Why do you like Pokemon?

[Miss G.]

My problem with the new designs is just that they all look horrendously overdesigned. Look at all those swirls and twirls and wisps and extra bits jutting out at odd angles and eugh, the Pokemon look like they had a run-in with Tetsuya Nomura; And while I like Nomura's character designs, I can't deny that he often overdesigns his characters and the style just isn't good for a bunch of cute collectible monsters that are put in pitched cock-fights.

The complaints about "classic" Pokemon designs being uninspired are just as valid as the complaints about "new" Pokemon reusing old assets, but to be honest I can enjoy more of the first three Generations of Pokemon because their aesthetic designs are simply less busy.

Anyway.

The appeal is that it's a simple game to get into with a lot more depth beneath the surface. Simple as.

It's about collecting fantastical creatures, raising and training them, and pitting them against other creatures. And for the fanatics it has some of the craziest min-maxing potential of probably any RPG on the market. It won't appeal to everyone. Lord knows I couldn't enjoy Black/White at all.

Thank you for getting back on topic at hand, but the starters' evolutions haven't been released and this is just a fan speculation of what they could look like. Here's just two fans' guesses of last gen starters when all we had were the silhouettes to go on. credit goes to Rodentruler and Xous54 respectively from dA. Nice, but not what we got.

 

[Dragonbums]

Let's not drop to the bottom-of-the-barrel argument of "I suppose you could do it better", yes? It's uncalled for, it's not part of what I'm attacking and it's not part of what you're defending.

When you say something like "I just find it amusing someone would talk anything but trash regarding "Pokemon designs" at this point."

You give off the impression that it's so obvious how bad they are, it amazes you how people actually still like the new designs.

But they consistently fall back on the same ten or twelve models. Speaking of which, a model is a model, nobody talked about 3D or pixel art.

And you ignored the point I made regarding the fact that you can use the same base animal category, but base it off of different species of said animal. Hence the example I used with woobat and the Honduras bat.
Also, when somebody says a model, it means that they are talking about 3D models. Anything else that is not 3 Dimensional is called a base.

And when I say texture I mean "skins". Case in point.

Same thing, different words.
That is basically a synonym.

Here we have Ariados.

A wild Galvantula appeared.

A combo of tracing, palette swapping and adding some touches to re-dress the original drawing. They didn't even bother to change the position of anything for the sprite - same framing, same angle, same everything.
This is just one example.

Since you like to point out the similarities of a Pokemon and call them traces let me tell you the differences of Galvantula compared to Ariados.

Galvantula:

- 6 legs
- 6 eyes
- yellow, blue, gray-purple color scheme
- legs end in blue spikes
- has fuzz tufts
- striped pattern on the back

Ariados:

- red, black, and yellow color scheme
- 4 legs
- has a spike on it's head, and on it's back
- only has a black stripe and two dots as it's abdomen pattern
- possess mandibles
- has two appendages sticking out of it's abdomen
- lacks any fuzz
- legs are more lean
-possess only two eyes

Again, same everything, just some palette swapping. Beartic is also slightly more pear-shaped than Ursaring.

Ursaring:

- Based on woodland bears
- brown
- Only has visible tufts on it's shoulders
- possess five claws on each hand
- possess three claws on each feet
- has a large round tail
- stockier head
- more defined body
- has a cream color around the mouth and a ring pattern on it's stomach.

Beartic:

- Based on the artic polar bears
- narrow head (due to the fact that polar bears in real life have narrow heads as well.)j
- has an icicle beard
- has two large paws with three claws
- has no visible feet due to being covered by tufts of fur
- has a more pear like body shape
- ice blue in appearance
- has black pupiless eyes
- has fur tufts jutting out of it's crotch
- much smaller tail

Throw a Van Halen wig on any pre-existing Pokemon: boom, new Generation.

No.
Not "boom new generation" they aren't trying to pass these off as new gen Pokemon.
If you bothered to follow any news on this you would know that these are simply battle forms that are only acquirable through use of an item called "mega stone" in battle. All they do is simply give them a different look, raise base stats, and give them a new ability. Once the battle is over they revert back to their original form.

