Ransei: SV doesn't really disporve this as they butchered just about all the signature move animations, and many other battle animations this generation harder than ever. There's even been recent posts about it here:
and here
, about people agreeing with this sentiment.
They are also a very far cry from how they were in Legends Arceus. The running and swimming animations are pretty basic and are part of something they implement every gen, including Gen 7 when they were unused. Animations in general were a significant downgrade from Gens 6, 7, 8. Even the basic eating animation is extremely messed up.
"Stupidest mechanical decisions in the history of the series" like what? The new gimmicks? That worked for their audience? Dmax did break up the pacing of VGC which is part of why so many new players got into it in that gen. Tera is popular even if divisive.
Ransei: Terastallization has been destroying OU and Anything Goes pretty hard, alongside many other formats. VGC is in one of its most broken states ever and a large portion of the community has been hating it this generation, especially for the Pokemon they decided to bring in like Urshifu and Flutter Mane. Moves that are extremely blatantly problematic like Last Respects, Rage Fist, Population Bomb, Revival Blessing now exist and are ruining a truckton of Smogon formats, for creating an awful environment for those formats. I've watched Pokemon tear itself to shreds throughout the past year because of how battle mechanics have altered the nature of many Gen 9 formats and it's never been anywhere like this before.
"The Switch games even have every single Pokemon in the series programmed in them, but with wiped stats in Gen 8, and completed stats in Gen 9." Okay, add the new texturing, new animations, make it look nice. Something people don't talk about is that for a while, SWSH despite what people said basically did not have Pokemon mods that worked well."
Ransei: Gamefreak are not very incentivized to try very hard to do this.
"BDSP works well because they did straight up rip the models with no new texturing. But even SWSH, if you just put in an old model at a higher resolution, it will look out of place because every Pokemon in SWSH has different texturing. This is also true of LGPE. Programming a Pokemon gameplay wise is fairly fucking simple, that's always been the case- it's literally a turn based RPG. You are basically putting in spread sheets. That doesn't mean it gets done in the pipeline and ships launched."
Ransei: The graphics are continuously complained about by the community for being awful for a Nintendo Switch console. Most people would say it did not work out for BDSP, and the graphics for every Switch game past LGPE are not good.
"animations are worse than any 3D Pokemon game prior to dexit," They literally are not, which is why there is currently a process of replacing the old animations for Pokemon with the SV ones on Showdown. Because they are pretty much just better, more expressive.
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Ransei: Some models are being replaced with fan models people come up with for projects but I'm gonna be honest some of them backfired. This Espeon for example, looks like it's trying to pounce, which is very unrealistic for an Espeon by nature. I'd also argue the same for Mega Absol and Mewtwo received a very massive downgrade off having its 3D model changed to resemble its SV model. Not to mention the animations
are absolutely worse here than in previous entries, as many of the move animations are now more devoid of soul than ever before, and the way characters move in cutscenes are very unsettling for a Nintendo Switch game.
"Game Freak fundamentally is a company full of developers who give a shit about the games, and is mostly made up of younger fans (frankly, because it's easier to underpay people if it's their dream job). The higher-ups are money hungry for sure, but so is fucking Nintendo.
Do you know how fucked Nintendo would be a lot of the time? I guarantee you Nintendo is a big part of why Pokemon releases so quickly, because Pokemon is a system seller that they can guarantee basically every year, every holiday. Ship their consoles, and oh yeah they make major profits off of it too. Literally the same amount as Game Freak."
Ransei: This is taking a
massive influence on how the games turn out, and through employee reviews, Gamefreak is being scored incredibly low because of it. One staff confirmed they know they're releasing low quality games, just because they still make profit anyway.
"Does this read to you as an entirely cynical attempt to just crash out games? Dexit is not entirely justified in every game, I agree. Particularly, BDSP did literally nothing to the models, and I'm pretty sure that was definitely just "We have to stay in line with the new Dexit norms". But even SWSH touched up the models, had to scale for Dynamax, and they've also become entirely ambitious."
Ransei: Dexit carried
no real positive aspect on the games or the Pokemon community throughout the entirety of its presence so far. SwSh didn't really touch up on models. They just copied off Gen 7, and made them high res, There was even code in the Gen 6 and 7 games to make the games high res but the 3DS could not handle them. Dynamax scaling was extremely lazy, and no Pokemon outside Dynamax were affected. Pokemon like Wailord and Groudon were still atrociously small for their real sizes in SwSh battles. For Gen 7 it was reasonable due to 3DS limitations, but in an ambitious game on a new console with the most controversial decision made at stake? It's just not acceptable.
"There is absolutely 1000% a profit element, and that is simply time. But also, Dexit has extremely reasonable points and frankly people underestimate the work into making a 1000 creatures compatible and looking good in a new game. The new Pokemon models and animations are the best looking part of SV, and frankly, I think SWSH battles looked pretty good. Not mindblowing because it's a turn based RPG, could have used better UI work like Legends, which takes notes from Persona 5. But the models, texturing, lighting gave a much better anime look to the battles in that game than Gen 6 or 7 IMO."
Ransei: I believe dexit would have to happen inevitably but right now the community has profited
0% from it, especially for the Nintendo Switch console. They could have had the National Dex in Gens 8 and 9, especially with how simplistic the effort they put into each game was in compared to games like Breath of the Wild / Tears of the Kingdom and Xenoblade Chronicles. The games don't even take up remotely as much space. They really just wanted to rush this out as fast as they could and tried to create nearly the minimal amount of what would make people think it could have been worth the money.
Legends Arceus was a step in the right direction but it was unfortunately one blown to the dust one month after release, for the next major game, and yet the major games of the Switch were all less developed in their animations, worldbuilding, and even overall concept than this game, which was designed as testing grounds for them.
