Is Pokémon Intentionally Designed to Waste Your Time? | Design Delve

My first Undertale playthrough is still fresh, I liked how REs are implemented there. Giving you multiple ways to approach the situation (including nopeing out immediately) always made them feel fresh

I feel Larian has spoiled me on random encounters. BG3 and the D:OS games have no random encounters and enemies don’t respawn.

They definitely should trim the fat from the main series games in terms of pointless cutscenes and text scrawl that doesn't need to put the whole game on pause. I definitely don't want to see the main series move away from turn-based, but I also don't expect that. What I'd really like to see is a similar quest system from ZA come to the main games, because the main series is starting to feel a bit empty since they moved to open world. Now there's very little direction and it feels like very little to do. They also need to re-introduce like, actual level design to traversal. ZA had this, and Scarlet/Violet are badly in need of it. I don't even care that Lumiose is "just one city". It's harder to figure out how to get to certain rooftop areas and courtyards than it is to get anywhere in Paldea. I don't know if that means they need to go back to defined routes, but they need to make traversal more constrained than just big fields for pokemon to wander around in between most of the towns, which are basically trivial to explore and traverse. This also makes regular trainers almost superfluous along with the lack of dynamic level scaling and the fact that they can no longer force encounters.

Bad jm8 take once again

When it comes to encounters, I do have one issue with field encounters. Making enemies hard to avoid in a game where slick actions controls usually aren't the priority, often leads to a situation where fighting at all feels like an opt-in sort of thing, rather than an obstacle to be overcome. I think my favorite approach to this was in games like Chrono Trigger, which sort of had field enemies at times, but also just had areas that were secrets triggers for fights as soon as you entered a certain zone. Some fights were unavoidable, and happened every time you re-entered a certain area, but the thing was, it's wasn't random, so you knew it was coming, and once you fought every encounter in a given area, you were basically safe until you left and returned.

Arguably the biggest time wasters in Pokemon ZA in order in my opinion: 1) Getting the Shiny Charm has the hard requirement of needing to do 1000 battles- you can get the Shiny Charm WITHOUT having to fill out your dex due to how the Mable Report Point system works, meanwhile doing every task EXCEPT for the 1000 battles will leave you 100 points off from Shiny Charm while the 1000 battles will give you 1000 points. 2) Dead while Mega Evolving. Also generally applies to mainly PVP, but your Pokemon faints just before it mega evolves but the animation still goes off, so not only do you have to sit through the mega evolution you also have a false sense of security thinking your mon is alive if you don't notice the HP bars to the bottom left. 3) Chasing to whiff. Generally applies to PVP, but when your mon attempts to do a melee attack you can't do anything else until it does- this leads to situations where you're watching your mon going and failing to melee your opponent for like 8 seconds while your just sitting there impatient- at least in the turn based when it fails it fails immediately. 4) The Rotom Glide. I get the why its not available immediately, but the fact there is no reason why I couldn't do so from the start feels very arbitrary and means when I do get it I feel more annoyed than anything. 5) Battle Royal Scoring. Fine when you do participate, but a waste of time when you didn't participate. 6) Forced Slow Running. Moments in the game where you can't toggle fast running for whatever reason (Trubbish Side Quest being the exception cause I thought it was a bit funny).

Also my goodness it’s nice to see Bravely getting a shoutout! Love a job system :D

I think I miss the random encounters because it removes that little mystery of seeing what’s going to pop up. Is it the rare Pokemon I’ve been searching for? Is it something I haven’t seen yet? Is it a shiny?! Or is it another bloody zubat. For post-game grinding etc it’s more convenient but I feel on the initial playthrough it misses something. In general as well, random encounters is a difficulty thing. To use the FF6 example, yeah it’s annoying but the puzzles have more incentive to solve them quickly and properly if every step might put you in a battle that wastes not just time but resources as well. Bravely Default 2 tied turning off encounters to a late game item which both used a precious slot but also ensured that you had already had the intended struggle up to that point, and I think that was a nice balance.

