After my delightful Tepig
solo run, I decided to
put the 5th generation Grass starter to the test. I would lie if I said I had
great hopes about Snivy's performance on the battlefield: from what I've read
and heard, this is a 'Mon that doesn't pack a lot of punch and lacks a bit on
the Stats side. However, I liked the looks of the serpentine starter, and I
wanted to see for myself how it fared in a solo run setting.
I can say right away that the rumours were indeed true: Snivy is far from being a stellar fighter. He has low HP as well as low Attack and Sp. Attack, and his Defense and Sp. Defense stats can be described as average at best. On the other hand, he boasts sky-high Speed; but this was useless as far as my solo run was concerned, since over-leveling is usually enough to give my One and Only the upper hand — and thus the opportunity to strike first — in nearly all solo run battles. Snivy also suffers from an affliction I've come to hate, i.e. Ridiculously Restricted Move Pool. The poor snake can only learn Grass and Normal offensive Moves by leveling up; and since TMs are a bit of a pain to uncover in the 5th generation entries, I spent my whole run spamming the same moves — namely Leaf Blade (Grass), Return (Normal), Slam (Normal) and Giga Drain (Grass). Mind you, that Move diet wouldn't have been an issue at all had the Moves in question been stellar; but unfortunately, that Move quatuor was far from being satisfactory. Not only had most of these moves low PP and poor accuracy (except for my beloved Return, which never fails me in solo runs), but because of Snivy's pathetic Attack and Sp. Attack, they failed more often than not to one-shoot opponents, even with the benefit of over-leveling. As a result, battles dragged on and I routinely found myself out of PP for my moves, which forced me to backtrack to Pokemon centers way to often for my taste.
 |
| Indeedy. |
After roughly eight hours spent plodding through the
estival version of Unova, one thing suddenly dawned on me: I was not enjoying
myself. That Snivy solo run was not downright impossible or even torturous, but
it was tedious enough to eradicate most of the fun I usually derive from
playing Pokemon entries as a lone ranger. Given the size of my precious
game collection and the sheer number of Pokemon solo runs I still
want to polish off, I had absolutely no time to lose in a playthrough I was not
fully relishing; and thus I gave up on my Snivy solo run, leaving my Lv. 59
Serperior to rest in Lacunosa Town. Guess he'll stay there for all eternity,
because I'm not planning to resume that run and burden myself with the
serpentine Grass starter again any time soon.
Since I don't have much more to say about my aborted Snivy solo run, I'll use
the opportunity to point out a couple of details that routinely irritate me in
my Pokemon runs. The time is ripe to mention them; because the more
entries I play, the more these details irk me. Low and behold, here are the joy-killers:
- Not having my 'Mons' HP refilled when they gain a level. Every single RPG under the gaming sun does that, so why not Pokemon? This makes even less sense given the overall forgiving and player-friendly vibe of the series. So I can restore my 'Mons' health for free as many times as I want, but the usual complimentary HP refill after leveling up is off limits? That's really stingy, GameFreak.
- Stat-raising items having no effect after my 'Mons' Stats rise beyond a given limit. Now, this really infuriates me, because it's completely unfair and uncalled for. Isn't it my right to lavish all the Zincs, Carbos and Proteins I uncover on a single 'Mon if I want to? This is all the more stupid as there are other ways to raise Stats independently from leveling up, such as IV and EV training. Good thing Rare Candies keep working no matter how high your 'Mons' levels are — that's the silver lining on this cloud of skewed limitations.
- Not being able to sell TMs. I understand that this was implemented to protect players from themselves and to make sure that they wouldn't go on a TM selling spree only to regret it afterwards; but to be honest, I find this a bit patronizing. Unused TMs have a way of cluttering one's inventory, and I wish there were a way to get rid of them for good. There should be other ways to prevent players from selling TMs by mistake or to address second thoughts, such as double-checking is the player is sure during the selling process or implementing a shop in which all sold TMs can be purchased again.
Now that this is out of the way, I can wrap up this post. I'm glad I gave the 5th generation resident Grass starter a chance; and although he ultimately failed to enrapture me, we still had some pleasant hours cruising Unova together. And now I can enthusiastically move on to other Pokemon solo runs; I still have my long-awaited Eevee solo run to tackle, and I sure hope that the adorable versatile fox won't disappoint me. Stay tuned for more Black 2 and White 2 goodness, dear fellow gamers! Thanks for reading, and be my guest anytime!
Wow, this where
we have our disagreeances over the game. I'm all for pokemon making some things
more friendly over the yeats, like making TMs unlimited and removing HMs in Sun
and Moon, but I really don't want any of the stuff you complained about.
