What Was Up With Pokémon X and Y?

foreign [Music] in 2010 Nintendo announced the successor to the Nintendo DS the Nintendo 3DS Nintendo's first fully three-dimensional handheld device that was set to come out early the next year needless to say the hype was real and fans around the world were immediately speculating in what beloved franchises they might get to see in three whole dimensions for the first time and at the top of that list of course was Pokemon but by this time the run of the Nintendo DS was far from Over the same year its successor was announced the fifth generation of Pokemon Black and White were released and introduced us all to the world of univa or better for worse a year after the 3DS was released we would also see its sequels Black 2 and White 2 as the final 2D installments of the Pokemon franchise I think the public was too busy complaining about the universe region to savor that fact but we'll get back to that hold your horses personally I didn't give a retardus patootie about the 3DS I was in high school at the time certainly old enough to care but they had no amount of hype and marketing could get me to care about stereoscopic 3D as a gimmick I've never been a fan of gimmicks like that and I don't think I ever will and while I knew a Pokemon entry was inevitable I generally considered the sixth generation to be the first Mainline game generation I would just skip so I didn't really give a single hoodoo about having any 3D in my DS but in the summer of 2013 my desire for Animal Crossing new Leaf was far too great and after so long of holding out I finally got myself a used 3DS that I could kind of afford it lasted me a couple years and now I have the cute happy home designer 3DS with Isabelle place that you could pry from my cold dead hands but this video is about Pokemon since I had the 3DS and I guess the money I was still in high school have no recollection of how I afforded most of this I pre-ordered Pokemon X tried to have it shipped to me had my order delayed a week because pre-order mailed to your door is a horrible idea and finally experienced the glory of callous for myself with the rest of the world fine time is marched on we've had more Generations coming after it and now we're looking down the barrel of scarlet and violet most of the fandom is regarded X and Y with a lot of disdain and sometimes even outright vitriol the vitriol used to be reserved for Unova again we'll get to that now I consider myself a massive Pokemon fan personally I've been playing the game since their initial North American releases that have never missed or skipped a generation in a remake I'm as they say a shill but I'm a shill because the franchise brings me joy in this awful awful reality we live in and I'm always able to grab some Joy from a game at least a little bit it's naive to think that I can be unbiased but it's because I want to find things I like to justify the use of my time and money all of this to say I don't hate X and Y I think there's a lot of Merit to them just as much as there are things I don't like so I'm going to dedicate hours of my precious time on this planet and your precious time on this planet making a stupidly long video talking about my personal opinions and judgments on what an arceus's Green Earth happened with Pokemon X and Y and a quick disclaimer we could spend days and days talking about the game's development pitfalls and cut content along the way but I'm not interested in what could have been we're going to talk about the game we got as it is live for now I will try to be brief before anything else let's talk about the story of the game it's generic Pokemon Fair we just moved into vanderville town in the Kalos region with your mom who used to be a star Rhyhorn racer because I guess that's a thing you and a bunch of neighborhood kids get invited to choose a Pokemon by Professor Frenchman McDreamy just to have I guess and travel he's not here to do it himself he's far too handsome for that these neighbor kids who will be your Rivals include Caleb or Serena depending on your own protagonist's choice an emotionless gifted kid who will die if they don't get an A plus in existing tierno a dance you cares more about the flashiness of his Pokemon's moves than winning a battle Trevor a non-binary nerd who'd rather be looking at Bulbapedia than being outside and Shauna and you know what Shawna talks about five kids being chosen for a journey but the professor only mentions and intends to give a Pokemon to your neighbor before hearing about your move to vanderville and being inspired by you not knowing the region and he only sends three Pokemon for a group of five which was intended to only be one but everyone got a pokedex it's really not clear what the plan was here I've got a theory in the works about this your neighbor doesn't give a Shedinja about the Pokedex and gave it to Trevor Shawna found out about Caleb getting a Pokemon and Pokedex and invited her yourself from our other friends from school because she's that neighbor kid who can't stand everyone going out and having fun without her and and Shauna stole a Pokemon these kids are the worst anyway it's time to take a take a gym challenge because you can and it's a Pokemon game and that's what you do work your way to Lumiere City to talk to Professor baguette do don't Google this man and here we're introduced to his bestest buddy Lysander what a guy what a pal boy golly gee sure looks non-threatening he's also a tech billionaire and CEO so he's definitely a cool and chill guy we can trust he's has some vague stuff about beauty that we definitely don't need to worry about right now and continue on our quest to explore on our travels we have various run-ins with team flare a bunch of pretty people doing crime like there's some kind of social media influencer we bet on Katy Perry Lady Gaga and Pitbull and make it to the bottom of Team Flare's base to find what