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Discussion Why do so many Nintendo fans dislike Pokemon?

Saying Pokémon is not Nintendo is analogous to saying Luigi's Mansion 3 is not a Nintendo game, Princess Peach Showtime! is not a Nintendo game, Super Mario RPG is not a Nintendo game, etc.
 
amiigo said:
Saying Pokémon is not Nintendo is analogous to saying Luigi's Mansion 3 is not a Nintendo game, Princess Peach Showtime! is not a Nintendo game, Super Mario RPG is not a Nintendo game, etc.
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yeah that sounds about right to me

none of those games were made by Nintendo! one of them was made by SquareSoft for fuck's sake lol
 
Pokémon games on Nintendo Switch...

Are some of the worst made, poorly put together, rushed pieces pieces of rubbish ever slopped out by Nintendo as a publisher.

And simultaneously some of my favourite games ever, with Shield beating out Dragon Quest 11S to be my favourite RPG period.

They have this weird mishmash of Nintendo charm and stumbling indie jank, which foments distaste when they're the most lucrative thing, perhaps ever imagined by a human being and that's not even an exaggeration! I can't say I agree with... What I might generalise as the broader Pokémon fandom, I think the games have always been a bit rushed and it shows. Where there was stability, there was blandness, and where experimentation, holes in the world (figurative or literal).

I think what sets Nintendo fans, who aren't themselves Pokémon fans, against it, is all of this put together, juxtaposed against the other titles Nintendo markets and sells. How does the same publisher release Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and Pokémon Scarlet and Violet? Then to further cement the distaste... Why did the Pokémon game sell, and not Xenoblade?

People get angry; it seems unjust, games they think are garbage sell faster than games they think are masterpieces, and Nintendo's financial and time investments in Pokémon make it appear that Pokémon, while profitable for someone, is a hole where money that could have gone elsewhere went to make another sub-par children's first RPG.

Or maybe they just don't like RPGs. That's not an insignificant number of Nintendo Fans. Just not RPG guys.
 
amiigo said:
Saying Pokémon is not Nintendo is analogous to saying Luigi's Mansion 3 is not a Nintendo game, Princess Peach Showtime! is not a Nintendo game, Super Mario RPG is not a Nintendo game, etc.
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Eh, I imagine all of these are built with much closer supervision from Nintendo than Pokémon games are. I don't agree with the assertion that Pokémon isn't Nintendo, but for the purposes of this discussion I kinda get it. They're not developed with the same sensibilities, and feel more different to internally developed EPD games than these examples do. Which is a legitimate reason for someone who likes EPD games to not like Pokémon as much
 
Magic-Man said:
It's the worst Nintendo franchise on Switch by a long shot despite actually having two good games (both of which are not made by the normal team, those being Pokémon Snap and Legends Arceus).
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Legends: Arceus was made by the normal team at Game Freak. Game Freak has two game development departments as per their website, Development Department 1 is their new IP initiative and Gear Project stuff and Development Department 2 is Pokémon. Many who worked on Arceus also worked on Scarlet and Violet.
 
FiniteInfinities said:
It's hard to even believe that it's true that if they released the games in a better state they'd sell significantly more. I think PLA is generally considered to be the best Pokemon in the Switch era, yet it sold the worst (admittedly only by a small margin, but still).

But yeah hopefully they can find a better sweet spot to balance development time and units sold. I'm not a TPC bean counter though, so who knows, maybe this is that sweet spot.
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Legends was released right after a remake, less than a year before the ninth gen, and was barley marketed compared to how much Pokémon games usually get. Plus it wasn’t released in the ever illustrious holiday time frame, further damning it to be less successful
 
The first mistake is using an enthusiast forum as a barometer for anything.

You would think Xenoblade & Metroid were the biggest brands with how much they are overrepresented here compared to other metrics.
 
Nintendo is one brand whose fandom differs from mainstream to enthusiast circles.

