#and if this were the inevitable Unova remakes

[alexanderkrizak]

And now the Champion screen only shows ONE Pokémon, so you can’t see Serperior’s grassy teammates Leavanny, Sawsbuck, Amoonguss, Ferrothorn, and Virizion. But more annoying is that clear time, because Pokémon White only gives you a Champion screen on the rematch! That is three times what my clear time for Brilliant Diamond was.

I seriously had to grind the entire postgame just to get my Pokémon strong enough, which just added to this already difficult run. Grass was... not the best option for Pokémon White, with a Bug, Flying, AND Ice gym and, oh, giving N a team-murdering Reshiram. But I got through it somehow.

[goldensunset]

well ok

slightly sappy post incoming

dang. i really started pokémon black 2 almost four months ago??? toward the end of august??? completely insane. it took me a long time just to do the main story and then i was like i wanna do all the side postgame stuff afterwards plus the season-restricted stuff. which was totally worth it. but now at last i feel that this journey has come to an end…

but like the thing about this being a sequel is it’s also kinda the end of my overarching gen 5 journey? which i think is even more painful. i have absolutely completely fallen to death in love with these games over the course of this entire year of 2024, seeing as i started the first game in january. the year of unova for me. and it has truly been the highlight of my year. not that that’s much of an achievement bc this year has lowkey sucked for me but like these games and their characters and stories and songs have seriously brightened my life so much i’m so grateful. it’s hard saying i’m finally done! i got so obsessed i even read the manga… i suppose i still have the pokémon masters ex cutscenes to watch even if those aren’t canon but like canon enough right? i need every ounce of gen 5 i can get

i’d been wanting to play this gen for a while bc i knew it was a lot of people’s favorites and i knew i’d love it and it would destroy me. but i was just going to wait for remakes, until i was finally convinced i should just learn how to emulate. and the payoff was excellent! my beloved laptop is so strong for this lol. but it’s time to end her agony. at least for now (we’ll see what i decide to emulate next!!!)

so uh not sure how to end this. both the first and second games blew me away at every turn even though my expectations were already high. if it wasn’t clear where i stood on the matter. Wow. i hope the inevitable remakes are good and i hope there’s a legends game someday bc i am completely insane and the world at large needs to know about and love unova forever. this experience will live with me forever genuinely. proof that you don’t have to be a kid to experience childlike wonder that will later become nostalgia. pokémon is for all ages!!

in conclusion thank you for bearing with my uh. well. i don’t even want to know how many hundreds of posts there are in this tag. thank you for bearing with my incessant ramblings and updates! see i do it for myself bc i need to archive my own nonstop thoughts plus i like hearing feedback if i need help… but i also do love it so much when other people who have played the game before get excited to relive their first-time experience vicariously through me. and i also love it when people who haven’t played it message me saying ‘i have literally no idea what you’re talking about at all but i’m glad you’re having fun i think?’. objectively funny. stay tuned for the next time i play or replay a game and can’t shut my mouth once ever!

peace out

[quixot1sm]

one of my biggest issues with gen 5 is that, despite the sole focus of the games being on the bond between trainers and pokemon, there isn't anything to really get the player themselves attached to their pokemon, especially in contrast to the games that came just before it. there's no group photos or following pokemon feature like there were in hgss, and there's not even any ribbons to be found in unova that would add some kind of unique or novel quality to your pokemon. the one thing bw DOES have is the musical, which is just a severely stripped down incarnation of the sinnoh contests. your team only exists in your inventory and nowhere else...

all things considered, it feels like a massive oversight. i hope that in the inevitable remakes there's at least a camp or amie/refresh feature of some kind

[geeneelee]

My (somewhat vague) hcs about the history of Hisui:

The hero was one of the Celestica people; after it defeated Arceus, Arceus was so impressed and intrigued that it joined the Hero, and was cool with allowing the people there to use its powers to accomplish incredible things. However, a lot of the Celestica people got inflated egos about having Arceus’s favor and wanted to use it to conquer the world, become immortal, etc but the Hero refused because he was a nice dude and told them he wouldn’t allow it.

They killed him.

Arceus, horrified, left the Celestica people. They realized they had messed up, and many of them left to search for Arceus and beg its forgiveness, unwilling to accept the loss. Those left behind began to struggle.

Cogita saved the child of the Hero from the chaos and helped them escape Hisui for Unova (since the hero of legend portraits look just like Alder) and she was “blessed” with immortality to help the new hero that would one day arrive. She had to watch her partner die, and their children, and their children’s children—Volo is one of her descendants.

