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krokonoko · 4 years ago

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*rolls up sleeves* Alright anon, let me tell you a story about my absolute favorite Pokemon type, the Grass type, how it’s disadvantaged, especially compared to the other two starter types, and how that handicap is rooted in sexism!

But first off I need to clarify what I’m talking about when I say the Grass type is the most disadvantaged of all starter types. It’s well known in the competitive scene that Grass is pretty trash tier when it comes to usefulness, so I don’t think I need to prove my thesis statement. But I will do it nonetheless, if only because it frustrates me endlessly and I need you to understand.

So first off, the obvious.

Type efficiencies.

(ranting and images await thee beyond the cut)

If these graphs are too hard to parse for you, let me break it down:

Grass is offensively strong against: 3 types.

Fire is offensively strong against: 4 types.

Water is offensively strong against: 3 types.

Grass is offensively weak against: 7 types.

Fire is offensively weak against: 4 types.

Water is offensively weak against: 3 types.

Grass is resists: 4 types.

Fire resists: 6 types.

Water resists: 4 types.

Grass is weak to: 5 types.

Fire is weak to: 3 types.

Water is weak to: 2 types.

There is not a single category where Grass gets to shine here. It scores the lowest in every single category. What’s worse, when it comes to weaknesses, offensively or defensively, it’s way outclassed by it’s competitor types. When the Steel type was added in gen 2, guess which one was the only type that was negatively affected by that.

But hey, at least all the three starter types are in balance! Water is strong against Fire, Fire is strong against Grass, and Grass is strong against Water, right? Think again.

If you’re Squirtle squad, you probably already know this, because you giggled at your dumbass rival or friends every time they got out their Venusaur against your Blastoise: Water Starters are capable of learning strong Ice type moves like Ice Beam or Ice Punch, which gives them a unique edge against the type that should be strong against them...!

Alright, so type advantages are already very much not in the Grass type’s favor. But unfortunately, the Grass starters are also handicapped when it comes to stats.

Here are the six starters with the highest base stats:

4 Fire and 2 Water types, no Grass types.

Here are the six starters with the lowest base stats:

4 Grass types. Funny that.

As if all of that isn’t enough, the Grass type also gets the short end of the stick when it comes to the strongest attacks the starters can learn in RBY: Hydro Pump, Fire Blast and Solar Beam. Solar Beam is the only one out of these three attacks that has to charge one round before it can be used. Sure, it gets 100% accuracy for that, but lbr you don’t really need more than 85%.

There is exactly one advantage the Grass type has over its competitors, and that’s its access to Powder Attacks as well as immunity to them, but that hardly justifies this kind of neglect in every other area.

Grass is the only starter type that doesn’t have a single Elite 4 member representing it AND the only starter type that hasn’t been represented by a gym leader further up in the ranking than Number 4. While both Water and especially Fire type starters continuously get lots of extra love and attention from GF (Charizard getting an extra mega, Blaziken being the first to receive a mega, Charizard being the first to receive a Gigandynamax and getting lots of extra spotlight through being Leon’s signature mon, Ash-Greninja, the list goes on), the Grass type never receives this kind of special treatment.

Not even in additional material, such as the Smash Bros. games, Pokken Tournament or Pokemon Unite does the Grass type get to shine. For example, in the newly released Pokemon Unite, the roster containts the original three Pokemon starters as well as two other starters: Greninja and Cinderace. In Smash Bros, things look similar: Additonally to Squirtle, Ivysaur and Charizard, the other two playable Pokemon starters are Greninja and Incineroar. I don’t think any further examples are necessary.

So what is going on here, because clearly some higher power seems to have it out for the Grass type. Well, this takes us to Pokemon and its weird gender thing.

Pokemon and its weird gender thing.

Pokemon has always had a bit of a weird gender angle to its little monsters, and I’m not talking about clearly biased sexual dimorphisms or weird gender ratioes (I already ranted at length about these two subjects). No, this time I’m talking more in a general sense. Like, some Pokemon were designed to be cool (for the boys) and some were designed to be cute (for the girls). And especially in earlier generations it was relatively easy to tell which one was trying to appeal to which crowd.

The game was also not very shy about making clear which of these were supposed to be used by girls. Pokemon like Clefairy, Jigglypuff and Meowth were predominantly used by the trainer classes Lass and Beauty, two out of the four female trainer classes in RBY. Out of 40 trainer classes total. Just saying. As if they didn’t already stand out like sore thumbs against the 37 male trainer classes, very many of the Lasses and Beauties had dialogue that strongly alluded to their status as “””GIRLS”””. They were constantly flirting with you, making allusions to you, the presumedly male player, hitting on them, or gushing about how adorable their Pokemon are. What I’m saying is their shit was gendered as fuck.

Now a lot of trainer classes were meant to introduce you to different Pokemon types. The Bug Catchers mostly use Bug type Pokemon (shocking, I know), the Engineer and Rocker use almost exclusively Electric type Pokemon, Black Belts use Fighting types, Swimmers use Water types, and there’re no medals for guessing which kinda Pokemon the Psycho uses. As you can see, there’s always a certain theme going on, making us associate Cue Balls with Fighting and Poison type Pokemon etc.

And here’s the kicker: Grass types were used almost exclusively by Lasses and Beauties. Considering they were the only female trainers, who also wouldn’t shut up about how omg girly they are, this automatically made you associate the Grass type with girls. Maybe even girliness.

And if that’s not enough for you, there is only one gym in Kanto that is not only lead by a female gym leader, but that’s also exclusively for girls, filled with only girls, omg so many girls, and of course it’s the Grass type gym. They even placed a perverted old man in front of the building peeking in through the window as if fully dressed women are anything to gawk at, just in case you didn’t realize those are WOMZ...! Training Pokemon!! Unheard of!!!

So they strongly enforced that association of Grass types and female trainers.

Now you could raise the point that RBY has been released 25 years ago, and you would be correct! If the Pokemon Company didn’t re-release Kanto every five years that is.

And even in later generations, when we got more female trainer classes, a lot of them were using Grass types that their male counterparts wouldn’t, like in the case of the Picnicker. Classes specializing in Grass types were always female, such as the Aroma Lady.

Also like almost all of those Pokemon that look like women in dresses are grass types.

Disrespect any of these Queens (and Kings) and I’ll kick ur ass.

But, like. Why, dude?

I assume it’s because a lot of Grass types resemble flowers, and I guess flowers are girly? Just have a look at any Pokemon forum and watch people make fun of Meganium just cuz it’s got a huge adorable flower around its neck. Go to any forum and watch people discuss the question why Grass is so unpopular. The answer very often boils down to “Grass is weak af, but the designs alone are enough to put ppl off. After all, would you rather have a huge winged dragon, a tortoise with two fuckoff canons on its back, or a dumb flower toad?”

My brother used to nickname his Chikorita the German equivalent of the f-slur. And I’m gonna tell you a secret: The Grass type wasn’t always my favorite. Far from it. When I was a 10yo, I used to hate and make fun of the it, cuz it was a “stupid weak girly type.” Cuz yeah. That’s just how kids are sometimes��🙄 And also that’s basically what the game communicated to us on every corner. Girls are ditzy, all these ditzy girls use Bellsprout and Oddish, ergo Grass Pokemon are for ditzy and girly trainers.

There’s also the idea which NPCs persistently try to sell you that “Grass types are easy to raise”, especially compared to the other two starter types:

(I’m not even gonna get into what a lie that is and how ridiculously hard it is to train Oddish, one of the most common Grass types, because all it knew was Absorb. There is also the problem that the Grass type is weak against Bug and Flying types, which consistently litter the start of every single game, making it harder to raise Bulbasaur than Charmander or Squirtle.)

A bad faith interpretation of all the facts we have on hand would be to assume that Grass Pokemon are supposed to be the “easy” choice out of the three starter types, and thus should be the one most closely associated with and almost exclusively used by girls...

Which is especially hilarious considering all the ways in which the Grass type is hugely disadvantaged. Telling girls to take the grass starter, cuz that one won’t be too hard for them to raise, but then outclass it in every manner possible by its opponents. Good job, Pokemon.

Completely unrelated interlude

Some say your starter choice is a way of choosing the game’s difficulty setting. Which is a very odd way of spelling “Grass starters suck more than the other two.” Others say that the Grass type is meant to fulfill a supportive roll.

There’s like, this common thread running through Pokemon design up until very recently: Masculine/male Pokemon = active and offensive, feminine/female Pokemon = passive and supportive.

(fun fact: Did you know that Gardevoir is 50% male? Most Pokefans don’t and so Gardevoir and Gallade get treated like the female/male evolutions of Kirlia.)

And that’s not to say that female Pokemon are worse than their male counterparts. But when I was a kid, the boys from my grade, my cousin, every boy I knew used to mock me for using female Pokemon. Because they were absolutely convinced the stats of female Pokemon were worse than those of their male counterparts.

There’s a reason every Pokemon you can only get once in the game only has a little more than 10% chance of being female, and it’s not to make breeding harder.

The thought here is (or used to be) that boys don’t like female Pokemon, boys don’t like feminine Pokemon, and boys think feminine/female Pokemon are weak. Unfortunately, preteens aren’t exactly known for their nuanced way of thinking, so these kinda patterns are often self-fulfilling prophecies. You assume boys won’t like Meganium, so you make it the weakest out of the bunch. Then boys don’t like it. They tell the girls to use it, cuz it’s a girl Pokemon with a big dumb flower and girls like that, and it’s weak, just like all girl Pokemon. Boys like strong Pokemon. Girls like cute Pokemon. Why is the Grass type the weakest type? No connection here, no siree.

End interlude.

So what is the takeaway.

A lot has changed since the 90s. Feminine looking starters don’t get the worst stats anymore. Super feminine looking Pokemon can kick your butt by now. There’s been an effort from the Pokemon company to divorce Grass from its status as “the girl type”. Grass starters aren’t decked out in flowers anymore. Some are brawly, and some have even been accepted as sleek and cool by the dudebro corner of the fandom!