Also, about the starter Pokemon... they could try a little harder, couldn't they?
Water-based three-step evolutionary frog family? Where have we seen that before? That's right, the generation directly before this one. And look, a fire fox. Because fire foxes are such a novel idea after 15 years of Vulpix, right?

What kind of animal exactly are you expecting them to base Pokemon off of?
They have already touched on the following animal types (and this is going to be a very long list):
- dogs
-cats
-lions
-leopards
-deer
-rhinos
-owls
-mice
-rat
-bunnies
-pigeons
-quails
-sparrows
-elephants
-capubara
-hyenas/wolves
-chameleons
-turtles
-tortoise
-crabs
-hermit crabs
-whales
-frogs
-spiders
-anteaters
-sharks
-crocodiles
-alligators
-crows
-skunks
-weasels
-otters
-monkeys
-fox
-bats
-moles
-falcons
-slugs
-oysters
-horse shoe crabs
-dinosaurs
-geckos
-chickens
-snakes
-zebras
-horses
-river eels
-angler fish
-sun fish
-octopus
-dragons
-bears
-butterflies
-moths
-caterpillars
-worms
-sheep
-cows
-giraffes
-sloths
-gorillas
-seahorses
-stingrays

Christ I can go on with the list of animals they have based Pokemon off of.

you treat Game Freak like they MUST release new Pokemon every now and then,

Please find the post where I demand that Gamefreak release a new Pokemon game every couple of years or so.

you're willing to overlook the fact that most of the time they're just re-using old models.

Your only real thing to back up this "tracing of old models" has so far been "these two are bears, and they have similarities so they are clearly traced."

Once again, before you call out any game company for tracing you better have some sort of insider on that matter.

I say they don't HAVE to release new Pokemon all the freaking time unless they've got some good ideas going on.

In a game industry where most games are crapped out every year, I think you can agree that 3-4 years between each installment is more than ample time to get a lot of things done. This is a far cry from putting them under pressure.

 

[Zeldias]

I'm not asking this to bust anyone's ovaries/balls. I just don't understand what's appealing about the series and feel that I need an outside perspective.

Anyone can say that about any games they don't get. I don't get shooters, 1st person POV of any kind, or MMOs, but obviously if I don't enjoy them, asking a bunch of strangers isn't gonna help anything since my mind's already made up and they're just not to my tastes.

Now, with all the hype surrounding Pokemon X and Y, I'm just confused. What is the appeal?

You're confused that fans of a series are hyped for the next entries in their favorite series? Since you asked, for me, it's the game (Gold version) that got me into gaming, it was and still is a bonding experience between my sister and I, some of the best friends I've ever had were met through love of the games and everything they inspire, and I enjoy playing it.

I like turn-based games, so that doesn't put me off, but the character-building is non-existent other than occasionally sticking a specific move on a Pokemon. There's never a reason to not evolve a Pokemon to my knowledge,

Certain hold items like Eviolite (50% increase defense and special defense of non fully evolved mons, in some cases leaving them with better defenses than evolving at all e.g Eviolite-equipped Sneasel has 82.5 defense compared to it's evolved form Weavile's 65) and species-specific hold items like Pikachu's Light Ball (2x attack and special attack leaving it a stronger mixed attacker than Raichu with only slightly less speed, which can be easily rectified), and the ability to learn moves at lower levels are a few good reasons to not evolve something.

so there's no choice for interesting and divergent stat advancement there.

Your mons gain effort values (EVs), which aren't shown and so must be meticulously tracked (they're making it easier for newbies and veterans alike to track them in X & Y) added to their stats with every pokemon you beat, thus there is character customization of your monsters depending on which EVs you want them to gain in any stat you want to tweak and what natures they have since those dictate positive, negative & neutral gains in stats. e.g. I want to boost my team to be able to tank Special attacks so I battle against, say Tentacools, because they give EVs in that stat. Properly done, you'll a see massive difference between EV trained pokemon vs mons trained by people who just did whatever during their play through. Then there are moves, natures, passive abilities, strategic breeding, Pokerus, EV training items, Vitamins, Berries etc that play very heavily in the meta game than during the main story, where a match can be won or lost because of one point in stat differences between mons that are EV trained to their utmost potential.

