LEAST Favorite Features - Main Games and Fan Games

[Domiok]

Since there's a lot of discussion in the other thread on the favorite features that you all enjoy throughout the generations, I was wondering about the type of features or gameplay trends that you really do not like in the main games and fan games that you play.

Spoiler: Pokémon Giveaways in Recent Games

One example for me is how the newer titles give the player powerful Pokémon for virtually no effort. X and Y award the player with a Mega Lucario as part of their explanation of Mega Evolutions after an early gym battle. Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire hand out Latios and Latias, notoriously evasive legendary Pokémon in the original titles, for defeating an enemy team admin in order to open up soaring to the player. While these giveaways present important features for their respective games, I really wish that the games made me go through more effort to justify the free, strong Pokémon.

How about for you all?

 

[Dragonite]

Oh cool, someone else said the easy-fication of video games before I did.

Also, I'm going to go with Rhyhorn/Mamoswine riding in X and Y. They were unnecessary, painfully slow, infuriating and the controls didn't even work the way one'd expect them to half the time. I'm kind of surprised that someone who tested the games didn't go like "hey, does this really make the game any better?"

Honorary mention to the dark cave with almost equally awful controls that, as it happens, immediately succeeded the Rhyhorn section in X and Y. How much did I not care for that part of the game? I can't even be bothered to look up its name.

 

[Jephed]

I think I have the unpopular opinion on this one, but I didn't like second gen's pokegear. The trainer calling you for a battle was a massive step back from the versus seeker in my opinion. I rarely used the radio feature and the town map in the pokegear instead of in your bag was a bit unnecessary imo.
It just felt very lacking to me.

 

[Aki]

I'm also bothered by the giveaways, but in a different way. I can deal with Lucario and Latias just being handed over because at least there were some story elements to them. (Although as a side note I wasn't thrilled by Lucario considering it was a gift pokemon already back in Sinnoh, like don't repeat that stuff)The giveaways that really bother me are the event pokemon. You know, the ones where you have to get them via mystery gift from a guy in a Pokemart. Those bother me very much because I'm just handed a special pokemon for no reason at all! It's even usually a legendary that has some cool lore that would've made for an awesome short challenge/story/adventure!

 

[doof]

I never really liked some of the new battle styles, like triple battles or more rather, rotation battles. They just always frustrated me, even when I always won.

 

[Fontbane]

I never really liked some of the new battle styles, like triple battles or more rather, rotation battles. They just always frustrated me, even when I always won.

Boy, do I have some good news to you!

While I usually didn't have a problem with HMs, sometimes they could really get annoying. Forcing you to have useless ones like Flash or Whirlpool (especially for just one use), HMs not being distributed widely enough (still haven't finished Gold because I don't want to change my team but Feraligatr can't learn Waterfall in Gen 2) , or having a bunch of type-specific HMs at once (Water HMs in Hoenn), forcing you to have one Pokémon with 3 moves of the same type, for example.

 

[Evan]

Oh cool, someone else said the easy-fication of video games before I did.

Also, I'm going to go with Rhyhorn/Mamoswine riding in X and Y. They were unnecessary, painfully slow, infuriating and the controls didn't even work the way one'd expect them to half the time. I'm kind of surprised that someone who tested the games didn't go like "hey, does this really make the game any better?"

Honorary mention to the dark cave with almost equally awful controls that, as it happens, immediately succeeded the Rhyhorn section in X and Y. How much did I not care for that part of the game? I can't even be bothered to look up its name.

Gonna add on to this and just say anything that slowed down the player was a bit of a boon to me playing Pokemon. Gen IV was the worst at this, with the mud and the snow features doing nothing but slowing down the player.

 

[Djaco75]

To be honest, there are heaps of least favourite features I could lecture about, but I'll just do the ones I hate the most.

• How your mum HG/SS uses your money to buy stupid things. (Eg. a potion when you are at the Pokemon League.)
• The Dragon's Den GSC. What was the point of that?
• Rock Tunnel in FRLG or more specifically, the really dark caves. I wasn't bothered to get flash.
• Title Defense Mechanisms. I really love this mechanism and found it really cool to play through. The only thing I would like to have seen was that, if you lose, the victor becomes Champion and you have to battle him/her for the title again.

