“Why isn’t it possible?” “It’s just not.” “Why not, you stupid bastard?” “He does exactly what I do.”
“But better.” “No no no no!” “Wait, wait, wait, wait. Hey.” “Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait!” “That is one big pile of shit.” Because I'm bad, I'm bad, shamone “You think you're bad, huh? You're a fucking choir boy compared to me! A CHOIR BOY!” "You French pig!" It was beautiful. So. Pokemon X and Y for the 3DS. It was the first Pokemon game for the 3DS, and the game that opened the 3D era of Pokmon. Is it a great game? Not really. But, I don’t think it’s worthless. Many cite Pokemon X and Y as the start of the downfall of Pokemon. However, some cite it as an underrated gem that gets overlooked. Therefore, as it’s time for the release of the new Pokemon game Scarlet and Violet, I think it’s due time that we look back at these games that started the 3D era and see which opinion is right. I want to cut through the hype, and judge these games fairly. This is a straight-up review of Pokemon X and Y, released in 2013 on the Nintendo 3DS. Part 1: Reputations, Incomplete, Parallels, and Reasoning Unlike my other reviews where I usually talk about the positives of a game first then go on to negatives, for this video, I will address the negative aspects of X and Y first. Why? Well, generation 6 has a bad reputation among fans. I think X and Y is neglected and forgotten by most of the fandom. Hell, I think even the anime is more popular than the games, like google “Pokemon XY”, you’ll get more results about the anime than the actual games. The biggest problem of this game in my opinion is, unlike bad modern Pokemon games, it’s not that there is bad stuff in it, or there were some really dumb or baffling creative decisions, but that the game feels not done. Sort of like a hamburger, that was cooked by an excellent chef, but the electricity suddenly went out in the kitchen halfway through cooking, and you had to eat the patty raw. This game needed at least half a year more of development. Still though, all Pokemon games, even the worse ones, had potential to be excellent, but X and Y is the most tragic to me. Kalos had so much potential, but so much of it was squandered. Actually, X and Y are very similar games to Pokemon Diamond and Pearl. Both are first duo games on a console, both ushered in a new age of graphics for Pokemon, Diamond and Pearl introducing half 3D and X and Y introducing full 3D. But the parallels don’t end there. Both feature very similar lame villains both feature champions that are very bad and don’t do anything except look cool. And most of all, both feel like incomplete games and more like graphical beta tests. Difference is, Pokemon Diamond and Pearl got Pokemon Platinum, a game that fixed almost all issues of the og base games. A truly wonderful game that basically saved Sinnoh and the franchise, which I have detailed wonderfully in a video in the past (ha, shameless plug) that ILCA completely ignored a decade and a half later. “What’s the difference between you and me?” “I'm not wearing hockey pads!” Kalos needed a third game, or a DLC or sequel or something that finished the region. An ultimate Kalos game. Isn’t it just a shame Kalos is the only region in the franchise that got visited once? Every other generation has been expanded upon either through third versions, sequels, remakes, ultra shitty cashgrabs and DLC’s. Poor Kalos. Still, while you might expect me to call Pokemon Company greedy or Game Freak lazy, rushed, and cutting corners for releasing an incomplete game, to play devil’s advocate… I kinda understand what situation they were in though. You see, the Nintendo 3DS was revealed in 2010 and released in 2011. When Black and White 2 came out, Nintendo’s newest handheld console was already a year old, and 2 years old by 2013. Pokemon has always been the franchise that carried Nintendo’s handheld consoles’ sales, so Pokemon desperately needed a new game in 2013. Like, imagine if they actually skipped 2013 and released this game in 2014. Fans would have rioted and asking for a new Pokemon game on the new handheld system, Nintendo would have been unhappy their new system is not getting a major release from a major franchise, 3DS sales might have actually not gone up and stayed bad like at its launch and become a failure of a system like the Wii U. Point is, Pokemon and the world needed X and Y in 2013 and there was no room for delay. However, while we can be sympathetic to the situation the developers were in, it doesn’t change the fact that the game is incomplete, and we’re here to judge the game on its own. So, what parts of this game are unfinished? Part 2: Incomplete Let’s get the obvious one out of the way. Some areas in the map just feel incomplete. Biggest example is of course the Kalos Power Plant. The Power Plant is a dungeon under the area known as Route 13. This place has many doors that should lead down to the power plant. You expect this to be like a Whirl Islands situation where it's a dungeon with multiple entrances that lead to different places right? But in truth, only one of these doors actually leads somewhere. The rest are decorations. They were obviously planning a much bigger dungeon for this part of the game, but scaled it down. As a result, Kalos Power Plant is kinda tiny, and probably the biggest moment in the game that stinks incomplete. The second biggest sign is of course the in-battle trainer models. So in this game, random generic trainers in the field have chibi models in the overworld, but when you battle them, this 2D image appears. Look, I don’t mind random NPC’s not having 3D models in battle, and most of the illustrations are really well drawn. However, they gave important trainers in the story like the rivals/friends or the Pokemon Professor or main antagonist Lysandre 3D models and animations, and all of them are animated pretty well. I like that important characters get special treatment, sort of like how in the generation 4 games, only important NPCs got animated sprites. But, they had to ruin it by not giving gym leaders animated character models. May I ask, fucking why? Except for the rival, professor, antagonist, and champion, aren’t gym leaders like the most fundamental important characters in any Pokemon game? Hell, they even made a gacha game that is mostly consisted of gym leaders, they’re that much of a foundation for the franchise. But since the gym leaders are just images, I feel like I’m not fighting a gym leader but fighting a PNG image you find on Bulbapedia. It’s just a shame, couldn’t they just make 8 more gym leader models and 4 more Elite Four models? Probably the most offensive is that the champion Diantha ended up just being an image too. Why? Why the hell is the fucking final boss of the game not a 3D model? What’s more perplexing is that for some reason, every Team Flare member has 3D models. Not just the leader but admins, but the grunts too? Like why the hell does a random Flare grunt get one and gym leaders don’t? What’s worse is that unlike traditional teams where there is leader, admin, and grunt, Team Flare is diverse as hell. There is leader Red Cyrus, then there are these bland admins with names that even a die-hard Pokemon fan won’t be able to