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Glen-i

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Posts posted by Glen-i

  1. Posted · Edited by Glen-i

    1 minute ago, Ashley said:

    I know the graphical focus is going to be on the Pokémon but god damn Game Freak have you actually ever looked at the human characters? They're so ugly and weird.

    Seems close to the anime really? It's fine if you like that sort of style. (I don't, but I can overlook it really)

  8. Posted · Edited by Glen-i

    Honestly, I'd be amazed if we saw Diamond/Pearl remakes in the more traditional style in the near future.

    Gen 4 fans got shafted so hard by Let's Go. They were this close.

    EDIT: So I was looking at the official website for S/S and it only just dawned on me that Sobble is a chameleon. A Chameleon that is blue.

    This means three things.

    1. Sobble is well on track to being best starter ever.

    2. We might actually get a chameleon Pokémon that isn't rubbish in a fight.

    3. Game Freak are defo spying on me.

  9. Posted

    1 hour ago, Vileplume2000 said:

    - The shot where your protagonist walks into the stadium, he looks like he is wearing a sports outfit? Pokémon soccer?

    Not the first time that's happened...

    smashgoal.png

    That's one of the games in the Pokeathelon. A feature from HeartGold/SoulSilver. It even changed the trainer's outfit when you took part.

    Perhaps what we see in Sword/Shield is an evolution of this?

  10. Posted · Edited by Glen-i

    12 hours ago, LazyBoy said:

    As someone who has skipped a couple generations, how has the collecting improved? 

    Also where would I be able to find your thread you mentioned where you discuss how the series has evolved? I wouldn't mind a read. 

    Off the top of my head, we've got stuff like Critical Captures, Chaining Pokémon, as well as numerous improvements to the breeding mechanics. The Gen 3 remakes had a device that let you choose what Pokémon in an area you encounter next (Provided you'd seen it once).

    There's also online trading and of course, being able to transfer your Pokémon between the games through cloud storage.

    Here's the thread, it's very cool and not even remotely nerdy.

    11 hours ago, MindFreak said:

    I hate this too, but it's the only true triangle there is in the type matching. Fighting, Psychic and Dark would be another if Psychic is able to actually hit Dark - such a shame, would be amazing if this was possible.

    Ice beats Flying beats Fighting beats Ice.

    It's not quite as easy to grasp as Fire - Grass - Water. But it does work with no immunities in there. You could also substitute Ice for Rock and it'd still work.

    Shut up! I'm not a nerd!

    EDIT: Oh, and Gen 6 kinda already did Psychic - Fighting - Dark.

    The starters final evolutions got those three types added to them.

    Chesnaught was Grass/Fighting, Delphox was Fire/Psychic and Greninja was Water/Dark.

    DOUBLE EDIT: Oh yeah! Fairy beats Fighting beats Steel beats Fairy.

    OK, I'm gonna stop now...

    • Like 1
    • Thanks 2

  11. Posted

    1 minute ago, Tim B said:

    Gosh, I don't get how everyone is picking their starter Pokémon already. Don't you want to see their evolutions etc. first? I certainly haven't rushed to make such a vitally  important decision so soon.

    Reptile supercedes everything in my book. And I'd prefer to keep some Pokémon a surprise if possible.

    Also I'm getting all three anyway.

  12. Posted · Edited by Glen-i

    9 minutes ago, Ronnie said:

    The fixed camera angles, the corridor based world design, the walking past a random person and a ! appearing, the same vacant looking character trainers, picking a starter Pokemon from the same three types, the walking through the same tall grass to be ambushed by wild Pokemon etc, starting off in your house, probably with your mum downstairs to see you off before you meet a professor and your rival etc etc... It's just the same game over and over. And yes I'm sure there's differences once you dig into it, but the overall design of the games have stayed the same all this time. Maybe Sun and Moon changed things a bit by not having gyms but overall it all just seems so formulaic. I think a lot of people wanted a BOTW style shake up to the formula, something completely different but it looks to just be more of the same, with HD graphics.

