Board 8 > I bought Let's Go Pikachu. I don't think this game got enough hate

(+) Yeah! (+)

I remember making a big rukus about this game before it came out, obviously it didn't fit my idea of what a Kanto remake could be. I didn't have high expectations for pokemon but I at least expected something akin to a moveable camera and topography, something to make the game feel like we were exploring our old home anew.

Then the game came out, and people claimed to be having fun with it, and I shut up, because look, game freak makes games that are poorly thought out yet fun. I figured I was too hard on it, and decided to get it if I ever had the opportunity to play the two player with someone else. Recently, my girlfriend who likes the early games and pokemon go was staying over for a week so I picked it up. She's also one of those super positive pokemon fans that doesn't really see all the flaws in design like I do.

I don't actually know where to start with this, the game gets so much wrong that I feel entitled to a refund for buying an incomplete game. First of all, the game overexplains the controls to the player sooo much, which yeah it's pokemon, but the game doesn't even adjust the controls to the controller. So while she's playing she has no idea what button to press because the game is telling her to press buttons that aren't even on her joycon, the interface is heavily reliant on pressing different buttons to do different things too so this isn't a minor issue. Second, even when the second player catches a pokemon, inputs are frozen for the second player regarding anything relating to the pokemon. Which means to nickname the pokemon I caught, I have to take her controller away and pause the game and name something and then give it back. Double Battles are equally bad, as the game makes you take turns selecting your move, as opposed to having two sides of the screen that you input at the same time. So this make the already slow battle system even more sluggish. Picking a pokemon to follow behind you is equally a nightmare, it took us a lot of time to even figure out how to organize the team so the pokemon we wanted to fight with were both following us.

I'm glossing over the things I think everyone already knows about two player, like the fact second player can't interact with anything and is shot into space every time there's a cutscene.

She made a comment that the game was too hard to play without falling asleep, which I totally get. There's nothing really that makes Kanto interesting or new, and battles take so long and have so little consequence that you don't really feel like they're worth it.

Which brings me to another point that I didn't see anyone complain about: Experience is busted, and battles aren't worth it. The game rewards barely any exp for trainer battles, and it's weirdly spread out amoung your party so even keeping a pokemon in front doesn't make it gain any extra exp. My Pikachu is constantly the highest leveled pokemon on my team despite never using it. After beating a pokemon twice my level and getting no exp, I did a little test and found out that catching a level 9 oddish nets you considerably more exp than taking down a level 20 opponent.

The box system is also awful, I've heard people talking good things about being able to switch pokemon on the fly without going to the PC. But the interface is really bad, and there's no good way of organization. Sun and Moon's switch when you catch worked much better and served the purpose 90% of the time, and the PC was almost perfect the way it's been the past few years.

There's lots more things to complain about, but I think they've all been covered pre-release. The graphics are bad, I get weird choppy slowdown just walking around towns, catching pokemon can only be done functionally in portable mode, there's pokemon sizes, but those sizes don't transfer into the battle (or at least not in a way that's noticable) so whats the point, there's a rival who tells you what doors to walk through and cheers you on for just being there, Jesse and James are in it but not the Jesse and James from the Anime, just different characters with the same design and face. Any sort of open world aspect from the first game has been replaced with being ushered around from area to area. I was honestly surprised the game let me leave lavender town to go to celadon first, only to have the rocket in celadon tell me I need to go back to lavender town for no reason. The whole thing feels like a fan game designed in the unity engine.

I played it until pokemon go park, because I was interested in the pokemon go transfer and how it worked, obviously that found a way to upset me too. Despite pokemon having OTs and real world locations in the park, that information is deleted as soon as you catch it, the nicknames aren't saved, so pokemon are back to just being your name. It would have been worth the novelty to keep a persian in my livingdex that came from chicago, but it seems this game has managed to remove anything that could be considered remotely fun or interesting.

Anyway TL;DR this game is even worse than you might think, please don't buy it if you haven't already. And if you did buy it and managed to enjoy it, you're objectively wrong, I'm so sorry to tell you that you have no standards for gameplay.

