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It's been almost two years. How do you feel about the 69 (+3) Generation VI Pokemon?

Busaiku

Member
Honestly, what I feel should've happened is that Unova and Kalos should've switched gens.
5th at the end of DS's life introducing 69 Pokemon and Megas and 6th gen, with the new 3D modeled world, being composed entirely of new Pokemon till you beat the game.

Kalos just doesn't feel as big as Unova, because of the lack of focus on new Pokemon.
It probably is bigger though.

The fact that 5th gen is the shortest gen and 6th gen is the longest gen is a travesty.
 

Regulus Tera

Romanes Eunt Domus
There are a lot of solid additions (Greninja, Chesnaught, Hawlucha), but I preferred the mons Gen V added to the roster in general. I understand why they went with a lot less (ie the move to 3D), but it still felt very barren compared to what had come before.
 

Bulbasaur

Banned
Nice write up. I concur with most of it too. Particularly about how new designs are the most exciting thing about the series. I think this is why I didnt get OR/AS..

Here's a question - How do I get Hoopa / Hoopa unbound?
 
I liked the more limited roster gen 6 had, each Pokemon (for the most part) felt like they had a purpose or at the very least were very well thought out.

I personally really hated Gen 5 because I felt that it wasn't thought out as well and they wanted to have a large amount of new Pokemon in a sense to somewhat 'reboot' the series at that point which ended up causing several problems (I don't have a problem with some of the Gem 5 stupid designs though, you can hate on the trash pokemon or the ice cream pokemon but Gen 1 had freaking magnets, gen 6 has a pair of god damn keys XD) specifically the overuse of the Dragon type which I'd argue created the need for the fairy type in the first place (if we didn't have all those stupid ass OP Dragons in Gen 5 we wouldn't have needed a new type but Game Freak went completely overboard) and I really felt the starters were the worst (Pure Water, Pure Grass neither of which is very good and yet we still get a freaking Fire/Fighting? What were they thinking?) and I thought a lot of the early Pokemon just felt like rehashes from previous generations (Dog/Cat/Rat) none of which brought anything new to the table, this improved past the second gem and towards the end of the game you see some really interesting designs (I love Durant I just wish it had an evolution) but by that point the Dragon's are best around and only they can take each other down so the end game gets somewhat muddled for me.

At least for the Pokemon designs anyway, I do give Gen 5 credit for at least trying something different with the story.
 
Klefki- Don't get the hate. It's not my favorite or anything, but it's a really cute idea for a Fairy-type Pokemon....the hate for it is overblown like for Vanillite and Trubbish. I think part of the hate is because of Gen VI in general...during the leaks on /vp/, the first mention of it was with the first post that mentioned there were only 69 Pokemon, and they reused the Legendary Birds. Seeing the first picture of the Pokemon was forever linked in many minds with "only 69", and the hate continues...

I think people hate Klefki not for its design but because of its Prankster Swagger, along with other priority-boosted status moves.
 
Lukewarm about most of them but Greninja and Aegislash.

Greninja though has become my absolute favourite pokemon of all generations not just because of the look, protean is such a fun hidden ability. Heck I bought the amiibo despite never having been a big Smash Bros fan nor even planning to buy a Wii U.

I bred a shiny Froakie only for it to have awful IVs and torrent but thankfully I was around when the whole hidden value exploit was found and I do have a copy of a 5IV Shiny Greninja (with hexagon and all) stored on my copy of X.

Aegislash also has a great mechanic.

All in all Gen VI brought me back to pokemon after stopping with Gen 3.

I've played B/W and only really liked Excadrill of that generation, but I really love Excadrill.

Edit and of course Noivern(bat). I adore that pokemon wish I'd made a shiny one of those.
 
The pumpkin/tree ghosts were created because they were exclusive to each version. Not really surprised by that. It's like complaining why did they make two fire dogs in Red/Blue with Growlithe and Vulpix lines...
 

Infinite

Member
I love them. So many great designs and they actually tried some unique gameplay + visual themes with a lot of them. Liked especially after witnessing the disappointment that was gen 5 where most of the designs from then felt like retreads of past ones.
 

