#no i do not have the MONEY to play scarvi

[rainbowrocketquotes]

random little post to spruce up the posting on here because I live and die by the queue function and by god have I been forgetting to add to it

presenting: what music I think the villains listen to

//note : this is based mostly off of people I associate with the villains because everyone I hang out with is a music freak. if you think an 50 hour playlist is bad, wait until you get a hold of my best friend's 600 hour one

Giovanni

No way in hell this man isn't a swing fan. His playlist is exclusively 50's—70's and there is no coherent genre. If you listen to music with him you could be vibing to Marvin Gaye and then Elvis could come on.

Maxie

Pry Roar and The Front Bottoms from his cold, dead hands. Just BIG Folk Punk vibes from him. Also, a good amount of Alt-Rock. His guilty pleasure, though? Country music. He's probably the one that listens to the most music, just because he feels like the kind of guy that can't work without background noise.

Archie

Very well rounded, says he doesn't have a preference, but has a slight one for rock music. Specifically he enjoys 80s & 90s metal. He feels like the kind of guy to be really into Megadeth. Maybe sprinkle some Tech N9ne in there for flavor.

Cyrus

Realistically he's definitely a full Alternative fan. I think he's super into Weirdcore (See: Lemon Demon, Will Wood) but would never admit it. He also listens to Emo Rap and Russian Rap on occasion but doesn't really consider them favourites. He pretends he doesn't like music, though, so he only really gets to listen to what other people force him to.

Ghetsis

Screamo, next question—

Kidding, but he really does like screamo, metal, and hard rock. He'll pretend he only likes vague classical music to seem more mysterious and then you look at his history and it's all Slaughter to Prevail and Korn.

Colress

I like to think he doesn't really listen to music in his free time. He usually listens to whatever is on, which is usually Ghetsis's screamo. He keeps him from ruining speakers. He does enjoy Green Day, though, and some Olivia Rodrigo.

Lysandre

He really likes single instrument covers, especially violin. Absolute Lindsey Stirling fanboy. Also enjoys Lana Del Rey and MARINA a lot. Those kinds of pop artists, you know?

Guzma

He's definitely the most well-rounded with his tastes, mostly because he listens to a lot of it. He listens to a lot of pre-2010s hip-hop & rnb. He loves dance music and electronica as well, and generally just a lot of old school stuff. Anything from 2pac to Gewn Stefani, baby. Mood/genre-switched covers are also a thing, and just covers in general. Catch him in his room at 2am listening to egg on repeat (then back away awkwardly and shut the door because he gets too into it and starts crying).

Lusamine

Listens to a lot of what Lysandre does. Lorde, Billie Eilish, anything hard pop that can pass as alternative. Nobody will ever trust her with the aux/bluetooth/radio/etc. because she always plays music nobody likes. She once got into a fight with Cyrus on what is and isn't alternative music and he didn't speak to her for a month after.

Bonuses, villains I don't include on the blog

Rose

Classical music. Bach & Chopin always playing from his office. More for ominous ambiance than anything, but he does genuinely enjoy it.

Oleana

She doesn't really listen to music, but she likes rap. She won't go out of her way to listen to anything, though.

Volo

Echoey latin chants with ambient noises in the background /hj. If he was in the modern day, I think he'd like NF and Panic! At the Disco.

[mediumcutsteak]

So I hopped into a free trial of NSO cause I wanted to check out Nintendo Music. I was already under no illusion this would be worth anyone's time as anything but an extra bonus for paying for a service you likely already pay for to play smash and splatoon, but wow this is truly pathetic. Here is the selection:

This is a PITIFUL list. TWO ZELDAS??? TWO KIRBYS???? IN A **MUSIC** APP?????? That's not getting into the other omissions, but this is a pretty glaring one. The only noteworthy thing about this selection is that I guess we officially call the first NA Fire Emblem with its subtitle now. Neat I guess. Also, these are Nintendo soundtracks, so really short musical stings (think Samus or Link getting Power up) bloat these OSTs, which for me is an L. No 3DS games at all by the way, nor any of the few remaining Wii U exclusives.

