The game is terrible and I do not support slop. Unfortunately many people reinforce shitty behaviours; oh well. So, so many videos highlight the mass flaws of the game technically. This is my opinion anyway.

Yeah any time I see people defending this game I really have to wonder what their agenda is.

I think some of these people literally only play Pokemon games, honestly a fact that I'm just learning about now, so they aren't gamers they are just pokemon fans and play zero other games and so were relegated to handheld technology until the Switch (alright technically still handheld but you know what I mean) and don't realize that Pokemon is about 20 years behind modern games in terms of gameplay, quality, and presentation/graphics, while of course at the same time having lost everything that made Pokemon so good way back on a system as basic as the Game Boy.

But for people who are actually gamers and make every excuse in the book for Z-A and Game Freak, claiming it's the best pokemon yet (lol), from a human behavior perspective it's hard to imagine what is going on. I guess this is just what blind loyalty to a brand looks like.

Looking at user scores, most are in the 0-4 range, and then some are the blind fans who just don't care and give it 9-10, and there's not much in between, because anyone being honest about the game is giving it 4 or less, and anyone being a blind fan that doesn't care about quality and only cares that is has the name "Pokemon" on it is giving it a 9 or 10, dragging up the score to a 3.X on Switch and 4.X on Switch2 which when you take out outliers (the 9's and 10's) is realistically more like a 2/10.

There isn't a single other franchise in gaming that would get this mass pretending of still being good despite putting out such a terrible zero effort game after several mediocre games (even perennial franchises like Fifa and CoD that get made fun of for being the same thing every year I don't think fall anywhere this low on quality/effort and at the very least actually look like modern games and give gamers the same consistent fun gameplay even if it is just the same thing over and over and never moves forward). Imagine if the next Mario game did a Z-A and came out and was by far the worst Mario game ever, had Sunshine-level graphics in 2025, bland boring uninteresting worlds and gameplay and zero difficulty...nobody would be defending Nintendo and claiming that "it's okay because nobody expects Mario to be impressive but it's still an amazing game because look you can jump on characters heads!"

Did either of you play it?  Do you really think someone bought the game, and than ran to metacritic and gave it a 0?  You think all of those 0-4 range scores a real and not just Debbie downers that like to vote everything down like Last of Us 2 and Starfield, and those high scores are from blind fans?  Some bad scores are probably legit as not everyone is going to like the same games, many are not.  I have never played a game I hated so much i wanted to rate it a 0.

This is the thing that throws me off with Nintendo sometimes. This game is terrible, and the overall franchise's quality keeps plunging. And yet it sells like bread.
And youd think, ok, thats fine, clearly some people like it, and the huge revenue Nintendo gets from it will ensure that the next entry is gonna be much better, and yet, no, its terrible. Even worse.

The hate of Pokemon is obvious console warring. Fanboys of Sony/Microsoft that are angry that low budget Nintendo games often outsell their favorite consoles AAA games like Yotei.

There's definitely an element of that, but that's not all there is to it; a lot of the criticism also comes from Nintendo fans who are unsatisfied that the games are so far behind the rest of Ninty's first party catalogue technically.

I agree that recent mainline Pokémon (and Legends) release have been graphically underwhelming. Where I take issue is when people make claims like “consumers are finally rejecting this garbage!!” or “I guess there’s some people with horrible taste who continue consuming this trash,” turning the discussion from one of presentation shortcomings to an objective assertion on a game’s quality, personal attacks, and doom-casting. And they do this without ever citing in what ways the gameplay is trash, further exasterbating the unproductivity and unwarranted negativity of the conversation.

You should wait till gen 10 next year before saying something like this cause with it being Switch 2 only, apparently being made on a new engine and getting a relatively long development cycle for a Pokemon game there is reason to have a bit of optimism for it. Though if that one doesn't notably push the series forward then yeah it'll be truly cooked so for me it's their last chance.

Pokemon games legit have below average reviews by JRPG and industry standards. Presentation including: story, art, performance, graphics, music/sound, animations is a huge part of a game experience for many people. I want to be immersed in the world. Especially for something priced at $70, I'm not sure why these are not valid talking points about quality? 

I would agree with you about the negativity if there was a specific Pokemon ZA thread where people playing the game wanted to talk about their experience or a review thread where people actually engaged in gameplay level critique. But this is a thread celebrating/congratulating them for selling almost 6m in a week whilst continuing not to invest in a huge part of the consumer experience. This isn't some underdog story about a small developer having a break out hit or a dev taking a risk on a smaller experience, it's just Game freak doing the least and thriving at it.

Modern Pokemon is garbage, and like most mega popular titles out there (Call of Duty, FIFA, the countless 3rd party money printers), a large part of its fanbase have extremely low standards and are in it because it's the trend/culture. If this makes me a "console warrior" then I'd proudly don this badge. Low effort Pokemon games don't deserve to sell as much in a week as the entire Xenoblade series lifetime. Imagine being offended by this.

People including Nintendo fans shit on popular titles all the time (like COD, sports games, Roblox, Fortnite, and even GTA!), and yet the moment the title involves Nintendo, we're not allowed to say a word. Pokemon is nowhere near the level of Nintendo's own big or beloved titles.

Calling critics "console warriors" is projection.