God, I wish Nintendo made the Pokemon games, because then they might actually not be ugly, terribly optimized garbage. Nintendo owns a minority share of The Pokemon Company, which is also owned by Game Freak and a company called Creatures. Each company takes care of different aspects of the franchise. Game Freak still does all the game development, and I wish they wouldn’t because they obviously don’t care about the franchise anymore and haven’t for quite a while.
The fact they put ILCA on BDSP (and how abysmally that turned out) was the nail in the coffin for me for trusting Pokémon games to be of any quality. SwSh was close, but that told me The Pokémon Company will pump out literally any dogshit they want and people will still buy it.
Developers put in charge of BDSP. Before Pokémon, their work was all extremely minor support for much bigger studios. So for example, if you’re a big AAA studio and you want to save on precious development time, you might contract out a dozen studios to do busywork, and one of those studios might be ILCA. For example, two people from ILCA are credited in Yakuza 0, but this is as “Casting Cooperation”. Their most major game they’d actually worked on themselves before this was Pokémon Home.
So essentially, you’re taking a small company where 95% of their existing work is as a supporting role to do relatively easy work for other major studios, and the other 5% is Pokémon Home, and you’re telling them “Okay, now remake Diamond and Pearl.”
I feel like there needs to be a bot to generate random sets of words from unexplained acronyms. I’m pretty sure the Google result for ILCA is not in the gaming industry.
Edit: ‘ILCA’ is the full name it looks like, recommend adding ‘studio’ or ‘games’ to that search tho, unless you’re looking for the International Lactation Consultant Association. Stands for “I love computer art”.
But… they don’t. Their games are old the minute they’re released. Sure they have enough bare minimum charm to wow the masses, but when you truly take a skeptical and honest eye to them compared to many other games, you realize how lazy they are with the copy/paste approach most of the time, inability to add basic common niceties of modern gaming, and generally lacking worlds that feel unfinished.
If it weren’t for the IP name recognition, most of their games would be panned as meh.
I maintain a stance that the only reason they’re still around is because of brand recognition. Literally the only reason I could think of anyone liking their slop.
Basically my stance. Do I like all the anti-competitive crap they pull? Absolutely not. But they do still make and/or publish most of my favorite franchises. This isn’t like, say, Microsoft or Google who bake their evil directly into their products.
It’s possible to acknowledge that yes but no they don’t make good games, just half-assed rehashed entries in the same 4 tired series they’ve been pumping games out of for decades
Hard disagree. I really enjoy a lot of Nintendo’s games, and will be buying Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom right around release. Some favorites:
Smash Brothers
Mario Kart
Zelda - didn’t like BotW and didn’t get TotK, but I loved the Switch ports of Skyward Sword and Link’s Awakening
Kirby
Mario Party
Super Mario 3D World
Xenoblade Chronicles
My kids like Pokemon and my SO like Ring Fit, but I think that series is pretty boring. And here are some I haven’t played, but probably will:
Astral Chain
Switch Sports
Luigi’s Mansion
Paper Mario
Metroid
Pikmin
That said, I very much don’t like Nintendo as a company, especially its opposition to emulation. But I do like their first party titles, and they’re very polished at launch, unlike many other big studios.
Yeah, games like Mario Odyssey, Mario Kart, Luigi’s Mansion, etc. are fun as hell and very polished. I can’t think of a single first-party Nintendo game that’s released riddled with bugs in recent memory, whereas the rest of the industry can’t say the same, excepting Sony’s first-party games.
I can’t think of a single first-party Nintendo game that’s released riddled with bugs in recent memory
Literally Pokémon. SwSh, SV and BDSP are all a bug-ridden mess. You will probably find more bugs playing SV for an hour than in all gen 3-6 games together.
Although yeah, it’s a (huge) anomaly and the rest of the first-party games are extremely polished. It just sucks to be a Pokémon fan in the 2020s.
I don’t think Pokemon is first-party since that IP and the dev studios fall under The Pokemon Company, whereas games like Mario and Zelda are developed by studios within Nintendo itself. I could be wrong.
Yeah, waiting for them to put out a few more updates and maybe I’ll try again: they’ve fixed a good chunk of some stuff recently. It’s still not there as a completed game for what it wants to be, but it’s okay as a cooperative PvE survival/monster collector.
Haven’t played since they added the island as more levels, so this may be an old opinion: Theres just no real end game past get a cool base. Dungeons are pretty moot at that point, the raid boss just blows up the whole base for some rewards which isn’t worth it unless you have an empty base to summon shit, and the tower bosses and lvl 50 bosses weren’t a bad challenge but that was about it. After you’ve killed those once there’s not much to do. I guess farm them for very specific drops… to be stronger so you can… idk do nothing else….
But again, I haven’t played since they added the island and higher levels so maybe it’s a bit better in that regard now?
It’s pretty much the same thing, but with a longer grind towards the final levels. Legendary bosses (jetragon, frostallion, centaur knights) were bumped to lvl 55, there’s a couple of “alien” pals from semi random, timed events (meteorites), and a “final” dungeon as an offshore oil rig, which is filled with max level syndicate goons that can kill you really fast, but there are many places you can stay where their AI will effectively break. The game crashing while you’re there is a much, much worse enemy
It’s clunky and the novelty wears off quickly, but it was worth a play.
The core game loop is better than any of the pokemon games though.
I am curious as to why they took so long though. Were they waiting until the hype died down so it didn’t look malicious?
