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Dulfite said:

Yes, though more old school. Modern ones are okay, but aren't taking the leaps I'd like. Legends is a move in the right direction, but still looks barren compared to other open world games like Botw or other huge map games like Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Still, a step in the right direction for sure.

I just wish they'd take all that money they make in profit and make an actual AAA budget game. Cutting edge technology, brand new engine/assets, massive online gameplay improvements, meaningful side quests, voice acting, more cinematics, more than two way battles. Basically do Dragon Quest 11 except Pokemon.

At this point it's no longer a matter of money, for instance the staff used in Sword and Shield is bigger than any Xenoblade games. Granted Pokemon has far more monster to design and animate, overall the graphical fidelity is low and the animations are barren and recycled enough to be done with smaller teams.

The matter here is clear for me: Lack of technical skill. Game Freaks are mediocre devs, period. They essentially reused a nice game design from Shin Megami Tensei series with a more approachable image to kids and the rest was a combination of genius multimedia marketing, the games themselves were never quite there. Their games outside Pokemon franchise got mediocre scores and underwhelming reception proves the point Pokemon ubiquitous popularity and public-friendliness are pretty much the only thing making the game score 80+ every gen 

For 25 years GameFreak only made games from handhelds which were by definition 2 generations behind the current one. We can see Legends Arceus with specs one would expect from a PS3 launch title. Their conservative nature don't make them hiring new talents, for some reason Game Freak still with only ~200 employees and we can clearly see they cannot fill deadlines for their own games anymore as they are for the first time outsourcing a Pokemon mainline remake

If you don't hire new talents how are you supposed to progress to modern day mechanics? You have a team of 90's dinosaurs who only made handheld Pokemon games in their lifes, how can they make advances in gameplay? Or in online design? There is no chance to a game with a core team from Game Freak meets contemporary gaming design standards, they would need to outsource most, if not everything, and if they will outsource then it's better close the doors, fire everybody and focus on marketing and strategy while more skilled studios work developing quality titles. Game Freak CEOs doesn't seem interested in this and Nintendo is quite lax when it comes to Game Freak. With Pokemon consistently outselling anything from other Nintendo IP's (except Mario Kart) it's not hard to understand why