Arceus felt badly that the Hero’s Pokémon, it’s former teammates, were abandoned, and when two ships from a people fleeing conflict nearly sank, it instead guided them to Hisui to start a new life. Palkia and Dialga arrived to tell them of the hero and that they were to cherish his former Pokémon, but when they met up and both claimed to have been blessed by the creator, an inevitable fight broke out about who was really blessed, causing the schism.

Volo grew up as a single child in poverty, hearing faded tales about how his ancestors were favored by Arceus. He felt that Arceus’s favor was his birthright that had been stolen, and the Diamond and Pearl clans were just interlopers. He was aware that Cogita was also from their people and tried to press her for information, but she withheld it and feigned ignorance, not wanting him to go the route of his ancestors. Volo wanted to find Arceus and force it to remake the world into the one he deserved, and dug deep into the traces of myth that were left behind, leading him to encounter Giratina, which led to the events of the game.

[onewingednatu]

I want the inevitable Unova remake/ next game to be like Legends Arceus

I want to go back in time to when Zekrom, Reshiram, and Kyurem were all one pokemon. I want to meet the Heros in the legends- or better yet, I want to BE one of the heroes in the legends!

We don't even have to be literally thrown back in time, just someone who lived in that era!

Idk I'm just thinking out loud lol

[a-tale-of-legends]

I saw your tags in response to mine and!! Thank you for reading my Kuroshipping fic KJSHAJKSHAJK Cheren Appreciators in 2022 rise up!! If he and Bianca (and Hugh) do not get to interact with N at all in the inevitable Gen 5 remake I will cry /hj

CHEREN APPRECIATORS RISE UP!!!

I haven't played the Unova games in a while but I greatly remember thinking how cool Cheren and Bianca were in the games and how they fit the games themes so well. They really should interact him it would be sooooo perfect!!!! I need them to be friends!!!!!!

[atrainernamedradish]

Top 5 Favorite Rivals

Least Favorite list: https://atrainernamedradish.tumblr.com/post/190290513502/top-5-least-favorite-rivals

Top 5 Favorite Rivals:

5) Barry [Diamond & Pearl; Platinum]

I think people can agree with me when I say Barry either needs to lay off the sugar and caffeine, or needs some Adderall, because holy fuck he was so damned hyper it was unreal! And before someone gets mad at the joke let me remind you that there is some dialogue where he tries to count to ten, and proclaims he can’t even sit still to do so! Like sweet Lord Barry calm the fuck down lol!

Jokes aside, I thought Barry was a solid rival. He wasn’t mean-spirited about being so or always trying to act better than you about it. Sure, he was cocky, but he eventually learned that he had to put his ego aside to actually learn how to be that much of a better trainer. His teams were pretty solid too. He wasn’t the hardest person to face, but he wasn’t a pushover by any means. Sometimes his hyperness was a bit annoying, but nothing that bugged me for too long. He was a good rival to have when you’re trying to deal with the headache that is the other rival that is your boring opposite gender.

4) Marnie [Sword & Shield]

Marnie is an interesting character. When I first saw her in the reveals for Sword & Shield I thought she was going to be this arrogant punk (I blame the black leather and spikes :P), but when you actually meet her that isn’t the case. She’s actually someone who doesn’t have that much confidence in herself, at first though, but as you progress through the game she builds up to that. In fact, the only thing she was confident in was not taking over her brother’s gym and setting out to do her own thing. Besides believing how confident she was going to be, I was also expecting Marnie to have this annoying personality (but I feel like that was due to Team Yell being there more than anything), but once again she blew my expectations out of the water! Her personality was sweet and likeable and it was refreshing! Her team was actually a pretty powerful one and was actually fit her aesthetic! That’s actually rare for a rival in this series if I’m being honest… From her aesthetic that mixes hard and soft (which yay the girls will be getting her outfit which I adore and can’t wait to have on my alt character!), her sweet shy personality that eventually gets some quiet confidence behind it, and her battle prowess, I enjoyed her as a rival as opposed to the other two who either got shafted by the overdone formula, or the one rival trying to be the OG rival who we’ll never truly get back.

