I don't like the Gen 5 Pokemon games. The weird thing is, given when I played these games, I probably SHOULD.
These games were released in an era when my interest in Pokemon was at its peak. I was still a huge fan of the franchise at the time, and Platinum and HGSS were among the first games I actively followed announcements for on the internet. Hell, I was so hyped for B1W1, the password on my old laptop from that time was - and still is - Pokabu, the Japanese name for Tepig. If there were ever a game to blind my opinion with overwhelming nostalgia, it should be this one.
And yet, despite the odds, just playing it makes me writhe in hatred, and I have an enormous amount of trouble just mustering the willpower to continue to the next gym, even though (or perhaps BECAUSE) it's only a single stubby near-empty route away from the last.
Though I was excited for a region based off of my home country in the United States, Unova's structure is... not the most engaging. Granted, the road from your hometown to the Pokemon League twists and turns, but rarely do you find yourself doubling back - it's just a straight shot from Nuvema Town all the way to Victory Road. The few times you need to backtrack for story reasons, it's only short-lived, and you'll inevitably return to where you just came from to continue walking in that straight line.
The monotony and claustrophobia of your trek in a single direction is only exacerbated by just how little the game utilizes Routes. In a series all about hitting the road and surrounding yourself in the beautiful untamed wilderness, B1W1's natural areas are remarkably stumpy and always feel so lacking in substance, and you wind up spending more of your time in dungeons, most of which are manmade in this game.
But apparently, cramming the game full of an overwhelming number of dungeons and bridges wasn't enough to make up for the short routes. They needed an extra way to pad out the game. Which leads me to the story. And if I were to describe Team Plasma in a single word, that word would be "squandered."
Allow me to go on a not-so-brief tangent about recontextualization. In Platinum, it's established in your literal first encounter with the Team Galactic grunts that they want to use the power released when Pokemon evolve to achieve their goals. This seemingly inconsequential little detail completely redefines a crime that every team commits which we've all taken for granted - kidnapping and hoarding Pokemon. They don't just want troops, they want POWER. Is it really a coincidence that the bug Pokemon that Team Galactic want to draw in with that sweet, sweet Honey in Floraroma evolve at low levels? Or that the two Pokemon that Jupiter kidnapped in Eternea, Clefairy and Buneary, are among the easiest Pokemon in the game to evolve? Frankly, yes, they probably are coincidences. But, regardless of whether or not it's intentional, it still makes their plans feel more cohesive and fleshed out. They aren't just doing this as part of a bid for power; kidnapping Pokemon is actually directly furthering their ultimate goal of summoning a legendary Pokemon by creating a chain by kidnapping three lake elves by blowing up their lake using a bomb which they NEED THE ENERGY OF EVOLUTION TO POWER.
I'm saying this because Plasma had even stronger potential for recontextualizing. For them, kidnapping Pokemon wouldn't have just tangentially linked to their goals, it would've BEEN their goal - stealing and releasing others' Pokemon out in the wild! A deed that's been taken for granted, given entirely new meaning by the team's motivations!
Unfortunately, the story decides to undermine this motivation by effectively retconning it from nearly every member of Team Plasma except N himself. None of them actually care about releasing Pokemon back into the wild. They only kidnap Pokemon because that's a thing evil teams do. They don't take the kidnapped Pokemon into the wild to immediately release them, they take them into dead ends in caves or empty buildings to use as hostages until they're beaten in a Pokemon battle by the main character.
In fact, despite their enormous presence throughout the game, Team Plasma doesn't really do a whole lot of anything for most of it. Most of your encounters with them are poorly explained. In the Wellspring Cave and Castelia City, you're just told that a Pokemon has been kidnapped and sent on your way. Your encounters with them in Chargestone Cave and the Desert Resort are both explained as Ghetsis wanting to "test" you... even though you've already opposed Team Plasma's plans countless times by this point in the story, and they should be fully aware of what you're capable of. Hell, in Driftveil City, you aren't even TOLD what Plasma was doing in town; you're just sent off to catch them because Clay is too much of a boomer to do it himself. The continuous run-ins with them exist only to add more cutscenes to the game and trick you into thinking the road you're walking down is longer and more adventurous than it actually is.
