And that's a massive reason why FRLG sucks.
I don't fault Kanto for being this bland, it was designed for the Game Boy, not even the GBC.
It did not age well though. It was showing it's age badly by Gen 3, now, it looks even worse.
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Unpopular opinions
- Thread starter antemortem
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I don't fault Kanto for being this bland, it was designed for the Game Boy, not even the GBC.
It did not age well though. It was showing it's age badly by Gen 3, now, it looks even worse.
I think your argument is off by about 10 years.
The Legend of Zelda on the NES hailed from an era where you weren't even remotely expected to beat the majority of the video games that you owned. Pokemon Red & Blue absolutely did not belong to that same era.
I also think it's too reductive to reduce this aspect of 20th century game design to a negative "guide-dependent" argument in the first place. One thing that's kind of been lost to time is how single player games used to also be social experiences. Like, real-life, analog social experiences. If you got stuck in part of a game, one of the first things you'd do is talk with a friend and ask what they did to get past it. This is more or less the real definition of a "metagame"--the game outside the game. Collaborating on an adventure could actually add something of value to the experience, make it feel more immersive. It was fun to share secrets and strategies that you found with others. There was a case to be made that the need for the player to create maps for something like Metroid or Phantasy Star in order to keep from getting lost wasn't "busywork," but a substantive consequence to make the experience more meaningful, and sharing those notes with friends was enjoyable, made it feel like you were accomplishing something bigger through the act of working together. It was a huge part of the appeal of games like Myst, which were incredibly cryptic and sparse on purpose, and which using a guide for would completely kill the appeal of the entire game. When modern Dark Souls fans talk about the value of collaboration and community strategizing to beat difficult bosses, it's sort of cut from the same cloth of what I'm taking about. (And as an aside, it's also part of the reason why I often find Souls fans to be insufferable. They tend to have no perspective of video game history and will gush nonstop about how "revolutionary" some component of it is when it's just derivative of something that's been around for 3 or 4 decades. You can draw a very clear through-line from Tower of Druaga to From Soft's catalog. But that's all beside the point.)
Anyway, I dunno how best to articulate that Pokemon Red & Blue really wasn't all that difficult to figure out when it was new, especially compared to the older stuff I just mentioned in the previous paragraph. It has very little resource management compared to so many of its predecessors, no equipment/weapon/armor component, and battles that are strictly 1v1 at all times instead of involving an entire party's worth of actions for each turn with all of the tactical team/attack synergy that such systems could offer. It is nearly maximally a "baby's first RPG" as an RPG of its time could be. Part of the whole reason why it was one of the first Japanese RPGs to catch fire in the mainstream American gaming populace was because it was more approachable than most! The link-cable trading/battling component of the game also made it much, much more relevant to the communal nature of video games than anything else I outlined above. Pokemon has been a "press the A button to win" game since its inception; some players just had to grind more to get it done because of their inexperience with RPGs at the time. I was there. Not only did I not need a guide for it, but I could almost beat the game on a single session, and the only reason why I couldn't at first was because my first exposure to the game was from borrowing a friend's cartridge and being absolutely forbidden from saving over his progress, so I basically just approached it with a speedrunner's mindset to squeeze out what I could before either the batteries died or I had to quit and do something else.
It's why I usually find it a little funny whenever somebody bemoans how "dumbed down" the franchise has gotten over time. Yeah, sometimes there's some truth to that and sometimes I also have gripes with specific changes, but, like, part of the reason why you feel that way is because you also just didn't have a very good frame of reference when you were 7 years old or whatever.
Kanto is not obtuse by 1990s RPG standards.
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You weren’t? Thats..kinda sad
not gonna reply to everything individually (can you even do that in the same post?) but to add to some of the stuff from the recent pages:
Mt. Coronet is both great and frustrating at the same time. Great because it's a really neat blueprint for a more expansive landscape design that makes exploring fun, rewarding and challening, bad because it's the best example of how stupid Gen 4s HM overabundance was. (it also really bugs me how long they tried to mantain something that was inspired by Dragon Quest 1. And only 1. Because it was annoying there too)
As for the discussion about pathfinding and old games taking longer to complete...I got stuck on Vermilllion City as a kid because I was too stupid to realize you had to go East from Cerulean. Which is (despite my dislike for the region) very much not Kantos fault and related to me being an idiot back then.