remember with a gun to their head, there is the Colress and Tierno’s love-child, there are just separate, regular, generic male and female admins with no names for some reason which other teams in the series don’t have, and finally there are the generic grunts, male and female. “What were they thinking?” Why have so many Flare grunts? Why have more admins than usual when they’re all bland? Why animate them instead of the more important NPCs? I feel like when they were developing this game they first started making the models for Team Flare, then they realized it’s already 2 days before release, so they just released the game in its unfinished state. Pack it all up! Pack it all up, only the gingers get 3D models! Another big sign of incompleteness is the fact there are no post-game areas. Even the previous first generation games like Diamond and Pearl and Black and White had areas to explore after beating the champion, Diamond and Pearl having the Battle Zone and Black and White having eastern Unova. But in this game, after beating the game, you ride on a bullet train, and get to explore one city. That's it. I feel like they were planning to make more routes for Kalos, especially in the southern part because Kalos is actually not France but just northern France, but again, ran out of time. Part 3: The Characters The story and characters of this game feel incomplete too. I’m just gonna say it flat out, I think X and Y have the worst story in the entire franchise, tied with Diamond and Pearl. First of all, let’s talk about the awful supporting cast in this game, starting with the “rivals”. This game has freaking 4 rivals, the most out of the entire series. Oh I’m sorry, they’re called “friends” not “rivals”. "Stop being such a pussy!" Junichi Masuda, director of the game, stated in interviews that he wanted this game to feel like an adventure through a region with a group of friends unlike other games in the series. Traveling around a region as a group of best friends sounds like a good fun idea on paper… But it's a really bad idea for Pokemon actually. Firstly, this is not a traditional JRPG where human characters form up a party so you travel around with them. In Pokemon, the creatures form the party, not the humans. Meaning you can’t control 5 characters at once. In Pokemon, more rivals just mean more forced scripted encounters and battles. Because of that, the game doesn’t have time to flesh out these guys and make them interesting. It feels like there is too much for the run time. Like your other-sex rival Calem or Serena. Their character is… they’re jealous of you? Kind of? I really think they should have done a Brendan and May romance thing if they’re gonna do this. They don’t have an arc, they’re just straight-line I mean bland. Then there’s Trevor. "Run you little bastard!" His character is.. He’s a short nerd, and he likes taking photos. That’s it. Maybe if they made him the NPC in charge of a photography mini-game or sidequest involving pictures, he would have been more memorable but nope, he’s just the short kid. The worst is Tierno. His whole character is, he’s the fat guy, and he likes to dance. Couldn’t they get him more interesting stuff like his parents being assholes who don’t like music or something like Bianca? A Footlose situation. No, he’s just a guy who likes to dance. And they couldn’t even animate a scene of him dancing with a Pokemon out of a Pokeball. Give this guy a Ludicolo or something for god’s sake! The only rival I liked is Shauna, cause they give us a pretty nice cutscene with her at not-Palace of Versailles with fireworks that’s memorable, and she actually has some depth like being bubbly all the time but being super serious in serious moments. But, even she’s way too pandering sometimes with loli-bait and creeps me out. Brrr. There are also other characters that don’t go anywhere and feel like they were meant to be in charge of some new content that got cut. For example, do you remember Dexio and Sina? They’re Professor Sycamore’s assistants, but they dress up like superheroes and show up sometimes? What is up with that? You don’t get to battle them, so they’re walking textbox generators like Lillieh. These guys didn’t even get official artworks by the way. When these two showed up in Sun and Moon later, I genuinely didn’t remember who they were and I was like “Who the fuck are you?” The gym leaders and elite fours are so bland too. They just stay in their gyms and league all the time, and don’t participate in the story at all except for Korrina. We’re back to gen 1 or 2 level of basic characters. It’s just made worse from the early thing about them just being images, so they really feel like pictures, not actual characters. Remember in the previous generation, the gym leaders had larger roles in the story and were super memorable? That’s gone here I guess. Thank god this was fixed in ORAS because the Hoenn gym leaders are so much better I just think the game had more plans but they scrapped it midway. Like one of the Elite Four mentions she was actually part of Team Flare in the post game out of the blue. But, she didn’t appear as a Team Flare member in the main campaign so it has nothing to do with anything at all? Why even mention that if it has no impact in the story? God, this feels like the Rise of Skywalker of Pokemon games. "Rey, Rey I never told you..." Part 4: The Story Let’s just talk about the story too, cause it’s a mess. After Black and White’s okay attempt at an actual story I actually thought Pokemon could write a compelling plot again. Boy I was wrong. Again, it feels like another Diamond and Pearl situation, where the story feels half-baked and rushed out with lingering plot threads. First of all, just like Diamond and Pearl Cyrus, we get Lysandre, (Lysandre? Lysandre? Ah fuck, who cares.) an evil team villain who wants to remake the world in their own image. Only difference is Cyrus thinks the world is incomplete, and Lysandre thinks the world is not beautiful. That’s it. Worse, unlike Cyrus who got much more deep character development in Platinum through the Distortion World thing, we got like nothing to explain why Lysandre thinks the world is not beautiful and he has to go all supervillain. He’s just a pretentious douchebag that no one can relate to. Even worse, they try to do the whole twist villain thing, even though his design screams TEAM FLARE. "Someone drove a hotdog shaped car through the window!" "We'll just close our eyes, just take your car and get out of here!" "Sir, that's clearly your car."