Lysander who would have thought anyway he somehow got an old tree or egg or something and plans to destroy our life on the planet to make sure things are beautiful forever you know like a cool and mentally stable guy oh and also there was a war thousands of years ago fought with Pokemon where a dude tried to use the same weapon of mass destruction and no one seemed to remember that history books ever wild we learn all of this in the span of like 10 minutes and with one little Pokemon battle keeping this grown man from Simply overpowering a bunch of 11 year olds it's all over and France is saved and that's pretty much it it's Pokemon we don't come here for the story so let's start with the beef [Music] let's start off the discussion with team flare every Pokemon game has its team that tries to mess everything up for everyone else Team Rocket is a bunch of petty Yakuza thugs Team Galactic as if the Tesla company was run by a fusion of Rick Sanchez and kylo ren team flare is the all-flash no substance the grunt outfits are fine the theme is pretty fine there's something too offensive about them but once you get to the admins it all starts falling apart Pokemon games are no stranger to an insanely designed character but I think something broke with the character designers of this game were so many people of importance are simultaneously over and under designed that I cannot tell anyone apart or remember their names it doesn't help that their names are stuff like Zara's sick according to Bulbapedia all the admins names are from some kind of terminology relating to solar flares neat for a game meant for literal school children and their personalities are just evil not even Sinister just Batman villain level Evil cheesy forgettable evil speaking of cheesy forgettable evil let's talk about Lysander the Elon Musk of the metrosexuals the biggest thing I noticed while playing was that he didn't really have a big evil villain Battle Theme aside from a fancy intro lightsader's theme is literally the same as the grunts theme which is super boring and kills some of the dramatic tension if you ask me the flare theme isn't even that spectacular on its own it's mostly really repetitive and kind of sounds like a discount bloody tears but the worst offense of team play player is what they do for the plot when you think back on the story beats of X and Y what do you feel mostly cold and difference right even when you remember that the plot surrounded a dude trying to wipe out all life on the planet with a super nuke I know by this point world ending catastrophe is old hat for these games but Gen 5 at least gave us a little break from the high stakes don't you think this would be a little startling upsetting the answer is no because it's so Grand bowl over the top that we know it's going to be fine so there's no earthly reason for us to give a Dunsparce I'll give them this if you played X Life Center threatens to kill everyone but also curse you and your friends with immortality because Xerneas is sucking the life out of everything to give it to Lysander and his crew anyway it's kind of a neat twist and did rustle in a motion of some sort out of me when playing for the first time because being forced to be one 11 forever and to be 11 forever and roam a frozen lifeless world is actually a terrifying threat to consider but it still doesn't matter in the end the 3DS was an exciting new console for Nintendo a fresh start with a foray into a whole new handheld Direction kids who were born when the original Nintendo DS came out were now old enough to read and play games for themselves finally a whole new wave of children to indoctrinate I'll cover this a little more at different points later in the video but X and Y was very transparently made for the new waves of children to be introduced to Pokemon they wouldn't easily be able to experience the originals because the game going Game Boy Advance are both obsolete now and the cruel passage of time continues to march on it differently without us well there's probably a whole Myriad of reasons other than just the new kids but this is the generation that began all the constant Kanto Throwbacks there isn't too much to all of these so I'll just give you a general Quick List Pikachu's Original Cry is replaced by ikoyotani who provides his voice in the anime santaloon forest is a copy of the map of Viridian Forest Professor Makati gives you the option of the original Kanto star starters at his lab the three conto starters receive Mega Evolutions A Gifted Lapras from someone who can't take care of it anymore Snorlax blocks the way and you can wake it up to battle with the pokeflute Mewtwo being encountered in a lone cave in the post game the legendary birds being encountered in the post game Charizard after doing pixel art for nearly two decades probably more considering red and Green's long development time I'm not gonna give too much over the Developers for not being incredibly familiar with 3D art Direction but I will say it's lackluster at best the 3D models do provide a constant movement in battle that's very satisfying it makes them feel more like active living creatures but my Arceus for a game with themes obsessing over Beauty the colors in this game are so washed out it's not quite as bad as I remember but gold and silver are more colorful than this game the environments themselves are so interesting and fun to explore if the color was more saturated they could definitely have rivaled Universe maps you can also argue that the transition to 3D was the beginning of a lack of artistic Direction in the Pokemon series especially with environments the assets are all pretty generic their ideas were all over the place with characters lines too some characters just look like people well there's like anime monstrosities and all that blends together into something that does not stay in your memory especially when the over-the-top designs are used for