I think the perception on this is just warped since as kids and teenagers you have far more time, so being stuck on a certain part of a game for days if not weeks was not an issue. I remember never getting past 50 Stars in Mario 64 before I turned 10, yet at 13 I 100%ed it because I became more involved with gaming in general. (also experience making me better at playing) You have more time, less games, and in a lot of cases (Pokemon especially) a friendship network where you exchange on how to progress at certain parts.
Nowadays I get frustrated when I'm stuck for more than half an hour (Edit note: very much not true for Pokemon), and often catch myself looking up little stuff, especially in older RPGs (also missables) because the time I can spent has simply been cut down by having to work and do annoying "adult" stuff. (being more experienced also means I never really get completely stuck so I guess it balances itself out a bit at least...) NES era games tend to be a lot more unforgiving in terms of obscure design (the first 2 Zeldas are generally seen as guide games), but I do think it persisted in lesser form in some way (though mostly optional, as being mentioned by others above)
As for Kanto/FRLG... I would not say FRLG sucks, but it definitely feels to safe. Kanto as a whole is just bland, and while not as egregious as Johto the path splits still create a few problems (which in turn should tell us that, with the way levels in Pokemon work, non-linearity is not working too well if you don't make sure you design around it). The path from Lavender to Fuchsia is super easy with lots of low levels, the water routes are generally weak too, Silph Co. is a joke, yet the cycling road and both Sabrina and Koga have much higher levels if you don't do the other parts first (they are still not hard due to bad mon selection (and in RBYs case bad AI) but it can be an issue.)
I hope I didn't miss any typos, this post is longer than usual
Mt. Coronet is both great and frustrating at the same time. Great because it's a really neat blueprint for a more expansive landscape design that makes exploring fun, rewarding and challening, bad because it's the best example of how stupid Gen 4s HM overabundance was. (it also really bugs me how long they tried to mantain something that was inspired by Dragon Quest 1. And only 1. Because it was annoying there too)
As for the discussion about pathfinding and old games taking longer to complete...I got stuck on Vermilllion City as a kid because I was too stupid to realize you had to go East from Cerulean. Which is (despite my dislike for the region) very much not Kantos fault and related to me being an idiot back then.
I think the perception on this is just warped since as kids and teenagers you have far more time, so being stuck on a certain part of a game for days if not weeks was not an issue. I remember never getting past 50 Stars in Mario 64 before I turned 10, yet at 13 I 100%ed it because I became more involved with gaming in general. (also experience making me better at playing) You have more time, less games, and in a lot of cases (Pokemon especially) a friendship network where you exchange on how to progress at certain parts.
Nowadays I get frustrated when I'm stuck for more than half an hour (Edit note: very much not true for Pokemon), and often catch myself looking up little stuff, especially in older RPGs (also missables) because the time I can spent has simply been cut down by having to work and do annoying "adult" stuff. (being more experienced also means I never really get completely stuck so I guess it balances itself out a bit at least...) NES era games tend to be a lot more unforgiving in terms of obscure design (the first 2 Zeldas are generally seen as guide games), but I do think it persisted in lesser form in some way (though mostly optional, as being mentioned by others above)
As for Kanto/FRLG... I would not say FRLG sucks, but it definitely feels to safe. Kanto as a whole is just bland, and while not as egregious as Johto the path splits still create a few problems (which in turn should tell us that, with the way levels in Pokemon work, non-linearity is not working too well if you don't make sure you design around it). The path from Lavender to Fuchsia is super easy with lots of low levels, the water routes are generally weak too, Silph Co. is a joke, yet the cycling road and both Sabrina and Koga have much higher levels if you don't do the other parts first (they are still not hard due to bad mon selection (and in RBYs case bad AI) but it can be an issue.)
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Yes, you can.
To me, what instantly turns me off a game is when it's one of those massive, 40+ hour games, especially when it has a lot of grinding.
I already work too much to have a hobby that requires tedious padding.
People be talking a lot about Mt Coronet and literally all I see it as is a boring multi-floor square Mt Moon that requires HMs.
