Pokemon Black & White: When Everything Changed

if I could sum up my thoughts on pokemon black and white in one picture if I could completely encapsulate how I feel about these games and how I feel about how other people feel about these games in one image it would be simmias sprite art from the games what emotion is that what is he feeling is he disgusted is he a bit uneasy is equally he looks kind of sick he looks very unsure does he know how he feels do I know how I feel no I don't think I do I don't know pokemon black and white are very confusing to me when I first played these games having previously been a Pokemon fan all my life having played starting from generation to onwards I found for the first time disappointment I couldn't put my finger on it but something about it just felt wrong I just wasn't getting the same sense of Glee and just sheer enjoyment that I got from previous Pokemon games i wasn't really old enough to have developed a critical eye at that time but i just knew that something was off as far as I was concerned I had just come off a generation for which I absolutely adored and put tons of time into I finished the whole pokedex in that game I played it for countless hours the internet wasn't really that readily available around the time of generation 4 so I remember going to the local library a lot to look up the scenery pokedex on Sarah B net so that I could finish it in the game because I was missing one Pokemon and I could not figure out for the life of me what it was it turned out to be much like who has a 1% chance of spawning from one of any four randomly generated trees it was a grind even before munchlax was the only Pokemon I had left I was constantly having to frequent the library and go back and forth and back and forth to you Sarah brunette and used the internet to patch up all these holes in the Pokedex and find all these Pokemon but I had no other way of finding ya it was inconvenient sure but I liked it I was good at it that's how much I cared about generation 4 that's how much it sucked me in when black and white were announced I was obviously ecstatic I was so ready to do that kind of thing all over again I remember when the games were first revealed for a long time leading up to that I'd been following this youtuber called Giga Titan who did Wi-Fi battle was on pokémon battle revolution remember that game and I was watching a video of him reacting to the announcement and he was just as excited as I was and he was showing off the front covers and talking all about it it looked promising these new legendary Pokemon looked cool they had this whole Connie Kim yang thing going on and obviously everyone loves that Crom because he was cool and he was black and you know and then as any other oh geez such as myself would remember the Pokedex leaked early and it was only then when I was following the first live leaks of the Pokedex as a little kid late at night on syrupy net that I experienced that little sinking feeling but before I get into that and my very complicated feelings on pokemon black and white give me one more minute of preamble real quick if you haven't seen my other videos on Pokemon X&Y and Sun and Moon respectively then know that this is effectively the final part of a trilogy if you're wondering why this is a trilogy and I'm not covering every main series Pokemon games and that is better explained in the X&Y video I'm not gonna lie to you like most other youtubers wouldn't tell you that those other videos are mandatory viewing if you want to understand this video but know that they are related and I'm gonna be referring back to them quite a lot and talking about things that I've said about other Pokemon games previously I think it would be great if you watched them it helped me out a lot because I haven't shoved any exaggerated facial expressions on 20 of my thumbnails so YouTube doesn't like me very much and hay is my first reference to them because in the Sun and Moon video I talked about all the things that I liked about Sun and Moon first because ultimately I disliked Sun and Moon and wanted to put the focus on what I thought was bad about it and did the exact opposite for X&Y and because my feelings on black and wire so kind of complicated I'm not really sure how to apply it that kind of approach here so I've decided I'm not gonna I'm gonna keep this a lot less structured no transitions or text on screen telling you what I thought was good or what I thought was bad I'm just gonna kind of talk about it as I go and a general idea of my opinion and how I feel about these games should form overtime without me having to be particularly explicit about it so we should probably do that pokemon black or white really change well I'm bad at intros and tight you can read the title stop being weird Darumaka looks like a used tampon and nothing else oh I did it you know I just did this like five-minute intro with all this preamble and the whole time in the back of my head I'll just like say say say I was waiting there is Darumaka looks like a used tampon I said it your mask more like you're done whoever designed this Pokemon you're done because I mean wavin is that no seriously what is that a latrine I can tell cry organ or cry cry I'm crying I'm crying right now is this Pokemon looks like [ __ ] question time what's your favorite legendary Pokemon mu2 pretty solid choice had a very