so that IGN review on pokemon

[Something Amyss]

Its IGN, move along people, nothing to see here.

I'm still not getting this, given how many Pokémon games they've given a 9.0+

 

[Lieju]

Wait, so what is the criticism? I read the review and I thought they meant too many water type pokemon? With whatever BS water type hydro pump surf armor penetrating attack they have? That seems more like a valid complaint than a map had too many water sections.

Wasn't it both? That it had a lot of water areas AND a lot of water-types? Which are two related things.

 

[Buizel91]

I don't get the problem....

U only need to visit these water section once in the entire game, then u can fly anywhere u want, i simply train my electric and grass types while over water, easy EXP.

Some people are never happy, what did we think would happen with a remake? They are obviously going to keep the water segments the same. Could they have changed it? Sure, but then people will moan that it got made easier.

Either way Nintendo can't win.

 

[Something Amyss]

Wasn't it both? That it had a lot of water areas AND a lot of water-types? Which are two related things.

From the review:

It?s not a new complaint, but Hoenn is still imbalanced type-wise, heavily favoring water. It?s especially noticeable in Alpha Sapphire, in which Team Aqua (the villains of the piece) use a lot of water types. It feels like there are water Pokémon in nearly every battle, and I have an overleveled Pikachu to show for it. You also have to navigate many bodies of water, since much of the late-game involves the HMs Surf and Dive to get from place to place. Diving was really neat back in 2002 when it was new, but I found it incredibly tedious in Alpha and Omega ? an obvious example of how superfluous some HMs are.

So yeah, it's both. Back to back.

 

[KazeAizen]

So, i checked out the IGN review on the latest Pokemon games, and I gotta say.......

seriously Too much water? what kind of negative is that?


thoughts on it?

Bonus Round: Post game content confirmed, speculations?

That really is much more down to personal taste. While the surfing segments are long the game doesn't truly open up until you can use Dive. Sure it probably could've been handled better but Nintendo was trying something new with not just land exploration but having pretty much an entire world to explore in the water segments which I honestly don't think has actually been done as much since then.

Also its IGN. The guys, that even when they are giving a fairly positive review, always come off as snarky and condescending (Looking at you Ultimate Ninja Storm reviews). Also they said a con to Sonic Generations was rehashed versions of old levels....for Sonic Generations....which pretty much from the outset said it was going to be a nostalgia tripe and tribute to 20 years of Sonic with past levels.

 

[Something Amyss]

I haven't paid any attention to them in years.

That much is fairly evident, since we're talking about Pokémon, which IGN has consistently rated at 90+ percent for the life of the franchise. I only found two below 90 in my quick search--this one and the previously mentioned HGSS (which still netted a 95, so not a bation of inconsistency).

I guess maybe you weren't joking about them being paid off for their other reviews, but if I went down that rabbit hole I might as well join Gamergate.

In fact, this review was from a woman, wasn't it? Probably some feminist agenda involved.

 

[Something Amyss]

Again, inconsistency on the part of individual reviewers, rather than the site as a whole. I mean wouldn't you think something odd is going on if Yahtzee suddenly started praising Call of Duty and Medal of Honor, a bunch of shallow, jingoistic military shooters with hand-holding gameplay and went on to condemn a game like Far Cry 4, the sequel to a series of open-world games that are known for actually gives player a significant amount of choice in how they decide to approach problems in the game? Thats not even to say that its a sign that they're being paid off, as it can just as easily mean that they're not very thorough with their opinions and can give a very poorly opinion on the game.

Which individual reviewers? Because barring evidence, this is indistinguishable from conspiracy theory.

But as the publication seems overall consistent, I find this hard to believe.

 

[Lieju]

Wasn't it both? That it had a lot of water areas AND a lot of water-types? Which are two related things.

