It could have been so much more
Being a kid and watching the Pokémon anime, my dream was to eventually travel the world and catch as much information as possible. I also wished that there would be some way that Pokémon could be a real thing with quests to find elusive monsters and a community of people that helped each other. I wanted nothing more than to just walk away and be whisked to a world of wonder.
Maturing into an adult has changed a lot of my hopes, wishes, and dreams. For starters, my purpose in life isn’t to simply learn and absorb everything like a sponge; I want to pass on information and help others reach their own potential. I also don’t really want crazy monsters roaming the world and potentially killing me on my drive to work.
As such, I’d like to see a Pokémon game that reflects something different within the series. Having just finished the Sun and Moon Special Demo, I’m left wondering why a main series Pokémon game can’t be just like this. For clarification, I don’t mean 30 minutes long and with totally easy battles.
The demo begins with your character, Sun, moving from the Kanto region. While you aren’t given specifics, you also aren’t instructed by some random professor to select a starter beast and head off to conquer gyms. You get to talk with your mom, meet a buddy, and step outside to explore the city.
You also already have a Pokémon and he is a decent level. Now, I won’t say that the games should begin at level 36, but maybe Game Freak should tinker with the distribution of power within the starter levels. Why does 100 always need to be the cap? Couldn’t making levels 1-20 feel more like 20-40 and lowering the cap to 80 be kind of neat?
My biggest gripe with the series is that every game is, essentially, a retelling of the last one. Sure, there are different regions and new Pokémon designs, but how many times can you follow the same storyline before it becomes stale? The best things that the remakes for each game have brought to the table are the endgame content, but why should I have to suffer through such a formulaic process to get there?
I want Pokémon to cover storylines that are different from each other. Let me have a game where I need to avenge the death of my family or randomly stumble into catching a monster. Maybe you get wrangled into Pokémon training because your family is going bankrupt or you land in the middle of a conspiracy to take over the world. For as much as Black and White tried to focus on darker themes, they still fell back on the regular formula of eight gyms and the Elite Four.
For that matter, what happened to the brevity and pacing that Alpha Sapphire and Omega Ruby brought to the table? With a lot of Nintendo franchises, the design tends to bloat things out as the series grows on, but ORAS actually wrapped up the main questline in a brisk 15 hours. It had all of the high points of previous Pokémon games with none of the filler and it felt refreshing.
Instead, the demo for Sun and Moon focuses so much on the animations for Z-moves and cutscenes before battles that everything feels artificially elongated. Is there any reason why battles with random trainers require letterboxing, a zoom-in, and an overly long introduction sequence? Can’t I turn off this crap and just get a game similar to the Game Boy originals?
That isn’t to say previous games in the franchise are better, just that there isn’t enough new and different in Sun and Moon to keep me interested. Most of the things that are new are shoehorned in with surprising clumsiness that isn’t typical of a Nintendo product. That Pokémon Snap-esque Poké Finder is a prime example of a feature that could use more work.
I do like how you no longer need to assign TMs to Pokémon and ruin their movesets. I also like how the lower screen reminds you of the effectiveness of certain moves against your opponent, even if common sense should be a part of the process. At least I don’t need to remember meticulous details about how every Pokémon interacts with one another.
Then again, there are still random battles and you can’t climb up any platforms despite your character clearly being taller than objects. If you’re going to convert the existing formula into a fully 3D world, at least put some effort into making impassable gaps actually look impassable. Let me also see wild Pokémon wandering around instead of stripping the world bare and having me grind away trying to find something.
Maybe I’m expecting too much out of Pokémon, but I’d figure that 20 years of popularity would provide Nintendo and Game Freak with a reason to try something different. Most of the spin-off titles have been relatively successful and even something like Pokémon Go has proven to be a smash hit. People want to experience Pokémon in a different way, not just the same nonsense with better graphics.
With the portability offered by the Nintendo Switch, I hope it allows Nintendo to tackle new territory with Pokémon. Maybe there can be a mixture of Pokémon Go with traditional gameplay and a new starting point that doesn’t limit you to three generic types. I want to start with a psychic Pokémon, dammit!
