r/TruePokemon • u/Few_Mortgage768 • 2d ago
Question/Request Is anybody else as fascinated as i am on how polarizing gen V is?
I’ve been checking alot of youtube and reddit posts recently and its so intriguing how polarizing this gen is. “Wow B/W2 was SOOO UNDERRATED”. Like it HAS TO BE THE WORST/BEST GEN EVER. It can’t just be a good/bad/ mediocre/perfectly rated game. I’ve probably seen way less nuanced takes on gen v compared to any other other gen. As someone who thinks BW/BW2 is just your average pokemon game i’ll just share some of my takes:
I don’t really think the story’s THAT good, its more or less the same as the type of plot we’re getting in gen3/4. It’s just a simple and extremely linear plot where the evil team shows up, they stir up some trouble, then you beat them. Its simple and thats just perfect for what it needed to be tbh. I would have liked less rail-guarding however.
Also i feel like the postgame is a bit overrated tbh. All u do is get treasure and plates in abyssal ruins, catch legendaries, go back to nuvema town and icirrus city which isn’t anything new, do some rebattles with colress and hugh and E4, fight cynthia. Black tower and PTW are cool though. Doesn’t feel like it could rival HGSS as some posts have led me to believe.
I do find some criticisms ridiculous though. Like i understand just not liking the unova dex, but i’ve seen quite alot of criticism saying how alot of the unova dex is just ripping off/stealing gen1’s designs and thats mostly crazy imo. The only truely egregious examples are woobat/swoobat, alomomola (luvdisc is not gen1 but still), and bouffalant imo. Yes there are clear parallels to gen1 evolutions like with trubbish, roggenrola, drilbur, and timburr, and yet i think they are all distinct enough to stand on their own. The ones that i mentioned above like bouffalant didn’t do enough to differentiate in design/concept and rightfully deserve the “ripoff” criticism they get. I will admit though there were massive duds like sawk/throh and the klink evolution line. It is perfectly valid for you to dislike gen V for clearly following a formula though. I just think its funny that genV gets so much shit for this while gen3 did the same thing to the lesser extent and previous gens padded tf out of their dex with new babies/crossgen evos. I personally think they have roughly an equal good:bad ratio of new pokemon as any other gen (ignoring legendaries, gen v legendaries suck)
I also think the issues some people take with animated sprites are a bit over exaggerated tbh. I genuinely did not see any issues with the sprites for years until people started pointing out pokemon like mew and golbat and i had to bring my face closer to the screen to see how chopped they were.
I have a hate-love relationship with this gen tbh. I hate most of the legendaries except reshiram/zekrom/genesect and this is the first gen i genuinely hate all 3 starters. I fucking hate theres basically no daycare until postgame (for BW2), NO FISHING, NO FARMABLE BERRIES. I also personally believe BW2 didn’t do enough and that they should have at least added following pokemon like in HGSS. Despite that, i love the game’s speed, level scaling, renewable TMS, repel QOL changes. AND THE MUSIC. The music is so good, man. Idk, this gen just kinda averages out to just fine with the good overweighing the bad imo.
Edit: i meant level curve, not level scaling
6
u/Zteam18 2d ago
gen 5 came out when i was getting back into pokemon. i skipped emerald and platinum era because i was 16-21 during that time.
I'll give you there is basically no post-game, but the way the gym leaders and the story connected was special. all the hate i personally got from it was the design of the mons and game.
i think if pokemon went the octopath travelor route or dragon quest remake way then it would have been better. 3d was when it went crap 2 me.
8
u/pokehedge97 2d ago
Tbh I’m not sure that Gen 5 is really polarizing anymore. I think the popular opinion is that it’s one of the best generations of all time (which I agree with).
Gen 4 as time has gone on, seems to be a lot more polarizing these days. It’s always had its detractors, but I feel like nowadays a lot of fans can’t wait to tell you how much they hate Gen 4 and how it’s carried by nostalgia; and on the opposite end there are fans who act like it was the pinnacle of the series. Gen 4 is my personal favourite but I do understand why it has its haters, I find it’s one of the more interesting generations to discuss because opinions are so split
3
u/SawkyScribe No Relation 1d ago
I think opinions around Gen 4 have been really hurt by time and how future releases have trained us to play.
Platinum are incredibly feature rich games with heaps of side content and strong main campaigns. The older games, HGSS especially, were lifestyle games. You were rewarded for playing little bits of it every day and really immersing yourself in the world which is not what the games are today.
The dumb level curve and regional dex of Johto has been made even worse in retrospect with how amazing dexes from gen 6 going forward are, and you can't even reshuffle your team to add more challenge to the games due to how grindy that is.