 

[Radical Raptr]

I don't know if it counts, but a feature I didn't like was the non-inclusion of following pokemon - I really liked being able to travel with my little buddy!!

I also hated how in X/Y, you were forces to use the skates if you used the circle pad, that made movement a little more annoying only because your pokemon in pokemon amiie seemed to not enjoy it, but it was the most convenient way to move!!

 

[Majestic Senzu]

• The fact that challenge mode is locked on B2/W2 until you beat it. I can see why they did this (play it again for some REAL challenge!), but that doesn't change the fact that I think it's hella dumb. Can't I just start with the easy hard mode unlocked?
• Not really a feature, but giving me a choice that isn't a real choice. "Do you want to get a Pokédex and collect data for me, yes or no?" Don't lie to me game, I know you will keep asking if I say no.
• No more companion Pokémon in main series games :(
• Gyms that don't have puzzles

Also, what the thread author said.

 

[manta]

Personally, I dislike sections of the game which take me out of the action just for a minigame or unrelated cutscene. Examples of this are in BW2 and ORAS, where they force you to make a movie in Pokéstar Studios and check out Lisia's show respectively.

As for actual features... Riding Pokémon in XY was slow and boring, and Gen 4's just general... slowness really hurt its replay value in my opinion.

 

[Mozart]

SOS battles in SuMo was a neat concept!

...It being a free move in a turn based game so you're caught in a loop of a Pokemon calling for help and the battle never ending not so much.

The festival plaza in SuMo also felt like a LARGE step back from the great wifi connection stuff that XY did, it takes way too long to get going and the events that they mention are poorly advertised anyway so there's no real satisfaction from achieving in them if that makes sense. Also some of these aforementioned events are...clock in set number amount of TRADES? If it was wonder trading that would be simple enough but who in the world has the time, patience, or social circle to clock in a significant amount of trades to contribute to the overall goal?

Something kind of vague: plots and their pacing. I don't mind plots in Pokemon at all, actually, I'm apparently in the minority for this? (As long as it doesn't get too grimdark anyway). But B2W2 felt kinda like...it was going at a breakneck pace? I was just imagining Rosa standing there as all of this stuff is abruptly forced on her like "who are you? What is this? What's going on??? Leave me alone!"

Speaking of gen 5 ROTATION BATTLES. Just. Rotation battles.

I also disliked how in gen 6 the box legendary was kind of just...plopped in there with little to no build up, speaking of pacing. The pacing and development (you know who I'm talking about with lacking development in XY) felt weird in general, and yeah you can justify it with they were introducing a lot of new concepts already so plot probably became secondary, but still.

Also you never raced your mom in XY, what the heck! What was the point of mentioning she was a famous racer then! (Not that the riding Pokemon feature felt good at all in XY.)

 

[Riddle]

Main Series:

- HM's. Dear God, I despised HM's. Terrible HM's like Whirlpool and Rock Smash, and me having no idea how to get rid of them.
- The periods when you didn't have running shoes. Not really a feature, but it got me mad regardless.
- Dark Caves that needed Flash. Flash isn't an HM, but I hated the darkened places where you needed flash to get around. Flash has to be one of the most useless moves in existence, and being forced to put it on a Pokemon really annoyed younger me.
- Caves in general. I might be in the minority with this, but I kind of hate caves in the main series (And a ton of ROM hacks/fan games as well!). Not ones like the electricity cave in BW, but just the expressionless, boring caves that look the exact same. Don't even get me started on the constant wild encounters there.
- Pacing. It was mentioned earlier, but the incredibly slow and boring start to the 4th generation alongside the 3rd generation, with really slow and boring battles... It sucks.

Fan Games:

Most of the previous stuff carries down to here as well.

- Unneeded Edginess. Specifically, the post-Reborn fangame edginess. It's really fun when you first see it, but the constant blood and guts can get really annoying and deter to the actual shock value.
- Main Series Copies. Okay, this one ranges a bit. When there are fangames that have the purpose of being very similar to the main series, I'm perfectly fine with it. However, when there are games that claim to be different but are literally the exact same, it irritates me. A lot. I always wanted to see fangames break the formula to begin with.
And speaking of which...
- Gyms. Like the generic "cool-looking building" gyms. No relationship with the gym leader at all; you just walk in there, get a badge, then walk out and the leader is never mentioned again. I'm a huge sucker for interesting and cool characters, and I end up getting so put-off by this.
- Boring rivals. Rivals with no character, rivals with a bad team, rivals with generic designs/taken from main series... Bleh. The rival should be one of the most important characters, so if they're bad, what are the other characters going to look like? Not a good first impression.

