Black and White was So Good It Killed the Franchise.

the pokemon franchise has obviously seen a dip within the last few years and with the announcement of pokemon legends arceus it looks like the downward spiral is only going to continue but how did we get here and what caused pokemon to fall into such a state of genericness and forced nostalgia well let me explain the downfall of pokemon in a short stage play played entirely by me look we have this cool new game wow this is amazing okay now we've made three more you want something new hmm no thanks okay guess i'll go [ __ ] myself in order to figure out where things are wrong we need to journey back to my personal favorite games pokemon black and white we also need to know the context of these games before we can decipher what went wrong and how it all happened so let's talk about them but hey before that you should subscribe because it's free and i will be your friend in a totally parasocial way and it'll look a little something like this i love you man i love you bro league game designer junichi masuda stated that pokemon black and white was meant to be a reboot for the series but what he didn't say is that it failed and it ultimately ended up doing the franchise forever this is seen most notably in the most controversial feature added to a pokemon game ever the pokemon the decision to only use new pokemon helped to freshen up the formula and make the games feel new again but because of this they had to convince you that these new pokemon are all gucci because they had no older gucci pokemons i had the new not gucci like little disgusting ones every pokemon game has bad designs but older games had older pokemon so if you don't like the barrels big buck teeth you can still use dragon items big dumpy the pokemon in black and white are kind of like a roller coaster obviously a very subjective roller coaster but i think we can all admit whether you like garbador or not that this generation has some quirky designs most of the coolest pokemon in this generation are all available much later in the game and a lot of its starting pokemon are among its most hated like let's compare two bipedal pokemon from this generation one from the late game and one from the early game on one side you have haxorus a scary dragon with an axe for a face and arguably one of the most unique designs in the entire series verse and angry meerkat gen 4 has a lot of ugly and really bad designs but everyone's so caught up in the shinks and the staraptors to give a [ __ ] about the cricket tots and the bidoffs the starting troop in these games are pretty weird too and not in a good way all three are ugly boring or just completely stupid looking and it's the third gen in a row they did the five fighting starters which is lazy and i hate you masadu i'm sorry i said your name wrong again osha whatnot second evolution had the potential to be one of the best starters ever but of course they went no that's a stupid idea let's make it look terrible the starter should have been left at an orphanage for all i care because instead of adoption i want to replace the d and a p with an r and a b because these starters all suck in my opinion then after giving you a subpar start a chair black and white goes oh yeah you didn't like that well how can i give you another one the monkey tree are even worse with such ugly designs that make me want to cry and that's just so awkward to look at inferno is a great monkey design this is a great monkey design this is another great way no no get rid of that along with designs like the angry meerkat it makes the starting areas miserable and i just want to speed run them as quick as possible but don't worry it gets worse you know those four pokemon that are ugly and no one likes well the first two gyms seem to love them so now you have to keep looking at these ugly monkeys and every gym leader from the first two gyms has either a lily pop or a hertia i like dogs as much as the next guy but these things are way too kickable for my liking you see first impressions are important and my first impression in these games is to grab all these pokemon and throw them into an incinerator also the second gym is a normal type gym in a library at a library with the angry meerkat pokemon and another one of those stupid dogs isn't a great way to convince players that using only new pokemon was a good idea but like i said before black and white are kind of like a roller coaster because from here on out the game's become amazing every gym is super creative with interesting designs and cool decals the towns are all super distinct and memorable with cool unique buildings and architecture they've got a baseball stadium a roller coaster and a bridge actually a lot of bridges in black and white the towns are all super cool but the roads connecting them kind of suck unfortunately the anova region is kind of like a big dumb boring circle which ruins the immersion because it feels like it was designed for a video game which it was but it i mean like it shouldn't feel like that it makes the games a lot less confusing because you're not wandering around not knowing where to go or even going the wrong way but linear progression isn't really a good thing because it makes the world less interesting you don't have those cool shortcuts or backtracks other regions require