But somehow the Grass starters of almost every single generation persistently manage to rank lowest on polls. It doesn’t really help that the Grass type has p much only gotten worse since its inception, that it’s almost useless in competitive gaming, despite there being no good reason for it to be this far behind its counterparts. No reason except one that is.

I guess you can only do so much to try and backpedal on an association that you hardwired into every Pokemon fan for decades.

Poison types: devious.

Dragon types: formidable.

Fire types: wild.

Water types: chill.

Grass types: girly (derogatory).

#Pokemon #Grass type #uhm what to tag this #feminism in video games #Pokemon is srs bsnz #rob rants

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krokonoko · 7 years ago

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What do you think is the reason for Pokemon being so much more popular than Digimon?

Imho there’re a couple of reasons for that. While Digimon had a way cooler animated series with better characters and a deeper story, there was something very important it didn’t have, and that’s accessible video games.

Pokemon games were played on Gameboy, a portable console that was easy to get your hands on as a kid and didn’t involve a huge monetary investment. GF churned out games on a regular basis, keeping you hooked through years and years.

I think that was a huge contributing factor to the popularity of Pokemon, but there is one more reason:

The premise of the Pokemon franchise is much more clear. As a kid, it’s an easy concept to understand and get invested in: You catch Pokemon, you train them, they evolve into bigger, cooler versions of themself, you beat gym leaders, earn badges, and fight on until you’re a Pokemon Master!

But at least for me, with Digimon this premise was neither as clear nor as sustainable. It was always like: I get a Digimon! …And then what. It’s not that I wasn’t excited at the idea of having a Digimon partner, I just didn’t really know what to do with it. Or what it would evolve into. Sure, your cute orange lizard could evolve into an awesome tyrannosaurus, but it could just as well become a green heap of sludge. In Pokemon, my cute orange lizard would always turn into an awesome dragon.

It’s all about image with these things, and Pokemon managed to have a concept just easy but yet compelling enough to draw people in for years. But not many franchises manage to do that. Digimon is still very well known until today, and I think it shouldn’t be considered a failure just cuz it didn’t reach the popularity of a franchise as massive as Pokemon.

#Pokemon #Digimon #Rob rants #ask #anon #Pokemon is srs bsnz #man that tag is seeing a lot of traffic lately.#Anonymous

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krokonoko · 7 years ago

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I have an ongoing vendetta with S/M/US/UM. Most of my problems while playing Sun were only scratching in the back of my mind until I managed to put them into words months after I stopped playing the game.

But playing Ultra Moon right now really makes me... see. Experience again. Why the 7th gen has been such a negative experience for me, and the game design decisions behind it.

Extra:

#Pokemon #and as always #POKEMON IS SRS BSNZ #Robin rants #it's BAD GAME DESIGN #not that Pokemon ever had stellar game design to begin with #but you get my point

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krokonoko · 7 years ago

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Every Feraligatr sprite, rated by me

I have STRONG feelings over Feraligatr sprites! Join me if you will >:D

Gold

The first. The original. A good boy. Looks sufficiently menacing. Could either go into the sleek or the bulky direction. The colors were still a bit off. In any case, good. (8/10)

Silver

Actually not a very impressive sprite, I mean. What is up with its arms and ridges...? But I had my first Feraligatr Blue on a Silver version so I get pretty nostalgic every time I look at it. (7/10)

Crystal

There we go! Not that I don’t like the more murky look of green Feraligatr, but it does look pretty in blue! Nice animation to boot, it literally goes “I’m gonna tear u apart brah” (9/10)

Ruby / Sapphire / Fire Red / Leaf Green (without animation) / Emerald

A mistake. Everything that is wrong with Feraligatr depiction. Way too square mandibular, I mean wow pelican beak much? What is with those dainty hands, and don’t even get me started on the terrible animation in Emerald. (0/10)

Diamond / Pearl / Platinum

WAY better. Not perfect, but better. The stance is weird with its left hind paw pointing outward like that, but eh. I take what I can get. (6/10)

Heart Gold / Soul Silver

THE. Feraligatr sprite. Perfection has been achieved. Where do we go from here. Beautiful slightly teal-y light blue, sleek snout, flawless mascara, strong arms to swim and hug and crush!! (10/10)

X / Y / Alpha Sapphire / Omega Ruby / Sun / Moon

I am. Torn. I mean it’s. Alright. Could’ve been worse. But. Ok hear me out cuz this is gonna take a bit longer. I feel this is a step in a very strange direction for Feraligatr modeling, but a trend we probably will have to deal with in the future. After all, we've reached the point where for the first time ever, they haven't changed the sprites from one gen to the next one bit.

So here's what I don't like about it. It's just. Statically unsound. It's SUPER bottom heavy with that suddenly very broad underbelly (compare to the HG/SS sprite), which also for some reason almost constantly obscures its pretty tail? The spread arms, which used to be a menacing gesture typical for Feraligatr, now awkwardly stick out its sides. Feraligatr always had a sort of slouched stance, but on this model the neck is way too thin to support this massive, WAY too forward head and jaw.

And last but not least, what is it with those. Weird. Boob. Things. The texture on the Pokemon Go model sports them too, and even more pronounced I might say.

Weird enough, in Pokedex 3D Pro, the first “game” to display the new 3D models that are now used in every game, the outlines were not there yet.

And before this model was introduced, Feraligatr has never been depicted with pronounced pectoral muscles.

Instead, it had a line implying strong neck muscles, which would be necessary to work such a huge set of jaws!

I think my problem with this (outside of how silly and lopsided it looks now, like the head's just protruding from its body without any real muscle or bone support) is how earlier depictions made Feraligatr look. Well. Feral. While this new model makes it appear more humanoid. And I'm not a huge fan of that.

I’m glad they didn’t go with the pelican beak tho, but all in all. This could've gone a LOT better. And ok, every now and then, a sprite doesn't turn out that pretty.

But the thing is... these 3D models are universally used all across the franchise. They're here to stay. And I will probably have to deal with the croco boobs for quite a while :/ (5/10)

#Pokemon #Feraligatr #POKEMON IS SRS BSNZ #Robin rants

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krokonoko · 8 years ago

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Every Raichu sprite, rated by me

@seanfiction gave me the idea. I am very invested in Raichu sprites.

Red / Green

Perfect, given the means and resources they had. Good proportions, cute face, really like the stance. 8/10

Red / Blue

Fat and happy, very friendly. Makes me nostalgic just looking at it. Maybe the most off-model though. 7/10

Yellow

Frickin adorable. Very nice energy and perspective. Love the brighter colors too. First time you can actually recognize it as the Raichu we know and love. 9/10

Silver

I’m sure this was intended to be cute, but. It’s kinda creepy looking. The weirdly executed jumping pose doesn’t make it look less menacing. 5/10

Gold (without animation) / Crystal

This Raichu looks way too mean. I like that it’s fat, tho it looks a bit static here, but its expression is decidedly mean and I don’t like it. 6/10

Ruby / Sapphire / Fire Red / Leaf Green (without animation) / Emerald

V cute! Look at those paws! Is it rubbing its little face or is it getting ready to punch u? Who know! The tail-lightning is a bit skinny tho. (also not a fan of the animation pulling the sprite apart) 8/10

Diamond / Pearl

A bit static, but also very happy! It’s going “yay!” I approve. 9/10

Platinum

Not sure what went wrong here. What is this lopsided face. Or the pose. Or the body. Is it sitting? Is it standing? This could’ve gone better. 4/10

Heart Gold / Soul Silver

Lacks personality imho. Not a fan of this particular body shape. Of course it’s still cute, but I don’t like this approach v much. 6/10

Black / White / Black 2 / White 2

Had to get an extra mention cuz I fucking hate every single Gen5 sprite, no matter how well made the base is. That grainy pixelated animation needs to burn. 0/10

X / Y / Alpha Sapphire / Omega Ruby / Sun / Moon

Maybe my absolute fav. I wanna protect it, I wanna cuddle it. The tail is nicely rendered, the proportions make sense. Favorite aspect: It’s little paw going in tiny circles as if to say “I’M GONNA PUNCH U!” 10/10, perfectly executed.

#Raichu #Pokemon #POKEMON IS SRS BSNZ #Cal rants

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krokonoko · 8 years ago

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Pkmn Sun/Moon in hindsight

Sun/Moon was maybe my most anticipated game of 2016. I was hyped MONTHS before the release and soaked in every bit of news and development like a frickin addict.

When the game was finally out... I had a lot of mixed feelings while playin it. I mean, I liked it! But looking back, I noticed how I’m remembering the game decidedly unfavorably. Usually, the moment I’m through with a Pokemon game I already can’t wait to restart it cuz I wanna try it out with new Pokemon. This time? I feel like coming back to Alola in fifty years would be too early. And I’m not alone with that. Some of my friends still haven’t finished the game yet...!

Now I feel like enough time has passed for me to be able to maybe draw some conclusions about Sun/Moon and my experiences with it. Warning: Critical opinions ahead.

(everything I’m writing here is about my experience. If you feel completely different about this, cool. But remember that I’m not claiming any of this to be facts. All I’m sayin is: This is my opinion.)

I feel like speaking about the Sun/Moon games as “the 7th gen” when neither the sister game nor the potential remake is out yet complicates the matter a bit, but for now, this is all we have to go on for this gen. And if things stay as they are now, the 7th gen might be one of my least favourite ones, despite HEAPS of things I absolutely adored about Sun/Moon.

Cuz don’t get me wrong. I don’t wanna dislike Sun/Moon, and they did a lot of things right. But the things they did wrong just made it one of the least worthwhile games in the Pokemon franchise in my opinion.

But let’s start with the positive.

