Thread 58546772

I think that PLZA is a downgrade from PLA in nearly every regard except for the battles and pokedex completing. The catching mechanic sucks. The day/night cycle cutscene is annoying. The plot is boring. The whole city quickly grows old on you and the wild areas are too small.

This except the exact opposite. It's better than PLA in every way.

>>58546772 (OP)
There hasn't been a good mainline Pokémon game since USUM.

>>58546772 (OP)
not exactly a hot take

>>58546772 (OP)
the legend name is a gimmick they're not supposed to be 1 to 1

>>58546772 (OP)
The battle is such an improvement that I personally prefer it over PLA but theyre both good it just depends on what you are looking for. Za is simply a battle focused game whereas PLA is survivalcraft and exploration.

>>58546784
I'm curious to know why you feel that way.

>>58546772 (OP)
>plot
yes the plot in PLA was soo captivating

>>58546772 (OP)
> The catching mechanic sucks
This
In LA you can actually sneak and hide unless if you kept throwing shit at the mons.
In LZA, sneaking is just pointless. The motherfuckers can spot you instantly even when you are hiding and somehow can turn 180 instantly so you can barely backstab them especially the Alpha who will yell the moment they smell you
Also it extremely lame that you can’t throw baits anymore

>>58546793
>"battle focused game"
>no abilities
PLZA is a joke.

>>58546807
>abilities
They would have to revamp a lot of them to make them work in this real-time system. I like the battles because its interactive. I like being see my mons move around and dodge hits. Feels like the anime

>>58546800
>better battling
>better dex
>better framerate
i have 500 hours on pla and will probably get more out of this game than from it running for shiny alphas. Also the replayability seems alot better.

>>58546823
>They would have to revamp a lot of them to make them work in this real-time system
yes. why didn't they?

>>58546772 (OP)
I agree on the catching mechanics, the day/night cutscene, on the wild areas being too small and to a certain degree on the topic of the city - I think the city does grow old after a while, but I think it could have been possible with better map design and some polish on different music tracks to avoid that issue. I dont think a pokemon game set within 1 location is inherently a bad concept, it was just executed poorly.

I lean with >>58546793 that the battle system is such an improvement that I did enjoy PLZA more overall than I did PLA, but I think the best path forward would be a title that bridges whats good about PLA with whats good about PLZA. I wouldn't mind another game set within 1 location or another game in the wilderness again, but regardless of the route they take I'd like to see this new combat system expanded upon, a return to the catching mechanics PLA had, and overall improvements to exploration as a whole (and for the love of god, add more dungeon environments like the sewers or the team flare lab. Dungeons are just a really great way to break up the pacing and it's just a shame that PLZA didn't offer more in that regard, like raiding an office building or exploring a construction site or a vacated apartment complex. Overall I think PLA expressed the player fantasy of being a pokemon professor's aid discovering, catching, and researching pokemon while PLZA did a better job at expressing the player fantasy of being a pokemon trainer. Neither did it perfectly, so I just hope to one day see a game that does a better job at expressing both fantasies at the same time, both titles felt like they could have accomplished that if just executed a bit better.

>>58546843
Because theyre lazy. Still doesnt mean that it isnt fun tho. If they keep this battle mechanic I expect them to improve on it, if they dont then ZA will probably just standout for this alone

>>58546869
Agreed. Like its not that I didnt enjoy PLA, but I find it very hard to reply after youve explored everything although that isnt a big deal because the time it takes for you to explore and do everything is more than enough for the games worth. However PLA really made me realize that battles are a very important part of the franchise and not having it be a core part of the gameplay feels very wrong and just not engaging.

>>58546843
I think we'll just get abilities in the next legends game, or gen 10 if they felt confident enough about the real time combat to make it the standard for the mainline games going forward and positioning Champs as the evergreen garden for turn based pokemon (lets be honest, outside of rom hacks the old turn based combat was never engaging enough until endgame to begin with for anyone old enough to understand the system and type charts) I was surprised that PLZA even had actual held items like leftovers or life orbs and shit, with the core combat now developed I can see abilities being the big focus the next time we see this combat system return since less time needs to be dedicated to building the foundation for it.