Back then, between 2003 and 2007 we had official Nintendo forums called Nsider forums. That place always surprised me because the games that get the most attention there usually did not get popular enough for the mainstream crowd. Moreover, Gamecube was by far the most discussed system there, despite GBA got more and better games and beat GCN's sales 3 to 1. But somehow hype thread for DK Jungle Beat beat Pokémon Fire Red and Leaf Green one (I remember this specifically as DKJB is one of my most hated Nintendo games lol). Many big GBA games were pretty much ignored there (including my beloved WarioWare Twisted).

Not much changed since, subsequent and concurrent forums had Nintendo circles continued Nsider's interests, Nintendo home consoles got the most talk. And among the home console games, the series with most dedicated fans remained popular, such as 3D Zelda, Metroid, Donkey Kong (handheld DK games ignored as always), Pikmin and Earthbound. While series like Pokémon and Animal Crossing massive fanbases, not many of them are the part of the internet circles (or as we say it, "bubbles"), as they're among the most mainstream names on the planet.
 
Pillydillsy said:
Legends was released right after a remake, less than a year before the ninth gen, and was barley marketed compared to how much Pokémon games usually get. Plus it wasn’t released in the ever illustrious holiday time frame, further damning it to be less successful
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I will always be so confused by their decision to release the Gen 4 remakes, release Arceus like 2 months later, undercut Arceus by announcing Gen 9 like a month after it came out, and then release the absolute mess that was ScarVi that very same year

Like, they could have tried to space that stuff out. Given the state of ScarVi, they really should have spaced that stuff out. There's an alternate universe out there where Arceus was holiday 2022 and ScarVi was holiday 2023 and I wish I could get a peek at that timeline where both games got about another year in the oven
 
goldrogerii said:
On another note, it's interesting to me when people talk about it lacking in creativity especially in the switch era which is the most diverse (regardless of how you feel about the quality of the games) the games have ever been.
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Apologizing for second massive essaypost lmao, want to put some input on why a lot of people could be coming to that conclusion.

I'm gonna agree with you with this when it comes to PLA, very creative idea that no one would've been able to predict. First game to turn the pokemon gameplay fomula truly on its head and give us a totally different experience, its what I love so much about it. Its side quest focused progression, catching focus, open zone progression, past theming, all of it! ZA also sounds like it could go down this route with only being set in one city, imagine the crazy brand new world building options they can explore. Even LGPE was pretty experimental for being an otherwise pretty straightforward remake.

Creatively, the problem lies in the A-Team games, SWSH and SV. They feel like they were made with the idea of "checking off the checkboxes" for a typical mass produced to sell mainline pokemon product. Outside of the wild area SWSH doesn't deviate at all from the established pokemon formula, with level design that somehow has even less depth and innovation than the gba and 3/ds games. Gigantamax checks the "new gimmick to sell toys" box and feels like they combined megas and z-moves into one entity rather than feeling like an original mechanic. The typical pokemon character tropes are all there in the writing and none of them truly stuck out. The raids were interesting in theory but they all played the same way and after doing about 10 it feels like you've played them all (same with sv's outside of the event specific raids that require creative strats)

SV is definitely a bigger creative embarkment than SWSH. Its fully open world is new for pokemon and exciting when you play it for the first time. Terastal is unique as it feels different from the older gimmicks, with creative strategy options that can even be used defensively. Character wise, Nemona is another flavor of "energetic fun rival", Penny is another "Hot headed stuck up kid associated with the evil team in some way" rival, I'll give them arven, outside of the parental issues/"parent is main villain" trope that lillie also had, he felt like a totally original and interesting rival. The missions associated with them (team star shenanagins and huge boss mons) are very repetitive thoughbeit and all play too similarly to each other, like they were just copy and pasted. The big bosses from sv were all pushovers and creatively felt like a massive downgrade from sm's totems, they had no strategy or flare to their bttle design. The only moment of them that stuck out was the hilarity of the tiny baby fish tatsugiri getting enveloped in a giant blast of enery.

Looking at other aspects, when you take a deeper dive with your koraidon and see the level distribution you see how much more similarly the progression was designed to play like a regular pokemon game, in spite of its open world masking. There is nearly no incentive or reward from deviating from the "official" path outside of getting certain mons early.