The battles basically just size up to "You're electric? Then I use a ground-type. You're a bird? Better not use my bug-type," and so on, which like I said, strikes me as RPS.

You don't need anywhere near as much strategy in the main game as you would in the meta against other players and yeah, the formula has basically remained the same at its heart, but the games are by no means stagnant. Your scenario of 'you're a bird, better not use a bug type' hasn't been a set thing for over a decade, especially with all the good buffs bugs have gotten in recent years. If you use a bird against my bug, I have several options available to me like laying entry hazards, holding items or having passive abilities that hurt you if you attack me/reduce super-effective damage to my mon/give me priority to OHKO you first, or using a move that grounds flying types for a set amount of time, or using a move that let's me sucker punch your mon and get out of dodge before you can even hit me and your main defensive advantage (if your primary type is also not resistant to Bug) is gone. And the same goes for other type match-ups.

It's not even like Monster Hunter where you raise a Suezo or something and give it a training regiment and deal with it's personality.

Starting with gen 6 you pretty much can do that very thing, even more so than previously since the welcome addition of personalities, natures etc back in gen 3.

Thanks, that was informative .

By "I don't understand why folks like it," I wasn't really considering Pokemon as it's own genre, which was definitely my mistake. I was thinking of it as "turn-based JRPG" and didn't realize all the other stuff you mentioned such as holding items or really considered the intricacy of the moves. I suppose what I really should have said was "I was exposed to this series in it's infancy and didn't like it. I see now that it has a huge following. Why is there a huge following for this game in relation to it's actual gameplay mechanics?" I get that some folks just like the strongest or cutest Pokemon, and I respect that as a motivator, because I fucking love cute things. I've just never understood what makes Pokemon tick, I guess, and wanted to learn from the fans. Not out a sense of disrespect but as a curious outsider.

Also, when I say character-building, I'm not talking about the story, I'm talking about mechcanically building a character. IE, "Yes, I got five more Special Attack and ten more HP!" not "Yes, Pikachu just got over the death of his mother!"

 

[shrekfan246]

Thank you for getting back on topic at hand, but the starters' evolutions haven't been released and this is just a fan speculation of what they could look like. Here's just two fans' guesses of last gen starters when all we had were the silhouettes to go on. credit goes to Rodentruler and Xous54 respectively from dA. Nice, but not what we got.

While I didn't know that, it doesn't defeat my point because I'll easily say the exact same thing about a good number of the designs from Pearl/Diamond and Black/White. I just snipped down to that picture to keep it more compact.

Gen. III was when the designs started getting more busy to look at, but overall they didn't go overboard with it. But looking at everything they've done since then just leaves me scratching my head in wonder. Especially the "Mega" versions of old Pokemon, which just look stupidly overdesigned for no other reason than "because we needed to change them some way".

 

[CrimsonBlaze]

Well...definitely don't want to get dragged into the whole 'Gen 5' fiasco, so I'll just say why I keep coming back to Pokemon handhelds.

For me, it's the simple gameplay aspects of the games (rock-paper-scissors gameplay, catching Pokemon, leveling up, etc.) that we see upfront and the more deeper aspects of the games (EV training, breeding, Shiny Pokemon, etc.) that are optional, engaging, and easily accessible.

I also enjoy the Pokemon; yes, there are some Pokemon designs that are questionable and subjective, but part of what makes these games great is that you get to start over your journey and see how things would have been different had you selected a different team of Pokemon. Replay value is a big must for any great Pokemon title and I've restarted nearly every Pokemon title that I've got at least once.

All and all, I'm excited for Pokemon X and Y and hope that it will be every bit as fun and unique as its predecessors.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Same thing, different words.
That is basically a synonym.