>>58546827
Understandable but honestly, more than half of my enjoyment of playing Pokemon games is finding and catching new pokemon, and exploring new areas. So, this game doesn't do it for me in that regard. And framerate has never been a issue for me except with SV.

>>58546772 (OP)
i can't take opinions of botwtard plassjeets seriously since they genuinely believe an empty turd world slop game with bland barren wastelands where you have to catch 50 bidoofs and watch them use tackle 100 times is the peak of gaming

>>58546882
Yeah, both games have their own unique charm to them, but an ideal game would be one that can carry what made both games charming to begin with. I think you need to have pokemon battles because the act of battling and the drive to make better teams for those battles is what can allow many of the other aspects of the game to flourish. Open world pokemon is almost cheat code to the open world formula as a whole because the core concept can be utilized in ways that really circumvent much of the typical shortcomings you run into with open world games.

The pokemon themselves, TMs, and held items al serve as amazing ways to make the act of exploration and competing side quests feel rewarding to the player. To make those aspects feel important to the player outside of collecting, you need to have pokemon battles as a focus to serve as the drive motivating the players. I think there's room for a game with a focus on battles like that that can also further explore aspects like PLA like it's catching mechanics and exploring new ways for players to engage with completing their pokedex beyond just catching the mons. Mabel's requests were executed poorly, but its a nice example of how you can further incentivize players to explore filling their dex with intrinsic rewards for doing so. If anything I also want to see them go further with it, make me need to do shit like hid in the grass to try to snap a photo of some bidoofs building a dam in a river in order to progress some researcher's level to get some rewards and unlock like, an extra dex entry for that mon at the same time. The camera is a dedicated button in the controls these days, why not explore utilizing the camera on a deeper level with game mechanics rather than keeping it relegated to just a button to enter photo mode?

>>58546785
XY*

>>58546954
>open world slop with varied environments and locations = le bad!
>open world slop but it's one city with the same textures = le good!

3rd game will have PLA's exploration and ZA's battles. Trust the plan.

>>58547041
3rd game will focus on how to make Dynamax battles work with the new gameplay.

>>58546978
>Why yes I do have high-functioning autism and can only think in black & white why do you ask?

Both games failed to make their exploration good, Pokemon as a whole has been failing to make it's sense of exploration good ever since it moved off the original DS. A difference in biomes doesn't matter if all of the biomes featured look like muddy shit and lack visual cohesion. Only a studio chronically incapable of solid 3D environmental design can somehow make a fully 3D Eternia Forest feel smaller and more barren than the series of hallways that it was when it was first featured almost 2 decades ago before we even start to consider the bastardization that is Snowpoint Temple. Likewise only that very same studio can somehow make a game dedicated to a single city feel more boring than the actual real life city it's based on. BOTH could have been done better, I don't even know why you are making it a point of contention as if the breed of cow that made the shit matters when at the end of the day both cow-pies are bullshit.

>>58546978
>empty turd world plass with barren wastelands and extremely repetitive "gameplay"
>fleshed out open world plza that mixes both wild-city areas meaning you can catch mons and battle trainers, plus partake in other things the city has to offer (cafes, tons of unique sidequests, platforming sections, alpha/rogue/shiny hunting) seamlessly
correct
good to know botwtard plassjeets have shit taste, must be a cultural thing over there in india

>>58546772 (OP)
Let's just accept the fact that Game Freak outright *refuse* to improve upon things that work because they want old games to sell in years to come. If they made Legends Johto and it was PLA with more areas and trainers there'd be no reason to play PLA. They do this on purpose and have been open about it.

Oh, I almost forgot. Fuck Rotom Glide, Pokerides are much better.

>>58546791
I've liked the fact this game isn't a direct follow up to Arceus but in many cases it just felt, rather it is, a lesser version of a mainline game without using the advantages of being so. Having the game taking place in just one place would be quite unique and interesting if the place was filled with content and unique events, different buildings, etc. That clearly ain't the case so I will take generic empy wildscape anyday then ugly buildings. >>58546805
At least Arceus focused more on the creatures and on the events at hand rather than segments dedicated to a streamer (very hot, indeed), some random guy who is strong, a mob guy; like I want to hear and find out about the Mega Evolutions not these dudes.

