What's the best Pokémon game?

[Paladino]

I'm currently playing through FR on my Anbernic machine and it really loses steam past Lavender Town, though with age I wouldn't claim that the water section is as incessantly long as, say, in gen3, it's dungeon-length really

As someone who played and liked the originals Red and Blue, I really can't point any faults with these remakes. It's just a more polished, pleasant and consistent experience.

 

[Maxie]

I'm currently playing through FR on my Anbernic machine and it really loses steam past Lavender Town, though with age I wouldn't claim that the water section is as incessantly long as, say, in gen3, it's dungeon-length really

As someone who played and liked the originals Red and Blue, I really can't point any faults with these remakes. It's just a more polished, pleasant and consistent experience.

more consistent how

 

[Paladino]

Visually consistent.

 

[Kuruwin]

With Pokemon I gravitate towards to mystery dungeon titles of which the second is the best. Diamond has place in my heart for being the first Pokemon game I played, but Arceus is the best. Violet/Scarlet did take thing's forward and I have some hope for future main titles, but Pokemon games tend to be pretty yarning. The battling is the worst part and if they don't want to revamp the system then at least let me take all the animations off.

 

[Nutmeg]

The main problem with Pokemon is how slooooooow battles are to resolve. The text appears slowly and waits on the healthbar animation. Most people just use their emulator's frame limit toggle, but what if you're playing on the actual hardware (less of a concern for me) or enjoy the music?

Anyway, this is what prevented me from playing more games in the series or replaying the classics. After I finished one of the GBA ones, I just didn't want to waste so much time with another title, even though generally I enjoy the game's systems and combat -- only needs to be snappier.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Just throwing it out there since the thread is going to be full of pokemon fans: If you haven't tried Monster Sanctuary yet, you're missing out. Fantastic game.


75% off right now too. Absolute steal.

 

[Silverfish]

Snap.

 

[Jonathan "Zee Nekomimi]

Emerald and the remakes. Black and White add some nice features.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Didn't see Infinite Fusion being mentioned

https://pokemoninfinitefusion.io/



There is also the option to randomize aspects for more/less chaos.

https://infinitefusion.fandom.com/wiki/Randomized_Mode

 

[DJOGamer PT]

The fantasy is that you are a beastmaster who bonds with one or two fantastical creatures

That's the anime, which came after the games massive success
The games have always been about "Gotta catch them all!" - and in case you don't know, the creator of the franchise based the game's idea of his childhood hobby, which was bug collecting

 

[Dr1f7]

the tcg is fun, it's like the games minus all the "running around" and "talking to npcs" garbage
too bad the online platform for it sucks donkey shit

 

[Üstad]

I didn't play pokemon games for a long time, what does natures do and how does EXP scaling, perfect stats and IVs vary colors work exactly?

• Natures: Enables natures from Gen 3 onward.
• Abilities: Enables abilities from Gen 3 onward.
• Phys/Spcl split: Enables the Physical/Special split from Gen 4 onward.
• Exp. scaling: Enables the experience formula from Gen 5, 7 and 8, which scales experience by the ratio of the opponent's level to your level.
• IVs vary colors: Enables color variation inspired by Stadium. DVs will subtly vary Pokémon colors. This applies to normal and shiny Pokémon.
• Perfect stats: All Pokémon stats, for you and the opponent, are calculated as if they had maximum IVs. The actual IVs are still random, so color variation and Hidden Power type are not affected.

You can check the auther's github out. https://github.com/Rangi42/polishedcrystal

Did you play 3.0.0 beta or official 2.2.0 version? Which one do you suggest?

 

[musouking]

Did you play 3.0.0 beta or official 2.2.0 version? Which one do you suggest?

I played 3.0.0 beta myself. The auther recommends 3.0.0 beta too.