    And technically speaking I'm watching the trailer again and it looks an absolute mess. Shadows flickering like mad, muddy textures, and the whole thing looks like it runs at 20 fps (at most).

    Most of that is just superfluous. Visual spectacle that doesn't actually amount to anything meaningful. That's not what I look for in a Pokémon game. The battling and the collecting is what changes over time and that's the most important aspect to me.

    I'm sorry you didn't get your BOTW moment with Pokèmon, but Game Freak is still a small company. It's just unrealistic to expect that kind of scale for a game as ridiculously complex as this.

    Also, X/Y is definitely the worst mainline core series. Like, you couldn't have started any worse.

  13. Posted

    2 hours ago, Ronnie said:

    You've basically described the whole Pokemon franchise, imo. The same decades-old design being rehashed in a new area over and over, every couple of years.

    Ahhh... Spoken like someone who doesn't know jack about how Pokémon games have changed over.

    I mean, I made a whole massive thread dedicated to showing why this view isn't accurate.

    At this point, I think anything short of making it not a Turn-Based RPG won't satisfy some people.

    Anyway, I've watched the footage now, looks solid so far. Just the stuff I like to see. Plus, only having Pikachu show up as far as Gen 1 Pokémon go is a good sign.

    Cautiously optimistic so far.

    • Like 1

  14. Posted

    3 hours ago, Ike said:

    You'd be surprised at how many people seemed to think that.

    I've always maintained that any massive changes will emerge in Generation 9.

    Haven't seen any footage yet, but most people here are disappointed, so that's a good sign! Looks nice so far. Like the blatantly British region.

    And the water type being a reptile of sorts means I'll probably choose that one, and then use @Ugh first aid to get all three anyway.

    2 hours ago, Julius said:
    • This area actually has a tower (based on The Shard?), stadium (Wembley?), what looks like the House of Parliament and Big Ben, a wheel based on the London Eye... @Glen-i, I'm really starting to think that that's a Battle Frontier!

    Don't you do this to me, man! OR/AS's blatant middle finger was too heartbreaking! Can't go through that again!

  19. Posted · Edited by Glen-i

    Glad to see most of you got your dreadful ideas off of your chest while I was away. You're all awful people and you should be ashamed.

    11 hours ago, bob said:
    11 hours ago, Tim B said:
    What are the odds that more than one new game is shown tomorrow? I'm predicting some kind of Pokémon: Detective Pikachu game to co-incide with the movie coming out this summer. They'd be daft not to make one for it.

    LA Noire 2 feat. Detective Pikachu?

    Except you. Because I'd play that. Dodgy realistic looking Pokémon be damned!

    I won't be able to watch it. I suppose that's for the best though, it's the first direct where I'm too scared at what could go wrong.

    • Haha 2

  20. Posted · Edited by Glen-i

    I'm constantly wondering if they will still call him "Mamu" in the remake.

    Because seriously, what was up with that?

    EDIT: Wait, hang on, I just remembered Mamu is Wart's Japanese name and for some reason, his name didn't get the translation in English.

    The French version of Link's Awakening actually changed it to Wart, so someone in the French translation team remembered him.

  22. Posted · Edited by Glen-i

    7 hours ago, GenericAperson said:

    Anyone find the fact that modern gaming has lots of fast travel in it noticeable when playing older games? It's sort of ruined me here when having to go for 100% I could be more efficient in trying to claim the items but when looking up the internet to see where all the items are (I forget the location of every single one but I do remember a good chunk of where the expansions were hidden and which ones I was likely to have already gotten) I found myself jogging back and forth in the same paths and round in a circle (I went through Chozo Ruins at least three times) so try and get everything I was after. Oh yeah... and I found a scannable bomb slot so that worked out.