From the review:

It?s not a new complaint, but Hoenn is still imbalanced type-wise, heavily favoring water. It?s especially noticeable in Alpha Sapphire, in which Team Aqua (the villains of the piece) use a lot of water types. It feels like there are water Pokémon in nearly every battle, and I have an overleveled Pikachu to show for it. You also have to navigate many bodies of water, since much of the late-game involves the HMs Surf and Dive to get from place to place. Diving was really neat back in 2002 when it was new, but I found it incredibly tedious in Alpha and Omega ? an obvious example of how superfluous some HMs are.

So yeah, it's both. Back to back.

Well I spot a lie right there. Diving was never 'really neat'.
IGN being paid off by Team Aqua confirmed.

Seriously though, I recall these exact complaints back when gen 3 originally came out. There really isn't a good division between land and water Pokemon: On other hand you have Water-type, on the other EVERYTHING ELSE.
Same goes for exploring water and land. They tried to mix things up with diving and rapid currents, but it wasn't enough. Which might really be because of the type-problem.
It also makes the plot utterly dumb. Well, even more dumb. This was really the first attempt at more 'epic' storytelling and I have to say I far preferred Team Rocket just being a bunch of thugs.

 

[Ghostface2206]

Water sections in Pokemon have always been a pain, go to the waters edge, press A, "waves roll on the waters surface...would you like to use surf?", play that same goddamn animation again, move around in what is basically an area where you area at constant risk of annoying random enocunters...with only water types...

And also the fact that the map is full of water sections has ALWAYS been a complaint of Ruby/Sapphire. You want to know another thing I've always noticed, a lot of people that started pokemon with Red/Blue or Gold/Silver didn't like Ruby/Sapphire (mostly down to the fact you couldn't transfer your pokemon so had to start from square one)and that also the only die hard fans of R/S are the ones that had it as their first pokemon game when they were kids.

So really the only reason IGN is getting hate for a legitimate complaint is because the fanboys can't stand a review criticizing their precious pokemon (it wasn't even a bad review. Have these fanboys even seen the IGN scores for previous pokemon games? They're all like 9s!!)

 

[Hero of Lime]

I agree that the HM system is still really bad. My way to fix it? Give each Pokemon a 5th HM slot. The fifth move cannot come into play for battling, and it allows you to use the full team you want, without having to keep depositing a team member for a HM slave.

As for the water complaint. Just use super repels! They are cheap enough to buy like 30 without breaking the bank. Plus, Hoenn is known for two things: water and trumpets. Take one away, and Hoenn loses its very soul!

 

[Something Amyss]

Well I spot a lie right there. Diving was never 'really neat'.
IGN being paid off by Team Aqua confirmed.

XD

Maybe Team Aqua is holding their favourite Pokés hostage?

Honestly, I don't even remember. I did this back in 2011/2012 when I had a lot of spare time. Just started checking out the history of some the reviewers, and honestly there was a lot of inconsistency. They'd like one game yet when a similar game came out, even if it was considered generally superior, people dissed it. Stuff like that. I chalk it more up to limited time frames and the need to plow through games quickly and sloppily to get the review out more than that they might've been bribed.

With zero to investigate upon specifically, this is a weak claim and not worth considering.

Again, its not a matter of the publication, its a matter of the reviewers.

Which misses the point of the statement. With the site's consistency across reviews, and especially in line with other publications, it sees horribly unlikely that you would see an inconsistency across individual reviewers. According to Metacritic, they are about 3% off from being a perfectly lubed weathervane.

To put this another way, if your claim of reviewer inconsistency were to be tested as a model with real, predictable capacity, I would offer the hypothesis that we should see a significantly less consistent between games than we do, or more appropriately than would be statistical norm. We don't see this. While it doesn't disprove the underlying belief, it does put it into question.

Without specific examples, there's not much to go into, either, just tenuous claims of patterns that may or may not exist. But my point was that I would actually expect to see less consistency from the publication if the individuals were inconsistent. To say what you did is to ignore what I said. It'd be one thing if you had a reason it was wrong (And "they hire a lot of people" is not one, since you're talking about patterns amongst similar games, which should show up in the overall scores of similar games), but you just ignored the premise of the line you were rebutting.