That stats limitation was made for the competitive play. If there were none of
those limitations, it'd be pathetically easy to get the "perfect"
pokemon and online play would be a joke. As it is now, one has to plan each
battle carefully so they can raise IVs and EVs propely from the moment an egg
hatches, then breed that pokemon multiple times until you finally get one that
inherits the improvements you want, then repeat the battling and the breeding
process until you get one with the perfect potential for growth. And even then,
it's perfect for that species of pokemon, not the perfect pokemon overall. A
perfect slowbro will always still be slow, because that's just how its species
is.
And even for non competetive play, it makes all the wild pokemon you encounter
be unique from each other. You may think it's BS at times, but it improves
pokemon for the better. If there were no limitations on the items, every
pokemon belonging to the same species would feel the same and natures would be
pointless. And if there were no limits to stats at all, every single pokemon
would feel the same. Slowbro is slow? After a billion carbos that won't be true
anymore. I think that'd be a disaster.
And yes, this mostly only matters for competitive play, and you may think
that's unfair for single players. But Pokémon has always been about battling
other people since its inception, before the internet was even popular. Dark
Soul's difficulty makes it unfair for less skilled players, but dumbing it down
would ruin the point. Same thing with Pokemon. Competitive play is a huge part
of pokemon, and they're a sensitive bunch that can get really mad if that crazy
process becomes too easy. GF knows this and isn't keen on making them mad
And as a nuzlocke player, I don't like the idea of healing after level ups
either. The game is already easy enough after they removed the poison damage
from outside of battle and pokecenters are already free. No item runs would
become almost pointless, since status effects would just get healed during
level ups as well. This isn't like other RPGs where you have to pay to stay at
an inn or someone to heal you, so I feel like the no free heals during the
field is a fair trade-off. Especially since particulary long dungeons in the
newer games always have people that will heal you anyways. And there's so
little places to spend our money otherwise; pokemon centers are free, there's
no point to buying carbos or zinc since you can get the same effect with
careful battle planning or super training, you don't even spend much on TMs
anymore. I feel that taking out the need to have potions on the field would
make money almost completely useless save for buying pokeballs and clothing.
Especially now that we have an overpowered Exp share that can potentially have
the entire team level up together every 3 battles. This would probably remove
the need to even visit pokemon centers in the first place.
Oh, and we were able to sell TMs before Black and White. The reason they
changed it was as a trade-off for TMs being unlimited now. Like I said before,
TMs used to be a real money sink and now they're not. This is not a decision I
entirely agree with either, but I guess it seems fair to GF, in their eyes TMs
are now key items like HMs. This is further proofed by the fact that pokemon also
used to be able to hold TMs, but now they can't do that either. This is because
there's moves that allow you to steal items from enemies, and since they're
'key' items, that's not allowed. And I'll take this limitation with open arms.
I'd rather have this than go back to the horrible days of single use TMs.
Also, I can see
how those things would be annoying to you on a solo run. But a solo run is not
the only way to play the game, and these changes could potentially ruin so many
other playstyles. Breeding would become mostly pointless, the whole IV and EV system
would become entirely useless since there would be an easy alternative,
competitive players would foam at the mouth at how "easy" the
competitive scene would get, nuzlockes and other challenges would become a
joke.
I'm all for small improvements, but I like things as they are now. There's
annoyances here and there, but the system is flexible enough to allow for many
different playstyles. Just like I find grass pokemon to be awesome because they
work so well in nuzlockes, but you don't find them as wonderful because they
truly suck as a solo pokemon. But every type and almost every pokemon has it
use, thanks to the flexibility of the system.
The complicated affair that is the EV and IV system gives something to players
who want more depth, and the no healing after level ups allow for players to
come up with ways to make this relatevily easy franchise difficult, without
forcing other players to go through it. There's challenges that limit the times
you can visit a pokemon center, which forces the player to rely on potions
instead. Suddenly, this makes money have huge importance, since now items are
the only reliable way to heal. And since there's only so many trainers to beat
to get money from before you have to beat a gym to progress, this limits how
much you can safely train a pokemon. No items runs on the other hand, make
status effects the scariest thing in the world, since they'll hinder your
pokemon until you can get to a pokemon center. This is the only reason I even
bother with berries and moves that heal status effects. But no one else is
forced to play by those rules.
A forced heal after a level up would ruin all those playstyles. It'd be like
forcing you to use a different pokemon after a certain number of battles,
forcing you to have a full team at all times to get through long dungeons. It
would ruin your solo runs. Why would they even do this in the first place?
Because pokemon would get tired after a while and would need to rest or get to
a pokemon center. That makes sense and it sounds humane, even tantalizing for
someone like me who likes a challenge, but it would be infuriating for you.
