What I Want Most From Pokemon
Image from the official Pokémon website
Hey there! This blog post is part one of a two-part series focused on Pokémon in light of the upcoming release of Pokémon Legends: Arceus. Special thanks to those who participated in the Questionnaire, and to my good friend Jon for helping put it together and sharing it.
Now on to the main event!
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With a recent release, an upcoming release, and a slew of years oozing with controversy for both what it is and isn’t doing, Pokémon has been quite a hot topic.
Based on the results of the questionnaire I mentioned, about 62% of people said they were at least slightly dissatisfied with the current state of the franchise. In a separate question, 54% said they believe that the series has been getting worse.
It feels like there’s always been a thing or two to complain about regarding Pokémon—as with most game series and big-time franchises—but the general air of negativity surrounding the overall state of the franchise traces its roots back to around 2013, around the time of the release of Pokémon X and Y, which was criticized for being comparatively shallow to previous entries. Pokémon Sun and Moon in 2016 (and its “third version” games, Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon) drew ire for its excessive hand-holding, roadblocks, and cutscenes at the expense of player agency, and Sword and Shield made things even worse due in no small part to the controversial decision to cut the number of Pokémon available to use, allegedly for the sake of improvements to graphics and animations, many of which were still being recycled from X and Y.
Speaking for myself, none of those things ever really bothered me. I was happy just to play through the games and have my fun, maybe dabble a bit in competitive until Landorus-Therian showed up, and then wait until either the next game came out or I felt like replaying an older one when all was said and done.
In the past six months or so, though, I’ve started to change my tune quite a bit. First, it was during my second playthrough of Pokémon Sword and Shield that I got bored of Galar’s excruciating linearity. Then, during my initial playthrough of Brilliant Diamond, I quickly got frustrated with the combination of permanent EXP share and the interloping by the overpowered and now unavoidable bonuses tied to affection (which was merged into the pre-existing friendship value in Sword and Shield), which took the fair-but-challenging balance of the original games (which the developers insisted would be maintained) and sullied them with mechanics that made winning easy and cheesy.
Spreading unbridled negativity is neither my intention with this post nor my style, but before I can talk about the things I love about the franchise, it’s important for me to voice my criticisms of its current state and declare what I want more than anything else from Pokémon games: a rewarding experience, both through its story and its gameplay
UNCHALLENGING NARRATIVES
42% of questionnaire participants believe that story is something that Pokémon has historically gotten wrong, and 52% believe it’s something the games have been getting wrong especially recently.
Pokémon has followed the same framework for its story for the past twenty-five years barring just a few exceptions, and while you can argue whether this is good or bad, my philosophy is that so long as you provide the player with interesting locations, engrossing characters, you have all you need to make the plot fun and engaging.
Pokémon has done an excellent job regarding the overall feel of the regions lately due in no small part to how much they capture the cultural aesthetic of the real-world places they are based on. However, the overall layouts of the routes and towns have been much more mixed. Where there was originally a feeling like you were embarking on your own big adventure and exploring the region for yourself, the focus on the narrative via cutscenes and the resulting roadblocks meant to railroad the player down the beaten path makes the player feel less like an adventurer and more like a tourist. This problem culminates in the design of Galar, whose locales, despite being impressive set pieces, are little else but corridors in the grand scheme.
More often than not, when people are complaining about Pokémon’s characters, their gripes are typically focused on the rival characters and how they’ve changed from aggressive, arrogant jerks and bullies to sweet, helpful neighborhood friends. Friendly rivals can be well-written and helpful at times, but their character arcs are extremely redundant (lose to you a bunch and be totally fine with it, then undergo an existential crisis that leads to them finding their place in the world, typically after losing once or twice to someone other than you), and they are hardly rewarding to fight and beat. A good rival is more than just a boss encounter; they’re who, through either their attitude or their actions, make you want to beat them, and are daunting enough that when you do beat them, it feels earned. In Pokémon Sword and Shield, the rival Bede almost fulfills this role but ends up disappearing about halfway through the story until the game’s finale, leaving the rival role to Hop, who follows the same cookie cutter friendly rival arc, and Marnie, who has even less presence than Tierno and Trevor from Pokémon X and Y.
UNCHALLENGING GAMEPLAY
Now THIS is the one I’ve been really meaning to dig into, and it seems like quite a lot of you share my sentiment. A majority of questionnaire participants agreed that one of Pokémon’s inherent weaknesses lie in the difficulty of grinding for levels and NPC encounters (57% and 52%, respectively), and certainly, you will see no end to all the complaining about how Pokémon has been getting easier and easier on a gameplay level.