backtracking through certain areas like a dark souls game which is sweet i love dark souls but it can sometimes feel weird like the psyducks in uh diamond and pearl cynthia's watering can seems much less effective than my garchomp's draco meteor but whatever will do it your way pokemon stories are usually pretty formulaic and not all that groundbreaking the big guy pokemon went yo let's add philosophy and complex questions about animal rights and morality into a game for 10 year olds good one masuda despite this though the story seems to be the one part of pokemon black and white the people universally seem to like so this is looking like a pretty good game from a storytelling perspective so far and even after playing it as many times as i have i still love it the character arcs and the betrayals and the dam the climax are all so good and i don't think anything will ever come close to fighting the legendary your rival then the big bad after crushing the elite four and having everywhere within five foot new york blocks you turn into a giant castle that came from the ground what the [ __ ] your friendly rivals are all bearable real and it's sometimes pretty good bianca starts as a trainer but slowly realizes she'll amount to nothing in life and gives up on her dreams to pursue a boring office shop is his game trying to tell me something then black and white 2 are actually good sequels where things change and age rather than just being an alternate timeline with some dlc slapped on black and white 2 did a lot of really good things but it focused on what people didn't like rather than improving on what did work and actually just forgetting about what worked hugh was one of the least sorry she was your rival sorry you might have forgotten about him he was one of the least memorable rivals with definitely the least memorable motives i have never seen his sister or her cat in my entire life so sorry if i don't care about getting it back because i really don't slapping ending gets us in at the very end is such a waste of good characters it also makes these new characters feel so much less important the climax has nothing to do with them and just shoves the old characters in because they know you're gonna like them more because of you know nostalgia i am foreshadowing future events the region of unova is fixed significantly with adding more shortcuts and backtracks to make the region way more interesting despite all this gen 5 failed it sound less than the previous gen like every other game despite putting the most work and creativity in making 156 new pokemon which is even more than the original games they gave every town unique buildings and cool designs made the best story in the entire series then made sequels that expanded on the world and were completely different to the originals fixing the issues people have with the games and weren't just dlc remakes like emeralds and [ __ ] platinum and lastly providing two of the best post games in the entire series and yet people still didn't like it black and white and black and white 2 tried something very different in the pokemon franchise called innovation but how far did that get them the most controversial game in the entire series but there's one thing they did get out of this experiment one thing that they continued to add to pokemon games for generations despite the long-term negative effects on the series the one feature you might have forgotten about in black and white that wasn't forced down your throat but was definitely there [Music] triple battles for some reason or another game freak decided that from everything in this masterpiece to take from it was that adding gimmicks to core battle mechanics is a great idea you know what why not do it for every game and then toss it in the bin for the next introducing game exclusive gimmick called battle mechanics or glendon for sure is stupid dumb and lessens the impact with every new installment mega revolutions were a great change and felt special and they added new designs to older pokemon but then of course in the next game they were completely removed and what were they replaced with z moves a really strong move for each type so creative then regional variants and then gigantomax our server out of ideas for sword and shield what should we do yeah we know the music's great can we talk about something else yeah no headphones off please we're in a meeting the idea of game exclusive gimmick called battle mechanics or glumblum for short already became lazy and stale within two mainline games and the next problem is what comes after gigantomax alright new idea every third turn you have to pay taxes or else your bani gets burned into a blender at this point whatever they add next is going to be so tainted by the holy knowledge of its fated removal that it's going to be hard to care about the worst part is that these new features don't even cater towards innovation but instead nostalgia with a new coat of paint out of the 48 mega revolutions added to pokemon x and y a grand total of 47 were of older pokemon and diancie being the only gen 6 pokemon you know the generation mega evolutions are from to get a mega evolution giganomax is a lot better with 19 of the 32 giganomax forms being from new pokemon which is great i can't complain about that and that's what we want but aside from garbador every other giganomax form is from gen 1. 