Pokémon announces Switch remakes, open-world "pre-makes," all the e-makes you could want
Games Features Pokémon
Big news in the world of Pocket Monsters today, as The Pokémon Company announced ambitious new plans for its long-running pet-war franchise. As with, like, all video game news these days, the big announcements were largely backwards looking, albeit in an ambitious sort of way, as the partially-Nintendo-owned company announced that it’ll be releasing Switch remakes of 2006's Pokémon Diamond and Pearl later this year. That’s pretty standard practice—almost every generation of Pokémon games has gotten some kind of updated re-release at this point, so Diamond and Pearl were due—except for the other game TPC just announced: An open-world exploration game titled Pokémon Legends: Arceus, which looks far more ambitious than anything the series has tried before.
For a franchise that’s branched into almost every genre of gaming imaginable—rogue-like dungeon crawlers, pinball, picross, photography games, and more—there’s never been a Pokémon game that just let you run around the world in 3D action, chucking Pokéballs at your soon-to-be Bidoof. (Although it does look like, if your monsters get near some other monsters in Legends, some more traditional Pokémon battling is likely to break out.) And, again, if this “pre-make”—whatever the Koffing Snorlax that might be—is a little too new-fangled for you, you can always dip back to Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, and re-live your Sinnoh-region based childhoods all over again. Really, we can’t wait to hear what amazing musical odysseys these new games inspire Post Malone to lazily write parody songs about 25 years from now.
Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl are out later this year; Legends: Arceus will reportedly arrive in early 2022.
16 Comments
There was an opportunity here, and they just let it slip through their fingers.
Part of me is hoping that there’s a framing device of Cynthia or Looker telling this story to Dawn and Lucas, or that it’s part of their research. Just because they’re two of my favorite human characters in Pokémon, we haven’t seen them in a while, and because their history of sleuthing would make it make sense.
Maybe if it was Platinum. The distortion world might tempt me to actually get it, but otherwise Gen 4 was good, but not nostalgic enough for me to go through it all again, especially since I have all my Gen 4 Pokemon transferred to subsequent generations.
Honestly, I’d expect them to mix in some of Platinum for the endgames, just because the Distortion World was so impactful, and the legandary climaxes were a little anaemic in Diamond and Pearl. Given the generation 2 and 3 remakes folded in stuff from Crystal and Emerald respectively, it wouldn’t be too odd.
Yeah you’re probably right on that
It is expected to be Platinum, there are Platinum-only NPCs showing in the trailer
My main gripe with the past Pokemon games has been level of difficulty. I get that this is supposed to be a game that appeals to everyone, but I barely ever had a battle in the last one where my Pokemon needed more than one turn per opponent. Including against my rivals.I wish the game had a difficulty meter and a level that was truly challenging and required strategizing more. That being said, if they can build an immersive world with secrets and tons of detail like BotW had (I don’t expect it to be that good but anywhere close) – I’ll be excited for this.
They did that once, in the sequels to generation 5. And they did it super weirdly; one version had an easy mode that lowered the levels of everything, and the other had a hard mode that jacked up all the levels a little bit and gave major trainers new Pokemon that covered their usual weaknesses.You could unlock the other difficulty by linking to the other version, but it was still really weird. No sign of it since, which is a little disappointing, but given Pokemon is so modular in difficulty anyway (if regular Pokemon is too easy for you, just incorporate one of the tons of challenge runs people have made up) it’s not too bad.
Yea I know there are artificial ways to make the game more challenging but that is a bit disappointing. IMO it should just be baked into the game. I mentioned the rival before, that’s one of my biggest gripes. How can someone be my rival when I wipe the floor with them every single time we have a battle?IMO a true open-world Pokemon game would have a story mode where you lose battles (and plenty of them) and have to grow and get better as a trainer naturally before you can overcome those challenges. Like think of BotW if you explore the wrong area from the start. The gym leaders, your rival, and above should be difficult to get past and the badges should feel rewarding. It shouldn’t be clear what the right path is. And make an easy mode where you can turn all that off and make it simple again if you want. But IMO that’s what is needed to make a compelling open-world game. Unless they do something vastly different and make it puzzle-based like Snap where finding and catching the Pokemon is the main game (which I am fine with too).
A lot of that is sort of just a consequence of the medium; it’s an RPG, it’s all about winning fights. They have softened about rival fights in particular over time, which I think is a disappointment; I remember Yellow actually did let you lose the first two rival fights, and actually based his later teams on how you did; if you lose both he’d have a Vaporeon (since that’s weak to your starter), win them both and he’d have a Jolteon (since that’s resistant to your starter).Personally, I find Pokemon games exactly tough enough for me if I restrain myself just a little bit—not even in ‘artificial’ ways. I’ve started making it a tradition to play a new Pokemon generation completely blind, for instance, only using either new Pokemon or ones I’ve never seriously used before. Stopping myself from looking up evolutionary paths, enemy builds, where Pokemon are, or future movelists, and keeping away from Pokemon I already know are good, does a whole lot to bring the game’s challenge level up to at least ‘moderate’, with some genuinely difficult fights. Leon REALLY did a number on me in Shield, because I struggled to naturally find an answer for his Haxorus.
See I had the opposite experience with Sword. I crushed Leon at every single instance we had. I also very, very, very (cannot emphasize this enough) much hated Dynamaxing. It was the worst thing Pokemon has ever done. Every battle extended to watch the same tired animations of Pokemon growing bigger for no real strategic reason.Maybe my complaint was just with Sword & Shield, I found it to be fairly weak personally.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised that you might’ve done much better against Leon, because again, much of my difficulty came from the fact that my deliberately-blind run couldn’t sufficiently counter Dragons, of which he’s got some meaty ones. Even just blindly poking in a DIFFERENT direction and landing one of the Ice-type fossils, Galarian Mr. Mime, or Frosmoth would’ve helped me.
I mostly didn’t even have to use other Pokemon I caught, Scorbunny / Raboot / Cinderace alone pretty much carried me.Anyways I get your point overall. I get that there are ways to make the game more difficult as-is. Just wish they’d focus on building the game for those of us who grew up with the series and are looking for a greater challenge as much as they do for younger audiences looking for an easy entry.
I agree with you, but be honest – you wipe the floor with your rival because of how much time you spent leveling up in the tall grass.
I don’t actually. I do fight every single Pokemon trainer I encounter along the way but I’m not grinding for experience ever. The random encounters in tall grass was always my least favorite part of Pokemon so I avoid it now that you can see the Pokemon unless I want to catch one.
I never got to play Diamond or Pearl so I’m excited for them to be released. And the open world game looks like it could be interesting as long as the world is large enough to allow for some extended roaming.