- So many of the new Pokemon are frickin amazing. Not as many as last gen, but. Idk. Every gen, no matter how much I dislike it, gets props for good Pokemon. The idea of the starters per se was really cool and novel, and. Yeah. Uhm. Looking at the list of new Pokemon I’m actually a lot more underwhelmed than I initially thought. Especially cuz my love for so many Pokemon comes with this bitter aftertaste. Like, I love Salandit and Salazzle, but what is UP with Salazzle’s pose and the weird lore surrounding it and WHY did they have to throw all this bs on one of the few cool new Fire type Pokemon we got...? ...Ok we’re in the positive section, so. Yes. Some Pokemon. Really cool.

- Team Skull is a national treasure that must be protected.

- the plot in general was pretty alright. As in, I didn’t hate it. I even was a bit invested? I think this is the Pokemon main line game with the best plot overall. Unfortunately, this brings us to a whole other can of worms, but more on that in the negative section.

- I didn’t hate the NPCs! I even kinda liked some of them? And if you know me, you know I got an affinity for loathing NPCs in almost every single game, especially Pokemon games. But p much every one of the NPCs in this one had a bearable personality. Congrats, S/M, you succeeded where X/Y failed.

- I like the IDEA of Alolan forms, and a handful of Alolan forms are cool.

- The Pokemon Resort is neat.

- I really, REALLY like that they were trying to do something new with this one. Despite everything I’m gonna criticize later, I 100% appreciate their attempt to change things up a bit in terms of graphics as well as formula.

- Last but not least: NO HMs!!! I’m serious, if they keep this feature? Or rather just frickin delete HMs from existence forever? The 7th gen will always be in my good books for that.

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on to the negative. Oh boy.

- I first thought the abolition of gyms and badges was a really interesting idea. I’m always for questioning time-honored traditions in games, and the whole gym-system has got to be one of the oldest traditions of all. All the more admirable is the attempt to try something new instead. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out at all imho. The Island Journey was nothing but confusing to me. When before we had eight gym leaders, eight battles, eight badges and that was it, we now have seven Trial Captains (one of which you don’t even get to exchange more than one line with before the Elite Four) plus a couple of former Trial Captains, four Island Kahunas, eight Totem Pokemon, a FUCKLOAD of Z-Crystals (some of which kinda replace badges) and five Trial Completion stamps. Add to that the Kapus, tho most of them don’t even do anything.

What I’m sayin is: SHIT’S CONFUSING AF. At least for me it was.

And the trials themselves aren’t all that interesting either. I have to fight Yungoos all the time anyway, why do I gotta fight three more as part of this frickin trial? Why does the trial itself often feel like it’s just stalling?? And while I found Kiawe’s trial hilarious, it’s just... it’s nothing that could replace gyms for me, ya feel?

Here’s what I think is the problem: Removing the gyms made me realize that they’re not just an old tradition of the games, but part of the absolute core of what makes a Pokemon game a Pokemon game. Training for the gym, fighting your way through the trainers until you finally reach the strongest of them and battling it out? That’s so frickin satisfying! And not just that, it also gives you a sense of progress.

And replacing that with this confusing Island trials that sometimes are Pokemon fights, but can also be puzzles that range from alright (Mallow’s trial) to just. Really. Idiotic. (Sophocles’ trial) ...Idk it just removes all sense of progress you had. No matter what, gym leaders are figures of authority. But in this case, there were just SO many trials thrown at you left and right, you couldn’t really take this new NPC seriously that the game just shoves into your face in order to provide you with Steelium Z or whatever.

Idk. Maybe the games just can’t do without the gyms. Maybe there’s a way to replace them. This was not it.

- The Z-Crystals. When I said I’m always in favor of trying something new with old established game laws? Yeah. Sometimes this turns out wrong. Sometimes, it’s “doing something new just so that you’ve got some BIG NEW COOL THING” .

You know, I never was a huge fan of the whole concept of Mega Pokemon? As in. I liked that Pokemon could only evolve so many times and could NOT evolve back, cuz that was something that set it apart from other franchises revolving around trainable monsters. This was a time-honored tradition I LIKED. But I wasn’t super against mega evolutions either. I was just kinda. Neutral on it.

But the fact that it turned out to be nothing but a fad which they quickly tried to retcon and replace with these dumb frickin ~*~huge strong attack~*~ things? That shit drives me NUTS. We had to spend the entire sixth gen getting lectured by every NPC about how special and important and mysterious mega evolutions were, just so that they could drop that shit entirely?? For what, ~*~stronger attacks~*~?? Jesus CHRIST with a man bun.

With mega Pokemon, I at least KIND of see the appeal. But the Z-moves? The animations get SUPER tedious after using the move twice. You’re pretty overpowered the entire game through anyway. I don’t WANT these ugly crystals, I was already annoyed with the mega stones, you’re gonna drop it for some new hot shit next gen anyway, get this shit AWAY from me >:/

- The endless. Frickin. Hand-holdies and stalling. Usually, after the first day of playin a new Pokemon game? I never wanna put it away. I just wanna keep playin and playin. The first day of playin S/M, I actually hated the game with every fiber of my being, and it felt terrible. That never happened to me before. Slight annoyance with the game? Yeah. Actual friggin hatred? Never!

The way the game kept stalling and stalling and dragging its feet killed every last bit of the INTENSE excitement I started out with. You wake up, you go talk to someone, day’s over, you wake up again, go talk to someone again, blaah blaaah blaaaaah... I think it takes you half a frickin hour of playin before you get your first frickin Pokemon...! You know how long it usually takes to get your first Pokemon in p much EVERY SINGLE POKEMON GAME?? Not even FIVE MINUTES.

Maybe they thought they needed to ease us into the new setting and all but OH my GOD I just wanted everyone to SHUT. UP already and let me start my frickin Pokemon journey! Which usually, you do not long after you got your first Pokemon. Not in S/M, however. You gotta watch cutscene after cutscene, klick through heaps of uninteresting dialogue, and when the NPCs finally let you set out? They’re still there. Always. Interrupting you. Talking to you. Explaining things to you that every frickin child can find out by themselves. Which, incidentally, p much all of us did. When I was ten, I played the red version, which explained NOTHING except for how catching Pokemon works, and I STILL FUCKING MANAGED. And ten-years-olds today aren’t dumber than we were back then! And this quenches every bit of desire you have to find out things by yourself.

LIKE. You see your first patch of grass. ALL you wanna do is THROW yourself into that thing, roll around in it until you’ve seen all the new Pokemon and askdhkasdh. But the moment you prepare to leap, the game goes “Hey, wait -insert player name-! Ha ha, it is me, an NPC! How are you and your Pokemon getting along? I see you’ve discovered this patch of grass, but let me warn you-” AND THEY KEEP GOING ON FOREVER and they just, IDK, EXPLAIN that there are Pokemon in there which you KNOW and you wanna GO and follow your innermost desires as a gamer and DO THE THING. But the game. Won’t. Let you. Until it’s stalled all of your excitement to death.

And you really feel like the game’s taking you for an idiot what with how the NPCs guard and guide your every step. I have never played a Pokemon game that felt so much like I was on rails, and the NPCs decided how fast I go, where I stop and even where I move my fucking head. Every part of the island is sealed off so that I can only go there when the game WANTS me to. Yeah, this is an element that’s always been THERE in Pokemon, certain points you can’t pass before you’ve fulfilled this and that task. Tho I mean. In the very first game, they basically let you decide in which order to take on the last gyms by yourself. In S/M tho? It’s just egregious how you can’t take a SINGLE STEP without having to get some NPC’s permission first.

Basically, this is a problem Pokemon has been suffering from for a while now. Have a short look at this Sequelitis video in which Arin explains exactly what the issue here is. Watch until 22:15. S/M did everything wrong in that regard. You don’t gotta constantly nag at the player to, whatever, go into this school and fight a bunch of kids or we won’t let you continue on your journey. We play Pokemon. Because. We like. Pokemon battles. We WANT to explore the world. We WANT to find and catch and train more Pokemon. But making all that a guided and guarded task makes it feel tedious. To quote Arin: It’s annoying. It feels like your mom and creates an “you can’t tell me what to DO” attitude.

When you played Pokemon back in the days of R/B/Y, G/S/C or R/S/E, you didn’t play the game to save the world from Team Rocket or Team Magma/Aqua. What I mean is... People sometimes act like the plot is what makes a good Pokemon game. But I think the exact opposite is the case: Pokemon games don’t need a plot. Sure, throw an evil team to defeat in if you want to. But don’t make it the REASON why I’m on this journey. This is what made B/W so stale and terrible for me. You only need to watch the intro-animation of the game and you’ll see it: They prioritized plot and NPCs over what this game should be about: Your Pokemon journey. And the more the plot is trying to butt in on this journey, the more NPCs just keep holding you back with making you click A a bunch, the more detrimental it is to the game.

To make it short: Didn’t you always hate it when you stepped outside the first few towns, ready to take on the Pokemon world, make new Poke-friends, train them and love them and catch them all and- wait, there is the guy who teaches you how to catch Pokemon in a two minute tutorial you can’t skip. Doesn’t this kind of bum you out for a second there? Yeah, that’s what the first, IDK, SIX HOURS or so of S/M felt like to me...!

This also leads to the replay value of the game tending towards zero. I usually play through a Pokemon game many times cuz I wanna try out as many Pokemon as possible. But while I found the plot reasonably entertaining while it was all new to me, clicking through it again will be the biggest frickin hassle.

If I’m being super honest, I feel like they did this to drag out the game time. I remember that when I first played X/Y I was through the game in two days. Cuz if you switch on the EP-share, you don’t need to do anything anymore, you just fly through the entire game, which makes it a bit dissatisfying as well. And X/Y had its share of NPCs that were holding you back at the start of every new Route, telling you what to do and why you should go down this one-way-street to speak to Professor Sexypants or whatever. But with S/M, it really felt like they were trying to make up for a smaller world. Which leads me to the next part.