Andrefpvs

Member
The amount of regional pokemon was too bloated, yet the amount of new ones was too few. There didn't feel to be any identity to Kalos.
My view is similar to that one. Kalos' new designs were generally good, but they really didn't have enough presence in the game itself, due to the low number of new Pokemon and high number of regional Pokemon.

These feel like fair assertions. In fact, I feel Kalos got most of its identity almost exclusively from its lore, whereas Unova got its identity from the Pokémon (and the story).
 

ss-hikaru

Member
One thing I did notice (and this may be subjective), is that a significant number of Gen VI evolutionary families suffer from the "ugly last stage Pokémon" syndrome

Agreed. So many pokemon I thought were super KAWAWEE and they evolved and I immediately ditched them in the box. And I wish Carbink had an evolution.

Pretty disappointed with the fairy offerings. I don't like Klefki (I do like Aegislash though so it's not because it's based on a non-living thing) and I hate Flabebe, it's just downright ugly. Dedenne is boring and not that cute. Sylveon was ok. Spritzee and the fairyfloss pokemon were cute but then they evolved. Oh but Carbink was awesome. But didn't evolve :(
 

Regiruler

Member
Agreed. So many pokemon I thought were super KAWAWEE and they evolved and I immediately ditched them in the box. And I wish Carbink had an evolution.

Pretty disappointed with the fairy offerings. I don't like Klefki (I do like Aegislash though so it's not because it's based on a non-living thing) and I hate Flabebe, it's just downright ugly. Dedenne is boring and not that cute. Sylveon was ok. Spritzee and the fairyfloss pokemon were cute but then they evolved. Oh but Carbink was awesome. But didn't evolve :(

Diancie.
Kinda.
 

wmlk

Member
Honestly, what I feel should've happened is that Unova and Kalos should've switched gens.
5th at the end of DS's life introducing 69 Pokemon and Megas and 6th gen, with the new 3D modeled world, being composed entirely of new Pokemon till you beat the game.

Kalos just doesn't feel as big as Unova, because of the lack of focus on new Pokemon.
It probably is bigger though.

The fact that 5th gen is the shortest gen and 6th gen is the longest gen is a travesty.
How is 6th gen the longest gen?
 
Still sucks

Although I will say that because of that gen 6 has the highest well-designed to total pokemon ratio. So many awesome pokemon this gen
 

Busaiku

Member
How is 6th gen the longest gen?
Well, it's shaping up to be.
Unless they introduce next gen next year, without a 3rd Kalos game, it'll be 4+ years.
Agreed. So many pokemon I thought were super KAWAWEE and they evolved and I immediately ditched them in the box. And I wish Carbink had an evolution.

Pretty disappointed with the fairy offerings. I don't like Klefki (I do like Aegislash though so it's not because it's based on a non-living thing) and I hate Flabebe, it's just downright ugly. Dedenne is boring and not that cute. Sylveon was ok. Spritzee and the fairyfloss pokemon were cute but then they evolved. Oh but Carbink was awesome. But didn't evolve :(
All the best Fairy are retconned ones.
Whimsicott, Mega Mawile, Gardevoir, Mega Altaria, etc.
 
Loved a lot of the designs. Wish we got more new Pokemons and no megas. Megas were awesome sounding until it became apparent that popular Pokemon were getting them. Why make strong Pokemon so much stronger?
 

Watch Da Birdie

I buy cakes for myself on my birthday it's not weird lots of people do it I bet
My favorite Generation of Pokemon is still III. In my opinion, it had a decent amount of New Pokemon, and I liked them going back to basically all-new Pokemon, and most of them are a bit odder, a bit weirder than the older ones, but I found them all really neat like a month after Ruby and Sapphire came out. Many of them are my favorites.

I thought the idea to do a "soft reset" was a bad idea at the time with Pokemon locked out, but in retrospect I think that was the biggest risk Game Freak took, like, in the last decade. I still think they need to drop connectivity eventually for the series to really grow, seriously. I thought Hoenn though had a really solid Regional Dex, with enough old Pokemon to satisfy as well as giving the New Pokemon decent spotlight. Plus Hoenn's Regional Dex was like 200~, and was the best one for a long time since Sinnoh and Unova were small at 150. It had good variety too, especially at the beginning---like before the first Gym there's like I think about 16 lines almost you can get, including Fighting, Dark, and Psychic.

