Words are cheap.

I'll believe it when I see it. The last time I personally believe they last put any effort into their games was X/Y. And only because they went from pixel to polys.

The story has been crap for a while. Even gen 1 has a more compelling story. The bad guys have been laughably stupid, and your rival... Your rival is an overly clingy person who desperately wants to be your best friend. The mechanics haven't budged in forever. So much so a goldfish can accidentally win. Every game is more about that games mechanic then building the franchise or gameplay. And a gimmicks are half baked, propped up just to sell but never follow through on. How many pokémon actually got mega evolutions? Or Z-moves, or Dynamaxing and Gigantamaxing. I mean, I quit shield like maybe a few weeks after it came out and I have most of them because... It was just a temporary gimmick to slap on the box to try to sell it.

But beyond just a bare bones mechanics that is the game...

Scarlett and violet run terribly. And I know a lot of people kept trying to blame the switch hardware because god forbid you blame pokémon. But it's not like it was just Scarlet and violet, sword and shield also ran pretty terribly not as bad but still bad. And they look like upscaled PS1 games. Mainstream pokémon games are just an example of putting in minimum effort while riding nostalgia and cartoon tie-in.

I hope when the next game gets announced, no one pre-orders. I know that won't happen because people are afraid that somehow they're going to run out of digital copies... But I can dream. I hope everyone waits until reviews come out. Because I want to remind you Nintendo doesn't do returns.

I feel it in my gut that some day Pokemon is going to have his "BotW"-like game that will make it revolutionary and relevant again, but until then we're gonna get a lot of stinkers.

Hopefully something comes from this because it's a shame the way the games have been lately.

Most of Nintendo's high-end franchises have been able to "evolve" except for Pokemon. Even the proven -to-always-work ones have taken great steps forward. For a franchise based on an RPG that honestly has plenty to pull from it's resistant to make itself better. The progression of a pokemon game becomes to expected and bland and to some extent it stops making sense in its own world. People have been making suggestions for years now and it's pathetic they refuse to listen to it's base. Scarlett and Violet should have been it's death but people still bought into it so again, it works for sales so why would they need to add in extra resources? Once I picked up on the gimmicks (z-power and gigantamax) I knew it was getting ridiculous. The game just straight up relies on predictable concepts of grinding and higher levels encounters through progression yet it tries to pass itself off as openworld and non linear when you have orher games who clearly do it better. If a pokemon game held it's same concepts and was called somethings else like Master Catcher or Battle Critters it wouldn't even be considered as "great" as it is. You can't say the same for the other franchises.

After the TOTK release, all the amazing mechanics, graphics, and creativity? While I think maybe TOTK is setting new bars, it really shows how much they’ve just churned out the Pokémon games without any thought.

Palworld is set to officially release at the start of next year. It's clearly very Pokémon inspired, but looks much more impressive than any existing Pokémon game. I wonder if Palworld will help shake the Pokémon Company into upping their game.

with regular releases

I guess having fewer releases isn't an option

Well Im not buying any pokemon games until they take more than a year to develop, sounds like Im not gonna be buying any new ones anytime soon if keeping the short development times is where they're starting from for their development strategy.

perhaps it's not possible; the crunch strategy isn't working (and is grinding up and spitting out devs)

They should also look at the long burning tire fire that is Pokémon Go.

ᴜɴɪᴏɴɪᴢᴇ ᴜɴɪᴏɴɪᴢᴇ ᴜɴɪᴏɴɪᴢᴇ ᴜɴɪᴏɴɪᴢᴇ ᴜɴɪᴏɴɪᴢᴇ ᴜɴɪᴏɴɪᴢᴇ ᴜɴɪᴏɴɪᴢᴇ ᴜɴɪᴏɴɪᴢᴇ ᴜɴɪᴏɴɪᴢᴇ ᴜɴɪᴏɴɪᴢᴇ ᴜɴɪᴏɴɪᴢᴇ ᴜɴɪᴏɴɪᴢᴇ ᴜɴɪᴏɴɪᴢᴇ ᴜɴɪᴏɴɪᴢᴇ ᴜɴɪᴏɴɪᴢᴇ ᴜɴɪᴏɴɪᴢᴇ ᴜɴɪᴏɴɪᴢᴇ ᴜɴɪᴏɴɪᴢᴇ

Also cool it on the release cycle a bit. And get Raitora in a game

Legends Arceus shows they can release a quality product, they just choose not to.

they lied on multiple occasions, so why even believes literally anything that comes out of their rotten mouths

A game that has barely changed in over 30 years, except to expand the color palette occasionally? What can they possibly be quality controlling? Its not even like you have to spell check stuff when half your proper nouns are gobbley-removed.

I guess it would have been nice if PokemonGO had released in anything resembling a playable state. But people still threw endless amounts of cash at it. So how important can quality control even be?

Drop Game Freak, hand the reins to a decent reputable developer.

Gen 9 so far is complete ass. Despite Scarlet/Violet having some good things going for it (Nemona is the best rival since Blue from RBY, Arven's backstory is great, Toby Fox making parts of the soundtrack, Ash Ketchum finally dropped from the anime), its flaws heavily outweigh the good parts. Game is dull and full of performance issues, Paldea feels lifeless, the Pokemon League can only be attempted once, Geeta is a joke of a champion, the Team Star questline is awful, and the Academy Ace Tournament is far too easy to be considered endgame content.

Should Gen 10 end up like this, Nintendo and the Pokemon Company will end up in trouble.

They should just have a series that goes out regularly for casual fans and some spin-off for their older audience. Like Pokémon generation me red.

They could buff the difficulty and make the game more complex. They could even have more mature themes(not adult) just like personal growth and the pain of loss kinda stuff.