It started in 2013 with the release of X and Y, when EXP Share became a togglable option to give half the experience of a battle to all Pokémon, even if they did not participate. Accompanying this change was a new mechanic called “affection” which, while locked behind a minigame, provided all sorts of game-breaking boosts (chance to evade or endure the enemy’s attacks, more frequent critical hits, increased EXP gain, and more). As of Let’s Go: Pikachu and Let’s Go: Eevee, EXP gain for all party members has become a permanent change, and as of Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, affection’s boosts are unavoidable as they have been tied into the Pokémon’s friendship value rather than as its own minigame-influenced mechanic. Not only is it easier as level to completely out-level even the “boss” encounters, like gym leaders and evil team admins, but now you have easy access to other means of trivializing fights that should be won as a result of the player’s own strategy and ingenuity.
The thing is, though, that the ability to out-level your opponent has always been an option. The ability to do so is easier than ever, if not inevitable, but it is simply the nature of Pokémon’s mechanics, as everybody technically has access to any Pokémon. Any Pokémon any boss character is or will eventually be accessible to the player and vice versa. It’s not like more traditional RPGs, where a level 20 player character did not technically have equivalent stats to a level 20 boss.
In fact, Pokémon has proven that it can be difficult when it tries to be: changing up the battle format like with Tate and Liza or the entirety of Pokémon Colosseum, asymmetrical battle scenarios where the enemy starts with stat boosts and can call reinforcement like Totem Pokémon and Ultra Necrosome, and competitivizing NPC teams like with the elite four and Cynthia in Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, to name just a few examples. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, but you certainly have room to add a spike or two to it.
Without challenge, Pokémon becomes a toothless, boring, and forgettable experience. Maybe you remember the pain of a frustrating loss to a gym leader, a rival, or a simple trainer; you may also remember feeling fantastic when you finally defeated them. We certainly don’t remember the times when we steamrolled through said encounters, perhaps even through entire games, because what happens then that’s worth memory?
UNCHALLENGING REASONS
Game Freak’s developers have addressed the trend of reducing the challenge in Pokemon Games before:
In other words, Pokemon’s developers feel (or felt back in 2014) that they were making things easier so that they could compete for the attention of young children against mobile games and other more shallow entertainment options.
I completely disagree with this philosophy, of course. In fact, as someone who has caught a glimpse of at least the United States’ school system and the fact that recent global events have stunted both the academic and social development of children, I’d argue this approach is legitimately harmful.
If you’re going to declare yourselves as a game designed for kids, then you need to realize that you can, will, and DO have a hand in shaping said kids on their journeys to maturity. Video games, like any book, show, movie, or toy, can play an influential part in a child’s development: they can influence emotions, preconceptions, drive, and even career paths. This isn’t something so silly as parents letting their kid play Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto; this is an informed decision by the developer in an attempt to appeal to an intended audience.
I get it Game Freak and The Pokémon Company. You’re businesses. You’ve got all sorts of deadlines and expenses to worry about and you’re worried about revenue and keeping the brand afloat. But don’t you think, with such incredible brand loyalty amidst your fandom, that you could do something better than make a quick buck?
Pokémon, through both itself and its community, has the opportunity to teach children a lot about mathematics, language arts, and even science, geography and mythology (look no further than channels like Lockstin & Gnoggin for a good example). Most importantly, though, Pokémon can teach critical thinking, helping children learn to be capable problem solvers by presenting them with immersive challenges to solve through hard work and clever thinking.
By voluntarily choosing to dumb down your games, you’re not just disgruntling and pushing away other parts of your audience with a lower-quality product; you’re also stooping down to the stupefying tactics of your “competition,” rather than actually being something cool and helpful to younger generations. I can hope that the presented quote is simply something of the time and not reflective of Pokémon’s present-day philosophy, but the time between then and no hasn’t exactly proven that.
TIME FOR EVOLUTION
Pokémon is a beloved and amazing franchise; if it weren’t, I wouldn’t be here talking about it so passionately. However, it’s also a franchise that has actively refused to tread off the beaten path and resorted to making its games simpler for the sake of the demographic, much to its detriment.
Without a story that invites you to take on its challenges, and without gameplay to bring you those challenges, the experience of playing a Pokémon game becomes a stale one-note slog. In such cases, once a fan’s done all the things they needed, they won’t give so much as a second thought to picking it back up and playing again someday. Given that 57% of questionnaire participants believe this to be a consistent weakness for the IP, there’s good cause to believe something needs to change.
Pokémon Legends: Arceus provides an extremely rare opportunity for Game Freak and Pokémon as a whole. Regardless of the quality (though it should be regarded), this game will show us what they are willing to change and do differently for the sake of the brand and figuring out how to carry themselves forward. Come January 28, we’ll get to see whether Pokémon will able to redefine and reinvigorate itself or just cement itself as a franchise that simply refuses to adapt and improve when needed.