And finally, my biggest pet-peeve that I whine about the most...!

Bad characters in general. Seriously. These guys hold up the game to begin with--they derive the story with their actions and hold the gameplay with their teams. When they're squandered, it just feels like a mark of a badly made game, and it's difficult to recover from that. It doesn't matter how many features your game has, or how pretty it looks. If the characters are unintentionally bad, I'm out.

 

[skurleton]

HMs, absolutely. The introduction of PokeRide is a godsend for the series and I hope they continue with them.

 

[Sableye]

I'm also bothered by the giveaways, but in a different way. I can deal with Lucario and Latias just being handed over because at least there were some story elements to them. (Although as a side note I wasn't thrilled by Lucario considering it was a gift pokemon already back in Sinnoh, like don't repeat that stuff)The giveaways that really bother me are the event pokemon. You know, the ones where you have to get them via mystery gift from a guy in a Pokemart. Those bother me very much because I'm just handed a special pokemon for no reason at all! It's even usually a legendary that has some cool lore that would've made for an awesome short challenge/story/adventure!

Maybe they should be limited until you've beaten the elite 4 or something otherwise I can imagine a scenario akin to the following happening:

>Newgame
>Boy/Girl: Boy
>Name: N00bTrainer991
>My names Oak...
>Pick starter
*kill weedles*
*catch caterpie*
Bulbasaur is level 7!
>Pokecentre
"Oh hello N00bTrainer991, I have a package here for you! Do you want it?"
>Yes
*Just got Arceus Lvl100*
#GameRuined

 

[TheGamingPaladin]

Main Series - hate Pokemon Giveaways, hate Easy-fication in Pokemon (series isnt close to challenging as is...) hate HMs.

Fan Games - Nuzlocke/Randomlocke in place of Difficulty, i wanna catch em all AND be challenged, not restricted because nobody wants to add in challenging battles...

and just overall... Hate Genwunners, game series are meant to evolve, not just be the exact thing as the first game because you are too pithy to accept change...

 

[Mozart]

So I don't remember if I ever mentioned this anywhere but can I just throw it out there that for fangames specifically: I am not a prude about swearing, I actually do a lot of it outside of here. But seeing a Pokemon character being like "[dropping a million F-bombs and you little bastards I'll murder and eat your entire team and family at the speed of sound]" just gets super awkward and kinda tryhard. An occasional "damn" or "hell" is fine imo.

 

[TheGamingPaladin]

So I don't remember if I ever mentioned this anywhere but can I just throw it out there that for fangames specifically: I am not a prude about swearing, I actually do a lot of it outside of here. But seeing a Pokemon character being like "[dropping a million F-bombs and you little bastards I'll murder and eat your entire team and family at the speed of sound]" just gets super awkward and kinda tryhard. An occasional "damn" or "hell" is fine imo.

lol agreed, adult language if it must be in a pokemon game, it must be tasteful, no Tourettes Syndrome style swear fests.

 

[SmokedPaprika]

Yeah, swearing usually doesn't work. More often than not it makes the world feel less involving and interesting. I did a lot of it in Edge Rising, but that was all in the name of parody - I would never write a serious project with swear words in mind. I find that telling a mature and engaging story is even easier when you avoid the cussing. Strangely enough, it helps your players get more invested in the world, because it feels more real - maybe not realistic, but real in terms of the story's world itself.

 

[Keileon]

Sardonyx does have swearing, but I make sure that it always feels natural in context. A character could say "damn" when surprised or angry, someone might call someone else a bastard in an outburst, that sort of thing.

But in terms of my least favorite parts of Pokemon games it has to be the difficulty usually being solely tied to the level curve. I know several fangames do well avoiding this, but when a game suddenly jumps five or ten levels between areas- or even between two battles- it starts looking like fake difficulty (Black and White is the best example in the official games, and as much as I like the game, unfortunately Uranium's another example). If you want a hard game, don't make it so the player's constantly underleveled, make it so that boss fights actually employ strategy.