Nothing is *basically* a synonym. Either they are or they are not.
They are not.
http://dictionary.reference.com/

Since you like to point out the similarities of a Pokemon and call them traces let me tell you the differences of Galvantula compared to Ariados.

Galvantula:

- 6 legs
- 6 eyes
- yellow, blue, gray-purple color scheme
- legs end in blue spikes
- has fuzz tufts
- striped pattern on the back

Ariados:

- red, black, and yellow color scheme
- 4 legs
- has a spike on it's head, and on it's back
- only has a black stripe and two dots as it's abdomen pattern
- possess mandibles
- has two appendages sticking out of it's abdomen
- lacks any fuzz
- legs are more lean
- possess only two eyes

So I criticize Pokemon for palette swapping and throwing in a few details to make a difference, and you counter that by describing the palette swap and the thrown-in details? "This one is red, the other one is yellow"? "This one is fuzzy, the other one is not"? It's the same freaking model! They just paint over it! Same for the bear rebuff.

Not "boom new generation" they aren't trying to pass these off as new gen Pokemon.
If you bothered to follow any news on this you would know that these are simply battle forms that are only acquirable through use of an item called "mega stone" in battle. All they do is simply give them a different look, raise base stats, and give them a new ability. Once the battle is over they revert back to their original form.

Fair enough.

Your only real thing to back up this "tracing of old models" has so far been "these two are bears, and they have similarities so they are clearly traced." Once again, before you call out any game company for tracing you better have some sort of insider on that matter.

No, not *similarities*, they look exactly the same, with some random cosmetic changes applied on top. And I'm not suing Game Freak, I don't need evidence to hold up in court, all I'm doing is palating the product they sell and using my right to judge it and criticize it. Their designs suffer because they HAVE to come up with a hundred of them every few years, so they cut lots and lots of corners in the creativity department.

 

[Miss G.]

Thanks, that was informative .

Also, when I say character-building, I'm not talking about the story, I'm talking about mechcanically building a character. IE, "Yes, I got five more Special Attack and ten more HP!" not "Yes, Pikachu just got over the death of his mother!"

My paragraph about EVs explains that. EVs determine stat boosts and pokemon can only have 510 to max out, and if you've not taken the time to max the best stats properly you'll have to start all over in that regard.

I'll repeat, with more emphasis this time: Your mons gain effort values (EVs), which aren't shown and so must be meticulously tracked (they're making it easier for newbies and veterans alike to track them in X & Y) added to their stats with every pokemon you beat, thus there is character customization of your monsters depending on which EVs you want them to gain in any stat you want to tweak and what natures they have since those dictate positive, negative & neutral gains in stats. e.g. I want to boost my team to be able to tank Special attacks so I battle against, say Tentacools, because they give EVs in that stat, Special defense. Properly done, you'll a see massive difference between EV trained pokemon vs mons trained by people who just did whatever during their play through. Then there are moves, natures, passive abilities, strategic breeding, Pokerus, EV training items, Vitamins, Berries etc that play very heavily in the meta game than during the main story, where a match can be won or lost because of one point in stat differences between mons that are EV trained to their utmost potential.

 

[Silvanus]

EDIT: It is basically based off of this this http://www.effingpot.com/food.shtml a "99" ice cream that is particularly soft and comes with a cadbury "flake" that is basically a long stick of chocolate. Which kind of fits in perfectly with what Vanilluxe looks like.

May I just say that this genuinely made me laugh out loud. I'm English, and to see somebody describing a 99 with such an analytical tone... well, it just tickled me.



OT: It's true that the first gen had its share of shite designs (Farfetch'd; Mr. Mime), but generations one and two probably still had the greatest crop of good designs.

It's not their fault. They've had to come out with so many, and they've done remarkably well. Some of the near-palette-swaps don't bother me (I quite like Galvantula and that mole-thing)-- what bothers me more is their tendency to simply stick coloured stripes on and call it a day.