So what about its two vaunted features, easy music extension and spoilers? Easy Music Extension is mediocre. You can extend some songs to 15, 30, and 60 min. No longer or shorter. No reason not to have more options but whatever. I say some songs though cause the choices seem arbitrary. Obviously the short music stings can't be extended. I thought it was based on if the music would loop in game, but so far three of the OOT dungeons loop. They're all just stupid 40 second tracks that just.... Can't loop. Neither can Sheik's theme???

Spoiler prevention allows you to nix a whole game from rotation on any playlist. Not useful for what it sets out to do, but if you HAPPEN to want to use a premade mixed game playlist (you won't but we'll get to it) and there are games you just straight up don't like ANYTHING from, itll keep them out. I like Metroid music but I really hate the NES sound font at this point so were I to use this app indefinitely I'd certainly throw those out. Can't be used selectively though, so if you do like ONE song from a game, then you gotta keep it open to them all.

Lets talk about the playlists because these are insane. First off, no community playlists. I get that there's no way they could stop profanity if they added those, but thats a massive L already. Ok so fine, no community playlists, whats poppin in premade town. Well its got some staples: top tracks on the app, franchise wide selections (most franchises on here are 2 games tops though right now), each game has a playlist of just the songs that can be extended. Then there's the weird ones. Each game has playlists that vaguely categorizes some of the music into certain modes of play? Take Nintendogs for example

Ok. These make sense for Splatoon at least cause they separate them by in-game artists and game mode. Then there's the mood playlists, all with cringy names like Powering Up or whatever. And then there's my favorite, the character centric playlists! These are hilarious. They are just songs that are related to the characters. And the selection of characters? Well....

Yeah dude, thats sick. I def want to listen to BOO music or Wiggler music. It appears that as I was writing this they also added ones for the ScarVi professors, legendaries, and the DLC legendaries. Swell. The wiggler playlist is five songs, with six minutes total of music. Really gettin into that Wiggler mindset. Wiggler Wednesday everyone.

Its just sad. If you play games online on Switch and the music you want to listen to is on here, it isnt gonna kill you. You're already paying for it. But right now the selection is TERRIBLE, some of the tracks you would expect to be extendable aren't, and some of these loops are under a minute (every oot dungeon except forest, water, and shadow I can't stress enough). And for what? The composers aren't making money off this, they don't even get CREDITS on the songs (the spot where artist would be on Spotify is the game title). Even if they WERE, the service costs less than Spotify, so they wouldn't be making much anyway.

This is basically for no one. Real nintendo music diehards who would lap this up are missing a LOT of big names, and anyone who ISN'T probably doesn't care enough to download the app in the first place. To say nothing of people like me, who would want music from non-Nintendo games mixed in. Also its weirdly hard to find??? I tried searching Nintendo Music on the Play Store and couldn't find it, I had to access a link on Google. So there's your deep dive if you cared. What a waste of time and energy. Just put it on Spotify and Apple Music and be done.

[nebuvoid]

There's many things I want back in Pokemon games. But one, if not the thing I want the most, is Pokemon Amie/Refresh. And sure we got inferior versions after but it was just never the same. Especially not the damn washing in Scarvi, it's funny for a bit but it's very lackluster.

With Legends ZA on the horizon getting Amie back is a possibility but. We didn't get bases or contests back in PLA so. We either won't get it back at all or another eh version that's an afterthought at best.

What I propose instead is a full spin-off game. To put it simply, a Pokemon Nintendogs type game. People would eat this UP. I'm definitely not the first person to bring this up. But seriously, they would make so much money with this.. god can you imagine if they outsourced it to the New Pokemon Snap team. Crazy. A game like that would ensure they could focus on the aspect of unique animations for playing with and petting your pokemon, teaching them tricks, hell it could finally expand on pokemon contests without being overshadowed by battling!