Personal opinion not related to the creativity but it also it feels like the game was designed to be open world specially because of marketing reasons "the people want it" because the game poops and farts itself trying to run on the poor tablet. It would've made much more sense for it to be "open-zone" ish like pla, where the region would be devided and you'd progress based on completing certain objectives. The game would run much better, and it would make sense with the suprisingly linear level balance the game has. The story could've been more evenly refined instead of feeling like 90% of it taking place towards the ending.

tldr: SV feels like its open world just to have the title of "open world game" without actually feeling like it was designed to be one at its core.
 
It’s an RPG and most Nintendo fans don’t play those unless Mario is on the cover of the box.
 
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I loved Pokemon as a franchise but I actually never liked the mainline games that much. My favorite Pokemon properties were the tv show, Hey You Pikachu, the pedometers, etc. In other words, anything that let me live in the world. Once living in that world lost its appeal, what's left? Occasionally something comes along to recapture the magic, like Pokemon Go, but it's fleeting.

This is the opposite of Digimon, where it took me awhile to realize that I loved the tv show but couldn't care less about the "franchise."
 
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I think for many, it's that they feel that Game Freak's occasionally boneheaded decisions are the main thing keeping people from reliving the magic they felt in their childhood with the first Pokémon games they played.

DISCLAIMER-- there are many valid criticisms of Pokémon games. I just also do feel this is an aspect of why people in Nintendo fandom often take huge issue with Pokémon games. More than most franchises, I tend to see people romanticize their childhood experiences with Pokémon while insisting that Game Freak just doesn't understand their userbase anymore.
 
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I love Pokémon, but I fell out of love with Pokémon games years ago during the 3DS. If the older games were ever made accessible on the Switch/2 I would happily pay for them but otherwise I’m content to sit it out. I’d reckon that kind of fan discourse only reveals itself when we get to people that would post on something called the Famiboard though and the vast majority of people don’t care that much
 
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Saturnman789 said:
the A-Team games
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As I said earlier a distinct Team A and B doesn't seem to exist. The Pokémon team is just development department 2. My assumption is that staff move in and out of projects as needed. The field planning lead for Arceus was the same for Scarlet/Violet (out of Arceus' 4 field planner 3 also worked on Scarlet and Violet). Many planners of Let's Go Pikachu and Eevee also worked on Sword/Shield; the co-director of the dlc got his start as a planner for Let's Go Pikachu and Eevee, etc.

Saturnman789 said:
the game was designed to be open world specially because of marketing reasons "the people want it"
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Of course this is part of the reason the game is open world, people have been very vocally telling them to make an open world Pokémon game for a very long time. There was even a bit of backlash initially when people realized Arceus was not an open world game. There's even a game informer interview where they were basically asked to make a open world Pokémon game.

I think each switch game has a different focus,
Let's Go Pikachu & Eevee: reimagines Pokémon yellow with a new gameplay,

Sword and Shield: A more traditional game with MMO lite elements and 4 player co-operative battles,

Arceus: the focus of the game is once again shifting towards catching with a different gameplay style than Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee and a different battle style,

Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl: bog standard faithful remake with some modern conveniences,

Scarlet/Violet: Open World Pokémon with a quicker battle style in auto battles has a focus on Pokémon living in an open world and the gameplay freedom that can along with an open world.

Well that's how I see it anyway.

In terms of character writing, they most have done something different this time around because Arven did win an award for best character in Japan. Which is something Pokémon games have never won awards for, writing.

Edit: I hope this reply doesn't come off as snarky or anything.
 
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Nintendo's internal development teams don't generally work on RPGs, although recent Zeldas have been trending in that direction. Fire Emblem, Xenoblade, and Pokémon are (broadly speaking) number-crunching tactical games, and their appeal is different from the kinetic action games that Nintendo is more often associated iwth.
 
I'm kind of fascinated by the industrial strategy behind Pokémon. I have a lot of friends who are fans. At the time, I still loved Dragon Ball, and not even to try and be a different kid.

