Youre doing that thing where you try to make my argument for me.
Did I praise the original games? Did I say they were exceptional examples of player freedom and discovery?
Please tell me how I am overestimating the original games, lol.
You literally just said the last few games which implies that the first few games were much more free than what they were actually.
It doesnt imply they were much more free than they actually were. It implies they were more free than their contemporaries, which they were.
Pokmon is a stagnant and regressive series outside of its battle system. They are actively dumbing down the games because theyre afraid modern kids dont have the attention span to sick with them.
Whether those fears are well founded or not, this has lead to the continued stagnation and objectively crappy design choices in the modern games.
Rikiaz posted...
GATTJT posted...
AlisLandale posted...
And the piss easy campaigns that make Red/Blue look like Dark Souls.
RBY has garbage difficulty, it was only "hard" because we were stupid little kids when it first came out. I played the digital version of Red recently and I cleared the game with high 40s low 50s when the Elite 4 start at mid 50s and end at low 60s.
Yeah the games were never hard but Gen 6 and Gen 7 are a whole new level of easy.
Basically this. Saying the modern games are especially easy isnt a praise of the originals. The easiness of the originals is what highlights that the current difficulty is so frustratingly brain dead.
Most of the older games difficulty came from getting blindsided by things like Mistys Starmie or Whitneys Miltank. Either that, or the sheer grind of going through long areas like Mt Moon with limited healing options and an aversion to backtracking to the nearest mart for potions. It wasnt difficult if you knew what you were doing, and a lot of players werent even originally aware of how infamous some of these roadblocks were to others
And in 25 years the difficulty has only gotten less intense.
And even there are still some surprises, like I was unprepared for Grant's Tyrunt on my very first run-through of X/Y. And of course Ultra Necrozma gave a lot of people trouble. ---