characters like Olympia remember Olympia remember that there's a psychic type gym in this game remember Anna Star City and his giant Sundial that seemed like it was super important because the game stopped everything to show it to you and then they never did anything with it despite the Sundial looking eerily like a mythical Pokemon they released later and you know what we will get to that later hey have you noticed that despite being a game on a much more powerful system most of the Overworld trainers look absolutely nothing like their in battle artwork you know what let's go over every gym leader and League member and review them in detail for the sake of thoroughness a photographer and bug type trainer with her Jim's main function being a gallery for her work but underneath there's a horrifying spider web with several children trapped inside and a bottomless pit below the Dew was the only thing keeping you from being trapped alongside them what Horrors hide behind her Hollow eyes and Karen haircut one of her two Pokemon is a surskit for some reason of course Mr Sportsman graded every sport as the black guy man's got rocks in his hair and uses fossils that's about it I guess she's important because she's the Mega Evolution guru's granddaughter or whatever and teaches you how to use Mega Evolution but she looks like she belongs in an early 2000s sitcom from when everyone was super into rollerblading she is too Lucario and don't use any of them or Gym battle and one of them likes you more than her how did this old man get up here this entire gym is based on climbing and swinging on ropes how the heck did he get up here is he trapped does he need help or is this his Fortress that he protected this giant scissors fine Grandpa keep your secrets Dexter's Laboratory the anime and also a quiz show that takes way too long she's from The Johto region and her signature Pokemon is sylveon linking her to the kimono girl to record cheek and their focus on Evolutions I understand oh [Music] okay okay change of tone on a replay of this I learned I actually love bull Frick and it only represents the ice type when you challenge him in his gym he talks about the strength and fragility of ice and how it's a delicate balance he seems like a kind of Drayden type on the surface the huge old dude who's gonna be tough and Stern but when you first meet the freaking Pokemon Village he has a rapport with all the wild Pokemon living there to the point that they trust him when he says you're a good one and come running back to say hello and give you gifts he's a big strong dude but he's also very gentle just like ice type Pokemon beautiful also she's part of Team Flair in the newscaster but it's never really mentioned until the post game and oh God I was the same dreaming don't get them songs Yo God this is such a waste of water where does it drain to weak strap quick straw we extract I can't tell if she's a nice grandma or the most passive aggressive person on the planet queen queen she has the brain cell but it's all about the aesthetic of it all she uses Goodra Queen [Music] I need to take a quick detour to talk about him the man who instigates the entire plot of the story the most incompetent academic you can come across in the entire series and most importantly the greatest French stereotype in the history of print stereotypes Professor Augustine Sycamore this man and studied under Professor Rowan the only Professor to get involved with the plot and actually get stuff done and learned absolutely nothing from The Experience Professor pretty man lists the entire plot happen he introduces you to Lysander who immediately starts talking about real upsetting ideas and our man of the hour just goes that's my buddy Lysander what a card I bet he's not serious about ending all life on Earth love that guy almost your Pomade shows off as a thriving social life and Flair for the dramatic like winning stages an entire Star Wars medal ceremony for you and your friends that weren't even around when the world was going to end in the middle of town completely stopping traffic I'll give it to him though yes I do deserve this medal but even after being an enabler for lysanders own pupil for Arceus knows how long this man Professor has the gall to give you a oops my bad after realizing the role he played in this what a French Legend all right let's talk about your Rivals I already introduced you to the general character of your four rival slash traveling party you've got Kayla Marcelina depending on the gender you choose for the rest of this video Let's just call him Caleb because let's face it Serena was the more fun option for the protagonist tierno Trevor and Shauna all of them suck and are the worst and I hate them but I hate Caleb and Shauna specifically to bring it back to Gen 5 the traveling party was definitely supposed to be the next step from Sharon and Bianca your childhood friends who are also going on their own Pokemon Journeys and both are different paths to self-improvement Sharon is constantly comparing himself to others the protagonist especially and takes his victories very seriously his Arc is all about learning to be comfortable with himself and improve based on Mutual trust and collaboration with this Pokemon over obsessing over the numbers and assigning so much value to Victory Bianca is a lot less goal driven than Sharon in game her levels are usually a lot lower than yours Victory is not her primary goal battling is incidental to her desire to see the world for herself and discover what she wants to do on her own both of their arcs conclude in the sequels where Sharon is now a gym leader and leads local Pokemon school and Bianca's Professor Juniper's Aid and helps new kids start their Journeys I love them they're great I can make a whole video just about them but this isn't about them the point I'm getting at is Caleb and Shauna or if Sharon and Bianca were cloned and something