To put it plainly, I find plenty of objective qualities in the games, but they bore me deeply. I watched the anime like everyone else, but it doesn't really interest me as a child, let alone as an adult.

But I have a real, slightly unhealthy fascination for this thing as a product, which is a kind of Call Of Duty from Niintendo. And I have SO many friends who still are fans and even share that passion with their , nieces, nephews or kids that I play it often, without regret.
 
Apopheniac said:
Nintendo's internal development teams don't generally work on RPGs, although recent Zeldas have been trending in that direction. Fire Emblem, Xenoblade, and Pokémon are (broadly speaking) number-crunching tactical games, and their appeal is different from the kinetic action games that Nintendo is more often associated iwth.
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Pokémon campaigns are very, VERY light on the number crunching lol. They are designed to be steamrolled by children
 
goldrogerii said:
As I said earlier a distinct Team A and B doesn't seem to exist. The Pokémon team is just development department 2. My assumption is that staff move in and out of projects as needed.
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Yeah i definitely could've framed what I was thinking better. I meant the new generation mainlines specifically (like BW, XY, SM, SV etc). I used A-team as a broad term because I'm assuming more people would be working on those games at a specific time than a side-game like pla, not because there's any established internal teams that separate the pokemon department officially. Apologies for the confusion.
goldrogerii said:
Of course this is part of the reason the game is open world, people have been very vocally telling them to make an open world Pokémon game for a very long time. There was even a bit of backlash initially when people realized Arceus was not an open world game. There's even a game informer interview where they were basically asked to make a open world Pokémon game.
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There's a huge part of me that wishes they didn't succumb to the peer pressure, because the game suffers due to it. Also a possibility they themselves really wanted to make an open world, but they could've done a risk-reward evaluation that factored in that theres a lot going on on-screen with pokemon than say zelda totk. Numerous wild pokemon, nature, cities, npcs, all being rendered at the same time in a big open world. Sure having a huge open world with no blocks is cool, but if the performance is at a critically bad level because of it, which will dampen the enjoyment of many players, is it worth it? Maybe it was too late in development when they (if they) noticed the issues. Or they did notice, but waving the "open world" flag was too good of an opportunity to pass up.


goldrogerii said:
In terms of character writing, they most have done something different this time around because Arven did win an award for best character in Japan. Which is something Pokémon games have never won awards for, writing.
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Arvens arc was definitely a breath of fresh air for pokemon. From what I remember of it (lol) he has a combination of character traits that haven't been done on a Pokémon character before. And the aspect where he was desperately trying to heal his dog that saved his life in area zero with mysterious herbs he heard about in the books was pretty cool storytelling wise.
 
Apopheniac said:
Wow, I didn't know that. I guess that completely changes how my post reads, huh
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I'm not sure if this is sarcasm, but if it is then I hope my reply didn't come off as snarky lol. If it's not, then yeah, the tactical elements in Pokémon single player basically just boil down to elemental rock paper scissors. The campaigns are really easy for the most part. The true number crunching doesn't emerge unless you're playing PvP at the competitive level
 
I did as a kid but the games have gotten easier and less polished as i've gotten older which isn't exactly a recipe for maintaining my interest

i've gradually just cared less and less about it as the years have gone on to the point where I very rarely even think about the series at all these days
 
Lord Azrael said:
I'm not sure if this is sarcasm, but if it is then I hope my reply didn't come off as snarky lol. If it's not, then yeah, the tactical elements in Pokémon single player basically just boil down to elemental rock paper scissors. The campaigns are really easy for the most part. The true number crunching doesn't emerge unless you're playing PvP at the competitive level
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Tactical number-crunching for babies is still tactical number-crunching. If tactical number-crunching for teenagers isn't appealing to platformer players, there's no reason to believe tactical number-crunching for babies ought to be.
 