It’s just like every other ‘sandbox’ game out there.
About the only substance is in the early game. Then there isnt much to do but grind out a checklist to collect everything.
It gets repetitive too fast.
Referring to all Nintendo games.
Yeah, I was gonna say, Gen IX Pokémon looks like some of the clunkiest, most repetitive shit imaginable.
God, I wish Nintendo made the Pokemon games, because then they might actually not be ugly, terribly optimized garbage. Nintendo owns a minority share of The Pokemon Company, which is also owned by Game Freak and a company called Creatures. Each company takes care of different aspects of the franchise. Game Freak still does all the game development, and I wish they wouldn’t because they obviously don’t care about the franchise anymore and haven’t for quite a while.
The fact they put ILCA on BDSP (and how abysmally that turned out) was the nail in the coffin for me for trusting Pokémon games to be of any quality. SwSh was close, but that told me The Pokémon Company will pump out literally any dogshit they want and people will still buy it.
ILCA?
Developers put in charge of BDSP. Before Pokémon, their work was all extremely minor support for much bigger studios. So for example, if you’re a big AAA studio and you want to save on precious development time, you might contract out a dozen studios to do busywork, and one of those studios might be ILCA. For example, two people from ILCA are credited in Yakuza 0, but this is as “Casting Cooperation”. Their most major game they’d actually worked on themselves before this was Pokémon Home.
So essentially, you’re taking a small company where 95% of their existing work is as a supporting role to do relatively easy work for other major studios, and the other 5% is Pokémon Home, and you’re telling them “Okay, now remake Diamond and Pearl.”
Cool. So what is the acronym ILCA?
I feel like there needs to be a bot to generate random sets of words from unexplained acronyms. I’m pretty sure the Google result for ILCA is not in the gaming industry.
Edit: ‘ILCA’ is the full name it looks like, recommend adding ‘studio’ or ‘games’ to that search tho, unless you’re looking for the International Lactation Consultant Association. Stands for “I love computer art”.
Dunno man, it is possible to accept they make good games while still condemning their corporate bs…
But… they don’t. Their games are old the minute they’re released. Sure they have enough bare minimum charm to wow the masses, but when you truly take a skeptical and honest eye to them compared to many other games, you realize how lazy they are with the copy/paste approach most of the time, inability to add basic common niceties of modern gaming, and generally lacking worlds that feel unfinished.
If it weren’t for the IP name recognition, most of their games would be panned as meh.
I maintain a stance that the only reason they’re still around is because of brand recognition. Literally the only reason I could think of anyone liking their slop.
Basically my stance. Do I like all the anti-competitive crap they pull? Absolutely not. But they do still make and/or publish most of my favorite franchises. This isn’t like, say, Microsoft or Google who bake their evil directly into their products.
They make some good games. They also sling out a bunch of crap and repeatedly rerelease games at full price.
It’s possible to acknowledge that yes but no they don’t make good games, just half-assed rehashed entries in the same 4 tired series they’ve been pumping games out of for decades
Hard disagree. I really enjoy a lot of Nintendo’s games, and will be buying Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom right around release. Some favorites:
My kids like Pokemon and my SO like Ring Fit, but I think that series is pretty boring. And here are some I haven’t played, but probably will:
That said, I very much don’t like Nintendo as a company, especially its opposition to emulation. But I do like their first party titles, and they’re very polished at launch, unlike many other big studios.
Yeah, games like Mario Odyssey, Mario Kart, Luigi’s Mansion, etc. are fun as hell and very polished. I can’t think of a single first-party Nintendo game that’s released riddled with bugs in recent memory, whereas the rest of the industry can’t say the same, excepting Sony’s first-party games.
Literally Pokémon. SwSh, SV and BDSP are all a bug-ridden mess. You will probably find more bugs playing SV for an hour than in all gen 3-6 games together.
Although yeah, it’s a (huge) anomaly and the rest of the first-party games are extremely polished. It just sucks to be a Pokémon fan in the 2020s.
I don’t think Pokemon is first-party since that IP and the dev studios fall under The Pokemon Company, whereas games like Mario and Zelda are developed by studios within Nintendo itself. I could be wrong.
If they ain’t first party, they’re certainly close enough that you couldn’t tell the difference.
A completely different (sub)company and dev team make those games. Nintendo just owns part of it.
Yeah, waiting for them to put out a few more updates and maybe I’ll try again: they’ve fixed a good chunk of some stuff recently. It’s still not there as a completed game for what it wants to be, but it’s okay as a cooperative PvE survival/monster collector.
Haven’t played since they added the island as more levels, so this may be an old opinion: Theres just no real end game past get a cool base. Dungeons are pretty moot at that point, the raid boss just blows up the whole base for some rewards which isn’t worth it unless you have an empty base to summon shit, and the tower bosses and lvl 50 bosses weren’t a bad challenge but that was about it. After you’ve killed those once there’s not much to do. I guess farm them for very specific drops… to be stronger so you can… idk do nothing else….
But again, I haven’t played since they added the island and higher levels so maybe it’s a bit better in that regard now?
It’s pretty much the same thing, but with a longer grind towards the final levels. Legendary bosses (jetragon, frostallion, centaur knights) were bumped to lvl 55, there’s a couple of “alien” pals from semi random, timed events (meteorites), and a “final” dungeon as an offshore oil rig, which is filled with max level syndicate goons that can kill you really fast, but there are many places you can stay where their AI will effectively break. The game crashing while you’re there is a much, much worse enemy