went horribly wrong in the process so just dull they're so dull Caleb is always stone-faced which is terrifying on an 11 year old and for some reason only holds the fact that you're also just some kid from vanderville town against you constantly as if it's weird that you've got a real knack for being a trainer if it wasn't your next door neighbor they could have made some interesting class commentary or something but instead it's just weird dialogue Shawna is always peppy and upbeat and ready to go to the point that she never has any freaking idea what's going on ever tends to show up shrug her shoulders and ask you to take care of the difficult stuff for her with vacant eyes that blink one at a time no thoughts head empty tyrano and Trevor are nothing they kind of show other things people do with Pokemon them be trainers which could have been interesting to explore further but there's so one note there's really nothing to say tierno is like a half a note he's a dancer and likes dancing with those Pokemon but it's something we never get to see and there's no payoff Trevor just wants to work on the Pokedex he's small and bookish and that's about it no one ever really has an arc Caleb's Arc is just getting out of your way so you can be the champion after watching you kick Lysander skull in Shauna doesn't really have enough she just shows up uninvited for all your major life events for the rest of your life and she'll be there when you die staring onward into nothingness [Music] the pacing of this game is so off at the halfway point it just becomes a slog and I can't entirely pinpoint why stuff like the callus power plant and the Pokeball Factory seems so incidental I don't feel like I'm exploring anything I'm just doing more battles so I can progress in the story the addition of ride Pokemon segments are really neat but they don't really add anything you move super slow across a flat area sometimes turning to get around a rock or something and sometimes you'll encounter a Pokemon it's definitely neat as a Proto example of ride Pokemon in alola in Hisui but it's really lackluster and frankly boring in this state replaying this game is hard just like emotionally a while ago I played through the whole game as a friend who hadn't ever seen callous before and it was fun when we could talk about everything going on together but then part way through that playthrough I remembered I had another replay of my own I could finish I saw that was at the Pokeball Factory again and just put it back down I just did the Pokeball Factory segment I had no patience to do it again without the fun of talking about it as I played and that says a lot about how the game feels I think we can't talk about the gameplay without also mentioning the experience share and the huge buff it got in this generation that stuck around through the rest of the franchise as anyone who is angry enough of you innocently claiming the feature was something new at the time can tell you the experience all was an item in the original first generation the split up experience gained among your entire party that was activated by having the item in your bag it was a horrible little item that gave absolute beans to your team to get near the end after collecting a certain amount of Pokemon for the Pokedex the second generation introduced the concept of held items and with that came the experience sharers we generally knew it a held item this was part of the experience gained by the Pokemon in battle with the Pokemon holding the item over time it got a little better calculations got a little more forgiving and what have you the experience share in Generation 6 pretty much reinvented these experience all from gen 1. it became a key item you can turn on and off the distributed experience throughout the party with the Pokemon in battle receiving the most while everyone else gets a slightly lesser percentage but a still large amount compared to the original experience all all of this is a long explanation to say that the new experience share was unbalanced and made the game ridiculously easy like B10 levels above the champion even when using it sparingly easy being able to turn it off is a huge Plus for the people that wanted to work for it but the experienced tweaks they made in this generation made it just as easy to gain levels all the time one of the game's big criticisms even at the time is that it's way too easy it makes sense it's meant to be an introductory game for the new fans and definitely aimed at a younger audience but it's where this conversation now about difficulty in Pokemon games started every generation before 6 was pretty difficult and a real challenge to beat Black and White 2 even introduced an extra hard mode option on top of being one of the most challenging Pokemon games for my greatest and final beef let's talk about my greatest disappointment with this game is this potential the extra installments will many view them as Superfluous I really value because they usually take the original experience and improve it in some way usually multiple ways they build on what they've already made to make a usually new and improved experience my go-to example will always be with Sinnoh my favorite Generation Now jam and a pearl are absolute ghastlys of games and remind me a lot of X and Y actually the original Sinnoh Pokedex is bad with most of the cool new Pokemon only being available in the post game so you can't really use them the plot is vague and boring there's 50 legendaries with the same boring encounter music so they don't feel all that special and there are a lot of events that the West just didn't see we didn't get Shaymin and Darkrai and nobody in the world got the Arceus event but then came Platinum Platinum came in and improved Pokedex massively letting us use all the crazy new Pokemon they introduced and pumped up the plot with a lot more involvement new characters and enhanced Aesthetics