biaza
12 reviews liked by biaza
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.
As a relatively recent newcomer to Pokemon, I get that there's certain pieces of franchise history I'm unfamiliar with. Pokemon Sword and Shield may not shake things up in a big way, but I found its low-key atmosphere compared to what I'd seen of other series plotlines very charming. Pokemon Colloseum already fed my interest in an "edgy" Pokemon, and Arceus seemed like a pleasant shake-up to the formula as I understood it. I haven't really sat through the sensation of the games being too "kiddy" or too much of the same for too long. That's just not a fan history I have. So maybe, the plotline found in Black/White was something people were really craving. 2010 was deep in that gamer edge era. It would make sense for people to be clamoring for it.
But wow, this game's plot just doesn't work for me much. The whole "Pokemon is animal fights" thing is notorious, but the franchise trying to acknowledge that just seems like a disaster waiting to happen. People I know have explained to me that "oh Plasma is just PETA, you aren't supposed to take them seriously." But that rings hollow to me when the language Plasma uses feels so... politically familiar. Plasma talks about culpability, it talks about corrupt systems, and it lines out their worldviews in pretty clear ways. Its the language of revolutionaries, not the language of PETA. Every character has to quickly leap in to respond "How silly! Pokemon would just leave if they were unhappy" in ways that feels like the writers couldn't fully form a real argument against Plasma's goals. We just sort of have to accept the game's claim that Pokemon love the state of things and not seriously give Plasma's words weight. And I don't like that feeling! I don't come to Pokemon for these discussions, I don't care about these discussions. Its a video game. Seeing the game trot out plot beats like "oh the leader doesn't actually care about this issue, its all about power" just puts a pit in my stomach. I get enough of this shit from MCU villains who are "right but kill babies" or anti-union episodes of tv or whatever. I know that's not what's actually happening, but so much of the dialogue and plot arc echoes the exact same motives behind it. You know?
Ignoring that mess is an especially useful tactic when the pokemon mechanics feel so good. My partner explained to me how controversial the all-new Pokemon only gimmick was, with other friends on the call nodding that they prefer Black/White 2 for giving them their faves back. But I think it works. So far in my Pokemon experience, I would find a reliable team early on and generally stick with it throughout the game. In this one, I was constantly juggling characters in and out. Changing my team layout took up about 20% of the game time and I was happy to do so. It felt like I was really experimenting with the system in ways I haven't before. It just works in a way that feels fresh somehow.
They really shouldn't be putting out so many of these games though. A new game every year or two just seems too many.
But wow, this game's plot just doesn't work for me much. The whole "Pokemon is animal fights" thing is notorious, but the franchise trying to acknowledge that just seems like a disaster waiting to happen. People I know have explained to me that "oh Plasma is just PETA, you aren't supposed to take them seriously." But that rings hollow to me when the language Plasma uses feels so... politically familiar. Plasma talks about culpability, it talks about corrupt systems, and it lines out their worldviews in pretty clear ways. Its the language of revolutionaries, not the language of PETA. Every character has to quickly leap in to respond "How silly! Pokemon would just leave if they were unhappy" in ways that feels like the writers couldn't fully form a real argument against Plasma's goals. We just sort of have to accept the game's claim that Pokemon love the state of things and not seriously give Plasma's words weight. And I don't like that feeling! I don't come to Pokemon for these discussions, I don't care about these discussions. Its a video game. Seeing the game trot out plot beats like "oh the leader doesn't actually care about this issue, its all about power" just puts a pit in my stomach. I get enough of this shit from MCU villains who are "right but kill babies" or anti-union episodes of tv or whatever. I know that's not what's actually happening, but so much of the dialogue and plot arc echoes the exact same motives behind it. You know?
Ignoring that mess is an especially useful tactic when the pokemon mechanics feel so good. My partner explained to me how controversial the all-new Pokemon only gimmick was, with other friends on the call nodding that they prefer Black/White 2 for giving them their faves back. But I think it works. So far in my Pokemon experience, I would find a reliable team early on and generally stick with it throughout the game. In this one, I was constantly juggling characters in and out. Changing my team layout took up about 20% of the game time and I was happy to do so. It felt like I was really experimenting with the system in ways I haven't before. It just works in a way that feels fresh somehow.