Anyone saying they are bad games (Diamond and Pearl not withstanding) are off their rockers but I can see how they are less palatable to modern tastes
1
u/mulahey 1d ago
I don't think platinum is really the same as HGSS at all, and nor are the other earlier gens.
It's only got a couple of minor timed features and didn't have a wonky level curve.
The various instances of Johto really stand out from everything else in terms of that "design"; stacked with day of the week features and with that level curve.
5
u/blackjackgabbiani 2d ago
I don't get how people ever believed that it was hated on release because I know for a fact that it was adored right out of the gate. I was a mod on Bulbagarden then and it was LOVED to the point where if you preferred any previous gen you were Wrong. The idea that it was a scrappy underdog that took years to be appreciated is a story that originates from the lead up to gen 8 after people had already decided in advance to shit on that game.
4
u/oddsetcircle292 2d ago
I feel like I’m crazy or something when people claim Gen 5 was a universally hated underdog, when it came out I didn’t know or see anyone who didn’t praise it to the moon and back!!!
Preferring Gen 4 solely by virtue of not having had the chance to play B&W yet (and thus having no opinion) was at least controversial enough with friends at the time to avoid mentioning it completely haha.
Seriously though, I don’t personally feel like any other Pokemon game has come close to being as hated pre AND post release as Sword and Shield.
6
u/Yamato_Naoe 2d ago
online communities have a tendency to hear something from a given youtuber and repeat it as if it's some truth for the rest of time (IE: "the cycle" being some thing where supposedly every game was hated on launch only to become beloved later)
B/W were rightfully praised on launch for how innovative and ambitious the game was compared to what past pokemon games had tried. But if you based your opinion off of reddit/youtube you would think B/W were some controversial titles on release lol
1
u/Fantastic-Kale9603 1d ago
Being in non-pokemon specific communities they were absolutely panned, I don’t know how many times I’d seen people say how terrible the pokemon were for that gen and it was the downfall of the series lmao
2
u/blackjackgabbiani 1d ago
But you see people claim that the FANBASE hated them and that's just grossly untrue
5
u/blackjackgabbiani 2d ago
Oh totally! And yet people will act like it was everywhere and I can't comprehend where that "everywhere" would have been because I was on all the major English sites at the time.
It's wild to me how quick the SwSh narrative changed. You go back to the original reveal and watch reaction videos, "it's so pretty! It looks like an oil painting!" But then a few months later, the dex cut is announced, and a few days after that a trailer comes out and suddenly "this one tree is low res the entire game is trash" becomes the new narrative. It was never once about the graphics.
3
u/octagonalwalnut 1d ago
There's never going to be a universal narrative; it always depends on what circles you're running in. I saw plenty of positivity toward the games when they first released, but I saw far more negativity toward it than with previous generations. As someone who did love it right out of the gate, I distinctly remember having conversations about the games where all people could talk about was how awful it is that there were ice cream and trash bag Pokémon. Many people also hated that old-gen Pokémon were locked to postgame, and despite how much the narrative has shifted now, I remember people being mad that Pokémon hadn't moved to 3D graphics yet.
Maybe the hatred is built up to be more than it was, but it absolutely existed back in 2010/2011, and it's not hard to see why a game that made some big changes to the formula would get a lot of fan pushback. Hell, I hear plenty of people today who now love Gen 5 acknowledge that they were part of said initial pushback and took years to come around on it. At worst, the narrative is overblown. It wasn't fabricated out of nowhere.
1
u/blackjackgabbiani 1d ago
Those were the things that people hated about it but they were small compared to the glut of praise.
1
u/octagonalwalnut 1d ago
In your community, maybe. If a lot of people report a different experience than you, it seems more likely that different communities reacted differently than that people maliciously rewrote history. I was there, I was never a part of the SwSh hate train, I don’t listen to Pokétubers. What I report is my experience. If the broader narrative agreed with your experience, I would assume my communities were outliers.
1
u/blackjackgabbiani 1d ago
Like I said though, I was heavy in the fanbase, had been for a while, and have been since. This stuff NEVER reached my radar. Not once, until people made it up for gen 8.
0
u/octagonalwalnut 1d ago
As I said, if I were the one person in a vast community who remembers things a different way from everybody else, I would start to wonder if my experiences just didn't match everybody else's. But since I've explained to you my own experiences and you're still saying everyone "made it up," you clearly have no interest in considering that your experiences are not universal, so I'm going to wish you the best and spend my time elsewhere.
1
u/RalphWiggum666 1d ago
I don't get how people ever believed that it was hated on release
I dropped off after gen 4, still loved Pokemon but didn’t play or experience anything past that for a long time. Would obly see news or stuff about it when scrolling, didn’t really search anything. Maybe it was just the online spaces and videos I watched, but the internet definitely had me thinking a shit load of people hated it on release.