3) Blue (Green) [Pokemon Red & Blue (Green); Yellow (Pikachu Edition); FireRed & LeafGreen; Let’s Go Pikachu & Eevee]

And speaking of the OG, here he is: Blue (or Green if your Japanese). Many Pokemon games after the originals have tried to replicate this character, and haven’t quite made one that is up to snuff. This character is a perfect blend of cocky asshole and a strong trainer. You almost liked how much smack he talked then enjoyed kicking his ass after the fact, and doing so wasn’t always an easy feat, even in the remakes (excluding the Let’s Go series since he isn’t your rival in that). He had almost the perfect team not only against your starter but to also counteract your team members that made up your team for said starter’s weaknesses. That’s why kicking his ass was all that much sweeter because he didn’t just hand it to you. He made you work for that victory. While I’m not necessarily someone who is looking for a rival that has to be an elite trainer or anything, it’s nice to not have a friendly rival who talks a big game but is always going to face defeat, and quite easily and quickly too, by your hands. There have been some other rivals that have been pretty tough to deal with, but not as challenging as Blue will ever be… There’s a reason you will find this asshole on almost every top rival list. He earned that spot. Because despite being that smack talking asshole that you have to work extra hard to beat… he is kind of charming. He’s the rival you love to beat.

2) Bianca [Pokemon Black & White; Black 2 & White 2]

I want to make this clear with about my opinions on characters in Pokemon: they don’t have to be the strongest to be my favorites or even liked for that matter, and Bianca is one of those characters as far as battling prowess is concerned. I like Bianca for her character arc as well as the character herself. I think this character gets a lot of hate for no reason other than her not being a strong trainer, or not automatically being this confident cool character that should be ready to adventure which is honestly sad…

For me, Bianca is a very relatable character who in my honest opinion is a very underrated character. She is a character who wanted to do something with her life, but wasn’t sure how to start or go about doing it. Her first attempt is by doing what all the other characters her age do and that’s to set off on her own Pokemon journey, even if she wasn’t exactly ready. As her story progresses she comes to realize that that isn’t for her, and honestly not every person in that world is going to go out there finding out that this is for them. Not to mention not everyone who sets out on their Pokemon journey is going to find themselves being these super powerful trainers who are always going to confidently beat everything in their path. Bianca getting picked on by Team Plasma was not all that farfetched. She was a brand new trainer experiencing new things making her an easy target for them. Your character could have easily been just as privy to Team Plasma. Generation V showed that anyone was susceptible to them. But anyway, I’m going a little off topic, Bianca did struggle, but her struggles eventually took her to her calling: being a professor’s aid. Which fits her and overall is a good story arc for her. She’s not your typical rival of going around trying to one-up you and getting on your nerves trying to do so. She’s a friend, a main character, and unlike the typical power hungry overused rival archetypes, she grew and I was happy for her.

Not to mention, Bianca is one of the first few characters in the series to actually really… notice that there is this big new world around you and it’s something to explore taking it in as opposed to rushing into filling the Pokedex or doing the Gym Challenge, and honestly that’s refreshing for a character! Because you cannot tell me that if you were to leave your home setting off on a journey traveling to many new places that you’d overlook everything? Probably not. You’d want to explore all the new sites. That’s the whole point of an RPG is to explore. I felt more immersed in Black & White than most Pokemon games because I had a character in my journey to make it feel like it was actual exploration instead of bare bones places with much to be had. Unova, as to other regions, had a lot more sightseeing options and a lot more to explore. Unova just felt big, kind of like Johto and Kanto for GSC/HGSS. Just, thanks Bianca for feeling like a real person, instead of one-dimension rival who either wants to kick my ass or is so boring that I wish they were annoying lol…

1) Wally [Pokemon Ruby & Sapphire; Emerald; Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire]

It’s like I stated with Bianca: a rival for me doesn’t have to have battle prowess to be liked by or be a favorite for me. Not gonna lie, I wish Wally had a better team, but unfortunately Wally falls under the earlier formulas of forcing trainers to use entirely new Pokemon instead only peppering their teams with a few new ones, but whatever… 

Wally has one of my favorite rival arcs. He is a sickly kid who wants so badly to be healthier and have a Pokemon of his own so he could one day to set on his very own Pokemon journey like the other kids who have probably left by now on it. Nicely enough your character is there to guide and watch over him as he finally catches his very own Pokemon, even if later you were there to kick his ass a bit later on… While I do like how ORAS gave more facial expressions for this character to make you more sympathetic to him in the story… I wish they hadn’t had him show up after your battle with your dad to keep that mysteriousness of him actually progressing along side you on your Gym Challenge (yes I know you could read the gym signs to see that he’s doing it, but no one thinks to read those, let’s be honest!) before running into him at the end of Victory Road, but oh well. Honestly I wish they had had him in the Champion spot, kind of like what RBY did with Blue, but instead of knowing your rival was one step ahead of you as always you had the sickly kid you thought you sent home after a crushing defeat there instead who actually overcame it and decided to meet you there to prove he did so.