I really dgaf about it, it's boring aesthetically in-game and its lore is just okay
Having the player go through the same areas to cross the region is cool ig but it takes like 30 seconds lol I barely even register it in my head
I really dgaf about it, it's boring aesthetically in-game and its lore is just okay
Having the player go through the same areas to cross the region is cool ig but it takes like 30 seconds lol I barely even register it in my head
I had more problems beating Sapphire that I ever had with either LeafGreen or Red's Kanto -because of the submarine of all things. It's definetly not obtuse when as mentioned you are a kid with tons of free time and a single game for most of the year. If 5 year old me could figure it out despite not learning the type table propertly (Poison being used so much with Grass made me think Psychic was effective against Grass for example) I can't see an argument for any guides needed for it in all honestly. You would just figure it out by trial and error. I find Paldea a lot more confusing for example, if only because of the weird movements you are supposed to do following the level curve, but that's probably an old topic by now.
Coronet is neat as a concept but I have to agree on ot not really being memorable for me. It just wasn't that impressive.
Coronet is neat as a concept but I have to agree on ot not really being memorable for me. It just wasn't that impressive.
Mt. Coronet's interior could've used a bit more visual pizzazz, but it is what it is. If anything, it made the transition into the snow section even more memorable, but that's mostly because that music hits different.
If it weren't for the HM problem, people wouldn't be as mad. It's a great set-piece that does a great job. If anything, it feels like what all Victory Roads try to achieve (and fail).
Yeah, I'mma call all of them out. Victory Roads were never really that good.
If it weren't for the HM problem, people wouldn't be as mad. It's a great set-piece that does a great job. If anything, it feels like what all Victory Roads try to achieve (and fail).
Yeah, I'mma call all of them out. Victory Roads were never really that good.
Mount Coronet feels just like what all Victory Roads try to acheive (and fail), and Mount Coronet also fails.
Yeah, I'm not going to sugarcoat it, Mount Coronet is mid as it doesn't really have much to do in there, it's just a boring ass mountain. There isn't anything interesting that happens. Iron Island is much more enjoyable and feels like if that was Mount Coronet, then it would have been up to all the hype people talk about it. The reason why Mount Coronet being just a mountain is bad is because it is the centrepiece of the region, it's meant to be interesting.
Victory Roads in general suck and I'm glad that they were done away, it's a cool idea to be a final hurdle to overcome, but it usually boils down to "another cave that is a tiny bit trickier to navigate." The only good Victory Road was the one in B2W2, which had an interesting layout and going in and out of the cave to traverse, which was much more interesting. Even Hoenn Victory Road (the one that I grew up with) I didn't find interesting and could not tell you the layout of for the life of me. Kanto Victory Road I only remember because it is so iconic.
If you want a cool mountain area, Mount Lanikila from SM or USUM is a good enough mountain, because it has the snow theme and has you go in and out of the cave. I'm not saying that you have to go inside and outside of a cave to make it interesting, just that there needs to be something else than "just another cave".
The interesting thing isn't the look or a specific puzzle, the interesting thing is that every time you come back to it, your abilities mean the layout is different and there's more to explore. It goes from a tiny tunnel with a couple of minor off-shoots to a massive cave system that connects the whole region, and does so with the only thing changing being your abilities. It's the player's growth represented in a clear, obvious manner by bringing you back to it repeatedly.
That's fair, and something I didn't consider. I still don't like Mount Coronet, since I think it kinda just doesn't have enough 'pizzazz', if you get what I mean. The changing layout is interesting, but most pokemon caves have multiple levels which I basically consider similar enough. If Gen 4 didn't have as many HMs as they did, it could be an interesting area, but I like to evaluate areas based on their appearences (BDSP is trash, so it doesn't count), and Mount Coronet really hurts from the use of HM's being so constricting to player expression. If there were ride pokemon, then it could be a lot better.
Yes I am. Mount Coronet, despite someone else saying something that was interesting with it, is just a cave, not a mountain. Mount Coronet is meant to be the centrepiece of the Sinoh region, and yet it feels like some cave that you see any old day.
B2W2 Victory Road is really cool area. You have to go through N's castle ruins a bit, which is a nice bit of continuity, and there are 4 different areas you have to traverse. First, there are N's ruins, which as I have said, good storytelling an ruins in general need to be utilised more in the series (they are utilised in the series, just not in a good way). Then, we have a mountain base which connects to a mountainside which goes in and out of caves. Thirdly, we have the caves area which is just stock standard but its alright when we have the other areas to back it up. Finally, we have the mountain area which is just caves 2.0, but at least it has more trainers.
Even after you beat the Champion League, you can then visit N's castle for real, which is so sweet. I didn't even talk about the enterance of it, which is just a little cool thing to see the gateways open for you. Imma just drop the maps of this place.