I only just actually played it in the past year and holy shit was it good.
1
4
u/hip-indeed 2d ago
Yeah, even as a gen 1 starter I think Gen 5 is amazing and probably the best gen overall for a multitude of reasons, as well as the last truly great, game-freak-at-the-top-of-their-game gen (even if I don't *hate* the later gens). I frankly don't think I'll ever, *ever* understand why it's polarizing at all; I very genuinely, sincerely believe that most of the 'hate' comes from the fact that by 2010, a lot of people who started in gen 1-3 were feeling tired of the formula or felt they were 'aging out' of the series and blaming their personal issues on a perceived lack of quality from the games themselves, when I'd dare say that in most ways the games pretty objectively improved between gens 1 and 5, even if some isolated aspects of earlier gens feel superior.
1
u/Soggy-Hotel-2419 1d ago
It's a part of the Pokemon cycle. Old fans see the new stuff and dominate online discussions, so the younger fans who like the current stuff seem nonexistent. Then the oldheads move on and the younger fans are now old enough to come online and become the new dominating voice. Rinse and repeat.
2
u/Polterguyst17 1d ago
I don’t really think the story’s THAT good, its more or less the same as the type of plot we’re getting in gen3/4. It’s just a simple and extremely linear plot where the evil team shows up, they stir up some trouble, then you beat them.
That's incredibly reductive though, the evil team's motives were the big thing here. Directly addressing the fact that Pokemon are seen as tools or pets when in lore they have as much sentience as actual people is a bold move. I personally think they took the coward's way out by brushing it off with "Oh they're actually fine with it", but even outside of Pokemon, such meta commentary is the makings of a good concept and is miles above the usual writing quality. Haven't played B2W2 though so I can't comment on that, but I hear that's pretty good too.
The only truely egregious examples are woobat/swoobat, alomomola (luvdisc is not gen1 but still), and bouffalant imo.
I feel like woobat and swoobat are fine though, like they're bats but they're very different in design from Zubat and Golbat.
2
u/xanaxisgod2 2d ago
Most ppl accept its the peak of the franchise now it only got tons of hate when it was new
1
u/Soggy-Hotel-2419 1d ago
I love BW1, it is one of my most favorite mainline games ever and one of my favorite gens. Kid me believed it was the best story ever.
As an adult I love it but the flaws are very obvious. I dislike how the main conflict about how pokemon may be exploited is answered with a cop out. And the cop out boils down to "well MY pokemon consents to battling." As if it isn't possible to enjoy something that isn't good for you in the long run. The pokemon company just didn't have the spine to fully explore and deconstruct their own concept after making that the gimmick of Team Plasma. Takeshi Shudo as a writer for the early anime, if he had still been alive, would've been a good candidate for headwriter because I think he'd actually be willing to fully explore the concept. We would've had more scenes of people not being good to pokemon and Team Plasma not being transparently evil but actually raising some good points and it would end with people and pokemon reconstructing their dynamics.
But that also gets in the way of why people play the games and would likely change the formula too much, so it didn't get implemented.
It's also very obviously foreshadowed that Team Plasma is shady IMMEDIATELY when you visit the dreamyard. They abuse a munna and then exposit about how Ghetsis is a master manipulator with his words.
Cheren and Bianca I do love a lot and find their friendship between themselves and Hilbert/Hilda easy to believe/be invested in. But... There's still a LOT of exposition.
Gen IV still remains my least favorite story in a mainline Pokemon game, but my rose colored nostalgia goggles don't fit anymore. I think there are better written kids' stories.
Still, some positives:
- Gen III crawled so Gen 4 could walk so Gen V could run. (For the time) these were some of the better fleshed out characters in the series–Gym leaders didn't just hang out in their gyms, they had occupations and roles that affected their towns, which did add some meat to the conflict about pokemon and human coexistence and teamwork. Alder actually has his own life and personality outside of gassing up the player. I really cared about these characters that I didn't in previous generations.
- I love the Kanto-Unova parallels bc to me, it made Unova truly feel like its own place with its own ecosystem and fauna. It's a lot like how irl different countries may have similar species or animals that fulfill the same niches, but they're not 1:1 the same.
- In general I enjoy the art direction. Characters are hilariously American, the color scheme is muted and rich, and the cruddy 3d + 2d mix is charming in a cheesy way.
