Nintendo Announces Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield
swordshield.pokemon.com
swordshield.pokemon.com
I'm still waiting for an "open world" style Pokemon game. For example take the Zelda: Breath of the Wild game/engine as a starting point and make a Pokemon game.
There's nothing inherently wrong with an on-rails game, and Pokemon games are well known for it. But it feels like the type of theme where exploration being a cornerstone would be fantastic.
I was hopeful after Pokemon Go's success (a game pinned on exploration) and Breath of the Wild, that that would be a natural progression.
It may be more successful to make that style of game, but it would alienate fans of the traditional style of the game like myself.
As of approximately Ocarina of Time (if not Zelda 2), Zelda games have been a lot more "on rails" in the sense of a well-defined path of progression that is difficult to break (generally because of the need for some artifact or some plot-point to develop that opens the next path point). BotW gave me a clear directional hint (key for modern game design; we're well past the point where most players lack patience for "Here you are; I won't explain the rules; try not to die" game design), but if I wanted to ignore the hint and go run off into the sunset or try to rodeo a Lynel in my shorts with three hearts, I could.
> or try to rodeo a Lynel
Taming one of the toughest non-boss enemies in the game, starting at 2,000 HP and ranging up to 5,000 HP.
> in my shorts
No equipped armor/clothes, meaning no reduction to damage if hit
> with three hearts
Early-stage, just-started Link. In tandem with "in my shorts," every hit from a Lynel in this condition would be a one-hit kill. Beyond that, it's implied that Link in this condition might only have access to the most primitive weapons (around 25-30 HP per hit before meal/potion bonuses), though even assuming the absolute maximum damage doable from even the best weapon with the best consumable bonus (~110 HP), you're looking at landing 19 hits on the weakest of these guys without being touched.
It's doable on speedruns by advanced players who've gotten a hang of all of the game mechanics. Fixermark's point is more that BotW gives you the option of embracing this sort of masochism should you choose, but it includes a predefined soft-path should you not.
But I'd argue that BotW was the most popular Zelda game ever, so while it did upset some of the fanbase it brought in more new people than it lost in traditionalists.
With Pokemon, they already have multiple branches of games running side-by-side. I would think that if they did an open world game, it wouldn't be part of the main franchise but rather its own new branch.
A new line of games would likely give them more freedom to break away from the typical formula as well (e.g. not gym-based progression).
There's some stuff in there for long-time fans and more precocious/deeply interested kids (all the competitive stuff), but the single-player campaign has always been for grade-schoolers.
I understand why they did this, given that it was the launch game of a new handheld platform, but it felt limiting from a design perspective. Most of the puzzles just weren't that challenging and the dungeons were rather lackluster instead of being big events.
It's an interesting situation—breakable weapons has the greatest impact at the beginning of the game, when you haven't yet found sources for your favorite weapons. On the other hand, it has the least gameplay impact at the start of the game, since the weapons that you find early on are weak, uninteresting, and easily replaceable.
So like I get what they were going for, but I don't think they hit the mark with the mechanic; it's most annoying when it matters the least, and by the end of the game, when you've got your katanas and glowing chainsaw swords and whatnot, it barely matters at all.
> Wind Waker has a dungeon with 100 levels of enemies, and it's actually fun to start the game up just to play through that.
Breath of the Wild has a similar dungeon in the DLC, and actually the breakable weapons makes it even more interesting. You lose all of your weapons at the start, so you can't just take in your favorites, you have to improvise and make do with what you can scavenge as you go along. You also don't need to worry about saving your best weapons because you can't, as you'll need them all, and what you have left at the end of the dungeon will disappear anyway. Or when you lose; I'll admit I haven't beaten it yet.
And those are just the ones that aren't pokemon-themed skins over arcade games like pinball.
Zelda is a quite different as they've done a lot less with other mediums than the core series (they still tried ofc, but it hasn't been nearly as effective or impactful). Also BotW is closest we're going to get to WindWaker, the greatest of the Zeldas
I like open-world games (e.g. Far Cry 5), so I enjoyed Breath of the Wild, but I'd agree that it felt like functionally a completely different style of game altogether. It's a distinct genre, so I'm surprised that they went that route.
Some fans of the traditional style. I've been playing Zelda games since the original, and Breath of the Wild quickly became my favorite.
The side games are where all the cutting-edge development happens. Someone comes up with an idea, and builds a prototype. If it works well, it gets integrated into the main-line games.
