards. With the memory link in BW2, you can see N release his Pokemon and he's confused by the fact that they seem sad to be released.

Are you trying to say that whichever dragon chooses N's side is objectively wrong? If that's the case, it's not. N spent his whole life believing Pokemon should be free from humans, yet when he fights the player he notices their Pokemon are happy, and this makes him doubt himself. His convictions are shaken, which is why he loses regardless of which dragon chooses him.

And when was it said that Team Plasma's castle was built by enslaved Pokemon? Ask ChatGPT where it got this info because it's certainly not in the games.
Edit: They do mention the castle was built by Pokemon, nevermind.

Speaking of which:
— but little that felt genuinely distinct or necessary
Within the first few hours, it's made painfully clear — even by the grunts themselves — that their liberation rhetoric is just a smokescreen for theft and control.
The legendary dragons — said to represent truth and ideals — are treated like narrative symbols without weight.
It's theatrical. It's imposing. It's completely tone-deaf.
You had a little help writing this. It's quite obvious from the wording you use and the excessive em dashes.
 
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Ultimately, I think a lot of the love for Black & White is retroactive. Not because it did things perfectly, but because everything that came after it fumbled the ball so hard. The 3D era’s been a mixed bag at best, and people started looking back at Gen V the way Star Wars fans look at Revenge of the Sith—flawed, messy, but better than what followed.
Pokemon's fanbase is low IQ. Thee depth of B/W trying is enough for them to act like it's Shakespeare. You're dealing with people who don't play better storied games so any story works for them.
Even then the game is aware of this, N's team always consists of Pokemon from the area where you fight him (except in the final battle), so it's implied that he catches Pokemon just to fight you and releases them afterwards. With the memory link in BW2, you can see N release his Pokemon and he's confused by the fact that they seem sad to be released.
Which undermines the whole character. If he's capturing things to fight them then abandoning them right after he is worse than a trainer. A trainer will care for and heal their pokemon, even if they're bad to them other wise. Capturing things just to use them then abandoning them is not kindness.

Pocket TCG has released the latest set. It's Gen 2 themed with Ho-Oh and Lugia being the two booster options. Ho-oh stocks energy and Lugia discharges it for big damage.
 
This was explicitly stated by one of the grunts in the castle.
I checked on Bulbapedo, turns out they do mention that, my bad.

Which undermines the whole character. If he's capturing things to fight them then abandoning them right after he is worse than a trainer. A trainer will care for and heal their pokemon, even if they're bad to them other wise. Capturing things just to use them then abandoning them is not kindness.
I'm not saying N is right, I'm just explaining his perspective. He believes having Pokemon inside Poke Balls is inherently cruel, so he releases them right after.
 
I'm not saying N is right, I'm just explaining his perspective. He believes having Pokemon inside Poke Balls is inherently cruel, so he releases them right after.
He can talk to Pokemon. He can ask them if they want to be his pets like we do animals IRL.

The story was the decline of the game play too. Modern pokemon games wouldn't be so bad if you didn't get interrupted by bad story segments.
 
The story was the decline of the game play too. Modern pokemon games wouldn't be so bad if you didn't get interrupted by bad story segments.
They would still be bad because Gamefreak would still be removing features even if they could write like Shakespeare.

Personally I like BW's story. It's flawed but I appreciate what they were trying to do and what they did torture out of it. That doesn't mean I think it's a good, let alone even masterpiece. The only Pokemon game that I would say even has actually good writing - as in it is characters and plot is compelling enough to compete with actual RPGs - were the Explorers games, and those were written by Chunsoft.
 
@Squawking Macaw
I know that there is some things that are traditions like the starters, regional vermin, and what not but even GF back then themselves stated that they were supposed to be homages, and that's perfectly fine in a vacuum but I feel like as time marches on with the Advent of regional forms, it makes it harder for a lot of these Pokemon to stand out which is probably why many Gen 5 Pokemon have been getting touch-ups over the past few generations.

My fundamental issue with N is that he's a case of the franchises mechanics strangely working against what they're trying to do with him.

He spends most of the game preaching against the way people carelessly use pokemon, but because of how this franchise works he's consistently challenging you to a battle which going by his own words, is something he doesn't agree with so his Pokemon are effectively fighting for nothing.

The player and their Pokemon benefit from these battles because of the very coach /athlete like relationship the series seems to be implying is going on here, but all he does is look like an idiot for doing something he consistently criticizes you, the rivals, and everyone else for doing.


What I was trying to say about the dragons is that the mythology surrounding them is that they're not supposed to outdo one another but because team plasma as a whole is built on a out and open lie this means that because of how the game is set up one of the dragon is going to outdo the other because the other one doesn't have a fundamental ground to stand on.

Also the Pokemon they stole did build that castle and one of the grunts even tells you this and this is specifically from Bulbapedia.

"One Grunt reveals that the castle was being secretly built for several years by overworking Pokémon that were taken away from other Trainers."

I remember this distinctly though because I always talk to NPCs like crazy and I was kind of taking it back that somehow nobody in the region noticed a bunch of Pokemon building a castle near the Pokemon League.

Even then, my main issue with the above isn't the absurdity of a bunch of Pokemon slaves building a castle, but more so that it's another case of the game going out of its way to make sure that team plasma remains a straw man so that you never really have to think much about what they're trying to push IMHO.


Admittedly, I use some assistance to try to make my words not jumble but the heart of what I said is still there.

I'm not saying that BW was trash because I can at least respect the ambition, but I just kind of feel like it's made out more than what it actually is
 
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Everyone is saying B/W deserves a participation award. Not that it's good or anything. Just that it tried so it deserves credit.

And this is why Pokémon is as bad as it is now.
B/W are good games with better writing than the games before it. That sentiment has been stated multiple times and should be self-evident. Try harder.
 
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