Greetings From Michigan!

Playing: Monster Hunter 3, Pokemon White
Watching: The Owl House

[ King of Smudge ]
[ Chronic Worldbuilder ]

Thanks for stopping by!

Having recently a shitton of downtime, I chewed into my fat stack of unplayed Pokemon games. I completed Black (Gen V) and then played X (Gen VI) and Sun (Gen VII). All told, since first playing Ruby (Gen III) as an adult, I have played Gen III - VII, and know of Gen I-II by way of SoulSilver. Since I came into Pokemon as an adult, I don't have that nostalgia for Red/Blue, though, I do have a soft spot for Diamond/Pearl, since they were the games I first learned how to play, and spent 10 years in Sinnoh, chipping away.

Gen I nostalgia is overrated, everyone has nostalgia for the first game they played. For most pokemon fans, this isn't Red/Blue anymore.

If there were T-shirts with Gen III or Gen IV starters, I'd buy one.

The biggest change to Pokemon games was changing exp.share from a held item that split the XP between the party leader and exp.share holder, to a key item that duplicates 80% of the XP to all party members. This was double-edged. It removed a lot of XP grinding, but eliminated challange - Gym Leaders are easy to fight when your entire party is 10 levels higher, the Elite Four not a big deal when your entire party is 20 levels higher by the endgame.

Gen V was the last true pokemon games.

Changing transport systems from having the right moves in your party pokemon to ride pokemon (and from what I can tell some sort of motorcyle thing in the current gen?) is double-edged. It freed up players from having to have the right pokemon to get across the map, but, it removed an entire way of interacting with your pokemon outside of battle with field moves. I never felt any sense of connection to the Ride Charizard.

Adding clothing options was welcome, making them very bland wasn't. I wanted to be as flamboyant as a Gym Leader, walk around in my riding gear, dress like Hau, where's my options to do that?

Using Sweet Scent to lower evasion is BOSS when capturing wild pokemon.

Pokemon Contests were an underrated and underused idea.

Berry Pots were the BEST way to grow berries. I will fight you on this!

Having pokemon walk with the player and react to the environment was very cute, underrated, and underused. It is sorely missed.

Having Trainer NPC talk to you over the phone and Gym Leaders walk around outside their gyms, made the Soulsilver/Heartgold more personable, esp. in the post-game.

Team Galactic is no joke. My Pearl experience consisted of lurching from one boss I had no idea how to beat, to the next. They were the most dangerous team of all time.

Gen IV had the best battle animations.

Gen V's sprite were high art, and more attractive/expressive than the 3D models.

The news ticker in the gateways was genuinely useful.

Kalos Pokemon Centers were the coziest, and most useful to the player.

Gen VI's ability to sit on a couch added A LOT to the game.

Pokemon TV peaked in Gen VI.

Melancholie Path had the best music.

Lumiose City is the worst. I got lost in that big circle every time.

Two games, and I still don't know what was up with Phoebe's character design. Something was lost in translation. Hoenn being inspired by Kyushu, the southern island of Japan, has me suspicious there may be some kind of tradition (E.G, dance for the spirits of the ancestors?) this is meant to resemble?

Alola had the deepest lore. Every character and every location had some secret backstory.

Text descriptions of how food tastes, are just as useless as pictures of it.

Super-Training was the BEST way to handle EV training.

EVs are terrible, and only add unnecessary grind. Things that mitigate the problem E.G. Super-Training, Isle Evelup, bounce-houses in Festival Plaza, are overrated. Because they're band-aids over a poor design.

Mimikyu is the BEST Pikachu.