in a lot of areas like the Team Galactic buildings Giratina got a huge push-up for being a random crazy legendary and amazed to something terrifying and really really cool the Distortion world is an amazing concept to include and I don't think anyone would disagree with me Platinum also gave us the Rotom forms if you've participated in a special event it really made Sinnoh memorable and iconic Platinum is my number one favorite Pokemon game because of how much it changed the feel of Sinnoh to something more exciting and fun and Kalos never even got the chance all of the makings of a third installment were there we have Zygarde which was obviously meant to play the Giratina role in a third installment and do a lot more instead got shoved into sun and moon where it became an incredibly forgettable collectible there's hints to Diancie all over the game I'm positive this empty room in the reflection cave where you encounter lots of Carbink was originally meant for her there's multiple spots like this too empty rooms tucked away or at the end of phases that was definitely meant for something we got a taste of hoopa an Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire but Hoopa wasn't immediately available that way instead we got the beginning of this awful Mystery Gift Trend where we do away with the fun exploration aspect of these Encounters in favor of just handing over the Pokemon with little to no Fanfare while the concept of exclusive events was annoying and made a lot easier by online Mystery Gift the events of gen 3 and 4 remain memorable because of what they add going to Birth Island or far away Island for deoxysm you were big events you got to travel and encounter the Pokemon yourself Shaman was encountered by walking down a long passage of beautiful flowers where it waited at the end Arceus had you ascend a glowing staircase to the heavens with the highest peak in the region it were spectacles and they deserved to be it took until sword and shield for the games to really Embrace new stories as downloadable content but I really think they could have been done as early as X and Y with Pokemon like Diancie and Volcanion getting the legendary and mythical Pokemon used to be something special but now it's just a check of the list for collectors and it's lost that grandiose charm it's a giant shame there is some hope with the Isle of armor and Crown Tundra DLCs making more of the new legendary Pokemon they introduced though I don't think we'll be getting anything as simple as the old event encounters ever again but enough baby crying over what Never Was X and Y did a lot of great things that I love so let's get into the positives of these games there is some controversy with this Pokedex because it only introduced 72 new Pokemon at release the lowest of any region but that's because they filled the game to the absolute brim with Pokemon from all the past regions at 457 total Pokemon it is the largest regional Pokedex out there and the last time in the franchise we had the National Pokedex this is also the first game where Evie can be encountered in the wild and relatively early in the game to make it that much easier to raise your favorite Eeveelution unless you want me Fiona glacion Zorro and zorark are also available freely in the wild for the first time and can we talk about the Kalos mons we got some super iconic Pokemon creatures in this generation some crazy tight matchups a whole new Evolution the fairy type owns honka boo Gumi esper esper Diggersby do not interact I swear to Arceus as disappointed as I am with the color palette of the game the environments are Stellar they really tried to make use of the 3D Graphics to have some much more Dynamic camera angles which yeah they played with in gen 5. a lot of the routes are very uniquely designed in ways that are so interesting to explore Route 8 is always the first to come to mind it's a rocky maze up top and you can see the beach on the bottom with parts carved out and intersecting each other then you pass through on Brett town then you explore the beach below all of the caves are different glittering cave forces you to navigate a dark maze from Over the shoulder of your character until you get to the end Reflection cave has mirrors on the side so you can see hidden objects and trainers can see you from behind as your Bay is a vast chunk of C that's just for exploration presented to you just as you get the ability to Surf Route 13 is a desert with wind blowing in different directions affecting your movement speeds a Spooky Swamp the areas are so diverse and dynamic and fun to explore there's also more interactable environment objects that kept the strength puzzles from Gen 5 which were a very welcome change and added things like rock smashed rocks also been crumbling walls that you could bust down for further exploration you could walk through piles of leaves and they scatter and you find an item or a trainer not unlike soot Encounters in gen 3 one of the many Hoenn Throwbacks in this game foreshadowing the remix for the next gear and trash cans can shake with little rotoms hiding inside in an underground Punk Hideout these games really worked on the exploration side of their environments and you gotta love them for it also the music in this game slaps it goes so hard the crown jewel of this game if you ask me as much as Serena was all of our gay Awakenings it was a huge game changer to be able to make your character look at least a little like you sugar options were kind of limited especially if you chose some male protagonist because obviously boys don't care about clothes but it was a welcome Benchmark for the rest of the franchise even if it took until gen 8 for me to be able to have funky colored hair I wanna look like an anime boy game freak let me live my fantasy but all in all very gender of them [Music] wonder trade is a revolution a gift from the gods and it was introduced with this