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I think it's time we address the elephant (Girimehkala or Copperajah) in the room: Shin Megami Tensei V compared to Pokemon Switch games
- Thread starter HylianSeven
- Start date
Every Pokemon thread for the past 3 years has been:
"It's the biggest IP, there's no reason they can't have every Pokemon with unique, individually animated moves'
"That's probably more work than we think to add every Pokemon with unique, individually animated moves "
"I don't want every Pokemon with unique, individually animated moves, I just want them to be as good as the older games."
Without fail lol. It's honestly impossible to discuss the games here.
GF has 150+ employees plus an entire separate studio dedicated to just making the 3D Pokémon models and they basically make one game. Atlus has 270 employees all together and put out a bunch of stuff so it's unlikely that the team dedicated to SMT V is anywhere near GF size, especially when Persona and Studio 0 don't touch SMT. It's embarrassing how bad Pokémon looks. MH stories looks better than what we have seen of legends as well.
Don't think I have ever disagreed with statement this much before. Opinions and all that tho.
Is Pokemon legends another in-house engine of GF? At least Atlus managed to get to Unreal, don't know if the P-team will have a shift to that or not, at the very least Atlus at least worked on consoles before even if it was the playstation 2. If GF still has the same people who did all the handheld games doing this new game, then i don't know if they can make it worthwhile, it might take more time than that to get decent if they are stuck with doing their own tech.
I honestly don't know why GF doesn't use an engine created by people who actually know what they're doing. Yeah there would be a transition period, but it would be so much more worth it than the garbage they've been using for years now. I can understand a custom engine when you have a number of heavily tailored custom features where tacking that onto an existing engine becomes a nightmare, but Pokemon games are bog standard JRPGs.
I think that "something" is 3D. They still don't quite have a grasp on it and are still woefully behind every other dev, indies included. And I think it's time for them to finally switch Pokemon development over to an existing engine like Unreal or Unity because their proprietary one is abysmal and is probably holding them back. And that's not even including the work they have to do to maintain/update it for new systems and new features
When the most complex stuff i can think of in Pokemon happens in the menus and the pokemon stats themselves with all the shit that gets brought over from previous gens, the whole walking around and battle animations thing can be done entirely seperate, like contract work. Making a game run good shouldn't be a side effort, but it clearly never mattered in sales.
I don't like the way Pokemon games look now, but one AAA franchise being low budget isn't the biggest deal to me as long as the resources that could have gone there go somewhere else. My problem with the modern games is more down to a lack of content/options. You'd think taking a visual hit would allow for more wiggle room on that front, but it doesn't really.
People will defend it, but there is no reason Pokemon should look like a mid budget Tales of.. game while having 20X the sales. None.
Take more time. Hire more people.
You have the $$$$
But no, profit comes first obviously. That's the world we live in. I get that.
But the production values don't match the sales juggernaut status and that's a very close to objective fact.
Take more time. Hire more people.
You have the $$$$
But no, profit comes first obviously. That's the world we live in. I get that.
But the production values don't match the sales juggernaut status and that's a very close to objective fact.
You could make the same argument about a lot of Nintendo games tbh. They have never and will never make visuals a priority when it comes to balancing development time.
Nothing will change as long as Pokemon keeps selling well. I have made my peace that nothing will change in the mainline pokemon franchise.
What Nintendo games?? The only Nintendo game that looks visually underwhelming compared to others on the system is Fire Emblem: Three Houses. And despite the series coming back from death with Awakening, it's still a somewhat niche series
I think I should say this I agree with Joe Merrick about SwSh, it's my favourite Pokemon game. I have played every gen apart from 3. I started with X and have gotten every new release and have enjoyed them all. I have played other RPGS but I don't agree that Pokemon is abysmal atm, I have bright hopes for the future
I know it's opinions and all at the end of the day, but I do find it difficulty to see how someone picks Sw/Sh as their favourites.
The main reason I can think of is really just they like Raids a lot. more specifically Dynamax Adventure since that makes Raids somewhat fun and interesting to mix things up (Base game raids have the barrier issue and everyone just brings Zacian to win).
Story wise the game has a fairly weak and rushed story (Dynamax Pokemon are attacking, oh don't worry about helping out, go finish your gym, here's one screenshot showing how that problem was resolved). Characters feel a lot weaker compared to past entry titles (These a few that stand-out, I like piers in particular, but a lot of them again feel half-baked), the new pokemon are good, ok? but that's been pretty much the case with all generations. First game missing some favourites certainly hurts a lot of people. And the Wild Area still feels like it's a lot of iterations away from being ideal (the DLC ones are better, but still run into the same issue that the overworld pokemon sorta become useless compared to the big glowy den pokemon you fight in raids.)