good shown in the first movie he's been marketed very heavily Mewtwo's just kind of cool man very respectable decision what about the alga look at that design he's a dragon who has control over time that's an incredible concept what about green man on cloud how do you feel but how do you feel about green man on cloud wait hang on I'm not done you ready for this BAM blue man on cloud now these guys these guys are pretty cool are you ever play at a Pokemon game and you just think to yourself man I really want just a guy on a cloud in my team of course you do but the problem is that they only come in blue and green and maybe you're not feeling blue and green slow down Buster Brown is I'm about to change your world are you ready for this sit tight hmm brown man on cloud yeah I don't like the generation of five Pokemon designs very much I had to get this one out of the way for us because it's just the one that eats away at me the most this is a totally subjective thing so I'm well aware that this is all just a matter of taste but for me I think a large majority of the Pokemon the way introduced in generation of five just hideous and it's a weird one because at the same time generation five introduces a small cluster of the coolest Pokemon ever introduced Chandelure Galvan Chula krookodile cough aggregates bisshop manda buzzed god these guys are so cool and they're so well designed and it's just like what happened to the to view I'm very concerned for the all of this complaining that I've done it's gonna make some people hate me right off the bat but I just I have to get it out there I'm sorry if you like these Pokemon but if you ask me generation of five just got hit with the ugly stick again this is very subjective and very down to personal taste some I'm sorry to go on about it for so long but for me it genuinely did negatively affect my enjoyment quite a lot because I struggled to build a team in you know vogue because so many of the Pokemon as far as I'm concerned with just really really not nice looking and no I'm not angry about the ice cream and I'm not angry about the trash bag because my thing is for the most part I think what makes a good pokemon design or what I like to see in a Pokemon design is some kind of proof of concept right more often than not as long as I can see some kind of idea or concept at play behind the design of a Pokemon I can get behind it I like features are like a personality a lot of the Pokemon I dislike in you Nova are either ones where I really struggled to find the concepts at play or if I can find the concept of play then it's very very hard to decipher on a first look and I feel like if you have to look up what a Pokemon is supposed to be based on or you just have no idea what it's supposed to be based on until someone else tells you or you somehow bump into that information then I don't think is a particularly well designed Pokemon some exceptions can be made of course as is the case with all things especially if they're based off of things from like another culture that you're not familiar with that's fine yes a Pokemon being an ice-cream is a bit silly in that being a trash bag is a bit silly but I mean hey be it be it a pokeball is a bit silly you know being a hot dogs a bit silly at least I can tell what the ice cream and the trash bag are supposed to be Darumaka if you ask me is the pinnacle of this it's just a red circle with these hideous eyes and really no features or traits to speak of I found out the other day that apparently it's supposed to be based off of a Daruma doll hence the name and it's significantly better-looking evolution with domina tan but can you see that I absolutely cannot see that if this is the concept I think it's horrendously executed here Cray Okinawa is supposed to be a snowflake but again there's nothing to it there's nothing going on here it's just a shape and I know you're gonna say well it's no flukes just and you're absolutely right well done here's how piggy looks in your world god I am just toxic in this video I personally feel like so many of the Pokemon in black and white artists featureless or devoid of personality but hey it's fine I'm not gonna go on about it any longer I've gotten to talk about pretty much all of the ones I want to know I have forgot about you you are truly just the worst aren't you you are the pinnacle of bad Pokemon design you are not even a Pokemon you are just a thing you are literally just a flowing object is there anything worse than sickle if I don't think there is I've heard that sigilyph is supposed to be based on some kind of totem poles or something like that and I've seen pictures of the object in question a few years ago and I vaguely remember thinking oh wow that does actually look quite a lot like Sigler but that doesn't make it okay you could make a Pokemon based off of a camera and you could make it look literally exactly like a camera it could just be a camera with no extra features yet there is a clear concept at play there but it's still an awful awful design sigilyph is just a floating object with no features and I hate it there I'm done I'm finally done complaining about the Pokemon designs I know it's been 10 minutes but I just needed to get that monkey off my back that hideous red monkey with an expression that seems to speak to every emotion at once and somehow no emotions who designed you see me say