- Greetings Pokefans, Michael
here, and over the course of Pokemon's history, a
lot of positive changes have been implemented
into the games. Some that stand out to me are the physical/special
split in Gen IV, TMs no longer breaking in Gen V, and the removal
of HMs in Gen VII. However, there have been some
changes that I didn't like. There's not many, but I
was able to think of 10 that I'm going to list
off in this video. Some of these are pretty
universally disliked changes, but some are more
specific to me. So don't forget to
subscribe to my channel and let's start with number one. Surf's change in targeting. My first Pokemon game
ever was Pokemon Ruby, so an important piece of
context that that brings is that double battles
have been a part of my Pokemon experience
since the start. Additionally, Ruby was
still in the age of HMs, which meant that the Water type on my team always knew Surf. Literally always, no exceptions, just like my Flying
type knowing Fly. The other HMs I could
go fetch when needed, but Fly and Surf
were used so often, especially in Hoenn
with all of its water, that I felt like I needed
those moves at all times. I would structure my
team in such a way to make sure my Water and
Flying types could learn them. Plus, both Surf and Fly
are pretty strong moves, so not only were they used for
traversal in the overworld, they were the primary
attacking move for my Water and Flying types. In the double battles I
would encounter in Gen III, I would often utilize my Water
Pokemon for those battles because Surf would hit both
enemy Pokemon for great damage. The most consistent situation
I would use the move in was against Tate and Liza to obliterate their
Solrock and Lunatone. Plus, Claydol, if
it was Emerald. I enjoyed having the
freedom to do that. Then came Pokemon
Diamond and on my team, I had a Floatzel, which
of course knew Surf. I played through normally,
happened upon a double battle, clicked Surf and damaged
my other Pokemon. Excuse me? Between generations III and IV, Surf was changed from
impacting the two enemy Pokemon in a double battle to
the two enemy Pokemon and the ally Pokemon,
like Earthquake. It was no longer practical
to use it in double battles, unless the ally had
some way of avoiding it or protecting, which was not
the case for most of my team since double battles are so
infrequent in playthroughs. So the main attacking
move for all of my Water-type Pokemon
for many generations became basically useless
in double battles when in Gen III it was
excellent in double battles. Plus, there's an additional
extra kick in the pants, which is Muddy Water. Muddy Water is a move
that is identical to Surf, except it trades lower
accuracy for the chance to lower the
opponent's accuracy. The move even looks the same, except Muddy Water
has brown water. Yet for some reason, Muddy
Water still to this day only hits the enemy Pokemon,
while Surf hits the ally. That makes no sense. Why were they not both changed? Thankfully Gen VII removed HMs and therefore Surf was no longer
necessary on my Water-type, so I could use Liquidation or Scald just fine
in double battles. However, for the generations
between III and VII, not being able to use my main
Water attack in double battles was very annoying
and I wish Surf had just kept targeting
just the enemy Pokemon. Another move-related change
that I didn't like was number two: the removal of
using moves outside of battle. Now I know what you're thinking. That seems to contradict
with me just saying that the removal of
HMs was a good thing. To clarify, I'm not talking
about mandatory overworld moves. I'm talking about optional ones. When Sun and Moon
came along and Hms were permanently
replaced by Ride Pokemon, the Pokemon community rejoiced. No longer did our
teams movesets have to be partially taken up
by often inferior moves, nor did we have to use an entire
party slot for an HM mule. However, when they removed
these mandatory overworld moves, they also removed
the optional ones that could make your
life a bit easier. The ones that I'm
specifically talking about are Dig and Teleport. Prior to Generation
VII, Dig could be used to quickly escape
from not only caves, but also sometimes buildings. It functioned as an
infinite-use Escape Rope and it was quite nice
to have to get out of any sticky situations
deep in a cave. The move itself was also
pretty good in battle, especially considering
that most Ground-types don't learn Earthquake
until later levels, so you could use Dig for a large
portion of the playthrough. As for Teleport, it was a
very useful precursor to Fly, allowing you to
instantly warp back to the last Pokemon
Center you visited. It is strictly inferior to
Fly, but it's nice to have for the portion of the
playthrough before getting Fly. Since my team was usually
incomplete by the time I got access to Fly, I
would often toss a Ralts or an Abra onto my team
just for the use of Teleport to be able to get back to the
Pokemon Center much quicker than if I didn't have it. But then in Gen VII, Ride
Pokemon replaced the HMs, but did not replace
these optional moves. The only way to escape a cave
is by using an Escape Rope, an item you have
to spend money on, and there is no