- Not a fan of the graphics and the overhauled world-structure. I liked the little chibi-Trainers. Especially in the sixth gen. They were perfect. The trainer models in this game just look awkward imho. But that’s not my biggest concern. That honor goes to the new world structure.

The overworld in Pokemon used to be grid-based. So every object was placed in a grid and you were forced to walk on a grid, which they kind of broke up a little in the sixth gen, in a good way. But this time they went with an organic, natural world. And this. Just. Doesn’t work. The way they did it at least. A rectangular patch of grass is okay in a grid-based world. In an organic world a huge patch of grass with nothing else in it... just looks goofy and kinda empty. And that leads to the whole world feeling this little bit. Empty. The rooms are huge, but you can’t interact with anything. The furniture is prettily rendered, but what use is this pretty couch when I can’t even SIT ON IT?? We used to be able to sit on things, GF...! And this may seem like a minor concern but it’s just so symptomatic for everything wrong with the environmental design.

Which is a shame cuz I bet they put in a lot of effort into your surroundings. Unfortunately, removing the grid probably made that a bit more challenging, which lead to the routes becoming smaller. Or at least feeling smaller.

I don’t even wanna get started with how much the camera angle annoyed me most of the time...!

But back to the trainer models. Another problem that was really bothering me about the trainer models was the battle intros. The illustrations in the sixth gen are maybe the best battle intros the franchise has ever seen. Ken Sugimori’s style has evolved so much, and every character was designed with so much care! Every single one of them had so much character and I love just looking at these guys, the Delinquent, the Sky Trainers, the Artist Family... Such great designs, so much soul!

But with the new models replacing the illustrations, we had cameras zooming in on blurry and pixelated faces with uncanny valley-ish expressions and blank stares. They could’ve used the new models to give each trainer a different pose or expression, especially upon losing, but they didn’t even do that. And the unfazed, always smiling face of the protagonist has long become a meme. We also had a significantly less amount of trainer models to fight against. The trainer classes stayed roughly the same in amount, but they re-used the models constantly. To me this just. Smells like unfinished work.

- I think it’s p cool the game is set on Alola. It’s refreshingly different from everything we’ve had before. The team definitely did their research and put a lot of effort into depict a fictional version of actual Hawaiian culture. But compared to X/Y, where we had so many different shades of environmental design, so many cool atmospheric locations, S/M just felt. Bland with its repeated happy-go-lucky-island-vacation mood.

- what was the frickin photo feature even there for. I was so here for a mini Pokemon-Snap, but what we got was just disappointing.

- What the fuuuuck is up with the Pokedex entries. Can we take that ~*~dark and edgy~*~ shit away from my Pokemon game please?

smaller complains include:

- the introduction of a quest diary was nice and the Rotom-Dex was cute, but ultimately useless and annoying. It constantly badgered and reminded you about quests that were impossible to avoid while completely staying silent about those that could very easily be forgotten.

- While I mentioned that I like the IDEA of Alolan Pokemon, I hate how they were mostly just trolling with them. Instead of more cool stuff like Alolan!Ninetales or Alolan!Marowak, they gave us Dugtrio and Graveler with hair.

- fuck the fact that when it comes to trainer customization and clothes, an entire array of colors were missing from my game just cuz I got Sun. If you trainer is customizable, you gotta go all the way and not make it ridiculously complicated for one half of your players to get clothes in a color they want.

- while we’re at it: fuck the Festival Plaza. Shit’s confusing, counter-intuitive and boring.

- What the FUUUCK was up with that Ash!Greninja thing? They were obviously planning on making this the next big thing, you know, Pokemon taking on features from their trainers. But then it probably got too complicated with all the Pokemon and all the customization features, so they dropped it. But why introduce Ash!Greninja then?? Do I look like Ash? No! I don’t even watch the fucking show! Do I know this Greninja? Fuck no I don’t! So why do we have this ~*~special bond~*~ or whatever is necessary for that thing to change its form?? What was that entire useless fucking gimmick except a reminder of what could’ve been?

- SOS battles are the most annoying feature in the history of ever. Had they just given us wild Pokemon encounters DOUBLE BATTLES, like we had them in D/P/P or B/W!! Anyway, just. Go look up “SOS battles Pokemon annoying” and you’re gonna see enough ppl explaining why this feature was the last thing we needed.

- I’m REALLY not part of the git gud crowd. I think Pokemon shouldn’t be too hard. For example I think it’s a nice touch to always show which attack is how effective against what. But the fact that status conditions don’t do shit anymore is a bit sad. The Pokemon either heals itself after two rounds, or you can just pet the poison away in a ~*~fun minigame~*~ with graphics stolen right of the 00′s.

- Legendaries are the fucking cancer that kills this franchise, and after X/Y and its mercifully low number of legendaries (six, to be exact, which is a number so low in fact that we haven’t seen it since the second frickin gen), I thought we’d finally reached the point were GF is over spamming us with these fuckers that are good for nothing except trials of patience. And S/M with this friggin TERRIBLE post-game-plot of “hey here’s two dozen legendaries. Catch them plz and u get munz.” Without even the EXCUSE of a plot. Just. *throws hands up* Fuck this.

- OH AND ALSO fuck GF for not giving the Litten crowd the quadrupedal fire tiger they deserved.

Thiiiis got a lot more negative than intended. But as I said initially, I’m surprised myself at how many negative emotions I have towards this game, despite the fact that I actually enjoyed it while playing it.

Generally I think this game just feels majorly unfinished to me. I’m very interested in Stars and whether it’s gonna be better or worse than it’s predecessor. In any case, I can only hope that Pokemon will stop centering around dialogue-heavy interaction and realize why we’re all really playin this game: To be the very frickin best, like no one ever frickin was.

And that p much concludes my rant. Anything you disagree with, anything you feel the same about? S’alright, we can talk it out ^^

#Pokemon #Pokemon Sun and Moon #Cal rants #POKEMON IS SRS BSNZ #that Calvindile person is a dick

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krokonoko · 7 years ago

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Pokemon generations ranking :D

Been meaning to do this for quite some time now, ever since I posted that hot take on Sun/Moon about a year ago actually.

I've been reflecting a lot on the different Pokemon generations recently, what made which one work for me and what was bothering me about others. It's just that I've noticed how much closer to my heart the older generations are, despite the fact that I get incredibly hyped over each new gen. It's probably nostalgia, but maybe there's something more there, and I'd like to examine that a little.

So join me as I walk down memory lane, rating the games by admittedly somewhat arbitrary aspects such as: Pokemon designs, graphical progress, game design improvements etc.

(As always, keep in mind that everything I express here is my very subjective opinion.)

7. My last place easily goes to the 4th gen.

It was the first and only Pokemon gen that I was not hyped for when it was announced and that I had no interest in playing for the longest time. Whether it was bad timing cuz my Pokemon phase was waning a little in general or whether the 4th gen with all the problems I already had with it on first glance caused that decline in interest, I'm not sure. I've never made a secret out of my dislike for this gen, but I wanna go a bit more into detail about what I liked, and what I disliked about it.

Things I liked:

- The fourth gen has an advantage over the majority of other gens, and that's the fact that it HAD remakes, and those weren't even all that bad. HG/SS were neat games. The introduction of Pokemon that follow you around was maybe the best thing to come out of the entire 4th gen. Unfortunately, they dropped that feature immediately afterwards. Which is a huge shame.

- I'd say the fourth gen was the last one were the Pokemon designs were informed first and foremost by aesthetic, instead of originality. That lead to some incredibly awesome Pokemon such as Chelterrar, Luxray, Lopunny, Togekiss, etc, but also some really boring ones, like the Starly line. Mostly I'd say the Pokemon in this gen are a gain for the roster as a whole, but. Well. More on the negative later.

- I enjoyed digging for fossils in the underground.

Things I disliked:

- Let's be entirely honest. Graphics have never been the strong suit of Pokemon. Only recently is the game starting to actually exhaust the possibilities of the engine it's played on. I mean, when Pokemon looked like this:

Sword of Mana looked like this:

And when Pokemon looked like this:

Final Fantasy Tactics looked like this:

Just looking at this made me feel cheated. The graphics had barely upgraded from the third gen, yet I would have needed an expensive new console to play this game? A console whose entire shtick it was that it had two screens instead of one, when even from the promo material I could make out that Diamond and Pearl didn't make any use of the bottom screen?

Yes, Pokemon has always been exploiting its fan base with bringing out the exact same game again and again, just with a new coat of paint added to it. And while I was kind of aware of it even back then, the coat of paint (aka the graphics) was SO thin in this gen that I couldn't look past it anymore. I only ever played this game on an emulator years after it was published, found that it smelled like a carelessly made cash cow to sell this dumb console with the two screens nobody needed and to this day, I don't remember it charitably for that.

- I think it was around here that the cartridges had enough memory to store far more dialogue than before. And I personally think a Pokemon game is better the less dialogue it has.

- I may have enjoyed digging for fossils in the underground, but other than that I really didn’t like what this feature did to secret bases.

- On average, the sprites are. Not very good.

- Honestly, uhm. Pardon my French but. FUCK the 4th gen for introducing redundant gender differences in Pokemon. If you take a look at my “POKEMON IS SRS BSNZ” tag, you’ll find out I have an ongoing vendetta gainst these.

- The saving took FOREVER.

- Team Galactic is one of my least favorite evil teams. They’re just. Bland. And even after all these years, I still can’t tell what their goal is.

- The Poketch feature felt like a joke to me. This is what we needed the second screen for? This is why we had to buy a new console? For this silly useless GBC-lookin thing?

- Many new Pokemon were added, but there still weren’t many to chose from on your playthrough. That’s cuz a huge number of the new additions were either legendaries or evolutions and baby forms to existing Pokemon.

