Lord Glenn

Whoever did the designs for Mega Parasect and Mega Torkoal got my attention. (And Mega Bisharp too, but I saw that one when it was linked like 5-6 months ago.) (Also, I just really want the typings for MPara and MTork to be used somewhere. See below.) YESYESYESYES @ Mega Weezing. In fact, I'm of the opinion that Weezing itself should have been Poison/Fire... I would actually use this, I think. Bug/Dark Beedrill is definitely something I want to see. Either as a Mega or just give me some kind of "demon" hornet that's got the typing. I think Beedrill should probably get a new ability that gives its Poison moves STAB still, regardless of the fact that it wouldn't be a Poison-type anymore. Plus, it should learn Night Slash (Level: Start) and Feint Attack (Level: ??) to actually make better use of its Dark typing. Heck, might as well throw in Beat Up and Bite too. Liking Mega Ninetails; actually seems like it might have good synergy for it, if you didn't have a better Mega to run. Lead and set up with Drought, activate Mega, and then be extremely happy as you only take half physical damage. Would suggest adding Night Shade (Start), Shadow Ball (by TM), and Destiny Bond (Breeding) as moves. I can't stop laughing at Mega Victreebel. And I mean that in the good way. Changes like that might actually make me consider using one. Feel like Gooey might be a better fit for Mega Muk, to be honest. > Mega Hypno with Bad Dreams and Dark Void Yeah, I don't see this one happening. Props for the idea, but something tells me that stuff that's exclusive to Darkrai (outside of Sketch'd Dark Void) is probably going to stay that way. Protean Mega Mew is actually kind hilarious. ------------ I'd chime in with actual thoughts for Megas that could show up in ORAS, but I honestly have no ideas. (Heck, I'm not even sure that Mega Evolutions as we know them will be in ORAS, given the whole timeline disparity.) Honestly, I'd rather see massive retypings across the board for a bunch of Pokemon to break up some of the monotony, but if Mega Evolutions are the only way that Game Freak will ever go about doing such, then I guess I'll have to live with it.

I'm evenly split on the issue. On one hand, I want developers and creators not to be locked into a single way to make a game - it's their project, if they should decide to want to take things in a significantly different direction for a sequel, that's their prerogative. On the other, a vast majority of such examples have not been well received (for good reason). (And, honestly, if I were a developer, I'd want to have my projects, especially sequels, not be exactly the same with chunks of stuff (be it story or models, etc.) swapped out: see Pokémon as an example of what I would NOT want to do.) The other point to consider is the development staff and time between games. In the case of Soulcalibur V, the game was headed up by someone different and wanted to focus on a much more competitively-viable fighting system. And, according to all reports I've ever read, the engine is apparently the best in the series. However, that doesn't excuse the fact that Bandai Namco shortchanged the developers and forced the game to a deadline, making it only like 25% complete when it was released. Because of this, the story mode is an absolute joke. So, for this particular game, I'd say the only reason it was so vehemently "disliked" was because of the fact that they were selling a barely cobbled together game as a full, complete game for the standard price of $60, basically charging you that much for a watered down story, the character creator (which you had to supplement with DLC to get new parts!), and online multiplayer for a full price game. Then, you have games like Golden Sun: Dark Dawn. Now, I don't know if the gap between the development of The Lost Age and Dark Dawn played a role in how much of a... mess Dark Dawn was or not, but it's a possible theory. Or, the developers could have been absolutely scatterbrained and thought that it was a splendid idea to start out with a routine fetch quest, bombard us with events and terms in the first hours of the game, and then never speak of them again until the very last minutes of the game before the ending scene, all the while hijacking the game with an extremely convenient plot that's initiated by the villains almost perfectly right from the start. Now, I know from the Golden Sun thread that there's plenty of unused data in the game that would seemingly point to the fact that deadlines played a serious issue in the development of the title, but as a creator, you have to understand the product that you're putting out. And if that product turns out to be an extremely average title for reasons squarely falling on the development team, well, I think that that generally means that you've failed somewhere down the line. And in Dark Dawn's case, it was probably from having too huge of a scope for the project, starting to run out of time, and then having to cobble together something that made a small iota of sense, and pushing it out. So, tl;dr, while I'm absolutely for developers making sequels to their projects, they also have to deal with a group of supporters that is very attentive. And while I'm also hugely in favor of trying new directions, I think that as a developer, you better have a pretty good idea that you know is going to work (or can back up with WHY you chose to do it) before attempting as such. Sometimes, it'd have been better if some sequels just hadn't existed in the first place for those reasons.

