Alright! Rant time!
I love Pokemon. It's something that I've long been a fan of and it'll always have a place near and dear to my heart. When I was a kid, I played the games, read the comics, and watched the anime as much as I could. But at this point, I think I'm done. I think I've hit a point in my life where I'm just done with Pokemon altogether. One might argue that I've simply outgrown Pokemon. I'm not going to bother ever playing a new generation of Pokemon again. Hell, I haven't even played the 6th generation, although from what I've seen, it looks pretty sweet. But after about 14 years of being an active fan of the series, on top of considerable gameplay makeovers that make you relearn the game every time a new generation is released, stack it on a college budget, and I'm just done playing Pokemon.
My roommate (who is my best friend from junior high and high school and who has also been as avid a fan as I) is also done with it. He's thrown in the towel as well. I'm not sure of his reasons, but I have a couple to list. Grab a cup of coffee because this might take a while!
First, for an old school gamer like me, the game just isn't what it used to be. When I was like 10, I played a lot of Pokemon Stadium 2. A LOT of it. It's a surprise to me that my Nintendo 64 didn't burst into flame from running so long with the passive cooling system it had in it. But I guess a 90 MHz processor doesn't produce all that much heat. I digress. I learned everything I knew about Pokemon from Earl's academy in that game. And up until the release of Gen 4, I was the go-to guy about anything to do with Pokemon with the exception of EVs and IVs, which I knew nothing about at the time. I could match any Pokemon, build most any team, work STABs and hold items, and so forth. I was pretty much an expert at it because that's pretty much all I did with my life. I maxed the clock on my Pokemon Blue, and I had well over 250 hours of play time on my Pokemon Crystal version. Gen 3 didn't add all that much except things like abilities and natures, which I didn't know too much about, but it didn't mess with the way I played the game. But when Gen 4 was released and most everything I knew about the game was thrown askew, I instantly sucked at it. And Gen 5 didn't help my case any more than the last one.
Secondly, the point of the older games was to catch all of them. You didn't get the data in your Pokedex until you actually caught what you saw. The idea was to see, to catch, and to conquer. In the first generation, 151 was a challenge since you had to have a link cable and a friend with the corresponding version. The same went for the second, but you just had 100 more to collect. Gen 3 was just the same, but now with 135 more Pokemon. 151 wasn't bad. 251 was a challenge. 386 was hard. When we got to Gen 4, 493 was downright difficult and 649 was next to impossible. Now with 700+, this idea of the game is essentially lost. Completing your Pokedex isn't fun anymore. It just feels like a chore now. Sure, the thing you get was crappy. But it was still cool being able to say you finished it. I've never done it myself, but I did end up at 148 in my Blue version (until I made the stupid mistake of catching Missingno...)
Thirdly, versus battles just aren't the same anymore. Not for me. It's too complicated. And don't get me wrong. I'm a pretty bright person (or so I tend to think). I've tested with an IQ at 127. I tend to pick up on things, and the things I'm good at...well I'm damn good at them. But there's genius in simplicity, if you ask me. Sure, I understand that they had to shake things up a bit in order to keep players interested because if the battle system had stayed the same over nearly 20 years, then people would have been bored with it long ago. Because let's face it, the story has remained relatively unchanged over the years. But I'll put it in the spoiler in case you've never played the game and I'm ruining the story for you.
A kid gets his or her first Pokemon from a professor named after a tree in a backwoods town that nobody has heard of. He or she goes on to college 8 gym badges, but not before uprooting a crime syndicate and pretty much saving the world. After doing all this, the kid goes on to challenge the Elite Four + the Pokemon Champion (fun fact: Johto is the only region without its own Pokemon League), and they end up being registered in the Hall of Fame. Roll credits.
But back to the point I'm trying to make. These days, battling other players just downright sucks. Just like in my first point, the mechanics aren't what they used to be. And online battles just aren't fun anymore. It's so technical and there's so much work to put into formulating the perfect team that the fun was lost at minute 2 of playing the game. I applaud them for making something so vastly varied that there are millions of possibilities, but at the same time, the game has lost the charm it once had. Well, for me, anyway. I remember having to link up two Game Boys and figuring out who was on the right end so Cable Club would work right. And once you were in the battle, it was a fun and engaging experience because the person you were playing against was right there. Online battles are just...not my thing. Sure, call me a nostalgiafag, but how do you heckle and mess around with someone over the internet without them getting all butthurt about it? That's what my friends and I used to do all the time in our wired battles. If the other guy was losing or just had a Pokemon go down, we'd rip on that guy. And it was all in good fun. Sure we hated each other while we were playing, but at the end of the day, we were all still good friends. Like, where did that go?
Let me add a note that I am not, nor have I ever been, a genwunner. To say that Gen 1 was the best is just not right in my opinion. Gen 2 was perfect in every way for me. No overabundance of legendaries. Night/Day cycle. Mom saves your money. You get to explore more than one region and collect the badges from there. And Umbreon. Freaking Umbreon. Gen 2 was perfect despite that one glitch where you can clone your Pokemon and make the game tons easier
Finally, let me add one more thing that I'm not throwing this out there as fact. I'm not saying that the game you prefer is garbage. The way the game changed has just left a sour taste for me, and I'm not a fan of it. I liked it when it was a lot simpler and the learning curve wasn't quite so steep. If you like Gen 4-6, then power to you. I just lack the same appreciation for them. Anyway, this is all just my opinion and reasons why I don't play the game anymore. As a whole, the game just isn't as enjoyable as it once was for me, and thus, I'm throwing in the towel
The game has had a good run for me, but it's time for me to move on.
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