I hated on Pokemon before it was cool, but I think we've lost the plot, guys. I feel like this deserved its own thread.
I remember thinking XY were kind of ugly looking Pokémon games. I also didn't really like how BW/B2W2 looked tbh, though I didn't think they were ugly. I thought ORAS was a huge improvement, and SM were too, with a bit of jank. I thought SwSh looked too shiny, and had a lot of the jank of SM, so I wasn't a fan, but this is when people started really saying that Pokemon games looked ugly more generally.
I kind of agreed here, and for other reasons completely skipped SwSh. I remember the Let's Go games came out and I skipped those too. I really hated the way they looked. But they were good looking games lol the dust has settled. We can admit that, right? The Let's Go games were sort of a wind waker situation where they looked a way that went backwards in terms of the direction we thought the series were going, but removed from that expectation, the games look wayyy better than SwSh for example. Not just better, but good.
Then Legends Arceus came out. Same jank of SM and SwSh, but definitely an improvement over those. I liked how that game looked more when it came out than I do now, but I still think it looks good. Btw, when I say "jank," I mean the character models have weird proportions. This has been an issue ever since XY honestly, but that was only in the cutscenes so it just felt like something they'd fix later, but it's felt like they just use the same base every game and it always looked off and amateur.
BDSP also released and just look bad, but the trainer models look really good, funnily enough. No more jank. So far, we have generally a mixed bag of how the games looked ever since XY, but a lot of the games still look good. ORAS, SM, Let's Go, and Legends Arceus look good. Even still, I've been avoiding part the criticism, which is technical.
SwSh were critiqued for looking technically bad too, not just aesthetically. I don't agree. I think they look mediocre, but that's it. Let's Go was fine. BDSP look fine graphically. Legends Arceus had some issues. But they don't look bad graphically. They just don't look impressive. I'll get back to that.
I played SV blind. I had no idea what the discourse was for these games until after I finished. I loved it. I had issues, but I had a great time. Relevant to this thread, is I actually thought they looked better than any Pokemon game since HGSS. I thought they were beautiful. I log online and see the games being bashed for how they look.
First, I didn't run into literally any of the glitches I've seen online. 2, I did run into all of the framerate issues. They were bad, so I loved SV in spite of it. I, like many of you, gasped at that intro cutscene in the class where the students behind me moved at like 3 frames per second. But I thought the game itself looked really good. I'd be fine with the game looking as it does now, but at a better framerate, forever.
But of course, I don't think it's a graphically impressive game. I've been a Pokemon fan since the beginning. Almost none of them have been. Maybe Battle Revolution was impressive for the Wii. Idk. But my expectation for Pokemon has never been the specs. HGSS and Platinum are the best looking DS games to me, and they aren't the most graphical games to me, and Let's Go Pikachu and Eevee are the best looking Pokemon games this console gen (so far) even though they aren't graphically the most impressive. I don't know where this spec critique of Pokemon became the norm.
Pokemon is an unrealistic franchise, so I genuinely don't understand what people are looking for if they not only don't like how ZA and Champions look, which I understand I guess, but that they think it should look graphically better. How????
Not how as in I can't understand how it could look more impressive, but I can't understand how much more impressive a graphical increase would look. Pokemon games are meant to look like cartoons. There's only so far increased fidelity will bring before you can't notice a different, and my biggest point to that is that they don't look bad graphically anymore! They look fine! Good even! Maybe the colors are a bit flat? But I think that's a stylistic choice, and I kind of think it looks good here. But people are saying it looks like a PS1 or 2 game or something. Statements like that make my head spin. It looks like a really good looking Wii U game, aka a switch game.
The attack animations in ZA look amazing. All of them. Amazing. Go and rewatch. Outrage looks killer. Flamethrower looks great. The pokemon finally look right again. This semi cel-shaded look for them looks great. I was always on the side of preferring the pastel colors and outlines of XY since I love sugimori's art, but this sold me on a different style.
The insides of the buildings look so good and detailed. The character models look good and not jank. Lumiose looks really good. Yes, the buildings look a bit flat (literally), but why care? They don't look bad like that. They look fine. The textures look better than they have before. Not amazing, but pretty good.
I feel like I'm in some alternate reality seeing people call ZA in particular ugly when to me, it shows Gamefreak actually listening to criticism. What's craziest of all to me is that the game looks this good on the Switch, when the Switch 2 is coming and this will likely be a launch title for that system too. It will look and perform better than this, and it already looks and performs this good now!
Pokemon Legends: Z-A and Champions are good looking games - You guys are just mean. I think we're all just traumatized by post-DS Pokemon, but it's okay. Things are going back to normal. Legends was good with some issues. SV were good, with some issues. Champions and ZA look better. I'm sure they'll have issues too. Never forget the Dexit, but we need to move forward.
I think it sends a really confusing message to GF when they do something so unambiguously good, and are criticized as much as they seem to be with this announcement. The message being to stop listening to fans because they don't know wtf they're talking about anymore. If ZA is being compared to a ps2 game when it looks this good, they're just hating to hate. I don't want them to think that.
You're welcome I've just fixed pokemon discourse worldwide
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