"(Essay) The features removed over the Pokemon generations and whether or not they are justified"

Warning: This is a fairly long post.So an issue I’ve had with the recent Pokemon games is just how many great and useful features they’ve removed over the years. I decided to make a small essay on which features I think were justified in being removed and which ones I think weren’t. Just in case you don’t want to read the full thing and just want to see which features were removed, here’s the list of the features that were removed in each Generation.Removed in Gen 2Walking with Pikachu (Brought back in Gen 4 though, and vastly improved)Removed in Gen 3Physical effect of the day/night cycle on overworld (Brought back in Gen 4)Transfer of Pokemon from the previous Generation (Brought back in Gen 4)Removed in Gen 4No major features were removed in Generation 4 as far as I’m awareRemoved in Gen 5Walking with PokemonGame Corner/Game Corner replacementUndergroundBall SealsSecret Bases (They returned later in Gen 6 though, and improved)Day/Night Music. Seasonal Music made an appearance however. (Returned in Gen 7)RadioRunning Shoes toggleRemoved in Gen 6Difficulty OptionsBattle Frontier (Bit iffy, since Gen 5 also didn't exactly have a Frontier, but it still had two other non-Battle tower clone facilities in Black Tower/White Treehollow and the PWT, so I'll let it slide)Proper Gym Leader rematches (Battle Chateau doesn’t count, the Leaders are super gimped with only 2 Pokemon)SeasonsGym Leader Final Pokemon MusicUnique Gym MusicGB Sounds removed in ORAS (Included here because it only makes sense for them to be in remakes. There would be no logical reason for them to be in Gen 5 or in XY)Hidden GrottoesJoin AvenuePhenomena (Dark Grass, Shaking grass, Rippling Water, Dust Clouds)Removed in Gen 7In-game National DexDex-NavHorde BattlesTriple and Rotation BattlesSuper TrainingSoaringO-PowersPSSSecret BasesBikeGeneric Trainer class encounter themesI don’t think there were any that I forgot, as I asked for feedback on the list before making the post.With that out of the way, here’s the list of removals with detailed explanations on whether they were justifiable or not. While usually I like to give a disclaimer at the beginning of my essays about how they’re just representative of my opinion and not objective, I think I’ve provided very solid reasoning here.Removed in Gen 2Starting with Gen 2 only one major feature was removed, so this section will be pretty quick.Walking with Pikachu (Brought back in Gen 4 though, and vastly improved)Verdict: JustifiedReasoning: Walking with Pikachu was really just a gimmick to market the anime. The overworld sprites weren’t very detailed back then, so I don’t really think it would have been worth it to create overworld models for all 251 Pokemon that existed at the time.Removed in Gen 3Gen 3 only removed 2 major features that I could think of, so again this section won’t be very long.Physical effect of the day/night cycle on overworld (Brought back in Gen 4)Verdict: UnjustifiedReasoning: There was no reason for this feature to be removed. The Generation 3 games still had an internal clock (Hence why Umbreon and Espeon can still evolve and the berries can grow). If a Gameboy can handle this, there’s no reason why the Gameboy advance couldn’t. Was either a time constraint issue or laziness.Transfer of Pokemon from the previous Generation (Brought back in Gen 4)Verdict: JustifiedReasoning: There was no reasonable way to transfer data from the Gameboy/Gameboy colour to the Gameboy advance at the time, so while it was a bummer, it is absolutely justified.Removed in Gen 4As listed earlier, even after a lot of research I couldn’t find any major features that gen 4 removed.Removed in Gen 5Haha, this is a bit awkward. Generation 5 is my absolute favorite Generation, but it's actually the gen where they started to unjustifiably remove features en masse.Walking with PokemonVerdict: UnjustifiedReasoning: People like to say that the reason for this features disappearance was how long it would take to create all the sprites. However, BW and BW2 still uses the HGSS sprites for all of its Gen-1-4 overworld Pokemon, so it doesn’t have an excuse. As well as this, around 40 Gen 5 Pokemon already have overworld sprites (source), so in reality only around 110 more sets would need to be created.For Gamefreak, this would be no issue. A counter argument I see from people a lot is that it would take too much time because they themselves have tried creating sprites in the past and have experience. But what you need to realize is that Gamefreak are a rich Japanese company and hire professionals who create sprites for a