Overall Wally was an underdog and I like characters like that. You don’t expect him to become much more powerful after Mauville. He takes his defeat and he does his best to make up for it by having it push him. He wants to be stronger to prove to everyone, but more importantly to you, the person who was there to witness his journey from the start, how capable he was. Yeah, you do inevitably beat him, which is the fate of the main player in Pokemon, but when you do it you don’t think “aw man I beat another weak rival” or “hah! I beat your smug ass again!” you think of how it was a fun battle and a great progression in a well developed character’s story. And even then, Wally doesn’t take the defeat as a loss, but more as a way to push himself even further. He sees losing as a way to overcome something as to trying to cover up his frustration or to go packing home, and that is an admirable trait. Plus the final battle with him on Victory Road was pretty epic with that new theme of his as well as made me a bit sad because I had to beat him and all he did was smile and thank me… Made me want to cry lol… But that’s why Wally is my favorite rival. He has a great character arc, personality, and he makes me feel so many emotions that I feel like other rivals or characters couldn’t give me… Good job Wally you will always be the rival. 

[umbrahighpriestofgiratina]

Gen 8 Predictions/Hopes List

Okay, as a successor to the trailer analysis it was only natural to do this, plus I did something like this three years ago for G7. This is where I extrapolate on everything I think we'll get in Sword and Shield and everything I want to get. In no particular order:

-First off, I'm not demanding some Breath Of The Wild or Super Mario Odyssey-esqe leap forward like a lot of people seem to be doing, and I kind of side-eye those people (including some Youtubers I'm disappointed in because I know they're better than that). That's not sustainable for every single Nintendo franchise or hell every single video game franchise period. What I do want is a smaller advancement that keeps the franchise what it is while adding plenty that is new and interesting and not too gimmicky - to quote @enigma-boi on my Discord server more like the difference between Splatoon 1 and Splatoon 2. I want it to be like the breath of fresh air Unova or even Alola were.

-On the note of those two please have a good plot. It's not a dealbreaker but please.

-Also less of a focus on gimmicks. Mega Evolutions and Z-Moves and such are cool but if you try to top them every gen things get... bloated. This is part of why I don't like the Armored Evolution rumor.

-There's probably going to be at least one Eeveelution. Give me Dragon or give me death.

-DITCH THE CATCHING TUTORIAL. LET'S GO HAD A STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION THERE. PLEASE.

-Hopefully HMs are gone for good too. I'm optimistic they are but.

-Also put your PC in your bag like Let's Go but make it more like the PCs from Hoenn to Alola.

-Nicknaming your Pokemon on the fly should come back too. And LET US NICKNAME TRADED POKEMON FOR GOD'S SAKE

-I feel we'll get it but give us the Pokemon Amie equivalent. Let me pet my Arceus on my big-screen TV.

-On that note. They said this would be a more handheld-oriented experience but I think when docked there will still be motion control some places like the Amie equivalent and in minigames, which are replaced by the touch screen and/or buttons in handheld mode.

-I'm a little sad gyms are back because the island trials in G7 were a nice change of pace but given that weird logo that's showing up everywhere I still have hope Galar's gyms are unconventional. We'll see.

-Minor nitpick but I hope Pokecenters and Pokemarts are still merged here. I know they've only been unmerged in remakes of games predating that concept but still.

-I'm pretty sure it's not coming back this time but I want co-op to make a return. That was fun in Let's Go, even if most of my experience with it was forcing a RL friend that knows jack shit about Pokemon to play with me.

-Speaking of multiplayer! Go back to an online experience more like G6's. Please. I'm begging you Gamefreak.

-Regarding the Galar region and its UK-y nature my one wish is that we get a bunch of pesudo-Arthurian bullshit as part of the setting lore. If there is none I will be forced to make some (and probably do some silly Fate series crossovers while I'm at it).

-References to UK pop culture would be delightfully silly too.

-For the cover legendaries... the logos make me think twin wolves. There's a rumor that it's a metal snake and wooden horse and while I would be 100% down for the metal serpent and the inevitable Metal Gear Solid jokes it would attract that leaves the question of what the wolf heads represent so I'm currently banking on my first guess.

-This makes me think the third legendary is a cat. Possibly a lion because Britain but we just had Solgaleo. Maybe a Welsh dragon instead. Or a third option of dragon cat. I suddenly want this.

-As for other Pokemon... I'm not really picky as there's no Pokemon design I outright dislike and I doubt that's gonna change, so I'm cool with whatever. But I hope because of the setting we have lots of Dragon types. Also a gryphon/griffin Pokemon. Maybe with a hippogriff as a counterpart

-Also this has nothing to do with the setting but I want a hummingbird and a dolphin

-As for the final forms of the starters... I'm guessing/hoping Grass/Dark for Grookey, Fire/Electric for Scorbunny, and Water/Dragon for Sobble

-On a minor note I hope they either make the Escape Rope a non-consumable key item or have a HM equivalent that lets you nope out of dungeons.