- The fourth gen had way too many legendaries. WAY. WAY too many legendaries. When I played the game I found myself being constantly pestered by the need to catch the two billion legendary Pokemon hanging around Sinnoh. Now I never liked legendaries much. I never chose them for my teams since I considered it cheating to win with a legendary, and catching them always was a hassle that could take up HOURS of my time, which I didn't have the patience for.

And D/P/P just. Had. SO. Many. Legendary Pokemon that I had to catch to progress the plot, it felt like a never ending hassle. Until Gen 7 and its introduction of UBs (which kinda count as legendary Pokemon), the 4th gen was the one with the most legendaries. Which is. Never a good thing in my book.

- The designs of many of the more important Pokemon put me off big time. The legendary Pokemon on the cover of the games looked stiff and expressionless, more like robots than Pokemon. I didn't like any of the starter Pokemon's first stages. I realize I was probably biased at this point, but almost every Pokemon that I looked at seemed terrible to me. Especially because...

- The 4th gen felt the need to come up with so many awful. Frickin. Evolutions. For existing Pokemon. I swear, Rhyperior is a reason for me to hate the 4th gen all by itself. Did Tangela really need to evolve into an even bigger blob of vines? Lickilicky barely even frickin CHANGES! If anything, its tongue seems shorter than before! Why was the addition of Magmortar necessary?

You gotta understand that for someone who already feels like a franchise they love is being warped into something terrible, seeing so many perfectly fine existing Pokemon evolve into superfluous bags of over designed shite... didn't really help.

- The soundtrack was very unmemorable imho.

- I frickin hated Barry. I think he was the first Pokemon rival / best friend who follows you around I hated this much. He was just. SO annoying.

- Last but not least: A recurring theme. The Fire starter. And Fire types in general. While I am a Grass starter kind of guy right now, that wasn't always the case. When I was 11yo, I was ALL OVER that Fire type. Of course Charizard and Typhlosion used to be my starter of choice for their respective games, and I used to love them to death.

Enter the infamous Fire/Fighting typing. I already wasn't a big fan of Blaziken, but INFERNAPE really took the cake. Never liked monkeys much, overly humanoid Pokemon kinda grossed me out, the Fighting type was officially my least favorite type of all, and Infernape... was all of these and a brain on fire.

And the best part? Gen 4 didn't even add any more new fire lines to the roster. Except for Heatran. Who's a legendary. So if you didn't have Infernape on your team, but wanted a new Fire Pokemon? Well, congratulations. You are fucked. The only other Fire Pokemon you could catch in the course of Diamond and Pearl was Ponyta. Who I love but. Honestly? A gen 1 Pokemon?? And this is a trend that followed me around more than you'd think.

And this wraps up my opinions on gen 4. Onward with placement #6.

6. My second to last rank goes to the 7th gen.

Honestly, just. Just go read that other rant I wrote. I can’t do this again. This game is so frickin dreary, only the graphics and the new Pokemon were keeping this one from replacing the 4th gen as my least favorite. ...Then again, the 4th gen at least had a cool remake. And it doesn’t look like we’re getting this for the 7th gen. Hm. Well, only time will tell whether my loathing for the 7th gen will stay as fresh in my mind over the years as my dislike for the 4th one.

...Anyway did you know that we used to have ~6 legendaries per gen? In gen 4 it was 14. In gen 7 it was 13. Unless you count the UBs. Then it’s a whopping 24!!!!!! .....You can’t possibly imagine how done I am.

5. Fittingly, the 5th gen gets the fifth place.

My Pokemon ennui had blown over, I had gotten the Nintendo DS as a Christmas present from my parents a couple of months prior anyway, so there was nothing really standing in my way of getting into this game!

Things I liked:

- The. Pokemon. Were. Moving. During battle. This may seem like a minor thing, but to me this was a gleam, a shimmer of hope that MAYBE the Pokemon graphics wouldn't stay this square, stiff mess forever. ...And not much more than that. But hey, it was a first step.

- Most of the designs struck a comfortable middle ground between quirky and traditional. I loved the idea of having a game full of nothing BUT new Pokemon, and I kinda wish we would get something like this again, but I'm afraid it would just be too much of an effort to come up with ~150 Pokemon again, especially with the contemporary graphics. Anyway, the Pokemon, the world, everything seemed fresh and new, like we were moving forward, instead of aggressively clinging to the old for nostalgia purposes and distorting it beyond recognition in the process. The new base starter forms were also adorable.

- Seasons, woohoo! Another feature that was scrapped immediately after the game, but it was funny as long as it lasted.

- The legendaries on the cover looked a lot cooler this time. Reshiram and Zekrom are frickin BOSS.

- I'm going back and forth on the new training system. On the one hand, it's a nice change, on the other hand, it was just really pesky with how much work you had to put into overlevelling your Pokemon, which is something I usually do. ...What I'm saying is: I'm not a big fan of the game trying to control what level your Pokemon have. BUT with the recent gens becoming easier and easier, I'm starting to appreciate how hard training was back then.

Things I disliked:

- The graphics still had barely moved on from the third gen. Pokemon sprites were looking all granular and distorted while moving, cuz that's what happens when you put 2D pixel sprites on a 3D movement rig. As happy as I was that the Pokemon MOVED AJSKAJKSA after more than ten years of this franchise existing, there was no way around the fact that animation just looked terrible.

When B/W looked like this:

Dragon Quest IX looked like this:

Pokemon had been struggling so hard with its inability (or maybe unwillingness) to adapt to the new 3D graphics expected for literally any other game that it got left behind, with nothing more than a couple of 3D elements in the overworld to show for, and those were shifting and changing like crap as well. Just... look at those perfectly aligned, badly rendered frickin trees up there. It's a shame it took us until 2013 to catch on.

- The fifth gen was the first one that focused more on the plot than... you know. The Pokemon. And your Pokemon journey. Which I think was a mistake. What is the first thing you see when you switch on B/W? A cut scene revolving around some human dude. I'm glad they cut that shit out in subsequent generations, but that was something that really annoyed me about this gen.

Furthermore, the plot is contrived af (as you would expect from any Pokemon game). If you wanna know a bit more about why I think the plot of B/W doesn't work, you can give this a read. To put it short I'm gonna quote myself for a second here: “B/W started questioning shit, but wasn’t ready to solve any of the problems it brought up. It wanted to sound all deep and meaningful, but then dropped the ball when it came to consequences.”

- Way too many legendaries. Again. But at least this time they barely bothered me, which I highly appreciated.

- What was up with so many Pokemon only evolving so frickin late in this gen? That honestly was a huge downer for me.

- Tripple and Rotation Battles were a superfluous addition imho.

- Pokemon musicals. Nuff said.

- Didn't like any of the starters’ last stages. Which, yes, IS kind of a major point for me.

- Recurring theme: Fire starters. The THIRD. Frickin Fire/Fighting starter. I was so disappointed. And it's. I mean. LOOK at Emboar...! :C Nothing against fat Pokemon. Fat Pokemon can be super cool. But Emboar looks just... like every single thing that I hate in a Pokemon design. Not just that, but they added insult to injury and made TWO. MORE. FIRE MONKEY LINES. TWO.

To get any other Fire type, you have to make considerable progress into the game. Litwick is an option, but Heatmor is only catchable right before the Elite 4, Reshiram (if you even consider legendaries as team members, which I don’t) you can only catch throughout the finale, and you don't get Larvesta before post-game!!! So your choice concerning Fire Pokemon was VERY limited.

Let's say I was getting. Disenchanted. With the Fire type.

4. On the fourth place we have the 6th gen.

This is a pretty close one actually. It could've just as well made it to the third place. Especially because of the remakes. I swear, ORAS are maybe THE best installment in the Pokemon franchise that exist to date.

The thing with this gen is that when I was playing it, I honestly didn't even quite realize how good it was. I think I kind of took it for granted. Only playing the 7th gen made me look back and appreciate all the great things about the prior games. And that's honestly a shame. Really, the 6th gen actually deserves a much higher placement, and the only reason it's not getting that is because the ones taking up the winner's podium are just SO close to my heart.

Anyway, let's get to it.

Things I liked:

- They FINALLY did it. They updated the graphics. When taking the leap onto the new console, it finally felt like it was actually WORTH getting the Nintendo 3DS. Not that I ever used the 3D feature and I honestly think it's mostly just window dressing, but in any case, it had the power to give us Pokemon Stadium-like graphics, something that I had been dreaming of FOREVER. When I got my 3DS, I didn't do so grudgingly. I did so because I was honestly excited for the new visuals, and because Pokemon was FINALLY making use of the power of its console. ...I often forget just how happy that made me back then.

- FRICKINNNN POKEMON AMI?!?!? That was introduced in gen 6! One of THE most awesome features ever, and they still haven't stepped back on it (maybe because there would be no way to evolve Sylveon otherwise? Or maybe cuz the community would rip them a new one.) FINALLY you couldn't just stare at your Pokemon on the status screen and look at it from behind in a battle. You could FACE it, FEED it, PET IT!! And it would emote and be happy!! That's the kind of shit that was honestly revolutionary for the Pokemon games (even tho it came WAY too late).

- TRAINER CUSTOMIZATION! THE BEST Trainer customization so far in my opinion. That is such a cool feature, and I’m glad they didn’t drop it after this gen.

- All the Starters' first stages and last stages are pretty cool. None of them are really my thing, but they were decently designed.

- OH RIGHT AND DELPHOX ISN’T FIRE/FIGHTING!!

- I'm almost in tears just thinking about it but... The number of legendary Pokemon in each game has been exponentially growing, with the exception of gen 6. It only had six legendaries. We didn't have so few of them since the second gen. And only one or two of them really bothered you throughout your journey. I wish we could go back to these days.

- This game had an amazing soundtrack. I'd be willing to say the best soundtrack of any Pokemon game.