who created you what have they done to you let's talk about the other big thing about these games that perks me a lot and that's the plot although it might be inaccurate to say that it's just the plot that bothers me is it's also people's reception to the plot especially when the games first came out it seemed to be a huge point of praise for people these Pokemon games have the best story that a main series Pokemon game has ever told I feel like you heard people praising these games plot a lot and I think maybe that's made me dislike it even more than already did the bar for best main series Pokemon game plot had already been set incredibly low and in fact the plots were pretty much non-existent in previous games the closest thing you ever had to applaud was why the evil team are doing what they're doing and why the legendary Pokemon had shooting laser beams everywhere I really think that in the case of black and white people were mistaking a focused on plot for a good plot pokemon black and white made much more of an attempt to actually have a plot and put the focus on the story of the games but that didn't mean it was good and it's a shame for me to say that because I respect the shift in direction that the franchise took in putting more focus on the story and the the angle that they came at it from had a lot of potential the story of these games are based around trying to answer a question that the fanbase had been asking internally the years now and I love that I love that they addressed an actual question that the fans had been pondering over and that question obviously was about the morality of catching and having in battling Pokemon is okay to just catch these living creatures and just have them fight each other kind of almost for sport it's a really interesting question and a very interesting dilemma to delve into and then it just turns out to be the most on the interesting thing ever for a long time the game seems to be playing to both sides there's characters in the game that kind of represent both sides of this argument the problem is that one of these sides of the argument is pretty much solely represented by Team Plasma oh boy Team Plasma are led by getss and they seem to believe in Pokemon liberation they think that catching and owning and battling Pokemon is cruel and they did they deserve to be free for all intents and purposes they probably have a very solid argument there's probably a lot of things to be discussed in regards to how ethical it is to catch and basically own Pokemon but unfortunately pretty much every time gets this or a member of Team Plasma talk this song plays so like as if it wasn't already enough of a tip-off that they were the bad guys from the fact that they are you know the team they're the the organization of this game and gets us by his dialog and appearance alone as somehow an even more obvious villain and Lysander from X&Y now you've also got this creepy Bond villain a steam plant every single time one of them opens their mouths the game seems to pretend like it's presenting a morally interesting argument to you and like it's gonna play both sides and give you solid reasoning for either side of the argument but it's totally not because it makes it abundantly clear to anyone over the age of three that these guys who represent this side of the argument the side of the argument that in the real world would be very legitimate of just the bad guys but it gets worse because they're up there gonna defecate all over the moral complexity of this game's plot way later on but before we get to that we need to open a can of worms a can of stupid cryptic green haired worms n is a character I I really don't know where to start with n he's the exception to the rule of evil characters solely representing the Pokemon Liberation side of the argument he's also super cryptic for seemingly no reason it's hard to tell whether you think he's a good guy or a bad guy from your first meeting but he's always spouting off about truth than ideal was and all this other nonsense that doesn't really mean anything truth and ideals are supposedly running themes of these games they are apparently represented by a Russia RAM in zekrom respectively but I don't really get how I don't see how this truth and ideals theme is ever really given any kind of meaningful context it's just like something that you hear characters talk about a lot but like I say it's never really given any kind of meaning or any kind of weight it just feels like they're just saying stuff and that's pretty much exactly what n does he just kind of says things to you that don't really mean anything maybe I'm missing something but I don't really feel like we ever get to find out exactly why n is like this I know that he has a backstory where like he was orphaned and grew up in a woods with some Pokemon and then get assists and claims to be his dad and then raised him to be like the puppet leader of Team Plasma and I guess that would mess you up as a kid but and this is just kind of conjecture on my part but I don't feel like it would make you weird in this way it would make you weird in some kind of way but it won't just make you so cryptic and brambly that this point is quite subjective I concede and if you disagree then I think that's completely understandable so that's just kind of my reading of the character I really don't think the character makes