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LTTP: Pokemon X & WHHHHHYYY

mishakoz

Member
After a long hiatus Im back in the Pokemon series. I picked up Pokemon Y when it launched but wasnt feeling it at all, but in prep for Sun and Moon I decided to come back to it as well as ORAS eventually. Lets Begin:

Story

Me: So the story...

Fan: Wait mishakoz, you can't judge a pokemon game on its story!

Me: Yes i can, it clearly tried to have a story, moreso than most of the other games, so Im going to evaluate it.

This is the first game that really annoyed me with its story and characters. You essentially team up with 4 friends from the very beginning that have little to no character, each defined by a single attribute. Unfortunately, with four friends comes four times the interruptions. You will be stopped and holocasted constantly, I remember i was stopped 3 times on a single route for a cutscene (the Battle Mansion route). It breaks up the gameplay and its why I stopped playing the game when it first came out. Not to mention i felt more led by the nose than ever. It does lead to a nice moment where you battle them one after another at the tail end of the journey, but they were never a necessary part of the game to me.

So the plot of Pokemon games has always been over the top. Team Whatever wants to control time and space and yadda yadda. But for me it was always kept abstract. In Pokemon Y, Team Flare literally broadcasts to the entire region that they are going to straight-up genocide everyone, and its up to some 12 year old boy to stop them. No gym leaders, no elite four attempting to help (Like Lance in Gold and Silver). Its just you. Its fricking stupid, and no one in the world reacts to the news. Its a pokemon story, whatever, but its almost self-parody when your opponent is Hitler levels of evil.

Gameplay
When thinking about writing this, I was initially going to say that the difficulty scaling in this game was some of the best. That was, until, I discovered that I unintentionally neutered myself by turning off the XP share. Unbeknownst to me, its actually free additional XP, not "shared" like the name implies. Well, at least I enjoyed the difficulty.

This game is really strangely laid out and paced. Gym 2 is a long time from gym 1 and you go thru several gymless cities before finally finding number 2. Nothing wrong with that in particular but it was a bit strange.

One thing I hate was the constant barriers. Blackouts, construction, people talking, all preventing you from progressing forward. (the Blackout in Luminose is particularly hilarious because you can see NPCs in the background walking freely into the blackout area.) I know pokemon games never let you progress to far, but at least you could get the Fuschia badge before the Saffron, or go down the eastern route instead of the bike trail. This one is super linear.

Battles
Battles feel good but the types are getting harder to keep track of. Minor annoyance but I have to constantly look up some of the weirder relationships, like Bug being super-effective against Dark, or Steel against Fairy. Likewise, pokemon are getting harder to decipher which type they are based on looks, so looking them up is almost necessary (the ingame pokedex doesnt say unless you capture them)

Loved double battles, rotation battles, triple battles, but trainers themselves have been completely neutered. I think in the entire main game the only trainers with 6 pokemon are the Champion and that one guy with 6 magikarp. Its ridiculous, especially insulting when the Elite 4 only have four pokemon, gym leaders only have 3.

Pokemon
This Gen's additions were the most disappointing yet. There aren't that many additions, and not a lot of interesting type combinations that could have been added. Another straight dragon type, great. Nevermind all the dragon-combinations that havent been done yet. I tried getting some of the more interesting ones, the Ghost-Grass (should have gone with the steel ghost but nevermind) but I wasn't feeling much else. Eventually my lineup became all dragons: Druggidon, Dragonite, Hydreigon, Salamence, Tyrantrum, and Garchomp. Which is fun, I like my dragons, but I would have liked to try some new, more interesting types

One thing I hated about this game is how it gives you pokemon. You have your starter, the Gen 1 starter, the early snorlax, and Lucario. All powerful pokemon that you can happen upon, and likely you are going to use 2 of those for the mega evolution.

Conclusion
This is my least favorite Pokemon in years, possibly ever. I look forward to ORAS but this one was a grind to get through. I feel bad because maybe im outgrowing Pokemon, but at the same time I enjoyed the hell out of the game taking on the champion. I just want some things to be there, I want more trainers with 6 pokemon (or at least close to that).

So, eh? Onto ORAS!
 

JoeM86

Member
Skip ORAS and hold on two months until Sun & Moon. ORAS won't change your mind about Gen 6, but Gen 7 looks amazing and look like it'll deal with some of your dislikes, such as the type effectiveness.
 
Skip ORAS and hold on two months until Sun & Moon. ORAS won't change your mind about Gen 6, but Gen 7 looks amazing and look like it'll deal with some of your dislikes, such as the type effectiveness.
This.