living. Creating a bunch of sprites (Or models for the later gens) really isn’t that hard for them, and you should probably stop trying to compare yourself to them.Game Corner/Game Corner replacementVerdict: Not as Black and White as the restReasoning: So, the removal of the Game Corner itself is (sadly) justifiable, as due to changes in the European rating system the game corner raises the age of the games (Take a look at Gen 1 virtual console ratings)That said, there was no reason to not add a similar non-gambling related mini-game. HeartGold and SoulSilver did, and regardless of how hard and seemingly divisive it seems it be, it was something.UndergroundVerdict: JustifiedReasoning: An excuse that Gamefreak apologists like to use all the time is that “Blank feature is region exclusive, it wouldn't make sense for it to be in every game”, and it's almost always absolute bullshit. But in an extremely rare occurrence, I agree in this instance. Sinnoh having an gigantic underground mine really does feel like a “signature attraction” and it wouldn’t make sense for it to be in a region like Unova thats a lot more technically advanced or Alola that is a group of islands.Ball SealsVerdict: UnjustifiedReasoning: Ball seals aren’t a feature that seems to take much effort. I don’t even think many people would’ve minded if they just copy and pasted the seals from Gen 4 without any new ones, as they did have quite a large amount.Secret Bases (They returned later in Gen 6 though, and improved)Verdict: UnjustifiedReasoning: This is a bit of a weird one, because I’m going to be talking about it later on again as well. Secret Bases are a great feature that can add many hours of more game time for those who like distractions like this.In fact, now that I think about it they could’ve easily implemented Secret Bases into Hidden Grottoes.This is a removal that takes away hours of Game time. Luckily for BW2, it has many other things that increase its replayability, but as we get into the 3DS era we’ll start to see how the removal of features that make the game last longer and more replayable becomes a huge issue.Day/Night Music. Seasonal Music made an appearance however. (Returned in Gen 7)Verdict: Slightly ComplicatedReasoning: Usually I would say this isn’t justified, but in the case of Gen 5 it had the decency to add seasonal variations which is actually BETTER, as there are even more tracks thanks to their being 4 seasons over the 2 phases of day and night.That being said, Generation 6 has no such equivalent, so this doubles as an early unjustifiable removal for Gen 6.RadioVerdict: JustifiedReasoning: The radio was mostly used as a plot device in HGSS (Radio tower being down means you can’t use Pokeflute to wake Snorlax) , it isn’t really necessary for anything noteworthy. The information and flavor lore it gives is no different to what you get from TV’s and Books, and the ability to find rare non-native Pokemon can easily be fulfilled by Swarms.Running Shoes toggleVerdict: UnjustifiedReasoning: Not even a difficult feature to implement, could easily have been added to the corner of the Gen 5 bottom screen, as there is plenty of space.Removed in Gen 6Generation 6 is easily my least favourite generation. It really bothers me, as not only are many features removed, but many of those features were really good and don’t have a solid reason for being removed other than laziness on Gamefreak’s part.Difficulty OptionsVerdict: Inexcusably UnjustifiedReasoning: Difficulty options may have been unlocked through dubious methods in BW2, but that is absolutely no need to remove them completely. Regardless of if you personally used them or not, the inclusion of difficulty options is ONLY ever a positive thing.It makes the games more accessible to a wider audience, as there are more choices on how hard you want the game to be.It especially doesn’t help that the games have only been getting easier with each iteration. (Yes, even with the EXP share off the games are extremely easy)A terrible excuse that I hear get brought up as a counter to this point is that “Pokemon is for Kids, there’s no reason to pander to the rest of the fanbase”. First of all, while kids are undeniably the majority of the fanbase, I think you’re incorrect if you think adults and teenagers don’t take up at LEAST 30-40% of it in this day and age. (Just look at how many older fans were lured back in with Pokemon GO)(Speaking of that, I’m going to go on a short little tangent. The target audience for Pokemon games has ALWAYS been kids. It's not like that's a new thing that was only enforced recently. The target audience was kids back in the days of Red and Green, and its kids