#that caused MASSIVE performance issues and aesthetic shifts that clearly weren't where the devs are most comfortable

[regallibellbright]

Well, I lost a massive post I was trying to write, but I apologize in advance because I then proceeded to write an even MORE massive post, because unfortunately for my sense of free time I'm one of those turbo nerds that knows things about the mechanical progression of Pokemon games by generation and will read Bulbapedia for fun, is incapable of shutting up once my brain started thinking down this path, needs a more specific definition here.

So when you say peaked: Do you mean mechanically? Aesthetically, including the new Pokemon designs? Performance-wise? Overall gameplay experience beyond the core mechanics? And what do we consider ESSENTIAL mechanics for Pokemon these days, like, should we focus just on the battling taking its modern shape mechanically, do we count the last new type so far and the introduction of single-generation battle gimmicks, do we count major gameplay elements OUTSIDE battle? Do they only become important if they influence battle? And where do we consider things like regional variants, are those something like a mechanic or just new Pokemon, same as every generation? (Because frankly, I think you can make the genuine case that they are by design standards pretty close to new Pokemon - they need new designs, new moves, and present new challenges to be considered in what they introduce to respective egg groups.)

Because like, I think the generation that best EXECUTES itself, overall, with the mechanics it has and introduces, with the aesthetics, with the overall experience, is probably Gen 3. RSE are stellar, Fire Red and Leaf Green are fantastic remakes that take the baseline of Gen 1 and then clean up a lot of the glitches from RGBY being SO experimental and trying to do SO much on the Gameboy hardware, the designs of the Pokemon are great, the story first starts getting really involved, the graphics absolutely blew my 10-year-old mind...

And I couldn't say Pokemon peaked before Generation 4 at minimum, because that's when we introduce the Physical-Special Split. That is the absolute earliest we can say the franchise's battle system takes its modern form. Gen 3 is still thoroughly Pokemon in its EARLY phase to me, so how the hell can I say it peaked there mechanically, even setting aside all the Pokemon that I've loved since then? But then would I say 4? No. Diamond and Pearl had MASSIVE performance issues (saving a lot of data...), which lessened through the DS era but I would still say were struggles even into Gen 5. All those gates were designed to offset the loading. They also had some ridiculous balance issues Platinum had to fix, since the Sinnoh dex didn't just originally only include two fire-type lines, it didn't even include all of the Pokemon that were introduced in Sinnoh for some reason.

Okay but Gen 5? Listen, I respect Gen 5's idea of only introducing returning Pokemon in the post-game. I respect its soft-reboot style. I think it and HGSS are the aesthetic peak of the series. But also, while some of the Pokemon introduced in Gen 5 are favorites, some of them were VERY clearly designed to take the place of some series standby or other. Woobat distinguishes itself from Zubat from having very different designs, evolution stages/mechanics, and typing. But Roggenrola is literally just here to be Geodude, but Unova. I find many of Gen 5's fighting types fall DEEP into the Uncanny Valley. And let's all remind ourselves that Unova is designed so that, in Black and White, you go literally clockwise around the map and only see half of it - a full HALF of the map - in the postgame. And despite that there's really not a ton to do in the postgame of Black and White compared to some. Its story is one of the franchise peaks, certainly in the main games. They've been trying to recreate the appeal of Cheren, Bianca, and N ever since, and they were absolutely right to do so, the development there is amazing. They are visually stunning. They're the start of the franchise shifting into a new phase, with a region that's not based on Japan and starting to hire Pokemon designers who aren't Japanese. They also make some decisions that I find deeply baffling to this day, and are the point at which we stopped getting third versions that would wrap the increasingly-divergent stories into something more definitive, which also incidentally allowed people who were waiting because they could only get one version and there was always at least ONE exclusive from each game that you fell in love with and you could hope that the third version would use both the ones you want.

