Pokémon Was Always Accessible

Okay, today was supposed to be another horror post… but my copy of Claire: Extended Cut started crashing and I decided I wasn’t enjoying it quite enough to work around the crashes.

Instead, let’s talk about a Pokémon topic that’s been confusing me lately.

First off, I have nothing against the idea behind Pokémon Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Pokémon Let’s Go, Eevee! Pokémon GO attracted many new fans, and creating a game to bridge Pokémon GO and the mainline series makes sense.

Create a Pokémon game that is similar to traditional games in the series, but with simplified mechanics and connections to GO, and use that to ease Pokémon GO players into the series to be ready for the next traditional entry. Will it work? I don’t know, but I understand the reasoning.

I’m more concerned about the fact that Pokémon X/Y and Pokémon Sun/Moon also simplified certain aspects.

Both were more linear than past Pokémon games, and Sun/Moon in particular carefully guided the player along. They felt simpler and easier. They lacked the more complex dungeons and challenges. And these were mainline Pokémon games, so who’s to say the 2019 game won’t be like that?

Whenever these concerns are mentioned, or when the Pokémon Let’s Go games are criticized, people using defend these changes by saying:

It’s a game for kids.
New players might be scared off by the complexity.
They need to be accessible games.

And all of that is fine, except… we’re talking about Pokémon! It was always a kids’ series, and it was always accessible.

People have started acting like the first few generations of Pokémon games were dense, hardcore RPGs that kids and new players couldn’t possibly understand. Where did this idea come from? Kids played the old Pokémon games. They had more challenge and complexity than the newer ones, but they were never ultra-challenging games.

So why act now like Pokémon suddenly needs to be simplified for the sake of kids?

I’m hardly a hardcore Pokémon player. I don’t play competitively, I never complete the Pokédex, and I rarely worry about the more in-depths elements like EVs and IVs and whatever else. But the recent games have lacked some of the challenge and sense of exploration and discovery that I enjoyed, and I hope the 2019 game is different.

What do you think? Could kids today understand the old Pokémon games? Are these changes actually being made for adults, with kids being the excuse? Was old-school Pokémon actually a tough, inaccessible RPG series after all and I’m just crazy?

And how do you think the 2019 Pokémon game will compare to past entries?

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