much sense or has ever really explained very well but if you don't agree then that's completely fine but if you want to talk about things that don't make much sense and aren't explained very well we've got to talk about that one line that one line in the game that really just bothers me so much in so many ways and that I think is just the peak of ends unexplained weirdness and not just ends unexplained weirdness but a lot of the unexplained weirdness around Team Plasma and that's when you decide you decide to ride the ferris wheel with him sure seems like a good idea he's not weird at all you get in the ferris wheel with him and then at the very top he tell he gives you this big dramatic reveal and he tells you I am the king of Team Plasma what king the king of team - your vague crime syndicate now had a monarchy how does that work where's the Queen where's anything why are you the king why do I care what does this mean to me when n tells me that he is the king of Team Plasma what does that mean aside from the opening cutscene on the home screen which most players just skip in the first two seconds anyway there's been no reference whatsoever to Team Plasma having a monarchy forever reason or having a king so when he tells you he's the king then I guess it means he's the leader but why not just say he's the leader right like why why is he the king there's never been a king in a previous Pokemon game in you have the vague villainous crime syndicates or teams so why now can you tell how dumbfounded I am by this and how silly I think it is it's just I just don't see the need for it what why is this a thing a statement like this that is built up so much just has no stakes or no meaning to you whatsoever because you don't know anything about the inner infrastructure of Team Plasma how it works you know King doesn't mean anything to you it's a dumb thing to build up in the first place but if he just said I'm the leader of Team Plasma it might have a bit of weight this might seem like a silly thing to criticize but I would like to remind you that you're at the top of a ferris wheel like this is this is the cutscene that they they go out of their way in the game to make you experience they're clearly trying to build this up like it's some kind of big deal and it is the frailest thing to me it is just the height of nonsensical melodrama that is everywhere in this game but hold on viewer I ain't done yet somehow after all this there is still one more fatal flaw with this game story it is the final nail in the coffin that they hammer in so obnoxiously at the end of the game the twist that everyone saw coming get assists and ends father-son relationship was a ruse all along and getss had just been manipulating in everything that n thought he knew was a lie and guesses had just been using him for personal gain to get power for Team Plasma and to try and acquire one of the legendary Pokemon so I said earlier that this game seemed like it was playing to both sides of the argument that it poses and that my problem with the game is that it's incredibly clear which side of the argument it leans to as a result of which characters they use to represent certain sides of the argument n was the only character who wasn't blatantly evil that stood for the side of Pokemon liberation shortly after he discovers gets as his manipulation the game just kind of ends and you don't really get to know where he stands anymore even if he still stands - Pokemon liberation then he's the sole non evil person who does so but it doesn't matter anymore he disappears the port is over it's done pokemon black and white asks a very interesting question is it okay to catch come on and kind of use them to your will are they happy like that and then it gives you the answer yep yeah it just is it's it's fine all of the people who thought otherwise are irredeemable bad guys there you go moral ambiguity moral complexity get out in regards to gets it and ends characters and their motivations this twist does make quite a lot of sense because one of the few things that is made clear and easy to understand about n is that he can talk to Pokemon area some kind of way of communicating with them probably because he was orphaned as a child and grew up with Pokemon in the woods and it makes sense that getss would want to use that part of em to try and get to the legendary Pokemon for power because n can communicate with them the problem is that this twist just completely tramples over the point of the game any intrigue you had is gone you're just given the objectively correct answer and as a result of this twist I feel like people are gonna try and argue that n calls himself the king of Team Plasma because maybe that's kind of an overblown title that gets this gave to him and he gave him these kind of delusions of grandeur to further his manipulation but to that I'd say well it's never really explained or honed in on in the story at all so that would be a very subtle piece of storytelling that they'd be doing there and judging by this twist at the end I really have no faith in them whatsoever to be doing subtle storytelling here it's such a shame to see such a complex and interesting talking point with so much potential just be so truly and utterly squandered the game concludes shortly after this twist and all the characters who had been telling you all along that Pokemon are ok battling