Copyright nintendolife
Over the weekend, we republished our reader-ranked list of all the Pokémon games after everyone had had a chance to spend some quality time with Legends: Z-A and vote accordingly. That's 22 mainline games by our count. The entries at the top of the table probably won't surprise you, as the inventiveness and sheer novelty (and nostalgia) of earlier entries dominate the higher ranks, although it may surprise you to see OG Red/Blue/Yellow outside the top 10. However, scrolling down from low to high, one thing becomes immediately obvious: the Switch generation hasn't been a great one for Pokémon. The Pokémon Company's accountants would beg to differ, I'm sure. ZA reportedly turned in the biggest physical launch figures in the US since Tears of the Kingdom, and it's gone down similarly well in Japan. The UK and European launches seem to have been a mite less enthusiastic, but the critical reception was positive, and the game is rocking a "Generally Favourable" Metascore of 78 on Switch 2, 76 on Switch 1. And yet, with nearly 500 NL user ratings at the time of writing, there it languishes at the very bottom of our Pokémon list. It's an odd one. Recency bias can present the opposite issue when a fervent fanbase is all-in on the new hotness, but after an initial period, we find things settle down nicely. Yes, it turns out Mario Odyssey and BOTW really are all-timers that deserve their spots at (or near) the very, very top of their rankings. We've had it so good with other Nintendo series since 2017, which makes all these Switch Pokémon games in the nosebleeds stand out all the more. Naturally, you'll always have extremes with reader-voted polls: some will slap on an 'Outstanding' 10/10 to try and elevate their favourites; others will troll games they've taken against with a 1/10 to knock them down a peg. (Seriously, the five people currently rating BOKURA: planet 'Abysmal' need to have a word with themselves, but that's another article.) But bombers and bootlickers and genuine outlier opinions aside, a good sample size soon balances things out and games settle into their groove. And there's no getting around it: the consensus shows a paucity of truly great, recent Pokémon games. Sword and Shield sits at #18, followed by Let's Go, Pikachu and Eevee at #19, the Diamond and Pearl remakes at #20, and Scarlet and Violet slotting in just before ZA at the bottom. The exception is Pokémon Legends: Arceus at #5; a game which dared to try something a little different, blending nostalgia for a past generation with some innovative touches — for Pokémon, at least — and hinting at a bright future if Game Freak dared to be different. It's worth clarifying that none of the Switch Pokémon games are straight-up bad. The average score from nearly 500 NL readers currently stands at 7.0, coincidentally bang on with Alana's 7/10 review score. As per our own scoring rubric, it's patently a 'Good' game. But is 'Good' or 'Generally Favourable' sufficient for one of the most beloved series in all of video games? Imagine the headlines, the think pieces, the confusion if Nintendo fumbled the next 3D Mario and it settled on a Metascore in the late 70s. It's possible, but also, somehow, unthinkable. Would Koizumi even let it out the door if he thought someone could give it a 4 with a straight face? 'Good' doesn't cut it for the greatest series. Yet it seems that, at some point, we've gotten used to 'good enough' from Pokémon, a sorry state for a series that fires up such formative passions. When did it happen? I remember X & Y launching without support for the 3DS' namesake, flagship feature. Was that it? I don't think so. Rarely has a Pokémon game been a visual tour de force, and that game was genuinely great. No, that wasn't it. Sword and Shield felt like a very safe first step into a new realm, although in that context, as the first home-console entry, Game Freak still had the benefit of the doubt. No, no, the next one will be the big one... Not that one. Or that one. Hmm. Look, maybe Gen 10 is when they'll really bring out the big guns, Timmy. The Pokémon fanbase extends far beyond the games, of course, so you're not relying on the near-annual mainline schedule for your Pokémon fix. However, discord in the physical TCG sphere and dissatisfaction with the Pocket version, in particular, have seen the fanbase become more vocally unhappy than ever. Throw in major disappointment around Scarvi's performance (which, for the record, performs much better on Switch 2 - it only took two-and-a-half years and totally new hardware!) and it feels like Pokémon stories come in just four flavours: 'random 'mon distribution in Game X', 'OMG terrible tech!!1', 'scandalous card-pack prices', and 'crossover merch'. Given the series' success, the dev resources allocated