1:08 You want a horror movie where the moon with a face hits Earth? Go to Mr. Friend on YouTube. "The Moon Woke Up"

To answer your earlier question, as to why random encounters took so long to get rid of, I am willing to attribute it to tradition. Japan is a very conservative country and tradition is very important over there. "It's done this way because that's the way it's always been done" sort of stuff. JRPGs started out with random encounters because it was easier to work with and even when we moved onto stronger hardware, some games kept them in because it worked then so it should work now. Hell, Dragon Quest is such a successful series in part *because* it makes so few changes to the formula from game to game. It's basically comfort food, a reliable release that won't rock the boat and will remind the audience of the things they grew up with. Countries that produce JRPGs that aren't Japan did so because Japan did it and they want to be faithful. Simple as. As for why Pokemon in specific made certain design choices like the animations, I'd argue there are a few reasons for that. Number one is that it's a monster tamer. Monster tamers live and die on their monster designs and how much people like them. Making a show of it would (in theory) aid in that, dramatically revealing what monster you've found now solidifies its presence in gamers' minds. Pokemon sells ungodly amounts of merchandise off the backs of their monster designs so they especially would lean into imprinting the monsters into the gamers. Secondly, the need to grind up new monsters you catch in order to keep up with your current party, that's just normal game design. Most RPGs with progression will usually require you to expend time to catch up new additions to your roster. Fromsoft games do this too, just to use a recent and popular example. You're using a weapon and suddenly you find a new shiny one that you like a lot more. But it didn't come with any upgrades so you can either dedicate time to grinding it up or you can keep using the one you've been using all game. Pokemon mitigates this with the level curve, stronger Pokemon appear in later areas and require less grinding to utilize effectively. There are rare occasions where this isn't the case, grabbing a Bagon in Pokemon Emerald late game where it's around level 25 when your team is mostly 50-60 by that point would require a greater time investment than normal. Third, and this one is not one most people would really bring up, Pokemon (from a design perspective) just... isn't a good JRPG series. I've mostly come to this conclusion from watching SmithyPlays talk about the series but he brings up a lot of stuff that Pokemon outright does wrong in their mainline releases. Bad movesets, bad stat distribution, bad dungeon design, bad stories, even bad Pokemon placement, Pokemon as a series has been hard carried by its monster designs imo and, while I do enjoy the designs and the competitive scene to an extent, from a purely objective standpoint I don't think the series holds up well without the sheer skill going into the art department. They've phased out HMs because you needed to dedicate either two moveslots on several monsters or at least one slot in your party and one moveslot on four monsters in order to progress, which is immensely tedious. Only being able to remove them via a move deleter is frustrating because HMs don't get used up on use and Pokemon who have fainted can still use HM moves so you can't really softlock yourself by deleting the moves yourself. Fangames and romhacks usually fix these missteps in some capacity, such as making Repel and Escape Rope key items rather than consumables. Pokemon also has the luxury of being a kid's game therefore incredibly easy so most of the complexity needed for more significant fights are easily overcome by overleveling and utilizing the type chart, which I've come to implicitly know because I've been playing these games all my life. The EXP Share thing I'm more willing to defend, as you're intended to swap your lead Pokemon throughout the game rather than rely on a singular monster to avoid overleveling. Grinding is an option but it's not really necessary, I've beaten older Pokemon games in just two or three afternoons so time investment has never been an issue for me. Game Freak made the EXP Share a Key Item you can turn on/off to make the games easier for newcomers but I'd argue that the games are too easy now. There's such a depth to raising Pokemon between natures, EVs/IVs, movesets, stats, and the like that Pokemon is without a doubt the most complex monster tamer in the business but the games never demand much more than knowing the type chart in order to succeed. Again, romhacks and fangames are usually better in this respect, they're usually more challenging and often better balanced to make lesser used 'mons more useful.

Feel like that's true of all RPGS I used to love grinding to max level (I spent days on Destiny Island in KH1), and for the first 3-4 generations, I would always get all 3 Pokémon games and play them all the way through. But I just don't dont have the time anymore. I probably havent even played an RPG since Bravely Second or FF15