Gen VI is OKAY but after the gazillion Gen VI playthroughs I've done between XY and ORAS I want to just wrap up my X playthrough later today and then never touch this gen ever again.
 

AzureFlame

Member
A rushed and soulless gen, wait for Sun and Moon, they look absolutely amazing, also if you really wanna play ORAS, go for it, you'll get some cool pokemons there that you'll be able to transfer to gen VII.
 
I seem to be the only person that actually enjoyed X and Y... More so than any gen in a long time... If anything, ORAS just reminded me of how much I hated Gen 3 in comparison...


Then again, I didn't stick around much for the non-existent post-game content... I'd rather replay a game nuzlocke style than do a bunch of grind quests.
 

mishakoz

Member
Skip ORAS and hold on two months until Sun & Moon. ORAS won't change your mind about Gen 6, but Gen 7 looks amazing and look like it'll deal with some of your dislikes, such as the type effectiveness.

I dont skip Pokemon games.

Also, isnt ORAS Gen 3 pokemon and Gen 6 mechanics? I think thats pretty okay, Gen 3 was a good set.
 
X was my first pokemon game since Crystal. I had a fair amount of fun, but then I got Alpha Sapphire and absolutely loved it. The game itself was a ton of fun, but the Delta Episode and chasing down legendaries after was by far my favorite part. Delta Episode was so good and I hope there's something like it in Sun/Moon.
 
I dont skip Pokemon games.

Also, isnt ORAS Gen 3 pokemon and Gen 6 mechanics? I think thats pretty okay, Gen 3 was a good set.
They use RS rosters for the Gym Leaders instead of the Emerald ones so there are only two with more than 3 Pokémon and both of them are cakewalks.

At least they updated the Pokémon rosters of the random route trainers so they're no longer both severely underevolved and underleveled. The E4 got some much-needed roster updates too but they're still relatively easy. At least your stats aren't boosted from badges anymore like they were in the first three gens.
 

Zalman

Member
I seem to be the only person that actually enjoyed X and Y... More so than any gen in a long time... If anything, ORAS just reminded me of how much I hated Gen 3 in comparison...
I agree with this. I love XY, and while ORAS was an improvement over the originals, it did nothing to change the fact that it's my least favorite region.
 

Mael

Member
I'm finishing a sorta-nuzlock run through Y (I'm at the last gym).
So basically only first pokemon per place to get, if faint then pokemon is dead and boxed, resets allowed.
The game is much harder than I thought, I tried to keep all my mons at the same level but without grinding you never have enough xp for even the limited number of mon I have.
The battle is really fun, Pikachu is finally useful!
Raichu with nuzzle+elekball is fantastic right now.
My team is something like raichu/snorlax/blastoise(mega)/nymphia/lapras(surf)/delphox
You only really need surf in that game as far as HM goes.
I didn't think I would actually have that much fun with a very limited set of pokemons because I like juggling with teams and sets usually but this is really awesome.

Now to finish OR...Hoenn is a step down after Kalos I think.
Much less linear but way too basic region so far (Badge 6 and going on to 7 atm)
 

trixx

Member
Should of bought Black or Black 2. X and Y is garbo, save for the online. Not only are is the story in those games pretty good, but there also challenging and feel like a real adventure. Everything just feels new and yet familiar at the same time. Black felt like my first time playing Blue version

The changes to meta game are arguable as well
 

P44

Member
Skip ORAS and hold on two months until Sun & Moon. ORAS won't change your mind about Gen 6, but Gen 7 looks amazing and look like it'll deal with some of your dislikes, such as the type effectiveness.

Wait, how?
 

mishakoz

Member
Should of bought Black or Black 2. X and Y is garbo, save for the online. Not only are is the story in those games pretty good, but there also challenging and feel like a real adventure. Everything just feels new and yet familiar at the same time. Black felt like my first time playing Blue version

The changes to meta game are arguable as well

I played them all. I especially enjoyed Black 2.
 

Link_enfant

Member
Gen VI was even more disappointing when you come from Gen V, which was really amazing.
Gen VII kinda feels like the "new Gen V" we wanted and deserve on the 3DS. The typo on Sun/Moon logos even looks like the one on Black/White logos.
 
Braindead story, even more braindead difficultly, and so much side content that this game felt more like a bloated Level-5 game than a Pokemon game. Put it down after 10 hours and never looked back.
 
Skip ORAS and hold on two months until Sun & Moon. ORAS won't change your mind about Gen 6, but Gen 7 looks amazing and look like it'll deal with some of your dislikes, such as the type effectiveness.

I really didn't like Pokemon y. I tried several times to finish it, but i just couldn't bring myself to do it.