One of the things fans have wanted the most is seeing more of Pokemon acting like the little beasties they are. And I think they're missing out on a great opportunity with this. Hell they could make it so certain contest tricks translate to unique moves or abilities if you trade the pokemon over to the next mainline game. That would ensure that not only the 'My Charjabug is my perfect little scrungly' demographic is interested, but also more competitive players focused on maxing out potential for battling.

For a company that's gotten more and more greedy over the years (I'm not talking about the 200 or so devs in there, because no matter the quality of recent games you can still tell they're passionate when you pay attention to certain aspects. They still care. I see you.), for a company that wants to sell as much merchandise as possible it's crazy to me how they haven't done this yet.

P.S. For the love of god fix walk speeds for follow pokemon in the next game. My mons in Let's Go certainly didn't get left behind when I started running. Sometimes the 'realistic' walk speed has to be disregarded for a better playing experience.

Speaking of Let's Go, the unique ride pokemon were one of the best things they have ever done. Though I do get that's hard to implement with a bigger roster of pokemon, I certainly wouldn't be opposed to seeing that back either.

[lastoneout]

hi idk if you're a huge kalos fan but how are you feeling about the direct

I haven't watched it yet, but ngl Kalos wasn't my favorite OR my least favorite pokemon game, I was pretty neutral on it overall. My main complaint was how annoying the map was to traverse before you got fly, but aside from that it was fine, introduced some cool pokemon and had a decent plot. Tbh for the next Legends game I would have preferred Jhoto, but eh. It's not a huge deal to me.

My real issue is that it's a little hard to get excited about it when I know how bad crunch is at Game Freak and that despite saying they were reevaluating their tight release cycle bcs like, ScarVi was borderline unplayable at launch and Arceus got abandoned the second they were done with it despite being the most popular game in years....I just have no faith that this game will be good, or at least it won't be anywhere near as good as it has the potential to be :/

I hope I'm proven wrong tho, and I don't think it's wrong to be excited about the game, something something no ethical consumption and I'd be a major hypocrite if I told people to drop any game company that has bad practices bcs almost all of them do, I just can't get hype. I was really, really hoping Game Freak would slow the hell down and stop making new games for a couple of years, put all of their focus on gen 10 and release that maybe in 2026 or 2027, but nope gotta make that money even if the games we release are falling apart at the seams and our devs are working on two or three projects at once.

And like, given the current trend in decreasing quality I'm genuinely unsure if the game is even going to be functional enough to be worth playing, especially since I figure to hit a 2025 release they probably started working on this right after Arceus came out, and there has simply not been enough time to make this game good. Plus there were a lot of points in ScarVi where I legit just wanted to put the game down and stop playing entirely bcs the graphics and glitches and framerate drops started to make me annoyed and dizzy, and once I was done with the main story I lost like all motivation to keep playing(I like finishing my dex, I did it in Sw/Sh and Let's Go and have almost done it in BDSP and Arceus, but I don't care about ScarVi's dex at all), and I haven't even bought the DLC yet. Tbh I'm probably not even gonna pre-order this, I'm waiting till it's out to decide if I want to buy it or not.

Anyway sorry to be a buzzkill, I don't fault anyone for being excited, I've loved Pokemon for more than half my life, it helped me meet my fiancé, it really means so SO much to me, so I get it, but like....I think I love the series too much to get excited for this. Seeing what Pokemon is turning into is just...painful and sad. I hope y'all enjoy it tho, and who knows, I could be wrong, maybe it will be fantastic and super polished and we can all breathe a sigh of relief bcs they got their shit together! That would be nice.

Edit: I do want to say I'm glad it has been 3 years instead of the usual 2, and I'm VERY glad they didn't announce gen 10, but unless the scope of this game is narrow as fuck and they also don't release until like November-December 2025 AND this team was NOT the same team who worked on ScarVi's DLC that is still not enough time to make a game with the scope they've been establishing as their new baseline. TOTK took SIX years to finish. Elden Ring's DLC was built on top of an existing game and it still took TWO whole years just to make it. Most open-world games take a really, really long time. Adding an extra year is great, but they need to be taking a lot longer than that between games. This is a step in the right direction, but it's not enough to inspire confidence.

