I remember getting absolutely lost after the submarine theft scene. I found the submarine but I thought it was a dead end so I looked ALL across Hoenn for the next scene. At some point, I was looking at the submarine again and I was too lazy to exit the cave to go back up only to find a new area. I was like, "OH MY GOSH! I'm in a new area!"
If you want to blame someone for that blame Game Freak, IIRC Masuda said that part of the reason for dumbing down ORAS (as well as replacing Emerald's Battle Frontier with XY's Battle Maison) was to keep kids' attention and compete with mobile games.
This is something I can kind of understand from a design standpoint since it's meant be a quick way to give players access to soaring without frustrating the player via accidentally fainting Latios or Latias and having to reset (or undergo a scene that restarts the battle). That said, you still have access to soaring even after trading, transferring, or removing the Pokemon in question from your save file.
This kind of thing (getting a special version of a highly-competitive Pokemon for free via an event) happens every now and then and I'm not too surprised by it nor am I going to complain about. It's worth noting that this specific Pokemon was given out to promote the Pokemon TCG's Ancient Origins set, where Shiny Mega Rayquaza pops up in the set as an Ultra-Rare card and as one of the Pokemon featured on the set's pack art.
Mega Evolution as a mechanic was a mostly-flawed concept from the start that really should've been given several more passes and edits before being approved. I do agree that there are some Pokemon that really didn't need Megas at the time (Like Lucario, Garchomp, pre-nerf Gengar, Blaziken, Salamence, Slowbro), some Pokemon needing them but should've been given a few more revisions (Kangaskhan, Mawile, Sableye) some that actually fixed their issues (Beedrill, Lopunny, Aerodactyl), and some that just kind of seem pointless (Abomasnow, Absol, Audino).
The point is to keep a continuous stream of younger players hooked to the IP while older players either stick around for parts of the IP (VGC, the TCG in general, teaching other players the ins-and-outs of the games) or they move on and live off of nostagia. It's a sad state that I, and hopefully other age-old Pokemon fans, have made peace with.
I’m honestly interested in what the next game after Scarlet and Violet does, now that Masuda isn’t directly involved with Game Freak anymore. Gen 9 will likely still have his fingerprints on it, but whatever comes after that’ll likely show if everyone at GF is just as retarded.
And there‘s the rub, he hasn’t directed a game in since then but he has shown up on the games’ staff role in some noticeable form (most often under producing role). With him leaving Game Freak and joining TPC‘s staff team as Chief Creative Fellow (whatever the hell that means) I can only hope that the mainline games get to the point where both newer and older players can find some joy in ‘em.
If the explore page on Scarlet/Violet’s advertising site is any indication it appears that TPCi is hyping up how players will be able to explore the game’s world at their own pace and not be tied down by the plot. I personally don’t buy that outright, I suspect that it’ll be similar to how PLA handled its areas, you’ll be able to explore a large amount of the area normally but some areas will be “walled” off by something that you’ll get later in the game (and even then I’m sure some players will find a way to break that), the only difference is that it’ll be a proper open world rather than massive areas that you can choose to go to via a selection screen.
I feel like there’s been a trend in the last handful of years and across many Switch games to move to this sort of walled garden approach to level design and this won’t be any different. The linear path, random encounters days of the franchise are done (until the gen 5 remakes)
I agree completely but I personally would've preferred to have the VS Seeker back over Audino spawns.
I won't be surprised if Scarlet & Violet will place an arbitrary barrier around certain cities or just bottleneck it with an bridge or an certain boat.
The only one that was challenging was the Original Gen 1 - partly because it was a brand new series so no one knew the mechanics, mostly because Red and Blue were held together by copious amounts of duct tape and were glitchy messes that’d make Bethesda proud. And even then, they weren’t that challenging - see literal Twitch Chat beating Pokémon, or any of the other X plays Pokémon videos out there.
Exactly.
That entire list is either:
No RPGs are challenging, it's all a numbers game. If you lose to a boss, just keep beating up smaller enemies until you get stronger and win. Tedious, sure, but not challenging.
I'd argue they got easier overtime, more so then Pokemon used to be hard and now it isn't. You just have to look at some pathetic learn sets on gym trainers and leaders past the first few gyms to see that. Even as early as the second gym leaders had full movesets, now they don't. It feels very deliberate that they want to make it easier. We're going from easy mode to very easy mode, unless you nuzlocke the game or something which isn't something most people do.
I'd argue due to how much power is given to the player if you just know how to use the item menu at all, group 2 is not that cheap really. Items are absolutely game breaking, and so is switch mode if you play on that setting like the average player does due to it being the default. Only the most autistic know what set mode even is or how useful switch mode is after they've tried set mode.
At least by kids' standards, the earlier generation required some logical reasoning. There's a difference between that and "Press A to Win".
I really don't remember having an lot of problems with this one. All I did was picked an fight with nearly every trainer that I saw and before I knew it, I was rich enough to rely on potion spam...But the limited inventory was an bitch, though.