(EDIT: In retrospect, I'm starting to have a better understanding of how Plasma's two-faced nature tie rather nicely into Gen 5's overall theming of Truth versus Ideals. But, I still think more could have been done with them, and in fact that knowledge has only strengthened my belief in this. Like, imagine if, during the events of B1W1, they had actually established in-fighting between the Plasma members who believed in N's ideal and those who sought power like Ghetsis. Y'know, as opposed to only revealing that such a thing existed in the next games.)
It's not even an especially well-built video game in some areas, either! The first gym utilizes a gimmick which is admittedly pretty cool, where the typing is determined by the starter you chose. You're able to get a Pokemon in the nearby Dreamyard that's super-effective against the leader's ace... but the ace is four levels higher than that Pokemon. By the time you get this Pokemon, you'll only have a pitiful two trainer battles left until you get to the leader - not nearly enough to get strong enough to stand a good chance. Even if you avoid as many trainers as you can on the way there and then double back to refight them once you've gotten the Pokemon from the Dreamyard, it STILL isn't enough to get close to level 14. The game essentially forces you to either grind up some levels on this new teammate, or abandon it altogether in favor of brute forcing it with a Lillipup or Patrat. And good luck grinding without the luxury of Audino, which only begins appearing AFTER YOU BEAT THE FIRST GYM.
I've tried to beat Black more times than I can count, and each time my energy gets sapped and sapped until my runs fall to a close and I just give up. I do not have the willpower to beat this game - the only one standing between me and transferring my beloved Gen 4 Pokemon into the modern games.
Fortunately, thanks to Dexit, I can't get most of them into the modern games anyway. Meaning there's no longer any reason for me to try beating B1W1.
2/10. The worst mainline Pokemon games, bar none. Don't @ me.
These games were released in an era when my interest in Pokemon was at its peak. I was still a huge fan of the franchise at the time, and Platinum and HGSS were among the first games I actively followed announcements for on the internet. Hell, I was so hyped for B1W1, the password on my old laptop from that time was - and still is - Pokabu, the Japanese name for Tepig. If there were ever a game to blind my opinion with overwhelming nostalgia, it should be this one.
And yet, despite the odds, just playing it makes me writhe in hatred, and I have an enormous amount of trouble just mustering the willpower to continue to the next gym, even though (or perhaps BECAUSE) it's only a single stubby near-empty route away from the last.
Though I was excited for a region based off of my home country in the United States, Unova's structure is... not the most engaging. Granted, the road from your hometown to the Pokemon League twists and turns, but rarely do you find yourself doubling back - it's just a straight shot from Nuvema Town all the way to Victory Road. The few times you need to backtrack for story reasons, it's only short-lived, and you'll inevitably return to where you just came from to continue walking in that straight line.
The monotony and claustrophobia of your trek in a single direction is only exacerbated by just how little the game utilizes Routes. In a series all about hitting the road and surrounding yourself in the beautiful untamed wilderness, B1W1's natural areas are remarkably stumpy and always feel so lacking in substance, and you wind up spending more of your time in dungeons, most of which are manmade in this game.
But apparently, cramming the game full of an overwhelming number of dungeons and bridges wasn't enough to make up for the short routes. They needed an extra way to pad out the game. Which leads me to the story. And if I were to describe Team Plasma in a single word, that word would be "squandered."