Nope, Siuloir's got it right. Multiples of 8. Also, I think Usenti can (or will) automatically align your colors to those multiples of eight? (I feel like I remember hearing this somewhere.)

As far as I've been able to tell, I don't think there's a consistent saturation level or a consistent differential between shades. Doesn't mean that there isn't one, just that I've never picked up on it if there is. And while IS's examples are a good place to start, you will undoubtedly want to tweak stuff around, especially once you work on it a bunch. And, to that end, I offer the following advice: when you're zoomed in on a sprite to see the finer details and the shades look like they're separated enough, once that sprite is visible in a 240x160 window and animated, it probably won't look as separated as up close. Unlike face sprites (which have more visible area to work with and make use of shading), I've found that what you might initially think is too much of a separation between shades actually ends up being the right amount of separation. Honestly though, when it comes to picking shades to go along with something, I'll play with the Hue/Saturation/Brightness, tweaking values off of one shade to go darker/lighter and then repeat that with the next shade down the line. I might take something that has a saturation of 185, a hue in the green range of 90, and a brightness of 160 and, to create something darker, decrease the hue 2-5 points down towards yellow, up the saturation by 1, and drop the brightness by 42. And if that doesn't work, then I fiddle with it some more until it's something I like that fits. I don't know if this really helps any or not?

Any chance of being a little more specific? Are we talking how to select a good color scheme in general? How to create the final palette (i.e. you want blue robes and pick a base 'middle' color and need to make the 'light' and 'dark' shades to go along with it)? Are we talking for building sprites/frames from the ground up or simply making a palette for an existing set of sprites such as one ripped directly from one of the GBA games?

Since you have previously stated that you're not focused on keeping the maps hack-insertable, I feel like some custom tiles or alterations to the tileset might do an even greater job at helping convey the perspective on this one (though I'm still confused about one part). It probably took me a good five minutes to realize that the entire top right quadrant such as the wall tiles below the two chests were actually conveying a hole between high "platforms" (for lack of a better term) than some kind of elevation change. I think it would vastly improve viewers' ease of determining this by adding some shadowed tiles for all of those spots to help show the depth of the gaps not unlike the Dragon's Gate tileset when it transitions in the black "abyss" below the walls. Similarly, the tall drops that have walls jutting out to their left could probably use more shadowing on the left side to convey the depth also. The part that still has me confused is this one right here: Even though I get that it's supposed to be a recessed wall, the height seems (well, is, unless I'm just misunderstanding what you're going for here) too high for the wall - it should match the height of the wall to the left of the big set of stairs to be level. Disregard that, I figured it out now. The room at the bottom of the map and the wall "behind" it are actually separated by spatial distance (with water down below), right? If that's the case, then it really probably needs what I suggested above, since right now, it's "blended" to the point that everything looks connected. Outside of the technological (i.e. default tileset) "limitations", I really like the concept of the map. However, to really drive home its appearance and flow, it's going to need a cosmetic facelift of smoe custom tiles to really give it that extra pop.

To be fair though, the third versions prior to Emerald didn't really feature anything worthy of having an additional remake of their own. Yellow was just an anime adaptation set over top of the original game and Crystal was essentially the same as its predecessors, just with minor plot tweaks and gender selection. There was no real storyline to make significant changes to in Gen I and II, where as all three games in Gen III have definitive stories that feature differences between the versions. (Ruby and Sapphire less so comparatively.) In the case of Emerald, there's story content that they're not going to be able to easily adapt into the remakes, unlike plugging a bunch of Suicune encounters and Eusine's annoyance into Gold and Silver. Not that I want separate remakes of all three versions, mind you, but Emerald certainly has more of a reason to have its own remake than Yellow and Crystal did. Even Platinum has a bit more of a reason to get a remake than the Gen I/II third versions, if only because the Distortion World stuff's timing might be a tight squeeze into (hypothetical) remakes of Diamond and Pearl.