[razette]

Honestly, people shit too hard on pokemon sword and shield. It definitely wasnt given the love I think it needed to be a better game than it actually was. Gigantamaxing LOOKED cool, but really fell short compared to mega evolutions and even terastralizing (the latter which looks A LOT less cool, but was much more versatile and brought a fun angle of the game.)

I have an exteremely polarized love hate relationship with scarvi. What I do love about I REALLY love about it and what I hate about it i REALLY hate.

Also its fucking ugly and the pokemon textures are EXTREMELY awful, but thats only a problem because swsh was actually really pretty and felt really rich with culture. Obviously they could have made a pretty game, they just werent allowed to. the company didnt give a shit because they knew theyd get the money no matter what so there was just no need to make it great. and i could live with an uglier game if it wasnt actually just a visual representation of corporate greed. unfortunately it just looks like a poorly maintained american strip mall after any social/cultural/economical upheaval of the last 20 years and the rise of online shopping and decline of product quality.

OH WELL at least the fun parts were REALLY fun. im still playing it. nothing matters. im just gonna buy and play a bunch of indie games while I wait for the next one.

[omegawizardposting]

The deeper I delve into my second phase of ScarVi hyperfixation, the more I realize just what a shitshow these games actually are. We were all way too lenient on them, I'll be honest.

I'm going to be talking about mechanics specifically, since we all already know the performance and graphics are ass.

First, let me note that the steps taken BACK from Legends: Arceus are EGREGIOUS. Legends: Arceus had quick, snappy gameplay that respected the player's time. Its out of battle catching mechanic was universally beloved and made for a much less tedious experience overall. The ability to grow Nature Mints and availability of Gravels (which augmented your Pokemon's EVs) made customizing Pokemon a relatively painless experience.

Lets start with battling. In ScarVi, we see the return of mandatory turn-by-turn combat. This is fine while playing through the story, but a major part of Pokemon's appeal is its postgame, which is dominated by one, singular activity: customizing your Pokemon. Whether you breed for the perfect 'mon or hunt for them in the wild, the majority of long-term players spend their postgame acquiring Pokemon.

In Legends: Arceus, this could be done without ever having to enter battle, but even if you chose to do so, battling was significantly speedier than in previous gens. No more waiting five seconds for a text box to tell you that your Pokemon is paralyzed. You were in and out in the blink of an eye.

Gen 9 returned to the franchise's roots, turning catching Pokemon into a slog. Unless you're using Quick Balls, it's possible to spend minutes at a time on some of the trickier catches, such as the Paradox Pokemon. I just got finished hunting for a Modest/Timid Sandy Shocks (did I mention that Synchronize no longer has its usual out of battle effect?), and at one point, I was so unlucky that I spent upwards of five full minutes watching text and battle animations play out. In Legends: Arceus, if you didn't catch your target on the first ball, you weren't punished for it. In ScarVi, if that bitch breaks out, it's going to be another eternity before you get to throw another ball.

Speaking of battle animations, they're on. Permanently. I'm the kind of person who prefers to save money (to the tune of 500k) by EV training my 'mons the old fashioned way. To expedite this process, I used to turn off battle animations. No longer an option. You will sit there and watch every animation or you will grind Raids for money for vitamins.

Okay, well, if catching Pokemon is such a pain, why not just catch one and use a Nature Mint? My sweet summer child, we can no longer grow them. The only way to obtain Mints now is by taking on 5-star+ Tera Raids, none of which are guaranteed to drop even a single Mint. Add onto that the bugginess of Tera Raids and you've got a recipe for disaster.

So no Gravels and we can't grow our own Mints.

Are you starting to see the problem here?