-I assume Trainer customization is back but I'm gonna put it as a request anyway. Additionally, for when we do get it, diversifying hair and eye color beyond "natural" options as much as possible (if the NPCs can have blue hair why can't we? We're the protagonist! We're supposed to be more special™ than they are!) Gen 7 had headway for this but I want MORE. Also a skin tone slider.

-More events that let you catch and name the Pokemon yourself

-There doesn't seem to be a Dark gym on the map so... Give us a lore reason there's not a Dark-type gym. (Is there some Defense Against The Dark Arts bullshit going on here? We need to know!)

-This one is a bit weird but bring back something like the Friend Safari? That was fun.

-Random encounters are back. Sigh. As a hope I hope we get a key item that replaces Repels and lets you toggle them on or off.

-Upgrade a lot of the more held-item-based, out-of-battle-use only, or otherwise lackluster/situational Abilities to be less so.

-Fill out the unused type combos. Especially the unused Fairy combos. GIVE ME FAIRY DARK AND DRAGON BUG

-There will inevitably be cameos of characters from other regions and one of them is going to be Looker. Looker is omnipresent. Looker is omniscient. Looker is a being too powerful for this world. Arceus looks upon Looker and quakes in fear at what they have created.

-And last but not least I think we'll get at least one new hot female NPC and at least one new hot male NPC, because I am a bisexual mess.

Whew! That was mostly hopes because I feel like we could get just about anything this gen but it was fun to write. But that's about it. If anyone wants to throw predictions of their own at me feel free to do so.

[grafai-ai]

*Cracks knuckles*

With the giga leak it was shown a lot of pokemon lines were condensed (I.E. Squirtle and Wartortle were the same line, Blastoise was from another line). The long standing theory of Venonat evolving into Butterfree wasn't one of those things. BUT here's my batshit take: Venonat is actually a puss catapillar and that's why it turns into a moth. It's other two legs are hidden under its fluff.

Anyone who stuck around after the original fall of Team Plasma are dumbasses and are pretty much a good allegory for PEŢA themselves. Either way, Coreless is kind of not all there anyway considering how he acts in Sun and Moon. Also personally, I still don't think Unova is the entire United States. It's just New York and New Jersey with unique biomes.

To me XY were transitional games. It was a new thing they were trying out...but because of that they put most of the effort into the graphics. But yeah. There's some redeeming mini-moments like the accidentally gay dialog, being able to nickname your character, and the post game. But Kalos as a whole...could have been better. It just seemed like it was missing a lot of stuff they wanted to put it.

Bots as in Wondertrade bots or like bot bots? If it's the former, they need to stop. I'm tired of getting 70 shiny legendaries in apricorn balls holding a master ball with the name hackeymon[dot]csx. Still not above taking the master balls before releasing them though.

Personally I liked the ultra beasts. It was a nice twist on referencing invasive species by making them literal invaders from another dimension. Now if only they'd do more with the concept. Like have a full Legends game set in the alternate dimension instead of leaving it in USUM.

I like Galar for its attention to detail instead of just making Great Britain this fairytale storybook land full of royalty and wizards. But at the same time, despite caring for the franchise, I'm also too old for the dex and graphics discourse ™️ because I understand how games work under TPCi's weird reverse hostage situation. Now Kalos on the other hand...that place was baaaaad and underrealized. I can only hope it's able to be visited in Scarlet and Violet so it can be redeemed.

I'm not going to argue about BDSP being bad. But at the same time it feels almost like Legends was going to be the remake but it shifted into something else after a while so they made a more faithful one and kind of failed at it by making it too faithful and not adding Platinum stuff in there.

I know it's inevitable at this point. But we really need less bipedal cats.

I am opening this post to the public. Please reblog or reply with your most batshit opinions. Thank you

[bunnywand]

i kno the sinnoh remakes have only just been announced, so this is just fun speculation, but i’m wondering abt the unova remakes.. 👀

i think they’re an inevitability, but obvs a Way off yet 😧 just a wild guess bcos i think it’d be neat, but i could see 2030 for them, cos that’d be a) nrly the same timespan between the hoenn remakes and the sinnoh remakes, and the sinnoh remakes and the unova remakes + b) the 20th anniversary of black/white 😳

if i had to guess what generation we’ll be up to by then?? maybe gen 10?? 🤔 i think u can imagine a reasonable timeframe there, and that’d carry on a nice pattern too, seeing as we’ve had gen 2 remakes in gen 4, gen 3 in gen 6, and now gen 4 in gen 8, so it’d be satisfying to get gen 5 in gen 10!!

