In past titles, EV training was considered one of the most mundane jobs, involving the player chasing down thousands of the same creature to boost their creature's values to make them marginally competitive. This process could take dozens of hours for a single Pokémon, which resulted in a maxed out save file for the hardcore player. In Pokémon X and Y, with the introduction of the Super Training mechanic, EV training could be completed in minutes by playing mini games on the touch screen.
Nah man, nah I can't take this serious. EV training took maybe one, two hours at most even back in diamond and pearl. With the introduction of the vs seeker, it went even faster.
The super training on the other hand didn't speed up the process that much either (it certainly wasn't minutes depending on the super shot you had and the values you wanted to train), it just made it more graspable for Joe Casual, who before, just didn't get what EVs were or how they worked.
I guess you're mixing in IV breeding here as well, which is the only thing that could take a considerable amount of time, since it was luck bound and you could only pass on two specific IV's intentionally at most (for the cost of nature not being passed)
It's a shame that males had very little hairstyle options...
First and foremost - the Pokémon themselves.
The games introduced about 70 new critters to the franchise. The title was introduced on January 8, 2013, with a release of October 12th, 2013. In the ten months that the game had to develop, most of the critters were already introduced by the time the game had been released, through Nintendo Directs or by following the Coro Coro! magazines that released in Japan every month.When release day came around, most of them had already been shown
no, only about half of them had been shown, probably less. We hardly got any evolved forms (besides megas) from the official channels, from those, mainly mega evolutions to my knowledge.
we did, however, get like a week or so of people who acquired/stole early copies and spoiled the rest of the pokemon, story and whatnot before most of us got to play on our own.
edit: also, if in the past games we counted evolutions of old pokemon among the new ones, we ought to count the 29 mega pokemon forms too. most of them certainly change how the pokemon is used enough to be counted here.
A lot of the designs felt unoriginal, but even so, were much better than the Generation V counterparts.
There will never be original designs ever again. We never had a keychain before. It doesn't get more original than that. It was deemed dumb and unoriginal cause its just a keychain. We never had a cool ninja frog before. Not original either cause it was just a frog with ninja stuff.
However, two ball pokemon, two sludge pokemon and diglets line will forever be original cause... we were young back then.
I also felt that Mega Evolutions, while they're a cool gimmick, took away from the evolutions that some Pokémon really needed. For example, Pinsir and Heracross. Competitively, the two are amazing to have, but they could have been given so much more in the form of a permanent evolution. And the idea of only Blaziken getting a Mega Evolution while Sceptile and Swampert are left in the dust really irks me. Hopefully with the release of Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, that gets rectified. Furthermore, the difficulty felt reduced and much easier than previous generations.
Mega Evolutions were a new, albeit limited battle mechanic. People had been whining for ages to have something new, cause nothing ever changed. New battle mechanic. Its too gimmicky. 3D world. Not 3d enough. Inline skates? But we wanted a skateboard D:
Difficulty is always hard to properly talk about in Pokémon titles. They're childrens' games, many say, but these felt a bit dumbed down, even with the Exp. Share item turned off. One stark example is the Elite Four of this generation, who each only held four Pokémon, and gym leaders, who restricted themselves to three Pokémon each. They felt stunted. The culmination of the training felt like a waste as I easily struck them down. Not to mention the Champion was a bit underwhelming, as I used to like struggling against the champion in a rather epic battle. This game, I was spamming the same moves on my Greninja non-stop and stopped the Champion in her tracks within minutes, without using items.
1. Pokemon was never difficult. 4 year olds beat those games.
2. The exp share in this form was great, it was what people wanted it to be, useful. It was also entirely optional.
It gave us two ways to play this game. The first being, like any other pokemon game, you got a team of about 3 main and 3 support/hm pokemon and basically just used them. In which case it never mattered if you had the exp share or not. Your main pokemon, especially your starter, would end up so strong you literally didnt need anything else or give a damn about types. When I was young, I beat Lance using a charizard with ember, flamethrower, fireblast and fire...that whirly one. I used that same charizard to beat everything else, from agathas gengar to blues blastoise.
Or, you could switch out half your team every other town and never have to resort to boring grinds. Which honestly is what I believe the game wanted us to do. Every route gave you new pokemon, there was hardly any repetition. No rattattas or pidgeons on every other outside route. New Pokemon all the time and not just one or two, but a bunch of them, often enough to make two new teams.