My least favorites tend to be the even Generations, though. I like seeing new evolutions (I actually enjoyed them taking more risks in Gen IV compared to the Gen II ones, which didn't seem as ambitious), but I wish it didn't come at the cost of a decent amount of New Pokemon. Gen IV had a really sparse amount too, but the New Evolutions I generally liked and were *actual* Pokemon with names, Dex numbers, etc.. Gen II and Gen VI really suffered from not giving the New Pokemon equal treatment too...in Gen II many of the new ones didn't evolve, were really rare through swarms and such, or locked till Kanto such as the Dark-types. Gen VI is a bit like that, except they load the beginning of the game with most of the new Pokemon, and a few thrown in at the end, and much of the middle doesn't see you running into a lot of new faces. I mean, I like a decent sized Regional Dex, but honestly Kalos felt too big for its own good.

I'd love if the speculation of a "half-Gen" came true and Game Freak throws in legit new Pokemon in "Z" or whatever.

Hoopa, regular or Unbounded is fucking awesome, and the movie adds to that. I've seen the movie twice already and may go again because it was legit. Think Pokemon Kaiju film.
.

Apparently it's doing bad at theaters though...like the worst performing Pokemon film, which means a lot of people (mainly on English sites) are really down on it. But I figure, you know, Pokemon just doesn't draw the same crowd anymore and it's not indicative of quality necessarily.

These feel like fair assertions. In fact, I feel Kalos got most of its identity almost exclusively from its lore, whereas Unova got its identity from the Pokémon (and the story).

I actually liked Kalos more than Unova as a Region. The earlier Japanese Regions I felt the love from Game Freak, that they based these Regions off their experiences with the Japanese analogue. Unova, on the other hand, felt really artificial and like a theme park, I live in America but it felt really foreign to me, more so than the Japanese-based regions. The areas felt disjointed, and almost like totally different areas like when you leave a huge metropolis and go right into the desert---it bugged me. Kalos, on the other hand, again I feel like Game Freak put more heart into it and having it represent France. It also doesn't feel as claustrophobic as Black and White did, which suffered from tons of segments where it seems you were bombarded by trainers every second.

But Black and White's plot was a highlight for me, and something I've grown to miss recently as it felt Game Freak was ambitious even if they faltered a bit. Black and White 2 really dropped the ball in giving us a good sequel to it, plot-wise, and then with XY, it literally feels like they were planning to write a good story, but just gave up...the AZ plot is kind of neat, but everything around Team Flare feels pointless and nonsensical, and I don't quite get how it all fits together. And then you skimp out on lore, giving us the Legendary Birds and Mewtwo pretty much thrown in there with barely and explanation, and it felt like senseless pandering and I didn't like it one bit. If we had more new Legendaries in addition to those, I wouldn't mind, but they feel like Game Freak got lazy and just said "hey, let's stick in the classic Legendaries!"

The Kanto Starters are a neat idea, but it sort of sucks that the Kalos Starters had to share the spotlight when that didn't happen to any of the other Starters.
 
I've been playing the series since I was a child and to me, Gen VI is the best new round of Pokemon the series has ever seen. The designs are PERFECT for the most part. Very few monsters are overdesigned, they SCREAM personality, and the slight bit of lore behind several of 'em are pretty good.

And they got real creative and hilarious with some mons. Take Barbaracle, for instance. Look at this motherfucker.

250px-689Barbaracle.png


He's a hivemind of goddamn goose barnacles.

fe20080423ata.jpg


Except, he's not a hivemind. All of his limbs, and his head, are separate beings with their own fucking free will. The head intimidates the rest of his body into moving in accordance with its wishes, and he moves like a drunk Gumby as a result. That's goddamn awesome and probably the single funniest idea for a Pokemon that there will ever be.

By gawd, just check some of these designs yo.


and two of my personal favorites... a regular ass squid Pokemon...

600px-686Inkay.png


that evolves after you flip your goddamn system, because the damn thing realizes it can use its own head as a set of hands and feet

600px-687Malamar.png


that's just plain cool



oh, and hey, you know the coolest part about X/Y? This dichotomy didn't exist -

1. pick six Pokemon you like and stick with them throughout the entire game
OR
2. train all the Pokemon you like in a hopeless grind that sucks your life away

because I was able to train over 40 Pokemon I liked and had 'em at parity with the Elite 4 by the time I was there. Love EXP Share for how it let me mix and match my team at my leisure.