idk how they’ll deal w/ the continued story between black/white and black 2/white 2 tho.. they’re still the only games that have ever had direct sequels, so would they all get remakes?? or w/ advances in gaming tech by then, maybe they’ll fit them all into one game?? that’s a difficult question 😧

and after them?? well atm i can’t imagine them doing x/y remakes.. 😅 (but i kno ppl say that every time there’s remakes like “hgss will be the last remakes, they won’t ever do sinnoh remakes!!”) like, gen 5 i can see, bcos they were the last 2d sprite based games, so the last needing of an ~upgrade~ to 3d, and getting to experience them like that for the first time will be Huge!! 😵

but x/y were the first 3d games and honestly rn, i can’t imagine an upgrade of them being that spectacular (i mean, the pokemon models between x/y, s/m and sw/sh have only been Slightly tweaked).. but rly, who knows!! if gen 5 remakes do end up being like 10 years away, who even knows what advances might have been made in gaming by then!! i mean, i couldn’t have predicted that hoenn remakes were gonna happen when fr/lg came out, or these sinnoh remakes when hg/ss came out 😅

anyways um.. oops 😳 this post ended up being Way longer than i thought it was gonna be.. 😭

[gascon-en-exil]

The interminable generation war of the Pokémon fandom is not something I’m inclined to wade into, not least because I am one of those strange individuals who play the games in part for their stories and worldbuilding. As reliably underwhelming as those attributes of any given game in this franchise may be, it’s nonetheless evident that Gamefreak puts some effort into elements of the franchise that aren’t competitive tournaments or Battle <name of building>s or gimmicky mini games. Sometimes. 

As such, in the spirit of my modest contributions to the FE and Zelda fandoms on this blog and as further proof that I am capable of judging aspects of video games aside from the desirability and inferred sexual prowess (or lack thereof) of their men, here follows my current opinions on each of the regions of the main series...so nothing about Orre or those Ranger spin-offs or whatever. And yes -  regions rather than generations, so the remakes will be grouped with their originals.

So. Very. Blaaaand. As with Archanea from Fire Emblem and the NES Zelda games I can respect the historical significance of the Kanto games; hell, unlike FE and Zelda I was actually following the series back when RBY were in their prime...and yet they are so unremarkable. Kanto feels utterly devoid of distinctive personality despite appearing in all of the first four generations, and even today there’s really nothing I can say about it beyond the relatively realistic villain team and the emphasis on modernization in contrast to Johto. Supposedly, anyway...it’s more like Kanto cares less about historical preservation which I suppose is probably the closest these games comes to commenting upon the real world inspiration for the region. Combine this with a contentious roster of Pokémon - some are great and still hold up today, some are meh, and almost all of them get disproportionate amounts of exposure and new toys in later generations, for better or worse - and an infamously loud fanbase wearing some very thick nostalgia goggles and you’ve got a setting I have no interest in revisiting. I absolutely wouldn’t put another round of remakes past GF, though 

(But having the protagonist and his rival hook up in their later years was a nice twist.)

Not much more developed than its predecessor, but the Johto games benefit immensely from throwing in Kanto as a bonus (sort of) postgame region, both for the aforementioned contrast and for the additional content. Sure, the level curve is kind of screwy, the Pokémon could be better (Johto has my least favorite starter line-up, for instance), and Kanto feels half-formed in Gen II, but it’s not bad for what it is. I like that these games are set three years after the first ones, in that it conveys a sense of the passage of time - something that would only get more vague as the series progressed. I’m not much interested in the nods to Japanese culture and folklore strewn throughout Johto, but at least the region is identifiably Japanese. Also, the implementation of elements like a day/night cycle and days of the week appeal to me, even if in practice they’re more annoying than anything else. And I know the entire internet agrees with me, but HGSS did substantially more for Johto and Kanto than FRLG did for Kanto. That’s kind of sad, honestly.

While I’m bringing up remakes, I would however like to disagree with most of the internet and say that ORAS were good remakes - good enough to where I could actually finish Alpha Sapphire when the original left me so unimpressed that I actually stopped playing the series outside remakes until Gen VI. The beloved Battle Frontier (which doesn’t seem all that interesting? Someone explain the appeal of this thing to me) may be missing and you can’t re-challenge gym leaders and various other things you can only do in Emerald, but on the flip side the story development is much improved and better paced - yay for convenient cutscene warping - and the Delta Episode provides a decent postgame capstone. What’s more, Hoenn is absolutely beautiful in the remakes, looking as lush and tropical as it ought to and no longer bogged down with water routes that are a slog to traverse or much backtracking. Soaring is a wonderful addition as well that shows off the region and cuts down on HM usage, and the DexNav is excellent for reducing the tedium of catching them all (or some approximation thereof when stupid things like event legendaries and untradeable-on-GTS version exclusives still exist).