The Leader and E4 part is about the only thing I can agree with, they've been dumbed down and should be using more pokemon. It always made sense for the first two or three to not have a full team, but anything after that using only three is dumb. But then, this has been happening forever too. ever since red and blue.
For Gym leaders, just look at what gold and silver offered us. The Jotho-Leaders had 2, 3, 2, 4, 2, 3, 3, 4 pokemon. The kanto ones had more, between 3 (sabrina) and 6 (blue), everyone else using 4 or 5.
Gold and Silvers E4 was weak too, like 10-20 levels weaker than the ones in red and blue. Having 5 weak pokemon made them look more like a threat, using almost a whole team, but didnt really make them any harder (some used doubles too)
The e4s in ruby and diamond were pretty easy too, safe for diamonds champ, the only champ who's felt challenging at all, but mainly due to being very defensively with spiritomb and milotic taking way too many hits and garchomp being almost unstopable if you run into it the very first time.
As for gym leaders, in the ruby gen, three used 2 pokemon, three used 3 pokemon, one used 4 and one used 5. The average for gym leader pokemon has been 3 pokemon for so long already.
Black and White had only one hard fight (if you didnt prepare accordingly or overleveled) and that was the ghetsis one, but also mainly due to his pokemon being both strong in offense and defense and very mixed in type. I know from experience that theres hardly anything more annoying than a game that has such battles from beginning to end. Yes, I too enjoy a bit of voltwhite or bloody platinum once in a while. But having to grind an hour or two for every gym leader ends up being more tedious than enjoyable.
Don't remember your past with rose colored glasses. There was no pokemon game outside of the two gamecube ones, that couldn't be beaten pretty easily by spamming the same move over and over, over the course of a 20-25 hour game (all the games are that short btw, the old ones just had you running around with less obvious hints most of the time)
And since we're talking about the Elite Four here, what happens after beating them?
Way too easy this generation...
Sadly, the answer to this question is not much, assuming we are talking about new content here. There could always be things to do: breeding, completing the Pokédex, competitive battle, but for new content, it felt stark and empty. The post game felt extremely lacking in this game. It's a fact that most Pokémon games that aren't based in the Johto region would have a relatively meager post game, but the 3DS titles felt empty for such a large region and file size. Legendaries were few and far in between to capture, with the mascot legendary, Mewtwo, Zygarde, and one bird that depends on the starter chosen. Also, usually the end game introduces a new city, island, or some other type of location to explore. X and Y introduce Kiloude City, a rather dull city with a dull Battle Tower and by far one of the weirdest Safari Zone variants of the series yet, which forces you to play and actively search for people to get Pokémon that can sometimes only be found here. The post game introduced a few randomly small side quests with Looker, but the story is a bit silly and anticlimactic, like the story itself.
Agreed. The post game was short and lacked. In a way. Red and blue had one dungeon as postgame. gold and silver had a whole region, but that was really more post story than post game. It was also mostly recycled from red and blue.
Ruby and the other one... besides rayquaza? nothing.
I'm not entirely sure about diamond and pearl. they had a tower and that island with the dungeon. and an empty town where nothing happened.
black and white didn't really have a world of postgame either. we had half the world map to explore, but there was nothing interesting to do there. an underwatermaze you needed an online map for, white forest and black city... which where nice to have, but not really special either, unless you did lots of that dream point stuff or something. more empty towns. But at least a bunch more AI trainer battles and a hide and go seek mission.
well, compared to the most recent games, b/w/1/2, yes, x/y didnt have much post game. but in general? were post game what most people wanted? some, but most spent literally 100 times more time playing or preparing for online than they spend playing the single player campaign.
Of course, I want to be clear, I'd rather have a longer game than a shorter one, but I didn't need b/w empty postgame routes to be honest.
Don't make me force myself to play with friends!