"Wrong." There’s a reason why ProZD’s character for stereotypical twist villains is named “Lysanderoth”. Why not make him wear clothes that hide his reddish mane hair or some shit, and I guess they did that right with Legends Arceus, kudos there. Lysandre is probably the worst Pokemon villain in history, other than Rose maybe and DP version Cyrus. Finally, the whole main plot other than beating the champion thing. The plot with Team Flare and AZ and the . I want to ask Masuda or whoever wrote the script of this game “What were you guys smokin' when you came up with that?” Like seriously, the lore and plot of Kalos kind of went off the rails and is batshit insane. So get this, you know the game has a very bright atmosphere and it’s about a fun journey with friends, right? But the main baddie’s plan is waking up a legendary Pokemon so that with said legendary Pokemon he can use an Ultimate Weapon that can apparently destroy everything somehow. Said ultimate weapon was built by an ancient king 3000 years ago, and apparently mega evolution channels the same energy. Said king built the machine because he wanted to bring back a dead Floette, but the Floette was sad because the king killed a bunch of Pokemon with the weapon and leaves him. Said Floette died apparently cause there was a fucking war 3000 years ago for some reason Oh and apparently the weapon made the king immortal so he goes around dressed like a homeless guy and taller than Shane Madej. “What is happening?” Look, I don’t mind overcomplicated fucked-up lore in my children games, actually I love those kind of stuff in kiddie stuff because it’s kinda awesome to traumatize children. But all of this dark twisted lore doesn’t have any bearing in the story! This cinematic that explains the backstory comes out of nowhere, the only relevance is that it explains what the weapon the emo baddie is trying to use is. It’s just some pretentious exposition. What they really should have done is A) Flesh out Lysandre and Team Flare more and B) Flesh out AZ and his backstory more, not with stupid exposition dump cutscene. Again, it feels like they had more plans for AZ and Lysandre and legendaries and Zygarde but they stopped writing after just writing half of the script. Now, you might ask, will Game Freak build upon this Kalos lore that is interesting but never utilized well in a remake or something? Probably not, because the developers seem to have forgot what the fuck was going on X and Y. "In Pokemon X and Y, the giant immortal guy AZ, what is his deal?" Still, there are some story moments I like. I liked the part where all of your friends gather for the final time at this bridge and battle everyone, the bridge of friendship I guess. I also like the ending cutscene where AZ reunites with Floette, kind of cute. Worth becoming a meme format I guess. Part 5: Too Easy We need to talk about the other big issue with this game, and that’s the difficulty and the EXP Share. It's only fitting that the game based on France has the most pathetic difficulty curve, your character may as well be German, right? This game introduced the infamous EXP Share. Up until generation 5, the EXP Share was a held item to give to 1 single Pokemon so they get EXP when your main Pokemon gets EXP. But in this game, they changed it to a key item, so that every single Pokemon gets EXP, not just one. So… I actually don’t have a problem with that. Look, I don’t like grinding in games, especially RPG’s. I would rather be doing something productive like doing my taxes instead of grinding by battling wild Pokemon. I recently played Sapphire on my own, I am now traumatized from using the Trainer’s Eye feature on the Pokenav to re-battle trainers all over Hoenn I think making your entire Pokemon team grow at the same rate is a really nice feature that gets rid of mindless grinding. The problem is not the EXP Share, but the level of the Pokemon NPCs. It feels like they developed this game with the old EXP Share in mind and the new EXP Share was added on like at the end, and no one playtested this thing because you get overleveled really fast. Like you know how most gym leaders usually have Pokemon with much higher levels than you in the past games right? Not in this game, your entire team will usually have a higher level than the gym leaders’ ace Pokemons. And it’s not just the levels, the final gym leader Wulfric is laughably weak as he only uses 3 Pokemon and one of his Pokemon only has 3 moves. The Elite Four only uses 4 Pokemon each, they don’t have rematch teams! None of the gym leaders use mega evolution in their battles too, I think only 3 NPCs in the game use mega evolution? Were the developers thinking we would be scared by it or something? I actually think Junichi Masuda or someone at Game Freak purposefully made this game easy, because it’s the first game on a new console, and the first 3D game that will attract a lot of new players. I think they wanted X and Y to be baby’s first Pokemon or appeal to casual fans here. I don’t know if this is a correct strategy that will make the game sell more in a business sense, but as a gamer, piss easy games are not something that I want. At least they fixed this problem in the next generation. Pokemon Sun and Moon might be many things, but I think it’s the best game in the series in terms of difficulty balancing. The game has the modern EXP Share, but the bosses in the game have high levels and is a pretty difficult game even with the EXP Share on. No grinding required but still challenging, fair and square. But then they broke it again in the next generation with Sword and Shield, and made it worse by forcing the EXP Share on at all times because they couldn’t trust the player making decisions I guess. Classic Game Freak. Interlude From all this bad stuff I just talked about in this video, you might think Pokemon X and Y is a shitshow and I would hate this game. But, I actually do not hate this game. I actually quite enjoy the game, and I enjoy it more than some gen 3 and 4 games like Ruby Sapphire or FireRed Leafgreen. Confession time. I only played Pokemon X and Y twice in my life. First time when it came out in 2013, and second time recently in the preparation for this review. So I had forgotten all the good stuff that was in this game while playing it in 2022, and I actually had a lot of fun playing it while on camera as a live nuzlocke run recently I had fun playing a Pokemon game, fucking shocker right? What I’m saying is, while there was bad stuff in it like any Pokemon game, it wasn’t enough to break my enjoyment of the game. And, I would dare say there was plenty of effort put into this game. Look, I don’t mind the story being incomplete or broken as long it’s not insulting to my intelligence, or doesn’t bombard with me unskippable lazy cutscenes with god awful dialogue (Pokemon X and Y don’t have much of that thankfully), because Pokemon games aren’t really about the story, it’s more about having a fun experience. And most of the bad stuff about X and Y are story related, so it’s not a deal breaker for me. Also, I don’t mind playing easy games that much compared to other people, so the easy difficulty is not something that will make me hate the game either. But note that this is all personal and subjective. So, let’s now talk about the things that worked in the game, at least for me. Starting with, let’s face it, this game is really a tech-demo for 3D Pokemon games and is the main highlight and focus of the game. So let’s talk about the graphics. Part 6: The Graphics of Pokemon Possibly the biggest hot take in the video. I think Pokemon X and Y is the best looking 3D Pokemon game period, tied with Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire. Yeah, I genuinely think generation 6 had the best graphics in the entire franchise. Why? The answer is quite simple. Cause it tries not to fucking over-extend itself. Recently on Twitter I saw some tweet go viral praising that generation 6 games