Well, that, and the legendaries. There are far too many damn legendaries now; the status is almost meaningless, and the designs have been weak ever since the legendary dogs.

 

[Mr Cwtchy]

I don't know, to be honest. I love being able to build whatever team of Pokemon I like, I get quite attached to them(unless they screw up ), and the 'boss battles' are some of the most exciting and tense stuff I've experienced in a game.

For example, in my recent playthrough of Soul Silver I went up against Lance for the first time. By the end all but one of my team was dead, with only Ampharos remaining(I called him Happy), while Lance was down to just Aerodactyl. I barely finished him off with a Thunder, and Happy won with just FOURTEEN HP left.

I haven't played a game in years that gave me such a thrill as I had in those moments.

As far as originality goes, Gen 1, 2 and 3 have just as many bland and uninspired Pokemon as the new ones, IMO. I can definitely agree with the more recent issue of having too much stuff 'going on' though.

 

[Hero of Lime]

I just have lots of fun with the games. Unlike most people here I don't really dive into competitive battling or EV train my Pokemon, and I still have a blast with it. Even though story was never a strong suit for the series, Black and Whitte really stepped it up to not only have a fun game, but also interesting characters and a simple, solid plot. I understand from an outside perspective it looks odd that a bunch of 20 somethings playing and loving something that is designed with kids in mind. It's just a bunch of fun, people can choose from now literally hundreds of Pokemon to be their favorites, or create their ideal team.

 

[Miss G.]

Thank you for getting back on topic at hand, but the starters' evolutions haven't been released and this is just a fan speculation of what they could look like. Here's just two fans' guesses of last gen starters when all we had were the silhouettes to go on. credit goes to Rodentruler and Xous54 respectively from dA. Nice, but not what we got.

While I didn't know that, it doesn't defeat my point because I'll easily say the exact same thing about a good number of the designs from Pearl/Diamond and Black/White. I just snipped down to that picture to keep it more compact.

Gen. III was when the designs started getting more busy to look at, but overall they didn't go overboard with it. But looking at everything they've done since then just leaves me scratching my head in wonder. Especially the "Mega" versions of old Pokemon, which just look stupidly overdesigned for no other reason than "because we needed to change them some way".

I honestly don't mind. I liked Digimon when it came out because they had similar designs to Pokemon, but more detailed or busier, before I just started to love the show on its own merits. Nowadays, I like looking for Pokemon fan art done either realistically or less simplified for kid-demographic like this (credit goes to Twarda8 of dA). Now this is a Bulbasaur.

[sub]*My, this thread is getting pic heavy. And I'm not helping.[/sub]

 

[necromanzer52]

I like it for the adventure aspect. It creates a big world full of cool creatures to find and train, interesting people to meet and battle, fun things to do, and various locations to traverse, and just tells you to set out and explore.

It was one of the first non-linear games I played, that just allowed me to travel around the world to my heart's content, and do whatever I feel like.

 

[Xman490]

I like playing through old Pokemon games with new teams, even though they might not beat the League without grinding. I've used almost all Gen 1 Pokemon at least once so far.

 

[Libra]

What I love so much about pokemon is that 1) it's a very cute and friendly RPG, lacking the gritty/angsty atmosphere many others go for, and 2) underneath the cutesy exterior is a very solid strategy game. Watching two very good battlers trying to predict their opponent's predictions can be awesome

 

[Ashadowpie]

for me, its a childhood thing. i played pokemon when it first came out, i watched the cartoon every day after school, i even got the pokemon toys that actually talked. i loved collecting the cards just because they were pretty. Charizard was my favorite pokemon and still is to this day. i never played the card game though it was too confusing for me but hey i was what? 8 years. i had a holo Charizard and i even framed it in my room. i still play pokemon today but only the games. i dont collect anything else anymore though.

 

[silver wolf009]

See, I'm at the level where I'm crunching numbers, planning move sets, and breeding for I.V.'s and Natures.