Apopheniac said:
Tactical number-crunching for babies is still tactical number-crunching. If tactical number-crunching for teenagers isn't appealing to platformer players, there's no reason to believe tactical number-crunching for babies ought to be.
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Okay so it was sarcasm lol. The tactical gameplay in Pokémon single player campaigns is practically an afterthought. It's not even close to the level of Xenoblade or Fire Emblem. People who play the games casually do so for the monster catching/raising aspect. I can't say I've heard anyone actually levy this complaint against the franchise as a reason they hate it. Whereas I've definitely seen Xenoblade for example get criticized for its obtuse systems and excessive tinkering
 
Lord Azrael said:
Okay so it was sarcasm lol. The tactical gameplay in Pokémon single player campaigns is practically an afterthought. It's not even close to the level of Xenoblade or Fire Emblem. People who play the games casually do so for the monster catching/raising aspect. I can't say I've heard anyone actually levy this complaint against the franchise as a reason they hate it. Whereas I've definitely seen Xenoblade for example get criticized for its obtuse systems and excessive tinkering
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People who enjoy or have enjoyed the gameplay of Pokémon are enjoying the aspects related to the tactics and resource management, even if it is for babies and obscured by cute creatures, because that's what the gameplay is, in the same way that people who enjoy Kirby games are enjoying the platforming and combat elements of it. Most of the Pokémon-dislikers are not jaded ex-fans, they are people that do not enjoy this gameplay, either due to its fundamental nature as an RPG or due to it being for babies if you're not already a diehard
 
Saturnman789 said:
Yeah i definitely could've framed what I was thinking better. I meant the new generation mainlines specifically (like BW, XY, SM, SV etc). I used A-team as a broad term because I'm assuming more people would be working on those games at a specific time than a side-game like pla, not because there's any established internal teams that separate the pokemon department officially. Apologies for the confusion.
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No problem 😃. I have just seen the sentiment that two distinct groups of people are making the games a lot so I assumed that's what you meant.
Saturnman789 said:
Arvens arc was definitely a breath of fresh air for pokemon. From what I remember of it (lol) he has a combination of character traits that haven't been done on a Pokémon character before. And the aspect where he was desperately trying to heal his dog that saved his life in area zero with mysterious herbs he heard about in the books was pretty cool storytelling wise.
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For Arven's story, game director Shigeru Ohmori's drew from his experience of losing his parents when he was younger.

Saturnman789 said:
Or they did notice, but waving the "open world" flag was too good of an opportunity to pass up.
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I think they did notice I tried their best to optimize the game within the time they had available. Something interesting is that the southern province area leading up to the academy was actually more densely designed with more trees and a slightly different terrain in the announcement trailer. It was pared back quite a bit in the release version.
 
Apopheniac said:
People who enjoy or have enjoyed the gameplay of Pokémon are enjoying the aspects related to the tactics and resource management, even if it is for babies and obscured by cute creatures, because that's what the gameplay is, in the same way that people who enjoy Kirby games are enjoying the platforming and combat elements of it. Most of the Pokémon-dislikers are not jaded ex-fans, they are people that do not enjoy this gameplay, either due to its fundamental nature as an RPG or due to it being for babies if you're not already a diehard
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And I'm saying I disagree with that notion. I think a sizeable chunk of Pokémon haters nowadays (actual haters, not just those with mild dislike/apathy - that's what the thread is talking about after all) are either jaded ex-fans who hate the current direction, or people who are upset that they're successful despite their poor technical state. If someone doesn't like RPG gameplay then they probably just wouldn't bother with the franchise, or maybe try it out and move on. But we can agree to disagree
 
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When I was a kid, I was obsessed with the Pokémon anime.. that was all my life for a good few years; I knew every Pokémon by memory, I'd draw them all the time, had plushies, toys, board games, movies on VHS, music CDs... one of my birthday parties was themed after Pokémon...

But I never had Nintendo handhelds, only their home consoles.... and when I finally tried a mainline Pokémon game, I got very confused and frustrated it was a turn based RPG that didn't translate at all the action I was used to see in the anime, with lots of text I didn't understand to boot (would take me a few years until I got to learn english properly); -- as an adult, I tried to get into the series on occasion, mainly with the 3DS entries, but it's hard if you aren't attached since childhood.
 