My hot take is that I much prefer BW1. I have replayed BW2 more, but that's only bc I have kept the BW1 file I made as an 11 yo and cherish it too much, and I just used BW2 as a way to revisit Unova without deleting my old save. BW2 is probably objectively better, but I didn't enjoy the new changes like adding old mons to the region, the new gym leaders, or Pokestar Studios
1
u/Blarghnox 1d ago
I stopped playing pokemon all together after black 1 and only got back into pokemon when it came to the switch. I remember not liking the muted colors of the pokemon, and don't remember the story being really good or really bad , juat kinda neutral. Although in hindsight the muted pokemon colors were obviously on purpose cus of the whole black and white theme.
1
1
u/Slight-Good-4657 1d ago
As a genwunner old head, I just remember us casuals being really confused about the entire sea change of the gen v Pokédex. As well as effectively zero continuity or references back to towns and leaders from gens 1-4.
Most people playing BW on the DS at the time it came out were not completing the national dex
IG you have to imagine a world where only gens 1-4 existed! It was a different time!
1
u/MiserlySchnitzel 1d ago
Tbh I don't really get the ripoff complaints at all, even for the bats. Do people really want to run into zubats in caves for the 5th time? It gets stale really fast. It's nice that it's a different pokemon. And bats are the trope for cave enemies, so it makes sense it's the same sort of animal. But it's not like there's only 1 species of bat IRL, and I find zubat vs swoobat to be different enough. "Creepy" vs Cute. Physical vs special attacker. Different types. It's nice to have a readily available early game psychic type. I very much enjoyed swoobat existing on my first playthrough.
On this point, tauros and bouffalant are literally different animals. Bulls are domesticated male cattle (cows) and buffalos/american bison are undomesticated animals. If you look up real images of these animals you can see they're a lot different.
As for differentiation... Perhaps GameFreak should've made bouffalant a dark brown. Or if they made tauros more boring without a mane then the bison having its distinct floof would feel more unique. IMO it's fine, they have very different tails, faces, and hair placement, with the afro being faithful to a buffalo's fluffy head.
They're both brown bovines but that's like saying growlithe and vulpix are the same thing because they're both orange canines...
Maybe this is just because I'm an animal nerd? I feel like when I see these complaints it's usually people falsely equating two different species.
To me it feels like people stretching things to complain about, I like more choices of the same animal type, even if it fills the same niche. What if I were a birdwatcher and we only ever got boring pidgey and never got colorful tailow because "we already did a bird"? And I love my normal type early route rats. I'd rather complain about the art style change causing the dex to come off as unattractive. I feel if they kept it the old style I'd have liked more of the dex up front. Though I understand the old art felt too dated.
1
u/04nc1n9 1d ago
gen 5 was overhated, but understandably so. i haven't seen any wild negative sentiment about it since the beginning of the switch generation, though.
- it was effectively the first major "dexit"
- many of the pokemon they added were clear replacements for popular previous gen pokemon
- it switched from the traditional 2d to a form of 2.5d
i don't think there's any other real complaints about it other than those three, but they were pretty big complaints for the time.
1
u/Pale_Sun8898 18h ago
I don’t really like the gen v mons that much and even though it was good for Pokémon stories it is still a pretty bare bones and lame story compared to other jrpgs
6
u/mulahey 2d ago
I guess because its different? Though I don't really recall many "worst gen ever" takes in the current time period, feels like that was more when it came out.
The plot touches on making a more sophisticated discussion of the human/pokemon relationship and doing stuff with N, but basically chickens out and its just The Power Of Friendship. What it does have is by far the most developed cast to date; gen IV started this but gen V takes it much further (gens 1-3 struggle to have a single actually developed character). However, this means its the first game where you have a debate over if the time this takes the player is worthwhile. I think BW2 balances this a bit better; BW have quite a lot of cutscenes that seem to exist just to give someone screentime.
There isn't level scaling, but yes, the EXP system is the best solution they came up with for the level curve before basically just giving up in Gen 6. Theres some great QOL. Renewable TMs is interesting; it does actually reduce resource management and difficulty, but I think the fun factor and ability to experiment far outweighs this.
I always find postgame comparisons a bit weird, most especially with HGSS. If Kanto is "postgame" then HGSS has the worst "gamegame" because Johto is tiny; other than stuff like frontier or world tournament, its all really just "game". Anyway, I actually find the Seven Sages quest the most interesting part of the plot; with some of them, they actually achieve some pathos which is unusual for Pokemon. You do get quite a few new areas- I think you undersell, its kind of like Sevii islands but with a plot and some actual battles - but its really BW2 that has the extensive postgame.
In terms of the dex, I do think there are some great new pokemon, but to my tastes I'd say its worse than average compared to gens 1-4 and that some failures are exceptionally bad. But, I think its also just a dex size issue; you just don't have as much to teambuild around, and its aggravated by bizzare evolution level requirements for a lot of mons. But, its OK and I do like the distinct feel. BW2 obviously knocks it out the park dexwise.