Competitively I think this has been one of the most frustrating generations due to Dynamax dominating the entire gameplay and it's not fun to play around. Add in that the DLC added a lot more powercreep than usual (even ignoring how most of the legendaries were in Crown Tundra only, the Isle of Armour moves are insanely strong and all the legendaries in this game feel incredibly busted, Urshifu and the new Regi's in particular) then add in how the Y-Comm is general not great to use...
...Again, I know it's down to personal opinions in the end and I'd like to hear why it's your favourite, but the only reason I can think is the raid battles really.
Writing this up reminded me to make a thread of Dynamax, I think it's quite relevant considering next month the online rules is banning it in particular...
Tbh I don't really know why I love SwSh so much but I think it has to do with my first playthrough I got the game and I started it and didn't stop for 12-13 hours because I was enjoying it so much.
I like the story because it fixes my gripes with the older games about how they let a 10 year old do all these dangerous things, instead of letting the adults take care of it.
I do wish that the main games focused on the gym challenge only and had the legendary story, post game.
Again I really don't know what clicked with me with SwSh, but something obviously did because I enjoyed it so much.
I think the biggest factor is that graphical fidelity is a diminishing return; casual fans who don't read forums or use twitter don't notice and don't care.
Beyond that, HD game development sucks in general. Gamefreak was very comfortable developing in SD and no matter how much money you throw at development, human beings, the people developing the game, are slow to change their habits.
All in all, I don't think it's worth worrying about. They'll probably figure out a good balance at some point.
Beyond that, HD game development sucks in general. Gamefreak was very comfortable developing in SD and no matter how much money you throw at development, human beings, the people developing the game, are slow to change their habits.
All in all, I don't think it's worth worrying about. They'll probably figure out a good balance at some point.
Pokemon has never looked great though. I didn't play any Pokemon games between Gold and White 2, and it felt like hardly anything had changed, despite the strides other games had made in that 12 year gap. They always hold stuff back, because they're probably worried if they put everything into a game, they will struggle with how to top it when the next one rolls around a couple of years later.
It's frankly embarrassing how much better SMTV looks. Pokémon really should improve something and judging by the short bit we've seen of Legends I'm cautious.
Legends looks better than SwSh, but still significantly worse than SMTV or even Mon Hunter Stories 2 or really most other 3D JRPGs on the system. But baby steps I guess
Graphics and animations weren't even my problem with Sword and Shield. Were they good? No. But they were mostly serviceable, aside from the pop-in and the obviously terrible animations like Double Kick. My problem with SwSh was the content.
What happened to exploration?
What happened to dungeons?
What happened to side quests?
What happened to any degree of player agency?
All of that is utterly absent in SwSh. Not one dungeon. Not an ounce of exploration. Seriously, it's just as linear as FFXIII, but with backtracking. There's like two side quests in the entire game, neither of which are at all substantial or interesting. The player is constantly shuttled directly from one gym to the next, which towards the end takes place within minutes of each other. There's nothing interesting to see or do.
And in its place? Raids. And an large empty tract of land with camera controls. Yay.
SMTV won't be better than Sword and Shield because of its visuals, but rather by being a fun and engaging RPG. Pokemon has completely forgotten how to do that.
What happened to exploration?
What happened to dungeons?
What happened to side quests?
What happened to any degree of player agency?
All of that is utterly absent in SwSh. Not one dungeon. Not an ounce of exploration. Seriously, it's just as linear as FFXIII, but with backtracking. There's like two side quests in the entire game, neither of which are at all substantial or interesting. The player is constantly shuttled directly from one gym to the next, which towards the end takes place within minutes of each other. There's nothing interesting to see or do.
And in its place? Raids. And an large empty tract of land with camera controls. Yay.
SMTV won't be better than Sword and Shield because of its visuals, but rather by being a fun and engaging RPG. Pokemon has completely forgotten how to do that.
Eh MH Stories 2 doesn't look better than Legends to me and it runs rather poorly. Besides, what we saw is a pretty old build by now. We also don't know what engine it's using as the rendering features look a lot different than SWSH. Might be an updated engine or it might be a different one but we just won't know until it releases.
Yeah, but as I've said, I think them sticking with their own proprietary engine is a fundamental issue that's holding them back. It was never performant or good with any of the 3D games and it's obviously not in their strengths
There are pros and cons to both, it depends how well they would be able to transition to yet another new technology. Long term it should help, though, but after seeing the progress they made in just a few years on Switch I'm not too worried either way. They basically just caught up on the rest of the industry besides raw graphical prowess and it's just more of the same from here on out so growing pains should mostly stop. Should!
