Pokemon has been a strong franchise for over 20 years and is now making it's mainline debut on the big screen in the form of Let's GO! Pikachu/Eevee. However this has stirred a lot of controversy, one with which I agree with and will detail why down below.
My problem with these games, unlike others, is not the fact that it is aimed at a different audience but in the fact that it is so poorly done. The game is stated to be aimed at "casual fans" and newcomers. However, what really is a casual fan because a casual fan is nevertheless a fan of the series and doesn't need a watered down version of a game to introduce them to a franchise that they already know about. So in other words this game is specifically targeted at people who are new to the franchise or have been distant from it for a long time. That would be a good thing if the game were to leave a good impression in the minds of those newcomers but I doubt that it will once the game rolls around in November and I'll explain why.
First I'll start with the main problem and that's that a lot of core mechanics are removed. It's not one or two but multiple mechanics that are removed. I get that GameFreak is trying to make a more simplified version of the game but this isn't the right way to do it. What's the point of trying to introduce newcomers to the franchise with a game that removes a lot of the core mechanics that make up the franchise.
First off, wild battles should have stayed. It is a feature that makes catching more than just throwing Pokeballs and gives the player a way to gain easy exp. I know that most newcomers are used to the Pokemon GO method of catching Pokemon but wouldn't it have been better to combine wild battles with the catching mechanics of Pokemon GO rather than out right removing wild battles. Combining them would have allowed newcomers get used to the traditional way of catching Pokemon whilst also being familiar with Pokemon GO side of it. It also allowed for easy exp gaining. There are only two ways to gain exp in Pokemon Lets GO! and that's by battling trainers or by catching Pokemon. Battling trainers is by far the better option here as it's quicker and gains you more exp which is especially made better by the exp share. However, trainer battles are finite and you will eventually run out of trainers to battle. Even if you were to rematch them, it usually takes sometime before you can rematch them so you're left with catching Pokemon as the only other option. The problem with this is that it provides very little exp, is very boring and slow and takes up a lot of PC space which you will have to clean out later. This could all be fixed with wild battles. Also stop bullshitting about wild battles are hard, Masuda.
Two other features they removed from the game are held items and abilities. See this one baffles me. Why remove something as simple as abilities and held items which aren't complex and easy to understand but keep stuff like EVs and IVs. Once these features were removed battling becomes boring. Battling would only be about who has a higher level/better stats with very little strategising. To be fair this is how it was in Pokemon Yellow. Abilities gave the player a little bit of strategising to do and made some Pokemon with horrible stats actually useful. Abilities and held items aren't complex in any way. Here's some examples of popular items and abilities
Intimidate-You lower your opponents attack upon Switch in Leftovers-You gain a little bit of health each turn Choice __- Raises the ___ stat by 1.5x Speed Boost- Your speed increases each turn
See they are pretty simple and easy to understand. So why, if you're trying to simplify battling,would you remove such a simple feature but include a complex stat system with EVs and IVs.
My next point is subjective but it was the final nail in the coffin. The world is very bland and boring. This was especially made worse by the fact that USUM looked very beautiful and the fact this was the first mainline console Pokemon game.
First off the artstyle. Pokemon Lets GO! is basically a HD Pokemon XY rather than a HD Pokemon USUM. This is rather disappointing as Pokemon SM was a massive upgrade from Pokemon XY and the more realistic proportions made it easier to design environments and made the overworld look cleaner especially since the chibi proportions lead to weird sizing issues where the people are half the height of houses. This was a bit better on the 3DS due to underpowered hardware but on the Switch it looks really out of place. I have to say the game has an art style similar to mobile Chinese rip offs. Here is one. Remove the clustered HUD, add lots of light and improve textures and you have a game looking very similar to Pokemon Lets GO! Infact if you were to do the reverse and also a silly HUD on Pokemon Lets GO! you could fool someone into thinking it's a Chinese mobile game. This is made worse by the use of a grid map which leads to the overworld looking blocky. Infact when the Lapras leak first came out, I didn't believe it because I thought it was an edited image of ORAS. I think that says a lot.
And it's not just the art style. The world feels bland as well. There's no colourful environments, no beautiful buildings. No it's just a copy and paste of the original Kanto map. There are no changes to it apart from the cycling road and a few other minor changes. It's quite disappointing. The original Kanto towns weren't very interesting but that's because they were on a game boy and it was not possible for the developers to make grandiose cities. Why didn't GameFreak benefit from the power of the Switch to improve on the cities like they did in ORAS. On the GBA, Mauville City was supposed to be a high tech city but due to the limitations of the GBA they could not do that. In ORAS they changed the whole of Mauville City to a large shopping mall with living areas above. They remade the abandoned ship into Sea Mauville an animal preservation site which once used to cause distress in workers and cause massive amounts of damage to the environment. That's how you remake a region. Just copy and pasting is lazy. The same could be said about the gyms. The gyms in both ORAS and Pokemon Lets GO! have the same puzzles as the originals but ORAS uses the additional power of the 3DS to make them feel alive, like actual gyms you would see. Here's an example:
As you can see there is a massive difference. Both have kept the same puzzle(though there isn't any in the first place) but Brock's gym has stayed almost entirely the same with the only difference being there are stands now and an additional trainer. Compare that to Roxanne' s gym where there are grandiose fossils and statues in the background which are constantly moving, with a little museum at the entrance. In this gym you truly can say that you are in a rock type gym. In Brocks gym the only thing saying that it's a rock type gym is a few boulders plastered around. This isn't about pandering to a new audience. This is laziness.
This is further amplified when looking at the overworld of USUM and LGPE. I'll give you screenshots.
As you can see USUM looks way better. The environment is colourful with flowers popping out of bushes and trees whilst in Let's GO! the enviroment is bland, with the only colours being shades of green and brown. It looks very boring. In the background you see a girl with her meowth which, when you run past them, you will see the meowth running around and purring whilst in Let's GO! Joey just stands there staring deeply into your soul. You see more examples of this in Route 1 in USUM where trainers do small actions on the spot such as throw the Pokeball up and down or look around whilst in Pokemon Lets GO! the trainers just stands there looking straight ahead into your soul as seen by the cycling road footage. There are also more things happening in the background with USUM with a wingull flying over the route in the morning and a Murkrow at night. The Pidgey in the LGPE screenshot look out of place mainly due to the chibi art style. The people in USUM also walk about on the streets, some do different things depending on the time of day. In other words the world feels alive rather than a plastic base for the player to explore. It adds flavour to the game. Oh and don't get me started on the stiff and poor animations.
So these are my thoughts about Let's GO! I could have written more but I've already written a lot. Please tell me about your opinions on the game
Submitted July 22, 2018 at 08:03AM by ulkesikildi https://ift.tt/2uXEnGi
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