I haven’t even mentioned the villain teams. I know full well that Tumblr is ahead of me on this one, but they are so gay. I picked up the gayer version with Matt outright professing his love for men (somewhat ruined when you consider that he’s talking to a ten-year-old...ick), but via extensive research *ahem* I’ve learned that Omega Ruby has its moments too and that Teams Magma and Aqua are best enjoyed as a pair. Their goals may be patently stupid, but they all learn something at the end of the day and can go home and have an orgy together. I haven’t even mentioned the Steven/Wallace subtext one of my mutuals cued me into, which is sweet revenge indeed for Emerald fanboys whining for years about femme Wallace with his predictable team becoming champion in that game. It’s enough altogether for me to forgive the game for constantly teasing Brendan/May - because obligatory heterosexual romance doesn’t have to wait for a little thing like puberty.

The only region for which I can’t really give a full assessment. I started a playthrough of Platinum on emulator, but the game felt so slow and clunky that after the second gym (which I’ve read is an especially dull and pace-breaking stretch) I couldn’t bring myself to play any more. I’ve watched speedruns and video reviews of this game, and they’ve only confirmed my initial opinion and caused me to hope that most of Sinnoh’s copious issues will be addressed in the inevitable remakes. The over-reliance on HM slaves (poor Bidoof...), unintuitive region layout, periods of severe environmental slowdown in the form of marshlands and deep snow, and other factors do not appeal to me at all, and while I know Platinum fixed this particular problem I assume that the Diamond and Peal remakes will not have to contend with a limited roster as they did. The characters could do with some work as well: Barry seriously needs to calm down, I still don’t know how to feel about Fantina (will she be Kalosian? What about in the Japanese and French versions where she’s apparently from an English-speaking country?), and Cyrus really doesn’t work as the charismatic leader he’s built up to be. Say what you will about the Hoenn villain teams or Team Flare having idiotic goals, but at least I can say what those are. I still got nothing on Team Galactic caring about Prof. Rowan’s evolution research or stealing energy or what have you. Sinnoh is severely in need of a second - or third, I suppose - draft. 

Confirming that Volkner and Flint are a couple would also be nice. Just throwing out ideas.

When I downloaded White and Black 2 for emulator I didn’t expect to be very impressed by these games. Unova is the MURICA FUCK YEAH region, as we all know, and I shouldn’t have to point out to my regular followers that that fact alone would be enough to unfavorably prejudice me against the place. And yet, in spite of that, it works for me. A big part of that is that Louisiana is absent from this loose celebration of the US as interpreted by Japan; there’s an oil baron dressed like a cowboy, a Californian or Hawaiian surfer bro, a gay (or straight hipster, hard to tell these days) artist with a loft gym in Castro the Village Castelia City, a Southern mammy for some casual racism that was actually too casual for international release, counterparts to Coney Island, Broadway, Hollywood, and American sports, and numerous Pokémon like the Trubbish and Vanillite* lines inspired by the shallow consumerism that passes for culture in the US, but nothing representing my own stubbornly French state. I’m actually warier about the bizarre attempts to insert bits of medieval and early modern Europe into the region via PETA-by-way-of-the-Knights-Templar (what) Team Plasma and the trio quartet of legendaries based on les Trois Mousquetaires. Did whoever came up with those not get the memo about where the series was going next?

With that said, although I’m not as enamored with N as some people his characterization was if nothing else a step up from anything that had come before. While Ghetsis and Plasma make no damn sense aesthetically until the sequels they are intimidating villains who raise serious questions about how humans treat Pokémon...that are naturally never considered in their full complexity because friendship or something. As I stated with Johto I do like the sequel model of region development since we get to see how Unova has changed over two years. I also appreciate the season mechanic that only appears in these games for lending some variety to the geography, though in execution it’s kind of a pain.

*But hey, I’m thankful at least that this is I think the only region that lets you catch (decent) Ice types before lategame. I will absolutely take the ice cream with a face.

