Fans Are Starting to Lose Interest in the Pokemon Games

Pokemon has been a part of all our lives, small or large. It has always been there in one way or the other. It is with great regret to say that fans are starting to lose interest. Pokemon’s upcoming game Sword and Shield has left many fans bitter and questioning Game Freak‘s choices and mentality.

The biggest mistake of many that they did was removing the national dex which meant that not all Pokemon would be programmed into the game. This undermines Pokemon’s core motto of ‘Gotta Catch Them All!’. While you could not catch them all in previous games either, they were all programmed and you could obtain all the Pokemon by trading or transferring from older games. This time, lots of Pokemon will not even exist, meaning many fans will most likely not get to train their favorite Pokemon. While that is the biggest problem of the title, it is certainly not the only one.

Game Freak has also confirmed that they will get rid of Mega Evolutions first introduced in X and Y along with Z Moves from Sun and Moon. Although a lot of fans disliked Z Moves to begin with, Mega Evolutions were an incredible success and adored by all. It empowered and transformed the Pokemon, making them feel cooler than ever, both visually and combat wise. In exchange for the loss of those two mechanics, Game Freak brought up the idea of Dynamax. Dynamax causes a Pokemon to temporarily become giant sized and grants them new powers to use in combat. While cool, this wasn’t enough to cover the loss of Mega Evolutions or the National Dex for most fans and Game Freak was called lazy due to Dynamax simply being an enlarged model of an already existing Pokemon. That brings us to our final problem.

The visuals of the world, animations of characters and Pokemon feel extremely lackluster in Sword and Shield. The game is meant to be the first mothership title on the Switch and fans were expecting it to look amazing, rightfully so. Not only does it look like it’s visuals were developed for hand held, they are very problematic. It has graphical glitches, an overworld that feels dead and terrible battle sequences. Fans were especially mad about the battle sequences, unable to believe how Pokemon could still be so static and the moves they do so ugly. Older games than Sword and Shield were much more appaling than Sword and Shield was whle being on hand held. As a Switch game, Sword and Shield just does not make the cut, it’s visuals and battles looking worse than X and Y from back in 2013.

As said before, fans have called Game Freak lazy for all these problems and all they did to address it was that they didn’t have enough manpower. No one believed this as Pokemon is the richest product in media history. Their claim was further disproved by the fact that Game Freak is working on their own title ‘Town’ which means they are managing two titles at the same time instead of focusing solely on Pokemon, one of the most awaited franchises in gaming. Ultimately, fans sadly believe that, much like other popular franchises in gaming, Pokemon has become no more than a brand. This is additionally supported by Pokemon Go’s outstanding success as a mobile game, obviously way lower effort than a mothership title. Pokemon Go has made revenue more than 5% of what Pokemon as a whole has made in 23 years in only 3 years. While sad, it is unsurprising why Game Freak wouldn’t put the necessary effort into newer mothership titles. After all, Pokemon Go will make way more than any one anyway.

All these reasons have made fans grow disinterest towards the game and a lot of them are looking forward to some other upcoming titles for the Switch such as Dragon Quest XI, Yo-kai Watch 4 or Digimon to name a few. While the game will sell millions surely, it is really sad to hear how some fans feel about the games now along with Game Freak’s mentality towards the main series. Today, a titan of gaming is falling…