now. So why have the game's gotten progressively easier? Does Gamefreak think that kids have gotten stupider over the years?)Battle Frontier (Bit iffy, since Gen 5 also didn't exactly have a Frontier, but it still had two other non-Battle tower clone facilities in Black Tower/White Treehollow and the PWT, so I'll let it slide)Verdict: UnjustifiedReasoning: More content is more content. I really don’t feel like I need to convince you why this is unjustified. The Battle Frontier add hours of replayability, and post-game content is something that ORAS (All the 3DS games really) was lacking in. (Admittedly ORAS does have the most out of the 3 pairs of 3DS games we currently have, but a lot of it feels low effort and lazy).HGSS features all of the “essential” features from Crystal. I really don’t understand why Gamefreak felt it was acceptable to leave out features from the 2005 “remake” of Ruby and Sapphire in their 2014 remake of Ruby and Sapphire. Like a lot of the upcoming points on this list, this exclusion feels like laziness and nothing else.Proper Gym Leader rematches (Battle Chateau doesn’t count, the Leaders are super gimped with only 2 Pokemon)Verdict: UnjustifiedReasoning: Pretty much the same reasoning as the above topic, more content is more content, and you can never go wrong with replayability. On top of this the current Gym leaders are all push-overs, so it would’ve been extremely beneficial to their image if you could rematch them with actually strong teams. (Also like the above topic, this was another feature from Emerald that Gamefreak neglected to transfer into ORAS for reasons unknown other than laziness.)SeasonsVerdict: One of the few points that is widely debatable, but I think it's JustifiedReasoning: Mostly because I don’t think seasons really added that much. Changes to the overworld could easily be achieved through other means (Admittedly, Gen 6 doesn’t actually do anything, but hey, I need to defend it somehow or else this entire section will just be shitting on Gen 6)Gym Leader Final Pokemon MusicVerdict: UnjustifiedReasoning: This feature is one of those minor things that while not necessarily groundbreaking, was a really nice effort. The music changing when the Leader is on their final Pokemon is pretty cool, and it helps that the track itself is really good. Creating a short uplifting track shouldn’t take much effort at all, and like many of the next few points seems to have been omitted out of laziness and nothing more. There are literally no drawbacks to this feature after all, and it was universally liked.Unique Gym MusicVerdict: UnjustifiedReasoning: The Kalos League is easily my least favourite due to a number of reasons.1: 4 of their Gyms look the exact same sharing the generic gym building, despite the previous game on the DS having unique buildings for every gym. As well as this, two more are simply in caves (Seriously, what?!) leaving only two unique Gym designs. (Lavere's Tree and Prism Tower.2: The Gym leaders themselves have no relevance to the story other than Korrina and, Wulfric (That said he appears for literally 2 minutes, so I’m being generous here), and they just feel boring in general (A complete lack of any difficulty is on reason)Do you know a cool way that they could have sprinkled the Gym’s with a little bit more personality? By giving them their own music of course! (Like they did in the previous game on inferior hardware…) The unique gym music was one of my favourite parts of BW2, and again, the only reason for its removal seems to be laziness on Gamefreaks end.GB Sounds removed in ORAS (Included here because it only makes sense for them to be in remakes. There would be no logical reason for them to be in Gen 5 or in XY)Verdict: Inexcusably unjustifiedReasoning: This barely would’ve taken any work, they ALREADY have all of the music. It's as simple as creating an item called the GBA sounds and putting all the old music tracks in. Again, it just seems like with ORAS they didn’t try as hard as they did with HGSS.Hidden GrottoesVerdict: JustifiedReasoning: Grottoes sole purpose is to find rare Pokemon with hidden abilities, but Generation 6 introduced more methods of doing so (Hordes, Friend Safari, Dex Nav) so this one disappearing doesn’t really matter.Join AvenueVerdict: JustifiedReasoning: Just like with Sinnoh’s underground, this is the only other thing that I think makes sense as a “region exclusive” feature. The whole concept of this is that it's a bustling shopping mall that you create, and it fits right in inside Unova where commercialisation and greed are a huge theme. (Driftveil City, Undella Town, Black City, Pokestar Studios etc all have themes of