are a popular discussion topic, too. If Pokémon is the biggest franchise on the planet, why isn't The Pokémon Company putting Naughty Dog-level budgets on these games? A recent (still-unverified) leak of various Pokémon-related material reportedly suggests that Scarlet and Violet's budget was $21.8 million. Now, many a small developer would kill for a budget like that, but for games that sell this well, a budget of $22 million is modest compared to many AAA games on other consoles. Perhaps there's something there: whatever triple-A means exactly in 2025, Pokémon...just isn't. Has it ever been? Modern Pokémon's problem is a lack of ambition. Say what you like about Pokémon GO, but it injected something totally fresh and captivating. And it did so nearly a decade ago, eight months before Switch launched. I gave myself an RSI playing that in Hong Kong, such was the curiosity and joy it inspired, the ol' surprise and delight. [insert tasteless joke about more recent Pokémon games inspiring personal injury of a different nature here] TPC giving the mainline series a breather last year felt like tacit acknowledgement that they'd made too many trips to the well and had come back with a muddy bucket. A year to regroup seemed prudent to prevent an MCU-style glut of product and waning enthusiasm. But is enthusiasm actually waning for Pokémon? ZA's early sales figures suggest 'nope', although speaking to the NL team, there's a general sentiment which doesn't bode well. A sampling: "Modern entries try to convey a sense of freedom, yet constantly stop you in your tracks to explain something excruciatingly simple step-by-step. They've lost that sense of discovery." "I’m always more excited to boot up Ruby/Sapphire or Black/White than the latest entry — and I think that’s because I always need to clarify the newbies with a “Yeah, it’s pretty rough, but…” to justify my enjoyment." "There are no surprises anymore." Then again, we're not kids anymore; naturally, they're the franchise focus. There's an influx of fresh players every generation, and no impetus for TPC to push the envelope when the base proposition of catching 'em all is still so addictive and profitable. Candy doesn't go out of fashion, does it? We're not kicking down doors at Cadbury's or Hershey's demanding they reinvent chocolate. But just contrast this to Nintendo's own approach to Mario. Just the other day, we saw Nintendo luminaries stressing that Mario will only survive if his games evolve and the developers continue to innovate. What's the last mainline Mario game that surprised me? Wonder, probably. The last one. Perhaps to a fault ("Okay, what's this zany Wonder Flower going to do?"), but who could deny being surprised and fairly delighted? Looking further afield, I wonder (heh) if Palworld's success is partly attributable not to its 'Pokémon-with-guns' flavour — as if dropping a cache of firearms into Pokémon was the only way to appeal to adults — but its ambition to take the formula in a different direction. Looking like a proper next-(current-)gen game doesn't hurt, but at least Pocketpair is trying something, risking something. Likewise, with Cassette Beasts, Temtem, and many other excellent monster catchers, indie devs have picked up the Beastieball and run with it. I remember thinking that the brilliant Okami was a death knell for traditional Zelda in 2006. I've likened it in the past to outside devs finally mastering the grammar Nintendo established with Ocarina. It took a decade, but Nintendo did finally respond - they did reinvent chocolate with BOTW. (Yes, I know a Toblerone and a video game are very different things; please let me have this laboured metaphor.) It's worth acknowledging that Game Freak does try new things, too, even if the pace of progress is glacial. As Alana said, ZA's battle mechanics are the best thing about it, and while the many and various Pokémon spin-off games can feel like free-to-play potshots, or half-baked ideas not intriguing enough to sustain a whole game, TPC does experiment with Pokémon. Pokopia looks fun! If only the mainline series could inspire such excitement. What does the future of Pokémon look like, then? Well, the leaks are out there if you're curious. But it feels to me that lapsed Trainers and uberfans alike are starting to align in their 'it is what it is' resignation. 'Phoned-in' isn't fair to the developers who work so hard on these games, but from the outside looking in, they deserve more time and resources. That the games look like they'd run fine on a PS3 isn't the point; Pokémon conquered the world from a Game Boy in 1996. The real issue is that the series itself feels like a fund-sucking machine fuelled by 'that'll do' energy more than an endeavour to surprise and delight. It could — and really should — be so much more.