     

    But yeah, modern gaming has spoiled me when it comes to getting around this game. To be fair though, the map is well designed with backtracking in mind, they made sure that if you need to go back somewhere there's always a shorter route to go through and the power ups you get while playing the game help you get through it all faster. For instance, the Grapple Beam makes getting through Magmoor Caverns much easier and the Spider Ball makes climbing one room in Phendrana much easier. Though, there are still some rooms you have to go the long way round to get through every time like if you want to get to Phendrana Drifts' main entrance through Magmoor Caverns, but I think the moment in the game where you realise how connected the world is comes when you take the lift in Magmoor to Tallon Overworld and the path ends up leading you right back to your ship. That's cool, it turns what was a simple corridor when you first arrive on the planet into a much more open route room and what I think this game does better than the other two Primes is have multiple lifts between areas. This is one of the best designed maps in video games, it's right up there with the first Dark Souls so the lack of fast travel really isn't too much of an issue in the end, just a modern convenience thing. I wonder if Prime 4 will have Fast Travel...

    In some older games, I do feel like fast travel has spoiled me. But I can't say I felt that in my Metroid Prime playthrough. I wasn't going for 100% items mind, but I did get any items I could remember that I could get.

    Like you said, the world is very well crafted in that a fully powered Samus can utilise lots of shortcuts to get around. So that's probably why.

    It's not totally perfect though. I still get a bit irritated when Chozo Ghosts lock the doors even though I've beaten them 10 times in that room already! Just leave me alone!

    I remember Metroid Prime 3 having a cool late game feature that would show you where expansions were as well as an option to mark rooms on your map so you could remember to go there later.

    It also handled the "artifacts" better in that you didn't need all of them to finish the game, but getting them all would get you more expansions and even a secret (and really ominous) message that hinted at the final boss and got you a gold token to spend on concept art. That whole wrecked ship section was really cool.

    • Thanks 2

  23. Posted · Edited by Glen-i

    18 hours ago, Grazza said:

     

    :laughing: I could explain why the Japanese image is better, but it's sort of like how you can't explain a joke.

     

     

     

    I don't really care about supposed ages of characters.  It's like the European version of Dead or Alive: Dimensions - the instruction manual (remember those days?) simply had ages removed for some of the characters; for Sweden's sake, if I recall correctly.  I'm happy with that - it's clear they were meant to be fully-developed women.  Japan just has different ideas of what an adult is, and a lot of people in the West read too much into that.

     

    But where images are altered or ruined is a different matter.  This is art, to a great extent, and changing the visual side lessens it; it really is as simple as that.  There is also the not inconsiderable factor that Nintendo of America's localisation team was particularly SJW at the time of these games in question, and some of us don't like other people's politics forced on us.  If you don't like males appreciating female figures, fine, but don't try and change our games.

     

    Personally, though, I suspect there has been a compromise.  Nintendo isn't so censorious these days, but at the same time I don't think their Japanese games will be so risqué in the first place.  A case of "Nothing censored, but nothing to censor either".

    Stuff like this is always going to be a difficult matter. There's no perfect solution that will make everyone happy. But there has to be some sort of line, you can't just leave some games as is and expect it to be OK everywhere.

    No censorship what-so-ever is definitely not the solution though. Especially when a Japanese game gets released overseas. But I do agree that there's also an opposite extreme where too much censorship can negatively impact a game.

    I have no idea what the perfect balance could be. But if having some censorship means a company feels they can release a game over here, then I can live with it.

    I mean, I'd rather have a world where I played the censored Tokyo Mirage Sessions (Ignoring the fact that I actually prefer a lot of the Western changes) than one where it never left Japan.

    But again, it's a difficult subject. But an interesting one, none-the-less.

    But I do agree with @Ike's sentiment that people whining about all forms of censorship is just stupid. Because it is. Especially that patch he mentioned.

    • Thanks 2

  24. Posted

    17 hours ago, Julius said:

    I find myself lost somewhere between excitement and apprehension, @Glen-i, and I really get how you feel.