commercialisation or greed)Phenomena (Dark Grass, Shaking grass, Rippling Water, Dust Clouds)Verdict: JustifiedReasoning: ORAS’s Dex Nav is sort of like a spiritual successor to this concept. While it has a few differences, it's close enough, and besides it's not like Phenomena is the only method of encountering rare Pokemon.Removed in Gen 7Even though I think what we have of Generation 7 so far is a little better than Gen 6, it still removed a large amount of features with mostly no justification. That said, even though I dislike Gen 6 immensely, I liked many of the features it introduced, and infuriatingly many of those good features are ones that get removed unjustifiably.In-game National DexVerdict: Inexcusably unjustifiedReasoning: This features removal is absolutely one of the most inexcusable on this whole list. It's been a staple feature of the series since Ruby and Sapphire (RBY obviously don't count being the first games, Johto had the "new Pokedex" which had all the mons, but in a different order.)Pokebank has a Pokedex, but it's inferior to an in game one. First of all, Pokebank requires a paid subscription, despite the feature previously being free. And yes, I do have a subscription myself. I see a lot of Gamefreak apologists trying to poor shame people who complain about this point as if the only reason we’re complaining about it being behind a paywall is because we can’t afford it.I understand that it's cheap, but that’s not the issue. It could cost £1 for all it mattered, It’d still be inexcusable to charge for a service that was previously free and superior in its free form.The second main issue is that you need to close your game and enter a completely different app just to view the entirety of the monsters in said game, which is inconvenient and frankly, stupid.You shouldn't have to go into a separate app to view something as basic as your monster encyclopedia. Not to mention, Pokebank requires internet. The 3DS is a portable system, meaning I'm likely to be playing it on the Bus or whether. Needing an an Internet connection to view an encyclopedia of my monsters in my PORTABLE monster catching game when it's been an ingame feature for the past FOUR generations is incredibly backwards and just sort of insulting really.A really weird and honestly very silly excuse that I’ve seen brought up every time this is discussed is that people finally feel encouraged to complete the regional Pokedex now that they know the national dex is gone.This excuse is silly, because nothing forces you to complete the National Dex after finishing the Regional dex. You don’t even have to complete the Regional dex if you don’t want to. The last time finishing the Regional Dex was necessary to get actual content was Platinum, which obviously isn’t relevant in this discussion.A slightly more concerning excuse I’ve heard is that “Sometimes people feel pressured to complete the National dex after finishing the Regional Dex because they feel the need to complete the game”I’m going to be brutally honest here. If you’re someone who for some reason feels pressured to 100% a game for a reason other than personal enjoyment, that's a problem with YOU, not the game.Besides, it's not is if the absence of the National Dex suddenly makes those Pokemon not exist. You can still encounter non-Alolan Pokemon online, through the Battle Tree and through the Island Scan feature, so even new or casual fans will quickly come to realise there are more Pokemon than they were lead to believe.Also a slightly more minor issue (that could be possibly taken as a nitpick, hence why I’m saving it for the last part of this section) is that Pokemon not included in the Pokedex do not have a number when viewed in game, which not only looks ugly in the PC when next to numbered Pokemon, but also makes the arrangement of a Living dex that much more irritating. As well as this Pokebank National Dex doesn’t have the ability to view models and animations, something that the previous (And may I remind you, Free) National Dex did have.Dex-NavVerdict: UnjustifiedReasoning: This is easily one of the more confusing and frankly infuriating removals. Sun and Moon literally have accurate top down bottom screen views of 95% of its ingame areas, so the Dex Nav would have looked more natural than it ever did in Hoenn. And it's not like the idea of a machine that searches for Pokemon inherently belongs in Hoenn or anything, it could have easily been implemented into the Rotom dex.