Teleport replacement. Prior to getting
the Charizard ride or the secret
technique Sky Dash, you just have to run back. Sword and Shield solved the
Dig and Teleport problem by making the Escape Rope
an infinite-use key item and by making the Corviknight
Taxi available very early in the game. However, during Gen VII,
there were quite a few times where I was really
missing the option to use Dig or Teleport. Another negative change that
came up in Generation VII was number three:
bad shiny sparkles. In generations II through
VI, the sparkles that occur when a shiny Pokemon
enters battle are tasteful. They vary in exactly
how they appear, but they are generally the same. Several tiny sparkles
fluttering around the Pokemon, bringing attention to
its different appearance without stealing
the show entirely. They accent the shiny
Pokemon very nicely, but then in Gen VII, both the
Alola and the Let's Go games, the shiny sparkles were changed to the ugliest ones out there. The sparkles are
basically one giant star that completely
covers up the shiny. Something personally
relevant to myself and other Pokemon
YouTubers is that it ruins the screenshot
potential for these shinies. In older gens, you
could get a screenshot with the sparkles around it. It looks really nice, but
this, it's like mid-sparkle, the star covers up
the whole shiny. I know this isn't a huge deal. It's just an aesthetic
thing that shows up for a second at a time, but hey, I said these were changes
that I did not like. Not changes that everyone
would care about. Thankfully, Sword and Shield
remedied the bad sparkle issue, so we're back to nice-looking
sparkles for Generation VIII. However, in Gen VII, the generation I did the
most shiny hunting in, the sparkles suck. The next entry also has to do with shiny Pokemon,
that being number four: not having a fun, new
shiny hunting method. For the last
several generations, each new generation has
implemented some kind of fun, new shiny hunting method to substantially increase
the odds of finding a shiny, alongside the Masuda method. Some examples are the
PokeRadar in Gen IV, chain fishing in Gen VI,
SOS battles in Gen VII and catch comboing in Let's Go. Sword and Shield technically
continued this trend with the method being the
number battled method. It's a pretty
straightforward process. All you have to do is
defeat or catch a lot of the same species of Pokemon, thus increasing its number
battled value in the Pokedex. Doing so increases both your
chances of finding a yellow or a brilliant Pokemon,
but also your chances of finding that
species as shiny. First off, the increased odds
are just not good enough. They are not worth your time. To get odds that matched
the Masuda method, you have to KO or catch 500
of just one species of Pokemon to get better odds for
just that one species. The Masuda method, you
have those excellent odds right off the bat with
any Pokemon you want. That is lame as hell since
most shiny hunting methods have better odds than
the Masuda method. They just work on fewer Pokemon. For example, chain
fishing can get you substantially better odds
than the Masuda method, but you're limited to only
fishing Pokemon in exchange. So not only is the number
battled method bad by design from the start, it
also doesn't even work. A bug in the code of
Sword and Shield makes it so these better odds
you reach only occur a small percentage of the
time, camping out at a mere 3%. That means that, assuming
you have the Shiny Charm, battling 500 of one species
of Pokemon increases your odds for that one species from
the base Shiny Charm odds of one in 1365 to
about one in 1300, assuming I did my math right. That is a minuscule improvement
that is still nowhere near as good as
the Masuda method, so using the number
battled to shiny hunt is literally a
waste of your time. And as some more
salt in the wound, this bug has been around since the games came
out in November. I am filming this
video in May of 2020. It's been six
months since release and they haven't patched this. Man, GameFreak is really
sometimes unacceptably slow with patching their games. Animal Crossing had
some bugs at launch and they fixed it in two weeks. Come on, GameFreak, be
more like Animal Crossing. The end result of all this is
that the only worth your time shiny hunting method
in Sword and Shield is the Masuda method, which
for me, is painfully dull and has killed my
interest in shiny hunting. This dramatic change from
the catch combo method in Let's Go, which was the game that I had the most fun
shiny hunting in ever, to a method that may
as well not exist, is a dramatic change that
I am very not happy about. Now while I loved the
shiny hunting in Let's Go, there was a change that
those games brought that I was not happy about, that being number five: the
Let's Go stat system change. In most main series games, Pokemon can gain extra
points to certain stats by gaining effort values or EVs. There's a limit to how many
you can give a Pokemon, that limit being 510,
but functionally 508, since EVs have to
be done in multiples of four to do anything. Every four EVs in
one stat corresponds to one additional stat point
for that Pokemon at level 100. This system has been a staple