They really shouldn't be putting out so many of these games though. A new game every year or two just seems too many.
As a child I only ever managed to complete the Forest Temple, so I decided to return and 100% this gem. Unfortunately it doesnt let me select this, but I played the PC Port, Ship of Harkinian which was a fantastic visual upgrade to this classic.
Fantastic work made in Argentina, long live fangames and fuck you Nintendo.
+ A remake of the best pokemon gen? Count me in!
- Uses the gen 4 battling, still slow and still miserable to look at.
- Uses the gen 4 battling, still slow and still miserable to look at.
The best part about this game is how the animation is little claymation guys and its so cheap it makes me laugh my ass off
i wanna live in the menu grids
Dark Souls is something unique. Despite playing it way later than most people, I still fell in love with this game. The Old Game Charm really benefits this game, it really feels like you are playing something experimental that is still executed really well. It is no surprise it gave birth to a new "genre". I can excuse most of the flaws in this game only because it is really that special.
Lies of P
2023
Alright let's see what this is about.
starts trailer
"Lies of P is a thrilling souls-like"
closes trailer
I was reminded of this and I'm sad it didn't make it into the final game.
EDIT 10/01/2023: I was wrong, the game's great.
starts trailer
"Lies of P is a thrilling souls-like"
closes trailer
I was reminded of this and I'm sad it didn't make it into the final game.
EDIT 10/01/2023: I was wrong, the game's great.
Dark Souls III
2016
Far and away my least favorite FromSoft Soulsborinko.
Spoilers below first paragraph.
"Jolly cooperation" for farmers I guess, I never felt like summoning was such a total win button in the other games (save for specific NPC summons in DS1 like the dude who can solo the iron golem), finding out it only increases boss health by 10-20% is such a letdown. Which is a shame, because a good number of the bosses here love cheap-shotting you and are absolutely relentless at least if you're a pure dex non-weeaboo like I was. The online came back mid-playthrough for me, which was nice, but again a letdown because it felt like I was just pressing the "win" button whenever I summoned for a boss. I only failed 2 or 3 summoning raids in total of the maybe 10-15 I used (all in the mid-late game)
=================
FromSoft is usually good about making their bosses at least feel a little organic, even in the rudimentary Demon's Souls; but they feel far from that here most of the time, feeling weirdly easy for the first third of the game, getting a difficulty spike, mostly normal for a bit forward and then taking a nosedive in how organic they feel starting immediately after Pontiff Sulyvahn. Bosses have always all had patterns and react to the player in different ways, and yes almost all of them even in DS1 "input read" to some degree but they're cleverly disguised around for the most part and dressed up to be interesting. Dark Souls 3 decides to just say screw it, frame one mid-combo interruptions and perfect punishes beyond reason,; the most egregious example of this in my mind is Champion Gundyr who will interrupt his otherwise repeating patterns mid-combo literally the first frame you register R1/R2 or Action, not to mention the dogshit design that is his shoulder bash which he can whip out seemingly randomly with 0 windup or tell that will decimate your stamina bar if you had the audacity to try and block it (unless you took the tank build approach with Greatshields, then you just win the game I guess! ridiculous how good they are)
Shoutouts to the DLC having one of the most blatant oversights in playtesting, making it a series first where the player can be attacked unannounced while conversing with an NPC because enemies a mile away patrol all the way up to the door she's at.
This is also the most linear in the series by a mile, making even Demon's Souls blush; once in a while the game tries to harken back to DS1 and DS2 by showing off the obligatory "contraption does not move" or iron door "that does not open from this side", but these feel weirdly shoehorned half of the time for the handful they are present. Despite this, NPC questlines are somehow at a series low in how obtuse and vague they are, with lots of backtracking down the gigantic hallway known as Dark Souls 3, while the NPCs themselves have I think the least dialogue in the Dark trilogy even still.