I bought ORAS after and I love it. The game's easy but I have a lot of fun with it.
 

Mael

Member
X&Y are my favourite Pokemon games.

Only game I managed to get far in a replay and the I'm actually having fun with the postgame longterm.
Having touched the online till I'm satisfied with the team I'm building lol.
I'll play online on Sun/Moon looks like.

couldn't even bother finishing Diamond, if we're talking garbage tier pokemon that one certainly qualifies.
 

Kyzer

Banned
yeah XY was clearly placeholder material for a potential Z version or sequel to fill in the blanks later while they put in a MASSIVE amount of work into the engine and gameplay features

I have faith in Sun/Moon. They had an extra year of development and much less groundwork to cover
 
They were my least favorite Pokémon games by far, and actually bad games. Terrible pacing, boring combat encounters (really an issue in past games, but it boils over here), an awful story, and no post-game. Loved Gen 6 Pokémon themselves but the games can fuck themselves.
 

JoeM86

Member
Wait, how?

After you have defeated a Pokémon for the first time (either trainer battle or wild), then when you face another of that species & form, when you select your moves it'll tell you if each move is Super Effective (4*, 2*), Effective (1*) or Not Very Effective (0.5*, 0.25*, 0*)
 

Kyzer

Banned
gen 6 is all about the gameplay improvements and features. sun/moon will hopefully bring it all full circle

better than gen 4 when it started. DP had a decent story but was damn near unplayable from the battle speed
 
couldn't even bother finishing Diamond, if we're talking garbage tier pokemon that one certainly qualifies.
In Pearl I was so underleveled at one point that I spent two whole days of my summer vacation just grinding in Iron Island.

Never again. Especially with how damn slow everything is.
 

Linkark07

Banned
Personally, you should have played ORAS only. While it is better than XY, it is still inferior... heck, I may even say Gen 6 is one of the worst Pokemon generations out there. It still makes me wonder why Gamefreak decided to omit many of the features of Pokemon Emerald in ORAS like Battle Frontier or battle again Gym Leaders. But, between XY and ORAS, I will always say ORAS.

My biggest grip of XY is, if you don't like Online play, then post game content is almost nonexistent. At least ORAS tried to remedy that with Delta Chapter and all the legendaries but still, compared to other gens, it is still barebone.
 

Carl7

Member
I loved gen 6 for its competitive gameplay, but the single player is as bad as ever. ORAS without the battle frontier was a slap in the face.
 

Mael

Member
In Pearl I was so underleveled at one point that I spent two whole days of my summer vacation just grinding in Iron Island.

Never again. Especially with how damn slow everything is.

I think I called it quits when I got the legendary trio of feelings or whatever to catch.
I like superbosses in RPGs but catching these guys felt really unrewarding.
Just before the Victory road.
By god it was taking forrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeevvvvvvvvvvvveeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrr to do anything in that game!
Got Platinium recently I don't even think I want to actually play it.
On top of that the transfer method for gen IV to gen V is the worst thing ever, take the worst minigame ever and put goddamn awful restrictions for no reasons.
the great thing with gen vi is that you don't need to fucking bother with genI->V if you want to get the missing legendaries.

In Gen VI, you can have a huge team of mons to cycle through while playing the game.
In X I had 100 pokemons to use as primaries while playing the game.
I could try so many different strategies in the base game it's not even funny.
OR is worse in that regard, 6 badges in I'm not even filling 2 boxes of pokemons!
 

Fireblend

Banned
I loved gen 6. It brought my love for the Pokemon franchise back after mostly ignoring it after gen 3. Different strokes.
 

Gartooth

Member
Yeah I was hugely let down by Gen 6 too. I don't give a shit if Megas are gone from Gen 7 at this point. Can't decide if this or Gen 4 is the worst Pokemon generation, but I'm leaning Gen 6 since Gen 4 at least had HGSS.

Thank god for Gen 5 and B2W2.
 

mishakoz

Member
After you have defeated a Pokémon for the first time (either trainer battle or wild), then when you face another of that species & form, when you select your moves it'll tell you if each move is Super Effective (4*, 2*), Effective (1*) or Not Very Effective (0.5*, 0.25*, 0*)

Gah I wish you had spoiler-tagged this but I so excited ill forgive you.
 

entremet

Member
I preferred X/Y over ORAS.

ORAS has some great features, but the campaign was lackluster. The region was also a pure bore.
 
It was no Black and White/Black and White 2 which had in my opinion the best story out of the Pokemon Games so far, but X and Y brought a lot of newcomers and old fans back due to the implementation of Gen 1 Pokemon which was great.
 

