Words are cheap.
I’ll believe it when I see it. The last time I personally believe they last put any effort into their games was X/Y. And only because they went from pixel to polys.
The story has been crap for a while. Even gen 1 has a more compelling story. The bad guys have been laughably stupid, and your rival… Your rival is an overly clingy person who desperately wants to be your best friend. The mechanics haven’t budged in forever. So much so a goldfish can accidentally win. Every game is more about that games mechanic then building the franchise or gameplay. And a gimmicks are half baked, propped up just to sell but never follow through on. How many pokémon actually got mega evolutions? Or Z-moves, or Dynamaxing and Gigantamaxing. I mean, I quit shield like maybe a few weeks after it came out and I have most of them because… It was just a temporary gimmick to slap on the box to try to sell it.
But beyond just a bare bones mechanics that is the game…
Scarlett and violet run terribly. And I know a lot of people kept trying to blame the switch hardware because god forbid you blame pokémon. But it’s not like it was just Scarlet and violet, sword and shield also ran pretty terribly not as bad but still bad. And they look like upscaled PS1 games. Mainstream pokémon games are just an example of putting in minimum effort while riding nostalgia and cartoon tie-in.
I hope when the next game gets announced, no one pre-orders. I know that won’t happen because people are afraid that somehow they’re going to run out of digital copies… But I can dream. I hope everyone waits until reviews come out. Because I want to remind you Nintendo doesn’t do returns.