(Which by the way, is one of the worst parts of Sun and Moon. There’s so much missed potential and wasted ideas there. It doesn’t really fit in this essay, but I very briefly wanted to talk about the issues with Rotom Dex and what could’ve been improved. Feel free to skip to the next subheading if you don’t care about this section:1: A lot of unnecessary space is used up by his GIANT BLINKING EYES and frame.2: Clicking anywhere but the dead centre makes the map disappear for a few seconds while he does a stupid animation.3: Clicking the map completely halts gameplay and brings it up on the top screen, which literally misses the entire point of a bottom screen map (Which is to use it seamlessly while playing the main game without breaking immersion).4: Also not a fan of the way that it recycles the same 4 or 5 dialogue options once you beat the game (Including the Ultra Beast line even after you've beaten the missions).5: It's also a shame that it didn't include the feature to add notes to certain areas, which would've been nice as I almost always forgot to go and battle those trainers who wanted me to return after beating the rest of the route.6: As stated earlier, Dex-nav and the other removed bottom screen features should’ve been implemented)Sorry for that off-topic rant, I just wanted to vent about it quickly.Now back to your scheduled programming.Horde BattlesVerdict: Justified, but not for a good reasonReasoning: This features removal is ONLY justified for one single reason. That reason is because Gamefreak are TERRIBLE at optimising their games. The games already lag an unforgivable amount even on the New 3DS, and now that trainers also appear in battle, I imagine the extra models would probably melt the system. So think of this as a sort of embarrassing justification.Triple and Rotation BattlesVerdict: Justified, but not for a good reasonReasoning: Same as above. Gamefreak seriously need to find a new way of optimising. I sure hope Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon at least do something to fix the lag.Super TrainingVerdict: UnjustifiedReasoning: Super Training was actually a fun little game, just because Horde battling is faster doesn’t mean this feature should’ve been removed completely. Besides, Super Training also allowed you to win rare items such as evolution stones.SoaringVerdict: JustifiedReasoning: The major advantage of Soaring in Hoenn was that it allowed you to fly without wasting a HM slot. Pokeride in Alola does the same thing. Other than this, there is no reason to use Soaring as it takes longer than regular flying. As well as this, there’s no reason to lock hidden areas behind soaring, they can easily be accessed through a variety of other methods.O-PowersVerdict: UnjustifiedReasoning: One of Sun and Moons bigger issues is the lack of a way to quickly level up during the post-game. While not a complete fix, the EXP O-Power would alleviate this issue at least a little. The other O-Powers are also very helpful in their own ways, and shouldn’t have been removed.PSSVerdict: UnjustifiedReasoning: The PSS was the best online interface we ever had in this franchise, and to put it frankly the Festival Plaza is goddamn awful. I can’t believe they killed off a feature this good for one so irredeemably shit.Secret BasesVerdict: UnjustifiedReasoning: Super Secret Bases were a really fun distraction from the main quest of ORAS, and I’d go as far as to say they were my absolute favourite thing from those games. Of course they were removed in Generation 7, and again, it's a case of the game losing content that makes them last longer or be fun to replay.BikeVerdict: UnjustifiedReasoning: The Bike is always a nice way of traveling. Its nostalgic, but more than that it's useful for breeding. With Pokeride, you have to hold a button for Tauros to go at top speed. The breeding process is easily one of the worst parts of Pokemon, and being able to multitask while doing it was one of the only reasons it was tolerable. I guess a Tauros run toggle could also work.(Admittedly, this is an issue with the droll breeding process more than anything, but it was alleviated slightly with the bike. Its absence only makes the problem more noticeable. Besides this essay isn’t about which features of the Pokemon games are outdated and need a complete revamping. I might do that soon though…)Generic Trainer class encounter themesVerdict: UnjustifiedReasoning: Even though I hate giving ORAS praise, one thing it did absolutely fantastically was the generic trainer encounter themes. They are some of the longest and highest quality in the series, and they give the generic NPC trainers personality. Sun and Moon only has ONE single encounter theme for generic trainers. It loops after 4 seconds and is bad. This is almost certainly because of laziness on Gamefreak’s part. via /r/pokemon http://ift.tt/2hePXZJ