- Just. ORAS. As I said, maybe THE best Pokemon game imo. If you've gotten this far and did the math, you know that the 3rd gen is among my top 3 favorite gens, and ORAS absolutely did it justice. And then some. Idk, I can't really put into words how much I love everything about this game: How it encapsulates the feeling of nostalgia while still being fresh and new, how they perfectly updated the soundtrack of R/S/E, how much I love every single dialogue, how frickin queer the entire game is what with all these adorable gay little NPCs strewn all over the place... sure, they didn't add the customization feature to this one, but they updated the designs of May and Brendan SO perfectly, I can't even tell who's cuter, and that's coming from someone who barely can bring himself to give a shit about ANY male playable character cuz they all look so frickin humdrum. ANYWAY, ORAS takes up a special place in my heart and I love it. LOTS.

- It was the only generation EVER that did not have... you know, one of these extra games. There was no Z version. I think that’s good. Personally, I often feel Pokemon games are rushed and unfinished. In my opinion, that's one of the reasons we're getting the extra versions for every gen, like Platinum, B2W2 etc. So that they can bait you with all the features that SHOULD have been in the first two games, but that they didn't manage to finish in time for the release. X/Y just had to do with what they had, no take backs, no additions.

Yeah, that kind of left the whole Zygarde business completely unfinished as well as making the Delta Episode virtually useless. I know that's a bad thing that probably robbed us of a lot of details about Zygarde, Primal Reversion and mega evolutions, but. You know. I kinda liked that. I'm not a fan of these over-arcing plot points, I don't care about how mega evolutions came to be and the less upheaval is made around legendaries the better. I think if GF can't complete their excuse for a half-assed story in one game, they shouldn't be able to finish it at all. And if that leaves the plot unfinished, so be it. Less money we are seduced to spend on a game that should have been finished from the start.

- OH and the Fairy type is honestly a nice addition.

Things I disliked:

- I was emphatically On The Fence about Mega Pokemon back then. I found almost all the designs outlandish and the evolutions often superfluous. And of COURSE they had to give Charizard TWO mega evolutions. The narrative pushed that shit down my throat left and right, even if I didn't have a single Pokemon on my team that was even capable of mega evolving. But some of the Megas were kinda cool, I always liked the Digimon approach to evolutions with the whole "evolving back after battle" thing. So I made a point out of being passive aggressively neutral towards this new feature. It kind of changed the whole concept of Pokemon evolution, but I was ready to accept new things into my Pokemon, if the developers considered them an enriching and new vital aspect of this franchise.

That is, until the arrival of the 7th gen. That threw Mega Pokemon out the window. And replaced them. With Z moves. Which I hate with every single fiber of my being. The Mega Pokemon were revealed for what they were. And it wasn't an enriching new vital feature. It was a fucking. Gimmick. They shit all over everything that was established about Pokemon evolution for a dumb frickin one-off gimmick. I mean, Mega Pokemon aren't as abhorrent as Z-moves, but that still didn't sit well with me at all.

- Team Flare is the worst evil team of all. Terrible design, terrible motivation, not even their goons are very funny :/

- The plot was just atrocious in general, but that’s nothing new for Pokemon.

- Too few Pokemon were added to the roster.

- Waaay to many NPCs following you around. Every single one of the numerous routes (which are all fairly linear I might add) started out with some kind of NPC telling you where to go. When. It was obvious where I was supposed to go. To the end of the route. Duh. Calem was creeping me out with his constant "neighbor neighbor neighbor" talk, Trevor and Tierno honestly were the textbook definition of one-note-characters, then you had Sina and Dexio, and they were all just constantly pestering you!

Looking back at it now it seems kinda silly that I would consider just a couple of NPCs talking to me at the start of every route annoying - what with how S/M/US/UM won't let you take a single STEP without freezing you in place and forcing you to listen to at least three Island Kahunas, two rivals and every single Elite 4 member gossiping about the latest news concerning the wrestling persona of the local Pokemon professor. But back then even gen 6 already drove me insane with how much it held me back and forced me to be friends with all of these characters I don't give a frog's fat ass about.

- Pretty much everyone agrees that the game was too simple. The XP-share made training unnecessary, and I remember runs in which I only ever trained the Pokemon with the most need for XP while the others... just kinda. Got dragged along and I barely got to see them. I mean sure you could just switch the XP-share off and that's what I did most of my runs, buuuuut I'd say even then the game is just. Far too easy.

- THE FIRE TYPE still hasn't really redeemed itself to me. Delphox at least was a step in the right direction, but it could have been so much cooler considering it's a frickin PSYCHIC... FIRE... WITCH... FOX!!! >:/ I know everyone loves Talonflame, and it HAS an objectively nice design, but unfortunately it never really worked for me.

And while I think Litleo is ADORABLE, both forms of Pyroar are just so goofy! So much wasted potential in the Fire Pokemon department again, especially after a lot of people speculated the stinger-lookin tip of Litleo's tail was a sign that it would evolve into an awesome fire manticore. And instead we got. Well. This.

I mean, AGAIN! They are FIRE. LIONS. And the male Pyroar looks super static while the female Pyroar looks like she stole Pidgeot's hair. It's where I gotta bring up this concept of "aesthetic vs originality" in Pokemon designs again. At this point, they chose the latter over the former. We already had a couple of lion-inspired Pokemon like Entei and Luxray, so they had to do something new, and I totally get that. You can only design a lion's mane in so many ways, so what they came up with was the idea of Pyroar’s mane spelling the Kanji for "fire". And that's a cool idea, honestly! It's just that it looks so damn silly!

It's not just that, it's also that the design department over at GF just makes the most bizarre decisions sometimes, especially when it comes to color choices. On the right you see a normal female Pyroar, on the left you have an edit that I made shortly after its design was released.

It would have been SO. EASY. To make this look better is what I'm sayin!

And it's not just the Fire Pokemon either. Let's have a look at Chespin's line. What do you think this cute little critter is gonna evolve into?

Surely, it's gonna be a huge green and brown chestnut, right? Nope. Suddenly lots of white out of nowhere.

And that honestly bothered me when the last stages were revealed, cuz I'm a fan of the green-brown color combination, and the white somehow really doesn't work for me. It looks like Chesnaught’s got an eggshell on its head for crying out loud! But to taunt me even further, GF made Chesnaught's SHINY look exactly like what we would have expected from the normal form.

I REALIZE IT SEEMS LIKE I'M GOING OFF ON A TANGENT HERE BUT HEAR ME OUT! I’M GOING SOMEWHERE WITH THIS 8DDD

What this made me realize is something that may sound negative, but is not necessarily negative: Pokemon aren't designed with the intent to look appealing anymore. They are designed with the intent to look DIFFERENT than their predecessors. And that's completely understandable! We're very close to the 1000th Pokemon now, and everyone who knows at least a bit about character design is aware that things like color schemes, silhouettes and that kinda stuff are HUGELY important.

We already HAD a green and brown tanky grass starter with a shell and everything, so they made Chesnaught mostly white. Pyroar with a darker face or a wilder mane mane would have looked neat, but probably too much like Luxray.

That's why we're getting so few quadrupedal dog- or cat-looking Pokemon anymore, even tho pretty much every single one of them is rad as fuck. They all kind of look the same, and I for example am starting to struggle with telling all the different butterflies and small grass critters apart.

It's only natural GF would try to find a solution for this through going for more peculiar designs. It's not them running out of ideas. It's them trying to keep every design fresh and distinct despite the fact that there are SO many Pokemon by now, lest they join a lot of other monster-focused franchises in the trap of recoloring the exact same Charmander over and over again.

And that makes sense. It’s logical. I know that. And I understand that. And I appreciate that. And maybe I will even defend that decision.

But it doesn't change the fact that I miss fluffy quadrupedal mammal-lookin Fire Pokemon with their fur on fire, or that brown-and-green!Chesnaught would have looked WAY cooler! >://////////

And that's my two cents on the whole "they're running out of ideas" debate.

OKAY ON TO THE NEXT TOPIC.

3. Bronze goes to the 1st gen.

Just to make this clear. The only reason. And I mean only reason. Why this gen ranked so high. Is because it is the first one. And because I love it. And it changed my life. And it makes me feel incredibly warm and fuzzy inside. From an objective standpoint, this gen doesn't stand a chance against a couple of others that got ranked lower. I love R/B/Y with all my heart, but I am fully aware that beyond my rose tinted glasses lies a game full of bugs and clunky design decisions.

Things I like:

- Idk it's. It's Pokemon. It's R/B/Y. It's. It's where it all started. The alpha and the omega. It's the Viridian Forest for hours, Weedle after Weedle after Metapod after Weedle after Kakuna after Weedle, ~PRAN-DEEDLEE-KRN~, "A wild Weedle appeared." Getting poisoned back to the Pokemon Center, "A wild Weedle appeared.", after Kakuna after Weedle, always looking for that Pikachu, waiting for that sweet sweet ~DEEDEEDLKRRKRRR~!!, humming that dem dem dem dem, dim dim dim dim, dom dom dom dom, dam dam dam dam~ for hours and hours, and that's saying something, cuz you're ten years old and patience isn't your strong forte!

It's anxiously walking through Mt. Moon, always afraid that too many of your Pokemon might fall unconscious and you will have to walk all the way back to the Pokemon Center, through the Zubats and the Geodudes, it's honestly FEELING like you are in a cave even though it's just an assorted arrangement of tiny, TINY pixels on your screen which you can barely make out cuz it's getting dark outside and you have to hold your gameboy in JUST the right angle to make out what is happening, cuz you really wanna reach Cerulian City before bed time!

It's watching your Charmander evolve and being so damn proud and feeling your heart swell in your chest cuz look at it it looks so cool now and it's Ember is even stronger and it can basically one-hit-kill anything and GOD HAVE MERCY on whoever dares to poison it they shall be squashed by your thirst for revenge!!

