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Pokémon Direct 8/18/21 Discussion Thread


vanguard333
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Very solid overall, BDSP looks a lot better than it did since it's initial announcement, but I more or less expected that. I'm still hoping for mega evolution to come back, though. Finding mega stones through mining in the underground would fit really well imo.

Legends also looks stellar! I'd be interested in dipping my toes into that. Can't wait to see what other new Pokémon they've added! 

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Honestly, I almost cried seeing BDSP lol. They look absolutely amazing and I am absolutely ecstatic to play them. Pretty much every wish I had for them has come true (basically Platinum dex/expanded DP dex and better graphics). Based the on the map picture we got, it seems like we're only getting the battle tower and we wont be seeing the battle frontier but tbh, I don't mind too much... Seeing character customisation was a massive surprise, even if is relegated to Overall, I'm super excited for it and the nostalgia hit that inevitably come.

As for Legends, also very excited. It looks really interesting so far and I lowkey hope we get a story trailer or smth, or at least another new trailer with more Hisuian pokemon. Overall I don't much to say other than I am excited and I will definitely be purchasing. Still unsure of what starter to pick tho lol.

 

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Oh baby Munchlax is finally catchable

The Underground expansion is a neat concept to help expand Dex options, although I would help they improve some of the surface-level encounter tables.

I'm really digging the new Hisuian forms, more evos for mons who wanted one or underutilized type combos.

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55 minutes ago, Azz said:

Seeing character customisation was a massive surprise, even if is relegated to Overall, I'm super excited for it and the nostalgia hit that inevitably come.

Seeing Lucas and Dawn with different skin tones looks odd to the point that I'm not for it strictly because their OG designs are still usable.  I'm normally in favor for this kind of inclusion, and I get that they did this because of the times we live in, but wouldn't other pre Gen 6 protagonists like Red, May, or Hilbert look odd if they were suddenly black or had blonde hair when they were never previously like that?

"But what about Team Aqua's redesigns in ORAS?"  Their outfits were completely overhauled, so the different skin tones for them didn't look out of place unlike Lucas and Dawn here.

Edited by FailWood
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54 minutes ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

D/P were the worst Pokemon games, full stop, and a remake isn't going to be worth my time.

I can understand not liking Diamond & Pearl; they had their problems and even I personally would've preferred a Platinum remake. But calling them the worst Pokémon games is a bit much considering the series also contains the extremely rushed Sword & Shield among other games.

Edited by vanguard333
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10 minutes ago, FailWood said:

Seeing Lucas and Dawn with different skin tones looks odd to the point that I'm not for it strictly because their OG designs are still usable.  I'm normally in favor for this kind of inclusion, and I get that they did this because of the times we live in, but wouldn't other pre Gen 6 protagonists like Red, May, or Hilbert look odd if they were suddenly black or had blonde hair when they were never previously like that?

Not in my opinion no. Personally, when ORAS came out, seeing the fact you couldn't choose the MC's skin tone or hair colour or even customise the MC at all was ridiculous, especially after X and Y. Having skin tone options/different hair colour options is great if it makes players feel more included and should become the standard of pokemon games, remake or not (which thankfully it is).

Inclusivity and diversity is far more important imo than remaining faithful to designs of the MC that is supposed to represent the player in the first place. Like I may play using Lucas' design, but I'm not playing as Lucas, I'm playing as me and I should be able to have the MC that is supposed to represent me look like me.

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5 minutes ago, Azz said:

Not in my opinion no. Personally, when ORAS came out, seeing the fact you couldn't choose the MC's skin tone or hair colour or even customise the MC at all was ridiculous, especially after X and Y. Having skin tone options/different hair colour options is great if it makes players feel more included and should become the standard of pokemon games, remake or not (which thankfully it is).