It's true that the player is given more visual representations of Mt Lanakila's stature then Mt Coronet's, but to me it feels like less of a mountain when you actually climb it because most of the vertical movement is done via elevator screen transition. Mt Coronet's HM requirements have been discussed to death, but I really do think they help sell it as this imposing presence that you're scaling with the help of your Pokemon, even if you don't actually gain very much height.
Ultimately, all Pokemon dungeons suffer from the fact that they don't hold up well to repeat playthroughs. People love to replay Pokemon games to try out different teams and strategies against the major trainer battles, but even the most interesting location can end up feeling like busywork when you already know its layout and your mind is jumping ahead to the next boss fight. In some ways, dungeons get worse on repeat viewings the more interesting they were to begin with.
Ultimately, all Pokemon dungeons suffer from the fact that they don't hold up well to repeat playthroughs. People love to replay Pokemon games to try out different teams and strategies against the major trainer battles, but even the most interesting location can end up feeling like busywork when you already know its layout and your mind is jumping ahead to the next boss fight. In some ways, dungeons get worse on repeat viewings the more interesting they were to begin with.
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PLA sucks because it didn’t have the beautiful 100% turn-based mechanics of Pokémon Red. Also it gets boring after 5 mins.
That's why I said it needed some visual impact, a unique tileset would've elevated it tremendously.
You're constantly weaving in and out of the snow area on your way up. Here's what it looks like after the story segment where you get to fully explore for TMs like Rock Slide and with a bunch of Grunts around.
I could've gone for a longer version with all the content, but we're really just talking about the actual path to the Spear Pillar anyway.
It's not only very unique because players don't actually enter it through the northern entrances where they'd expect to see snow, it just hits you with that and the amazing music shift.
Just because there's room for improvement, it doesn't mean Mt. Coronet has major flaws beyond Gen 4 Sinnoh still using the HM system.
See I don't even think of Mt. Coronet as a dungeon?
I literally go through it for like 20 seconds each way. I wasn't exaggerating. Early game I go east and that is about 30 seconds minus the talk with Cyrus, and then later I go west through it again.
On the way to the Pillar it really is just a regular ass cave but even that is a short bit.
You're all telling me you gave a fuck to explore the basic looking boring cave full of HM locks that has bleh Pokemon? Nah I'm doing the bare minimum lmao
And clearly anything you can explore in it isn't that necessary considering that no matter how many times I play Sinnoh games, this remains the same fact
I literally go through it for like 20 seconds each way. I wasn't exaggerating. Early game I go east and that is about 30 seconds minus the talk with Cyrus, and then later I go west through it again.
On the way to the Pillar it really is just a regular ass cave but even that is a short bit.
You're all telling me you gave a fuck to explore the basic looking boring cave full of HM locks that has bleh Pokemon? Nah I'm doing the bare minimum lmao
And clearly anything you can explore in it isn't that necessary considering that no matter how many times I play Sinnoh games, this remains the same fact
Yeah, one thing that D/P was really good at in comparison to a lot of other Pokemon games was demonstrating the player character's growth, both as an explorer and as a battler. As bloated as the HM system was in gen 4, it was also the closest this series ever got to scratching the sort of exploration itch that a game like Metroid is designed to do.
The Cave of Origin in Hoenn sort of comes out of nowhere and leaves the picture just as quickly. It's a very short and basic setpiece in a remote location for precisely one battle in R/S, and its role was reduced even further in Emerald. As positive as I am about Hoenn overall, there are at least a few important locations in the region like this where it doesn't really feel like they're there to flesh out the world as much as they're just there to house one specific key item or encounter. Like their existence is purely functional. Mt. Coronet is a presence that is literally always looming in a lot of the background scenery throughout the game, and its role only becomes more important over the course of the story in tandem with the player's ability to explore it. It represents something bigger, and it's foreshadowed appropriately.
It dovetails nicely with Barry's role, who is a pretty solid rival character. He's not an outright jerk like Blue or Silver were, but he still comes across both confident and competent, very much has his own motivations, actually wants to beat you, and is literally always one step ahead of you... until he loses to Team Galactic in the lake encounter right before the story's climax and falls one step behind you for the remainder of the quest. That's an incredibly basic example of "show, don't tell" storytelling, but it's still something that some other Pokemon games don't even bother to try.