looked really good aesthetically, and people were saying “Oh it’s dumb idiot fans going through the cycle again, now they love shitty graphics now. I just want to say to these people, stop fucking gaslighting damn it. When this game came out in 2013, everyone was floored by the games’ visuals. I thought the game looked amazing back then, and still do think it holds up today. Please keep in mind the system this was on, it was on the 3DS and this game looks really good for the 3DS, compared to other games on the console. Like I think people don’t realize most 3DS games don’t look that great, especially some JRPG’s by third party companies. The 3DS Pokemon games look better than the average game on the system, due to probably the art-style that’s just cartoony enough and use cel-shaded graphics with some textures. Out of the 3DS games I’ve played, the only games I think that look better than the gen 6 and 7 games are the first party Mario games like Super Mario 3D Land and Zelda games like N64 remakes, and that’s it. Pretty impressive feat in my opinion. The problem is not the 3DS games’ graphics, no. The problem Pokemon fans have is that the graphics stopped advancing after reaching the 3DS. Game Freak have been reusing the same fucking models and animations starting with XY til the latest Scarlet and Violet, that’s almost a fucking decade now. It’s like if Nintendo made Ocarina of Time and kept using the same Link model til Twilight Princess and Game Freak kept using the 8-bit sprites from Gold and Silver til Black and White. Anyways, the Pokemon models look good for the time in my opinion. Keep in mind, this is the first time for most people seeing Pokemon creatures in 3D. Yeah there were the console spinoff games like Colosseum but the majority of gamers have never played that. It’s hard to imagine right now what it felt like in 2013, but we went from this, to this, so the jump in graphics felt overwhelmingly huge. To share some of my memories of this game, when this came out, I was amazed to see all my favorite Pokemon from the old games in 3D. I wanted to see what Pokemon that weren't in XY looked like in 3D so much that when Pokemon Bank was first launched, I transferred my favorite Pokemon over to the new game, just to see what they looked like in 3D. . I even went to the effort of bringing over shiny edit-mons because I wanted to see them in 3D too. Boy didn’t I think I would see these models for the next 10 years… Only problem people had with this game’s graphics is the… 3D. Not the 3D graphics, the stereoscopic 3D. You see, when the 3DS’s 3D mode is turned on, the framerate of XY drops to like 15 frames per second, and you could only turn on the 3D in battles and a few areas. But who the fuck cares about 3D, it’s a shitty gimmick of the 3DS which was the worst aspect of the system that only weirdos liked anyways, and most of you will probably be playing this without 3D turned on or on 2DS’s or on emulators right? Also the game runs mostly fine with the 3D turned off, I did notice some frame drops when flying Pokemon were on screen but it’s a turn-based JRPG, it’s not too big of a deal, at least for me. I’ve seen some people these days retroactively complain about the animations of attacks, but I think you have to remember this game was designed for a console with a screen the size of an iPhone 4. It might look bad with the footage blown up on your 1080p modern devices, but on the original 3DS’s, it looked quite good. And some attack moves were fucking amazing to me as a kid, I remember the attack Brave Bird be super badass, Close Combat was also rad, and Retaliation was metal as fuck. Again, it’s not this games’ problem but modern games that never updated this and kept reusing the same fucking shit on HD consoles. Speaking of modern Pokemon games, you know, if they were ever gonna do a national dex cut, stop bringing back old Pokemon from the previous gen, I think it should have happened here with this game. Or at least, I would have been more understanding if they decided to stop it starting with generation 6. You see, designing 2D Pokemon sprites and 3D models is a completely different amount of workload, it takes much more effort to design 3D models. If they said, “Since 3D Pokemon models are harder to make then 2D models, we will not be supporting the National Dex anymore” in 2013, I wouldn’t have been too mad. But the fact that they went the extra effort to make sure that every 721 Pokemon, 649 of them returning, get 3D models so that we can bring them to the newest generation, make sure that every attack from the old games are in XY, it shows that they still cared in generation 6. In the Black and White 2 review, remember how I stated that they did “Things they didn’t have to, but they did? Well, they did it here. They didn’t have to introduce a Nintendogs clone mini game of petting every single fucking Pokemon that existed til then with each own customary animation, petting zones, and facial movements. But they did. That’s kind of why it’s hard to hate this game and call XY lazy, they didn’t spare any expense of making a real, full 3D Pokemon game. The reason why I call modern games lazy for not having the national dex unlike XY is because they’ve been recycling the same models for almost a decade now, there is no single excuse of not having all Pokemon in 1 game except for lack of time or effort. How is it that a tiny 3DS game was able to create over 700+ new original 3D models and animations but modern games can’t even be bothered to just port and copy 3D models and animations? Do you get the difference and see what’s the problem here you fucking stupid Game Freak dickriders- Part 7: 3 Times 151 I guess I should talk about the Pokedex quickly before moving on. You see, this is a game directed by Junichi Masuda, so of course it’ll have 151 Pokemon on the local dex because it’s the number of the best generation and region. But 151 has always been too small of a number, a complaint I had about Diamond and Pearl and Black and White. So, for this time, Lord Masuda showed us mercy and tried something new, and we do have the 151 Dex but “there's three, actually.” Basically, there’s 3 local dexes in the game. Central Kalos, Coastal Kalos, Mountain Kalos each with about 151 Pokemon each so there’s about 450 Pokemon total in the local dex. The biggest number for a local dex yet, even beating Black and White 2’s giant 300 dex. And, I love it. You see, generation 6 didn’t introduce a lot of Pokemon. Typically in the past each new generation would introduce about 100 to 150 new Pokemon per generation, but generation 6 introduced 72 new mons only. While this sounds lazy on paper, I don’t mind. After all, we’re seeing all the old Mons in a new light with 3D models so they feel fresh again, most of the new Mon have really great design (shout out to Gourgeist, Aegislash, and Kelfki). Also as mentioned, there’s such a large regional dex that there are so many Pokemon to choose from, there's plenty to catch 'em all and use in runs. Part 8: The World that Game Freak Was Proud of Aside from the Pokemon models, the rest of the game looks visually good too. First of all, the battle backgrounds. You know how in modern Pokemon games they can’t even be bothered to render