The modern games are really flawed. Also, something people forget is that for people who are really old (like, in their 40s now), Pokemon in the 90s was sort of treated like Fortnite is now, or like how MineCraft was at release in the early 2010s. It was explicitly marketed towards children and seen as kind of a fad in video game enthusiasts circles at the time. Anyone old enough to have been around back then might have never really gotten onboard in the first place.
 
Do Nintendo fans in particular dislike Pokemon, or does Famiboards (a niche of a niche community) just not have a lot of big Pokemon fans?

I love the Pokemon franchise. Even if I have qualms with modern Pokemon, I still love classic Pokemon and even those newer games scratch a particular itch. Even outside of the more controversial modern stuff, Pokemon hasn't generated that much discussion here yet (remember the short lived Pokemon Center board that got like no attention?), and that's okay. Or perhaps be the change you want to see!

EDIT: Speaking of "the change you want to see," here's a great example of a recent Pokemon focused thread on Fami:
famiboards.com

What Pokemon do you love, but is generally disliked or rarely used/talked about?

I have a couple, but the main one for me is Dunsparce. This Pokemon is so goofy I can't help but love it. Besides a weak movepool in GSC, I think it's got pretty decent stats all things considered. I'll always have it on my team in GSC, and its fun to bring out this little guy and wreck with...
famiboards.com famiboards.com
 
I got into Nintendo from Pokemon. When I grew up, I kept playing Nintendo games, but I stopped playing Pokemon.

Pokemon has all the outward qualities of a classic Nintendo game. Iconic character designs that appeal to all ages, great music, a colorful world. But it's not good. It's never been a competently made RPG. Incredibly complex combat systems, sure, but unless you're into the insanity of competitive Pokemon then most of that is completely useless and irrelevant to you and in fact the easiest way to get through most of the games is to ignore as many systems as possible and just put a bunch of the strongest damage moves you can on your starter. Black & White is the only time it felt like they even tried to pay closer attention to the balancing and be deliberate with what the player has available to them, but even that fades as it goes on.

And all of this is before the games started cutting popular features left and right, gained a massively coddling attitude due to some deathly fear of alienating five year olds, and had their big public technical fall after the transition to 3D.

...All that said, I reject the premise and am convinced absolutely everyone except for me still plays Pokemon, especially the ones complaining about it.
 
This is something that I’ve noticed, too, and it’s so bizarre to me.

But that’s not all—the reverse seems to happen a lot, too, and is even more bizarre!

Like, it seems relatively common to find Pokémon fans who dislike Nintendo—hardcore PlayStation/Xbox/PC gamers who don’t play Nintendo games but somehow like Pokémon. I don’t understand it—how do you not like Nintendo when Pokémon is a Nintendo game itself for Nintendo systems?! It would seem totally contradictory, yet somehow this isn’t an uncommon occurrence from my experience…
 
VolcanicDynamo said:
Do Nintendo fans in particular dislike Pokemon, or does Famiboards (a niche of a niche community) just not have a lot of big Pokemon fans?
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I don't think it's necessarily a Famiboards specific thing. Go to just about any major online gaming forum or social media group, and there's a good chance you're gonna hear some negativity directed towards Pokemon. Although, as you said, that community in general even beyond Famiboards is niche. Most of Pokemon's sales stem from fans who are never gonna bother with this type of stuff, and just buy the game regardless because they like Pokemon.

Regardless, I think the main thread kinda summed things up nicely. The disdain stems from the lackluster output on a technical (and sometimes creative) level of the previous generation of games. I don't think there's many here who specifically dislike Pokemon, but the negativity is amplified by how disappointing their recent output has been, particularly in comparison to other Nintendo franchises.
 
They... don't? Sure there's a vocal minority who complain. But Pokemon games take up 5 slots on the top 15 highest selling Switch games (and that's combining each set of titles like Scarlet and Violet)
 
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Maybe it's not just some people's cup of tea?