Given that the tilesets are just images and palettes, I don't see why you wouldn't be able to incorporate new ones - you probably would just need to define (i.e. code) new properties for tiles that don't follow an existing template (i.e. Throne, Plains, etc.). Same with defining new palettes for tilesets - it probably just reads them in straight from the new tileset you are adding. And, given that FEXNA is written in C#, if the above isn't true right now, all it should take is someone coding in the above functionality to make it work.

I would be a "mad collector" if, you know, Nintendo/The Pokémon Company would get off their asses and actually bother to distribute events (or distribute them in ways that make sense). Pokémon is a global game, even moreso after the release of X and Y. You can't bring the slogan of "Gotta Catch 'Em All!" back and then not let the players... catch them all. I mean, creating a distribution of a player's perfect Metagross that won in the World Video Game Finals the previous year and making it available to people that are attending this year's Worlds? That's fine. Creating an entirely new pattern for a Pokémon and locking it to a single, specific location that's TEMPORARY and might be halfway around the world from some people? Not exactly fair. (I mean, I suppose it's better than if it would have been a distribution for an actual species that you just couldn't get in the game, but still...) Also, I'm willing to bet that the Fancy Pattern Vivillon will be a Poké Bank distribution, seeing as they've only used it for Celebi so far. Plus, how hard is it to copy over a DATASET, anyway? The language files are already in the games, so porting over entries distributions should take no time whatsoever - it should literally be just an array of data and distributing it! So why hasn't anyone outside of Japan gotten the CoroCoro Charizard distribution (with the opposite Mega Stone to your game)? Why are the Electabuzz and Magmar distributions only available in Europe? Why does Japan have like 5 times as many Holo Caster announcements as everyone else? Etc. For a game that's all about being connected [to other players] (and even had a worldwide release), the companies involved sure are doing a great job at keeping everyone equal. </sarcasm>

1) Sceptile - As much as I rate Treeko's line as my least favorite of the Hoenn starters, I also already have a Mudkip courtesy of SoulSilver and a Torchic courtesy of the Blazikenite Event. Might end up substituting in a Breloom from time to time in place of it. 2) Swellow / Altaria / Flygon - Will probably alternate between these three, with Swellow being the Fly-user. 3) Sharpedo -> Walrein 4) Aggron 5) Manectric 6) Shedinja? / Absol? / Seviper? / Camerupt? / Dusclops (or Dusknoir)? - I honestly don't have any idea who the last member of the team will be. 7) Lanturn, as a Surf and Dive bot, just because I can. I like the imagery of a trainer navigating Underwater on a Lanturn. (If only the models used when Surfing/Diving weren't generic... (outside of Lapras))

1) The Eye of Valmar from Grandia II. Had to stop playing the game for three months my first time through because I kept getting my ass kicked. It's not one of the hardest bosses in the game for nothing. 2) Death Bringer from Golden Axe (Genesis). Though, that's an arcade game by heart, so it's understandable that he'd be hard as balls. But, you don't have access to unlimited quarters in the Genesis port, so it's quite possible you'll die frequently and have to start back at the beginning of the game. 3) Seymour Flux / Lady Yunalesca, Final Fantasy X. Only ever beat Seymour by Overdrive spamming and I don't even want to think about Yunalesca. Honorable mention goes to Ozma from Final Fantasy IX, though that's more a product of me getting rid of the anti-Shadow armors than anything else. 4) Kisuke's first boss in Muramasa: The Demon Blade (Wii). Something about this boss I just can't deal with. Maybe it's the fact that Kisuke is stuck with two longer katanas for this fight, which I don't like using. The reaction time's too sluggish for me. :/

