Pokemon Legends: Z-A and Champions are good looking games - You guys are just mean

[Frogger]

Xxain said:

Frogger said:

We can go back and forth on whether it's lazy forever. I just don't agree that it is. There are over 1000 Pokemon models at this point. It's not lazy if they don't always update every single one, and we have no reason to believe that they will not update any at all, especially when they already look so good now. That's not lazy. That's just good priorities.

I also think the size issue is an issue, but it's not a limitation of open world gameplay. The last Legends game had proper proportions, so this is being done for some other reason. I suspect it's a balance issue, now that the combat is real time. Size+speed will effect big and slow Pokemon a lot when it comes to being able to dodge attacks now in away it didn't before. I think the trade off isn't worth it though, and agree that the sizes should be corrected, but that's a practice change.

I just don't believe that the moves aren't flashy. I don't know if I'd call them complex, but I don't think that matters. They look good. That's all that matters. There are over 1000 attack moves in pokemon atm, and after changing the battle system significantly with this game, all the attack animations look really good and flashy. I think Outrage can look like that forever and be fine. Rock Slide looks great. Bulldoze looks... annoying because it doesn't match the move name, but the animation itself looks high quality. I don't think it's an issue that Mega Evolution uses the same effect over an over, considering the same thing is being done over and over. We don't criticize cool Doom weapons for using the same animation over and over again. It's the same gun shooting the same bullet.

I think it's likely going to have way more variety than what we're seeing when it comes to building variety than what we're seeing, but they haven't shown us that, so I'm not going to pretend I know. The only things I'll say is that a big part of the last Legends game was drastically changing a previously visited area, and that the single biggest thing we know about that game is that it's centered around urban redevelopment specifically to make it more habitable for pokemon. I'm very confident that Lumiose will not only look very different from the one in XY, but that it will probably look different in a way that will personally annoy me. This is speculation, so don't take this as an actual refutation of your point, but considering how the 5 zones are marked by colors, I wouldn't be surprised if they were focused on a collection of types, and the reason this zone looks so normal is because it's the Vert/Green Zone and is the most normal/grassy.

I 100% don't believe that ZA will have the architectural complexity of a GTA, but I don't think that makes it lazy, and I don't think that means it will be filled with copy-pasted buildings. It's not the case that if a franchise as big as Pokemon doesn't make it's experimental spin off series as big and complex as GTA, that that means it's being lazy. I do think there could be more people in the city though. I just don't think that's as big an issue as you do, because I don't think the other issues you're seeing exist, so this is one of few on a clear line of improvement for me.

I'm not going to get into Pokemon lore stuff, as that's beyond the scope of this thread. A lot of things in Legends 1 didn't make sense and are plot holes/lore breaking, like them retconning Pokemon to shrink before they go into a pokeball, instead of the Pokeball using technology to shrink Pokemon, but that has nothing to do with how the game looked graphically.

They've never made a massive city, and they've never done real time combat using mainline game stats. Those are literally the two biggest things revealed here. I just do not agree with your assessment of their effort here at all. I don't see an issue with it taking place in modern kalos Lumiose that isn't abandoned. Also, I don't even know if I'm being fair to this game. Maybe it's just the screenshots I chose, but there are way more characters on screen in the screenshot of ZA than of the other two games, and I'm not even counting the Pokemon. I don't know why I have to agree that the city is empty just because it's not full. There is an in between.

And more than half of them don't even make it in to the games. Recent games have a bestiary the size of standard RPG game. Dragon Quest 11 had over 400 monsters and they were all updated and well animated. So the ones that are being used, why shouldn't they be updated? What's the excuse? Hell, at the rate they're going with the limited Pokedex they could update a batch over time, but they're not even taking advantage of that. 

EDIT: Digimon Cyber Sleuth had 350 Digimon and they didn't have the luxury of reusing models. All made from scratch.

Hiku said:

Sephiran said:

Complaining about Pokemon selling well even though the games look bad seems just like console warriors that are angry that Pokemon outsells AAA games that releases on their platforms of choice. Its not Pokemon's fault that no one is buying FF7 Rebirth on PS5 and instead just play Gacha and other live service games on the console.

Doubtful, considering how you'd think there would be a correlation between success, and increase in quality in areas where there is a lot of room for improvement. 

I'm of that opinion as well, and I own the prequel.

Gamefreak may not have the talent/manpower capable of producing something that would look a bit more akin to what I'd expect from a big release from such a massive franchise.
But all it really should take is money, which they print.

It's not unusual for studios to expand, or move people over from other divisions who have the experience needed.
I'm only referring to the visuals for the environments btw, but to me it is startling to see this being a new Pokemon release.

I think thats 8 tufts of grass next to him.
The car almost appears to have one flat color for each texture.
The often repeated and simple building patterns in the one single city this game takes place in is a choice.
Some definitely have a lot more character than what's seen in this particular shot though. And I think the pavement looks fine.

Persona 5 is a 2016 PS3 game, which is notably weaker than Switch.
And Switch even runs the upgraded Royal version.




P5 is very simple and unremarkable when it comes to its environmental textures.
But not that simple, and they make use of colors and object placement to make things look more lively.

Lots of different signs, colors, shapes, and lights. There are some signs similar to these in Pokemon Z-A, but seem to be more like an exception rather than the rule. 
The books on the left side in this shot look very simple and flat. But the ones with the spines facing outwards have a lot more and varied detail.

The bookshelves are very simple. But they do look like wood.
I need to see the flower beds in Z-A more up close, but from a distance it looks like they used the bucket tool in MS paint to fill it with brown.

Which is fine at times, but that's right behind the car with the same issue, and surrounded by a lot of similarly flat and empty presentation.

And while I think the pavement looks fine in Z-A, here in P5 there are asymetrical paterns, popping colors, cracks in the tiles, garbage/flyers lying on the ground, some knocked over cones, etc.

With how much Pokemon is earning, I think the environments in a Pokemon city should look way better than Persona 5.
But if anything I think they look notably worse in most regards.

Not referring to character models, which I think look better in Z-A. At least when it comes to detail. But with the drawback of having notably fewer npc's it seems.

I feel like these are all really fair comparisons. My only thing is that the areas in P5 are a lot smaller than anything we're seeing with Z-A. I'm not confident at all that a P5 as big as ZA would look better than P5 currently looks with only a larger budget, especially considering how how many years it took to even develop P5. I do not think the Switch is as much more powerful than the PS3 as other people think it is.

Like I don't think it would be reasonable to expect ZA to handle the amount of npcs in the first pic, considering its size.

This is a comparison of the the Lumiose compared to Paldea. If the scale is anywhere close to accurate, it will be a very very big side project on a console that is very very weak. And this isn't me saying that the switch can't make any game more beautiful than this game at this scale. I just don't think that kind of game is a spin off to an anime game franchise made in like 2 years, and I think Pokemon should be allowed to make smaller scale games without them literally being small in game area, like LA was, if it doesn't look bad, which I don't think ZA does.