PSqueak

Banned
You didn't neuter yourself by turning off the exp share, the game explicitly states its optional, basically you played the game as it was meant to and turned off the "easy mode".

I think what i loved the most about this gen was the battle chateau, it easily allows you to level up any pokemon you might want to use without having to grind dozens of wild pokemon for little experience.

When i faced the elite 4 i had ready a selection of over 12 pokemon at lv 60.
 

ZiZ

Member
I loved X&Y. The world was nice, the Pokémon were good. But I especially loved the character customization and online features.

Storywise, it was nice having friends. But I miss having a real rival like Gen 1 and Gen 2.

Team Flare were probably the worst evil team yet. I don't remember their motivation at all.

I'm really looking forward to Sun/Moon.
 

Drago

Member
Gen VI was even more disappointing when you come from Gen V, which was really amazing.
Gen VII kinda feels like the "new Gen V" we wanted and deserve on the 3DS. The typo on Sun/Moon logos even looks like the one on Black/White logos.
Pretty much exactly how I feel. I really loved X&Y at launch but the honeymoon period ended quick. It has probably my least favorite region (I barely remember any towns aside from a select few), the worst soundtrack (also unmemorable), the visuals were a weird half step into full 3D that doesn't look all that appealing in the overworld, it has the absolute worst set of rivals, the story is braindead (even more than usual, it felt like they didn't even try), there is basically no postgame whatsoever. Everything about the single player felt like a step back coming from BW. I played White 2 for the first time after playing both gen 6 games and it blew them out of the water, now that is a Pokemon game firing on all cylinders.

As for ORAS they are the worst remakes yet, at leasg relatively. FRLG and HGSS imo surpassed the original games and are the definitive ways to play those gens to me, but when it comes to gen 3 I still think Emerald is the way to go over ORAS besides all the battle system improvements that come with a newer game. That shouldn't have happened. It's baffling how ORAS basically ignored just about EVERY single improvement Emerald had over the original RS.

It wasn't all bad though. The new Pokemon were mostly great (even if there were less of them), I really liked the introduction of megas and most of the Mega Pokemon themselves, 3D Pokemon battles were superb if too taxing for the system, and the battle system and other little technical things were super nicely refined. Also the sheer amount of Pokemon variety in XY was appreciated. But man they really left a sour taste in my mouth by the end of it all.

Sun/Moon looks absolutely superb so far though, I have faith it's gonna be great and wash out the bad taste of gen 6. I agree that it's giving me Gen V vibes in terms of how crazy and experimental it seems to be and that is a great, great thing.
 

PSqueak

Banned
I loved X&Y. The world was nice, the Pokémon were good. But I especially loved the character customization and online features.

Storywise, it was nice having friends. But I miss having a real rival like Gen 1 and Gen 2.

Team Flare were probably the worst evil team yet. I don't remember their motivation at all.

I'm really looking forward to Sun/Moon.

This is the one thing i missed the most on X/Y.

Gary was this trainer that always was ahead of you and a challenge, he'd come to challenge you when you were the most vulnerable.

But in X/Y? Your rival is shit. You are the Gary to their story. They don't even have a full team until nearly the end of the game!!
 

Gin-Shiio

Member
From an effort standpoint ORAS strikes me as a very lazy entry in the series seeing all the missing features from both XY and Emerald. Seeing how this is a remake and you have pretty much played it already in form of the originals, I don't see the harm of you skipping out on this one. Jumping straight into gen 7 would bring in fresh designs that might be to your liking, like Alolan Exeggutor among others.
 

Griss

Member
I seem to be the only person that actually enjoyed X and Y... More so than any gen in a long time... If anything, ORAS just reminded me of how much I hated Gen 3 in comparison...


Then again, I didn't stick around much for the non-existent post-game content... I'd rather replay a game nuzlocke style than do a bunch of grind quests.

This was my exact experience to a tee.

Pokemon X was my favourite in a long while.
 
Have to disagree that Gen VI's Pokemon roster wasn't strong. It was full of awesome Pokemon that were great additions, but the bigger problem is just that there were only friccin fewer than 80 of them. But your point about crazier type combos is well taken and seems to be something Sun and Moon are going wild with.

Also what do you mean about types being hard to manage? The only type added since Gen II was Fairy, and the matchups have only had minor tweaks between generations occasionally. I will say sometimes I trip up with not knowing a particular type matchup, but I actually kind of like that because it usually makes me think. But also Sun and Moon include UI functionality that assists with type matchups so that's pretty cool.

Gonna have to agree with those saying Gen VII has strong Gen V vibes, and that can only be a good thing (lively, unique region with a big set of amazing Pokemon and a non-traditional approach to the story and narrative progression).
 