Well, I'm glad I was at least able to help out in some way. Thanks for the updated tilesets though! (Might want to get a staff member to add your updated tileset link to the topic that NL posted that you linked to in the first post, that way anyone who would go to download it would get the correct ones!) As for the italicized portion, here's kinda what I was getting at: Mappy Tileset Tiled Tileset (unless it changed with your updated rips - I took the picture before downloading them) Both of these are the same tileset type (I think I've got two very slightly different palettes though), but notice how in Mappy, the sand/water tiles have chunks of them missing on top of having the palette that is tailored towards using other types of tiles. (EDIT - Imported the same Mappy tileset as the Tiled one and the palette still seems slightly off and the chunks are still missing.) Whereas in the Tiled one, not only is the palette corrected, but the sand is fully usable. Is it just that whoever created the Mappy tileset created it wrong?

I'm pretty sure that the tileset included in the package found in the Tiled topic (the one you linked to) for Chapter 17 (Pirate Ship - FE7 Tileset 5B005C5D) is wrong. The version I downloaded (which was months if not years after that topic was made), has horizontal moving open water, despite the fact that Pirate Ship and the rest of the tileset require vertical moving open water - it's the 3x3 block of water tiles in the bottom right portion of the tileset. I don't really have any use for any of the existing GBA maps (anything I ever need them for is references, which just requires a viewable image), so I don't know if your package already has this corrected or not, but I thought it worth noting. Also, I know that the Mappy version of the tileset used in Linus' version of Four-Fanged Offense (it's one of the FE7 1000XXYY tilesets, so there might be an issue with all of them) has issues with not displaying all of the tiles [in general, though others aren't in the palettes that they should be]. (Do the different tilesets flag different palettes for different areas - i.e. one of the ones in this block makes the water/sand transition tiles work, but also makes the wood deck tiles not work? I mean in addition to the sand being bright cyan instead of yellow; almost like if it's Cycle 1, sand is visible tile but wood plank is a "garbage" tile.) I don't think that the tilesets in question provided for Tiled have this problem, but I also want to make sure that the they work properly using all of the pieces if a map using them is inserted into the game. Since the Mappy ones are "goofy", it'd probably be helpful for hackers to make sure that they're actually able to use all of the tiles that the tileset is saying that they can... Did I make any sense? (Even I'm not sure.)

Or... you could just tap the bare punching bag on the Super Training screen until the RNG rolls that you find a Reset Bag, nuke all of the EVs with it, and spend about 30 minutes retraining it with the desired EV spread. A lot less effort in the long run than cross-breeding berries just to drop the EVs by 10 per berry, especially if the EVs are dispersed crazily from in-game play.

Honestly, I'm the type of person that prefers having more options, variety, and diversity. That would including more for the physical side too - more types of weapons (or, at the very least "subtypes" that could fit under one of the existing types but would feature special properties a la your Armorslayer) that aren't just variations of Hit, (Weight), Might, Critical, and Uses. And, if you open the physical side up, you should definitely do the same for the magic side*. Also, in response to "but should magic really have more diversity than physical weapons", I would have to say yes, but for reasons outside of the above on principle. Magic is, well, magic - it's not as bound to the laws of physics and chemistry as a blacksmith would need to be to forge a weapon. It's whimsical enough that you should be able to think outside of the box enough to easily have diversity, where it realistically would be harder to have diversity in terms of physical weapons (outside of weight / size, power, effectiveness, etc.). And the fact that FE basically has the diversity backwards is baffling to me. (*Though, I'm personally of the opinion that weapon types should be a lot more fluid than they currently are; why should every spellcaster train in only one type of magic? There are certainly prodigies that could handle learning Fire and Wind simultaneously, while other characters might be like Nino and have a hard time learning a single spell, let alone different types of magic. Make it more about the character than the class and then let new weapon types and ideas spring from that. Perhaps Wind spells, in addition to the classic single-target variety, have a focus on hitting a line of enemies? And Fire is more prone to hitting a radius around a target doing splash damage and DoT. I feel like the rigidity of Fire Emblem is one of the things causing the problems. Once that's out of the way, you can have units "specialize" in different things instead of just weapon type or various degrees of hit rates, damage values, and critical rates.)