Perfect, or rather just imperfect enough to perfectly capture the essence of France and its culture in this silly world of fantasy cockfighting. Unashamedly biased I may be, but as Kalos gets a lot of hate online I feel the need to push back against popular opinion a bit. X and Y were in my opinion the first games where GF really went all in on characterizing a region, because everything from the preoccupation with aesthetics (Character customization! Dog Furfrou grooming! Petting and pampering your Pokémon! Meticulously kept jardins à la française! Serious philosophical discussions on the fleeting nature of beauty! Team Flare...ok, never mind, they’re kind of dumb) to the discerning restaurant culture to the general ambivalence toward glorious and gloriously wasteful institutions like monarchy and their lavish châteaux feels so familiar to me. And how could I forget the Fairy type, a type tailor-made to vex the sort of posturing bro gamer sorts who somehow maintain their bro-ness while openly playing Pokémon. Could any region but Kalos have delivered that so beautifully? Well, now that I think about it, are the Japanese aware that the French are characterized as feminine in the English-speaking world? Regardless, I could go on, but this post is long enough as it is.

As I said before, Kalos isn’t entirely without flaw. Team Flare might be a hair less ridiculous than Team Galactic, but that isn’t saying much. The troupe of rivals, such as they are, aren’t much better, and others like Sycamore and most of the gym leaders are woefully underutilized. The Kalos Pokédex is overstuffed, and while I enjoy its subdivision into three regions that not-so-coincidentally recreate the Tricolore it is nevertheless a pain for those who like to fill up the Dex as they go along in a game. The developers were still clearly learning how to deal with the camera in a 3D space as is evident in certain areas like Lumiose, and certain features like the roller skates are awkward to use. Not the Exp Share, though - call me a lazy casual, but that thing makes team-building so much easier and actually incentivizes doing so rather than just relying on one overleveled Pokémon with good coverage to solo everything. Oh, and we never got a Pokémon Z, or more importantly an extension of the map that would include southern France. Poké-Gascogne, please, Game Freak.

Really, it’s hard for me to criticize X and Y because I quickly come back to everything I love about the place. I’m actually replaying X right now, inspired as I was by this project and lacking anything else to play before USUM comes out next month. Speaking of which...

I may not have any personal attachment to Hawaii, but I have to give GF serious props for taking the best gameplay and worldbuilding elements of Kalos and replicating them on an even greater scale. Alola is a vibrant and extensively-realized setting for a game, and I’m not even taking into account that we’ll be getting an AU version of it or something like that in the upcoming games. Sun and Moon fascinate on their own with their deep characterizations that touch on such surprisingly dark topics as child abuse (in a variety of forms) and the failure of community and, er, social programs, or whatever you’d call the Island Trial and the whole sending-ten-year-olds-out-to-enslave-wild-animals thing this universe has going on. 

There aren’t really any duds in the cast, either: Kukui is drool-worthy, Guzma and the rest of Team Skull are thoroughly silly and also thoroughly sad, most of the kahunas and trial captains are entertaining in their own ways (special props go to Nanu, Kiawe and his hiker boyfriend, and Acerola the fallen aristocrat who’s entirely too perky about it), Lusamine is a demented mother figure so of course I find her compelling, and Hau...taught me what a malasada is? It’s basically a Portuguese beignet, from the sound of things. Lillie is the real star however, and I don’t understand why some fans criticize the games for making the story more about her than about the player character. One of the biggest drawbacks of silent protagonists, and especially silent protagonists that never emote, is that it’s difficult for them to be a part of character-driven storylines, and in a first for the series unless you count N in BW Sun and Moon are exactly that kind of story. Lillie gets a voice and a distinct place in the world and in the lives of the other major players in the narrative, and she has a development arc that follows along with but stands independent from the standard one followed by this protagonist and all others in this series. Meanwhile, the player character...is from Kanto, and is Kukui’s cousin, and Kukui is probably fucking their mother. That’s pretty much it.

I’m a little less enamored with the Ultra Beast plotline as it’s a little too sci-fi for me, and Aether’s presence and purpose in Alola feels unexplored, but there’s still a chance that USUM may woo me on either score. I’m fairly indifferent on the Mega Evolution vs. Z-Moves argument, and I can take or leave Alolan forms - except Ninetales *pets* - but SM made one substantial gameplay improvement I absolutely adore and will hate to see be removed from future games: ride Pokémon. No more HM slaves, yay! Compound that with surfing between islands and some new areas and they’ve sold me on the next games. If the story is as radically different as trailers seem to be promising I can only hope that it’ll be just as engaging as the first time around.

So, if I had to provide a tl;dr by dint of a simplified ranking, it’d probably go as such:

Kalos > Alola > Hoenn = Unova > Johto > Kanto = Sinnoh

I’d expect Sinnoh to get bumped up a few notches in remake form, but otherwise that’s about right.

[halahalaisms]

while i’m not 100% psyched for sinnoh remakes bc the sinnoh games were my least fave all round, i want them for the updated aesthetic and for unova remakes that would inevitably follow 0w0