and doing whatever you want them to do they're just kind of like [ __ ] I guess we were right all along that's that you know like it's not left open-ended as a question that you can ponder after the game is over there's your answer that's why I hate the plot of Pokemon black and white it's not like there's any reason really given to why Pokemon should be liberated other than a bunch of characters just kind of telling you that they like it and I guess maybe that's true and maybe I shouldn't really be mad about that but to me it just paints a very strange world of very strange masochistic creatures that I'm not sure I want to go back to anytime soon it really weirds me out to think about like the fact that they gave us an answer isn't necessarily the worst thing ever by itself it's just how ham-fisted it was done and as I mentioned earlier I'm probably not actually as frustrated by the story as it seems but it's a combination of the story and the praise that it got so many people praised black and white for having the best story of a Maine Pokemon game and even with the completely bare-bones stories that were told in the previous games I actually still don't think that was true by the time of generation 5 final final thing I'm gonna say in regard to the plot is if you're one of those guys who's like what is a game for kids why does it matter that much you know the plot isn't a big deal so that I'd say why did they try then why did they try in the first place and additionally I'd say that just because it's a kids game that doesn't mean they have to be pandered to maybe some kids would respect and appreciate being treated like they're smarter than that maybe they don't want to be spoon-fed the answer and maybe telling a genuine story with some moral ambiguity and some emotional depth would actually do quite a lot of good for their development as people I don't like Pokemon black and white story that much should be obvious by now but I do respect it this video is called pokemon black and white when everything changed and it's caught that for a reason I loved Pokemon generation 4 I lost generations two through four have said as much in previous videos but I will say that when I finished generation 4 I was kind of pining for something new I think most people would agree that for the first four generations Pokemon was playing it very safe the direction that they took for generation 5 was significantly bolder than anything they'd ever done before and I think you kind of have to respect that focus on story is not an inherently bad thing with a Pokemon game obviously I don't like the end result in the execution but I really admire that these games put a focus on the story and tried to accentuate a feature of the games that hadn't really been honed in on before whether I like it or not the story was given the time of day and that was fresh additionally black and white introduced the most new pokemon of any previous Pokemon game 156 that's a lot and while I've complained about the Pokemon designs a lot in the video I was actually discussing my thoughts on black and white on Twitter with someone not long ago and they said something that on the surface seems really simple but something that just kind of never occurred to me and something that kind of changed my mind on things a little bit I was talking about how I find quite a lot of the designs to be pretty hideous and I thought across the board for the most part of black and whites designs were quite bad but the guy said in retort that it stands to reason that you're not gonna like some of the designs because they've never introduced this many new Pokemon at one time and yeah like I say it's so simple that I kind of can't believe that it never came to my mind but yeah I guess that is fair enough when they're introducing this many new pokemon you're bound to not like a few and righted I dislike more than a few but then you know they have a bigger sample size than ever before and I still respect the approach that they took here I really love that the only Pokemon you can encounter in these games are the new Pokemon there's no playing UPS in nostalgia which has long been a curse of the main series Pokemon games I've complained about nostalgia baiting in generation six and seven before but generation 5 is absolutely not guilty of that they are very bold games that wanted to try and take the series in a different direction and like I say whether I like the execution or not I kind of have to respect that it was for all intents and purposes exactly why I wanted until I played it well wait actually hold on I'm not about to let these games off the hook for nostalgia baiting just yet there is one weird little thing I've noticed let me ask you a question what's your favorite rock type Pokemon who evolves at level 25 and then again by trading Geodude right or is it maybe rock and roller it's not the same level in this example but who's your favorite of fighting-type pokémon who you catch early on in the game is mono fighting type evolves in their mid-level twenties and then again by trade is it Machop or is it timber who's your favorite back Pokemon who you catch in basically every cave in the game especially in the early ones as a Zubat is it we're about all very very suspicious Game Freak for the record I don't actually class this as a nostalgia baiting it could be a weird coincidence I think