Like with a lot of Nintendo games, I genuinely like the aesthetics of Pokémon, but ever since I tried it out for the first time in the late 90s - granted, that was under the circumstances of not having a GameBoy to play on and being more-or-less forced to play on the N64 through the Transfer Pak (THANKS PARENTS) - I've never really found my way into the games. I like quite a few of the Pokémon spin-offs (particularly Pokémon Mystery Dungeon and Ranger), but having tried the main series again and again (the last time with X/Y) I've found it's just not my thing. Funnily enough, that's when I also started falling in love with another "creature RPG" series - that being Shin Megami Tensei.

And it's not that Pokémon is the only Nintendo series that I don't care a lot about - Splatoon is also up there as a game where I appreciate the aesthetics, but the gameplay doesn't look super appealing to me - and that"s actually true for a lot of Nintendo frachises for me.
 
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Tye said:
This is something that I’ve noticed, too, and it’s so bizarre to me.

But that’s not all—the reverse seems to happen a lot, too, and is even more bizarre!

Like, it seems relatively common to find Pokémon fans who dislike Nintendo—hardcore PlayStation/Xbox/PC gamers who don’t play Nintendo games but somehow like Pokémon. I don’t understand it—how do you not like Nintendo when Pokémon is a Nintendo game itself for Nintendo systems?! It would seem totally contradictory, yet somehow this isn’t an uncommon occurrence from my experience…
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It's probably people who grew up playing Pokémon on the playground and have lots of fond memories. Lots of people in my elementary school only played Pokémon. Many then probably moved to PS/Xbox/PC
 
Quoted by: Tye
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Lord Azrael said:
It's probably people who grew up playing Pokémon on the playground and have lots of fond memories. Lots of people in my elementary school only played Pokémon. Many then probably moved to PS/Xbox/PC
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I guess, and I’ve assumed that as well…but, like, how do you actively still like Pokémon while not liking Nintendo at all? How do you even play new Pokémon games?? I dunno, just doesn’t make sense to me. Like, what, you “grew out” of Nintendo games…but, somehow, Pokémon of all things is an exception to that??

Then again, I guess I should know by now not to expect people to make sense—most of us humans love to be walking contradictions on so many levels, after all. 🤷

Anyway, I just find it odd that both this and the reverse seem to be such common scenarios. It feels so rare to find someone who genuinely and thoroughly loves both Pokémon and Nintendo in general. (Though I suppose it’s not quite as odd as people who love Smash Bros. but not Nintendo—or vice versa—which is also a not so uncommon occurrence I’ve witnessed, lol.)
 
Pocket Card Jockey is more interesting than any Pokemon game on Switch by a big margin.
 
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Thunder84 said:
I don't think it's necessarily a Famiboards specific thing. Go to just about any major online gaming forum or social media group, and there's a good chance you're gonna hear some negativity directed towards Pokemon. Although, as you said, that community in general even beyond Famiboards is niche. Most of Pokemon's sales stem from fans who are never gonna bother with this type of stuff, and just buy the game regardless because they like Pokemon.

Regardless, I think the main thread kinda summed things up nicely. The disdain stems from the lackluster output on a technical (and sometimes creative) level of the previous generation of games. I don't think there's many here who specifically dislike Pokemon, but the negativity is amplified by how disappointing their recent output has been, particularly in comparison to other Nintendo franchises.
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I wouldn't take any hardcore communities opinion on anything as representative. With a franchise as big as Pokémon, there will always be a loud and large enough contingent to make it seem like there's a significant amount of negativity, even though they're a tiny fraction ot the userbase.

There's plenty of reasons to dislike Pokémon, of course. At a time where many Nintendo franchises reached unparalleled heights, Pokémon came out as a unpolished mess, and had to make games with massive cuts to content when almost every other Nintendo franchise was releasing bigger than ever. They're terrified to have any level of complexity in their main campaigns, and even the much vaunted battle system ended up heavily dumbed down in legends arceus. And frankly, I think trying to make Pokémon work as a open world game has been devastating for the gameplay loop.

