#I'm probably better prepared for this because my boy Pansage got cut at the earliest possible opportunity

[goldensimisage]

A bit off topic with my writing stuff here and elsewhere, but I feel it's worth bringing up since people are asking for it yet again in the wake of Legends ZA's announcement: I think the opinion that the national dex was a bad idea that game freak hung an anvil over their own heads by implementing in the first place is probably my hottest pokemon take.

On one hand, the longer it stayed around, the more pokemon would become transfer only while still being required for dex completion, because there are only so many species you can naturally fit into a region. That'd definitely make people mad, because they already do when it's >20 pokemon for vgc before dlc makes them catchable too. Imagine the shit storm if it was 600 transfer-only mons next to the 400 Paldean natives in the base game. So you'd need a constantly updating living dex for the shiny charm, and even if you have one, you gotta wait 1-3 months for Home compatibility and the charm is just unobtainable beforehand.

And on the other hand, it getting cut was always a matter of when, not if. And when you consider the fact that Pokemon fans (like the rest of the internet really) get more rabid by the day, the backlash was only going to get worse the longer the national dex stuck around. Pre-covid when dexit happened, people were already willing to try and ruin a man's career and public image with fake rape accusations, so if they kept the natdex throughout the switch era and only resorted to it by, say, gen 15 when we hit 2,000 pokemon, Masuda would get Shinzo Abe'd the next time he made a public appearance.