Legit don't get why people use Double Kick to prove a point (for some reason is the one that people use the most despite better example being there), that move is one of the most basic ones that you delete the moment something slight better appears, which is why there is no reason to make it look good
I said in the OP I actually bought and enjoyed Sword, and I don't think it's a "systematic failure", I think it's just disappointing in many aspects. I'm throwing criticism at something I enjoyed, and stated in the OP that this isn't a "gAmE fReAk LiEd" thing at all.
Gamefreak isn't lazy. I don't think they can release something on a near-annual basis and be considered lazy.
But incompetent? For sure.
The style of cutscenes in MHS2 is what I want to see in Pokémon. The Kinship attacks are way cooler than any Dynamax move as well.
Only quibble I want to make here is that SMTV seems to be focusing on demons as NPCs, meaning that demons are going to have a lot of overworld animations that a Pokemon wouldn't, since Pokemon has people as a separate set of NPCs that have a decent number of their own animations.
Legends Arceus looks like it's going to try to justify its smaller availability pool with a deeper overhaul of systems and animations than we've seen previously, so that gives me some hope. It also appears that they've been phasing in new animations here and there with BDSP and such. It seems to me like Pokemon is trying to up its animation quality gradually around the edges instead of trying to do everything at once in a single game, which I can't fault them for when they've got so many of these things.
Maybe I've just been spoiled by the 3DS games, but I would like to see another Dream Match Pokemon game at some point down the line, with all the asset reuse that will entail. Pokemon games from the GBA era through the 3DS had something special going, and it'd be a shame if complete collections had to be the domain of a side app forever.
Stylistically, I really liked what Gen VII Pokemon games had going for them. The textures don't hold up on an emulator, but I think keeping the models and backgrounds simpler and less realistic works a lot better for Pokemon. I don't expect later games to necessarily take after SwSh in this regard, but we'll have to wait and see.
Legends Arceus looks like it's going to try to justify its smaller availability pool with a deeper overhaul of systems and animations than we've seen previously, so that gives me some hope. It also appears that they've been phasing in new animations here and there with BDSP and such. It seems to me like Pokemon is trying to up its animation quality gradually around the edges instead of trying to do everything at once in a single game, which I can't fault them for when they've got so many of these things.
Maybe I've just been spoiled by the 3DS games, but I would like to see another Dream Match Pokemon game at some point down the line, with all the asset reuse that will entail. Pokemon games from the GBA era through the 3DS had something special going, and it'd be a shame if complete collections had to be the domain of a side app forever.
Stylistically, I really liked what Gen VII Pokemon games had going for them. The textures don't hold up on an emulator, but I think keeping the models and backgrounds simpler and less realistic works a lot better for Pokemon. I don't expect later games to necessarily take after SwSh in this regard, but we'll have to wait and see.
OP
OP
Then you didn't read the OP, because that's not what I said.
That was one I could give a gif of, there are plenty of other examples, and why wouldn't they make it look at least decent? Even if it's a recycled "kick" animation they use for other moves too.
Yeah Sun and Moon look basically perfect at their native 240p resolution, only some very specific textures looked bad (the most egregious being the clouds). Just a perfect blend of artstyle and execution for its platform.
It's not what the OP said either.
I don't know that the OP would sum it up the same way but I personally see it as incompetence.
Is one of the 200+ moves in the game and is one you literally replace all the time, that is why there is no reason to make it look good (as in make a decent animation when most will never used it), people just love to ignore context to make it look worse
I said in the OP I actually bought and enjoyed Sword, and I don't think it's a "systematic failure", I think it's just disappointing in many aspects. I'm throwing criticism at something I enjoyed, and stated in the OP that this isn't a "gAmE fReAk LiEd" thing at all.
I don't really want to create a conflict point because I think your criticism is valid but have you ever consider how many moves a Pokémon can learn (Scorbunny I think learns around 40) and how time-consuming would be animate most —not all, sure— of them? And that's only 1 Pokémon, imagine all of them, even in a reduced Pokédex like Galar's one.
Of course animations should be definitely better (I personaly don't feel triggered by Double Kick as it's a move you'll forget in like 3 levels) but sometimes I feel people forget the aforementioned fact.
As you pointed out, there're some good animations, like Cinderace's football one, but think about why — usually only 1 Pokémon can learn those moves so the animation/VFX effort goes all in with them.
As I said, yes, of course animations could and should be better, but I'm not expecting too much considering that even a handless Pokémon like Gastly learns Ice Punch.