Pokemon's Uncertain Future

Originally I was going to write about my impressions on Pokemon Legends Arceus, but with the recent announcement of Gen 9, I’ve decided to pivot onto a broader discussion of the series as a whole.

I think the best place to start on this topic is to look at the past few games, and by that I mean recount the downfall of the main line series. This most obviously starts with X and Y, the first game in the series that I would consider a “modern” Pokemon game. By a “modern” game I mean a game with an easier experience, less content, and a more incomplete feeling. I think its clear to see that XY suffered from the jump to 3D, as the region was small, the Pokedex smaller, and the performance was subpar at time, but a lot of that was easy to forgive as it was the first time working with a new engine.

A bit of a hot take, but ORAS were actually good games in my opinion. They had the advantage of being remakes that allow more development time to be put into adding improvements over the originals. They still suffer from being on the same engine as XY, but they’re better all around.

Things kinda started to go down hill with everyone’s favorite, Sun and Moon. SM were an interesting attempt at redefining Pokemon’s stagnant somewhat stagnant formula, but in doing so they leaned heavily into the more “modern” design aspects of Pokemon. The hand holding for much of the early game is unbearable, the route “design” was more like hallways than organic spaces, just the existence of the Rotom Dex, foreshadowing the removal of the National Dex, and the commitment to making battle gimmicks all show the unfortunate trend the games were following. Its easy to look back and point out all these flaws, but this is nothing compared to the dumpster fire that were USUM. Those games kept everything wrong with SM and made it worse. Those games took everything right from SM and made it worse. Those games took SM and sold it to us again. Some argue that USUM are the “definitive” version to play through for that generation, I’d argue differently. USUM may have more content than SM, but they don’t have better content.

The next games, Let’s Go, are an interesting case to me. They’re a more streamlined remake of the original Red and Blue, and while I haven’t played them, I also haven’t heard anything horrible about them. Yes, they diverge from the expected formula a bit, but they’re meant to be baby’s first Pokemon game. They took the originals, updated them and gave them a fresh coat of paint, and this is something I can get behind. The sixty dollar price tag? Maybe not, but in concept they are still OK games, and maybe that has to do more with them being remakes than anything else.

Now if we want to talk about a waste of sixty dollars, that is where Sword and Shield come in. SwSh are by far the worst Pokemon games I have had the pleasure to play to date. The horrible region, the horrible route design, the horrible story, the lack of any challenge, “Dexit”, and the utter lack of content is just appalling. And then on top of that they have the gall to ask for even more money to get some bonus content. I understand some people actually enjoyed the game, and that is a perfectly valid opinion to have, but I must ask those people if they’ve played any previous Pokemon games before, because SwSh was so mindless and so boring that seeing the utter failure of the trees in the game was more entertaining than anything else that game had to offer to me.

Switch owners would actually have the chance to play some of the older games in the form of the Diamond and Pearl remakes, games that were highly anticipated by the community. This had been something that was desired for years and it was so cool to finally get an announcement for them in early 2021. Except, these games were anything but what the fans wanted. They told us they would be “faithful” remakes, and they meant that. The games were closer to a copy paste job than a remake. This would have been fine if they chose to copy paste the correct Sinnoh game, Pokemon Platinum. Platinum took the time to take what was wrong with Diamond and Pearl and actually improve them to create a definitive experience for the Sinnoh region. BDSP just flat out ignores that and kinda just paints over DP and sells it for sixty bucks.

At least the wait for the next game wasn’t long, as a short three months later we would get what I consider to be the “true” Sinnoh remake, although its only a remake in spirit. Legends Arceus takes the player back in time to ancient Sinnoh for a completely different experience. It actually succeeded in mixing up the formula, where SM tried and failed. However, it did so by creating such a different experience that it is hard to compare to any other Pokemon game. LA takes a proto-open-world approach to a Pokemon game and lets the player explore environments at their own pace. While everything else takes more of a back seat on this journey, the core focus is on the capture of Pokemon. Running around trying to catch Pokemon is such a fun game play experience, but the sad part comes outside of that experience. Everything else, such as the story, the environments, the actual battling, and much more just feels lacking and empty. As a game, it is a million times more enjoyable than any of the games from the past few years, but with it having such a different structure than every other game it is hard to make any comparisons, especially to the known good games.

Somehow, only a short month later, we already got news of a new set of games on the horizon. Pokemon Violet and Scarlet are shaping up to be a true open-world experience and possibly a change from the regression Pokemon has had in the past few years. While we do not know much about them, it is still possible to speculate based on previous games and some of the “trends” they’ve followed. In a sense, SwSh laid the ground work for the open world with the wild areas, PLA took that and expanded upon it, and it seems like Gen 9 will finally see it to completion. PLA also shows us that Game Freak is still able to create a game with highly engaging game play while providing a fresh take on things such as the revised battle system. Things could finally be looking good for the future of the series, but I still have many doubts. The effort required to create a game has only increased over the years, and the jump to 3D has not helped, especially in an open world environment. While not completely confirmed, it is highly speculated that the engine that was originally written for XY has over the years been worked on and overhauled to the one that is used currently, and that worries me a bit. An engine originally written for the 3DS and all of that system’s quirks probably has difficulty handling the complexities of an open world game. And its not only the engine that is concerning to me, but also the scale of the game increasing while the development time stays the same. While Game Freak does have multiple in-house teams to work on projects, the time between generations still takes the same 3-4 years as previous games have. I fear that this is no longer adequate time to create a game, especially with the ever increasing scope of these games.

To summarize, Pokemon games have been going downhill since 2013. The most recent game, Pokemon Legends Arceus, shows that with some effort the games could recover, but the trends the games have been following leaves me, a long time fan, uncertain. I cannot promise I’ll cover everything about them up to the release of the next generation, I can say that these next games might be some of the most pivotal in the franchises history.