Pokemon did not mature with its primary audience.
(Something a lot of people don't know is that Mew's data actually exists in the generation 1 games and that it's technically possible to have it in the game on original hardware, sprite and all. The technical means by which one can obtain it is actually the same as the means by which one encounters the famous Missingno. I've personally done it in an emulator.)
I also see some gameplay flaws but they're mostly opinion (I'm not who you replied to, FWIW):
- Gen 1 had a single "Special" stat which was used as both Defense and Attack; this was split in Gen 2 to be Special Defense and Special Attack. This actually makes it a little fun to go back and play those games because some mons are just broken, e.g., Chansey so maybe it's not a great example. I believe this was a consequence of the memory size of the game flash cards being too small to support more numbers.
- Competitive teams from Gen 1 are determined by the 3 mons (of 6) which aren't on every single competitive team for the generation[1]. Normal is generally considered to be the best defensive type in the game for two reasons: 1) its only natural weakness is fighting, which doesn't have any good offensive moves in Gen 1, and 2) it's immune to the paralyze chance from the move Body Slam because Body Slam is a Normal-type move. The 3 mons which don't change per team are all single-type Normal.
I'm not exactly sure about the gen 2 games but I don't generally find myself drawn back to them. But I also don't find myself drawn to gen 3, for example. I do love myself a good gen 3 hack, though.
0: https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Same-type_attack_bon...
1: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/rby-ou-sample-teams.36...
TBH, I don't consider the glitch list that you shared to be a list of flaws. I played the original pokemon games a lot, and heard all of the rumours about the game. Very rarely if ever did I encounter a glitch without seeking it out. Honestly the existence of missingno and the rare candy duplication glitch were enhancements to the experience when I had already played the game exhaustively.
> This actually makes it a little fun to go back and play those games because some mons are just broken
I agree! I really don't consider lack of competitive balance to be a significant flaw for the first games, since the game design was based around the single player experience. If all of the pokemon were balanced, I would consider it a detriment to the game. Half of the joy of finding new pokemon and discovering evolutions was to find these imbalances and use them to destroy the elite four, or show off to your friends.
As far as flaws, I was mostly asking from a game design or implementation perspective, because hard to replicate glitches that reveal hidden secrets and 150 monsters to uncover with some being ultra powerful was literally exactly what I wanted as a kid. It's also good game design, even if not 100% of it was intentional.
- gen 1 pokemon are very basic and probably some of the worst in the series (subjective)
- the games are extremely unbalanced, and many types have only one evolution line while others have a lot, there's no uniformity (gen 1 has only 1 dragon and 1 ghost line)
- the lack of physical special split hits many types insanely hard and they never balanced for it (i.e.: Ghastly line is a special attacker but is the only ghost type, ghost type is physical for some reason)
- gen2 is basically non linear for most of Johto, which completely destroys the levels on the gym leaders and the wild pokemon. The Kanto section has similar issues. And red is only difficult because it's insanely overlevelled compared to everything else
- gen 2 gym leaders don't have Johto pokemon (lol)
- trainer AI, especially in some instances, is very weirdly programmed (Blaine for example uses healing items on full HP pokemon for no reason)
- lack of moves means even late game, trainers have start-of-game moves ( blue has a rhydon with tail whip and leer, but no ground or rock moves. And an Exeggutor with no grass or psychic damaging moves. And he's the final boss)
When I think of Pokemon I think of feeling powerful because my starter Pokemon could defeat any team in the game on it's own - to getting to the end and suddenly needing a well rounded team. It felt like a bait and switch. "You thought you were good at this game? No! You suck! Go grind forever to level the rest of your team!"
It feels like a game of rock paper scissors grafted onto a grinding simulator. It feels like they add more Pokemon and more ways to grind, but what I would want from it is keeping the same Pokemon I grew up with and am emotionally invested in, with less grind and more ways to feel like I am Ash Ketchum.
But I'm an RPG fan, so maybe these games just aren't for me, and there's a different personality which enjoys minmaxing and novel Pokemon who are the right audience. (I really liked Pokemon Stadium.)
Also I’m not really sure what exploring you’d want to do in those early games. I guess if you wanted to explore, I’d be annoyed by the constant fights, but that never occurred to me. The point of leaving a town was to get into a fight for one reason or another. That style of random fights outside of towns was also a staple of a lot of top down RPGs at the time.
I haven’t played a pokemon game in 20 years, but I think you might have been barking up the wrong tree a bit. Outside of the combat, there isn’t much to do. If you don’t like the combat, then it’s just not your game.
The fights in RPGs don't take you to another UI, play a long animation, just so you can try to run away from the fight. The wild pokemon are just constant. Way too constant to be interesting. It just felt like the game was trying to slow my progression with busy work - there's no challenge in pretty much anything expect the final fights, so why I should I bother? RPGs drop you right into the combat, so it doesn't break the flow and feels exciting.
Pokemon Stadium was more fun for two reasons. There wasn't any grind, you could get right into the combat. (I don't recall if there was a campaign and I don't recall the mini games, I just played free play.) And I wasn't fighting brain dead trainers who had no strategy, or yet another level one Pidgey; I was fighting my friends and family members. When I won it was because I played well, when I lost it was because they played well. It felt more like Smash Bros.
If there weren't so many wild pokemon and if the trainers steadily gained in strength instead of being totally flat until the difficulty rose like a brick wall, the game would be much better, in my opinion. Maybe instead of a model where you're constantly assaulted and need to be repel, you could be lightly peppered with wild pokemon unless you used an expendable to attract them.
That's just my game design criticism, if someone is enjoying Pokemon I wouldn't want to rain on their parade.
I thought it struck a good balance of story and gameplay and I like the way characters were revealed. I thought it was a huge missed opportunity that it didn’t take advantage of stereoscopy on the 3DS but I guess they didn’t want the 3DS to upstage the switch or maybe they couldn’t decide if Lusamine’s hair formed a cone or a sheet.
I have some software that works like Disney’s multi plane camera and have wanted to cut up some art from that game and make some stereo dioramas but had the excuse that I could only make lousy anaglyph images but now that I have the MQ3 I’d really better do it.
I say this as a pretty massive fan of the franchise; I only skipped gens 4/5 because I didn't have the personal disposable income to buy a DS. I'm sure VGC[0] is the primary reason most adults choose to purchase the new games, among those who do.
0: https://www.pokemon.com/us/play-pokemon/pokemon-events/pokem...