All right, the Paradox Pokemon might be annoying, but for every other Pokemon, why not just get a Ditto with good IVs and breed for the right nature? Darling of my heart, apple of my eye, they fucked breeding up, too. The picnic system is so unintuitive that it boggles my mind how it got past player testing. (Do they even DO player testing? It sure doesn't seem like it.) Not only is the acquisition of eggs painfully slow without the use of Egg Power sandwiches (DON'T GET ME STARTED ON THE FUCKING SANDWICHES), you cannot produce eggs and hatch eggs at the same time. The only time eggs are produced is while picnicking. You cannot change your party once a picnic has begun, and even if you could, steps taken while picnicking DO NOT COUNT.

Overworld traversal is clunky. Places that feel like they should have fly locations don't, while others have far too many. Gliding and flying on Mir/Koraidon is SLOW, probably because if they moved any faster in the air, your Switch would explode. (I have never played a more poorly optimized Nintendo game.) Mir/Koraidon would rather slip and slide than stick to a climable surface half the time.

POKEMON.

HAVE.

NO.

COLLISION.

The amount of times I've exited one battle only to immediately be forced into another because an aggressive Pokemon quite literally shoved its entire body up my tight little asshole is TOO DAMN HIGH.

Both of the DLC Legendaries (or are they considered Mythicals?) force you to capture them after a stupidly lengthy battle. Ogerpon and Terapagos have MULTIPLE phases. Resetting for different natures is simply not an option if you value your time at all. This is coming from the guy who reset for Eternatus, don't even bother. Grind Raids. Use a Mint.

As far as I'm aware, there is no quick way to jump through your inventory. You must scroll. And scroll. And scroll. Arceus help you if you're looking for something in the middle of the bag. (In USUM, you could press L or R to jump down several items, which was a lifesaver when you were looking for, say, a Protect TM.)

Why are TMs single use again? Who asked for craftable TMs?

The list goes on...

I remember being so hopeful for these games, and honestly, I had fun playing through the story both times. It was when I got to the postgame and started hunting 'mons that I could no longer ignore their flaws. ScarVi was not a game built with longevity in mind, which is INSANE given how big and dedicated the competitive scene is. You are meant to play through their story, maybe the DLC stories, too, and then never, EVER touch them again.

[drkineildwicks]

So happy Scarvi day!

May you all enjoy that new Pokemon smell while it lasts, I know that’s probably one of the big draws whenever a new Pokemon game comes out

Me, the honeymoon ended a while back and while I was debating, I’ll be sticking with the rom hack over purchasing the games I’ve got bills

This of course hasn’t stopped me from looking at the leaks and...general negativity under the cut and BOY HOWDY do I have some Thoughts:

Look we all rag on Pokemon for rushing the games but this is ridiculous

The friend I got the rom from told me that there were some stability issues and general jank in the rom and we both chalked it up to it being the rom but no the jank and crash is in the base game

Apparently the game plays like a just-turned-on alpha build and that is...not a good look for a multi-billion dollar company

“But Kineil game freak is a small company!”  Pokemon as a franchise makes Elon Musk look poor game freak can definitely hire more people or at LEAST hire optimizers and bug hunters at this point one person who can do that job would make a world of difference

Pokemon as a franchise can afford to hand the reins to someone else game freak has made it clear they’re no longer interested in putting in the effort

Plus we’ve seen plenty of other indie games that make a fraction of the money yet still put out good games so...no excuse

Seeing a screenshot of one of the cutscenes where everyone is still in the T-pose they’re loaded in as is...not good these games needed more time for polish but gotta have that yearly release don’tcha know

Legends could have been delayed until this Christmas and Scarvi could have been pushed to next year to give both games more time in the oven and I sincerely doubt that anyone would have complained about it

Absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that and the diehard fans will still wait eagerly for a few extra months

I mean LOOK at the Zelda games look how many people are excitedly waiting for BotW 2 yes it got delayed but we’re still all waiting for it and will buy it no one looked at the delay and said well I’m not buying it NOW I’m so mad they delayed it that I’ll never buy another one

Look at how many people are still holding a candle for Metroid Prime 4 and Pikmin 4

I’m savoring the Legends experience but it still has jank and seeing how Scarvi is I can’t blame that on the emulator