proper battle backgrounds during battles? I remember when you fight Rose’s henchmen in Sword and Shield on the streets of Wyndon you just fight in blank voids, or any of the city battles in BDSP you just fight in orange fucking voids. Lazy, rushing and cutting corners. However this game came out before USUM and Pokemon Go killed the franchise, so it’s not lazy rushing and cutting corners. The battle backgrounds all look great. The forest areas look like real forest in battle, , the beach areas look like real beach in battle, and most importantly, wow a city with buildings, lights, and windows in the background when you fight someone in a city? "Impossible." There’s plenty of unique battle backgrounds too in this game. Notice how when you fight Shauna in Aquacorde Town you can see the town square in the background, when you fight Korrina in Geosenge Town it’s not just plain forest background in battle but you see the town huts, when you’re going through the route that looks like a garden path to Parfum Palace the battle background matches that too with the bushes and trees when you battle in Team Flare’s HQ it has its own unique backgrounds too, and when you fight AZ in the epilogue, they have the red carpet, lights and everything from the cinematic too. Again, this game is filled with effort, not lazy with detail. Just compare the details of the battles on the bridges. In X and Y, when you have your friendship battle on the bridge, you fight on an actual bridge in battle. In the “critically acclaimed” remakes Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, when you fight Barry on the bridge of Canalave, it’s fog mist because modeling a canal would be too much work for ILCA. In modern Pokemon games, it feels like at least the developers are conscious about how embarrassing their games look visually. But back in 2013, when you played XY and ORAS, you can feel the developers were proud of how the game looks and runs. Game Freak was proud of the graphics. There was even a photoshoot mode where you can pose in front of the game’s scenery, they were that proud. They try to show off the game’s visuals with cool effects like when you first enter Olympia’s gym, this is straight up Super Mario Galaxy shit right here, or when you enter an Elite Four room. We got a good Smash Bros. stage from this. Or, they play around with the camera to show off the cool grandeur locations they built. Actually, the reason why I like Kalos so much is because many places feel grandeur with neat architecture and cool scenery. Places like Anistar City with its sundial, or Shalour City’s Tower of Mastery, or Parfum Places’s garden with statues, and fireworks are so well intricately designed and these places look better than all of the generation 8 games combined. There are places that use the camera’s angle cleverly to showcase the design of the world just like the previous generation, and there are just so many vistas I love in this game. I also want to give a shout out to just the solid map design of Kalos. It pains me to say that modern Pokemon has basically given up on proper world and map design, it’s just empty open fields with 0 reason to explore or linear paths that a lab rat can beat. Kalos is different. I don’t know if any fans would get offended from saying this, but I think Kalos has about as good map design as Sinnoh or Unova? This generation still followed a tile based world in most areas, and overall most of the route design is classic Pokemon excellency. Plenty of routes with optional paths with items at the end, with some being unlocked through HM moves. There are also great dungeons with each being pretty unique, some having a cool gimmick like Reflection Cave where you have to use mirrors to progress, classic industrial dungeon like Pokeball Factory, actual classic ice puzzles that require brain cells made harder this time cause you can use diagonal controls, and classic caves like Terminus Cave that you can actually get lost in and need to google a map online. Bottom line, this game is so much fun to explore. This game actually has some great cinematic cutscenes too that I would argue look better than the gen 5 games. The scenes involving the legendaries like Xernas and Yveltal’s awakening are animated great, and that final ending cutscene with AZ and the celebration looks greater than anything Shigeru Ohmori’s babies pulled off in the following generations. Like, see the main character fucking emoting, how did we backtrack so much in the next generation with blank fish-eyed Selene? "It is evolving, just backwards." Part 9: So French What I also love about this game is the Kalos region itself. Kalos might be the most culturally unique and memorable region in the series. Kalos is so fucking… French. “You French pig!” Okay, some disclaimers. I’ve never been to France in my life, the only European countries I’ve ever been to are the United Kingdoms (which was a miserable experience) and the Netherlands with Amsterdam. So I have no fucking clue if this game represented France well, French people let me know in the comments. Anyways, every Pokmeon region had a theme up until that point. Kanto was science, Johto was history, Hoenn was nature, Sinnoh was existence, Unova was truth and ideals, and Kalos is… beauty and fashion. Suiting for France, I don’t know, but they did a great job serving up to that theme. We have an entire antagonist team obsessed with fashion and beauty, the main antagonist is a psychopath obsessed with beauty, the professor is one beautiful hunky guy, one of the biggest gimmicks in the game is character customization, there are other features in the game dealing with beauty like the PR studios decorating your dog… Remember in the Black and White review I complained about how Unova was half-assed at trying to feel like New York and America? Well this game is fully committed to make it feel like France, or at least the image of France Japanese people have in their minds. There are so many restaurants and cafes in the game, the main city is literally shaped like Paris with all the buildings looking like Paris and the gym is literally the Eiffel Tower, you can work at high-class hotel, you can meet butlers and maids, you can battle people and become knights and barons and shit, the route names have French names, some of the NPCs even talk in French… They were so committed that there is stupid little details like being constantly asked to tip after doing something, it doens’t have any effect in gameplay except change some of the dialogue, but you can just waste money and tip. I love this kind of stupid detail in games, it’s completely unnecessary but it makes the game unique and lovable. The only problem I have is the champion, Diantha. She’s just “Hey what if Audrey Hepburn was a Pokemon character?” They have the exact same damn looks and hair, it’s not a coincidence. But when I think of France, I think of uh Napoleon or Joan of Arc, not fucking Audrey Hepburn. A famous actress who was born in Belgium who had British citizenship and worked in American Hollywood is a French champion, makes a lot of sense to me. Part 10: My Dress Up Pokemon Trainer One of the biggest known facts about Pokemon X and Y is that there is little to do after the post-game. And