It's not about the fun of playing the game anymore. It's about:

[footnote]Go to 37 seconds in for what I mean, because it won't start like that.[/footnote]

 

[suntt123]

I like pokemon because it's basically as complex as you want it to be. Its pretty simple if you're just looking for a fun time, but competitive battles are GRUELINGLY complex.

What I'm not fond of is when people start harping on about how new pokemon are dumber that the earlier gens... You know, the one that put a face on a ball, half a dozen eggs and pile of goo and called them creatures.

Fair enough, let's take the high road.

1) Poliwag, Poliwhirl and Poliwrath meet Politoed.
Politoed is the only one here that even resembles a frog

2) Did we not have enough turtle Pokemon with Shuckle and Torkoal?
Shuckle is a barnacle

3) Furry Spinarak and Ariados.
House spiders vs Tarantulas, my friend

4) Magnemite, Magnetron and their 3rd evolution. Replace orbs with gears.
Indeed, they're all dumb looking.

5) There's Hitmonlee and Hitmonchan. Again.
No arguments.

6) Oh look, six palette swaps of Aipom.
Not really, these are based off the hear/see/speak no evil monkeies thing. Pansear/Panpour/Pansage has his ear out/eyes closed/mouth open

7) And another palette swap of Teddiursa and Ursaring.
Woodland bear vs Polar bear

8) Pidgey, Pidgeotto and Pidgeot. Again.
Pigeons vs Pheasants. Okay, pidove (the first stage) is obviously a pigeon as well, but at least he actually LOOKS the part.

9) Furry rodent useless normal types? Did we not already have Sentret and Furret?
"rodent" is such a vague term. There's ferrets, squirrels, rats, mice, beavers, the list goes on. It's unfair to harp on about there being a lot of rodent pokemon. And of course they're useless, they're easily obtained and evolved. You get what you pay for.

10) Sandshrew and Sandslash.
It's closer to diglett/dugtrio concept wise. Sandshrew/Sandslash were based off of pangolins, Drilbur and Excadrill are moles. The only real similarities I can see are that they have the same body type and have long claws. But then so does Zangoose. Plus, you know excadrill can close up his claws with the horns on his head to become an actual drill, right?

11) Bellosom, no questions asked.
Because bellosom was the first pokemon with a flower on it's head ever, right? Seriously Lilligant is based more on high societal ladies whereas bellosom are hula dancers.

12) Spearow and Fearow over again.
Sparrows = Eagles? Or are we clumping all birds together too? C'mon these ones don't even look the same.

13) Take Paras and Parasect. Replace their fungi with chests.
Do you mean crusts?

14) Because we didn't have Stantler already.
Sawsbuck was meant to show off the different times of the year. S.A.W.S. Summer Autumn Winter Spring, having a different (purely cosmetic) form for each.

15) Suspiciously similar to Larvitar, Pupitar and Tiranitar.
WAT? Fine, axew is small, green and has the same body style as larvitar, sure but how exactly are the rest of the "suspiciously similar"?


What, ice-cream is a rare English delicacy now?

LEAVE VANILLUXE ALONE!!!

 

[thesilentman]

I love the battle system. If Game Freak released a game that was only for battling without the grind, they have my money. I do know about the Smogon Simulator, but an official one with some extra goodies would really make me damn excited.

There's also the fact that it forces me to act like a kid and go on an adventure. It's a welcome change from most other games that I've played, which require me to step into the footsteps of a main character and go along with their journey. With Pokemon, there's this state where it's half scripted, but enough leeway to make it my own journey.

Now excuse me while I go replay Pokemon Platinum. =P

 

[prpshrt]

Guess you can call it nostalgia because the only generations I did like were the first and second. I was able to process the the third but that was because pokemon emerald was really fun and looked awesome on the gameboy advance. Everything after that was just stupid. I really wish they made a simple gameboy advance rework of gold and silver. Then again, who the hell plays on the gameboy advance (I still do!) according to nintendo.

 

[RaikuFA]

For me, it's a mix of nostalgia and bonding. Me and my brother play it and it's the only time we really bond when it comes to other games.