As for the actual point, it'd be one thing if you at least had a single piece of evidence, like the smoking gun of the hypotheticals you proposed, but I can't find examples of this at all. Maybe, maybe if I followed dozens of reviewers across their careers, I might find something. But then, the fact that this score comes with legit criticism about a game that Pokémon fans have been making (Hell, Lieju says that some of these date back to the original Gen III games, though I sat 'em out) for years doesn't help the idea that this was a well-founded statement.

That's it's based on claims that another party can't verify makes me wonder if it's even remotely true. Hell, that this author seems to demonstrate consistency[footnote]based on a google search for the author of this review and looking at her other work for IGN[/footnote] doesn't help, either. Are you working backwards from a conclusion?

 

[Something Amyss]

So really the only reason IGN is getting hate for a legitimate complaint is because the fanboys can't stand a review criticizing their precious pokemon (it wasn't even a bad review. Have these fanboys even seen the IGN scores for previous pokemon games? They're all like 9s!!)

Well, you can rationalise away the high prior scores if you're already working from the assumption that someone's out to get you.

I agree that the HM system is still really bad. My way to fix it? Give each Pokemon a 5th HM slot. The fifth move cannot come into play for battling, and it allows you to use the full team you want, without having to keep depositing a team member for a HM slave.

As for the water complaint. Just use super repels! They are cheap enough to buy like 30 without breaking the bank. Plus, Hoenn is known for two things: water and trumpets. Take one away, and Hoenn loses its very soul!

HM slot works, or just make them items, as the homebrew Alpha/Omega does. Or make the moves more useful, or...there's a lot of ways to fix this one.

As for water being a big part of the region, that's fine.

So retool the water!

People hate escort missions. If you made that a core mechanic, it wouldn't invalidate the complaints. People hate sewer levels. If you were to make a game that's all sewer levels, it would still be a problem. People hate water in Pokémon. Making a region based on water and not addressing the problem doesn't make the complaints less legitimate--especially in a remake, when they've had years since the game came out.

 

[Scarim Coral]

I'm not suprised given that is my complaint toward Ruby and Sapphire in the first place. So in hindsight the game is just an visual update but in saying so I don't see how they could of gotten around the two problem. Maybe making HM as an explorer move only or added 2 more move slots that are for HM only, not too sure about the surf, make it faster and less encounter rate?

 

[w23eer]

Seriously though, I recall these exact complaints back when gen 3 originally came out.

That was my first thought too. I would've found it wierd if they didn't criticize those things.

Y'know, I'm actually sort of glad I read the IGN review. I was excited for AR/OS since they were announced, and in hindsight I must admit that my rose tinted nostalgia glasses was clouding my expectations. I forgot about the excessive surfing and GOD THE DIVING.

Still not gonna miss it though. Gen 3 is still my faveorite Pokemon game in terms of roster.

 

[Lieju]

Seriously though, I recall these exact complaints back when gen 3 originally came out.

That was my first thought too. I would've found it wierd if they didn't criticize those things.

Y'know, I'm actually sort of glad I read the IGN review. I was excited for AR/OS since they were announced, and in hindsight I must admit that my rose tinted nostalgia glasses was clouding my expectations. I forgot about the excessive surfing and GOD THE DIVING.

Still not gonna miss it though. Gen 3 is still my faveorite Pokemon game in terms of roster.

It's my least favourite gen, and I was disappointed by it.
So I didn't really get the hype for the remakes. Maybe some people jumped in at that point or something.

 

[Dragonbums]

I find it ironic how when IGN docks points out of a game for having "Too much water"- where the whole point is to be half land half water- you have people defending it and calling those who disagree pokemon/nintendo zealots. With the latter simply making water jokes, calling ign stupid, and moving on with their lives.