One of Pokemon’s higher-ups insists that people don’t have time for games anymore and would rather have the mobile game experience--sir, when we buy a mobile game we’re paying at most five bucks we know it’s going to be a shallow experience but when you’re asking us to shell out sixty bucks minimum for a game on a console that costs several hundred dollars we’re wanting an effin’ EXPERIENCE

Nexomon is a mobile game that costs a fraction of what a Pokemon game does and I had more fun on the Steam port of it than I have had with the past several gens of Pokemon mobile game does not necessarily equate shallow experience this man is just a fool

Also what I’m hearing is again no post-game so that sucks

“Kineil you’re holding them to too high a standard just consume product”--I’m holding them to their own standards Pokemon games used to be an experience that was worth returning to

My gen III games have a minimum of 500 hours per game with Emerald clocking out somewhere around 1K hours that was an experience dangit

“Well you were younger then you’re blinded by nostalgia”--if I were blinded by nostalgia I would keep buying the games and would have liked ORAS rather than rip it up one side and down the other from ORAS to Sun/Moon all my Pokemon games were DNFs

We gotta stop normalizing underperformance guys game freak has done better and we should hold them to the standards they’ve set in the past

Let’s see, what other beef do I got...

Listen gen VIII designs had to grow on me but Gen IX...you know how everyone got big into making AI Pokemon?  Game freak apparently jumped on that bandwagon the majority of these guys look like they got spit out by a generator

I like maybe a handful of these designs and I’m not sure if the rest will grow on me game freak really front-loaded all the good designs in the promos

Legit I thought a lot of the designs were from Palworld you know you done goofed when your designs are indistinguishable from your competitors

Also I was once again ruined by much better fan designs for the final starter evos my boi Quaxly they did you so dirty

Are they just appealing to cosplayers now because I really can’t stand the whole humanoid Pokemon trend I don’t even like humanoid Digimon

We shouldn’t go “birb --> bigger birb --> Elton John” those feet legit look like slippers wtf it’s just a guy in a costume

So yeah sorry Quaxly but Fuecoco’s the new starter at least that one stays monstrous

Just doing away with trainer gender altogether reads like 1) cheap pandering and 2) lowering effort even MORE

Temtem, the game that fully released recently and was touted around Sword and Shield as the new Pokemon-killer (more on that later), had the option for boy/girl/other like...three years ago are y’all really going to reward nintendo for bare minimum pandering?

If you’re being truly inclusive, then you have options

Like, for example, I have the option to play:

Temtem

Nexomon

Coromon

Monster Hunter

DokeV

Palworld

Kindred Fates

Older Pokemon games

Pokemon emulators

Pokemon fan games

Plenty of others

People talk about other games in the monster-capture genre being the Pokemon-killer but real talk the real Pokemon-killer is...Pokemon.  They’re constantly shilling out the least effort at this point and eventually people will hit that trust thermocline and jump ship because Pokemon isn’t putting the effort out anymore.  It’s already happened once with Sword and Shield and while I know I’m not going to be the one who breaks them, that’s still several hundred dollars since Sun/Moon that I have not spent on Pokemon.  Instead I spend it on other games and while my experiences have been all over the place, it’s been with the knowledge that I’m not paying for the hope of recapturing an old experience and instead being sold fumes.

I’m sure there’s more to say on the matter but this is already going long so any further beef will be in reblogs I guess

But I guess my main point is that we have to be responsible on this end too, we don’t have to just mindlessly consume, we can vote with our wallets and tell these companies that we don’t want to pay an arm and a leg for Sonic 06-level quality made by people worked to the bone for pittances so higher-ups can have fatter bankrolls

Speak the language they speak and hit them in their wallets

Alternatively, write to Nintendo or the Pokemon Company and tell them your thoughts

I know they bury it under all the corporate rigamarole but these places still have brick-and-mortar locations take the sixty bucks and spend it on stamps

But don’t bother sending letters to game freak they’ve already said decades ago that any suggestions sent to them are read aloud to their coworkers and laughed at

Again, consume responsibly, they don’t have to laugh all the way to the bank with your money

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have pirating to do and better games to spend my money on