    Admittedly, I haven't played LGPE since I don't yet have a Switch, but I've had a strange relationship with the core Pokémon games ever since they transitioned to 3D graphics back with X&Y. I can't quite put my finger on it exactly, but it just really feels like they've been missing something since. 

    Looking back, I find myself agreeing with you about the pandering to Kanto that we've had since that transition to 3D. These games sell ridiculously well no matter what, though, so what's with that? It feels like they've grown far too comfortable in their own bubble sometimes.

    Gonna split your quote into many sections so I don't overlook something.

    I can't really speak for you, but for me, the thing that's been missing for me since Gen 5 has been the focus on what was new. Ever since Black/White sold the least amount of copies in Pokémon history (Not counting third versions, remakes, etc.), The Pokémon Company has been desperately trying to claw back the gamer who stopped playing Pokémon after 2000 or so. Even though most of them don't care anymore.

    There's this image I once saw that I can't find for the life of me now. It shows the distribution of Pokémon based on their region. It's pretty balanced throughout (Except Gen 5, which had far more newer Pokémon catchable than the older ones). However, both Gen 6 and Gen 7 has more Gen 1 Pokémon than any others, even the newest Pokémon at the time. Sun and Moon was particularly bad as it had only around 20 Gen 1 Pokémon that can't be caught there. It certainly didn't help that most of the actual new Pokémon were very difficult to catch.

    This has the effect of dampening the sense of discovery that a new region brings. Which is my biggest issue with Pokémon these days. I still have hopes of another Gen 5 scenario where no old Pokémon show up until you finish the main story and the spotlight is once again focused on what's new.

    18 hours ago, Julius said:

    Personally, I want to see some respect for the fans that I'm sure they're aware weren't fans of LGPE, like yourself @Glen-i. What I mean by that is if something like the capture mechanic from LGPE is going to make it's way over to these new games, have it be the non-default option, and bring back the traditional capture mechanics as the default option. 

    I feel like Sun & Moon was a step in the right direction from X&Y (with a better story, and Alolan Pokémon variants seem like a better direction to head than the power creep that Mega Evolutions were starting to bring), but since then we've had a third version in Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon (which slashed Sun & Moon's sales, when they were on target to become the second best-selling pair of Pokémon games) and a pseudo-remake in Let's Go Pikachu & Eevee, so it's hard to tell which direction they're heading in.

    And, for the love of Arceus, I don't think that a fully controllable camera in a truly 3D environment is too much to ask for. It feels like we've been playing early PS1 games since X&Y, and what I mean by that is that despite having 3D models, the games (for the most part) have the exact same camera angle that they had in older games, making them still feel like 2D games. The closest that they've got to getting away from that, in my opinion, was with Lumiose City's camera, which followed you from behind and changed angles in alleyways, but that was over five years ago now. It's time to see that evolved. 

    I'm glad that LGPE brought with it Pokémon in the overworld -- that's something I'd been hoping to see -- but right now, at least from what I've seen of it, it seems like it's a system being taken advantage of for shiny Pokémon in a similar way to Metal Slimes in the 3DS version of Dragon Quest VIII (with how frequently Pokémon load in to an area), so I hope that's something that the figure out going into these games.

    For all the things LGPE gets wrong (and it gets a hell of a lot wrong) It does have some good ideas that I wouldn't mind seeing make the jump to the core series.

    I like your suggestion of GO style capturing being a toggable option, it's a best of both worlds solution that shouldn't be too hard to implement.

    I'm not too sure I can agree with you on wild Pokémon appearing in the overworld though. Call me old-fashioned, but random encounters still manage to have an element of surprise for me. When that transition begins, who knows what could show up? And a shiny Pokémon appearing on the overworld doesn't quite have the same shock of finding one appear randomly when that silhouette reveals itself.

    I get that people get annoyed by random encounters, but I've always liked them. So it's probably more a "me" preference.

    Pokémon following you on the overworld is always a good thing though.