Honestly, I was fine with ORAS lacking customization options because X & Y and Sun & Moon's customization options made me feel all the more excluded for one simple reason: they forgot about redheads. Personally, I'd rather no option at all over a customization option that goes, "Okay, we've included brown hair, dark hair, blondes, and multiple skin tones. …Yep; that's everyone; I can't think of a single person that's left out from that." Imagine if a game included every customization option except the ones that would match you, and they did that across multiple games.

 

13 minutes ago, Azz said:

I'm playing as me and I should be able to have the MC that is supposed to represent me look like me.

I've been making that exact same argument to try to get red hair and left-handedness into video games as options for well over a decade now; no one seems to listen to that argument.

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An open world RPG where you're doing assignments for different bureaus and survey fieldwork. Is it just me or is this low key Xenoblade X? And then they go and show off a FFX turn order system where the moves you make determine how much time passes until you can move again. This is some good stuff. I hope the game does well. The release date definitely has me concerned, since it hasn't been that long ago since it was first announced, and now it's coming out just two months after the previous main series launch. That seems needlessly early, especially when the preferred launch date for most japanese games following Christmas is typically March - the end of the fiscal year. It almost feels like they're sending this one out to die. But that only endears me more to it.

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Personally, I don't mind if it's there or not, but that said, I've never seen as "myself" in games that let you customize the protagonist. I'm playing a game, not in it. So great that the options are there for those that want them, but if I ever get these games, I'll forever choose the "default" designs and will always name them "Lucas/Dawn". Because I make no illusions that they're me.

Edited by Acacia Sgt
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23 minutes ago, vanguard333 said:

Honestly, I was fine with ORAS lacking customization options because X & Y and Sun & Moon's customization options made me feel all the more excluded for one simple reason: they forgot about redheads. Personally, I'd rather no option at all over a customization option that goes, "Okay, we've included brown hair, dark hair, blondes, and multiple skin tones. …Yep; that's everyone; I can't think of a single person that's left out from that." Imagine if a game included every customization option except the ones that would match you, and they did that across multiple games.

 

I've been making that exact same argument to try to get red hair and left-handedness into video games as options for well over a decade now; no one seems to listen to that argument.

Personally I think skin tone options should take precedence over hair colour options and in X&Y/Sun&Moon, you can dye your hair. I do understand the frustration however. Best case scenario, character customisation in Pokemon would be more along the lines of AC: New Horizons, where you choose your skin tone and hair colour outright before even starting the game.

Overall, I think games that advertise themselves as having the player be the MC should allow for the player to represent themselves in the in game MC/avatar that is being used to represent them as much (or as little) as possible/wanted.

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54 minutes ago, Azz said:

when ORAS came out, seeing the fact you couldn't choose the MC's skin tone or hair colour or even customise the MC at all was ridiculous, especially after X and Y.

That never bothered me since Brendan and May were given redesigns in ORAS like the protagonists in the remakes before it (except Crystal's Kris, who was outright replaced by Lyra in HGSS).  Heck, they made Brendan more tan in his redesign, but that never bothered me because of what I mentioned before with Team Aqua; it was part of his redesign.

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49 minutes ago, Acacia Sgt said:

Personally, I don't mind if it's there or not, but that said, I've never seen as "myself" in games that let you customize the protagonist. I'm playing a game, not in it. So great that the options are there for those that want them, but if I ever get these games, I'll forever choose the "default" designs and will always name them "Lucas/Dawn". Because I make no illusions that they're me.

I'd do the same for the designs, except for Elio in Sun & Moon because his default appearance is awful (thank God his default in Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon is so much better).

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2 hours ago, Azz said:

Personally I think skin tone options should take precedence over hair colour options and in X&Y/Sun&Moon, you can dye your hair. I do understand the frustration however. Best case scenario, character customization in Pokemon would be more along the lines of AC: New Horizons, where you choose your skin tone and hair colour outright before even starting the game.

You could indeed dye the character's hair, but even in the hair dye, red hair was not an option. Seriously; the closest it had to red hair were a very yellow orange, and pink.

Thanks for understanding the frustration.