If GF does implement some of your ideas, I hope they add a hard mode for people
like me. I don't know why they don't do that in the first place, people loved
that feature of Pokemon Black 2. And god help them if they ever make the IV and
EV system too easy. Competitive players already had a fit over super training,
and that only affected the "you have to battle only with certain pokemon
to raise their EVs" part of the equasion. You still had to breed pokemon
over and over to get the perfect IVs. If that made them mad, I don't know how
much they would cry over endless stat boosting items. Even if they costed 1
million pokedollars, they'd still be mad. People complain to this day about how
EXP share works now, and that's an optionable item, not mandatory. There were
even some people who complained over unlimited TMs.
Maybe it's time for GF to add difficulty modes to pokemon, or more items like
the EXP Share that can be toggled on and off and change the gameplay. An item
like that that makes it so pokemon heal after a level up would make you happy,
without ruining my and other player's fun. But even then, people would complain...
Tweakable items
and parameters and different sets of rule would be a really neat idea. It would
allow each potential player to customize their playthrough and play Pokemon the
exact way they want without restraining other players' enjoyment. If GameFreak
could include the Exp. Share and make it optional, then surely many other
tweaks are possible.
As for Stats raising items such as Zinc, Protein &co, a simple solution
would be to dole them out in limited amounts, just like Rare Candies. The
result would be the same, but that would remove the frustration of trying to
feed your 'Mon one of these energy drinks only to be rebuffed with a dry
"It won't have any effect". I think this would even make things more
interesting from a strategical point of view, because it would force players to
ponder carefully the use of the Stats raising items they uncover instead of
simply running to the Mall and stuffing their 'Mons with everything available
until the limits are reached.
I think GameFreak did a stellar job in trying to accommodate both single play
and online play, as well as casual players and competitive players. Having said
that, there will always be minor conflicts and gaps between these two widely
different ways of playing Pokemon, and we obviously have to accept them and
cope with them. Still, that doesn't save a player from being irritated by the
occasional gameplay limitation. :p
The limited
amount of stat raising items sounds good at first, until you take into account
that pokemon can hold those items. This might not seem like it matters, but
remember that you can trade pokemon holding an item. So a player with two
consoles and two copies of the game could just use one console to continuely
farm those items, restarting the game over and over, and trading them over to
their competitive copy. Don't think people wouldn't do this, they already did
this with TMs before they became unlimited. How else did you think players were
able to fit entire teams with a TM move that wasn't avalaible for purchase?
And that's just something someone like me, who doesn't even think about those
"exploits" because I don't play online, noticed right away. Imagine
what someone in the competetive scene woudl come up with! Bottom line,
competitive players are geniuses at what they do and short of GF imputing
limits on the way stats can be raise like they do right now, players will find
a way around it. Besides, X-stat items already help players who want ridicolous
stat boost in their single player games. They just have the minor annoyance of
only lasting one battle. But personally, I think the X-items are already fair
enough as it. Unless they suddenly became super expensive, such a high buff to
stats shouldn't be avaliable so easily, so wasting a few turns is good
trade-off.
In another topic, super happy with the recent Atlus news. Radiant Historia,
Strange Journey and Etrian Odyssey V are all coming over to the west. What a
relief! Now all that's left up in the air is Etrian Mystery Dungeon 2, but I
have high hopes for that one. Well, they were announced for a North American
release, but since they have the partnership with Deep Silver, we Europeans
shouldn't have to wait too long. Unles Atlus wants us to hate them even more
after the SMTIV fiasco.
In more sadenning news, The Sword of Ditto is advertised as a “compact action
RPG”, yet isn't avaliable on a handheld. It's not even going to come for the
"hybrid" switch. Oh well, I'll still get it on the PS4. And Koei
Tecmo is bringing over Blue Reflection for the PS4 and PC...completly screwing
over the Vita version in favour of making a PC port. *sigh*
Right, Pokemon
can hold these items... I have to admit that the possibility of sneaking
Vitamins through the trading process didn't even dawn on me. Well then, guess I
have to accept that necessary evil of not being able to use all my Vitamins. :p
At least they can be sold for a hefty amount of money.
That's great news on the Atlus front, indeed. Although I never really doubted
their dedication to bring the Etrian Odyssey entries to the West, I have to
admit that I was beginning to grow a bit worried about their complete silence
regarding an Etrian Odyssey V localization. I'm glad that I managed to show
some patience and to stop myself from purchasing the Japanese version on a
whim. Heck, Play-Asia had a 60% discount on that game a couple of weeks ago and
it was really hard to resist... :p Good thing I waited and trusted Atlus on
that one. ^^
The prospect of having 3DS releases in 2018 is a delightful one, and it goes
way beyond my wildest expectations for the system. Oh, and there's obviously
the upcoming release of Ultra Sun and Moon! Looks like GameFreak is going the
Unova way once again, and as a fan of both Sun&Moon and Black 2&White
2, I can only approve such a move. I just hope that the Ultra Sun&Moon
Trainer won't be a complete pushover and a mere extra like their Black/White 2
counterpart.