Intelligent Systems' failures are not indicative of a problem with having that many types of magic. It's indicative of their own lack of thought, lack of common sense, and their inability to balance. Just because they can't come up with solutions doesn't mean that it couldn't work. There are plenty of suggestions both in this thread and in this subforum that have been talked about over the past years that would fix the problems and actually improve on Intelligent Systems' implementation(s). EDIT - Let it be said that X-Naut and Woodshooter pretty much said everything that I would have back within the first five posts of this thread before I even had a chance to see this topic, so I won't beat a dead horse and repeat what they've already said.

This wouldn't surprise me much at all, just given how Game Freak seems to introduce features in a game and then inexplicably remove them in at least the following one (before possibly bringing it back later). See: Pokemon following trainer (brought back once and dropped again), Battle Tower (brought back seemingly permanently, though not necessarily with that moniker), animated sprites (brought back permanently), Mach/Acro Bike, Underwater areas, seasons, etc.

Agreed 100% - I mean, I get some of the "special" type of events and why they might be the only ones to get it, but the events are literally just data files. I can't understand how the generic ones aren't a simultaneous release (unless it was a case where the event was released in Japan before the game was localized, but this isn't a problem any longer). Take the King's Rock Mewtwo from Gen V that introduced his signature move. That's not a special event tied to a movie or anything, so it should be a worldwide release. There's no reason other than idiocy and region control for why it wouldn't be available across the world. I don't think Wi-Fi trading is really a great long-term solution. Most of the event Pokemon worth caring about are legendaries which you can't breed to get another copy with whatever special move(s) they might have (if any). You're basically being dependent on whatever small market exists of people with multiple copies of the same game (pair) who can take advantage of the duplicate downloads who actually want to throw their extras online for trades. (Or, if it would come to it again in Gen VI, hacked copies of said events...)

Are we talking about the same Game Freak here? Because the Game Freak I know has about the least amount of common sense possible such that millions of fans have thought of great ideas that have never even come close to entering Game Freak's realm of thought. (Case in point, keep B2/W2's Easy / Challenge Mode stuff, but make them available to everyone from the beginning instead of requiring a specific version to match with Unova Link and requiring them to be used on a second playthrough.) That said, HG/SS did incorporate a fair number of the minor improvements that Crystal added/modified (though definitely not all of them), so I think it's fair to assume that OR/AS will incorporate several of Emerald's. But if Game Freak can't replicate the freaking roof of the Goldenrod Department Store added in Crystal for the remakes (something which should take very little development time in comparison to other portions of the game), I don't know if they're going to put effort in to trying to find some way to tip-toe around Emerald's plot to make it work in split versions.

Presumably, I can see them doing something like what B2/W2 and adding more locations and Routes to the map. After all, the Kalos we traverse in X/Y only encompasses about the top 50% of France by landmass. There's probably a "South Kalos" (or perhaps it used to be part of Kalos but broke off during the war, becoming its own "region"?) in and below the southern mountain ranges ripe for exploration. Plus, there are a number of "open areas" in X/Y's Kalos Map - plenty of areas that could, over time (or as retcons) could turn into more locations and paths to explore.

Honestly, this is the biggest reason why I can't play R/S/E nowadays. The split just makes so many Pokémon that I like (more) useable. (Plus, some of the moves and abilities that were added post-Gen III - as much as I really like Breloom, I can't fathom using it in R/S/E without Poison Heal or Technician...) In fact, that holds for Kanto and Gen II Johto, too. Crystal is probably my favorite game in the series (to the point that I like it more than the remakes), but with no split between Physical and Special moves, I can't play it after living in the lap of luxury that is more modern mechanics. EDIT - Was going to reply to these and completely forgot. Nah, it's okay. It probably didn't help that it was in the giant spoiler of replies, either. As for the timeline, I'd have to disagree. There are numerous references in each of the games that at least depict some semblance of an outline for a timeline. Yes, you could probably just chalk them up as references and fun little nods for the players to find and read, but the information is still there. The game tells us that Gen V takes place at some point in time (a couple of years, IIRC) after Gen II/IV, given that the guy from Cerulean City appears in Icirrus City in the house accessible in Winter. And we know that Gen II/IV takes place 3 years after Gen III, because it's referenced all over the place in Johto. ...How is X/Y concurrent with B2W2...? *mind blown* (I guess the references to Team Plasma are its original incarnation then...? )

