PikaKiraKuzu

Hello everyone, I hope you all have had a lovely weekend. I kind of wanted to write a different kind of post today. One that is sort of just talking about my frustrations about a certain topic..

Pokemon, the video game and anime series that almost everyone knows. Pokemon had its first video game in 1996 and it debutted its award winning anime in just one year following in 1997. Since then, Pokemon as a franchise has come a long way. It is the top most grossing company in the world, with over 1000 Pokemon across 40 games to collect.
However, in recent years, things have started to plummet for the serie’s reputation. Pokemon has faced many criticisms from both old and new fans of the franchise, with some refusing to consume their content at all. Today I am going to discuss my own critiques of the series in full and why I think Pokemon is at a turning point, possibly for worse.

First and probably the most controversial choice the Pokemon company has made is locking the use of some pokemon within their games behind a paywall. Game Freak, the company behind the franchise, has stated they made this change to focus more on honing in the quality of the actual gameplay elements and animations. While not a bad idea in theory, I as well as many other longtime Pokemon fans feel this is completely false.
I am wholeheartedly convinced the choice to put more pokemon behind a paywall was made to simply make more money, and here are a few reasons why. There is no visible evidence that they are using the excess time to further improve the quality of the games, especially considering the lackluster release of Scarlet & Violet. While some great changes have been made to the ingame pokemon models themselves, it is not enough to require additional payment. It’s important to remember that all Pokemon have an existing 3D model. So, with some rather quick adjustments to a Pokemon such as adding polygons, upscaling textures either with AI or by hand, and adding bitmaps when needed, they would be ready to be added into the modern Pokemon world. There is no logical reason someone should have to pay more to use more Pokemon in-game, especially when they are likely already paying for the Pokemon Home service. Incase you don’t know Pokemon Home is a paid service which allows you to store and trade your Pokemon from all Modern games. Yes the subscription is not very expensive at just 20.00 dollars a year, but thats irrelevant. Essentially you are paying twice for the same thing, because while Pokemon Home is only storage app, you are storing them to use them in the modern games.

Another big concern which I briefly mentioned was how bad the latest installment of the franchise was. Besides the fact the game had game breaking bugs, horrible pop-in and lag, removal of previous features, the Pokemon were just quite frankly.. ugly. Now, I understand that me not liking particular Pokemon is no fault of Game Freak. In fact, I was not a fan of many of the Pokemon from the Sinnoh Region when the Diamond & Pearl games first came out. However, there is a key difference between the Pokemon from generation four and the current ones from generation nine. Diamond & Pearl was the first game featuring a more modern art style in all aspects. Designs for Pokemon got much more rounded with unique and varied color palettes. It was a change that took some getting used too, but it was calculated and consistent. In contrast, Scarlet & Violet has absolutely no consistency and some of the Pokemon designs are so incredibly lazy it’s embarrassing.

I mean, lets just be honest. The tumbleweed Pokemon is so uncreative!

To make another point which also might be silly, one of the most obvious examples of laziness from Pokemon is the official art of Sprigatito. Look at the picture below and tell me, do you notice anything odd about it?

One eye is completely crooked! To their credit I will admit that errors like that are incredibly common for beginner to moderate level artists. But on the same token, that type of error is not something we should expect from a company like Pokemon. That is because of a few reasons. First, all artwork and designs go through multiple stages and have to be reviewed, modified, etc. so the mistake should have been caught.

Another reason is that this is a starter pokemon, the most important selling point for Pokemon games! This was one of the first pieces of official art we got to see for generation nine as well, so you’d expect some care to be put in the final product.

A additional criticism given by fans that also ties in with the games Scarlet & Violet is the fact Pokemon decided to restart the anime and focus on a completely different protagonist. As someone who grew up with the original Pokemon anime, I am actually not against this change. Ash has been the anime’s protagonist for over 20 years, I don’t think focusing on new characters is necessarily bad. However, I am absolutely gutted that the new anime takes place in the Paldea region, which has been, in my opinion, the worst generation in all aspects to date.


I feel the need to acknowledge the Donphan in the room and say I am completely and utterly aware of how insatiable the Pokemon community can be. Even when Gamefreak has specifically listened to fan’s wishes in regards to certain remakes or adding certain content, many fans will immediately flip and say something like “Ok, now when are you going to do ____” “This sucks, why would you do ___?” It’s honestly a little ridiculous especially when your ‘fans’ will cause a community outrage by making up false rumors about or just freaking out over nothing. Examples of this are: people claiming Sword & Shield’s houses were all identical, or absolutely losing their minds over in-development footage not fathoming that it wasn’t the games final form.
I do think all of the rabid fans have caused Gamefreaks morale to drop tremendously, which undoubtedly affects the quality of the games. That is no excuse of course, they should only release games they are proud of, but I do think it could serve as a possible and partial explanation.

Another thing I’d like to address is that possible time constraints on releasing games could be a factor in dropping quality. While I am not positive, I do imagine Nintendo and Game Freak likely have a contract stating they have to make a game every 2-3 years. In contrast, the amount of time between the last two mainline mario games is 6 years. While I dont think every 3 years is a impossible deadline to meet, I do think the franchise would benefit from a longer period between games.

Overall, I think Game Freak is burnt out over Pokemon games. And really, can we blame them? They release a game every 3 years so they are constantly working on new titles, and the ungrateful community doesn’t make it any better. It really saddens me that the franchise I grew up with has gotten this way. I think the best course of action for the franchise would be focusing on cards and merchandise, as well as leaving more time between games.