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lol

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rukus
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I thought the entire point of it was that it was baby's first pokemon for children, so wouldn't that make it more a case of "just not for you" than "this game sucks"? Stuff like the overexplained controls, easy battles, linearity etc.
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Emeraldegg posted...

Stuff like the overexplained controls, easy battles, linearity etc.

I mean the "pokemon came out when we were all babies and no one had trouble understanding it" point has been done to death, I don't feel the need to argue that point, it's not productive.

My point here is that the controls aren't clear DESPITE being overexplained. The battles are more difficult (tedious I guess more than difficult) because exp isn't parceled out in a functional way, you waste a lot more time exploring things because you're exploring things in the wrong order that the game wants you to play. No matter what their end was, they failed on every aspect.

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TexasZea posted...

rukus

shut up zea

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I read the game has no held items or abilities and I can't go back to pre-Gen 3 situation. This all sounds so much worst than I expected.

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Emeraldegg posted...

I thought the entire point of it was that it was baby's first pokemon for children, so wouldn't that make it more a case of "just not for you" than "this game sucks"? Stuff like the overexplained controls, easy battles, linearity etc.

Welcome to SantaRPG.

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Anyhoo, the only point I'm going to reply to is about the battles/EXP.

The game is supposed to attract Pokemon GO players, not so much regular players, and so the whole point is catching Pokemon. You get more EXP from catching them than battling because of this. That's also why the PC is how it is, because the game expects you to catch dozens upon dozens of the same Pokemon to then send to Oak for candy and crap. It's not "broken," it's designed that way. You seem to have gone into this game with a fundamental misunderstanding of what the game is.

EDIT: The whole game is built around catching. Chain catching the same Pokemon gets you more EXP and more candy and spawns rarer Pokemon and increases chances of spawning a Shiny and so on. The battles are dumbed down because GO players are coming from a super basic battle system that is nothing like regular Pokemon games.

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I really don't want to defend Let's Go but most of your complaints were nitpicking

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One thing I disagree with is the visuals. I think the graphics are mostly quite pleasant and I didn't experience much slowdown at all.

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HashtagSEP posted...

Anyhoo, the only point I'm going to reply to is about the battles/EXP.

The game is supposed to attract Pokemon GO players, not so much regular players, and so the whole point is catching Pokemon. You get more EXP from catching them than battling because of this. That's also why the PC is how it is, because the game expects you to catch dozens upon dozens of the same Pokemon to then send to Oak for candy and crap. It's not "broken," it's designed that way. You seem to have gone into this game with a fundamental misunderstanding of what the game is.

Pokemon go is designed that way, and it works more or less. Pokemon are raised with candy because the game is designed to emphasize catching and real world exploration. Let's go takes elements of the mobile game and creates a chimeric system that doesn't function for the system it is put in. You cant put caramel on steak and say "its designed for people who like ice cream"

Nanis23 posted...

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SaveEstelle posted...

One thing I disagree with is the visuals. I think the graphics are mostly quite pleasant and I didn't experience much slowdown at all

I did find the pokemon models to look better than they ever did, but the towns visually are... Nothing. There's no added element of depth or design in any of the locales, its just the same space as the gameboy games but in 3-D. The one space I was impressed with was the team rocket basement bottom floor, where I was like "woah it actually looks like a basement" but that turned out to be because it was to showcare the feature of pikachu moving on a grate.

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SantaRPidgey posted...

I mean the "pokemon came out when we were all babies and no one had trouble understanding it" point has been done to death, I don't feel the need to argue that point, it's not productive.

I mostly agree with you, but you have to understand these are different babies.

You might have considered us the babies back then, but we were actually the kind of people that just chugged along into the unknown and learned things the hard way even as kids. That's why gaming is so much bigger today. The babies that wouldn't play games back then at all now have something for them.

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SantaRPidgey posted...