Despite being linear hell the game is a stuttery, frame dropping mess, and has been since launch. I've tried all of the suggested community fixes and eventually they undo themselves anyways, so whatever. It's mind boggling to me that DeS, DS1/DS1R, DS2/DS2:SOTFS don't have any of this even a tenth as bad, even Elden Ring nowadays runs MUCH better than this and that's a sprawling, constantly loading massive open world game dense with shit to do. What went wrong here? Not to mention the extremely aggressive LOD constantly making model pop-in painfully obvious. Watching my 3080 or 3700x actively choke because I ran around a ladder one time was mildly amusing, until I realized that's how the rest of the game was going to be. What even happened here?
Whatever. I might revisit it someday, I don't know. A lot of the bosses are cool on paper but were actively either boring or infuriating to fight with a payoff that only amounted to me saying "finally it's over" just like I think Miyazaki said when he put the final period in the fourth "Souls" game's 2nd DLC's script.
Oh also the game has like SIX swamps. WTF!!!
Spoilers below first paragraph.
"Jolly cooperation" for farmers I guess, I never felt like summoning was such a total win button in the other games (save for specific NPC summons in DS1 like the dude who can solo the iron golem), finding out it only increases boss health by 10-20% is such a letdown. Which is a shame, because a good number of the bosses here love cheap-shotting you and are absolutely relentless at least if you're a pure dex non-weeaboo like I was. The online came back mid-playthrough for me, which was nice, but again a letdown because it felt like I was just pressing the "win" button whenever I summoned for a boss. I only failed 2 or 3 summoning raids in total of the maybe 10-15 I used (all in the mid-late game)
=================
FromSoft is usually good about making their bosses at least feel a little organic, even in the rudimentary Demon's Souls; but they feel far from that here most of the time, feeling weirdly easy for the first third of the game, getting a difficulty spike, mostly normal for a bit forward and then taking a nosedive in how organic they feel starting immediately after Pontiff Sulyvahn. Bosses have always all had patterns and react to the player in different ways, and yes almost all of them even in DS1 "input read" to some degree but they're cleverly disguised around for the most part and dressed up to be interesting. Dark Souls 3 decides to just say screw it, frame one mid-combo interruptions and perfect punishes beyond reason,; the most egregious example of this in my mind is Champion Gundyr who will interrupt his otherwise repeating patterns mid-combo literally the first frame you register R1/R2 or Action, not to mention the dogshit design that is his shoulder bash which he can whip out seemingly randomly with 0 windup or tell that will decimate your stamina bar if you had the audacity to try and block it (unless you took the tank build approach with Greatshields, then you just win the game I guess! ridiculous how good they are)
Shoutouts to the DLC having one of the most blatant oversights in playtesting, making it a series first where the player can be attacked unannounced while conversing with an NPC because enemies a mile away patrol all the way up to the door she's at.
This is also the most linear in the series by a mile, making even Demon's Souls blush; once in a while the game tries to harken back to DS1 and DS2 by showing off the obligatory "contraption does not move" or iron door "that does not open from this side", but these feel weirdly shoehorned half of the time for the handful they are present. Despite this, NPC questlines are somehow at a series low in how obtuse and vague they are, with lots of backtracking down the gigantic hallway known as Dark Souls 3, while the NPCs themselves have I think the least dialogue in the Dark trilogy even still.
Despite being linear hell the game is a stuttery, frame dropping mess, and has been since launch. I've tried all of the suggested community fixes and eventually they undo themselves anyways, so whatever. It's mind boggling to me that DeS, DS1/DS1R, DS2/DS2:SOTFS don't have any of this even a tenth as bad, even Elden Ring nowadays runs MUCH better than this and that's a sprawling, constantly loading massive open world game dense with shit to do. What went wrong here? Not to mention the extremely aggressive LOD constantly making model pop-in painfully obvious. Watching my 3080 or 3700x actively choke because I ran around a ladder one time was mildly amusing, until I realized that's how the rest of the game was going to be. What even happened here?
Whatever. I might revisit it someday, I don't know. A lot of the bosses are cool on paper but were actively either boring or infuriating to fight with a payoff that only amounted to me saying "finally it's over" just like I think Miyazaki said when he put the final period in the fourth "Souls" game's 2nd DLC's script.
Oh also the game has like SIX swamps. WTF!!!