The most recent official version is 2.2.0 as of September 20, 2016. The changelog lists all changes since then. I recommend playing the 3.0.0 beta instead.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

I played exactly 1 pokemon game for more than a few minutes, Pokemon Emerald in GBA emulation (I lost the Save game so that was the only reason I never completed it). It was compelling enough to make me want to go on. I'm slightly interested in what the current state of Pokemon is and how it handled the shift to 3D. Mods and romhacks like Pokemon Luminescent and Pokemon Unbound look like they might be worth investigating, in a trippy, "Hey Man! The colors, the colors! Far out, man!" kind of way with at least ramped up difficulty.

 

[Butter]

Pokemon peaked mechanically around gen 4 (Diamond, Pearl, Platinum) or 5 (Black, White). However it peaked aesthetically probably in gen 2 (Gold, Silver, Crystal). The games were always too easy and too basic (they should've been designed around doubles or triples from the start to make battles more engaging). I can't bring myself to revisit any of them because starting out with 1 or 2 Pokemon that know 1 or 2 moves each makes the early game way too boring.

 

[Gandalf]

Last year I've checked out an unofficial browser game named Pokémon Showdown which is a Pokémon battle simulator. Play Pokémon battles online wih other players! Play with randomly generated teams, or build your own!

It's pretty cool and doesn't require an e-mail to play or register an account.

 

[Poseidon00]

Pokemon has always been inferior to several Pokemon clones, but the experience of playing the original gens 1 and 2, and trying to take your created team through Pokemon Stadium 1 and 2 is a legit challenge and, to me, quite enjoyable.

If you say Stadium 1 and 2 are easy, you're lying

 

[ind33d]

pokemon would have been better if you drafted your team like football instead of catching them

"gengar, piss in this bottle. we need to test you for rare candies"

 

[H. P. Lovecraft's Cat]

Palworld?

 

[Poseidon00]

Palworld?

Dragon Warrior/Quest Monsters > Jade Cocoon > Monster Rancher > Monster Sanctuary > Azure Dreams > Pokemon > Eternal Eyes > Palworld

 

[Jack Of Owls]

Speaking of Dragon Quest Monsters, I wanted to see the current state of Citra since their lawsuit so I downloaded the last nightly build, found the Dragon Quest Monsters Joker 3 english-translated rom (which I heard is a good monster catching series), and fired it up in the emu. Well, real nice cut scenes at least and great starting house interior but once you step outside after the beginning, it runs with more stutter than Cyberpunk 2077 at 4K on a GPU (integrated) from 10 years ago. And so ended my experiment in modern monster catching EmuLand. Every now and then I just have this compulsion to do something game-related that's goofy and futile.

 

[pakoito]

I've been playing Emerald Rogue lately, and I think it's great.

IMO, there are three fundamental problems with the franchise: Having advanced knowledge of enemies (I enter a water gym therefore I use a grass pokemon to annihilate everything) and lack of consequences for using glass cannons that just alpha strike everything. And lastly, there's no reason to use the vast majority of pokemon or think about their abilities or ways they could synergize.

Rogue fixes all these problems. The boss fights along the way are randomized, so you actually need variety not just on your team, but on individual pokemon. Death is permanent, which adds a lot of value to more defensive strategies as opposed to just spamming psychic with an alakazam or whatever. And lastly, what you have access to is randomized on each run, so you can't just get your ideal team and ignore everything else. You might end up using something you think is pretty crap because it's your only way to cover certain types offensively or defensively.

It's just a fundamental shift in the gameplay (which is the entire focus, there's no story to speak of) that suits the core concept perfectly.

Have you tried PokeRogue yet? How does it compare?

 

[Dr1f7]

Pokemon peaked mechanically around gen 4 (Diamond, Pearl, Platinum) or 5 (Black, White). However it peaked aesthetically probably in gen 2 (Gold, Silver, Crystal). The games were always too easy and too basic (they should've been designed around doubles or triples from the start to make battles more engaging). I can't bring myself to revisit any of them because starting out with 1 or 2 Pokemon that know 1 or 2 moves each makes the early game way too boring.

play a romhack to make it harder and set a keybind for 10x speed and it fixes everything

 

[Damned Registrations]

Have you tried PokeRogue yet? How does it compare?

