From the Fires: Hot Takes to Challenge Your Mind

Pokémon is DEAD

I don't like Pokémon.

I'm sorry. I just don't.

I tried with the series. I really did, but I can't like it. I don't know why, but I just can't.

Let me explain my background for context...

I tried to play it.

I've played Pokémon Red and Yellow. I have Emerald on the GBA. I just can't get into it.

While the creature-collecting JRPG is meant to be accessible, the games just don't gel with me.

Once I gave the games an honest shot, I quickly realized, it just wasn't for me. It just didn't even captivate me on base level either, and, for me, you have to do a lot to get me to invest time into your RPG.

And if you think about it, Pokémon, as a franchise, is just awful.

As a nonfan, I'll be blunt and say that the Pokémon Company is a truly terrible corporation who is so unbelievably lazy, it isn't even funny.

They push out a duology of Pokémon games each year or two, and it is literally the same exact game as the last, forcing out a gimmick in order to convince consumers to buy these games for these worthless mechanics that are never coming back and are the only things that makes a double release different from those before and after it.

And so, new fans who already can't get into the games are not helped in the slightest.

And don't even get me started on the disastrous and ruinous launch of Scarlet and Violet.

What an embarrassment.

The game was clearly rushed out the door and was so unplayable and so glitchy and buggy, that even the most hardcore Pokémon fans couldn't defend it. The games graphics are so poor, that they look like they came from the Nintendo 64, a console generations ago, and make Nintendo look like dinosaurs to put this on their most powerful, yet pathetic hardware compared to the competition.

And this crystal mechanic?

Meaningless.

They just put it in the game in order to give a reason for the game to exist and to give the illusion that they are changing the formula, which they don't in order to satisfy their existing consumers.

Why do you think they put minimal effort into each of their games? Because they know that people are going to buy it, because they know that they are going to make millions, if not billions in copies and merchandise.

Why try? Why put in the effort? People are going to buy their mediocre products anyways, so why bother?

I've heard that Legends: Arceus was a step in the right direction for expanding the stale and overplayed formula, but it just didn't catch my interest enough to warrant a purchase.

I even played some of their spinoffs!

Does anybody remember Pokémon Duel? The game was clearly meant to capitalize on the success of Clash Royale, another freemium game, but it was actually decent! You had these Pokémon figures that you would take to this board, with six per player in a battle. You simply had to put one figure on your opponent's base space in order to win, with battles between Pokémon once you encounter them on the board using spinners to fight in order to remove the figure to the "Pokémon". No typing advantages or weaknesses were involved, and it was a surprisingly good online game. To make the game sweeter, they showered you with in-game currency for unforeseen maintenance breaks and even gave you tickets to get any figure in the game close to the end of its online run, allowing everybody to get the most broken Pokémon imaginable.