I haven't played AC: New Horizons, so I can't agree or disagree.

 

2 hours ago, Glennstavos said:

An open world RPG where you're doing assignments for different bureaus and survey fieldwork. Is it just me or is this low key Xenoblade X?

Oh, yeah; it is like Xenoblade X. I wonder if the starting mission for Legends will guide the player down a path where they will have to avoid a level 90 Infernape that runs along the middle of the path; that would really capture the Xenoblade X experience. …I should probably point out that I like Xenoblade X.

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Gen 4 is far from my favorite generation, but it's one I always respected and played a TON as a kid. For many of my friends, it was our last hurrah in the Pokemon world, as they stopped playing by the time B/W came out. Some have gotten loosely back into it. Others that never stopped are starting to. 

I was originally on the fence with BDSP. New gen Pokemon games and remakes have always been Day 1 buys for me, but this new one didn't capture me. It didn't seem to add anything I already had, nor did it seem to look like I feel Pokemon can, has, or should look now. It felt safe after an already safe outing with Sword/Shield, and when it felt like every other franchise came out swinging with their A-Game or at least was TRYING something new. 

After the presentation, I'm still hesitating on buying the remake, but I'm more open to it than I was yesterday. If I do get it, it won't be a Day 1 purchase. But maybe in time I'll get it. 

Now, Legends Arceus will be a Day 1 purchase. I'm liking the new forms and the idea of quests showing up in this game. I'm not entirely happy about how the capture mechanic works, but a blend of Let's Go and the traditional style is better than fully Let's Go IMO. The change in battles is also a welcome idea for Pokemon IMO. And the item creation aspect is really interesting! Of course, the style will draw immediate comparisons to BOTW, but I'm here for it. I'm sure there will be some transfer system between LA and BDSP games (probably a time-capsule or Dialga/Palkia ability or whatnot), and I'm curious to see what it'll look like. 

Overall, this was a solid Pokemon Presents. I do hope that the Gen 4 remake doesn't fail, but I really hope Gamefreak doesn't do this sort of treatment in the future. As for Legends Arceus - if the game is good, I hope it gets some more spin-offs. Adding this into the cycle of Pokemon games ideally could give the new generations a little more time for each game, if we go:

New Gen

New Gen 2.0

Remake

Legends

Let's Go

New Gen

Of course, we're likely to go back to Kanto for the upteenth time if that's the case, but seeing a young Professor Oak could be pretty fun. (Although I'm personally more interested in visiting a previous era of Hoenn, Alola, Kalos, and possibly Unova to be honest. Seeing less...cross-cultural influence on places like Hoenn and Alola would be cool, and seeing a medieval version of Kalos would be AWESOME.)

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I liked what I saw. Personally I think Renegade Platinum (a romhack) is the best iteration of the Sinnoh games but I will still check out BDSP. I'm not expecting too much of a challenge but I think it would be fun to do something like an all flying type run or something like that. Nice to see that it looks like they are using the Platinum pokedex since I saw Pokemon such as Houndoom and Scizor there.

Legends Arceus still peaks my interests. I liked the new regional variants and the game looks like it runs much better than what they showed off previously. Curious to see what Hisuian Arcanine looks like or if Growlithe will evolve into something else. I found it interesting that the Hisui apparently has Kantonian Vulpix in it. Personally I think it Alolan Vulpix would fit a cold region like Hisui/Sinnoh better but oh well.]

Overall I'm excited to play the new Pokemon games. Will probably have to dust off my Switch since I haven't used it in two years.

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4 hours ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

D/P were the worst Pokemon games, full stop, and a remake isn't going to be worth my time.

While I wouldnt phrase it quite like this, I have to agree. D/P/PT had so many issues that turned me off, that I cant even look forward to a remake of the games. 

Of course I hope they would address some of them, but I dont believe i'll forget those issues so easily.

Edited by lightcosmo
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It all depends on how many of Platinum's enhancements will be implemented.