One thing I did notice (and this may be subjective), is that a significant number of Gen VI evolutionary families suffer from the "ugly last stage Pokémon" syndrome (maybe this is accentuated by the lower number of families in this gen). Diggersby, Talonflame, Aromatisse, Gourgeist, Avalugg, to name a few. I feel these look worse than at least one of their pre-evolutions. Diggersby and Aromatisse in particular kind of leave my scratching my head.

All of those Pokemon are awesome. Talonflame is a bit generic, sure, but Gourgeist is still cute as hell, Avalugg has a really visually interesting and subversive design that screams defensive tank, Aromatisse is a goddamn plague doctor, and Diggersby is the chillest looking foreman that a construction crew of hard working Bunnelby could ever hope to have.

250px-660Diggersby.png


He might be ugly, but he's the boss, and you can tell just by looking at him
 

Watch Da Birdie

I buy cakes for myself on my birthday it's not weird lots of people do it I bet
Issue I have with Talonflame is it looks like he's wearing like leopard leggings.
 

Neiteio

Member
Everyone step the fuck back.

I got a mean motherfucker who will halve your damage with Light Clay-enhanced dual screens and absorb your Talonflame's priority Gale Wing Brave Bird, lay down Stealth Rock as you retreat, and then finish off your Talonflame with Power Gem when it comes back.

20109_703-0.png


I still have PTSD from breeding Sturdy Carbink for half of Poke-GAF.
 

Bladenic

Member
I liked a ton of the Pokemon in Gen 6, including all 3 final form starters. I do think that Fairy was way too much pink and female looking mons. Hopefully they introduce more badass looking fairies in Gen 7, the only semi intimidating fairy type is Granbull and he was an old design.
 
I exist!

I think that's all to it, but I also love myself some Chespin and Fennekin.

But, still... Noibat and Noivern are cute and cool. No contest.

It's a shame there's a shortage of Pokémon, though.
 

openrob

Member
For myself, I tried to keep excited about Pokémon, but there are just so many damn mon now that they have all been forgettable for va long time.
Gen 2 was when I was generally excited for the introduction of new Pokémon. (Although gen 3 is around when I stopped watching the show... Might have something to do with that!)
But after playing through Y, I can only recall the looks of 12 of those new Pokemon in the OP.

Chespin was cool though. Loved him as a starter!
 

Zalman

Member
I've been a Pokémon fan since Generation 1 so this is an interesting topic to me.

I think X/Y are some of the best games in the series as they fixed a lot of things I thought needed fixing. For instance giving you a wide variety of Pokémon to choose from early on so you're not just stuck with a bird and a rat. However, in this case we're just talking about the Pokémon designs, and in that respect I think X/Y is the worst generation.

Now, I think it's unfair to leave the Mega Evolutions out of this. Every other generation tends to focus a lot on evolutions rather than new Pokémon. To me, this is like Gen 4 all over again. Gen 5 was all brand new Pokémon, and if the pattern continues, Gen 7 will be too. But okay, for the sake of the OP's argument, let's ignore them for now.

I thought Gen 5 was really amazing. Not just the games themselves, but also the Pokémon designs. I thought there were a lot of great designs there, my favorites being Excadrill, Zoroark and Galvantula. As far as Gen 6 goes, there aren't really that many standouts to me. Like, I can name a couple of designs that are not bad, like Pangoro and Noivern, but neither of them do much for me, sadly. I do think Gen 6 has some of the best cover legendaries in the series though. Xerneas and Yveltal are great. The starters are alright too - better than the B/W ones if you as me. But yeah, I hope they step up their designs next generation, because I definitely think this was the weakest.
 
Much better than gen 4 and 5, but there simply wasn't enough of them.

Phantump, Pyroar, Tyrantrum, Greninja and others I'm forgetting are up there with the GOATs.
 

Soodanim

Member
OP you've said a lot, so I don't need to say much except there are a decent enough number that can make it into final teams, and that's nice.

But I'm still confused by Hawlucha and his dual type move.
 