Like, probably the one thing about S/V that I was most put off by is how every other character simultaneously babies you but also treats you like you're some kind of god prodigy before you even do anything. It was bizarre to play through an "adventure" that didn't even feel like it had a single antagonist until the very end of the game.
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Not to mention Barry obtains a Munchlax, a Pokemon notoriously difficult and time-consuming to find. Absolutely excellent bit of detail there.
Wrt Mt Coronet, I actually wish we'd had to go through it more times in the story. As it is, you pass through from Eterna-Hearthome and then again when going through to Snowpoint, but they're both exceptionally brief - the Snowpoint one is built up to be a harsh journey but is basically just a long corridor with no trainers or significant obstacles.
If they'd designed the map so that Mt Coronet was truly omnipresent and the player needed to pass under it a few different times, I think there'd have been much more of a sense of scale and awe to it, and a real sense of "oh, I've got to climb to the top of this thing now". As it is it's just... there. I mean, the passage between Eterna and Hearthome isn't even as big as Hearthome City itself; you can speed through it in an instant.
Oreburgh Tunnel is also part of Mt. Coronet.
The thing takes up so much of the map and has obvious blocked passages during your early trips that do a good enough job of getting the point across that you're going to be scaling it eventually. I also used to be the sort of player who would revisit locations right away after receiving a new HM just to see what I could find, so that was reason enough to check in a couple more times. Forcing it any more than they did would run the risk of getting repetitive.
Also, in what may or may not be another unpopular opinion, I've actually grown to like the role that HMs play when I revisit old games. Very rarely do I use dedicated HM mules at this point; I think it's more fun as a team-building exercise to make sure that I've got all of the field moves covered and evenly distributed. It's not incredibly common for a Pokemon to learn 4 good and distinct battle moves without dipping into powerful TMs anyway, so giving up 1 of those 4 move slots for exploration purposes is fine.
The only thing that irritates me about it is the text box prompts that you have to mash through every. single. time. that you want to chop down another tree. It's like at least 70% of the reason why I'm baffled that anyone would play one of these games without setting the text display speed to Fast.
Replaying things will generally make you notice flaws more often, even in things you love (in my case I have played Sonic Adventure 2 and Pikmin 2 way too much and the little flaws both games do have become more apparent each time). Stuff that is done for visual flair obviously sticks out, and in Pokemon the unskippable cutscenes can also be annyoing on repeat playthroughs or when doing a nuzlocke or other challenge I feel
In Pokemons case it is mostly lots of little annoyances that build up to something aggravating for me. Interestingly I think you could easily fix the more annyoing parts of Gen 1-6 with some small touchups. The dungeons that feel most bothersome to me on repeat playthroughs are those who need HMs, whih Mt. Coronet is. (I do think Rock Climb is good use of making you feel you are scaling it.
Flash caves are by far the most annoying. I hate doing them without despite knowing the layout, and in Kanto you need to go through a boring corridor named Diglett cave to get it...
Gen 5 and Gen 6 victory roads are dungeons I have enjoyed on repeat playthroughs, so there is definitely some differences in how you could design interesting ones for replayers (especially since Pokemon is a game people replay often)
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Flash is the funniest HM.
Like they're just taunting you by making it not technically required, but trying to go without it is often miserable, but it's also a total waste in battle, especially with its 70% accuracy in the earlier games.
Like they're just taunting you by making it not technically required, but trying to go without it is often miserable, but it's also a total waste in battle, especially with its 70% accuracy in the earlier games.
HM's are so bad lmao. I honestly think that while they were a cool idea, but implementation was always going to be bad. They were inspired by a system in Dragon Quest 1. Just 1, not any other Dragon Quest games cause even they realised that it was doo doo too. The reason why they were so bad is because you had to keep subpar moves on your mons in order to traverse unless you swapped out your mons, which most people don't do. Stuff like surf or strength are what HMs should have been, strong moves that you would use to traverse, but are still good outside traversing. The ability to not remove HMs is the straw that breaks the camerupts back, you cannot replace said moves until midway or late game. So you are having to use rock smash or worse, cut, for half of your playthrough, potentially longer if you are worried about losing a precious TM by putting it on a mon and then having to delete it because you actually needed the HM. Back in like Gen 1 or 2, yes, you most likely couldn't learn good and distinct battle moves without dipping into TMs, but Gen 3 onwards, you absolutely can since they massively expanded mons learnsets from then on. Now you don't really have to use TMs, they are probably recommended but not necessary.