I'm at the Zero Zone right now. I agree, it is nice that they separated the story bits. It did leave me googling what order to do things in so that my levels would be appropriate, but that's what Google's for after all. And you're not just locked into that order. I just love that, like you said, the separation allowed them to flesh out each individual part.
I'm of two minds about the performance issues. Like I've said (repeatedly) before, having played Cyberpunk 2077, Saints Row (2022) and other games; I think I've become a bit forgiving when it comes to a certain amount of performance issues. But on the other hand, I think maybe I may have become a bit too forgiving. It used to be that you didn't get second chances with patches and updates. As an industry, gaming has grown just a bit too comfortable with releasing unfinished.
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Now, here's what I hope to see in the future:
TM's :
I really love how S/V did this . You don't want to be in a position where you learn a move, not thinking you learn another move and lose the one you learned from the TM and now you can never get it back.
Reusable HM's were a step in the right direction. Removing the need for HM slaves so that even if you lose a move forever, it's not a game breaking mistake because you don't need them for flying/swimming/etc, was a much needed change on so many levels.
But I like this idea. TM's are breakable upon use, but as long as you have the materials, you can always make more. This makes it so you have to be conservative and not just unthinkingly use TM's and learn moves all willy-nilly like you could with unbreakable HM's, but you always have the chance to try again as long as you get the materials. I want to keep this going forward .
Crafting:
Going along with this, one of the things I absolutely loved from Arceus was that you never really had to buy things like pokeballs, potions, revives, etc. You could buy them if you were in a pinch, but you didn't have to. You could make your own using materials you found out in the wild.
I would like to bring this back going forward. Crafting and managing resources was such a fun part of Arceus.
Battle:
I'm not sure what to say here. Arceus was just so perfect in so many ways. It's options for how you go about battling were unparalleled. But once you got used to V/S, it had its ups and downs. So I'm really just not sure what I really want going forward.
High Level Pokemon:
Now here's something that's really bugged me about these games. Once you hit about lvl 60-70, leveling your Pokemon just becomes a slog. Whether you doing Battle Ground fights, farming candies from Max Raid battles, going around high level areas...no matter what, it just becomes a slog.
I think the only game where fast leveling wasn't a slog was in Alpha Sapphire with the Blissey Bases. And maybe that just spoiled me because the very first Pokemon game I ever played gave me an opportunity to level up an entire team to level 100 in less than half an hour. And maybe it shouldn't be that easy.
But I do wish there was a way to get Pokemon up to level 100 without it being such a slog. By the time you get to that point anyway, it's not like you're trying to keep the endgame from being too easy. You're already most likely in post-game. Just give us a non-sloggy way to max out levels. Like, seriously, bring back Blissey Bases.
Shinies:
Oy! I don't know how many shines I've probably walked right past in V/S without even knowing it. Now I will admit that Arceus had a real problem with it being so easy to get shinies that they stopped being special in a way. Arceus made it way too easy. But here, it just seems like they've gone too far in the opposite direction. There needs to be some indicator when you're around a shiny. It becomes too easy to miss otherwise, particularly when some Pokemon already have more than one color (Oricorio, Floette), when the shiny color is very similar to the normal color (Pikachu) (particularly with the graphical issues this game has)...or maybe its a new Pokemon that you have no idea what the normal/shiny colors are even supposed to be.
Like, okay, I understand that Arceus made it way too easy. But this is making it way too hard. There needs to be something they can do to meet in the middle.
Camping:
Camping was okay in V/S. I think I prefer the curry mini-game over the sandwich mini-game. But it was alright. But where V/S really fell short was in playing with the Pokemon.
Arceus you can talk to your Pokemon and they emote. V/S it felt like whenever I tried to talk to my Pokemon they just stand there. Arceus let you play ball and had a feather stick. These were fun AF. V/S also has a ball you can throw, but not a single one of my Pokemon would run after it. Maybe I'm just doing it wrong?
And while I don't know how you would do this on a TV screen as opposed to the DS which has a touch-screen (yeah, the Switch has a touch-screen, but not useful in docked mode), I'd like to see them find some way of bringing back Pokemon-Amie. I mean, yeah, it can help build friendship/affection. But really, who doesn't want to get an Eevee/Fenneken and just pet their cute widdle faces!