It's going down Route 11 after walking home from school on a cold late winter - early spring afternoon, your hair still all chilly and the sky cast over with gray and dark blue clouds, and you're feeling kinda sad cuz you hate school and you don't have any friends and everyone there hates you, but at home you can sit down in your room and play Pokemon and you can imagine your Charmeleon and your Pikachu traveling together with you through the tall grass while your Pidgeotto flies overhead and looks for wild Pokemon, and they love you and you love them and it's maybe the only thing in the world that makes you happy.

It's always fighting Gary with the same team and always making your Pidgeotto go up against his Pidgeotto to show that your bond is stronger, and beating his Wartortle with your Charmeleon to teach him that even tho he's intentionally got the Pokemon with the type advantage, he still can't defeat your awesome Charmeleon who is the absolute best by the way!

It's almost losing your shit while trying to orient yourself in the Seafoam Islands, and getting irrationally angry at Articuno WHY WON'T IT STAY IN THE GODDAMN FRICKIN BALL oh my god it's the last twitch just stay in there please UUUGH it popped open again FUUUUUUUU----

It's holding the "down" + "A" button when catching a Pokemon and holding "left" + "B" when you want your Pokemon to land a critical hit. It's chanting at your Pokemon to not hurt itself in its confusion and praising a Pokemon for waking up just in time. It's sitting in the back of your parents’ car and it's night and you're trying to hold the screen of the gameboy into the headlights of the car driving behind you to see something. It's accidentally cloning your bike with the Missingno. glitch and never getting that fucking thing out of the inventory again. It's finally challenging the Elite 4 with your amazing Charizard, Raichu and Pidgeot that traveled with you from the first day on. It's clicking through the Hall of Fame again and again, looking at the levels of your Pokemon and being super proud of them.

I could go on like this, but I think you get the picture. There was this very empty, very unhappy time in my life, and as silly as it sounds: Pokemon was what helped me feel a little bit less lonely.

Oh and let’s not forget: So many. Cool. Fire Pokemon.

Things I disliked:

- The move pools are terrible, and I'm not speaking from a meta point of view. I'm speaking from a point of view were some Pokemon don't even learn a STAB move. I mean Nidoqueen only learns Body Slam. There's a couple of Pokemon that are very good, and there's a lot of Pokemon that you could never have on your team because they just. Don't work. How am I supposed to get Oddish/Gloom to level 28, where it learns Acid, let alone level 38, where it learns Petal Dance, when ALL it has up to that point is Absorb?

- The UI is atrocious, even for a game this old. There is NO way to find out what an Attack does other than using it in battle. Which means when the game's asking you: "Do you want to forget an old Attack for this new one?" And you don't know anything about the new attack (which is the case for most people who played their first Pokemon game back then mind you), it's the same as tossing a coin.

The storage system was maybe the most terrible part. You could ONLY look at the contents of your boxes if you had at least one empty slot on your team. If you had the habit of nick naming all your Pokemon, well, congratulations, you played yourself. All the Pokemon in the boxes are ONLY displayed by their nick name in the 1st gen. Which means if you have forgotten what name you have given to each Pokemon, you have to pick it up into your party. Which is the biggest hassle in history if you are looking for a certain Pokemon. Switching boxes took forever with all the saving and such. Oh, and you couldn’t catch any Pokemon if your selected box was full :))))))

- The game design wasn't exactly stellar either. What were they thinking making the first two gym leaders a Rock and a Water type trainer? As a notorious Charmander-picker, I felt a bit scammed. They kinda fixed this in FR/LG, the only game in which Charmander learns Metal Claw, but still, the game is far more easy if you start with Squirtle and even MORE of a cakewalk if you pick Bulbasaur. Today it's nbd for me, but as a ten years old, I remember struggling a lot with Brock, all the Geodudes in Mt. Moon and Misty, cuz I mean yeah, you can catch a Pikachu, but even that often wasn't enough to withstand Starmie's Bubble Beam. My point is not that it's impossible or anything, just that it wasn't very cleverly thought through.

Why not put a Normal gym leader first? And if that isn't cool enough, what about Fighting?

- A lot of the sprites were nothing to write home about, even by 90s standards.

- While of course most of the Pokemon designs are frickin awesome and iconic, a lot of them also are the absolute worst. Purple sludge evolves into bigger purple sludge. Red-white ball evolves into bigger red-white ball. Phallic object sticking out of the ground turns into three phallic objects sticking out of the ground. Hooray.

- Far too little space in the inventory AND the item storage on the PC.

- Bugs, bugs everywhere~

2. The second place of the winner’s podium goes to the 3rd gen.

I think it took me until a couple of years ago to realize just how much I love this gen. ORAS MAY have had something to do with it, but honestly, R/S/E are just really good games.

Things I liked:

- The graphics, while far from perfect, were the biggest leap we witnessed in a LONG time.

JUST FSKDasja LOOK at the colors, LOOK at that tiny Kecleon, it's an ACTUAL Kecleon, not just some Rhydon-lookin mess of pixels! In the prior two gens, only a couple of Pokemon had been allowed the luxury of their own distinctive sprite, and even that they had to share (see: Clefairy, Grimer, Lapras etc.). Now not only did they add an overworld sprite for the Pokemon that you met, but every Pokemon also got their own little team sprite to make them more easily distinguishable, even with nick names!

- Which brings me to my next point: The 3rd gen provided us with the biggest UI overhaul of the Pokemon main line games, and MAN was it needed.

What they gave us were intuitive, easy to use, neatly arranged interfaces like the new storage system, the new party overview, all things that have stood the test of time, that are still used today, and for good reason.

- With the updated graphics came the possibility to give us new and innovative biomes. For the first time we had Cities that truly looked different! Fortree City, Pacifidlog Town, Sootopolis City! They were all absolutely unique, each had their own cool ideas and atmosphere!

And we didn't just get interesting towns, we also got to DIVE. Yes, I am very enthusiastic about HM Dive. To me, it just opened up an entirely new world back then! As someone who has a slight fear of deep water, diving through Hoenn's oceans was the most thrilling thing to ever happen in Pokemon outside of battle!

- As sad as it is what happened to the Fire type, and believe me, I will talk at LENGTH about that in the dislike section, this was the generation that introduced me to the idea that maybe, just MAYBE, Grass Pokemon are actually cool, and not just girly boring nerds that are only there to get stomped by Fire Pokemon *nervous laugh* I'm honestly grateful for that, cuz by now, Grass is one of my favorite types (even though it needs a frickin buff so badly.)

- The 3rd gen also gave us awesome stuff like the Running Shoes! And the Mach Bike! Just. Practicality all around!

- Double battles. Amazing idea. Thank you 3rd gen. Would've liked a bit more of those in the game itself, but just. Yes. Good introduction.

- A lot of the new Pokemon were rad af. All the starters’ first stages are cute, and the last stages are pretty cool as well.

- THERE WAS WEATHER!! That was such a cool feature back then! Just, the shivers that I got every time I traveled through Route 119 and there was a thunderstorm, MAN that was the COOLEST thing!

- Secret bases. Yes. Good.

- Natures. Abilities. Nice.

- I think Team Aqua and Magma are the most tolerable of the evil teams outside of Team Rocket. They don't want any deep shit, they don't wanna create a new universe, they don't have any complex plans to take over the world or what have you. They just wanna flood the world with water or lava respectively. So that there will be bigger oceans or more land mass. That's it. I liked that simplicity and absolute honesty with which R/S/E admitted that yes, these two evil teams and their plans weren’t pseudo philosophical, or dark and edgy, or intriguing. They were nothing but frickin ludicrous, the end.

- I kinda like the idea of all the optional routes this game had, while still being clearly arranged and easy to understand. *aggressively side-eyes S/M/US/UM*

- It was the gen that started the trend of remakes. Which should be one more money-grabbing effort that I'm opposed to, but that weirdly enough I can nothing but enjoy.

- Trumpets intensify!

Things I disliked:

- The graphics still weren't up to par to other GBA games. On the left you have The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap. On the right you have Pokemon R/S/E.

I'm sorry that I keep coming back to this, but to me it's just staggering every time I look at how far the Pokemon main line games have always been behind in terms of graphics. This is particularly confusing since a lot of the spin offs tend to have very nice graphics. I don't really know how that came to be, whether it's because the developers know they don't have to put as much effort into their game as other franchises since people are most likely going to buy them anyway, or whether it's because of the tremendous effort of putting so many playable characters in a game that they have to lower their sights on other aspects.

But I do know that I expect more from one of the most successful gaming franchises in the world, especially when all it does is, as I said before, slap a new coat of paint on the same game over and over again.

- Move pools were sub-par. As much as I love Sceptile, it doesn't know anything but Quick Attack and Pursuit until Level 29, where it finally learns Leaf Blade. Aaand that's pretty much the best attack it can acquire all by itself. No Solar Beam, no nothing. I remember really struggling with Sceptile in my first playthrough.

(Btw, Sceptile kinda suffers from this up until today. The problem is that Sceptile's strength is in its Special Attack. Back in the 3rd gen, all Grass type moves were Special moves, which includes Leaf Blade. Today though, Leaf Blade is a physical move, and Sceptile's Attack is not that great. But it's the best STAB attack it learns until Leaf Storm on Lv.63, and I'm not really sure what they were thinking with that. There is a trick to avoid this situation: Just train your Treecko to Lv.21 before letting it evolve, which is how it learns Giga Drain, by far its best move for a normal playthrough. But I don't understand why Sceptile couldn't have learned Giga Drain. Why hide this attack from gamers who don't spend their life on Bulbapedia? Idk. Weird decision, tho that's rather a detracting point for ORAS, but ANYWAY why can't Sceptile just get the move pool it deserves??)

-Dive is cool, but it really wasn't very practical that you needed to teach your Pokemon three water HMs just to progress the plot.

- They removed the day-night-cycle. For some reason.