Pokemon Snap tested, "can we render a pokemon in 3D". Pokemon Stadium I and II tested "can we do a 3D battle system". Eventually these made their way into the 3DS titles. More recently, the catching mechanics in Niantic's Pokemon Go made their way into the main-line Let's Go Eevee/Pikachu.
It works surprisingly well, even for such an old game. The fact that you can just fly anywhere as soon as you get a couple of badges means that the sidequests and caves feel less like chores and more like just stuff to do when you get bored of battling gyms. The scaling ironically reduces grind, because it means most trainers you fight will give you decent chunks of EXP, and you can always skip a trainer and come back for them later without trivializing the battle.
I walked away from it kind of wishing that Nintendo would just carbon-copy some of its design decisions for future games -- I can only imagine how much more interesting that formula would be in a game where I didn't already have the majority of the content memorized.
[0]: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yvciS0eLrTdQfLGVQEBkhZwz...
They could make it a "Team Rocket" based game. Instead of focusing on Gyms, you're trying to stop Team Rocket from liquifying the environment for example.
I like Gyms, and I don't think "on-rails" Pokemon games should go away (there's obviously a large market for them). I just want a game where I can go explore and be surprised/find hard to locate Pokemon.
Just feel like the whole theme of Pokemon just naturally flows into that style of game.
Your average Pokemon super fan is in say the 6-10 year old age range. But strategy elements of RPGs can be difficult to grasp so young. With kids often getting "stuck" after a few easy battles and making little progress beyond.
I think that's why the Mystery Dungeon series was so popular, despite being "off-brand". More of a Roguelike exploration scenario. And focuses on creating an emotional bond with hyper-kawaii styled "virtual pets". Rather than achievement of battle supremacy.
Hopefully when we have persistent, shared AR worlds once everybody has always-on AR glasses.
Pokemon could use changes to the formula, but open world just doesn't sound very good.
-Left joycon drift
- Parental control scheme... it is console based rather than user/mii based. So it is very hard to cordon off a game like SkyRim to the teen/adult mii account. You cannot restrict playing hours bu mii - you have to restrict the whole console.
https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/answers/detail/...
A temporary remedy is to clean them out -- even a can of air can do it.
This is of course a temporary remedy, though, as you will have to do it again, and sooner or later, it won't work anymore.
Really? I adore the system as well but... it seems rather bloated with mediocre and outright terrible "indie" content. There is a distinct lack of AAA quality games aside from Nintendo originals (Mario, Smash, Zelda...). 2 years of Switch were enough to finish those to a satisfying end. A couple of ports like Stardew Valley don't really help the case either.
I just finished adventure mode in Smash and consider only two games to buy right now: Octopath and Undertale, where only the former is a new original Switch title. Im not jumping at those either. The games that seem attractive in the store are often available on other systems as well.
The Wii was a fine system but it lacked a lot of quality 3rd party content because of how unique the hardware and controller situation were. The Wii U was basically a $400 Super Smash Bros machine. I'm not saying that the Switch is perfect, but it has far more options than it's predecessor, even if you're not super happy with those options. I personally own Celeste, Okami, Dead Cells, Crash Bandicoot N. Sane trilogy and several others on my Switch. I get that most of these are ports, but with the Wii and Wii U we were rarely getting even that and I am very happy to be able to play them on the go. I'm happy that we have these games and developers are bringing their content to the Switch. It shouldn't be taken for granted imo.
And honestly, even if a chunk of the good stuff is available elsewhere, portability on something more convenient than a laptop is nothing to sneeze at.
To me, the thing that makes playability and enjoyability worse on games like this is the grinding they make you go through before you can even do anything.
Explaining myself to the user below: weapons breaking too often, combat is crap, very limited amount of types of enemies, etc.
"The market" is how all franchises become franchises in the first place.
/uodtl is right about all of those things. I admit i never actually finished BoTW but I spent 100+ hours in it, so it was worth my money. I've seen this image on r/gaming where it shows a BoTW like panoramic view, but with your pokemans. That is what everyone wants!
I'd like to see something more like Dark Souls 1, it's a linear world unless you figure out how to go a different way. Then it opens up tremendously.
A first-person or third-person action model doesn't fit Pokemon very well because it doesn't position the player as the trainer, but you could do a turn-based grid like Fire Emblem, or a turn-based/real-time grid-fighter thing like MMBN, or an overhead-camera action-y thing (Diablo, most MOBAs, etc). Integrating battles into the world more (environmental things - climb trees, dig holes, hide behind rocks) could also help.
you could add high level pokemon in easily accessible areas, but position the pokemon centers to make getting stuck extremely hard. Make the gyms harder but make the order flexible.