of the main series games for generations and
it's a massive part of the competitive
battling community because a big part
of this strategy is determining how you
distribute your Pokemon's EVs. But then Let's Go came
along and it implemented several drastic changes from
the rest of the main series. The catching system
was completely changed, as you likely know, but the battle system was
also heavily simplified. Abilities and held
items were removed and effort values were
replaced with awakening values, also known as AVs,
and AVs are so dumb. On AV corresponds to one
extra stat point at any level, and you get some
AVs by leveling up, but the bulk of AVs come from
feeding the Pokemon candy. One of its species candy
increases all of its AVs by one, but you can only
use species candy on Pokemon in the same
evolutionary line. You can also use
stat-specific candies, but they require more for
each point the higher you get. A Pokemon has a limit of
200 AVs in every stat, so 1200 total. That means there's no
strategy whatsoever with how you distribute them because you're just incentivized
to give a max of 200 AVs in all of the stats
for a Pokemon. So instead of being like EVs, where it's a strategic
way to figure out how you distribute them, AVs, you just give as many
as possible to your Pokemon. They're pointless,
so pointless in fact that if you do an online PVP
battle against another person and you select normal
rules, AVs are removed. Why do they exist? I'll tell you why. To make the playthrough even
easier than it already is. AVs can be applied to
a Pokemon at any level if you use the species candy. So if you give a level two
Pidgey 200 Pidgey candy, it will have over 200 in
every stat at level two. I will admit that's
kind of hilarious, but it's also very
broken and pretty dumb. I get that Let's Go
is more heavily aimed at much younger kids than
the rest of the main series, but this stat system
to me is just, it just seems pointless. Why is it even there? So let's go to shiny
hunting, right? The stat system wrong and
following Pokemon very right. That's actually the
focus of my next entry, that being number six: the
removal of following Pokemon. Following Pokemon
were first introduced in Heart Gold and Soul Silver, and I don't think a
single person exists who disliked this feature. It added so much
to the immersion and connection with your team, since seeing your Pokemon
wandering the world itself was not something you
could previously do. Then they removed the feature, and I don't really think
there's an excuse for doing it in Black and White since
the games were still in 2D, but with the 3DS
games, I kind of get. They were doing 3D
for the first time and the 3DS was a pretty
underpowered console, and so having walking
and running animations for every Pokemon in the game, I can get why that would
be tough to implement. But then Let's Go brought
following Pokemon back and it was fantastic. It looked so good in 3D, and the variety in
how they traversed added so much personality
to each Pokemon. Some zipped ahead,
some lagged behind, some rolled instead of walking, and some you could
actually ride. It was incredible. Many fans including myself hoped that the overworld encounters
and the following Pokemon from Let's Go would be new
mainstays in the series. Then Sword and Shield came
out and overworld encounters were there, but following
Pokemon were not. I really don't think there
is any excuse for this. As I mentioned in the 3DS games, they would've had to code
in a Pokemon, all Pokemon, being able to walk or run
around in the overworld, something that did not occur in the vast majority
of the games. But in Sword and Shield, almost every Pokemon is
already in the overworld and has the running and
walking animations coded in. Was it that hard to just
add one more Pokemon to the overworld
at any given time? I'm not a game dev expert, but I feel like they
could've done that. So the removal of following
Pokemon is a change that's happened twice now and
I have disliked it both times, so I desperately hope
following Pokemon come back and then are never
removed again. The next entry is another
removal-based change, that being number seven:
the removal of the PSS. The PSS, or Player
Search System, was the interface for
interacting with other players and it is the best
interface for doing so the main series has ever had. Wanna trade or
battle with a friend? Simply tap on their face
and click Trade or Battle. The request then shows up in
their game and they accept. You're done, you can do this
at any location in your game. The interfaces since
then have been garbage. Festival Plaza required you
to go to Festival Plaza, which was stupid. And then Let's Go
wouldn't even let you talk to specific friends. You just had to implement
a certain Pokemon code and then the Y-Comm in Sword
and Shield does the same thing. In order to connect to a friend, you have to coordinate
link codes and hope that no one else inputted the
same one at the same time. The PSS was simple,
intuitive and effective. The removal of it
was a giant mistake and I desperately hope that
the next online interface place in Pokemon is just like it. Just let me see a list