Gee, I like how everyone is ignoring the fact that I mentioned this yesterday afternoon... (I have more comments on Konnor's post in a moment though) Well, given that Kyogre and Groudon were originally the only ones supposed to be able to manipulate the weather for an infinite amount of turns, perhaps they'll give them something like "SuperDrizzle" and "SuperDrought" that last indefinitely in battle, while still allowing normal Drought and Drizzle to exist on Politoed/Ninetails/etc.? ----- Back to Konnor's post: The point about Sycamore struck an interesting thought in my mind. Now that it's confirmed that these are pure remakes and not sequels, is Game Freak throwing the Generation "timeline" out of the window? It is temporally impossible for R/S and X/Y to exist concurrently. As Mega Evolutions are stated years down the road as being only found in Kalos, not only can they not appear in Hoenn without completely retconning their previous story point (wouldn't surprise me for the ever inept Game Freak to up and do this though), but information about them shouldn't even be widely known that many years in the past...

Doesn't someone in X/Y say that Mega Evolution is only found in Kalos? And doesn't Sycamore say something about needing to do further research as to why this is? (Let's ignore the fact that TPC used Mega Evolution in Origins...) That being said, it is a game mechanic they probably plan to still use going forward, but perhaps Game Freak plans on modifying it to just be a general mid-battle form(e) change, of which Mega Evolution would become a sub-category? (Honestly, I think it might be something like a "regional" version of MEv - Hoenn wouldn't have Mega Evolution per se, but there would be some kind of "replacement" for it that still enabled the changes, possibly even something man-made. (Then again, we don't really know where the Mega Stones and Key Stones even come from, so they could be man-made also...)