that is only half-true really. Yeah, there are no post-game areas to explore, no Battle Frontier or World Tournament to grind hundreds of hours into, "Where is it!" but there is something else. You see, if you just care about the main core RPG mechanic about Pokemon, X and Y is a pretty lousy game. But there is something else that’s in the game that’s just frankly, wonderful, that has nothing to do with battling and catching Pokemon. And that is of course, the fucking trainer character customization. X and Y introduced character customization to the series, and it became a series staple feature after X and Y, appearing in almost every subsequent release. I would argue that X and Y still have the best character customization in the series, at least in the time of making this video. Yes, even better than SM and SWSH. I don’t know, I’m not a big fashion guy, so it’s kinda hard to explain, but just the overall clothes option in Kalos is so much better. Like Alola’s clothes were just dumb kid clothes but Kalos is so much… Fashionable and high class. Smartly, they also have a lot of premium clothes in the game, and buying them is a quest of its own. First these clothes are just really expensive so prepare to grind with the Amulet Corin, clothes sold in shops are different based on what day it is in the week, there is this clothing shop in Lumiose City that you cannot enter until you rack up style points, there also hair options you have to grind to unlock and yadi-yadah and you get my point. For fun, on stream I tried to have my character dress up exactly like Serena’s recent appearance in the Pokemon Journeys anime If anyone wants to try this, you can follow this tutorial. You need the felt hat gray which you can buy at Lumiose City on Wednesday and Friday, you need the sleeveless turtleneck black you can buy at Snowbelle City on Mondays and Wednesday, you need the pleated kilt skirt red you can buy at Lumiose on Tuesday and Sunday, you need the zipped boots black you can buy at Snowbelle City on Wednesday, Friday, and the weekends, and a matching hair cut at the salon with the bob hair cut, and viola, you have anime Serena. This all cost 179,000 Pokedollars not counting haircut, so you can tell how rich this fucking kid is. Still, some of these clothes feel a bit sussy, Jesus how short is that skirt, thank god for censorship or this video would be demonetized… I also like that you can show off your own personal character customization with this thing called PR Studios. Basically you can create a basic short film by putting on makeup, having poses, choosing background, choosing music, choosing a Pokemon to do poses, choosing character’s facial emotions, choosing dialogue, also you can unlock more features with style points and aughhhh! You get my point? This game might lack a lot of stuff but there’s so much effort put into little detail like this it’s astounding. The only problem with this character customization is Game Freak is blatantly sexist with the clothes. You see, X and Y is the only game in the series where I recommend you play as a female protagonist, because you’ll be literally missing out on content if you choose a person with a dick. It’s because females have like double the amount of character customization. More hair styles, more clothes. Females can wear both skirt and pants but males can only wear pants only. Not biased towards female protagonists are we, Game Freak? Anyways, I feel like there is 1 big new feature about the game I’m forgetting… Uh, what was it? Oh right. Part 11: Mega Evolved Let’s talk about Mega Evolution, probably the biggest hot thing that was all in the promotional material, and the main reason so many were hyped for this game. This game introduces Mega Evolution. Some special Pokemon when held a stone, can mega evolve during battle. Basically they go into super saiyan mode, their stats go up, their design changes. However this only happens during 1 battle and the Pokemon reverts to normal when the battle ends. It’s really more of a form change than “evolution”, but evolution sounds cooler. Back when this was first introduced, I thought it was just a cool but just okay gimmick. Yeah it’s cool to see popular Pokemon like Gardevoir or Lucario get new forms but meh, I would rather see permanent new evolutions or forms. Thankfully we kinda got that in the next generation with regional forms, which is something I really enjoy by the way. But after generation 8 introduced Gigantamax, and Scarlet and Violet is introducing uhhh what do you call this shit… It should be named Crystallization, that’s such a easy way to say, uh it’s Terastallization, stupid fucking name. Anyways after Gigantamax and Terastallization, I kinda miss mega evolution. Gigantamax just feels like “duh, what if Pokemon became really big” and Terastallization just feels like “duh, what if Pokemon became erect I mean hard I mean a rock or crystal”. Mega Evolution looks more cooler and is a cooler concept, and the new forms of all the mega evolution (minus Garchomp) looks badass as fuck. God bless Ampharos with the Fabian hair. But then again… I read somewhere in interviews Ohmori or Masuda felt bad because only a select few Pokemon got special forms with mega evolution and the rest didn’t, so they wanted to introduce a mechanic where every Pokemon can change form and become special. This resulted in Z moves, Gigantamax, and Meth. I agree with this kind of sentiment, hell there’s poor Flygon not getting a mega… This sounds like a good idea on paper, but the fact they gave special Gigantamax forms to classic fan favorite Pokemon like Pikachu and goddamn Charizard, kinda beats the whole purpose doesn’t it? I don’t know, I have mixed feelings about Megas. It’s a cool mechanic and feature, and I enjoyed using it in XY and more in ORAS with the newer forms but I wasn’t too sad when it was deleted in gen 8 unlike the national dex. I don’t know how competitive Pokemon players feel about Megas, is it bad or good that it’s gone? But for me, I feel no strong attachment to Mega Evolution honestly. Part 12: Music I also want to give some praise to this game’s soundtrack. This review has gone overtime anyways, might as well talk about this. Pokemon has never let us down with music, and this game didn't disappoint us either. But they could have. After all, this is the first game in the series that doesn't use in-game video game soundfonts for the music. They used digital original music composed on a synthesizer or with real orchestra for the first time and put it into the game, so it’s realistic music instruments being used in a mainline Pokemon game for the first time. Since this was Masuda and his team’s first work on such a new platform, they could have been uncomfortable with the new work environment. But, they didn’t let us down. Like this game’s soundtrack is amazing and super underrated in my opinion. While the rivals may be the worst in the entire series, I thought their battle theme is the best in the entire series. Also, even though I have never composed music so I may be talking out of my ass here, one of the limits of video game soundfont music is that you can’t play soundtracks with long notes and slow tempo without having it sound weird because it’s technically a