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4 hours ago, vanguard333 said:

Oh, yeah; it is like Xenoblade X. I wonder if the starting mission for Legends will guide the player down a path where they will have to avoid a level 90 Infernape that runs along the middle of the path; that would really capture the Xenoblade X experience.

Seriously though. My image of GameFreak is being shattered here. I just imagined that those developers have only ever played games with Pokemon in the title. 

I love this description of Basculegion. The jovial VO really sells it.

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ITT: Nobody cared about Unite.

Spoiler

 

Pokemon Presents has happened. Was it any good?

  Hide contents

The first 6 or so minutes are all mobile titles or Unite, so skipping.

And yeah, in motion I am concerned about the look of the remakes already. The slowdown when the pokemon came out of the ball, the looks of the towns as they moved about. And then they had to do it. They brought back pokemon following you around. IT'S BEEN HOW LONG AND IT TOOK A NOT-GAMEFREAK DEV TO DO IT? I am concerned by the fact I might be interested because of this. The in battle models are actually pretty solid and it disappoints me that they went with the chibi models for walking the world, especially since they advertise trainer customisation. Though they actually showed off the contests, Underground and it looks about as I expected (but yes, the twirling still is as poor as you'd expect from Pokemon), barring what looks like new miniature dungeons you can access and fight rare enough pokemon (Including Munchlax without honey). Then there's Galactic shown, with the theme kinda unrecognisable. And with that and shots of the legendaries we're done with the trailer with a date of Nov 19. Was that announced before? There's nothing much in the talking points after the trailer either, so after a point or two I'll move on.

Reading into it the Platinum-added pokemon are available through the mini dungeons (called Hideaways), so excuse me while I give a half whoop for them actually giving us them even if it'll be awkward for nuzlocking purposes. And there's also a chance the Nat Dex won't be available too (Ugh). Guess there's still the Battle Frontier and other QoL things to ask about though, so no guarantees yet.

Next is Legends Arceus, where we see a bunch of shots of pokemon just out and about, with the areas looking a little worse than BotW (Good news, the framerates on pokemon weren't as low this time). Then there's a shot of a Stantler evo-looking thing, before we see a bit of the main town, some of the characters and more footage in action, including a montage of catching, combat and a dumb looking Growlithe alt (And a cool looking animation for the actual catching, it has a firework now), more shots of exploration, including in the air and on the water on new Braviary and Bascuiln alts/evos?. No idea of if the only ones that can be ridden are them and the Stantler evo, but after that there's a lightning storm and some pokemon get angry (you can tell by their eyes being red), with them directly attacking trainers (Amazing how durable the player is to survive a Thunder from Luxray). There's apparently styles from particular pokemon, one more montage including a team around a player, them a 2D bit at the end just to look nice and show the box art (And of course Pikachu's on the boxart. boo.)

Sinnoh's called Hisui now, apparently Team Galactic stole their logo from elsewhere (The Galaxy team), we start in Jubilife (There may be other locals. Interesting). It looks like you'll go between different areas to take on missions, so it's less akin to BotW and more like Monster Hunter after all. Apparently it turns out the pokemon will try to avoid the tall grass because of you being there (How the turn tables). Pokemon battles are more like Continuous turn battles now, so faster pokemon can get multiple turns, there's styles which alter attack strength and speed, which affect the amount of turns you can have. The Dex has a variety of goals now, really trying to make more out of it I suppose. The new evos include Wyrdeer (Stantler's evo tied to there), Basculegion (with a pretty metal explanation that it's possessed by the spirits of Basculin that dies swimming upstream), alongside the Hisuian Growlithe and Braviary (Confirmed Psychic/Flying). It's confirmed for January 28th 2022.

TL:DW: I might be a bit interested. I am concerned. Have to see what more we learn from here, but at least BDSP has the Platinum Pokemon and they added pokemon following again.