Allow me to go on a not-so-brief tangent about recontextualization. In Platinum, it's established in your literal first encounter with the Team Galactic grunts that they want to use the power released when Pokemon evolve to achieve their goals. This seemingly inconsequential little detail completely redefines a crime that every team commits which we've all taken for granted - kidnapping and hoarding Pokemon. They don't just want troops, they want POWER. Is it really a coincidence that the bug Pokemon that Team Galactic want to draw in with that sweet, sweet Honey in Floraroma evolve at low levels? Or that the two Pokemon that Jupiter kidnapped in Eternea, Clefairy and Buneary, are among the easiest Pokemon in the game to evolve? Frankly, yes, they probably are coincidences. But, regardless of whether or not it's intentional, it still makes their plans feel more cohesive and fleshed out. They aren't just doing this as part of a bid for power; kidnapping Pokemon is actually directly furthering their ultimate goal of summoning a legendary Pokemon by creating a chain by kidnapping three lake elves by blowing up their lake using a bomb which they NEED THE ENERGY OF EVOLUTION TO POWER.
I'm saying this because Plasma had even stronger potential for recontextualizing. For them, kidnapping Pokemon wouldn't have just tangentially linked to their goals, it would've BEEN their goal - stealing and releasing others' Pokemon out in the wild! A deed that's been taken for granted, given entirely new meaning by the team's motivations!
Unfortunately, the story decides to undermine this motivation by effectively retconning it from nearly every member of Team Plasma except N himself. None of them actually care about releasing Pokemon back into the wild. They only kidnap Pokemon because that's a thing evil teams do. They don't take the kidnapped Pokemon into the wild to immediately release them, they take them into dead ends in caves or empty buildings to use as hostages until they're beaten in a Pokemon battle by the main character.
In fact, despite their enormous presence throughout the game, Team Plasma doesn't really do a whole lot of anything for most of it. Most of your encounters with them are poorly explained. In the Wellspring Cave and Castelia City, you're just told that a Pokemon has been kidnapped and sent on your way. Your encounters with them in Chargestone Cave and the Desert Resort are both explained as Ghetsis wanting to "test" you... even though you've already opposed Team Plasma's plans countless times by this point in the story, and they should be fully aware of what you're capable of. Hell, in Driftveil City, you aren't even TOLD what Plasma was doing in town; you're just sent off to catch them because Clay is too much of a boomer to do it himself. The continuous run-ins with them exist only to add more cutscenes to the game and trick you into thinking the road you're walking down is longer and more adventurous than it actually is.
(EDIT: In retrospect, I'm starting to have a better understanding of how Plasma's two-faced nature tie rather nicely into Gen 5's overall theming of Truth versus Ideals. But, I still think more could have been done with them, and in fact that knowledge has only strengthened my belief in this. Like, imagine if, during the events of B1W1, they had actually established in-fighting between the Plasma members who believed in N's ideal and those who sought power like Ghetsis. Y'know, as opposed to only revealing that such a thing existed in the next games.)
It's not even an especially well-built video game in some areas, either! The first gym utilizes a gimmick which is admittedly pretty cool, where the typing is determined by the starter you chose. You're able to get a Pokemon in the nearby Dreamyard that's super-effective against the leader's ace... but the ace is four levels higher than that Pokemon. By the time you get this Pokemon, you'll only have a pitiful two trainer battles left until you get to the leader - not nearly enough to get strong enough to stand a good chance. Even if you avoid as many trainers as you can on the way there and then double back to refight them once you've gotten the Pokemon from the Dreamyard, it STILL isn't enough to get close to level 14. The game essentially forces you to either grind up some levels on this new teammate, or abandon it altogether in favor of brute forcing it with a Lillipup or Patrat. And good luck grinding without the luxury of Audino, which only begins appearing AFTER YOU BEAT THE FIRST GYM.
I've tried to beat Black more times than I can count, and each time my energy gets sapped and sapped until my runs fall to a close and I just give up. I do not have the willpower to beat this game - the only one standing between me and transferring my beloved Gen 4 Pokemon into the modern games.
Fortunately, thanks to Dexit, I can't get most of them into the modern games anyway. Meaning there's no longer any reason for me to try beating B1W1.
2/10. The worst mainline Pokemon games, bar none. Don't @ me.
3 Comments
based
You’re so real for this one, I wish I could put my feeling toward these games into words but this does a lot of it better than I could
IncPara
3 years ago