kylelabriola

Kyle Labriola

@kylelabriola

blogging (ashamedly)

Hello! I'm an artist, writer, and game developer. I work for @7thBeatGames on "A Dance of Fire and Ice" and "Rhythm Doctor."

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I run @IndieGamesofCohost where I share screenshots and spotlights of indie games. I also interview devs here on Cohost.

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kylelabriola
@kylelabriola

i like Pokemon, but...

I've probably made a post just like this before with me whining, so apologies.

I really like Pokemon as a series. The vibe, the world, the Pokemon themselves.

I just cant get over a lot of the weird mechanical stuff that invites further interest but then pushes you away by being so hardcore that they require a Ph.D in Bulbapedia to grok.

  • Why is the stat stuff so hidden and confusing, especially until recently?
  • Why are Natures, IVs, and EVs three totally separate things instead of being streamlined and conveyed as a connected system? (Fwiw i think Legends Arceus had really good ideas for simplifying this)
  • Why is being able to capture a fun palette swap (aka Shiny) gatekept behind being an ultra rare hardcore postgame thing with like a 1 in 2048 chance?? Instead of being the exact type of thing that casual players would love to engage with.
  • Why are things like Everstones and Eviolites not just available from the start, for the people who prefer the designs when theyre cute?
  • Why does it feel like a third of the moves are useless??? Or at the very least not worth spending a whole turn to do.
  • Why do Pokemon not just automatically have a damage-dealing move? Sometimes you can catch or hatch a Pokemon who can't deal damage at all for a while.
  • Why are all the Status Effects so similar, and also why do they not display any info about their effect or duration on screen?

I've really appreciate the Switch-era games trying to streamline and tweak how some things work, and theres romhacks that do the same, but sometimes it feels like a band-aid fix. At least for my tastes. Even some of the indie monster tamer games copy the exact same systems over (Shinies, IVs, etc).

I can definitely see why people do Nuzlockes, randomizers, and other custom rules because I think those things really force you to learn and care about every detail. But doing things to crank the difficulty up is just too much work for me just to make me engage with how esoteric they implemented all this stuff.

Probably the game that has done the best job of making me care about / engage with the combat systems is the fangame PokeRogue.

Anyway that's just me nitpicking. I really hope we see them experiment more. Honestly I could've seen myself dipping more into Pokemon Masters EX if it wasn't a gacha game, I love when they take opportunities to completely redo how combat functions.

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in reply to @kylelabriola's post:

joshg
@joshg

the no-attack-move pokemon thing was fun once when you had a comically useless fish that, if you persisted in leveling it up by tossing it into battle briefly before bringing something useful back in, would eventually turn into one of the most powerful dragons you would ever see

but even back in red/blue, there were still useless cocoon stages which were much less interesting and mostly just annoying

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lotus
@lotus

for me most of these do well to serve the roleplaying and vibes aspect of the games, which strategic and competitive gameplay are pretty much antithetical to. Pokemon (plural noun) being unpredictable, unique, strange, and not doing what you say is interesting in a universe where the goal is to form close bonds with magical animals. but since Pokemon (IP) only occasionally seems interested in advancing this idea, none of it really gels without a child's imagination

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kylelabriola
@kylelabriola

Yeah i think thats super true! And fwiw i definitely wouldnt prefer the games to be catered towards being more competitive. Whenever i even try to dip a toe in that realm, I get stomped and bounce off immediately.

If anything I'd be fine with them going in the opposite direction, making it more about fun and whimsy and expression rather than combat. But sadly even in that department I feel like they only take half-measures. Every idea they have (Shinies, Contests, poffins, curry, sandwiches, breeding, ribbons, friendship, petting and playing catch with your Poemon) seems like it's either half-obscured or abandoned after they first come up with it.

I think my mind is on combat too because when i try romhacks and fangames, where people often make improvements, the games become even more combat or completionism-obsessed than they were before. I'd guess because most romhackers are into that stuff.

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ewie
@ewie

:yeah: the benefit of evs, ivs, and natures all being separate is that it increases the differences between any two pokemon. ivs mean that your pikachu has slightly different stats than your friend’s pikachu, the evs mean that your pokemon grow with you (and become inherently stronger than the gym leader’s), and natures influence more than just stats, which try to let the player feel the personalities of the pokemon. idk if it works but i appreciate all the different layers. i’m certain a number of kids thought they only beat the elite four because of the bonds between them and their unique pokemon

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kylelabriola
@kylelabriola

Yeah that makes sense!

Speaking just for my own personal preference, my favorite of the 3 by far is Natures, and my least favorite by far is EVs.

For IVs......i feel like they have to exist, especially once Breeding became a thing. I feel like if your game has a breeding mechanic there has to be incentives to actually do it. But other than that I dont know how much I need "the Pikachu I caught is objectively better than the Pikachu you caught" bc I feel like Natures solved that in a more interesting way.

At the very least I think it's overboard that theres a spectrum of IVs, instead of being simplified down to maybr a binary (like "Alpha" in Legends Arceus.)

For me, EVs are just unnecessarily confusing. I think the Friendship system from Diamond and Pearl was a fun and childlike way of giving you that fantasy of "my Pokemon became strong because we're best friends!"

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frik
@frik

I feel like most of these can be atributed to Pokémon being rooted in the memories of japanese kids in the 70's/80's venturing into the countryside, catching bugs and admiring the wonderful fauna and flora; vs. gamers' expectations of how many numbers the computer has to tell you to be totally in control of your ones and zeroes

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