there's a few too many of these Pokemon that I like very similar in concept and design and their evolution methods two ones of previous generations for it to just be a coincidence but is also not that bad I think it's probably likely that they just kind of went back to the well a little bit and you know it's not great thing to see but black and white is still a hell of a lot less than Estelle juh bent than other games so I'll let it off here you get off free this time gin fibers this might seem like a weird comparison at first but I really view Pokemon generation 5 as kind of the last Jedi of the Pokemon franchise both were additions into long-standing series that were bent on change a lot of Star Wars as predecessors before the last Jedi were bent on focusing on the past and kind of rehashing a lot of the stuff that had been done before especially in the case of the force awakens and while Pokemon wouldn't really start badly playing up to nostalgia until after black and white black and white was very much still a bold direction that said forget about the past this is the present I really respect the approach of both of these things I wanted to like them so much I remember seeing the last Jedi and being so ready to love it because of how adventurous it was being and then being so miffed the in my opinion greatly botched execution and that's pretty much how I feel about black and white as well I really wanted to like it because it was trying to be different and daring and new and then I just had so many issues with it and it's sad because I really really wanted to love it it's funny that I should bring this up because if you've seen the X&Y video then you would have heard me talk about how on paper considering everything I've said about Pokemon before it feels like X&Y games that I should hate but games that I actually wound up quite liking and I feel like the exact opposite is true for black and white black and white doesn't really do anything that I've complained about in regards to X&Y or Sun and Moon you know it doesn't nostalgia bait it doesn't really hold your hand too much crucially because of much less intrusive characters than say Sun and Moon the games do feel like an adventure which is something that I said in the X&Y video is to me the most important thing for a Pokemon game to nail that is something that I can give to black and white they do feel like an adventure because of this bold and different direction black and white to me is when everything changed with the Pokemon series in my opinion I don't think they ever really played it as safe as the first four generations again I know a lot of people criticize generation 6 of being very safe and very say me but does that I'd say well they did have the whole job to fully 3d to think about as there was there was quite a lot going on there and yeah there is a lot of nostalgia baiting and playing it kind of safe but I don't think it's that bad there was some interesting plot related stuff going on I think it was a decent amount of focus on an actual decent and interesting plot even if it was kind of not really fully fleshed out mega evolutions were a pretty big deal even if I don't love how they were handled and then of course Sun and Moon it it played it safe in a lot of ways it really did in a lot of ways that I don't think people really talked about but you know getting rid of the gem system and getting rid of hate gems was a pretty big deal but I don't think any games prior to black and white had really made changes that big I do think that the series has changed since black and white not hugely as a whole but as far as Pokemon games go you know games that are infamous for kind of doing the same thing over again is sticking to the formula I'd say they're pretty seismic in comparison I mean aside from this renewed focus on plot and the entirely new cast of Pokemon who are the only ones you encounter look all the other new and exciting things that black and light brought in rotation and triple back but these other two changes were like a pretty big deal despite not doing much of any of the things that I've prettify X&Y and Sun and Moon for black and white does a lot of small little things that just kind of continue to bother me previous Pokemon games took place in regions that had interesting geographies and shapes that made them look like real places on a map you know vert is a circle additionally I don't love the region of you know burr and traversing it that much feel like a lot of it is just to cities and towns right am I going crazy and thinking that I don't I don't really think I can think of very many memorable locations and even the ones that were memorable like sake a studio city to me was kind of just a pain in the ass to get around I don't like castelia city very much I don't like a lot of the cities and the towns in the game and then aside from that what else is there there's there's two towers which like yeah there's twists Mountain Twitter mountains and [ __ ] right off pinwheel forest I don't know I feel like I'm having to reach kind of hard here I don't love the soundtrack very much I don't know if that's controversial but for me black and white has one of the least memorable soundtracks of any Pokemon game there's obviously a few good songs and areas the case with basically any soundtrack but for the most part I think it's pretty weak that's another