If the games are fun to play who cares if the graphics are bad? Scarlet and Violet were the best pokemon games since P:LA and that was the best since Gen 5.

Based on the limited information we've gotten about ZA there's no reason as of yet to doubt that it won't be comparable to P:LA and S&V in terms of enjoyability.

Complaining about the graphics of pokemon games or the bugginess of pokemon games is like complaining about CoD being an FPS or Assassin's Creed having traversable terrain or Souls-likes being hard. At this point it's a staple of the franchise with 40 games between the mainline games and major spinoffs establishing a trend of the games being thoroughly buggy messes and/or having shit graphics. There is absolutely no reason to expect any of that to change and constantly hearing complaints about it with every new game is getting fucking old.

[–] tonytins@pawb.social 10 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

While graphics generally aren't important, they do become a glaring problem when the engine is poorly written. Pokémon Sword and Shield shed light on this problem because it was designed as an 3D open world game, meaning attention to detail was paramount. It needed to feel lived in, much like Breath of the Wild. Unfortunately, we got a barren and flat landscape that feels like it was ripped straight out of the DS.

[–] CrazyLikeGollum@lemmy.world -4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I don't disagree that the graphics could and probably should have been better. I do disagree with the idea that it's anything more than a minor annoyance with no meaningful impact on the game.

However, regardless of what I think about it, my point was that at this point in the franchise, Gamefreak, the Pokemon Company, and Nintendo have demonstrated repeatedly since the very first game that optimization, stability, graphical fidelity, and any semblance of good development practices are not something they're willing to commit to. Expecting that to change at this point is unreasonable and continuing to complain about it is demonstrably unproductive and just introduces pointless negativity into the pokemon community.

[–] caseofthematts@lemmy.world 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Until Sword and Shield, the games weren't known to be ugly, buggy messes. People have, and continue to, praise the 2D pixel art of previous generations. Sun and Moon is an odd middle ground as some people started to not like the 3D direction, but thought it'd improve on a more powerful console, like the Switch. I don't think it's correct saying this is a staple of pokemon games. It's a staple of modern pokemon games, which I absolutely disagree about the last 2 entries being the best. Far from it.

[–] CrazyLikeGollum@lemmy.world 0 points 2 weeks ago

I was more thinking of the N64 and GameCube games (Stadium 1&2, Colloseum, and XD Gale of Darkness) when referencing older games with poor graphics specifically. All four of those games were graphically inferior to other titles on the same consoles.

However, every single release has been plagued by bugs that can result in completely corrupted save data, softlocks, and a wide variety of other unexpected behaviors. Major examples being MissingNo and the other glitch pokemon, bad eggs, a wide variety of exploitable, but potentially save corrupting bugs like the infinite item glitches in gens 1-3, and a whole host of bugs that break how moves are supposed to work in battle.

Hell, shinies were originally a graphical bug in gen 2.