generation you send out a Pokemon and get a random Pokemon back from anywhere in the world this absolutely revolutionized online trading creating a system with all the thrill of gotcha with almost none of the cost and it was a fantastic way to fill up the national decks in a way that let you play the game for longer some people drop some fantastic mods in there too I currently have a shiny Dragonite named Pickle and a shiny Ditto named blueberry that I got in xy's wonder trade if they belong to you please know they are in a good and loving home it's also inspired me to repay the favor and when Pokemon go is Community Days I try to hoard a bunch of shinies to send them out in wonder trade on Pokemon home speaking of home I am disappointed with wonder trade being restricted to just home because it makes friends like Wonder locks so much harder to do and box organization on the mobile app is garbage I think the feature was best implemented in the game itself because it let people get really creative with it [Music] post game content that isn't some weird set of challenges where you have to rent someone else's Pokemon plot looker is here esper is here too so basically the post game is a wrap-up of team flare and all about helping this little Homeless girl Emma out of a really messed up Iron Man plot line but she's been testing this robot suit to earn a little pocket money but when she puts the suit on she blacks out and commits crimes taking notes yet feige it's up to you and my dad to help figure out what's going on in lumios and in the generations episode about it she kicks the esper which is tragic and horrible it's dramatic detective work and honestly really fun to explore a different kind of plot with a familiar face we haven't seen since Platinum when he was introduced every good Pokemon game worth its salt has a way for you to grind levels and make stupid amounts of money and a majority of games it was done with the versus Seeker sometimes just through the Pokemon ever poke gear or just trainers that are able to be rebattled over and over Kalos has the Battle Chateau and there's nothing quite like brutally destroying the French Elite and taking their money to make actual Millions while everyone cheers you on X and Y ended dragon type Supremacy long gone are the days when dragon types were special and revered and feared the fairy type is immune to dragon and is also super effective against it as well as dark in fighting and resist bug dark fighting and fire it's also weak to poison and steel which gives those types so much more to do now and make poison and Steel type moves very valuable to have on a team post fairy type I don't leave the house without poison jab on a party member anymore fairy types are perfect for that all pink aesthetic trainer who wants to wreck house once in a while aesthetic vampire Sylveon anyone Pokemon Emmy is a naming opportunity that the English localizers Galaxy brained on for the first time you can pet and feed your Pokemon and let it know how much you love it and by using the front-facing camera on the 3DS they can even track your head movements and play a little game where they want you to smile for them this mechanic later carried into other games and became necessary for affection a value different from friendship which is only Quantified in Gen 6 and 7 but still exists in Jenny will likely last in the series High infection has in battle effects like Pokemon dodging attacks healing themselves from status effects and holding on with one HP after taking a particularly devastating hit in battle Pokemon with an infection level over a certain threshold also interact with their trainer a little more in battle showing extra dialogue at the start with the model turning slightly to face the camera and look back at you it's precious and I love these creatures so much [Music] okay so that's my list of praise and my list of bummers but there's a few things that I want to talk about that have me feeling neutral lukewarm these are the honorable mentions your favorite Pokemon memes that aren't youngsta Joey and his shorts or is Rattata are from this generation why are you crying 3 000 years esper esper has done more heavy lifting for us culturally than any of you are willing to admit everyone say thank you esper social media has been blindsiding me with toddlers posting about how they're nostalgic for Pokemon when they were kids and posting Mega Evolution go back to preschool stop torturing me like this I've already said how I feel about gimmicks I tend to not go for them Mega Evolution was introduced mostly to balance out older Pokemon competitively and keep them on par with newer stronger Pokemon which is why Dynasty and Audino were the only Pokemon past Generation 4 to get megas instead I made it my goal to show up all Megas and defeat them without bothering besides you can only do it once per battling for a Max of three turns in that battle just give us new Evolutions instead speaking of battle gimmicks why I have no idea how I'm supposed to feel about AZ in terms of the plot he's the dude who originally built the nuke that Lysander tries to use it's a whole story about trying to revive his dead floette then it rejects him for killing so many to bring it back and I guess the machine made him Immortal so he just wanders the Earth until you slap sense into him and his floette finally comes back in the iconic scene and also he's 10 feet tall and never mentioned again the only thing Dave giving me is I think Mellie from Legend jerkius has something to do with him kind of maybe they seems kind of similar in looks you know I remember there being a rumor before sun and moon came out that the new games would have a portion in the sky where AZ people lived and the plot would be about that and then it just didn't happen at all I guess that's another idea that started and ended with X and Y there's this cute little Sanctuary outside of snowmobile