Pokemon go is designed that way, and it works more or less. Pokemon are raised with candy because the game is designed to emphasize catching and real world exploration. Let's go takes elements of the mobile game and creates a chrimeric system that doesn't function for the system it is put in. You cant put caramel on steak and say "its designed for people who like ice cream"

No, it's 100% designed around the GO style catching. The battles are just extra/fluff. The root of the game is the catching, and that's why the PC/EXP/battles/etc. are how they are. The problem is you didn't approach it thinking "This is like Pokemon GO," and thus ended up trying to play it like a traditional Pokemon game when you're not supposed to.

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In my experience it gets better. Not overwhelmingly, but like, it starts absolutely brutal and becomes kind of a real video game.

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SantaRPidgey posted...

I did find the pokemon models to look better than they ever did, but the towns visually are... Nothing. There's no added element of depth or design in any of the locales, its just the same space as the gameboy games but in 3-D. The one space I was impressed with was the team rocket basement bottom floor, where I was like "woah it actually looks like a basement" but that turned out to be because it was to showcare the feature of pikachu moving on a grate.

lol, that's fair

I'm also bummed that we're now two-for-two on Kanto remakes not featuring day/night. That could have helped with the saminess emanating from the towns! But I guess with only 151 Pokemon there's just not enough going on to make time-of-day functionally decent without simply keeping it as a presentation gig that doesn't actually affect what's available to be caught. (Which I'd have been fine with but shrug!)

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Yeah it's not like games haven't had day/night cycles purely for presentation for the last 20 years.

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hey hg/ss had day and night! Hg/ss was really the best kanto remake we ever got. The towns looked better, they all had their own themes and the music was awesome. I have no idea why no one hasnt made a romhack where you start in kanto then go over to johto.

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HashtagSEP posted...

The battles are just extra/fluff.

Which means the battles are pointless

So why even have them? If they offer no reward, why on earth would anyone battle anyone they didnt have to? Theyre not challenging and they take a lot of time.

Also late game, catching doesn't really seem to be as effective as early game. It was more worth my time to farm oddishes since those all got in the ball easily on the first time so I could get more exp quicker with less expensive balls. Late game excellents + berries seemed to pop out far more often.

That was another big problem, the ball jiggles seemed to be seperate from catchability. It seemed no matter what I threw I would always get it to jiggle until the last jiggle and then break out at the last second.

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SantaRPidgey posted...

Pokemon go is designed that way, and it works more or less. Pokemon are raised with candy because the game is designed to emphasize catching and real world exploration. Let's go takes elements of the mobile game and creates a chimeric system that doesn't function for the system it is put in. You cant put caramel on steak and say "its designed for people who like ice cream"

What did I post

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Nanis23 posted...

What did I post

He's calling you out for you of all people talking about someone else nitpicking.

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Nanis23 posted...

What did I post

I was going to respond to your post but couldn't think of the right way to say "design is everything" so I wanted to delete it which is hard to do on mobile

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SantaRPidgey posted...

Which means the battles are pointless

So why even have them? If they offer no reward, why on earth would anyone battle anyone they didnt have to? Theyre not challenging and they take a lot of time.

Also late game, catching doesn't really seem to be as effective as early game. It was more worth my time to farm oddishes since those all got in the ball easily on the first time so I could get more exp quicker with less expensive balls. Late game excellents + berries seemed to pop out far more often.

That was another big problem, the ball jiggles seemed to be seperate from catchability. It seemed no matter what I threw I would always get it to jiggle until the last jiggle and then break out at the last second.

Because they wanted to give GO players a sense of a full "adventure" and get them to dip their toes into potentially playing regular Pokemon games. That was their entire intention. Battles are simple/skippable to long-time players, but intentionally done so that GO players don't get overwhelmed.

And you're right, there are definitely certain species early game to catch to get specific kinds of candy, if you're farming them. Catching late game is moreso for farming EXP and species-specific candy. But yeah, just like anything else, there's an optimal way to go about it if you just want generic Attack/Defense/etc. candies by chaining early Pokemon.

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I'm not sure what the point of saying "yeah but it's supposed to be like Pokemon GO" is like if the end product is still bad. Are we not allowed to criticize things that are intentionally trying to be the least common denominator?