I already wrote up an initial reaction to it I'll put in the spoiler above, but the fact I was kinda interested has worried me as someone who was put off by Sw/Sh has somewhat surprised and concerned me. BDSP being remakes of the games I came back to the series with after skipping the GBA entirely probably helps, but I am uncertain how much it's taking from Platinum and future QoL choices. Legends it turns out is being more like Monster Hunter, which is more interesting than I was expecting and at least 2-frame Chingling wasn't present. Still have to see what else is going on with these in the coming months.

7 hours ago, NSSKG151 said:

Personally I think Renegade Platinum (a romhack) is the best iteration of the Sinnoh games

Is this far closer to competitive in terms of difficulty? Asking because I realised it's from the guy who did Sacred Gold/Storm Silver.

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13 hours ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

D/P were the worst Pokemon games, full stop

oops, didn't think this was the "Unpopular Pokémon Opinions" thread, my mistake

 

jokes aside, Pokémon Legends seems promising, much more than when they showed it for the first time at least
i can't wait to see more Hisuian forms and evolutions, but i can't but wonder how they're gonna treat them when a new mainline Pokémon game will launch, and where the new evolutions will be placed in the National Dex
anyway, they said that Legends takes place in a time when humans didn't live with Pokémon yet, so how does this connect with the fact that Pokémon and humans once used to eat at the same table/marry each other? does Legends take place before what we learn in DPPt? or maybe after that, due to an event which caused humans to fear Pokémon?

as for the remakes, i had very, very low expectations, so what they showed actually pleased me, but i still need something more to buy them, maybe something like the Delta Episode from ORAS, where they'd be able to add things like the distortion world and other Platinum-exclusive contents

overall, i was positively surprised, a thing which i honestly can't remember when it last happened, with the Pokémon franchise

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I'm seeing skin tone and clothing customizations as good things, full stop. Pokemon has always been a social game, so it's rather silly that, in the past, when you battled or traded with someone else, it was someone who looked just like you. This is one of the few changes X and Y made that I really appreciated, and I'm glad to see it continue going forward.

That said, I'm not totally sold on either game yet. Legends Arceus looks experimental - I like the idea of a crafting system, and the background NPCs seem like some interesting ones. But I dunno if I'm ready for moving around in a "Breath of the Wild" style while engaging with Pokemon. Nor if there'll be much of the "social scene" that I've grown to know and love. On the flip side, BDSP does some stuff to iterate on the original (more stuff to do in the Underground, trainer customization, Pokemon following you). But the aesthetics look very close to the originals, while I don't know that anything mechanical has been changed substantially (i.e. will there be Megas?). If this is just DPPt with a fresh coat of paint, why not pull out my DS?

So, some good stuff there, but I'm not definite yet on either. Gonna wait and see.

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14 hours ago, vanguard333 said:

I can understand not liking Diamond & Pearl; they had their problems and even I personally would've preferred a Platinum remake. But calling them the worst Pokémon games is a bit much considering the series also contains the extremely rushed Sword & Shield among other games.

D/P were the games that effectively ended my attachment to the franchise. I just didn't like anything about them, aside from Empoleon. And though B/W were a one time upturn, my interest has just been nonexistent since.

 

I was also only counting mainline games. If I was counting spinoffs, non-functional games like Hey You, Pikachu and the trash mobile gacha games would of course be worse. But that's almost as unfair as counting the Mario and Zelda CD-i games.

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4 hours ago, Dayni said:

Is this far closer to competitive in terms of difficulty? Asking because I realised it's from the guy who did Sacred Gold/Storm Silver.

By competitive do you mean like Online Ranked battles, Smogon, etc then no it's not that crazy (that's more like what Radical Red tried to do) but the difficulty is still a step above the mainline games. Gym Leaders, Galactic Admins and Rivals add least have a full team and have held items on their mons. I would say it is about as difficult as Sacred Gold/Storm Silver if you played that and mentioned it but with things like fairy type and moves from later gens like Scald added in.

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