12 out of the 19 golf forms are a gen 1 pokemon which but by the way galah's a really dumb name i used to have a glass kind of bird i used to have well i mean actually it was a cockatoo and um anyway uh it had a foot fungus and um it died the gen 1 starters and gengar both have a mega and a giganomax form and meowth and slowbro both getting regional forms and a giganomax or a mega evolution while there are 887 more pokemon that could use a new color form no not the foot funk is dead but just any form but why is game freak doing this why because in gen 5 the fans told them that focusing on new pokemon and new ideas isn't what the fans want as long as you keep pandering to nostalgia and half-assing games the fans will keep buying pokemon's core business philosophy revolves around nostalgia this is why pokemon are so formulaic and never changes black and white wasn't completely different but tried to change even slightly and fans didn't like it so we're met with resistance i think they just said well we put in all this work and no one cared and it didn't make us any more money so let's never do that again this is why features like the raid battles or wild area never get enough work put into them because it just isn't worth it fans are buying it for the new charizard not the cool wild area now you might be saying well i bought it for the wild aryan you're one of the good ones look at you i'm so proud of you my little gamer boy the absolute epitome of this is with pokemon legends arceus i was really excited when i first saw this look at something new it's the breath of the wild wow sweet this is gonna be sweet but now the initial hype has worn off and i think this game is gonna be garbage a trailer is meant to show off the best and most exciting parts from a game but what's the most exciting part from this trailer the ghost town the completely empty fields with literally nothing in them literally nothing the 2014 graphics the same 20 year old battle system the poor optimization and lag again this is in the announcement trailer think about what breath of the wild did for zelda games they completely changed everything about the games and broke through with interesting new mechanics and ideas legends artists could have done this it's not connected to the main lane games in any way except for the region and release date and again there's a remakes that are coming out that don't change anything so this game has the breathing room to you know do a little bit of twinkin oh twinkin that's not what i meant to say this game has the breathing room to experiment a little bit again what what legends arceus could have been the game to change up the same stale 20 year old turn based battle combat time if you're gonna go all breath of the wild on us with a spin-off actually commit to it and make something new not just spit out some low effort garbage look at the trailer do these buildings look like you can go inside them they don't to me also isn't it a little bit worrying that there's not a single human npc in this entire trailer the only thing of note in this trailer is these weird pins of things that look like an island somewhere but apart from that there's nothing again let's remember the game is probably in really early development but this is the announcement trailer so if they're showing us this don't expect this from everything pokemon has shown us in the last eight years i genuinely do not believe this game will be good and none of this will be patched or fixed because they've never done it before so why start now pokemon is in a doom state despite being one of the biggest franchises of all time the design choices aren't making for a sustainable series and i'm a businessman don't worry i know the only reason these games are being made is because they make some people a lot of money and i don't blame them but it's 2021 and this ain't 2021 material the last of us two came out last year looking like this and they expect us to buy this in 2022 basically pokemon died a long time ago when game freak made the most creative and unique pokemon games ever and it failed and made the most creative and unique mainland pokemon sequels ever made and it also failed dooming pokemon to a cycle of nostalgia and using the same formula over and over and over and over at least we've got the diamond pearl remakes though right right no pokemon's dead it's dead they [ __ ] killed it they [ __ ] killed it and i've only covered a few and there are plenty of other issues with pokemon games that i just don't have the time to cover because i already took an extra week to make this dumpster fire of a video so here's a list of problems in pokemon games it can be traced back to black and white with zero context wow there's a lot of like letters and words and stuff anyway what are you doing late at night you wanna maybe um like get a coffee or something or no oh you think i'm really ugly oh that's a bit harsh [Music]

Channel: Cassidyhunt.

Views: 1,013,706

Keywords: pokemon, black, white, legends, arceus, legends: arceus, black and white retrospective, review, gameplay, pokemon sword and shield, pokemon direct, pokemon go, nintendo, pokemon videos, videos, pokemon legends: arceus

Id: w9tsmyeHgfQ

Length: 13min 42sec (822 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 09 2021