City for Pokemon that don't fit into the outside world gather and take care of each other guarded by a mysterious Forest that turns Travelers around so little commune is so hidden away you could practically hear the vampires making out in the distance surrounded by ghosts and tricksters and fairies of all kinds that try to tear off wandering trainers tucked away in the very back as the saddest Pokemon of all the one who wants to be alone at all costs X and Y did have the first overt transgender representation in Pokemon this story has been passed along to heck but there's a beauty class trainer in the battle Palace who talks about how she was a black belt some time ago and it was quite the transformation innocuous enough but slightly different in Japanese the black belt class is translated from Karate King in the original Japanese and the beauty explicitly attributes her transpiration to Medical Science you go Queen there is a ghost in lumio city for no real reason just Dare for you to find and unrelated to the ghost girl that appears throughout multiple games when asked about it jinichimasuna denied it until he finally just went oh along with the bike the circle pad let you use rollerblades to travel with a burst of speed and navigate special grind rails to reach areas it was neat in killode City unlocked after beating the champion the Friend Safari is accessible every trainer is assigned a random type with a random particular set of three Pokemon available in that Safari and if you interacted with any of the real world person in the games online or locally in your friends list or not their Safari would appear for you to access with the accessibility of the PSS internationally this met people across the world were connecting just to swap their unique friend safaris to work on their Pokedex or get Pokemon with hidden abilities and even shiny hunt a one-on-five random encounter with some Pokemon only appearing in hordes callus especially had a lot of fun with the concept adding some extra fun details like Survivor zangoo's ganging up on the odd one out and Sudowoodo hiding among the Trevenant hoping no one can tell the difference Hawlucha a flying fighting type has a signature move called Flying press the first move to be dual type itself also being flying fighting type this is the first time a dual Type move has ever been done and to my knowledge it's the only time it's ever been done every Pokemon game has its fair share of strange Evolution methods and Kalos is no exception this includes but is not limited to Pangoro only evolving when Pancham levels up with another dark type in the party still Dion only evolving when it has two hearts of affection in Pokemon and me plus a very tight move in the evening's move set Roars and Tyrantrum both evolve at level 39 but Tyrantrum will evolve in the daytime while Aurorus will evolve in the night time heliolisque and florges evolve with evolutionary stones with heliolisk using a Sun stone and floor juice using a Shiny Stone sligu can only evolve into Goodra when it is over level 50 and the battle is taking place in the Rain the most infamous of all ocalo's is strange Evolutions Inkay can only evolve into Malamar if it levels up and the player turns the 3DS upside down I literally had no idea that natural formations were a feature until I replayed this game for footage and was looking up where to find an item apparently if you see something like a berry tree or a weird rock in the background you can use a very specific and short list of moves to get an item from them that you pick up at the end usually berries hard Stones damp rocks things like that I cannot recall any NPC that ever talks about this mechanic or any way the game bothers to actually teach it to you if you gain any knowledge from this video or at least make a net zero on anything it's probably that this is a thing so what does all this mean what am I getting at by going through all of this well we've looked at what X and Y are now I want to ponder why they are I've touched on it a little bit in my bigger rants but let's go a little more in depth just a disclaimer this is all wild speculation on my part just theories and ideas that get the little dead-to-day in my brain running on its wheel there's always been true with the series but it's been increasingly obvious in the 3D era that a new generation of Pokemon tends to be molded by the backlash of the generation that preceded it as much as Universe love and the obnoxious demand for remakes is strong now it wasn't always that way don't pretend we all love Gen 5 all the time they were the most hated Pokemon games for years and we can't act like it wasn't like that Pokemon Black and White were a huge overhaul and departure from the usual form of the first four generations in a lot of ways it was the first region to be inspired by a location outside of Japan if you don't count Pokemon Coliseum the New York City metro area it was the first game to really promote diversity of skin color and body type its plot was genuine and thought-provoking and the characters were fleshed out and brought the world to life the biggest upheaval in generation 5 was announced was that the Pokedex would be entirely new no old Pokemon would return in the unit of a pokedex you could find an older Pokemon in the post game and transfer everything from the older games once you beat the game but it was still a long journey with no familiar faces and I think that upset a lot of people even more so than the art style which people love to complain about even though it's circles were never new to the Pokemon designs they just didn't look like the old 1996 sugimori art anymore Pokemon was growing up it was changing and people were starting to realize that the franchise was pushing 15 years I personally always loved Unova I thought it was unique it struck me aesthetically in a way only Johto had before like something mysterious that I