bunch of beeps and boops. What I’m saying is that parts in the tracks with long notes couldn’t exist in the older games. For example, this part in the gym leader theme, or this part in the rival theme or this part in Lysandre’s theme would have sounded bad in the older games. It seems Masuda and his team knew this about the new hardware and used it to their full advantage. I also appreciate there’s a lot of soundtracks that try to sound modern with crazy synth noises, but there’s also soundtracks that use a lot of classic orchestral instruments. Pokemon X and Y was the beginning of a new era too for the music of the franchise, and I would say it was a strong start. Part 13: Minor Things Lightning round about minor stuff in the games! X and Y have the fastest tutorial in the series! I might love this game just for this fact. I love how the game gives you the Pokedex, starter and everything you need at the beginning and you’re right off on your adventure right away. I think this was put in the game because some people complained about Black and White’s long tutorial that lasted till Castelia City. That’s great and all, but how the fuck did they completely backtrack this achievement with the next installment after XY? Ohmori, you don’t need to explain every fucking mechanic in the game with long drawn out cutscenes with lazy animation, Jesus Christ, I’m having first island flashbacks with the gen 7 games… I love the skates you get! Basically you can use skates instead of walking with the 3DS’s analog stick. It controls really well, and has a very unique different feeling from the classic bikes. You can also learn tricks, and there are routes designed with skate tricks in mind, it’s overall great. I don’t know why this was not returned in later installments. This game also introduced a new type to the series, the Fairy type. While I was perplexed why they didn’t go with a “light type”, after all dark type exists? But still, I liked that fairy type was designed to nerf OP types such as dragon and dark types, but was also used to boost the poison and steel type. Only complaint I have is why is Delphox not a fairy type? It’s literally a witch and uses magic-esque moves, it’s something from a fairy tale. I feel like they originally were planning that but they were worried players were gonna get confused because it was a new type. Trust the players more, Masuda! X and Y had the best online system period. I liked how the entire bottom screen was reserved for the online system. The UI is really well made and designed, it’s super easy to use, there is no bullshit confusing shit like C-Gear or Festival Plaza or Rotom Phone or fuckaphone. Simple, concise, and easy to use. X and Y had such a good online system, this was the only generation in my life that I actually tried getting into competitive Pokemon, because battling online with random people was really fun. It’s just a shame Game Freak basically abandoned moderation as soon as gen 7 came out, and now gen 6’s online system is just filled with hackers, and Nintendo’s probably gonna cut the service in a few months. RIP. Horde battles are a new feature. You can sometimes battle 5 wild Pokemon at once. This is a meh feature. Since there’s 5, the wild Pokemon usually have low levels, so it’s easy but super boring to get rid of them 1 by 1. Maybe it was just an experiment to see what players would think, and I didn’t like it. Riding Pokemon is a thing in this game, but it’s also meh! People have been asking for riding Pokemon since like gen 2 or something, and you can finally do that in this game. Problem is, you can only ride them in certain areas for limited times, it just feels like an experimental gimmick. Worst, that fucking desert section the Pokemon moves so fucking slow. Move your ass! At least they made it into a full feature in Sun and Moon, and perfected it in the Let’s Go games. Pokemon got new cries! Every Pokemon have updated cries and sound different from generation 5. I am divided. While I think generation 1 and 2 Pokemon needed new cries because they didn’t sound like animals due to them being 8 bit noises I think gen 3 to 5 Pokemon didn’t need new cries. And some were straight-up butchered. I really hate Kyogre’s new cry Also for some reason Pikachu only talks, it’s super distracting. That's the end of the review ain’t it? I think I covered everything… Oh wait. Part 14: Looker Post Game Rant I thought about skipping this part of the game for the review, but I think I should at least talk about it because retroactively this might be the biggest legacy Pokemon X and Y left for the series for the years to come. The goddamn Looker quests. So I mentioned how Pokemon X and Y have no post-game areas? Well, they kinda compensated us with something else, and that is a 3 hour long story quest that takes place in Lumiose City. You meet Looker, yes that police detective character that originated in Platinum who was completely forgotten in the gen 4 remakes. He signs you on a task to solve a mystery of crimes in Lumiose City. It sounds like a fun idea on paper, again. But, it’s executed terribly. First, the game makes you just aimlessly run around Lumiose City for a bunch of fetch quests. I haven’t really talked about Lumiose so might as well here. Lumiose City is impressive. It’s a huge city, and possibly the only city in the entire franchise that feels like a real city. Lumiose City looks like a real city, feels more realistic and looks better than Hau’Oli City in Alola, Wyndon in Galar, or Jubdead Village in Hisui. There’s just so much stuff to do, facilities, and NPC’s walking around in this city. It’s Castelia City upgraded. The problem is that there is no mini-map, and it’s a big problem. You get lost so easily, and a lot of the city looks quite the same, so it’s really confusing where you’re going Also it’s circularly shaped so you’ll go around in literal circles, there’s a shit ton of hidden alleyways, it’s the only Pokemon city where you can get lost in. Lumiose’s problem is it’s too big for the system it was on, it should have been on a system where we could control the camera and feature a mini-map so we can know where the fuck we are. Bottom line, it’s a mess to navigate through this place. Anyways, Looker makes you do fetch quests in this literal Minotaur labyrinth. You get lost so easily, and most of the time you’re backtracking to places. Worst of all, the game keeps making you visit old areas, just to see lazy animated cutscenes with hamfisted overly long dialogue. I’m gonna assume this part of the game was ghost-written by Shigeru Ohmori, because it smells of everything about the games he directed. We have uninteresting, bloated out dialogue cutscenes no one cares about. Also another trademark of director Ohmori: just like the future Zinnia, Lillieh, and Marnie, the main character becomes a side character and the story focuses around a different character, this time Emma. It’s some bullshit lazily written uninteresting tale about Xerosic of Team Flare trying to put her in a suit to mind-control her and what? There’s a reason why no one talks about Emma and have been completely forgotten by the community and the developers, she’s that forgettable and her story is uninteresting. And this whole Looker quest is