- I’m not sure why there was a need to add Pokemon Contests. The mechanics surrounding them are tedious, and I’m just not a fan of what they stand for.

- I liked the departure from tsundere rivals that R/S/E's Wally stood for. I liked Wally himself. But he also was the first in a long line of rivals who just. Didn't make me wanna beat them. Gary's and Silver's snotty attitude made me really wanna kick their asses, but then they turned the rival from antagonists into allies, like helpful kinda mentor figures, inexperienced kohai personalities who look up to you, or a best friend who just really wants to strive to be the very best.

And these kinda get boring to beat tbh. Like, Calem's whining about not being able to win just started annoying me so quickly! I kinda miss my bratty douchey bully rivals.

- It was this gen that that marked the decline of the Fire type and started the trend of adding p much nothing but generally underwhelming Fire Pokemon. It also gave us the first in what would be a long line of Fire/Fighting starters. But no matter what your opinion on Blaziken is, I think we can all agree that the alternatives, Torkoal and Camerupt, weren't exactly the most appealing of options. I'm still not over how similar Torkoal and Numel (and to an extent Camerupt) look!

I mean come ON GF! Yeah, it's a tortoise and a camel, but they're both stout have short klutzy legs and a big round torso with a hump that spews smoke. That's the same idea twice!

And despite running the danger of getting lost in anecdotes, this decline in number of cool Fire Pokemon for me was marked not by a slow feeling of discontentment, but a big, absolutely traumatic incident, alas! When in the first two gens the Fire starters were my Poke-pals of choice, my disdain for the Fighting type forbade me to even consider picking the roostery brawler with the stylish flared pants, if you allow me that pun. Thus I resorted to the FUCKING AMAZING GRASS DINOSAUR which I loved anyway and took to the road.

Not feeling any inclination to properly plan a team, I mostly just befriended the creatures along the way that I regarded as, for a lack of better terms, cuddly. The Fire types that crossed my path, mostly Numel and Slugma, did not appeal to me at all, I turned a blind eye to them, and thus began the tragedy.

After a long, arduous journey, I bade defiance to the sovereignty of the Elite 4 and the one who calls himself their champion! My friends fought well and together we made it to the doorstep of Steven Stone, a man as cold and unrelenting as his name.

Counting no Fire Pokemon among my allies, I was tread into the dust again and again, until my weakened soul couldn't take it anymore. Indeed, I could have chosen defeat, honed my skills and returned later, for those that fly may fight again!

Yet my pride was too strong. Those Pokemon that I had trained from the cradle should suffer loss at the hand of this smug, impertinent charlatan? Nay, not on my life! I rather would have deleted them, together with this doomed existence, than allow Steven, the fiend, that satisfaction.

...And that's how my dumb 13yo self deleted a save file with a team full of a couple of my favorite Pokemon on it. Just because I fucking hated Steven Stone so much. Just because I didn't have a Pokemon on my team that could defeat his Metagross. Just because there wasn't a single nice Fire Pokemon that I could've caught on my journey. Just because the Fire Starter disappointed me so much. Just because the Fire type betrayed me.

Honestly, that team kinda haunts me to this very day. I still remember all of their nick names.

I guess what I lived through is a story about hubris. A tragic tale, and the trauma that lurks behind my obsession with the introduction of unappealing Fire Pokemon, and my particular aversion to Fire/Fighting starters.

Honest to FUCKING god to this very day I am subconsciously afraid of having such a type weakness every time I plan a new party, and the Steel type makes me particularly nervous. As I laid out, there aren't a lot of cool new Fire types that I could assimilate into my team, and it doesn't help that one of the alternatives is the ~*~loathsome Fighting type~*~.

ANYWAY that's the reason I get so worked up about the whole topic. Now you know my secret. Go spread the knowledge, lest anyone repeats the follies of my youth.

EDIT from October 11th 2018:

VENGEANCE WAS HAD

This is the very same team that I used to challenge Steven back then! (Albeit a bit better trained and with a better move set). Never seen something so satisfying as that goddamn Metagross being stalled into Struggle! I’m so proud of my babies ✨

1. This leaves us with my favorite gen of all time: The 2nd one.

It is here that intense nostalgia and an actual good game come together to form the ultimate love that I have for this gen. It is by far the one I remember most playing day and night, it's the one that I connect the most memories with, and it's a game that felt like actual effort went into it to make it more interesting than its predecessor.

Things I liked.

- Just the IDEA that there was a new Pokemon game with new Pokemon was enough to make me go BONKERS back then. From the moment I heard that there would be more Pokemon I was HYPED as all hell and couldn't wait to make friends with all of them. They used to look very sleek to me, though I think that's mostly because the sprites and colors suddenly looked better. But it felt like the franchise was growing and changing, a bit like I did! ...It was all very important to me back then.

- While the overworld barely changed, we still got a couple of graphic updates. There was a lot more detail in the world design, buildings looked different and the new colors gave everything much more atmosphere! Instead of eleven party sprites, we got 37, some of them fairly unique to a single Pokemon or an evolution line.

- In my opinion, the sprites are on average the best and most charming ones of the entire franchise.

Despite the fact that each Pokemon could only have two colors plus black and white, they looked so detailed for their time. Pretty much every Pokemon looked cute, the colors were vibrant, and these sprites still pose the standard for how Pokemon should look for me.

Also Crystal had the first animated sprites! And we aren't talking "two frames and the rest is just compressing and tearing them" like the shit they pulled in Emerald. We are talking fully animated, with in-betweens and everything. That kinda dragged every fight out a bit more than it needed to be, but I didn't care. I just thought it was frickin amazing that the Pidgey in front of me was flapping its wings.

- The music was improved so much from the first gen. There are probably only a few Pokemon fans out there who don't get nostalgic while listening to the R/B/Y tracks, but G/S/C had incredibly complex compositions that really made use of the four sound channels in the best way possible. Much more than in the previous games the soundtrack was diverse, atmospheric, and unique.

- The addition of the day-night-cycle was really cool. It gave the game such a cool feeling, especially since I played a lot during the night, when all the cities were dark and only their windows were shining bright in the darkness. It was little things like this that gave this still pretty static world life and ambiance.

- All the starters are awesome, both their first and their last stages.

- The addition of two new types was blowing my MIND back then.

- The berries were a cool idea. Per se. When there were only a couple of them.

- You could chose the gender of your avatar!

- Shinies are kinda snazzy.

- The battle against Red was maybe the most epic fight ever. This silent guy standing all alone atop post-game-mountain with his roster of hugely strong Pokemon... The whole thing was just so mysterious! I kinda miss this tbh.

- It's kinda weird to bring this up specifically, but considering what fan favorites these two Pokemon are, I have to talk about them: Espeon and Umbreon are two of the most awesome Pokemon in the history of ever, and the idea to add new Eeveelutions was great.

- I liked the introduction of the friendliness-meter. It kinda made it feel like it mattered whether you treated your Pokemon well or badly.

- G/S/C had many mysterious events, like the dancing Clefairy, the secret wild Lapras in the Union Cave... small things like these made the game feel way more vast and mystical!

- Pokemon breeding! I always was a tiny baby feminist at heart, so it was very important to me to get a team with lots of cool female Pokemon to kick the butt of all the boys at school who told me female Pokemon were weaker than their male counterparts. This was doubly true for Pokemon that made it very hard to get a female one, such as Eevee. Just like today, the fact alone that only a bit more than 10% of Eevees are female made me work twice as hard to get one, just out of spite, and the hours I spent driving up and down Goldenrod City hatching Eevee eggs are endless.

- And one of the things that decisively make the 2nd gen my favorite one is the fact that G/S/C are the only games that gave us two. Entire. Countries. To explore. First Johto, and then an updated Kanto ONCE. MORE. What other Pokemon game can say that it included the entire previous generation, gym leaders, trainers, badges, Pokemon and everything.

Things I disliked:

- The phone was a mistake.

- Trainers starting with Chikorita were at a similar disadvantage as those starting with Charmander in the first gen, with the difference that Meganium stayed virtually useless throughout the game. Don't get me wrong, I love Chikorita and its evolutions, but they didn't have the advantage over a single gym type. If anything, most of the gyms had a type advantage over poor Chikorita. Once more a pretty weird design decision. Buff the Grass type.

- It's kind of a shame that G/S/C are the only games that stop working after a couple of years since the battery runs dry.

- What's worse than a legendary? That's right, a roaming legendary.

- My recurring Fire problem hadn't reared its head yet, but that doesn't mean GF wasn't already fumbling the type. There were only two newly added Fire evolution lines that weren't the starter. Houndour was pretty cool, and we don't talk about Slugma. But for some reason, you could only get either of them after you beat the Elite 4. Yes, both Houndour and Slugma were only catchable in Kanto, for some absurd reason. So your only choice for a Fire Pokemon outside of Typhlosion when playing through Johto was Vulpix or Growlithe, depending on which version you got.

This is especially jarring considering you need a Fire Stone to evolve either of those, which in G/S/C you could only get north of Cerulian City. Which means: IN KANTO. Which means: If you didn't chose Typhlosion or incorporate legendary Pokemon into your team, there was no way to get a fully evolved Fire Pokemon until AFTER you beat the Elite 4...!

It's just. I don't understand. Why not just put Houndour on Route 36+37 instead of Growlithe or Vulpix. WHY, GF. What is your problem with the Fire type.

And that concludes my ranking of the current seven Pokemon gens.

It turned out to be a lot more about my personal experience with these games than anything else. But since I love hearing stories about what connects people to certain Pokemon games and why, I think that's okay.

I’ve been working on this on and off over the course of about two weeks, whenever I had time and felt like it. I think it was worth the effort and I hope you found a bit enjoyment in following me down memory lane as well.

If you have any opinions on the different gens or the points I jotted down, I'd love to read them! ^^

#Pokemon #POKEMON IS SRS BSNZ #Rob rants #sharing Pokemon stories is so good

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