Pokémon titles always had a weak storyline. They're meant to be kid friendly and teach very basic lessons. But this one was very dull and just didn't do justice. The storyline turned into the world's ending from a crystal laser looking device that would go off unless the player stopped Team Flare. But hold on, I have to take a picture of myself in front of the doomsday device to complete my photo album. Selfie, anyone? Lysandre himself also felt like a flamboyant villain. He reminds me of Zhang He from Dynasty Warriors. He gets this cool backpack with cyborg arms coming out of it, but it doesn't even do anything. It was a terrible letdown. The story pace is also jarring, with several hours of space between the first two gyms, followed by a huge surge of gym leaders from there on. If this game needed to learn something, it was that consistency matters,
In that case, you better revisit the old games because, from the point of view of a 20something year old experienced gamer, all these stories were weak and dull.
I got to give it a point though, it seemingly took itself more serious than other games, probably because it was about the fate of the world and had that genocidal element that just wouldn't want to be downplayed. Which is a bad idea if the plot and its protagonists aren't easily taken serious.
Lysandre being flamboyant... well. Yeah. But its not that much worse than a supposed mafia syndicate leader being put down by a boy and changing his ways just like that, a pirate and some sun fan who's way to pale to be a fan of the sun, a psychotic maniac and an abusive father and his freak adoptive son.
which brings me to my next point: the 3D visuals being inconsistent most of the time.
The 3D effect for the title was not fully enabled for many areas of the game. In battle, it caused frame rates to drop noticeably. In the over world, the 3D effect was only used in a few areas, like caves or notable locations in the Kalos region. When I played a title like Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies, the 3D was there throughout. I also won't forget to mention that only one Pokémon of almost 800 got voice acting. Pikachu may be the series mascot, but come on, give the others a similar treatment. It felt unfinished, like a lot of the other side characters the game forces upon the player.
thats a legitimate complain. though if I was nintendo/gamefreak and was aware of how little 3D is used, I wouldn't even have bothered with stereoscopic 3d at all.
Then again, most 3d games get framerate and effect trouble, once you turn on stereoscopic 3d. like heroes of ruin, kingdom hearts, that lego undercover game. pheonix wright or professor layton obviously has less trouble in that aspect.
as for the voice acting... voices arent canon, pokemon saying their names was only for the anime and didnt really make sense. but kids learned the names of the pokemon better which caused sales to skyrocket. pikachu saying pikachu was pretty unneeded for the game though. I would however support a recast of all 'voices' to sound like they come from actual creatures. like birds doing birdcalls, dogs barking or snarling and bears growling etc.
Pokémon X and Y gives the player a few child friends to play with. They are quite possibly the worst written characters of the game, with almost no trace of ambition, save for the rival male/female counterpart of the player. Their plot lines felt shoehorned in, and it turns out by the end of the fun, they're out not doing much. I get that the series wanted to make the game social for the player, but including scenes of "dating" on a castle and watching fireworks was too mundane and kind of awkward when the butler gives the Technical Machine for Protect.
i didnt like the friends either, but then, I didnt like any rival/friend character ever since pearl.
Pokémon X and Y tried too hard to be something that catered to too many fans. It did things right with the visuals, social play, easier breeding process and character customization, but it was also too easy by a Pokémon game standard, and the aspect of adding social features to the game crept in and created forced relationships with players that had little significance to the overall plot of the game. That, combined with inconsistency in the visuals, lack of new Pokémon, a severe lack of post game content, and rather bland music made a title that brought forth the franchise a little bit but took some steps backward. Having said that, I will add Pokémon X and Y to the list of Games You SHOULDN'T Buy.
why do you call it social play? you mean the online mode of battling and training, right? a thing that didnt get the praise it should get in your review. its so much better than what the ds games offered in online play and if anyone played these games for the battle part, then the whole review should be read much more positively:
the story is short, everything regarding competitive battles is easier and faster now, if you play competitively, this game is pretty much made for you specifically.
as i argued, its not easier than any other pokemon game, but it can be made less hassle than any other pokemon game by using exp share and never switching pokemon.
i have no idea what you mean with forced relationships. its npcs in a game. they're never that important to the plot.
if by inconsistent visuals you mean no 3d in overworld, alright, but again, who uses the 3d effect that much? is that really a dealbreaker?
and bland music? it doesnt get more subjective than music. its music fitting for a pokemon game and its good quality tunes.
so yeah. obviously, you don't lie about the things you complain about. they're worth of being complained about. but they're far from being deal breakers whatsoever. at the heart of what these games wanted to be ever since the gameboy times, social games about monster battles, X and Y excel on a level never before seen in the series.