[spoiler=Replies, Spoiler'd for length] brb called this point back in September (shush, yes, I totally flopped on the first paragraph) You know, in retrospect, this actually makes a ton of sense, especially considering all of the stuff they datamined out of BW that was in the code that didn't show up until B2W2. (Granted, I think most of us were just expecting them to show up in Z/XZ/X2/YZ/Y2/whatever naming scheme they came up with instead of new R/S games...) Fun other thing to think about: just look at the Alpha symbols on Kyogre for a minute. ...Bear a bit of a resemblance to Team Aqua's "A" logo, no? Similarly, the Omega symbols bear a bit of a resemblance to Team Magma's "M" logo... I think it's fair to assume that we might have team-controlled Mega Evolution of some kind (perhaps similar to the TCG's whole "Trainer's" type of Pokémon, i.e. Team Magma's Aggron), similar to "form differences" a la Mega X/Ys... See above. Yes please - at the very least Battle Frontier ones. I want my Superpower Scizor back, dammit. This too, please. I don't really like when X/Y runs extremely fluid with Pokémon animations in the PC, yet struggles and noticeably slows down when trainer battles do the Stadium-esque split frame view. Yeah, who keeps coming up with these version names, anyway? Do they just throw darts at a dart board and see what comes up or something? See above about split frame trainer battles. For the love of god, Nintendo, give us SELECTABLE DIFFICULTY OPTIONS as soon as you start a New Game. Not necessarily just the Battle Frontier... since we know from previous experience that we're just getting R/S, I'd like to see ALL of Emerald's content and relevant changes incorporated (assuming that it's a remake or reimagining and not a sequel). One of my biggest pet peeves with Heart Gold and Soul Silver's adaptation of Crystal's events is that they didn't port ALL of it over, just the plot related stuff involving Suicune and, by some extention, Ho-Oh and Lugia, and and some of the PokéGear improvements Where was the patch of grass outside of Violet City that allowed you to get Growlithe if you didn't pick Cyndaquil? Was adding the roof and sales to the top of the Goldenrod Department Store too much to ask for? They seriously couldn't have adjusted the appearance ratios to allow you to catch a Sneasel in the Ice Path or a higher level Magmar in Mt. Silver? Sure, we get an Extrasensory-equipped Togepi, but why wasn't the Odd Egg brought back? And that's not even covering a common courtesy of actually improving things too: the whole Unown sidequest is still an absolute waste of time - there's no (real) reward for completing it and cataloging all of the forms doesn't activate any special kind of further event that remotely removes their uselessness. ------------------------- As much as I want to experience Gen III now that I realize what I missed (I was a Gen I initiate that was amazed by Gen II (and the fact that it expanded on Gen I) and then was immediately disappointed when Gen III completely left Johto and Kanto alone, so I never bothered to play R/S/E), since I didn't return to the series until I bought Soul Silver, I can't go back to the "archaic" mechanics of all Dark moves counting as Special, etc., which makes the announcement nice for me. However, I know that, deep down, I'm just going to end up disappointed by these games, as they're not going to address some of the core issues with the series. They won't enable Difficulty settings, they won't give out better Battle rewards (outside of BP) - such as bringing back the tradition started in Stadium of giving out "unique" Pokémon with (presumably) unbreedable moves, like the Earthquake Gligar from Stadium 2 - to actually make you feel like you've accomplished something instead of just getting a specific (and, okay, "rare") berry, they won't continue to adjust and balance the type chart (seriously, why does Electric still not do super effective damage to Steel types), they most likely won't fix the atrocity that is the Ability system and, coupled to that, how it negatively affects Sky Battles*... And, most of all, is there even a snowball's chance in hell that they'll liven up the watered down (no pun intended, sorry) plot outline that's basically the same one that they've been using since the early-to-mid 1990s? I want to be excited, but this is Game Freak we're talking about here. They seem to be *VERY* slow on the uptick when it comes to making changes - heck, Dragons (especially of the pseudo-legendary variety) had been running away (or starting to) with the metagame since, what, Gen IV? And it took them until Gen VI to make a change? (Which, did it really make that much of a difference in the end?) The fact that they kept spitting these kind of Pokémon out every single game shows that they had no idea whatsoever what effects their actions were having to the point that they basically expressed surprise that they needed to add a new type to try and neutralize them! (When you keep making Pokémon with 600 BST, wide, diverse movepools, and a STAB type that was barely resisted (and, defensively, only had 2 weaknesses), what do you think is going to happen?!) I can't be excited at all when the company in charge doesn't seem to have a collective clue about what their series has become.

If it was intentionally planned as a duology, wouldn't you think that Camelot would have an idea as to what the second part would be and that they wouldn't need to "work on ideas"? Maybe I'm just different, but if I'm planning something and amount of content is such that it requires two individual chunks, I tend to have a solid outline that at least knows where everything is going to go; I don't just fly by the seat of my pants and come up with the stuff later as I go along - that's just poor planning. Yes, the game starts several plot points and then promptly doesn't answer them and leaves the game on a giant cliffhanger, but what does that end up saying then? Camelot's writers and scenario planners weren't on top of their game? They didn't have faith in the game's ability to sell and didn't bother planning ahead for where their story would go after the cliffhanger? They got so distracted and off-topic with all of the stuff that drew the group off of their actual quest that they forgot where they were going with the story? They ran out of time and were forced to cut content or meet a deadline and, thus, had to put cliffhangers in instead? (Or something else entirely?) Just because Dark Dawn ended up leading the player towards a sequel doesn't mean that that's how it was originally envisioned or planned. (Of course, it very well could have been planned that way and Camelot really, really has some internal issues that they need to take care of...) (Also, Golden Sun and The Lost Age only ended up as a duology because they couldn't do all of the things they wanted to do on the GBA and have the amount of content that they wanted, forcing the content to be split into two.)