subjective one though I admit another little nitpicky subjective one what happened to the the evolution methods and in particular the evolution levels of certain Pokemon why does de no not evolve for the first time until level 50 in the previous generation by this time you would have had a fully evolved Garchomp la Vesta doesn't evolve into Volcarona until level 59 whoa weird and random level philippi and roughly don't evolve until level 54 what gives you you can't even get them till right knee at the end of the game so screw your chances of using either of these guys on your team they evolved into pretty much undeniably in my opinion two of the coolest Pokemon in the game because of how weirdly late you catch them and how weirdly late they evolved you've got basically no chance of using the evolved forms of roughly Orville of B until like Victory Road and the Elite Four probably the earliest and I guess you could at the very least say that you would get to use them in the postgame and you know what that'd be fair enough both of these games have great very content filled very vast post games up there with the best in the series and that is a big positive for black and white that being said call me a Pokemon boomer but I'm just used to catching Sparrow early on in the game I get him to level 20 he evolved was fan there's fear oh and then nowadays in this game I can't catch roughly until like five minutes before the champion fight and he doesn't even evolve until I marathan the [ __ ] Lord of the Rings trilogy with him if there was some kind of in-game explanation as to why Pokemon and you Nova evolved so much later than in other regions I think that'd be really cool actually it could contribute a lot to some genuine world building but is that it just kind of is the way it is and it feels really jarring like I say Dino doesn't evolve the first time until level 50 and then if you want him to get to his final stage of evolution you've got a hit level 64 I believe that's the highest level requirement for any pokemon evolution ever right like even now to this day nothing's gone higher than that I'm kind of just like why I guess it's not inherently a problem because there has to be a highest requirement but why here why now is it the post game I guess the post game would be a fair enough X nation but like I say it just still feels very jarring what's up with this thing they do with the first gym this is like the definition of thinking so hard about whether you can do something and not about whether or not you should do something you always fight the gym leader who has the elemental monkey that is super effective against your start a Pokemon so most of the time you're basically forced to get the other monkey who is super effective against that monkey almost immediately making your start a decision feel kind of redundant 95% of people are just getting them out of necessity anyway because nobody wants to use them long term on a team because they're pretty lame and they kind of suck there's something about this red one I can't quite put my finger on it I think I've done it I think I've exhausted all of the critiques I have for these games before I kind of wrap up and address an elephant in the room I do want to give one last piece of praise to black and white a real glowing piece of praise and that's I said I've complained about the plot a lot but I haven't necessarily complained about all of the characters there is a character in pokemon black and white who is the closest that a main series Pokemon game has ever gotten to a genuinely complex and interesting character and if you haven't already figured out who it is it's cherry throughout the game cherán is constantly in conflict with himself trying to figure out the best way to make his Pokemon the best they can be does he have to be loving and caring like so many preach about or does he have to be hard-nosed and focused on optimization through training and watching his kind of evolution throughout the game his character arc right what a novel concept and how his thoughts and feelings change it's genuinely interesting and it's satisfying to see the conclusion that he comes to him and how much he learns it'd be so easy to just turn this character into the villain but he's just complex you know he's just interesting and he's far and away in my opinion the best character of any main series pokemon game and between this and one scene with Bianca in mombasa city the game does show the potential to have some real interesting and emotional moments and it's as I say such a shame to see all marred by this Team Plasma gets his nonsense that is going on I assume at some point during this video pokemon black and white to have come to I'm not gonna spend too much time on them but for obvious reasons I think they are worth the mention I didn't play them at the time of release because obviously I wasn't too fond of black and white it was the first time that I ever didn't play the follow-up to a main series Pokemon game by initially skipped black and white too and since then I've heard very good things and been recommended these games by a lot of people so earlier this year I finally got around to playing them I haven't finished them yet I just beat the fifth Jim they're better they are better than black and white in my opinion I'm just having more fun with them you know as much as I've praised