This whole ordeal is so dumb and I don't understand it. It's possibly because I'm not a Pokemon fanboy, but really I just don't get it. Not every demon is featured in Shin Megami Tensei/Persona games, so why does the Pokemons being missing specifically offend people when there are thousands of games where some of the important characters are missing and are basically replaced by other characters? Some of my favourite demons from Shin Megami Tensei 3 are completely cut from Persona 5, but I don't make a fuss about it.
I say this in the nicest way possible - the Pokémon community, despite the series being made for and aimed at literal children, is quite possibly the single most autistic group I’ve ever seen. Yes, I include most of us in there as well.
While I personally didn’t have a problem with the Pokémon Culling - theres like, 900 of the fuckers, it had to happen eventually - some people have been trading and transferring Pokémon game to game since the OG Red and Blue. I can somewhat understand them being pissed that they can’t bring their favourite Pokémon that they’ve had for 20 years into the newest game because GF didn’t include it, but again, it had to happen sooner or later. Add in the line about “high quality models and animations”, only for most if not all of the models that weren’t new Pokémon looking like they were ripped from the 3DS games, and the same low effort animations in Sword and Shield, yeah the Pokémon Community was a decent dumpster fire when Gen 8 cane out.
The real issue with Pokemon is that it's boring (Atleast it looks boring), I cannot imagine a kid with ADHD get to the end of the game, let alone reach the elite 4 in any of the games. This is partly why I was interested in Legends of Arceus for a first Pokemon game because it looks more involved than all the other games with slow-ass gameplay and random encounters RPG bullshit since Red and Blue.
I’ve said it before, though maybe not ITT - Pokémon is, at this point, Baby’s First RPG. It’s easy enough that even Twitch Chat is able to shitpost their way through one of these games, and that’s probably by design.
Legends, I feel like was them throwing a bone to the older fans who’ve been bitching that this series needed some long overdue changes, and to playtest them for Gen 9 after seeing that reveal. It being well received might mean that, for fucking once, this series might change something worth a damn, and actually keep the change going forward.
But I do have one worry that made me not buy it, it's because it looks too much like Breath of the Wild. Long story short, I didn't like Breath of the Wild, everything felt so bland, barren and empty and you had the occasional enemy to worry about, Legends of Arceus looks equally as bland, barren and empty as Breath of the Wild and I'm afraid it's just going to bore me to sleep.
BotW is admittedly a nice template to base a game off of, but you’re not wrong about Legends being fairly empty. I don’t overly mind - sure, exploring you can find most everything pretty easily, but there’s something about the gameplay loop that’s managed to reel me in. Wish there was more to do besides catching Pokémon - we’ll see what the DLC’s add - but if I want to play a Pokémon game it scratches that itch.