Also, I'm saying the modern form battle system, completely ignoring all non-battle mechanics, only really comes to be in Gen 4, AND that's still leaving out fairy types, which as of this year have been in the franchise for a decade and RADICALLY reshaped things. Do you all remember when Jigglypuff and Togepi used to be Normal types? Togetic and Togekiss were Normal/Flying! Baffling. I still think of Fairy as the "new" type and I still have to remind myself about Wigglytuff being weak to Fighting types in old games. You know what else Gen 6 adds, which I can't imagine the franchise without anymore? Dedicated mechanics to interact with your Pokemon casually, outside battle or the battle alternatives like contests and musicals. Yeah, HG/SS had the following mechanic, but being able to look at and pet your Pokemon, or wash them or play fetch starts with the 3DS era. Also trainer customization, which doesn't relate to most of the core gameplay but which is still pretty essential for a franchise where the Player Character is supposed to be a player INSERT. I remember people being really disappointed when ORAS didn't allow even basic skintone variation for its player characters and I guarantee you that's why Let's Go and BDSP decided some basic customization were essential. Because it is. It sucks that it took a franchise that started in 1996 and was always making a player character we were supposed to project ourself onto seventeen years to let gamers with darker skintones represent themselves in game. Hell, it took that long to include blonde hair. Player characters couldn't wear glasses until 2016.

On the other hand, Gen 6 is also the shift from the sprite-like, 2.5D-style games on the DS to the 3D style of the 3DS, and I think there's been one hell of a learning curve for the designers with that aesthetically even as I think it ended up being essential to allow that character customization and the one-on-one interactions with Pokemon. (At the very least, we certainly would've had a harder time doing anything more than pallet swaps with the DS era sprites, and I DO think there's a huge difference between being able to have my Mew follow my sprite and interact with it from a distance and have Mew look at me the player in Pokemon Amie or even the camps in Sword/Shield and Scarlet/Violet.) Especially outside towns, but comparing the human character models and their expressiveness in XY to even Sun and Moon, much less the Switch games, it was rough. The shift from 3DS's still more top-down-esque 3D to Sword and Shield's has been another huge change, and while I think they've gotten the hang of it (and acknowledge that between 'length of development cycles', 'burnout as a result of that,' and simple priorities in that they will always need CHARACTER designers and artists way more than they need environment ones, the environments are a lot weaker than human or Pokemon design,) it's still been rough going. The performance issues are also notable.

But! That's not unique to XY or Sword/Shield by any means. Diamond and Pearl run BADLY, even compared to Platinum two years later. There's kind of been an aesthetic and performance floundering since we went from sprites to 3D, and each progressively "more 3D" style of gameplay. I think they were still catching their footing making the jump from the 3DS era to Switch.

I think, frankly, that Pokemon has not yet reached its peak. We're seeing stronger character designs and stronger storylines again. The open world gameplay introduced in Scar/Vio is huge and ultimately pretty fun. Legends Arceus, which IS IN FACT a mainline title per people who would know in that it holds the same Japanese title designation as any other mainline title, was I think the best Pokemon game I ever played. And I have played a game from every generation of Pokemon on its original hardware (Yellow was after Crystal, so I say I started in Gen 2, but I played that one before Gen 3 came out.) Legends Arceus was THAT GOOD at reimagining Pokemon as a world and game to play.

(Let's be real: Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl were intended to be the 'and also' ones released probably in mid-summer 2021 while Legends Arceus would have been the holiday release of that year taking the mainline title slot, Gen 9 in the wings, with them looking at its reception as potential for a dedicated sub-line the way they looked at Let's Go as a potential dedicated sub-line. Let's Go got middling reception, Legends got rave reviews and I think there IS a very real chance of at least a subline if not full integration of more of those catching mechanics going forward, but also COVID hit and so we got two mainline Pokemon games in 2022 and the release in 2021 were the titles they'd outsourced just for people who wanted Sinnoh REMAKES specifically, not the radical reimagining you'd need to put something like Mount Coronet in the new camera system.)

I think we'd need the many gears of the Pokemon Machine to all relax enough that Gamefreak could get more time to, you know, rest and make games that aren't Pokemon for a year or two before returning to make a new Pokemon on a slightly more generous timescale, and I realistically doubt that will happen under capitalism, to get a Pokemon game that is truly well-executed on all fronts. But I also think that Pokemon as a franchise is so CLEARLY continuing to grow and evolve, has ABSOLUTELY been doing this since Gen 5 and 6, and even as it's hitting growing pains here because of the grueling development cycles and developers suddenly having to shift their design philosophies SO dramatically? I think Legends and Scarlet/Violet were promises of what's to come, and while that includes some DEFINITE issues, I think the gameplay experience of what's going to be developed looking at the reception of the 2022 games is going to blow our minds.

PART 2 OF POLL

please see part 1 of the poll if you haven't voted on that