don't know how to describe the sequels remain my favorite map of any Pokemon game I adore how diverse and fun the Landscapes are to explore to this day I assert that black and white are the most difficult Pokemon games I know that people nowadays consider Ultra sun and moon to be the hardest but really it's just Ultra necrozma that's difficult black and white are rough from the beginning all the way to the end and it feels like such an accomplishment to finish those games but I think it's difficult to play to hand in how easy the Kalos games are you Universe for the competitive player the Challenger the seagulls even have a hard mode that you can unlock something no other Pokemon game has done before or since I've mentioned before already that X and Y are very much for the newcomers to Pokemon the kids whose first console might be the 3DS and that's why it's so easy univa is not for the newcomer little kids those games will crush them like sawato on the sidewalk sorry for the visual he's safe I promise maybe backlash the universe entirely new Pokedex also played a hand in the amount of new callous Pokemon being significantly less compared to the sheer amount of returning moms reminder 72 Kalos Pokemon out of a total of 457 in the Pokedex at release the old fans who are upset would maybe like it more if they had more of their old favorites to choose from I've already gone in depth on other Unova comparisons but I figured these points were also pretty significant to cover so then what about us the fans the Aging codgers who long for ye olden times when our mice were fat and we liked it that way gosh darn it X and Y were very hyped when they were announced all the way through release in 2013. more this game than any other Pokemon game Europe hearing about people picking up Pokemon for the first time in ages maybe it was because of the new console in the buzz about the 3DS maybe it was simply because it was the first Pokemon to be in 3D or maybe the same nerds and Geeks Who were kids when the first few games came out suddenly were adults with disposable income and could finally spend it however they pleased that year more than ever felt like everyone was playing Pokemon again at the time it felt great but I think it might have been its downfall all the dude Rose and what have you realized that maybe they were too old for a game meant for kids it didn't align with their interest anymore and that's completely fine sometimes you outgrow stuff but older Pokemon fans tend to get so clouded by Nostalgia and Dark Souls that instead they lashed back out the post-mortems most people did on this game have led to the rumors that sun and moon would be the last Mainline Pokemon games and that's not to say we shouldn't be be holding game freak in the Pokemon company to higher standards because my God we should be I just don't think X and Y were the greatest Defenders out of eight going on nine Generations they just can't all be the greatest experience ever but X and Y were the first Mainline games set for a North American holiday release a horrid little Trend that's playing the 3D Pokemon games the yearly holiday release in Japan it's really not all that new the game's usually released in the fall to be ready for the holiday season then it'd take another six-ish months to tweak and localize for a more polished release of North America and Europe X and Y changed that with the goal of having one date for a worldwide release October 12th and without that extra trial period isolated in Japan for bug fixes we were graced with a fair share of bugs and glitches most infamous being the lumio city glitch essentially until they released a patch sometime after release via Wi-Fi if you saved your game inside lumio City close the game and booted it up again which is very likely the area would load properly and you wouldn't be able to continue the game actual yikes when I tried to talk to people about these games a lot say they dislike the callus region and then admit shortly after that they've never even played it enough time has passed already for it to be some folks first Pokemon game that they're able to post extensively about online which I think I have a unique perspective because I started the Kanto which does not fall in line with most people in my age group and I grew up along with the series I'm always going to be biased when it comes to these games I adore this franchise and it's little creatures and it's brought me a lifetime of Joy both in game and away from the screen I'm gonna give every game the benefit of a doubt and find something I enjoy in it because I'd much rather do that than be mad on the internet I'm not going to tell you that Gen 6 is the best actually or that it truly is the worst or worse than you think but I do think it has value that the general public doesn't give it enough credit for and if you're going to criticize some thing I think it's an important thing to consider what did you enjoy from this experience what are the things you will remember I'll always fondly remember the absolute Delight in seeing esper for the first time and how much I loved my meow stick leaving my 3DS on to listen to the music and snowball City in the Mewtwo fight and how powerful I felt defeating dianthus Gardevoir without using Mega Evolution My overall point is that complaining is fun and it gets the clicks but don't forget to let yourself enjoy things once in a while foreign thank you so much for watching this video I have some links up here for other social medias you can follow me I recommend following my twitch where I'm streaming a couple times a week you can chat with me and hang out and talk about whatever if you made it this far into the video tell me your favorite Kalos memory thank you guys have a lovely day [Music]

Channel: Hoork's Place

Views: 142,301

Keywords:

Id: 8imGFZBkEjo

Length: 47min 14sec (2834 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 11 2022