    @Dcubed and I constantly joke about how a Pokémon game tends to look like a previous Generation Golden Sun game (Diamond/Pearl looks like the GBA games while X/Y looks more like Dark Dawn on the DS) Of course, there's no Golden Sun game on the 3DS, so maybe Dragon Quest 8 would be what they aim for. I'd be fine with that. DQ8 is a cool game. And a reasonable bar to aim for Pokémon these days. Certainly more reasonable than those clamouring for BotW, but with Pokémon. That's just loony!

    18 hours ago, Julius said:

    Speaking of Dragon Quest, I feel like this is the time to say it: Pokémon needs to look at how they transitioned from their 2D games to Dragon Quest VIII, and have (at least in my eyes) perfected a modern "open world" JRPG with Dragon Quest XI. It's a linear open world with its utilisation of zones, but it is absolute perfection: it looks gorgeous, there's a sense of scale, and a real sense of adventure conveyed by the world as a result. I don't think that Game Freak is in a position to gun for a seamless open world with this upcoming pair of games, and I agree with everyone here that expecting that much is asking for disappointment. DQVIII and DQXI are, in my eyes, what they should be looking towards for inspiration of they make the leap into a fully realised 3D world, and I'm going to be sorely disappointed (and I'm sure I won't be the only one) if they don't take that plunge now. Because when would be a better time to do so? I'm curious what your stance is in this @Glen-i: do you want them to take that plunge, or are you okay with them continuing with what they've been doing to this point? 

    I guess that sort of transitioned into my wishlist for these games...

    Oh, and please: no more new gimmicks like Mega Evolutions and Z-Moves. Can we just get some more regional variants if we need to supplement the number of new Pokémon? And more in-depth character customisation. That too.

    I can't really say how much from DQXI I'd like to see Pokémon take inspiration from because I haven't played it yet. (Waiting for the Switch version and I'm staying mostly blind until then) So this is gonna be more of a general thing as to how "open-world" I'd like the series to get.

    It's no secret here that I really dislike games that put the "open world" concept as the focus of a game. Because having such a massive open world that the player can go anywhere they want from the get-go will always force a compromise somewhere else. And yes, BotW is a prime example of what I don't want in Pokémon. There's such a thing as too big and if I get bored exploring that world, that's a big negative.

    That said, I do like some exploration in games. Black/White hit a nice balance for the time in that the progression was quite linear, but people who explored each route would find plenty of caves and forests that were completely optional.

    But I feel like that layout won't do these days. For me, the perfect balance between open-world and focused progression would be something like Xenoblade Chronicles 1 and 2. The areas in those games are pretty big (but not too big) and have plenty of things to discover, but you couldn't actually progress to a later area until you finished with the plot related stuff in the place you were currently in.

    Gym badges would be a great excuse to deny the player access to later areas because those places could be deemed "too dangerous" for rookie trainers. Makes more sense than a Tauros blocking your way just because it's grumpy.

    But realistically, that probably won't happen in the Switch's lifetime unless Game Freak get some help from another company (Monolith Soft helping with the world building is a great idea and I want it to happen yesterday), so I'd settle for something along the lines of DQ8.

    I'm gonna have to agree with @Dcubed on the Mega Evolutions though. The concept is great. But I found the execution flawed because they gave half of them to Pokémon that were already pretty powerful. (Which is definitely what caused the perceived power creep, the likes of Mewtwo, Garchomp and Rayquaza didn't need them)

    Mega Evolution made Beedrill and Pidgeot actually viable in a fight, and I want more of that. Weaker Pokémon getting new life breathed into them.

    But yeah, there's my counter long post.

    • Like 1
    • Thanks 2

  25. Posted

    11 hours ago, Ronnie said:

    Cue lots of gamers saying "We won!"

    Did anyone really think a new IP would sell more than a Mass Effect game?

    Splatoon says Hi! And that was on a failing console to boot.

    No-one really wins from this, you know. Especially if EA is your boss. If this doesn't pick up soon, Bioware could be in serious risk here.

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