having nothing but new Pokemon in black and white I've also said that I don't like a lot of them so having a lot of returning Pokemon in black and white - it's been very refreshing I can use a leg - buzz that's cool and while from what I've seen so far there doesn't really seem to be too much going on with the plot at least it hasn't angered me here like black and whites did I would say that I am enjoying black and white - more but I still wouldn't exactly say that I liked them I've say that they're better than black and white but I don't really think they fix a lot of the core problems that I have with the original black and white but then again like I say I haven't finished them so the jury is kind of still out I really didn't realize how controversial and opinion it was to not like black and white until a while ago when I was talking about it publicly on my Twitter and I just had quite a lot of people in my mentions disagreeing with me and that's fine I enjoyed the conversation I enjoyed the discourse I've enjoyed talking about black and white today because I'll say this I still don't like Pokemon black and white I don't I have too many issues with them but I can't I couldn't make a video about black and white like I did with Sun and Moon I'm I'm pretty confident that I could make a very solid argument if the Pokemon Sun and Moon just being bad games and I don't think I could make that same argument for black and white because you've probably noticed sorrowing theme throughout this video and that is the a hefty majority of my issues with black and white are very subjective and I totally admit that a lot of my problems are just opinions they're very nitpicky little things things that bother me personally sure but not a lot of things that I can really argue are objectively bad aside from maybe the story but even then that feel was very kind of touching go right I'm sure someone could make a solid argument as to why the story is in fact good and I'm full of [ __ ] it's honestly a little bit frustrating to not like these games because of everything they do right these were the last main series Pokemon games where the experience shared didn't completely break the game and it doesn't really set a foot wrong in terms of core gameplay and design I've previously praised two sprite animations that give the Pokemon so much more life I still love these they're such a great addition the season cycle was a nice idea I don't actually think it really affected very much or ever really came into play very much but it was a cool thing to see implemented regardless the way the trainers talked to you during the battle the cool little graphic the flash is up before an important bow there's a ton of cool stuff in this game and it's a shame that I don't feel like it could outweigh the admittedly kind of petty problems that I had with it because when I try and look at things more objectively I think there's just no way that I could possibly say that these games are bad just ones that don't do it for me do I like pokemon black and white though I enjoy pokemon black and white no not really but I do respect pokemon black and white and that's a hell of a lot more than I can say about Sun and Moon these games did take a very respectable direction to put it simply I think Game Freak had the right idea with these games for me the execution just didn't work so that's that pokemon black and white for me unfortunately kind of started this downward spiral for Pokemon I had my fun with X&Y but obviously had issues with it so I didn't moon as far as I'm concerned with dreadful I haven't really enjoyed a main series Pokemon game as much as I did generation force its generation 4 and obviously that wasn't even my favorite and thus brings an end to my trilogy of talking about the last three generations of Pokemon and how I think they changed things and how interesting I think they are to talk about in relation to one another as far as Pokemon is concerned I'm signing out well I'm not quite signing out yet am i I suppose there is something else on the horizon one more fish to fry one that I have very little faith in one that based on what I've seen seems to be an amalgamation of a lot of the things I hate about what the series has become but I will save my verdict for when I play it and I hope you'll look forward to the video in either November or December whenever it will be depending on how much time I feel I need to digest why it's played in the meantime I would greatly appreciate if you could like and subscribe and do all that crazy stuff as any youtuber would this was a very long painstaking video to make hey I mean if you enjoyed it then I'm like this a lot right I think all my other videos are more or less like this so if you join me you want more of me then come come get some more of me I'm on tap tonight baby I'm gonna stop talking now bye

Channel: Fudj

Views: 294,715

Keywords: Fudj, Pokemon Black, Pokemon White, BW, Gen 5, Nintendo, DS, Pokemon Video Essay, Gen 5 Critical Analysis, BW2, Pokemon Comedic Review, Pokemon Gen 5 Retrospective, Game Freak, Unova, When Everything Changed, Pokemon Generation 5, Pokemon Retro Review, Pokemon Black & White When Everything Changed, Pokemon Black and White Video Essay, Pokemon Black and White Critical Analysis

Id: TEbqWHaDZhs

Length: 39min 37sec (2377 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 27 2019