Sheesh, I'm really bummed about Blue Reflection not coming to the Vita... Well,
guess that means I'll have to import the Japanese version. ^^ At least there is
one, which is more than can be said about many games lately. That makes me
think, the Switch seems on its way to becoming an all-digital machine flowed
with indies. Given the thing's tiny storage space, that's not exactly
convenient... But people seem to accept these limitations good-naturedly, after
giving hell to the Vita for operating in the same exact way. Puzzling.
Pokemon
Ultra...I loved BW2, those are my favourite games in the entire franchise, but
I'm iffy about them. Mainly, will they fix the damn lag so I can play the game
in the first place? If not, I'll have to give Sun and Moon a shot first to see
if I can stomach the lag, since they'll likely have fallen in price by then. I
have no other choice otherwise, since apparently Sun and Moon won't be making
it onto the switch. Other than that, I hope they include another side activity
that isn't something like the battle Maison. I want something like Pokemon
Contests, Pokemon Musical or even Pokestar Studios. X and Y felt really empty
to me without that sort of stuff, and I have no doubt that Sun and Moon would
feel the same.
Speaking of the Switch, man were Switch owners pissed off with the Ultra
announcement. And I mean, I am pissed too. I was hoping to play Sun and Moon
lag free on the switch someday and now apperently it will never happen. And
this also means that the Switch will truly have nothing worthwhile this year
but Breath of Wild (which you can get on the Wii U), Super Mario Odyssey and
Arms (arguably). Everything else is a port of either a Wii U tittle or some
other game that was avaliable on other consoles. Oh and indies that few people
care about. Yay. I know that the Pokemon Stars we talked about would also
technically be a port, but there's a difference there. A port from a handheld
to a console is bigger undertaking, and it's something people have been crying
for for decades now, Pokemon on a console! It's another thing to port Pokken
and Mario Kart 8 with a few upgrades. It's nice, but is it truly worth for
people who already had those games on the Wii U? Not really.
I swear if Marvelous and Atlus start porting their series to the PS4, I'm so
skipping the switch entirely. And why wouldn't they since their graphical
requirements are very similar now and avaliability on more consoles means more
money, especially since ports between the two aren't hard to make and the PS4
already has a huge established base. It used to be they developed exclusively
to the 3DS due to its lower entry requirements and huge install base, but now
those requirements are similar to a lot of the games the PS4 already offers and
it has a bigger userbase than the switch will have for a couple of years. I
seriously won't understand Atlus and Marvelous if they choose to remain
exclusive to Nintendo, especially when they didn't do so in the past and don't
even do it now with certain games (P5 and the Senran Kagura series). And Pokemon
and Fire Emblem alone just aren't worth it. I'm seriously hoping...
As for accepting the same crap that the Vita got slammed for, well, fanboyism.
It's either that, or the limitations the Vita has weren't so bad for most
people in the first place, but people just used it as an excuse to not even
give the system a try or bash it outright(probably because they never had any
interest in it in the first place). Either way, it shows those people have a
bias either for Nintendo or against Sony. I don't blame them, I have a present
bias against the Switch.
I just saw an
article that confirmed that Atlus is releasing the 3DS tittles in Europe as
well. Etrian Odyssey will come out on Winter 2017 and the other two games in
early 2018. America is getting Etrian Odyssey in Fall 2017, so I'm guessing the
other two games will come a little later as well despite having the same
release window as America right now.
I don't really care, I'm just happy that Atlus has worked out their European
issues to the point we don't have to wait for months to even know if the game
is coming out in Europe. I might have my problems with Sega and Deep Silver,
but their relationships with Atlus have been fairly benign so far (Sega gets a
minus point for their influence over the P5 controversy, but gets it back for
their help in bringing over 7th Dragon).
I'm really starting to think that GameFreak are truly reluctant to release mainline Pokemon games on the Switch and will try everything in their power to avoid it. They are already visibly dragging their feet and trying to hang onto the 3DS as long as they possibly can. Now the question is: if the 3DS has no successor, could GameFreak step as far as to jump ship and abandon Nintendo in favour of tablets, phones or an hypothetical future dedicated handheld? Although such an option may seem totally ludicrous and beyond shocking, we have to remember that Squaresoft, another developer affiliated to Ninty for the longest time, didn't hesitate to jump ship when Nintendo's decisions clashed with what they envisioned for their flaship series. And powerhouse Enix has been only marginally faithful to Ninty since the late '90s... Now I don't know if GameFreak can technically sever themselves from the Big N, but such a move would certainly shake the industry and be the talk of the town for years.
No comments:
Post a Comment