But none of that matters to the vast majority of the audience
 
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Tye said:
I guess, and I’ve assumed that as well…but, like, how do you actively still like Pokémon while not liking Nintendo at all? How do you even play new Pokémon games?? I dunno, just doesn’t make sense to me. Like, what, you “grew out” of Nintendo games…but, somehow, Pokémon of all things is an exception to that??

Then again, I guess I should know by now not to expect people to make sense—most of us humans love to be walking contradictions on so many levels, after all. 🤷

Anyway, I just find it odd that both this and the reverse seem to be such common scenarios. It feels so rare to find someone who genuinely and thoroughly loves both Pokémon and Nintendo in general. (Though I suppose it’s not quite as odd as people who love Smash Bros. but not Nintendo—or vice versa—which is also a not so uncommon occurrence I’ve witnessed, lol.)
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Can't say I've met these people who buy Switches just for Pokémon and then hate on every other first party game available haha. I've met people who express fondness for Pokémon but don't play it anymore, while calling the rest of Nintendo's catalog "kiddie", though. But yeah, it's a lot more common with Smash Bros. as you say, since plenty of adults will play it at parties or whatever but won't go out and buy the console themselves
 
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Why should liking Nintendo be a qualifier for liking or disliking Pokémon? Especially modern Pokémon.
 
Wockio said:
I know that sounds weird... but think about it. There's a lot of Nintendo fans that seem to really not like the franchise despite playing a variety of other Nintendo games, and I feel this has only been intensified by the recent controversies that have taken place within online discourse surrounding the games. In this very forum the perception of Pokemon is extremely poor, with people groaning every time there's big news or it shows up in a Direct.

Fire Emblem and Xenoblade are likewise othered, but I think that's understandable considering the anime aesthetic and the games themselves maybe not being the easiest to get into. But Pokemon? It's the most accessible thing ever, and it's never been too weeby. So what gives?
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I don’t think it’s that at all, it’s that it’s very popular which means it gets a ton of mentions in general discussion and that discussion will include ‘don’t really play them’ to a greater extent than more niche series that barely get mentioned at all.

It’s like, there’s 100m+ Switch owners that didn’t buy Breath of the Wild, and even then we hear a lot more about the issues people have with it (and direction of the series) than we do, say, the issues people have with Zelda games that sold a tenth as many copies. Being popular just means more media coverage so more opportunities for people who aren’t interested to say ‘yeah I’ll skip this Pokemon-specific direct’ or whatever.

Personally, I’ve never played Pokémon either. I don’t dislike it, or find anything particularly offputting, I’m just not interested and never have been. My main engagement with it was when moderating discussion on it here and finding it extremely heated (see also Paper Mario), but that was down to fans disagreeing on stuff, rather than people who are completely apathetic about the series actively ‘disliking’ it.

As for the ‘anime’ aspect of Xenoblade and Fire Emblem, I don’t think they are ‘othered’ at all, any more than other JRPG series are. It’s just a genre thing, they are pretty popular within it. In the rpg thread, they both come up a lot at least as much as I’d expect, and particularly when Fire Emblem along with FFT is a bit of a genre codifier, or at least a reference point, for SRPGs. FE discussion waxes and wanes depending on the latest game.
 
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I think most Nintendo fans want Pokemon games to be excited about and get a bit frustrated when they look so unpolished and graphically unsophisticated. Both technically and aesthetically they lag far behind. That was not the case on the GBC and GBA, where they looked good for the systems. So in recent years this frustration has built up and scepticism of GameFreak as a developer. They've actually experimented quite a bit with the games this era, but always with that lack of polish to sell it fully to core gamers.
 
The results of GF's work into the NS generation were too embarrassing causing the reputation of many Pokémon games to plummet.
 
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Liking Nintendo doesnt mean you like every single franchise from Nintendo.

I like Mario platformers, Zelda, Metroid, Xenoblade etc etc
I dont like Animal Crossing, Pokemon, Fire Emblem etc etc

Or rather.. not just my cup of tea, they dont do it for me.
 
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