I still find it funny how people constantly complain about fairy being weak to steel as an illogical type match up, when it's honestly the only logical one you could apply to fairies, because Fae have traditionally been given a weakness to iron

Also, ending up with an all dragon team is completely on you and not the game. XY has the most diverse catchable lineup of any Pokemon game
 

rotpb517

Member
It's all about perspective and your history with the series I guess. My friends and I loved X&Y when it came out, but a big reason I think was because it pulled us in after years of not keeping up with Pokemon.

A lot of the more dedicated fanbase seem to think it was eh though. I agree about having to look up Pokemon though, the series has gotten too convoluted and I can't tell what types are what by just looking anymore.
 

OVDRobo

Member
As someone who came back to the franchise after a long break with Pokemon Y, I can see the differences.

There were plenty of stops along the way aside from the traditional town -> gym -> next town -> next gym format and not all of them felt worthwhile. The characters that you travelled with along the way added to the story in some ways, but also took away the solitary feeling of adventure I got from the older Pokemon entries where you were a kid leaving home and travelling the world with only your monster buddies to help you and your rival to check in on your progress every now and then.

Serena wasn't a particularly good rival character because she never felt like a threat. The Mega Stone event solidified this as a fact even more, whereshe was given a handicap against you that doesn't disappear until way later than it should have. This is par for the course with Pokemon games at this point, though. They all seem ridiculously easy. It'd be nice for Game Freak to throw in a key item for 'experienced trainers' that would make trainers a bit tougher, but I can understand why they wouldn't, too.

The Pokemon were interesting to me as someone who checked out with the series at Ruby and Sapphire, but that's more because of the sheer amount of Pokemon from all regions of the world that were in the Kalos region exposing me to lots of the Pokemon I'd missed out on over the years. I can't speak on the quality of the Pokemon specifically created for X/Y because of that fact.

I don't know what they were thinking with Lumiose City, but that place was a labyrinthine nightmare to me even with all of my years of video game map navigating. The rotating 3D effect on a circular city with no compass or minimap and loads of weaving side passages and a low frame rate made me detest needing to travel there.

Ultimately, I came out of the game feeling positive, though. I could see the years of supposedly bad Pokemon designs coming up every now and then with some uninspired or just plain bad designs, but there were enough cool new creatures that I could build several teams out of new Pokemon that I liked, and while the difficulty was certainly too low, it gave me a relaxing time of just improving the strength of my own personalised team made up of the Pokemon I liked.

I imagine there's a divide between classic fans that have stuck with the series and those that lapsed like me, where the people returning find it a great entry because of the variety of Pokemon available and the 3D graphics, whereas old players probably can't find enough compelling new content or Pokemon to justify playing through another game when they've done something similar many times before.

I've read Sun/Moon are shaping up to be pretty interesting so far, and despite not really being able to appreciate why that is, it's nice to see people being positive about a Pokemon game for once.
 

jnWake

Member
I really liked X and Y although I had two main complaints. First, the framerate isn't good. Several Pokemon would cause the framerate to drop and in 3D it's very very bad. Second was the pacing. The gap between gims 1 and 2 made me think the region was absurdly huge but then you have a streak of gyms which killed that hope. The Team Flare plot also had awful pacing.
 

DocSeuss

Member
I love ORAS. It has a bunch of nice QOL addons while removing the unnecessary bloat of X and Y. Definitely the best Pokemon.
 

mishakoz

Member
Have to disagree that Gen VI's Pokemon roster wasn't strong. It was full of awesome Pokemon that were great additions, but the bigger problem is just that there were only friccin fewer than 80 of them. But your point about crazier type combos is well taken and seems to be something Sun and Moon are going wild with.

Also what do you mean about types being hard to manage? The only type added since Gen II was Fairy, and the matchups have only had minor tweaks between generations occasionally. I will say sometimes I trip up with not knowing a particular type matchup, but I actually kind of like that because it usually makes me think. But also Sun and Moon include UI functionality that assists with type matchups so that's pretty cool.

Gonna have to agree with those saying Gen VII has strong Gen V vibes, and that can only be a good thing (lively, unique region with a big set of amazing Pokemon and a non-traditional approach to the story and narrative progression).

I know it's on me to have dragons, that's how I like to play. But I didn't start out that way, I just fell into it because I was bored by my current lineup.

And typing is just difficult to keep track of, especially when you aren't sure what type a Pokemon is. This is amplified by Pokemon that were normal or a different type in the past gens and are now fairy. Gardevior for example, now a fairy type but doesn't look like it.
 
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