EMT0

Banned
Everyone step the fuck back.

I got a mean motherfucker who will halve your damage with Light Clay-enhanced dual screens and absorb your Talonflame's priority Gale Wing Brave Bird, lay down Stealth Rock as you retreat, and then finish off your Talonflame with Power Gem when it comes back.

20109_703-0.png


I still have PTSD from breeding Sturdy Carbink for half of Poke-GAF.

You're still the Real MVP
 
J

Jotamide

Unconfirmed Member
I like most of gen VI, Xerneas design is god-tier. Since gen III that we haven't had such a nice, non-overdesigned legendary.


What a majestic mofo. Yveltal, Zygarde and Diancie are cool too. My only criticism is that outside of Froakie, the starter Pokemon are not very remarkable.
 

jholmes

Member
I think as a whole it's a forgettable group. Greninja and Tyrantrum are really solid additions, and other than the keys there's not much that pisses me off. It doesn't have the pile of garbage Black/White did, but neither does it have a slam dunk like Litwick/Lampent/Chandelure, although I think Aegislash is the closest in this batch.

All in all I think X/Y are pretty crummy games but they largely did well with the new Pokemon and didn't make more than needed. They did screw up on other stuff, especially the hackneyed gimmick they thrust on the series with...

Let's leave Mega Pokemon out of this!

...bah, never mind.
 

ChrisD

Member
It's a shame that Megas took so much away from the new count for anyone that didnt play online much. Seeing that (comparatively) low number in the OP still makes me sad.

At least we got Meowstic, Carbink, and Xerneas!
 
I was going to say the new Gen VI Pokemon were OK but after trying to remember my favorites I realized that other than Clawitzer and Tyrantrum I couldn't even recall any of them either by name or appearance. Which is really disappointing considering how great Gen V was for new Pokemon. I know a lot of people didn't like the fact that in B&W you couldn't use Pokemon from prior games but at least it meant we got a ton of new Pokemon with a lot of variety.

Here's hoping Gen VII is much better in terms of new Pokemon
and post game content
.
 

NEO0MJ

Member
I felt a lot of them were pretty solid. Not sure how memorable they'll be after next gen. Only thing I know for sure is that Skrelp and Dragalgea re my favorite pokemon to come out of it. Just so awesomely designed, and being the anti-fairy dragon is really cool. Creepy lore is a nice bonus.

10995683145_81a281fd84_o.png


I like most of gen VI, Xerneas design is god-tier. Since gen III that we haven't had such a nice, non-overdesigned legendary.

Yeah, Xerneas is one of my favorite legendary Pokemon right now, up there with Lugia.
 
I'll never understand the hatred for the newer generation of pokemon.

The newest generation gave us Hawlucha.

tumblr_nc4jowsvIc1s5h198o1_500.gif

Hawlucha is fucking awesome.
 

Bulbasaur

Banned
Talonflame...

I've said it before and I'll say it again - Everytime someone uses Brave Bird against me I want to smash my 3DS.

I strongly dislike that move and I strongly dislike Gamefreak for introducing it.
 

ChrisD

Member
One other Pokemon that I always remember for some reason is that flat ice Pokemon. The reason I left it out of my other post is the same as why I remember it -- I can NOT remember it's name. I just call it flat ice. It's my head's official name for it.
 
Yes, I am still a bit disappointed with it,because there really are only a handful of gen VI pokemon that I like, but it's the least of gen VI's problems.
 

Breads

Banned
Still bitter over the amount.

That was my takeaway. I appreciate the new visuals and megas were a neat touch but the fact remains that to me Gen VI has been the least replayable one due to the lack of new goodies to play around with. I bought a 3ds xl for this alone (got the red yveltel version) and beyond the initial month I haven't touched XY since. I can see what they were going for. It was like a best-of/ nostolgia bait and in that it succeeded but as a person who's never stopped playing pokemon it just didn't do enough for me.
 

NEO0MJ

Member
One other Pokemon that I always remember for some reason is that flat ice Pokemon. The reason I left it out of my other post is the same as why I remember it -- I can NOT remember it's name. I just call it flat ice. It's my head's official name for it.

That's a pokemon I really wanted to be good, but its type will always condemn it to failure. Still, it's a part of my team.
 
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