Meanwhile Polygon not only gets shat on for docking the same amount of points for Bayonettas sexual display, but people also came together to make op Bayonetta 2 to have said site blacklisted from nintendo.

Huh.

 

[Savryc]

I find it ironic how when IGN docks points out of a game for having "Too much water"- where the whole point is to be half land half water- you have people defending it and calling those who disagree pokemon/nintendo zealots. With the latter simply making water jokes, calling ign stupid, and moving on with their lives.

Meanwhile Polygon not only gets shat on for docking the same amount of points for Bayonettas sexual display, but people also came together to make op Bayonetta 2 to have said site blacklisted from nintendo.

Huh.

That's what the gaming community is now. No middle ground, no shades of grey. There is only the "Objective (There are no quotation marks big enough) Truth" and the publisher/developer/franchise/etc zealots. Obviously who falls into what category is dependant on the individuals own brand of fanboyism and zealotry.

 

[42]

I'd say it's a valid thing to complain about, there's a ton of Surfing in Gen 3 and having to deposit a team member to get Surf (ah, the old Pelliper HM whore) out is irritating.

I imagine it's even more grating with the new movement options (if they're still featured), because you lose all that lovely circle pad movement.
IMO, this would've been a great time to implement a running shoes equivalent while surfing, or perhaps just some kind of personal hovercraft-bike-thing to replace it altogether.

you've literally just given me the Pokemon HM whore i was looking for. Thank you kind friend.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

I do agree with her on too many HMs.

Nintendo needs to get off their ass and implement HM items, like in zeta/omicron. Having a machete, jetpack, rocket boots, inflatable lapras etc to use HM abilities without being forced to take them on a pokemon is *so* much nicer. It allows the devs to keep the HMs as a series of progress checks to streamline world exploration while also using more of each type of barrier. Typically towards the end of a pokemon game, there's very few things that need to be Cut, because it's a pain in the ass and nobody near the endgame is going to be walking around with cut. But they'd be able to have more cuttable stuff, rocks to smash, etc if you could just use HM items. In Z/O, the HM items weren't mandatory (obviously, since you could still use the HM moves on pokemon) but they were an added perk for out-of-the-way exploration, as many were found in optional rooms or route paths.

One other thing Z/O introduced was the idea of IV stones - talk to npc and max out an IV. At the end of Z/O campaign, there was another NPC that would set an IV to 30 instead (which was perfect for getting specific hidden power types). In the past, nearly every competitive player used action replay (or, later, pokegen/pokesav) to create "legit" max pokemon, as the effort required to get one actually legitimately was completely insane - literally thousands of eggs, hundreds of thousands of steps, praying to RNG that this next one will be max IVs in the stats you want. And god forbid you try to use hidden power - that easily doubles the amount of eggs you'd need to hatch. That kind of awful, soul-draining grind is the main reason pokemon PvP is a shitfestival - there should really be an option (even if they lock it until endgame) to alter IVs. Make it cost gold, make it cost an item you can farm. Just don't make it purely random on spawn and tell players to hatch thousands of eggs.

Honestly, after how many great ideas were introduced in Z/O, I find it really hard to go back to the "main" pokemon games and suffer through how little they've actually changed. Daily grind quests and shirts that cost $200,000 does not a great game make. I was a competitive battler in state-wide tournaments during the R/S/E and Fr/Lg era, so gen 3 getting a new release should make me excited, but... it just doesn't. What they add isn't what pokemon *needs*, it's mostly just useless bullshit. Mega evolutions, dailies, RNG breeding... zzz. Give me HM items and *maybe* I'll buy a pokemon game again, nintendo.

woah didn't hear about this, downloading it now, I've only just started and I'm liking what I see, 3 save files? fucking christ about time.

 

[MerlinCross]

I'd actually give my own thoughts on this, BUT I skipped out on the games the first time around so I have no idea what they mean by "Too much water".

Does that mean there's like 6+ routes that are nothing but water?