Also the music is so boring. Goddamn, on top of the game being in this same location also the music of said location has like 2 variations.

>>58547066
There's no studio capable of making this type of design ingenuinity you've described. Closest that I can think is From, because the dungeons and cities really felt like the Souls counterpart, but that was on the expense of a lot of Marika Churches and a lot of repeated monsters across the map

>>58550488
Arceus is so bare bones though.
In za the poke.on actually have little interactions with the enviorment. Weather its trubbish hanging out by cans or fletchling perched on a lamp, magikarp flyong at you as you cross the bridge.

Yes its simple scripted events, but it makes a more enjoyable illusion of the world being alive then arceus's mmo spawns milling around.

Whatever they do, i hope ZA's battle system sticks around a while longer. Its pulled me bck into the franchise after ignoring it for years.

>>58547087
Yeah, dude, because the gameplay in ZA isn't repetitive.
>fleshed out open world.
Now you're taking the piss. That mix made so the wild areas had to be very tiny boxes and the city to be an empty grey hellhole. That fusion didn't worked out.
>cafes
Are you serious? You can't even see them from the inside.
>Different sidequests
Have you played PLA? That game wasn't a masterclass at sidequests, but it was so much better than whatever we have going on in ZA. Most sidequests comes down to "Oh, do you know about this movie that you've used 1000+ times? Battle me and I will give the TM". Wow. Riveting stuff.
>seamlessly
yes that it is the strongest aspect of the game but having a dead city, that feel less alive the Goldenrod in GSC isn't a good tradeoff.
Also PLA had a more fleshed-out sidequest to catch the weather trio than ZA had to catch XERNEAS AND ZYGARDE.

>that feel less alive the Goldenrod in GSC
They really do be saying anything.

>>58550506
Yes the wild areas in the Arceus does get barebones, specially the latest ones like the snowland. And I do like how the Pokémon interact with the city and I think the general aspect of interactivity, the way they move and interact and fight to be the best they ever done in the franchise. But that came at the cost of a very limited dex, which very limited options. The city feels huge in the beggining until you realize there are no secrets because everything is either story or it will be right on your face so no reason to go exploring. It is clear that this game is far away from what the developers had in mind, you can't make a game of that scope in 3 years. I wonder why the hell they've chosen to make the entire city in Lumiose when they probably had to spent most of the dev time making that game run at 30fps on the Switch.

>>58550517
Yes. What made Cities feel alive in the old Pokémon games is that there were different people and different unique places which made a 8 bit city feel very fleshed out. If you go to the earliest days in the franchise you'll realize that each city in that game has a different and unique thing to do, even those which does not have a Gym, like Lavender.
Lumiose, which also was very fleshed out in X/Y, is just Cafés (which you can't enter), the prism tower, a single museum and that's it. Not even a gimmicky facility where you can do shit with your Pokémon. Nothing.
Even the hotel ZA is disappointing compared with S-V

? You can enter the cafes and restaurants just fine?

PLA is the most boring Pokemon game I have ever played

>>58546869
Wow, a good post with nuance. Had to blink twice to see if I was imagining it

>>58546869
>>58546882
I know everyone always complains about the battle system in PLA but for me it... wasn't that bad? I went into it expecting it to be awful based on what everyone said but it was fine. Similar to how I ended up feeling about PLZA's realtime battles after playing it knowing what people were saying about it. They both have their own drawbacks, like strong/fast style being a bit broken sometimes in PLA, and battles lacking that strategy as well as going by insanely fast in PLZA.

Battles were less plentiful in PLA but felt more meaningful to me at least, and made sense in the context of the game. And turn based will always be more Pokemon-y to me personally

>>58550506
Not true at all, it's the exsct same in Arceus. The placement of mons is generally sensible and makes sense. And there was depth in how the mons behaved. Like the birds that were high up in the sky, or Luxray being in packs and so on

>>58550506
>>58550526
Pokemon in PLA interact and behave according to various personalities ranging from aggro to timid, as>>58551316 mentioned.