Haven't tried it but I did watch someone do a playthrough of it. Pokerogue is just straight up combat encounters with no movement/exploration. I think it kinda works though- you make decisions on which reward to take after each combat, and which area to move onto every 10. You still do the whole capturing/upgrading/teambuilding thing as you go along, but none of the combat will be completely filler, and you won't need to dick around walking through empty areas or trivial random encounters to collect your loot along the way.

Pokerogue also features a bunch of the newer pokemon mechanics from later gens which I'm totally unfamilliar with. Also, it's in an unfinished state; some of the pokemon abilities aren't implemented yet.

Last major difference is in the meta progression- Pokerogue has you do a point buy for your team at the start, letting you pick from any pokemon you've caught before, and which combination of traits, moves, natures and such they've had before. You also have a gacha game system to get eggs, which function as captures. I think it's a pretty cool system, and again saves some time otherwise wasted doing stuff like the Safari zone or checking multiple pokemon's stats to figure out which one is worth keeping. Not sure what Pokerogue has for extra challenge modifiers though; Emerald Rogue had a lot in that regard, and was really quite difficult for me with the better AI and competitive builds turned on. Pokerogue seems like it might be relatively easy to sweep through most of it because you can carry over stat buffs between a lot of fights as well. But I'm not an expert and the person playing it definitely knew more than I did, so maybe he was dodging all sorts of pitfalls I'd have lost to.

 

[Damned Registrations]

^^^

Okay I actually started playing it (damn you pakoito I'm supposed to be finishing the XPiratez LP ) and it's really fucking addictive. You can stack multiple carried items on a single pokemon during the run to create some seemingly unstoppable monsters. I had an Articuno with 2 shellbells equipped, lifestealing 1/4 of the damage it dealt, with just all the fucking drugs pumped into it and holding like 2 of every berry. Which will, of course, get stopped by the one thing you didn't think of after murdering your way through over a hundred varied enemies. Once you find the map item (fairly common) in a run, you can pick your path to either avoid types that will wreck your team or hunt for ones you want to add. Once you get further in the run enemy trainers start having crazy piles of items as well, and it feels all the more satisfying to beat some overpowered bullshit enemy with a bunch of cheater buffs by finding it's weakpoint or bulldozing it with your own overpowered freak. And of course the collectathon aspect is in full force, even stronger really because you want shiny versions (they give extra luck for drops) and egg moves and good stats, and the right nature and the right ability to all line up for the perfect starter, and you can't just target breed them that way like you can in the normal games, so those gacha tickets are always exciting. You also get to add extra perks to them by using or capturing a lot of a pokemon, in the form of making it cheaper to bring along or adding an extra ability.

My only gripe is that it's very hard to do a clever teambuilding thing early on due to lack of options, and you'll likely spend several runs fighting the same lame ass rats and shit over and over, because all the fancy types like dragons and psychic are in the much later areas, and harder to catch. Still, it means I ended up experimenting with shit I'd have otherwise never considered, because I happened to get an egg with a good move or that has a rare type. One of my best right now is a lame ass fat bird wearing an eggshell. It got an egg move that does massive fighting damage that scales with defense, letting it sweep the early levels filled with normals and later by setting up defense and sweeping everything. OTOH I'm also working on making a great Abra because it's my first favourite and makes a great sweeper in general- having it go from finally accessible but with shit stats, to having a good passive, to decent passive and stats, and now with a good starter move too feels very good.

Oh, one more gripe: a lot of pokemon kinda rely on common TM moves to make them good, and well, there's really no such thing when you're getting a chance of a chance to get any TM your team could use after each fight. I've never seen fly in all my runs so far, even though it's the kind of thing you'd slap on any flying pokemon and make them instantly viable. Since you also don't have an inventory and need to use or discard items as you find them (which I didn't mention before but makes trainer battles much harder) you also can't find a cool move early and hunt for the right pokemon to give it to.