easily the worst part of the entire game. It was only part of the game that genuinely made me upset and pissed me off while playing on stream cause it was so boring the game was frustratingly vague on where to go in Lumiose, and I had to backtrack to so many places for 3 hours straight. The reason why I talk about this part of the game is because it was an eye-opening experience for me. This Looker sidequest, would become the blueprint for the next 10 years in the Pokemon series. Think about it. ORAS tried the same thing with the postgame that was only made interesting due to the ending, the Delta Episode. Sun and Moon’s entire story became about Lillieh’s annoying quest about mommy issues. Sword and Shield, Legends Arceus will be filled with lazily animated cutscenes that drag on forever that you can’t skip which makes playing it a pain in the ass, just like X and Y’s Looker quest. This my fellow jerry cans, is the root of all evil. The seed that started it all. Part 15: What Would Pokemon Z Be Like? Anyways, back to the missed potentials. I talk about what a Pokemon Z would have been like if it existed. Another time, another parallel universe where different decisions were made and things went right. Pokemon Z’s story would have been more about Zygarde, just like how Platinum had Giratina and Emerald had Rayquaza. Zygarde wouldn’t have been some bullshit collecting side quest but a true legendary, a Pokemon that protects and watches Kalos’s eco-system from its cave underground. When Lysandre activates the weapon after capturing both Xernas and Yvetlal, perhaps Zygarde will appear and stop it just like some other green dragon legendary. The game would also expand on the existing content. There would be more new mega evolutions, like how ORAS added more. More mega evolutions for Pokemon that needed it desperately like Flygon. Instead of just the Kanto starters getting megas, it would have had the Kalos starters themselves get megas. Moreover, more clothes for clothing options. Both male and female get equal amounts of character customization. The Battle Maison at Kiloude City would be expanded into a real Battle Frontier. There will be more areas to explore in Kalos, sort of like how Black and White 2 expanded Unova. The story would be changed so the rivals have more stuff to do in the game rather than be annoying time wasters. They will have proper arcs. Lysandre would get more backstory and depth and will be written better. AZ will have more stuff to do in the story rather than just be stuck in prison. Diantha will actively participate in the story and help the player, sort of like how Cynthia did jack shit in DP but helped out properly in Platinum. Problems will be fixed. Gym leaders, Elite Fours, and champions will get proper 3D animations when battled. Areas like the Power Plant will be finished. The difficulty will go up. Either all gym leaders and Elite Four will use Mega Evolution Pokemon as their ace Pokemon, or at least they will use them in rematches. The level curve will be raised, so the game is not a cakewalk with the EXP Share on. Sigh… These are all realistic expectations, I just listed out things third games in the past did in the series. If they just invested 1 year. To make this game and release it in 2015 or 2016. If Pokemon Z was real, I think Pokemon Z could have been one of my favorite games in the entire series, and it would have proudly stood alongside Crystal, Emerald, and Platinum as third games that are the best in the entire franchise. But again, that is another world, another time, another life. Conclusion This review turned out a lot longer than I thought it would. I guess defending games that I think gets too much undeserved hate makes me talk a lot. While X and Y aren’t very good games, X and Y was a good blueprint. A blueprint for future Pokemon games to follow. Sort of like how Ruby and Sapphire might have been a mid game on its own, but it wrote the blueprint foundation of modern Pokemon in gen 3. I think the next game ORAS followed this blueprint well and became one of my favorite games in the franchise. Sun and Moon had some mistakes but overall still a refreshing game that stood on its own. A lot of people say X and Y was the turning point of the franchise, but I think I explained pretty well in the past that everything went to shit starting with the success of Pokemon Go and Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, NOT generation 6. What a shame this game has a really bad rep. I personally think this game is better than other first-new-console-generation games Ruby and Sapphire, Diamond and Pearl, and Sword and Shield. Ruby and Sapphire cause there’s more stuff to do, Diamond and Pearl because it’s not mentally cancer to play, and Sword and Shield because the game doesn’t rape my eyes. The biggest catchphrase of this channel is of course: lazy, rushed and cutting corners. While this game is an incomplete mess, I will say it’s neither of these 3 things. It’s incomplete but there’s a lot of work that got put into it so it’s not lazy. This game may be unfinished but there is still a lot of stuff to do in the game so it’s not rushed, and I don’t see a lot of cut corners. I guess what I’m saying is that X and Y wasn’t at least embarrassing to play. Despite being an incomplete game, paradoxically, it’s not an incomplete game if you think about it, at least compared to modern games. They didn’t cut out any old Pokemon, the national dex is still here like gen 5, all the major features such as triple battles from gen 5 are still here. There were a ton of new features to be excited about like mega evolution and Fairy type that were carried on to later games. Like it at least completes all checkboxes for a “complete Pokemon game” in my opinion which modern Pokemon games even can’t be bothered to do so. I think Kalos has a bad rep because it came out after the best Pokemon game that ever existed, actually scratch that, a series of excellent 4 Pokemon games. So, you cannot help but compare it to the previous games. Black and White 2 had the most content in a game ever in Pokemon history, and the next game X and Y is back-to-basics generation starting game. Of course this game won’t have another Pokemon World Tournament. Of course this game won’t have 2 regions. I don’t know about you guys, but despite it being 3D, Pokemon X and Y still feels like a classic era Pokemon game to me. For now, it’s the last original game in the series that has everything in the classic Pokemon formula such as classic 8 gyms 4 elite four, champion, standard rivals, villain team and boss, and Victory Road. Before the overuse of lazy cutscenes. Before the era of bad lazy overworld design. Before the era of barely trying. I guess the only thing we can hope for is for fans to make a really good rom hack, or a remake that fixes all issues of Kalos. I want Pokemon XZ and YZ for generation 10 or 11 if you know what I mean. But that will never happen. As we all know, ILCA is lining up Unova to pulverize and ruin, and Kalos will be up next after that. Faithful remake that adds nothing while keeping everything unfinished like the Power Plant same coming up in 2026! Hooray. Ah fuck, I gues I’ll see you in Pokemon Scarlet Fever and Violated Violet next.
