Optimistic over Mega Flygon. /ignores the leaks/You forgot Passimian.
Adding bits of blue to Mega Dragonite could have been the least they could have done to make it less...boring. Did they fire the guy who made the original megas or something? Even the more basic ones like the mega Tyranitar they used are way more interesting.
Zoomer years are generally given as 97-12, so while some Zoomers first got in with Gen 3 (such as myself), most were Gen 4 and 5 - the former got indisputably the worst remakes yet and the latter has thankfully been spared remakes. Maybe there are some younger zoomers with genuine nostalgia for XY as games but in my experience the only people who actually have nostalgia for Kalos were longstanding fans of the anime, amourshippers, or people thinking about what X&Y could have been. I don't hear anyone talking about the battles or starters or locations or legendaries or story years on in the same way you can easily find about Gens 4/5, the closest is people occasionally remembering Korrina or the NPC trainer designs. So if anything this will probably make it bomb harder since they're not doing anything to pander to the diehard Kalos fans.
Yeah, I remember that, they were even criticized for being ripoffs of Digimon (I said the same thing back then), but by the time ORAS came out they were positively received aside from Mega Rayquaza. And through the power of hindsight we can see that GF would never keep adding 100+ unique Pokemon per generation. If it isn't Megas it's regionals, or Gigantamax, or convergent evolutions, or whatever other excuse they fancy to rehash old Pokemon and sell that as brand new.
I had it before I switched to Rillaboom lol, I also considered Granbull.
I'm third-ing these two, especially as a watershed moment for Pokemon. A "fourth" evolution, temporary or not, IMO really broke one of Pokemon's fundamentals, which is always to have three stages and that's that for a line. New evo? Oh, must be a split-evo then...! Nope.
I have more sympathy for GF needing to spice things up here-and-there with gimmicks than I sound above, that's the nature of keeping things fresh and I understand it from a sales standpoint... but Pokemon's such a genuinely and wonderfully strong base concept you could easily just fine-tune most existing things in the battle format, endless new mons/designs, and throw in gameplay gimmicks elsewhere to show how pokemon affect their world (IE, contests or whatever) and people would still eat it up. Imagine them doing that or transitioning far more properly into meaty, non-"tech demo"-esque 3D games from Gen VI onward, considered just as chock-full of stuff as say Gens II and IV, and beloved on the same level as those in fan reception.
Sadly it's just the a regular Switch 2 and not one with a new color scheme but that's to be expected.
I don’t think Megaten is as good of a comparison because it existed long before Pokemon did. I’d say if you really wanted to compare Pokemon clones that just couldn’t cut it because they tried to copy the formula I’d say fossil fighters or yokai watch would be better comparisons. There were a lot of attempts during the DS era to try to copy the formula, but in the end it was always “Pokemon but with ___”.
While Megas were divisive, the modern appreciation is less because the downward trend leaves nothing better in comparison and more an understanding that they were a necessary decision to keep the series from growing stale. The idea a decision regarding Pokémon being reason to discredit it alone is a poor one, because Pokémon fans had cemented themselves as not understanding what they actually wanted when they bitched about Black and White. There was simply no way X and Y could survive solely on the transition to polygons.
There’s nothing they could have announced regarding the TCG that they couldn’t do some other time or place. Same with pocket and definitely same with live. Pocket also caters to gambling addicts like the physical TCG, but you’re just paying for cards you don’t own.
Incidentally, you're not far off from how Crobat looks like when it's fused with itself in Infinite FusionWell, if GF now thinks that giving a Pokemon a Mega is the same as haphazardly slapping extra parts on it, then let's try doing the same. Take a look at my Dragonite-styled Megas:
lolno
Lysandre got fucked in every major continuity. In the games he blew himself up with the Ultimate Weapon and either died or got trapped in the rubble while immortal. In the anime he got fucking vaporized by Zygarde Complete Forme. And in the manga he fell a couple dozen feet onto some sharp rocks and severed his spine, leaving him permanently paralyzed from the neck down.
He has the same name as the prince from Disney’s Princess and the Frog movie.
People think about megas that way today, but back in generation 6 they were incredibly divisive and it started the moment they showed off Mewtwo Y, but it got worse when people found out that the megas ended up taking up most of the slots that would have been given to brand new Pokemon and they were relegated entirely to the post game mostly.
>SV wearing the skin of XY and Arceus
I would say that it is a lot more refined than whatever scarlet and violet was trying to go for.
People complained about Mega Rayquaza being OP but I don't remember people disliking it. I also personally don't mind if they add less Pokemon to the pokedex in a new region, I'm more interested in what they do with them. Less gimmicks, more game. Megas, Z-moves, etc. don't appreciably improve the experience of battling, and I'd rather GF focus either on stuff that actually would improve the underlying mechanics or just add more stuff for you to do outside of battles and catching. But they won't because that takes effort.
Yeah this is the other big thing megas did. Megas could have been an early form of regional variant instead of the Kanto-wank we got, they could have been new evolutions or a split evo, but no, they're a gimmick that the player won't interact with 90% of the time and doesn't even count to the point of collection.
Man that's a throwback. Fossil Fighters actually could have filled in Digimon's niche as Pokemon's biggest competitor if they hadn't gone and murdered the series in the third game. The first two still hold up pretty well for what they were, imo. Should mention they had triple and rotation battles as a mechanic before Pokemon too.
Megas were divisive the moment they were revealed, and I think it's telling that ORAS scaled back from having multiple megas for a single mon - nevermind that it was just thinly veiled Kanto wank.