(also Pokemon GO was actually fun and while I haven't played Let's Go Pikachu, the complaints in this topic as laid out seem valid)

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KamikazePotato posted...

I'm not sure what the point of saying "yeah but it's supposed to be like Pokemon GO" is like if the end product is still bad. Are we not allowed to criticize things that are intentionally trying to be the least common denominator?

(also Pokemon GO was actually fun and while I haven't played Let's Go Pikachu, the complaints in this topic as laid out seem valid)

The whole issue is it's not bad for what it is. Santa even mentions he saw other people saying they liked it. It's because we knew what we were getting.

A lot of his issues come from approaching the game and playing it as if it's a typical mainline Pokemon game. If that's what you wanted, then yes, it is bad.

It can be good and bad at the same time depending entirely on what you want out of it. But the point of "It's supposed to be like Pokemon GO" is because if you go in knowing that/expecting that, then it's a pretty fun game. Santa didn't, and it wasn't fun to him, but that doesn't make it "objectively bad."

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Basically, to sum it up:

The game is supposed to be for people that go "I want Pokemon GO, but more."

It's good for those people.

If you come in thinking "I want a typical Pokemon game/straight remake of RBY," then you're going to be confused/potentially put off by some of what they did.

It was advertised/intended to be the former. It's not taking a regular Pokemon game and intentionally making it "bad." It's taking the Pokemon GO catch mechanic and building a bigger game around it.

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SantaRPidgey posted...

And if you did buy it and managed to enjoy it, you're objectively wrong, I'm so sorry to tell you that you have no standards for gameplay.

When someone posts something like this it immediately tells me their opinions are objectively not worth listening to
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I mean Santa is like, perpetually miserable so

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probably because Christmas is so close huehuehue
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HashtagSEP posted...

The game is supposed to be for people that go "I want Pokemon GO, but more."

It's good for those people.

I don't think any of my complaints have anything to do with pokemon go. I LIKE pokemon go, and brought it a pokemon go fan to try to play the game with me. Pokemon go isn't perfect, but it has a lot of really good elements to the design that aren't brought into let's go.

Take the catching in both games, in GO a curved ball "excellent" catches nearly everything on the first try, but it's pretty difficult for beginners and for certain pokemon, so sometimes you might go with just a simple "nice" or use a higher level ball. There's options for different levels of skill. Berries are on one side, balls are on the other, and switching between them is completely seamless (provided there's not a network error) Even for high level raid rewards I never felt like not catching a pokemon was out of my control, even if it was.

In Let's go comparatively, the only thing you can do is get an "excellent" and it's fairly easy to do for even for a beginner. So outside of using your best berry and using an ultra ball, there's really nothing else that can be done except keep getting "excellent"s and hope the RNG treats you well. I failed to get several pokemon because I just used all my ultra balls with mostly perfect throws but I wasn't lucky enough to catch them. Berries are in the same menu with balls, they're weirdly mixed in, and you have to confirm every single move you want to make. The clunkier element means it takes much longer to get a lot of throws against a pokemon and the whole experience feels more dull and less tense.

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Hbthebattle posted...

When someone posts something like this it immediately tells me their opinions are objectively not worth listening to

I like to mix hyperbole with my strong opinions so people will remember not to take me so seriously when I'm passionate about things like pokemon spin off games

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HashtagSEP posted...

Basically, to sum it up:

The game is supposed to be for people that go "I want Pokemon GO, but more."

It's good for those people.

If you come in thinking "I want a typical Pokemon game/straight remake of RBY," then you're going to be confused/potentially put off by some of what they did.

It was advertised/intended to be the former. It's not taking a regular Pokemon game and intentionally making it "bad." It's taking the Pokemon GO catch mechanic and building a bigger game around it.

haven't paid that much attention to stuff in the past couple years but that was my impression, with Sword/Shield being the proper Pokemon game (though missing content).

it's also one of the few Pokemon games i never got any versions of and have zero intentions to get. and i loved Pokemon Pinball.


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