of my online friends and tap on one and ask
them to trade or battle. It is not hard. The next entry is number
eight: the FPS downgrade. The Generation III Pokemon games
run at 60 frames per second and look so smooth. Every movement is fluid
and I personally think that's a big reason
why my favorite mainline Pokemon graphics
are the Gen III games. At least they were prior
to Sword and Shield because Sword and
Shield look incredible. But then in Gen IV, the
games dropped to 30 FPS. Then in Gen V, the
battles were 60 FPS, but the overworld wasn't. Then every single mainline
Pokemon game since then has run at 30 FPS. I am not a game
development expert and I don't wanna
pretend to be one, so I have no idea what all
the backend processes are that go into determining
what frame rate a certain game runs at
on a certain platform. However, I can still be
disappointed with the change because I simply miss how
smooth and good the games looked when running at 60
frames per second. Next up is number nine:
the change to berry growth. Starting in Gen III,
the games I started in, berries were for
the most part grown by planting one of
that kind of berry, waiting some period of time,
then picking the plant, which contained several
of that kind of berry, a lot like growing fruit
trees in Animal Crossing. I've mentioned it twice now. Can you tell I've
been playing it a lot? This method is a reliable
way to obtain more of one specific
berry that you want because you plant that one berry and get more of that one berry. Every mainline game
from Gen III to Gen VII, except the Gen V games,
had a way to plant berries and grow more of
the ones you want. While Gen V didn't have
this method in the games, it had it in the Dream
World, which isn't as good, especially since the Dream
World is no longer available, but the option still existed. But then in Sword and Shield, they removed the
ability to grow berries. The primary way to obtain
more is by shaking berry trees and getting a random
collection of them. If you want more of a
specific type of berry, you have to go around to
all of the berry trees that it can spawn
from, shake the trees and hope that you
get some of them. And you can only shake
a tree once per day. I experienced quite a bit
of annoyance with this when I was trying to get a lot of EV-reducing berries
in Sword and Shield during the Metronome Battle
Federation season two. I was trying to modify
some of the EV spreads for some of my Pokemon. So to get more of the
specific EV-reducing berries for a certain stat
that I wanted, I had to go around to all
the trees that it spawned at, save my game, move my
switch's clock a day forward, then go back and check again
and do that until I had enough. It was tedious and I didn't
like it and it would've been much more convenient if I
could've just planted several of that specific berry
and gotten them to grow. To be clear, I don't mind
the berry trees themselves. I actually think the
pseudo-minigame involved with the risk versus reward, how many times you shake it and then a Pokemon attacks
if you shake it too much, I think that's fun. However, I just don't like
that there's no other way to grow more berries like
there was in Gen VII. You could get the
berries from the trees, but you could also grow
more in Poke Pelago. Sword and Shield should've
had a method like that. And finally is number
10: the Gale Wings nerf. I love Talonflame a lot. So much so that not only is
it my favorite regional bird, but it's also one of my
all-time favorite Pokemon. The big reason why
that is the case is because I had a ton of
fun using it in Gen VI. I used a few different
Talonflame, usually
Choice Banded, to obliterate opponents
with priority Brave Bird. I used one to perform
quite well in my first and only ever VGC Tournament, where I finished in the
top 10% of 250 competitors, and I had a Talonflame
on the team I used to get a 50 streak in the
Battle Maison doubles. But I guess GameFreak
didn't like Talonflame as much as I do, so in Gen VII, they nerfed its
ability Gale Wings, the ability that
made it so powerful, and they nerfed it way too much. Rather than always giving
priority to Flying moves, it only gives them priority
when Talonflame has full health. This is an extremely
severe nerf, so much so that it took
Talonflame from one of the most powerful
Pokemon in competitive to being in the lower tiers. If they wanted to
nerf Gale Wings, fine. It was admittedly pretty
OP, but making it so that it just doesn't work if Talonflame
takes even one hit point of damage is too much. They should've made
it so it only works if it has above half health
or something like that. I really hate this
severe Gale Wings nerf because it really hurt one of
my all-time favorite Pokemon. Thank you so much for watching and extra-special thanks to
my patrons over on Patreon, who are helping my support
my channel independent of pretty bad YouTube
ad rates right now. If you wanna help support
my channel in the same way, the link is in the
description below, and if you wanna
check out some more of my fun Pokemon content, I
recommend these videos here. All right, that's
all I have for now, so until next time, Pokefans. Gotta catch them all.
