what helped Legends was that catching pokemon was the point of the game. it's easier to swallow that way, while the other games, the point is to just become champion. a bit more of an annoyance when that requirement wasn't in the original.
I agree that their wording seems careful so far, but Pokemon's story structure is so open that it'd be a huge missed opportunity to linearize it unnecessarily. The gameplay and level scaling challenges they'd need to overcome wouldn't be nearly as difficult as some other open world games; it's practically begging to be opened up a la BotW.
Something that's imo rather underappreciated and under-explored in Pokemon is the fact that you have an unlimited supply of lower level Pokemon to use if things are getting too easy. You're not locked into using the same team for a level 50 gym as you are the next one. I utilized this a fair amount in Pokemon Legends: Arceus in order to avoid overleveling (specifically, I had a primary team for story content and a more fluid secondary team for filling out the Pokedex), and in the era of the always on EXP Share I think that's the way I'm always going to do it moving forward. It's rather nice that if I miss lower level content until late game, it doesn't have to be a pushover if I don't want it to be.
I've always hated this playstyle and the general "handicap yourself to have fun". It also goes against the idea of building the best team because at that point, I'm building an intentionally shitty team.
I agree with the sentiment of hating handicapping yourself, but it just doesn't feel like that in Pokemon - and "intentionally shitty" doesn't describe what I'm doing at all. I'm not actively making my main team worse, I'm just not feeding them every ounce of available XP. And again - that's still the team I'm using for pretty much every bit of story content.
prior to Legends, I never found catching pokemon fun or worthwhile. all you get a shiny charm or whatever. without any meaningful motivation, I just caught what I found cool and just stuck with a general party of 6 + whatever caught my fancy. it's not unusual for me to become champion with less than 50 or something pokemon registered.
It's interesting, because in Pokemon: Origins, that's exactly the gist of how gym battles worked. Red hit up Brock's gym first, and Brock is on screen shown going "this is your first gym? I'll use these two Pokemon then", picking two Pokeballs from a tray that had six.
I guess I'd like a mix of both?
I always underestimate just how much of a boost going into “open world” genre can do for a lot of games.
It's an RPG. Wild Pokémon can be captured, and you can add them to your party to use in battles.
I'm not even gonna be annoyed any more at this point, just disappointed.
The games have never been renowned for their stories, but they have them, yes. That said, a decent bit of the plot pretty much is catching Pikachus and fighting other people's Pikachus. They've also included a villain trying to use a super powerful Pokemon (the one on the box of each game) for world domination and stuff, but that tends to be presented as the B-plot to becoming the best battler around.
If I end up choosing Sprigatito I'm definitely naming it after one of my cats (the needier one)
Mobile games, maybe they announce a new one.
Nah I don't think they do, I think it may mean some new announcements.
I disagree. I'm pretty sure they used this same wording before and had new announcements.
